Israel: a Failing Colonial Project?

Running Out of Solutions

By M. SHAHID ALAM
CounterPunch
July 9 - 11, 2010

Increasingly, despite its early military and political successes, Israel cannot for long endure as a colonial project. It must choose between wars – and destruction – or transition to a state for all its peoples.

In order to firmly secure its existence – as firmly as that is possible for any state – a settler state has to overcome three challenges. It has to solve the native problem; break away from its mother country; and gain the recognition of neighboring states and peoples. It can be shown that Israel has not met any of these conditions.

Consider Israel’s native problem. In 1948, in the months before and after its creation, Israel appeared to have solved its native problem in one fell swoop. It had expelled 80 percent of the Palestinians from the territories it had conquered. In addition, with the rapid influx of Arab Jews, Palestinians were soon reduced to less than ten percent of Israel’s population.

So, had Israel licked its native problem for good? Not really.

The Palestinians inside Israel pushed back with a high natural rate of growth in their numbers. As a result, despite the continuing influx of Jewish immigrants, the Palestinian share in Israel’s population has grown to above 20 percent. Increasingly, Jews in Israel see Israeli Arabs as a threat to their Jewish state. Some are advocating a fresh round of ethnic cleansing. Others are calling for a new partition to exclude areas with Arab majorities.

The Palestinians expelled from Israel in 1948 did not go away either. Most of them set up camp in areas around Israel - the West Bank, Gaza, southern Lebanon and Jordan. In 1967, when Israel conquered Gaza and the West Bank, it could expel a much smaller fraction of the Palestinians from these territories. In consequence, with more than a million additional Palestinians under its control, Israeli had recreated its native problem.

Israel’s native problem has grown worse since 1967. Already, the Palestinians equal or outnumber Israeli Jews between the Sea and the Jordan River. In the years ahead, moreover, the Palestinian share will continue to rise.

Having run out of solutions – such as rising net immigration of Jews and ethnic cleansing – Israel has been implementing draconian measures to handle its native problem. With Egyptian collaboration, it maintains a medieval siege over Gaza; it neutralizes the Palestinians in the West Bank with the apartheid wall, expansion of settlements, settler-only roads, intimidation and humiliation of Palestinians, and military control over the Jordan Valley.

However, these remedies are creating new problems. They lend support to charges that Israel is an apartheid society not a democracy. As a result, slowly but steadily, Western publics are throwing their support behind the campaign to divest from, boycott and impose sanctions on Israel.

Has Israel broken away from dependence on its mother country/countries?

In the absence of a natural mother country, Zionism worked with surrogates. Quite a few of them. Indeed, there is not a Western country – including Russia in its previous incarnation as Soviet Union – that has not served as a surrogate mother country to the Jewish colonial project.

The Jewish settlers in Palestine lost the support of Britain - their leading surrogate mother - in the early years of World War II, but retained it long enough to create their own state. Over the next few years Israel took on several new surrogates, not counting the Jewish diaspora: including the Soviet Union, France, Germany and the United States. Starting in the late 1950s, however, the United States became the leading mother country to Israel. This was the result of a powerful dynamic largely directed by Israel and the Jewish lobby in the United States.

Over the years, the United States has subsidized Israel, armed it, allowed it to acquire nuclear weapons, and gave it immunity from the sanction of international laws. Under the protection of the United States, Israel quickly gained hegemony over the Middle East: it became a law unto itself.

Still Israel is not an autonomous state.

It could not sustain its current military posture without the annual military grant of some three billion dollars from the United States and the tax-free donations from American Jews. More importantly, without the US veto at the United Nations, Israel could not continue its occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, its siege of Gaza, its pre-emptive wars against its neighbors, and its policy of assassinations against Arabs. In short, without US-backed immunity, Israel would become a pariah state.

Arguably, this dependence does not place Israel at risk, since it is primarily an artifact of the Israel lobby in the United States. Over time, however, as the damage that Israel causes to US interests filters to the American electorate, unqualified US support for Israel may be in jeopardy.

Finally, there is the question of gaining the recognition of its neighbors.

Israeli gains on this front are more apparent than real. The Arab regimes that have recognized Israel, or are eager and ready to recognize it, have little legitimacy. Should these regimes collapse, their replacements are likely to resume their early confrontational posture towards Israel.

This is not mere speculation. Under the despotic Shah Iran was friendly to Israel, but after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 Iran became an ideologically committed adversary of Israel. As the powers of the secular generals in Turkey have been clipped, Turkey too has been revising its friendly ties with Israel.

In recent years, Israel has been running into a new problem: the loss of legitimacy with growing segments of civil society in the Western countries.

Driven by the contradictions of an exclusionary settler-state, as Israel has ratcheted its violence against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, as it has tightened its siege of Gaza, as it deepens its apartheid regime in the West bank, as it threatens to strips Arab Israelis of their rights, it has slowly called forth a new form opposition to its policies.

Angry at the complicity of their governments in Israeli crimes, segments of civil society in Europe, Canada and the United States have been moving forward with calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Increasingly, despite vigorous opposition from the Jewish establishment, this movement has been spreading among academics, students, trade unions, church groups, dissenting Jewish organizations, and human rights activists. Some of them have been organizing convoys, over land and sea, to break the blockade of Gaza.

As the failure of Israel’s colonial project looms larger, its nervous leaders will increasingly seek security in new and more dangerous wars. Increasingly, Israel will become an intolerable threat – if it isn’t already – to the Middle East, the world, and no less to Jews everywhere. Zionism was founded overwhelmingly by secular Jews, but, in order to succeed, it created a new religious myth of Jewish restoration, galvanized messianic tendencies among Western Christians, and created the myth that Israel alone shields the West from a resurgent Islam and Islamicate. It will not be easy putting these genies back in the bottle.

Perhaps, the best chance of unwinding the Zionist colonial project lies with the Jews themselves. Only when liberal segments of the Jewish diaspora are convinced that Zionism endangers Jewish lives, only when they act to countervail the power of the Jewish lobby in leading Western societies, will Israel finally be moved to dismantled its apartheid regime. In the end, the alternative to this orderly dismantling of Zionism is a destructive war in the Middle East that may not be limited to the region. Whatever else happens, it is unlikely that Israel or US interests in the Middle East will survive such a war.

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His latest book is Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Macmillan, November 2009).

The General and the Bomber

"They Don't See Children; They Don't See Anybody"

By Rev. WILLIAM E. ALBERTS
CounterPunch
July 9 - 11, 2010

Both took center stage in America recently. The audiences hung on the general’s every word, and dismissed every word of the “blood thirsty” bomber. Yet it was New York Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and not General David H. Petraeus, who confronted America with reality. The four-star general’s polished uniform, chest full of war medals, and reassuring tone led his eager Senate confirmation hearing committee members, and hailing mainstream media, to remain happily oblivious to the reality of America’s war crimes. Conversely, the bomber spoke truth to America about its transgressions, which, if not ended, will lead people like him to continue “attacking the U.S.”

“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” the bomber said, in explaining why he put a bomb in the center of Times Square at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday night in May—to create a maximum number of deaths and injuries and destruction. A repeatedly interrupting Federal District Court Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum tried to discredit where he was “coming from.” “You wanted to injure a lot of people?,” she asked. He said that he saw himself as “a Muslim soldier,” and that “United States and NATO forces had attacked Muslim lands.” “But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night,” she countered. And with judicial emphasis, she added, “Did you look around to see who they were?” “Well, the people select the government; we consider them all the same,” he said. She interrupted with, “Including the children?,” intending to expose his inhumanity.

The bomber turned Judge Cedarbaum’s question around to expose the inhuman reality of US foreign policy: “Well, the drone hits Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “They don’t see children; they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children. They kill everybody,” he continued. “It’s a war. And in war, they kill people. They’re killing all Muslims.” (“A Guilty Plea In Plot to Bomb Times Square,” By BenjaminWeiser, The New York Times, June 22, 2010)

United States “terrorism experts” have tried to dismiss the bomber’s reality. They reportedly say that “his responses to [Judge] Cedarbaum’s questions, on topics including his family and his educational background, highlighted . . . the danger of so-called homegrown militants, who evolve from seemingly benign backgrounds to become intoxicated by international extremist groups.” (“N.Y. bomb defendant pleads guilty,” By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2010) The so-called “terrorism experts” themselves are assumed to “evolve from . . . benign” American “backgrounds,” and have themselves become “intoxicated” by internal ethnocentric propaganda that glorifies American exceptionalism and rightness, which renders them oblivious to the reality of so-called “extremist groups.” The “terrorism experts’” job is to justify U.S. imperialism by discrediting “extremists” who dare to oppose “the greatest nation in the world.”

The bomber and his reality are difficult to dismiss. Mainstream media reports themselves describe his testimony before Judge Cedarbaum as “straightforward,” “clear, matter-of-fact,” “ polite but firm,”—and quote him as saying that he himself had “a wife and two beautiful kids,” His warning needs to be heard and heeded: “Until the hour the U.S. pulls its forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and stops drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan and stops the occupation of Muslim lands, and stops killing the Muslims, and stops reporting the Muslims to its government, we will be attacking U.S. [italics added], and I plead guilty to that.” (The New York Times, June 22, 2010)

Where the bomber is “coming from” puts the boot of terrorism on America’s foot. “I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people,” he said, “and, on behalf of that, I’m avenging the attacks.” He put his finger on American foreign policy’s soft immoral underbelly: “Living in the United States, the Americans only care about their own people, but they don’t care about people elsewhere in the world when they die. Similarly,” he continued, “in the Gaza Strip, somebody has to go and live with the family whose house is bulldozed by the Israeli bulldozer.” (“Excerpts of statements made by Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad,” The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2010)

United States foreign policy has resulted in the deaths and injuries and displacement and hardship of millions of human beings, “including the children”—in our name! Well over a million Iraqi civilians have been killed in the Bush administration’s pre-emptive, falsely-based, illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. A deadly civil war between the Shiites and the Sunnis, triggered by the criminal war, is still raging. Some four million Iraqi citizens have been uprooted. The country’s life-sustaining infrastructure has been and still is decimated.

“Including the children?” Especially the children. Reports have revealed that the U.S.’s criminal war has produced “an estimated 740,000 widows in Iraq,” whose “presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents [italics added] has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraq’s self-sufficiency.” (“Study: Iraqi widows struggle in new roles as breadwinners,” Baghdad, Iraq, CNN.com/world, Mar. 7, 2009; “Iraq’s War Widows Face Dire Need with Little Aid,” By Timothy Williams, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 2009)

A similar story, one that includes the children, continues to unfold in Afghanistan and Pakistan. United States military drones and bombers’ air strikes have indiscriminately killed children and women and other civilian villagers—at their weddings, in their homes, and in their centers of thoroughfare. These war crimes are repeatedly covered up by the U. S. military, until the truth is finally uncovered—that the people killed were not “Taliban” and “insurgents”, as the U.S. military command declared, but civilians. (See Alberts, “First the Torture of Truth, Counterpunch, June 10, 2009) Their relatives may then be reimbursed “$2,000 for family members killed and $1,000 for those injured.” (The Boston Globe May 13, 2009) The amounts reveal just how little value and meaning Afghan lives have for their American “protectors,” and how much faith there is in the American dollar to cover imperialistic tracks and buy off grief and anger.

Now new United States military “rules of engagement” have been created supposedly to protect civilians—as their deaths and injuries obviously undermine U.S. attempts to “win the minds and hearts” of the Afghanistan people. Most Afghan “minds and hearts” do not want any foreign military boots on their soil for one minute never mind nine years. And most reject the corrupt U.S.-installed government of President Hamid Karzai.

In Pakistan, there is more Iraqi-like United States foreign policy handiwork. In addition to the deadly indiscriminate drone strikes, the U.S.- pressured Pakistani military’s assaults against Taliban havens have created some three million internal refugees, especially children. A Boston Globe feature, called “Children in Pakistan,” began, “According to Pakistani authorities and the UN, at least 3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have now been registered as a result of the recent fighting and on-going military operations against the Taliban in Pakistan’s Swat, Buner, and Lower Dir districts.” The story continues, “Refugee families are often made up of only women and children, the older men staying behind to care for their homes and crops.” The story’s bottom line: “UN humanitarian chief John Holmes issued a desperate appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars to help those who have fled the war, warning that the U.N. can only sustain its current aid efforts for one month.” (June 10, 2009)

The United States military is now preparing a campaign to invade Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and drive the insurgents out. The reported aim is “to expand security throughout Kandahar,” and introduce “Western development aid and Afghan government services to win the loyalty of local Afghans.” (“McChrystal: Kandahar Campaign Slows as Taliban Ramps Up Intimidation,” By David Wood, Chief Military Correspondent, www.politicsdaily.com, June 10, 2010) It would appear that countless more civilians will be killed and injured and uprooted and their life-sustaining substance destroyed in this latest U.S. attempt to “win minds and hearts” by force—rather than discovering and being guided by what is on those minds and in those hearts.

The bomber also stated the importance of putting oneself in the shoes of a family in the Gaza Strip, “whose home is bulldozed by the Israeli bulldozer.” United States-armed and –backed Israel is reported to have killed some 1400 Palestinians, “including several hundred children,” and “damaged or destroyed more than 20,000 houses” in its 23-day indiscriminate bombardment of the Gaza Strip in December of 2008. The report specifically includes the children: “The long history of Israeli assaults on Gaza, and the two-and-a-half-year-long blockade of the territory after Hamas took power, has exacted a toll on almost every aspect of children’s lives: schooling, leisure time, what they eat, what they wear, how they see the future.” (“Childhood in ruins,” by Harriet Sherwood, foreign editor, guardian.co.uk, Dec. 17, 2009)

Almost 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip are imprisoned by Israel’s brutal illegal economic blockade, including 750,000 children. The Institute for Middle East Understanding reports that “10 percent of the children under five are stunted,” that “more than 10 percent of children are chronically malnourished, according to the World Health Organization,” and that “61 percent of households face food insecurity, defined as inadequate physical, social or economic access to food, and rely on assistance from aid agencies.” (“Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip, http://imeu.net/news/article0019136. shtml, June 2, 22010)

The Palestinians in the West Bank see their homes and land continually taken by predatory Israeli settlement policies. The result is the gradual shrinking of a viable two-state solution for the Palestinian people. The criminality of Israel, violating the Golden Rule by doing unto the Palestinian people what was done to their own Jewish ancestors—in the name of security, and with the blessing of our United States government.

“Including the children?” Where are the mass graves of over 500,000 Iraqi children, under the age of five, who died as a result of the United States-controlled UN- imposed complete economic sanctions against Iraq from 1991 to 1998? In an August 12, 1999 report called, “Iraq surveys show ‘humanitarian emergency,’’ UNICEF Executive Director Carol “Bellamy noted that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.” (www.unicef.org/ne)

Who should we listen to? The general or the bomber? The general promises to be America’s deliverer: to save America, not from its sins, but from recognizing them, which recognition is the necessary condition for repentance and reparations. Newly selected as U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the general promises victory: “We are in this to win,” he said at “the ceremony, at NATO headquarters in central Kabul . . . dressed in camouflage fatigues.” (“Petraeus Takes Command of Afghan War, Pleading Effort ‘to Win,’” By Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, July 5, 2010)

The New York Times would have us listen to the general. The Times heralded the general as being victorious in Iraq, in a story called, “Petraeus Is Now Taking Control of a ‘Tougher Fight,’” which began by asserting that his 2007 surge of 30,000 more U.S. troops “helped pull Iraq back from the brink of catastrophe.” (By Alissa J. Rubin and Dexter Filkins, June 23, 2010) The general’s numerous war medals represent U.S. imperialism not victory. And certain of his campaign war medals represent the deaths and injuries of countless Iraqi civilians, including children. The catastrophe is the Iraqi war itself!

The general told the Senate confirmation hearing committee, “I want to assure the mothers and fathers of those fighting in Afghanistan that I see a moral imperative [italics added] to bring all assets to bear to protect our men and women in uniform.” (“Petraeus Says He’ll Review Curbs on U.S. Strikes and Artillery in Afghanistan,” By Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, June 30, 2010) He was confirmed by the full Senate 99-0. His “moral imperative” reinforced his listeners’ willed obliviousness to the immorality of the unjust U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The general demonstrated the power to camouflage U.S. war crimes as a “moral imperative.”

The real moral imperative is for American mothers and fathers to stop losing their sons and daughters to the immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The real moral imperative is about American mothers and fathers, and their sons and daughters, having jobs and security here, rather than seeing their nation’s resources and loved ones sacrificed on the corporate and political altars of those for whom war is profitable and power-maintaining. The Obama administration’s selection of the general to “win” immoral wars is as protective of us Americans as the government’s (Republicans and Democrats) demonstrated inability to protect our country from BP’s greed and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Jesus taught, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6: 31) This universally proclaimed Golden Rule, on which justice and peace depend, requires self-awareness and awareness of other people’s reality.

The general and the bomber. One reveals reality. The other camouflages it.

Rev. William E. Alberts, Ph.D. is a hospital chaplain and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion.

McChrystal Probe of Special Forces Killings Excluded Key Eyewitnesses

"I Saw Them Taking the Bullets Out of the Body of My Daughter"

By GARETH PORTER and AHMAD WALID FAZLY
CounterPunch
July 7, 2010

The follow-up investigation of a botched Special Operations Forces (SOF) raid in Gardez Feb. 12 that killed two government officials and three women, ordered by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal Apr. 5, was ostensibly aimed at reconciling divergent Afghan and U.S. accounts of what happened during and after the raid.

That implied that the U.S. investigators would finally do what they had failed to do in the original investigation - interview the eyewitnesses. But three eyewitnesses who had claimed to see U.S. troops digging bullets of the bodies of three women told IPS they were never contacted by U.S. investigators.

The failure to interview key eyewitnesses, along with the refusal to make public any of the investigation's findings, continued a pattern of behaviour by McChrystal's command of denying that the SOF unit had begun a cover-up of the killings immediately after the raid.

Both the original report of the U.S. investigation and initial NATO report on the Feb. 12 night raid in Gardez remain classified, according to Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, the officer who was spokesman for McChrystal on the issue before the general was relieved of his command Jun. 23.

Casting further doubt on the integrity of the investigation, the officer who carried out the follow-up investigation was under McChrystal's direct command after completing the investigation.

As a member of the SOF community who had promoted night raids as a privileged tactic in his strategy in Afghanistan, McChrystal had an obvious personal and political interest in keeping evidence of an SOF cover-up of the killings out of any official U.S. report on the Gardez raid.

Even while claiming that he could not reveal anything about the conclusions of the report, Breasseale told IPS, "Based on the findings of this investigation, I can reaffirm what I wrote on 5 April - there is no evidence of a cover-up."

Breasseale had said in an e-mail to us before McChrystal was relieved of command that "many" survivors of the raid were interviewed, "depending on whether they were available to speak to the investigating officer".

But the father and mother of an 18-year-old girl who died from wounds inflicted by the raiders and the brother of the police officer and the prosecutor killed in the raid all said in interviews last week that they had never been contacted by U.S. investigators about what they had seen that night. All three gave testimony to the Afghan investigators.

In an interview, Mohammed Tahir, the father of Gulalai, the 18-year old girl who was killed in the raid, said, "I saw them taking out the bullets from bodies of my daughter and others."

Tahir said that he and as many as seven other eyewitnesses had told interior ministry investigators about the attempted cover-up they had seen. But he insisted, "We have never been interviewed by the U.S. military."

Mohammed Saber, the brother of the two men killed in the raid - Commander Dawood, the head of intelligence for a district in Paktia province, and Saranwal Zahir, a prosecutor - said he had not been interviewed by any U.S. investigator either. Saber told IPS, "The Americans were taking out the bullets from the bodies of the dead with knives and with other equipment that they always have."

Saber said the U.S. soldiers refused to let relatives of the victims go to help them as they lay bleeding to death. Saber said he and other eyewitnesses were taken to a U.S. base and detained for three nights and four days.

Sabz Paree, the 18-year-old woman's mother, also denied being interviewed by U.S. investigators. "I saw everything," she told IPS. "The Americans had knives and were taking out the bullets from her."

In response to a request for comment on the denials by the three family members that they or other eyewitnesses had been interviewed by the U.S. investigator, Breasseale wrote in an e-mail, "All available family members who offered themselves up to take part in the investigator's questions when he was there were interviewed during his visit(s)."

Breasseale said the name of the Army colonel in charge of the investigation would not be made public for reasons of "privacy". He acknowledged in an e-mail before McChrystal was relieved of duty, however, that the officer was under McChrystal's "operational control", although he was not at the time he was appointed and during the investigation.

The target of the raid was a young man who had been at the celebration at the compound but had not even been detained, according to Mohammed Saber, who was shown pictures of the target while being held in detention for four days. The man turned himself in for questioning a few days later but was then released without charge, according to Saber.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the combined U.S.-NATO command then headed by McChrystal, issued a statement within hours of the Feb. 12 raid declaring that the two men who died in the raid were "insurgents" who had fired on the raiding party, and that the troops had found the bodies of three women "tied up, gagged and killed" and hidden in a room.

Military officials later suggested that the women - who among them had 16 children - had all been stabbed to death or had died by other means before the raid.

The officials told reporters the bodies had shown signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife – a claim that appears to support the eyewitness accounts by family members of the use of knives by SOF members to dig bullets out of the dead bodies.

The New York Times quoted a family member, Abdul Ghafar, as recalling that he had seen bullet entry wounds on the bodies of the three dead women that appeared to have been scraped out to remove bullets. "The holes were bigger than they were supposed to be," Gafar was quoted as saying.

When Jerome Starkey of The Times of London reported Mar. 13 that more than a dozen people interviewed at or near the scene of the attack had said the three women were killed by the U.S.-NATO gunmen, McChrystal's spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, tried to challenge the accuracy of Starkey's reporting.

On Apr. 4, ISAF admitted for the first time that the woman had been killed as a result of the SOF raiders firing on the two men.

However, the ISAF statement suggested that the U.S. and Afghan investigators had conducted a "thorough joint investigation" and maintained that there was no evidence of a cover-up. It explained the earlier statement about the women being found bound and gagged as the result of "an initial report by the international members of the joint force who were not familiar with Islamic burial customs".

But the head of the Afghan Interior Ministry's Criminal Investigation Department, Mirza Mohammed Yarmand, publicly contradicted to the ISAF statement, telling the New York Times Apr. 4 that his investigators had gotten eyewitness accounts from survivors of tampering with the bodies of the dead.

Yarmand told the Times that his investigation had concluded that "there was evidence of tampering in the corridor inside the compound by the members" of the SOF raiding unit.

Within 24 hours of the publication of Yarmand's revelations, McChrystal's spokesman was telling reporters that McChrystal had ordered a new U.S. investigation, even as he was continuing to deny that there any evidence of SOF tampering with the evidence.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

Ahmad Walid Fazly reported from Kabul.

The Worst of Times, the Best of Times

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch
July 9, 2010

It’s the worst of times. America is plunging back into Depression. Only one out of every two Americans of working age has a job. Forty years ago that would have been okay. Dad went to the factory. Mom stayed at home to mind the kids. These days, just to keep the show on the road, mom and pop both work and the kids get daycare.

Start looking for work now and on average it will take till next April for you to find something. Across the last two months, more than a million Americans simply gave up seeking employment, even as benefits are running out. Ironically, if you quit looking for work you count as officially "discouraged", and don't figure in the official unemployment stats, which is the only reason that number hasn't shot up to record highs.

Somewhere near 10 million Americans without work aren't getting any kind of check. One in every five children is living below the poverty line, sometimes by as much as 50 per cent – classed as "extreme poverty". Across America, in state after state the till is empty. Barack Obama's home state of Illinois is effectively bankrupt. So is California. Forty-six of the 50 states are buried under huge deficits.

The stimulus has failed. The housing market is in free fall. A couple of months ago market analysts predicted there would be five million more foreclosures between now and 2011 and it looks like they're on target. Forty per cent of delinquent homeowners have already loaded up the SUV, thrown the plastic chairs in the swimming pool and tossed the house keys back at the bank. Only 30 per cent of foreclosures have been re-listed for sale. The banks have been keeping them back to avoid flooding the market.

For tens of millions of Americans the house is as central and crucial a financial asset as a pig was for an Irish peasant family in the 19th century. The pig, as the old Irish saying goes, was "the man beside the fire". It had the place of honor. The pig died, the family starved. Knock 20 per cent off the aggregate value of housing in America today and that means sunset years of penny pinching and, of course, yet one more knife in the belly for the overall economy.

And yet... if not the best of times, you can hardly say that America is broke. It's not. As Carl Ginsburg remarked on this site last week, "America is awash in cash. This is a very, very rich country with piles and piles of cash. Private US accounts today contain approximately $10 trillion in cash and liquid assets.

"On the corporate side, non-financial US corporations are holding more than $1.8 trillion, constituting a 26 per cent increase as of March from one year earlier - the largest increase on record going back to 1952."

The problem is that the banks don't want to put money out, because they think ordinary Americans are too broke to pay it back. Ordinary Americans agree. They've carried America forward through the past decade on the backs of their credit cards and they can't totter another step. They're out of juice.

In the measured argot of the IMF, "Financial crises typically follow periods of rapid expansion in lending and strong increases in asset prices. Recoveries from these recessions are often held back by weak private demand and credit reflecting, in part, households' attempts to increase saving rates to restore balance sheets. Globally synchronized recessions are longer and deeper than others."

(Political footnote to the foregoing: the recession of 1980 finished off President Jimmy Carter: the recession of 1992 did for George Bush Sr and put Bill Clinton into the White House.)

Of course America is wildly rich. How else could it find room in its heart for the legal tax write-offs that allow Americans to deduct contributions to Israelis establishing illegal settlements on the West Bank? How could it pay the $2 million in direct and indirect bribes to the Taliban a week - or is it a day? - in Afghanistan to allow its supply convoys down roads so that the counter-insurgency against the Taliban can continue, if not prosper?

Counter-insurgency means drones that kill civilians and do the Taliban no end of good. But drones mean jobs in jobless America. As Laura Flanders pointed on the F Word on Grit TV the Wisconsin National Guard is planning to build a new $8 million base for unmanned drones. Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri is to be a drone base control. In South Dakota, Rapid City's nearby Ellsworth Force Base also recently won a drone contract.

In none of these places was there much of anything but joy at the news. "There was great news for Ellsworth Force Base and for the Rapid City community," declared the local Black Hills Fox Channel. Missouri Congressman Ike Skelton said he'd worked for a year to win the Predator. The Rapid City Journal editorial page was ecstatic: "Ellsworth and its many supporters have done Rapid City and South Dakota proud."

It's the best of times for Republicans who have scant sympathy for out-of-work people anyway and who have every political incentive to ensure that by mid-term election day, November 2, they'll be able to hang America's latest "worst of times" around the necks of Obama and the Democrats.

Dean Baker, who co-directs the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC, explained here on CounterPunch the Republicans' heartless, disgusting math in his article, “The Party of Unemployment” : "State and local governments have cut their workforce by an average of 65,000 a month over the last three months [as they have to do, because they are legally bound to balance their budgets]. Without substantial aid from the federal government this pace is likely to accelerate. The Republican agenda in blocking aid to the states may add another 300,000 people to the unemployment roles by early November.

“The Republicans' blockage of extended unemployment benefits promises similar dividends. Unemployment benefits are not just about providing income support to those who are out of work, they also provide a boost to the economy, which is why the Republicans have been especially keen to cut them off.”

It's the worst of times. People are down. I meet young people every day who say they've simply given up watching the news. It's all too depressing.

The Washington Post ran a story on July 6 by Kimberly Kindy that established that "in the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 per cent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day."

As of Monday July 5, with about two million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

As William Empson wrote in his poem "Missing Dates":

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills…
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

Who can feel it's anything other than the worst of times when the Gulf of Mexico is set to die before our eyes.

Guantanamo detainee Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi pleads guilty

By Reuters
Thursday, July 8, 2010; A03

A Sudanese man accused of guarding Osama bin Laden and helping him escape U.S. forces in Afghanistan pleaded guilty at Guantanamo Bay on Wednesday, giving the Obama administration its first conviction in the controversial war crimes court.

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi pleaded guilty to conspiring with al-Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism, said Guantanamo Bay court spokesman Joe DellaVedova.

Qosi, who ran the kitchen and provided supplies at bin Laden's Star of Jihad compound near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, has been held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for more than eight years.

His sentence could range from no additional time to life imprisonment. A panel of U.S. military officers will be assembled at Guantanamo to hear evidence and deliberate his sentence at a hearing set for Aug. 9.

The terms of his plea agreement were not disclosed, but it seemed unlikely that he would have pleaded guilty to both charges without some limit on his sentence.

Qosi is only the fourth prisoner convicted in the controversial military tribunals since the Guantanamo Bay detention camp opened in January 2002.

Two were sent home to Australia and Yemen. One other, al-Qaeda videographer Ali Hamza al-Bahlul of Yemen, remains at Guantanamo serving a life term on the same charges to which Qosi pleaded guilty.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama signed an order to close the detention camp by January 2010 and said terrorism suspects should be tried in the U.S. courts or in regular courts-martial.

But his efforts to shut down the camp have been stymied by Congress, including some members of his own party, and his administration opted to tweak the Guantanamo court system rather than scrap it.

The detention camp now holds 181 prisoners. The Obama administration plans to try about three dozen of them at the prison or in federal courts, including five accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, while holding 48 others indefinitely and repatriating or resettling the rest.

Qosi, 50, was charged by the U.S. military with acting as a driver and bodyguard for bin Laden and helping the al-Qaeda leader escape to the Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. He was also accused of being part of an al-Qaeda mortar crew.

Netanyahu hears no discouraging words from Obama

By Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Wednesday, July 7, 2010; A02

A blue-and-white Israeli flag hung from Blair House. Across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Stars and Stripes was in its usual place atop the White House. But to capture the real significance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's visit with President Obama, White House officials might have instead flown the white flag of surrender.

Four months ago, the Obama administration made a politically perilous decision to condemn Israel over a controversial new settlement. The Israel lobby reared up, Netanyahu denounced the administration's actions, Republican leaders sided with Netanyahu, and Democrats ran for cover.

So on Tuesday, Obama, routed and humiliated by his Israeli counterpart, invited Netanyahu back to the White House for what might be called the Oil of Olay Summit: It was all about saving face.

The president, beaming in the Oval Office with a dour Netanyahu at his side, gushed about the "extraordinary friendship between our two countries." He performed the Full Monty of pro-Israel pandering: "The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable" . . . "I commended Prime Minister Netanyahu" . . . "Our two countries are working cooperatively" . . . "unwavering in our commitment" . . . "our relationship has broadened" . . . "continuing to improve" . . . "We are committed to that special bond, and we are going to do what's required to back that up."

An Israeli reporter attempted to summon the effusive American back to reality: "Mr. President, in the past year, you distanced yourself from Israel and gave a cold shoulder to the prime minister. Do you think this policy was a mistake? . . . Do you trust Prime Minister Netanyahu?"

Obama assumed an amused grin. "Well, let me first of all say that the premise of your question was wrong, and I entirely disagree with it," he said. He said he had always engaged in "a constant reaffirmation of the special relationship" with Israel, and "I've trusted Prime Minister Netanyahu since I met him before I was elected president."

So that business about Hillary Clinton calling Israel's settlement action "insulting" and the State Department accusing Israel of a "deeply negative signal" that "undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests"? You must have imagined it.

Obama came to office with an admirable hope of reviving Middle East peace efforts by appealing to the Arab world and positioning himself as more of an honest broker. But he has now learned the painful lesson that domestic politics won't allow such a stand.

On Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House on Tuesday, liberal activists protested what many of them see as a betrayal. "We want to appeal to Obama to stand up for once, to get a little vertebrate in his invertebrate back and speak to Netanyahu in no uncertain terms," protester Ray McGovern shouted into a bullhorn. Obama, he added, is "a president who by all indications is what we call in the Bronx a 'wuss': a person who will not stand up for what he knows is right."

Even before Obama's surrender to Netanyahu, Muslims were losing faith that he would be the transformational figure who spoke to them from Cairo last year. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that the percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in Obama fell from 41 percent to 31 percent in Egypt and from 33 percent to 23 percent in Turkey.

Obama snubbed Netanyahu at their last meeting, shortly after Israel's announcement during a visit by Vice President Biden that it would build new housing in a disputed area of Jerusalem. No statement or photograph of the meeting was made public. But Israel didn't back down, and neither did it heed administration pleas to use "caution and restraint" before the deadly raid by Israeli commandos on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza.

Netanyahu arrived at the White House to see bulldozers and piles of rubble along the West Wing driveway from a construction project on the North Lawn. Inside, he found more construction underway: Obama feverishly rebuilding the U.S.-Israel relationship. The president's opening statement in front of the cameras contained not a word of criticism of the Jewish state.

"Well, I just completed an excellent one-on-one discussion with Prime Minister Netanyahu," he began. For those tuning in late, he added at the end: "So I just want to say, once again, that I thought the discussion that we had was excellent."

Netanyahu was pleased with the pandering. "Mr. President, I want to thank you for reaffirming to me in private and now in public, as you did, the long-standing U.S. commitments to Israel."

Obama didn't even mention Israel's settlements until a reporter inquired -- and then he declined to say that Israel should extend a moratorium on settlements that expires in September. Avoiding any criticism of Israel, he instead directed Palestinians not to look for "excuses for incitement" or "opportunities to embarrass Israel."

Netanyahu celebrated victory. "To paraphrase Mark Twain," he said, "the reports about the demise of the special U.S.-Israel relationship aren't just premature, they're just flat wrong."

At the White House, Netanyahu makes his case

By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
July 7, 2010; 1:02 PM ET

Binyamin Netanyahu doesn’t have any illusions about Barack Obama’s regard for him, despite their friendly meeting at the White House on Tuesday. But Netanyahu does apparently believe that if he presents this most cerebral of U.S. presidents with a well-reasoned position, he’ll be listened to. Hence his behavior -- and the relative warming of U.S.-Israeli relations -- in recent weeks.

Take Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. For some time, according to people close to him, Netanyahu regarded the policy as counterproductive. Following the confrontation with a Turkish-led flotilla that left nine dead, the blockade became indefensible. Netanyahu couldn’t make a rational argument to the White House that Israel needed to deprive the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza of cilantro, ketchup and other basic goods. He could easily explain why it must continue to prevent the smuggling of Iranian missiles and other arms to Hamas.

So Netanyahu dropped the ban on food and consumer goods, while insisting that Israel must intercept ships that might be carrying weapons. The result was accord on what could have been another point of contention between Washington and Jerusalem. Obama “welcomed the prime minister’s efforts to implement Israel’s new policy in Gaza,” said a White House statement on Tuesday’s meeting.

The Middle East peace process is a tougher problem for Netanyahu and Obama. The White House believes Mahmoud Abbas is willing and able to agree to terms with Israel on Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu, like most Israelis, thinks otherwise. Obama believes an Israeli settlement freeze is crucial to advancing negotiations; Netanyahu, like every Israeli prime minister before him, rejects the link.

But here, too, Netanyahu has formulated a pragmatic and non-ideological position -- one that he discussed with Obama at length on Tuesday.

The argument, which Netanyahu has laid out publicly in several speeches in the last year, goes like this: Times have changed in the Middle East since 1993, when Israel and the Palestinians concluded the Oslo accords calling for a gradual handover of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinian government. Then, the main threat to Israelis in the territories was Palestinian rock-throwers. Now, thanks to the growing power of Iran, Israel is surrounded by tens of thousands of short- and medium-range missiles. There are thousands in southern Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew in 2000 and which was subsequently occupied by Hezbollah. And there are hundreds, maybe thousands more in Gaza, from which Israel withdrew in 2005, and which was later taken over by Hamas.

Israel, Netanyahu told Obama, has to be able to ensure that the West Bank won’t also become an Iranian missile base following a peace settlement. The logic of his argument is hard to refute, from any reasonable standpoint. Who would contend that there is no danger that missiles would be smuggled to the new Palestinian state from the east, from Syria, Lebanon or Jordan? Is it reasonable to suppose that a UN peacekeeping force would suffice to protect the border, given the failure of such a force to stop smuggling to Lebanon?

That’s not to say that Netanyahu has come up with a trump card to block the peace process. He has said himself that there are ways to solve the security problem, including a phase-in of Palestinian control over the eastern border of the state. But the Israeli leader is demonstrating that he has figured out a way to talk to a president who hasn’t displayed much sentimentality when it comes to Israel. Forget about sentiment; make a good argument.

US Questions Its Unwavering Support for Israel

by Chris McGreal
Guardian/UK
Monday, July 5, 2010

There are questions that rarely get asked in Washington. For years, the mantra that America's intimate alliance with Israel was as good for the US as it was the Jewish state went largely unchallenged by politicians aware of the cost of anything but unwavering support.

But swirling in the background when Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, arrives in Washington tomorrow to patch up relations with the White House will be a question rarely voiced until recently: is Israel ‑ or, at the very least, its current government ‑ endangering US security and American troops?

Netanyahu would prefer to be seen as an indispensable ally in confronting Islamist terror. But his insistence on building Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, which is causing a deep rift with Washington, is seen as evidence of a lack of serious interest in the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. That in turn is seen as fueling hostility towards the US in other parts of the Middle East and beyond, because America is perceived as Israel's shield.

In recent months Barack Obama has said that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a "vital national security interest of the United States". His vice-president, Joe Biden, has confronted Netanyahu in private and told the Israeli leader that Israel's policies are endangering US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senior figures in the American military, including General David Petraeus who has commanded US forces in both wars, have identified Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian land as an obstacle to resolving those conflicts.

More recently, Israel's assault on ships attempting to break the Gaza blockade has compromised relations with Turkey, an important American strategic ally.

A former director of intelligence assessment for the US defence secretary, last month caused waves with a paper called Israel as a Strategic Liability? In it, Anthony Cordesman, who has written extensively on the Middle East, noted a shift in thinking at the White House, the US state department and, perhaps crucially, the Pentagon over the impact of Washington's long-unquestioning support for Israeli policies even those that have undermined the prospects for peace with the Palestinians.

He wrote that the US will not abandon Israel because it has a moral commitment to ensure the continued survival of the Jewish state. "At the same time, the depth of America's moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors.

"It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of US patience and exploits the support of American Jews."

Cordesman told the Guardian that the Netanyahu government has maintained a "pattern of conduct" that has pushed the balance toward Israel being more of a liability than an asset.

"This Israeli government pushed the margin too far," he said. "Gaza was one case in point, the issue of construction in Jerusalem, the lack of willingness to react in ways that serve Israel's interests as well as ours in moving forward to at least pursue a peace process more actively."

It was a point made forcefully by Biden to Netanyahu in March after the Israelis humiliated the American during a visit to Jerusalem by announcing the construction of 1,600 more Jewish homes in the city's occupied east.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that at a meeting between the two men, Biden angrily accused Israel's prime minister of jeopardizing US soldiers by continuing to tighten the Jewish state's grip on Jerusalem.

"This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace," Biden told Netanyahu.

Obama's chief political adviser, David Axelrod, said the settlement construction plans "seemed calculated to undermine" efforts to get fresh peace talks off the ground and that "it is important for our own security that we move forward and resolve this very difficult issue".

Netanyahu sought to head off the issue when he spoke to pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington earlier this year. "For decades, Israel served as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Today it is helping America stem the tide of militant Islam. Israel shares with America everything we know about fighting a new kind of enemy," he said. "We share intelligence. We co-operate in countless other ways that I am not at liberty to divulge. This co-operation is important for Israel and is helping save American lives."

But that argument is less persuasive to the Americans now. Last month, Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, said the Jewish state had suffered a "tectonic rift" with America. "There is no crisis in Israel-US relations because in a crisis there are ups and downs," he told Israeli diplomats in Jerusalem. "Relations are in the state of a tectonic rift in which continents are drifting apart."

Oren said that assessments of Israeli policy at the White House have moved away from the historic and ideological underpinnings of earlier administrations in favour of a cold calculation.

Cordesman said it is too early to tell whether Netanyahu has fully grasped that while there will be no change in the fundamental security guarantees the US gives Israel, "the days of the blank cheque are over".

He added: "I think it is clear there is more thought on how to deal with Gaza, how to deal with the underlying humanitarian issues, less creating kinds of pressures which frankly, from the viewpoint of an outside observer, have tended to push Hamas not toward an accommodation but toward a harder line while creating of all things an extremist challenge to Hamas. But until you see the end result, some comments and some token actions don't tell you there's been a significant shift."

Israel as a Strategic Liability?

Anthony H. Cordesman
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Jun 2, 2010

America’s ties to Israel are not based primarily on U.S. strategic interests. At the best of times, an Israeli government that pursues the path to peace provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilizing military power that could help Arab states like Jordan. Even then, however, any actual Israeli military intervention in an Arab state could prove as destabilizing as beneficial. The fact is that the real motives behind America’s commitment to Israel are moral and ethical. They are a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust, to the entire history of Western anti-Semitism, and to the United States’ failure to help German and European Jews during the period before it entered World War II. They are a product of the fact that Israel is a democracy that shares virtually all of the same values as the United States.

The U.S. commitment to Israel is not one that will be abandoned. The United States has made this repeatedly clear since it first recognized Israel as a state, and it has steadily strengthened the scale of its commitments since 1967. The United States has provided Israel with massive amounts of economic aid and still provides enough military assistance to preserve Israel’s military superiority over its neighbors. The United States has made it clear that any U.S. support for Arab-Israeli peace efforts must be based on options that preserve Israel’s security, and its recent announcements that it will consider “extended regional deterrence” are code words for a U.S. commitment that could guard Israel, as well as its neighbors, against an Iranian nuclear threat.

At the same time, the depth of America’s moral commitment does not justify or excuse actions by an Israeli government that unnecessarily make Israel a strategic liability when it should remain an asset. It does not mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors. It does not mean that the United States has the slightest interest in supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, or that the United States should take a hard-line position on Jerusalem that would effectively make it a Jewish rather than a mixed city. It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major strategic blunders--such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in east Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the “peace flotilla” going to Gaza.

It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it become far more careful about the extent to which it test the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews. This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world.

Israel’s government should act on the understanding that the long-term nature of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship will depend on Israel clearly and actively seeking peace with the Palestinians—the kind of peace that is in Israel’s own strategic interests. Israelis should understand that the United States opposes expansion and retention of its settlements and its efforts to push Palestinians out of greater Jerusalem. Israeli governments should plan Israeli military actions that make it clear that Israel will use force only to the level actually required, that carefully consider humanitarian issues from the start, and that have a clear post-combat plan of action to limit the political and strategic impact of its use of force. And Israel should not conduct a high-risk attack on Iran in the face of the clear U.S. “red light” from both the Bush and Obama administrations. Israel should be sensitive to the fact that its actions directly affect U.S. strategic interests in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and it must be as sensitive to U.S. strategic concerns as the United States is to those of Israel.

The United States does not need unnecessary problems in one of the most troubled parts of the world, particularly when Israeli actions take a form that does not serve Israel’s own strategic interests. This Israeli government in particular needs to realize that as strong as U.S.-Israel ties may be, it is time to return to the kind of strategic realism exemplified by leaders like Yitzhak Rabin. No aspect of what happened this week off the coast of Gaza can be blamed on Israeli commandos or the Israel Defense Forces. Israel’s prime minister and defense minister had full warning about the situation, and they knew the flotilla was deliberately designed as a political provocation to capture the attention of the world’s media in the most negative way possible. They personally are responsible for what happened, and they need to show far more care and pragmatism in the future.

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Ex-Hamas man gets U.S. asylum

Richard Shulman
Examiner.com
July 2, 10:55 AM

Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a founder of Hamas, has been granted “tentative” political asylum in the U.S.. Mr. Yousef, once active in Hamas, turned against it when he realized it just is brutal. He helped Israel squelch terrorist plots, minimizing the number of deaths of fellow Arabs as well as of Jews. He turned toward Christianity and felt it safer in America. Unfortunately, when his background became known, immigration authorities focused on his original membership in Hamas and not on his work against it. They moved to deport him.

Yousef appealed, pointing out that if he had to go back, they would kill him. The U.S. government dropped concerns that he represented a terrorist threat to the U.S. (Wall St. J., 7/2/10, A 6, with some background from earlier report).

Encouraging to see the government come to its senses, and drop its bureaucratic rigidity. It would have committed a demoralizing injustice.

The Unknown Afghan Body Count

An unwillingness to track the number of Afghan civilians killed undermines attempts to gauge progress in the country

by James Denselow
Guardian/UK
July 4, 2010

June was a terrible month for the war in Afghanistan. The milestone of the 300th British death was compounded by the most deadly month for the Nato-led mission since the start of the conflict.

The precise compilation of western casualties contrasts with almost criminal neglect in tracking the numbers of Afghan civilians killed since 2001. If Afghanistan is the "good war" then why are we not demanding to be accurately told how many skeletons there are in the Afghan closet?

In 2005 Donald Rumsfeld famously quipped that "death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war". The US defence department maintains documentation on US military personnel only, while the British ministry of defence "does not maintain records that would enable a definitive number of civilian fatalities to be recorded" - although it did confirm last month that payments to relatives of Afghan civilians killed in error by British forces have trebled over the past year. The Afghan government, characterised by massive levels of ineptitude and corruption, has failed to keep centralised records of civilian casualties which would enable it to issue annual estimates.

True to form, the International Security Assistance Force has also avoided releasing body counts - leaving it to an inconsistent patchwork group of NGOs and academics to correlate the numbers of dead Afghans. Although boosted by an occasional United Nations report, homemade body counts are largely unreliable, as they struggle to agree on a consistent methodology and are unable to keep up to date with the constant grind of killing. Perhaps the best statistics we have on the plight of the Afghans is the UN report on how for the past three decades Afghanistan has been the leading country of origin for refugees - with 2.9 million Afghans living across 71 countries.

How can any western official claim to have the best interests of the Afghans at heart when they don't even know how many they've killed? To understand the western presence in Afghanistan it is of critical importance to effectively and publicly track the lives lost as a result of both military and "insurgent" action.

In 2009 the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "A high number of deaths inevitably makes you question what we are doing, how we are doing it. The conclusion one has to reach is, going right back to basics on this, that this mission is really important." Yet Dannatt is guilty of a moral triangulation that has typified the avoidance of a real audit into Afghan deaths.

Indeed, the constant repetition of the British death toll and fiscal expenditure is part of the "blood and treasure" argument that, in a country that supports its soldiers, places a firewall in front of any real debate on the war itself, typified by the consensus during the recent election campaign.

After sacking General Stanley McChrystal, President Obama announced that the personnel had changed, not the policy. Yet in the furore over McChrystal's attacks on the US civilian leadership, people missed how the Rolling Stone article highlighted that the former general was engaged in a battle with the military to reduce civilian casualties. McChrystal spoke of how "we've shot an amazing number of people", a reality that is most viscerally described in Sebastian Junger's account of the war.

Turning the US military into a more nuanced killing machine had been a struggle for McChrystal as soldiers saw their lives being placed at greater risk. While he was in charge, McChrystal attempted to avoid civilian casualties (known as Civ Cas) by reducing air and artillery strikes, the destroying of houses and dangerous US military driving styles. The recent Marjah offensive and upcoming Kandahar operations were highly publicised to allow civilians to leave the area. McChrystal explained to his men that "the Russians killed one million Afghans and that didn't work".

Our way out of Afghanistan, the McChrystal/Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy, emphasises protecting local populations, providing them with services such as schools and health clinics. Yet without proper tracking of the numbers of Afghans killed then the best Petraeus may be able to achieve, as he did in Iraq, is a narrative of success that ignores the far more complex and bloody reality.


James Denselow is a writer on Middle East geopolitical and security issues based at Kings College London. He currently writes on Syrian, Lebanese and Iraqi politics. He was a contributing author to the book 'An Iraq of its Regions'. Visit his website at jamesdenselow.com

Go Tell Osama Bin-Laden?

by Tom Gallagher
CommonDreams.org
July 3, 2010

Perhaps you caught the recent report about a band of 500 holding off 100,000 enemy troops. Unfortunately, this time it wasn't the story of the Battle of Thermopylae (horribly portrayed in the movie 300 a while back) where the Spartans defended Greece against an invading Persian army in 480 BC. No, according to the New York Times, those are the numbers that tell the tale of the current war between Al Qaeda and the U.S. military.

According to the Times, Michael E. Leiter, called "one of the country's top counterterrorism officials," puts the number of Al Qaeda operating in Pakistan at something "more than 300." This, the paper noted, constituted "a rare public assessment of the strength of the terrorist group that is the central target of President Obama's war strategy.

The numbers make it perfectly obvious why such revelations are rare. With Al Qaeda's ranks in Afghanistan thought to be under 100, it appears that the U.S. enjoys a numerical advantage over its principal enemy that is in the range of 200-1. Yet it still appears unable to defeat it. Somehow the clandestine war in Pakistan that everyone knows we're fighting, but no one in official government circles will admit to, seems a much more plausible proposition when we can imagine a countryside teeming with untold numbers of enemies of America - rather than just 300 of them.

Osama bin-Laden, and whoever else planned the operation, obviously damaged the U.S. in many ways on September 11, 2001. In the long run, though, one of their greatest achievements may have been the damage they did to America's capacity for critical thought, in the process setting the country on a decade of war that simply makes no sense when you consider the actual numbers involved.

But as they say, you can't fool all of the people forever and even before this latest diminutive assessment of Al Qaeda's strength, pollsters for Rasmussen Reports found the numbers of Americans believing that the U.S. could "win" in Afghanistan down to 41 percent, with a 48-42 percent plurality in any case considering it more important to end the war than to win it.

Lately even Congress has been showing signs of recovering their ability to think rationally. Or at least House Democrats have, anyhow: in the course of approving the latest $33 billion "emergency" supplemental appropriation for the war, 60 percent of them voted for an amendment calling upon the Administration to outline its exit strategy. And this time their ranks included Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. As the Speaker usually does not actually cast a vote, her choice to do so in this case sends a clear message of her reading of the mood of her district and her party. No, these days the principal problem lies with the Republican Party and their war leader - the Democrat in the White House, who once said there would be no more "emergency" war appropriations.

The Al Qaeda numbers should send up an alarm for more than one reason. Not only do they indicate that the disproportionately large force - the U.S. - is obviously engaged in a foolish course of action, they broadcast a message of heroism about the smaller force - in this case Al Qaeda. Although historians tell us that the famously remembered numbers about the Battle of Thermopylae are not quite right - there were more Greek soldiers there than just the 300 Spartans and the actual number of Persians is quite uncertain - it is no accident that the memory of this battle has survived over the millennia.

In the traditional understanding of the meaning of Thermopylae, the bravery of the Greeks there stemmed from the fact that they were free men fighting to defend that status from foreign invaders. The most celebrated war monument of ancient Greece was later placed on the spot where the Spartans were buried. On it was inscribed an epitaph that, in its most famous English translation, reads:

"Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."

While Barack Obama has yet to extricate himself from the decade of knee jerk thinking that has led us ever deeper into this unwinnable war, he has seemingly demonstrated the capacity to understand that America's actions may carry a quite different meaning in other parts of the world than they do at home. Does he really want his legacy to be a war in which our opponents will boast of their heroism in defending their homeland against a far more numerous and better armed enemy?


Tom Gallagher is a San Francisco antiwar activist who initiated last November's successful Proposition U calling upon the city's congressional representatives to vote no further funding for the Iraq War. He is a past member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Put Away the Flags

Published on Friday, July 2, 2010
The Progressive

Remembering Howard Zinn on July 4th

by Howard Zinn

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail in 2004 that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

This piece was distributed by the Progressive Media Project in 2006.

Howard Zinn died on January 7. Please read Matthew Rothschild's "Thank you, Howard Zinn," [1] for more about his legacy.
© 2010

Howard Zinn (1922-2010) authored many books, including “A People’s History of the United States [2],” “Voices of a People’s History [3]” (with Anthony Arnove), and “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress [4]."

The Israel Lobby in San Francisco

A Canary in the Coal Mine

By BINOY KAMPMARK
CounterPunch
July 2 -5, 2010

'I was the child of the survivors of the Holocaust.’ With that, Roz Rothstein of the activist group Stand With Us that hopes to transform the image of Israel on US campuses sets the moral authority before a small audience at an office on Howard Street, San Francisco. One can, she explains, disagree with Israel, but there are ‘limits’ to such doubting behavior. Exceeding those limits constitutes the gravest sort of anti-Semitism. As people devour the food and drink put on by the associates of Blumberg Capital, serious politics is being discussed. ‘We are being demonized,’ she insists. Whether she means Israel, Jews or Jews in the US is hard to tell. Presumably, no true distinction is intended.

The gathering teams with Republicans, many of them competing with each other for various posts in upcoming elections. Candidates who are going to be competing for House positions are also there including John Dennis who hopes to undermine Nancy Pelosi. The room smells of political hustling and over-eager libidos.

All are, however, there for one reason: defending Israel. Israel is besieged, the David in a sea of overly keen Goliaths. A good deal of agitprop is necessary to convince the audience, and perhaps the speakers, of this bizarre scenario. Pro-Palestinian groups are swarming across American campuses attacking Jews and pro-Israeli students alike. The UN is ‘obsessed’ with Israel and prefers, we are told, not to look at the stain of character on other states. One must be on the look out for the ‘Three Ds’ suggested by Natan Sharansky. (The speakers intone this in irritating fashion – we are in a kindergarten of ideological instruction. Remember ‘demonization’, ‘double standards’ and ‘delegitimization’, for one.)

The language merchants are busy attempting to find the right good to sell. ‘We must be out there to counter our enemies.’ Evidently, the Gaza dead, with their galvanic properties must be astonishingly good at public relations – they are, it would seem, the ignoble savages who dare speak from their status as the deceased.

The campaign being waged is yet another indication of how the Israeli lobby, so peevishly dismissed by Israeli supporters as non-existent, arises with effective force when fear is packaged and retailed in this faux salon manner. These are the first people who would insist that such a thing is anathema, only to then gather their forces and funds to effectively provide assistance to a foreign power. Young, well-groomed men listening intently will be doing service at some point with the Israeli Army, a problematic situation given mixed allegiances. The framers of the US constitution would have had something to say about that.

What is most striking in this display is the rehearsed language of doom. (We are ‘besieged’, a ‘well planned tsunami’ is being put into place, argues Rothstein.) The Palestinians do not exist except in the negative, a dark eminence with Satanic overtones. Hamas, a body once supported by Israel for Machiavellian purposes, is not a force that can or should be dealt with other than through force. Beware their Charter.

It all comes down to ‘information’. ‘They do not know the information,’ explains Dr. Michael Harris, who was a founder of San Francisco Voice for Israel before it became the San Francisco chapter for Stand With Us. So, with this in mind, a packet is distributed, bulging with fascinating ‘facts’ rendered on glossy paper. How far it will go is not something these agitprop peddlers make clear.

A brief summary of what is on show then. A booklet entitled ‘Middle East: Apartheid Today’ is designed to focus on Arab and Muslim prejudice (murderous ‘gender apartheid’ is practiced amongst the Palestinians). ‘We don’t do apartheid in the Holy Land’. South African apartheid is also singled out as spectacular, singular and totally different from Israeli policies. And besides, many want to leave Islam – they want to assimilate, to become like ‘us’.

There are pictures of hanged men from Iran reproduced in distributed booklets showing homosexuality to be a capital offence in that benighted part of the world. (Would Orthodox Jews disagree with such treatment, one wonders.) In short, the apartheid fiends, the promoters of segregation, sexually motivated crimes, honor killings and institutionalized racism, lie outside Israel’s sacred, threatened borders. Instead, focus is directed on such things as ‘Israel’s gift to the world’ on a card that speaks about its ‘Intel laptops’ and ‘mobile phone technology’ amongst other things.

On the coattails of doom is that of self-praise. No one would hate us if they knew how humanitarian we really were. An example is adduced: the hospital in Haiti, emphasized in the publication ‘Israeli Heroes in Haiti’. This gesture, it seems, rinses guilt and cheers the consciences. Far better to build hospitals in Haiti than Gaza, where a humanitarian crisis is all too real. The mantras are almost hypnotic, and said with repeated, mechanical hollowness: ‘We are the glowing light in the Middle East’. This is the Winthrop covenant of the Holy Land, Americans who have confused Israel with the ‘light on the hill’ and a puritan assertion of exceptionality, and would prefer to be there than in San Francisco. (Dare one ask?)

The questions posed by the anesthetized audience are variously comical and absurd in their businesslike approach. A political candidate for the twelfth district in San Francisco suggests a screenwriter for an appropriate film to display Israel on American campuses in a good light. Another suggests ‘feel good’ images that re-enforce notions of the genteel Jew. ‘Cuddly, yes, cuddly and warm.’ Things are getting rather slippery here, and the hold on reality, if was ever there, is now being lost. Another suggests that Israel is ‘the canary in the coal mine.’ An announcement of thanks is made to the speakers: an anonymous donor has just penned a cheque for an undisclosed sum running into the thousands. Money for jam. This place, presumably a refuge from the coalmine, is an asylum of unreality. And one is simply happy to leave it.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently in San Francisco.

Posada and Dudas

A Tale of Two Extraditions

By SAUL LANDAU
CounterPunch
July 2 -5, 2010

The US government demanded that Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding extradite a drug dealer. When Venezuela made similar demands on Washington, for arguably the Hemisphere’s most notorious terrorist, the Justice Department brushed off the request.

Compare the recent arrest in Jamaica of “Dudus” (Christopher Coke) to stand trial in New York for drug and arms trafficking to Washington’s response to Venezuela’s extradition petition for Luis Posada Carriles, aka the Osama bin Laden of the Western Hemisphere for plotting the October 6, 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner over Barbados. All 73 crew and passengers died.

Evidence abounds pointing to his culpability including declassified cables from the CIA. An October 12, 1976 CIA cable from Caracas states that “Posada was overheard to say that `Now we are going to hit a Cuban airplane’.”

22 years later, Posada told NY Times reporters Ann Bardach and Larry Rohter (July13, 1998) he had orchestrated a series of hotel bombings in Cuba to dissuade tourism. An Italian tourist died in one of the blasts.

Posada’s captured underlings – arrested by police after the bombs exploded -- named him as the criminal author. A recent New Jersey Federal Grand Jury gathered evidence showing Posada used money and personnel from Miami to carry out the hotel bombings.

However, instead of charging him with terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder Justice invented a legal inanity and charged Posada with immigration fraud: lying to US officials when he entered the United States in 2004. Since then, the Justice Department has created reasons to delay the case – perhaps as Jose Pertierra suggests, so he will die before going to trial.

Compare this dallying with a bona fide terrorist to the “extradite Dudus or else” position taken with Jamaica’s government. Jamaican security forces killed some 70 residents trying to capture Dudus in his Kingston neighborhood. But Washington refuses to extradite the mass murderer Posada.

As Washington intimidated Jamaica’s government over Dudus the drug and gun peddler they ignored the fact that millions of US citizens consume drugs imported from Jamaica; and US banks that launder money from the trade.

But a more sinister fact underlines the Dudus and Posada cases. Both of criminals owe their careers to Washington’s 50 year war against Cuba.

In 1976, Prime Minister Michael Manley told me during the filming of his campaign film, of an unusual invitation. In January 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, vacationing at the Rockefeller estate in Jamaica, invited Manley to visit to convince him to withdraw his support of Cuban troops in Angola. (Castro had sent troops there in October 1975 at the Angolan government’s request to stop CIA and South African invasions of that newly independent African country.) Kissinger’s grimaced as Manley reiterated his backing for Castro’s Africa policies.

“He then assured me,” Manley chuckled, “I should not worry about CIA activities in Jamaica.” But, he said, some interesting “coincidences” occurred shortly after the visit.

Norman Descoteaux arrived to head the CIA station in Kingston, an expert on destabilization campaigns in South America. As journalists arrived in Kingston to cover World Bank and IMF meetings, violence exploded in Kingston’s western slums. Tourists exposed to the media accounts would have had good reason to change plans for a Jamaican vacation. Soon afterward, security forces arrested armed youth who admitted they were getting trained to attack the government, Other gunmen killed two policemen.

Manley applied “heavy manners.” He revived a special court permitting the arrest without bail of persons with unlicensed firearms and formed unarmed, community self-defense groups. The CIA learned from its “mistakes,” however.

In Manley’s 1980 campaign for re-election, the violence far exceeded the 1976 carnage. I heard the nightly roar of gunfire in Kingston streets and filmed people weeping for their dead kin outside a recently torched housing project in a pro-Manley district. Thousands died in that pre-election period. The gangs bought by Manley’s opponent, Edward Seaga, and the CIA successfully destabilized the government.

Manley lost; Seaga became Prime Minister and the first foreign visitor to the Reagan White House.

Dudus’ father, Lester, emerged from the violence campaigns as head of the Shower Posse (they sprayed their victims with automatic weapons) in West Kingston. Having secured a political alliance with the winner in 1980, and possessing arms from the CIA, he began dealing drugs and weapons.

So powerful had the posse become – now under Dudis the son -- that Labor Party chief and now Prime Minister Bruce Golding tried to defuse the US extradition request for nine months. The State Department assured him that continued resistance would endanger US-Jamaican relations (aid money) and his political career.

But Washington sneers at Venezuelan pressure just as George H. W. Bush in 1990 derided his own Justice Department’s strong advice against pardoning Orlando Bosch, Posada’s co-conspirator in the airline bombing. Judges play along with the charade. One magistrate, without fact or testimony, ruled against Posada's extradition to Venezuela because Posada’s lawyer claimed Venezuela would torture him “while in custody."

The Caribbean states (Caricom) called the 1976 Cubana airline bombing “terrorism in Caribbean airspace.” Ricky Siingh writing in the Jamaica Observer said “no double standards on implementation of bilateral extradition treaties should be permitted on the part of Jamaica and the USA in the case of Christopher Coke; or that involving Venezuela and America for the extradition of Posada.” June 20 Accusing the United States of double standards is like charging a prostitute with having sex. Indeed, US behavior in the Posada case gives hypocrisy a bad name.
Hubris with Jamaica over a druggie! The stalling game played with Venezuela over a terrorist! Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a nation of law?

Saul Landau directed Michael Manley’s campaign films in 1976 and 1980. Counterpunch published his A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD

Mortars hit Green Zone during Biden visit

July 4, 2010 6:04 p.m.

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- Three mortar rounds struck harmlessly inside Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday night during a weekend visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

No damage or injuries were reported from the bombardment, which occurred about 10:30 p.m. Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET).

The district, formally known as the International Zone, houses Iraqi government offices and the U.S. Embassy. But there were no injuries or damage reported from the shelling, Iraqi Interior Ministry and U.S. officials told CNN.

The district was a frequent target of rocket and mortar attacks during the worst of the war that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. A similar attack struck during a Biden visit in September.

Biden landed in Iraq on Saturday to celebrate the U.S. Independence Day holiday with American troops, the White House said.

He also met with Iraqi political leaders, including Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and with former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, whose political coalition narrowly won an election in March.

Iraqi political factions are still negotiating who will lead the new government following that vote. Biden told them after their meeting that "you must have all voices represented in this government for it to be successful," and noted later that a country's second election -- not its first -- is "the most important election in a country's history."

"Now there's a new parliament that's been seated, and when the new government is formed, it will mark something absolutely extraordinary -- a peaceful transition of power encompassing all the people of Iraq, maybe for the first time in their history," Biden said during remarks Sunday at Camp Victory, the U.S. base near Baghdad's airport.

And Biden said the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq will continue as scheduled, with the pullout expected to be complete by the end of August. But he said 50,000 Americans will remain to train and support Iraqi forces, and the United States will remain engaged with Iraq "diplomatically, politically, economically, culturally (and) scientifically."

Was a Swedish Oil Company Complicit in Sudan's Civil War?

By Lisa Abend
TIME
Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010

BP is not the only oil company in trouble these days. A report by an NGO that accuses Lundin Petroleum, a Swedish-owned company based in Geneva, of being complicit in war crimes committed in Sudan has led a public prosecutor in Sweden to open an investigation into whether any of Lundin's Swedish employees broke the law.

"The purpose of the inquiry is to investigate whether there are individuals with ties to Sweden who are suspected of involvement in crime," Swedish prosecutor Magnus Elving said in a statement released on June 21. The investigation, he said, was triggered by a report published on June 8 by a Netherlands-based NGO, the European Coalition on Oil in the Sudan (ECOS), that suggests that the Lundin consortium's decision to explore and eventually extract oil from a concession in southern Sudan known as Block 5A "set off a vicious war for control" in the area. Claiming that Lundin knew or should have known of the repercussions of its actions, the ECOS report also accuses the company of contributing material that would be used in the war and of working with security forces responsible for many crimes — from widespread displacement to mass rape — committed during the civil war. Lundin denies the allegations.

"It's gratifying that something is being done in Sweden to finally look into these allegations," says ECOS spokesperson Kathelijne Schenkel. "There are big clues to what was going on in Sudan, and for the last 10 years we've been saying, Okay, the home government of these companies should be looking into what happened there." Thus far, Schenkel adds, neither of the home countries for Lundin's partners in Sudan — Malaysia, home of Petronas, or Austria, home of OMV — has opened investigations.

The 1983-2003 Sudanese Civil War, in which the ethnically Arab, Muslim government of Sudan battled with non-Arab animist populations in the south, was fanned in part by rival factions' efforts to control the country's rich oil fields. In the Block 5A area alone, an estimated 12,000 people were killed or died of starvation and 160,000 were forcibly displaced from an original population of 240,000. According to a 2003 Human Rights Watch report, none of that area's displacements occurred until 1998 — a year after Lundin started oil exploration there.

That coincidence is one of the things that ECOS would like to see investigated. "We're not saying that Lundin intended to cause these crimes," says Schenkel. "We're trying to show that there's no way they could not have known that [their exploration] was going to exacerbate the war."

Lundin is also accused by ECOS of building roads and bridges that, while ostensibly constructed to access installations, enabled the Sudanese army to conduct attacks. And ECOS also raises questions about whether the company hired security forces it knew were implicated in the government's campaign against its citizens. "It appears again and again in the U.N. reports," says journalist Kirsten Lundell, who has written a book, Blood Oil, about Lundin's activities in Sudan and Ethiopia. "They relied for their own security on the army and local militia who had previously been involved in war crimes."

The risk of that kind of abuse prompted several governments and petroleum companies in 2000 to agree to a set of non-binding principles referred to as The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. "One of its key tenets," says Mauricio Lazala of the London-based Business and Human Rights Organization, "is that extractive companies should perform human-rights checks on its private security forces."

Unlike BP, Lundin is not a signatory of the Voluntary Principles. In a statement released to its shareholders on June 8, the company denied the accusations and upheld its commitment to peace in the area (The company referred questions from TIME to the statement). "We again categorically refute all the allegations and inferences of wrongdoing attributed to Lundin Petroleum in the report," wrote chairman of the board Ian Lundin. "We strongly feel that our activities contributed to peace and development in Sudan." See pictures of people protesting against BP.

The investigation is particularly sensitive because Sweden's Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, served on the board of Lundin during the years in question, which has led opposition politicians to call for him to stand down, at least until the investigation is complete. "I think Bildt should take time out as long as this investigation is underway," says Thomas Brodström, a Swedish member of parliament for the opposition Social Democrat party and former justice minister. "We've never had someone so high up in government accused of this kind of criminal activity. It's an embarrassment for Sweden, which is always talking about defending human rights." (READ: "Sweden: Goodbye to All That")

Still, should the case go to trial, it may prove hard to prosecute successfully. An attempt to try the Canadian energy company Talisman in U.S. civil court in 2006 for human rights violations in Sudan was dismissed for lack of evidence. And as Kevin J. Heller, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Law School, who has written on Sudan, emphasizes, negligence — the contention that Lundin should have known better — is not a basis for prosecution in international criminal law. "The prosecution has to show that the company was aware of a substantive likelihood that their actions would result in a crime, or that they aided and abetted the commission of those crimes," he says.

For journalist Lundell, however, no amount of denials from Lundin, or legal loopholes, will convince her that the company behaved responsibly in Sudan. In the course of her research, she interviewed a woman in Block 5A who told of fleeing her home after her village was bombed by government forces and her husband killed. "The day after the bombing," Lundell recounts, "the woman saw oil workers coming down the road. As soon as the village was empty and peace returned, the oil workers were there." To Lundell, that suggests that Lundin was communicating with the military and may even have received the all clear from the people responsible for the bombing. Whether or not Swedish prosecutors will be able to prove such accusations, Lundin's operations in war-ravaged Sudan — like BP's off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — highlight how far oil companies are willing to go in fragile environments to feed the world's reliance on fossil fuels.