Category: Middle East

Shipping death and destruction to Syria

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By Sharmine Narwani

“The weapons of choice in (today’s) new conflicts are not big-ticket items like long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter planes, but small and frighteningly accessible weapons ranging from handguns, carbines, and assault rifles on up to machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-fired missiles,” explained William Hartung more than a decade ago in an article entitled The New Business of War.

“Because they are cheap, accessible, durable, and lightweight, small arms have been a primary factor in the transformation of warfare from a series of relatively well- defined battles between ‘two opposing forces wearing uniforms’ to a much more volatile, anarchic form of violence,” says Hartung, now director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC. “More often than not, today’s wars are multisided affairs in which militias, gangs, and self-anointed “rebels” engage in campaigns of calculated terror, civilian targets are fair game, and the laws of war are routinely ignored.”

“The ready availability of small arms makes these conflicts far more likely to occur, far more deadly once they start, and far more difficult to resolve once the death tolls mount and the urge for revenge takes hold.”

Hartung could have been describing Syria today. And no – the anarchic, violent rebels he describes in his article do not appear everywhere else in the world except in Syria. They are the Syrian prototype.Read More »

The UN Arms Trade Treaty is not perfect

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By Jonathan Power

US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter described arms sales as a “cancer”. But once in office Carter achieved little in controlling them.

In President Bill Clinton’s first term Amnesty International questioned the US government about the use of American military helicopters and armoured vehicles involved in human rights abuses in Turkey. Under pressure from Congress the State Department compiled a report on human rights violations by the Turkish armed forces. It concluded there was “highly credible” evidence that US-supplied arms and jet fighters had been used to subdue Kurdish villages.

Later, in 1996, the US temporarily suspended the sale of advanced attack helicopters. But two years later there were fresh reports that hundreds more armoured vehicles had been sold. The US Defence Secretary visited Turkey and reportedly lobbied on behalf of American companies wishing to co-produce advanced helicopters there. In that same year an American company sold 10,000 electric shock weapons to the Turkish police.
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The future after oil: Six proposals

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By Johan Galtung

Keynote Speech – Doha, Qatar – 2 April 2013

Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities in the GCC-Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Distinguished Participants!

The organizers deserve high praise for setting this key, almost existential for some, issue on the agenda for an international conference. Oil and gas being limited there obviously is a peak–in the North Sea some years ago for Denmark, the UK and Norway. But this conference is not only about whether the peak is behind us, right now, in the future, and in that case when; but about and then what. Diagnosis, prognosis, therapy.

However, the peak may be more due to demand than to supply; more due to the problems caused by converting the energy stored in fossil fuels than to the extraction becoming too expensive to pay off. To the contrary, the more expensive the higher the profits as percentage of the costs, and given the oil-gas addiction the richest in a very inegalitarian world can always pay. In a better world energy for daily needs should be as freely available to everybody as walking on a street, or as health and education in a decent welfare state (they still exist). We risk fossil energy for the few only, not a peak.

On the demand side, all over, more or less, there is a turn to the alternative: the many green energy conversions. “The Surgeon General has decided that smoking is bad for you” has a follow up: “fossil fuels are bad for us“. We are not there, but it also took much time for high numbers to give up smoking. A massive shock, and compelling evidence of a causal connection, is needed. The increase in natural disasters and the erratic climate may soon provide that.

The world sees other peaks. Peak US Empire – not USA – with China coming up, Peak West with Rest coming up, headed by BRICS, Peak inter-state wars with inter-nation violence coming up. It’s a very dynamic world.

China burns coal-oil-gas, but is also a massive pioneer in green energies with photovoltaic and solar cells and electric cars, produced in ever greener ways. In the USA highly effective coal-oil-gas lobbies prevent the greening and promotes ecologically bad extraction. Politicians are bought by banks, banks invest in that extraction.

The world is moving East, the East is moving green. And so are millions. Read More »

Don’t blame the Iraq debacle on the Israel lobby

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By Stephen Zunes

Given the enormous tragedy of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war’s tenth anniversary has inevitably raised the question of “why?”

As many of us predicted in the lead-up to the war, the official rationales for the U.S. invasion of Iraq—namely, that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and had operational ties to al-Qaeda—were false. And the corrupt, inept, and repressive sectarian government the United States helped establish in Baghdad has undermined any pretense that the war was about democracy.

There are a number of plausible explanations, ranging from oil to strategic interests to ideological motivations. One explanation which should not be taken seriously, however, is the assertion that the government of Israel and its American supporters played a major role in leading the United States to invade Iraq.

The right-wing governments that have dominated Israel in recent years and their U.S. supporters deserve blame for many policies that have led to needless human suffering, increased extremism in the Islamic world, and decreased security, as well as rampant violations of international legal principles. The U.S. invasion of Iraq, however, is not one of them.

Arguments Supporting Claims of a Major Israeli Role in the U.S. Invasion of Iraq

There are four major arguments made by those who allege a key role by Israel and its American supporters in leading the United States to war in Iraq:Read More »

Reading these Palestinian prison diaries: A moral obligation

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By Richard Falk

The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag
Edited by Norma Hashim, in close collaboration with the Centre for Political & Development Studies, Gaza, 2013.

Download the pdf version of Prison Diaries for USD1.99. The printed book will be available at http://www.palestinemall.net from 17 April 2013.

There are many moving passages that can be found in these excerpts from prison diaries and recollections of 22 Palestinians. What is most compelling is how much the material expresses the shared concerns of these prisoners despite great variations in writing style and background. A few keywords dominate the texts: pain, God or Allah, love, dream, homeland, steadfastness, tears, freedom, dream, prayer.

My reading of these diaries exposed me to the distinct personal struggles of each prisoner to survive with as much dignity as possible in a dank and poorly lit circumstances of isolation, humiliation, acute hostility on the part of the prison staff, including abusive neglect by the medical personnel. The diaries also confirmed that even prolonged captivity had not diluted the spirit of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, but on the contrary had intensified it.

A strong impression of the overall illegitimacy of Israel’s encroachment on the most fundamental rights of the Palestinian people is also present on virtually every page.

Although not professional writers, the sentiments expressed have a special kind of eloquence arising from their authenticity and passion. A female prisoner, Sana’a Shihada, on learning that her family had been spared the demolition of their family home, describes the ordeal of her interrogation in a poetic idiom: “..the anger of the interrogators was like snow and peace to me [an Arabic saying that conveys a sense of being ‘soothing’]. I felt the pride of the Palestinians, the glory of Muslims, and the brightness of honesty. I knelt to Allah, thankfully. My tears fell on the floor of the cell, and I am sure they dug a path which those later imprisoned will be able to see.” Read More »

President Obama’s Middle East visit

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By Farhang Jahanpour

After a great deal of criticism from Israeli leaders and pro-Israeli groups in the United States for not having visited Israel during his first term, President Barack Obama chose Israel as the first point of call at the beginning of his second term. Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s overt interference in the US presidential election and open support for his old friend, the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Netanyahu was rewarded not only with the first visit in the second term, but also with effusive praise for Israel and its policies.

Many pundits have regarded President Obama’s visit to Israel as a wasted opportunity and indeed as a depressing spectacle, because it finally admitted the failure and the total abandonment of US mediation for a two-state solution. At the beginning of his first term, Obama gave top priority to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and made determined efforts to achieve that goal. In various speeches he rightly pointed out that continued settlement activity and the erosion of the remaining Palestinian territory would be an obstacle to peace, and he openly called on Israel to stop further violating international law by stealing more Palestinian land. Netanyahu’s response to all that pleading was downright rejection and deliberate provocation.Read More »

Middle East economies are unable to shift into top gear

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By Jonathan Power

Dateline: Doha, Qatar.

It has always been one of the mysteries of history why it is that the Muslim world of the Middle East was once so far ahead of Europe in science, medicine, astronomy and mathematics yet by the 16th century started to fall behind.

Not only did most of it never industrialize, if it hadn’t been for nearly all its countries having oil in abundance they would still be living in the poverty and torpor that was their lot at the beginning of the twentieth century. Even today as modernism takes over and cities are built like this one and its neighbours, reaching for the sky, the foundations are industries of the newer kind – tourism and banking. According to the UN’s annual Human Development Report most of them, Abu Dhabi apart, compared with countries of equal income per head, are low down in the world rankings on education, health, scientific prowess and the status of women.

But why did the Muslim world lose its momentum? If it had kept going at the pace it did in the first millennium after Mohammed it would now be one of the world’s leaders.Read More »

What was wrong with Obama’s speech in Jerusalem

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By Richard Falk

It was master-crafted as an ingratiating speech by the world’s most important leader and the government that has most consistently championed Israel’s cause over the decades. Enthusiastically received by the audience of Israeli youth, and especially by liberal Jews around the world. Despite the venue, President Obama’s words in Jerusalem on March 21st seemed primarily intended to clear the air somewhat in Washington. Obama may now have a slightly better chance to succeed in his second legacy-building presidential term despite a deeply polarized U.S. Congress, and a struggling American economy if assessed from the perspective of workers’ distress rather than on the basis of robust corporate profits. Read More »

Iraq – Ten years of stupidity

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By Johan Galtung

Nobody celebrated the 10th anniversary of the 19-20 March 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq (not only the USA was responsible, the stupidity coalesced). Stephen Zunes [also TFF Associate, edit] summarizes the losses in one of his excellent articles in the Santa Cruz Sentinel[i]: “the death of up to half a million Iraqis, the vast majority of whom are civilians, leaving over 600.000 orphans. More than 1.3 million Iraqis have been internally displaced and nearly twice that many have fled into exile. Almost 4,500 Americans were killed and thousands more have received serious physical and emotional injuries that will plague them the rest of their lives. The war has cost US taxpayers close to $1.3 trillion”.

On top of killing 1.3 million in the UN-imposed sanctions.

To use expressions like “humanitarian intervention” or “human security” given such predictable insults to basic human needs and rights beats Orwell’s 1984 Newspeak. With nothing to justify this, the coalition should bow in Confession, Contrition and Compensation: 3C.

Iraq did not become a democracy as a result, Read More »

As Obama greets Iranians on Nowruz, he’s made some medicines hard to afford

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By Farhang Jahanpour

Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, is one of the oldest festivals celebrated in the world. In fact, the palace of Persepolis built in the sixth century BC was an audience hall for celebrating Nowruz. It takes the spring equinox (falling on 20 or 21 March each year) as the start of the year, and it is celebrated in Iran and in many other countries, including Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other Central Asian states, as well as Arran (Republic of Azerbaijan) and some other countries in the Caucasus. It is celebrated by the Kurds in Iraq, Syria and Turkey and many other peoples who have a shared history with Iran. It is a time of renewal and rebirth. Continue here This link also contains Obama’s speech to the Iranian people.