Eight Hundred Years of Forgetting

Binoy Kampmark

“Governments and the illiberal cherish Magna Carta not despite its lack of legal significance, but because of it.”
– David Allen Green, Foreign Policy, Jun 15, 2015.

Idolatry is the natural consequence of abuse and disregard. Forget something, and revere it. Edification entails that no regard need be had to substance. When human rights conventions make it into the political argot, cited by the very individuals who are controlled by them, we know that a degree of amnesia and calculation has set in. They are the last ones who are interested in what those documents enshrine.

Magna Carta has suffered more than most. A long suffering dowager of the human rights revolution, it has been subjected to dismissal, qualification and sanctification. Could the document, an expression of baronial disgruntlement over royal taxation, be anything other than a creation of opportunists? Unscrupulous aristocrats battling King John within a feudal system that was gasping for air set the scene for future confrontations.

The assault on the Magna Carta commenced immediately after its signing in 1215. King John rushed the inconvenient matter off to the Vatican, and got what he wanted: a decree of nullity from Pope Innocent III distinctly troubled by the turn of events. But the document stubbornly clung on in various versions – 1216, 1217 and 1225. In 1297, King Edward acknowledged its legal value, albeit in heavily revised form, by placing it on the statute books. It became the weapon of choice for jurists keen to attack such concepts as divine rule.

To this day, the provision about having no freeman “taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land” remain distinct. But as has been pointed out, its form, its legality, is essentially worthless to the modern litigant. All this, despite the statement in Halsbury’s Laws of England claiming that, “Magna Carta is as binding upon the Crown today as it was the day it was sealed at Runnymede.”

The tussle between executive power bound and held accountable, and the various clauses of protection, has persisted for centuries. The Magna Carta has become a totemic alibi easily discarded when cited in legal challenges. Judges make reference to it in a passing, even as they prefer more contemporary statutes and conventions.

The Occupy Movement attempted to capitalise on its historical value without success when challenging their eviction from St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. In the case of Mayor Commonalty and Citizens of London v Samede & Others [2012] EWCA Civ 160, the court could barely contain its scorn. The challenge made by the applicant that he was a “Magna Carta heir” was “a concept unknown to the law.”

It was noted by the Master of the Rolls that the surviving document was a fairly skimpy one for the contemporary reader – at least in terms of relevance, only three provisions survived. “Chapter 29, with its requirement that the state proceeds according to the law, and its prohibition on the selling or delaying of justice, is seen by many as the historical foundation for the rule of law in England, but it has no bearing on the arguments on this case.” The others – and here, a chuckle could barely be concealed – concerned the rights of the Church and the City of London.

On Monday, another effort positively brimming with authoritarian contempt was shown. Police attempted to shut down a touted “festival for democracy” at an eco-village near the site holding official commemorations for the signing of the document. Irony was also in full supply, with the Queen in attendance to celebrate the signing of the document.

As Runnymede resident Peter Phoenix explained, “There has been a bonfire of the liberties in the past 10 years. We have seen the removal of so many of our rights to gather, our rights to protest, our rights of free speech and the right to a fair trial.”

The commemorative gush filling the political spectrum was not unanticipated.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron, to take a very conspicuous example, raves against the foundational document of European human rights while claiming Britain can do something better. After all, the Magna Carta was proclaimed at Runnymede, which for Cameron provides the perfect blood and soil argument for British exceptionalism.

“Why do people set such store by Magna Carta? Because they look to history. They see how the great charter shaped the world, for the best part of a millennium, helping to promote arguments for justice and for freedom.” Treating human rights like reputational agents, Cameron would argue that it fell to “us in this generation to restore the reputation of those rights… It is our duty to safeguard the legacy, the idea, the momentous achievement of those barons.”

States where executive power has transformed into forms of absolute rule (unwarranted surveillance; the attack on habeas corpus) continue to proclaim the value of the Magna Carta. Keeping people in indefinite detention can still be deemed appropriate policy even by states that value the concept of habeas corpus. The language of rights remains, as ever, the imperative of opportunists, the policy of scoundrels. The Magna Carta, to that end, remains the most generous excuse to that end.

China Rising

Pepe Escobar

In this week’s edition of CounterPunch Radio, host Eric Draitser interviews Pepe Escobar.

As intellectual acumen and cross-cultural expertise go, it would be hopeless to expect self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration foreign policy advisers — as well as Pentagon functionaries/hacks — to understand the complexities of China.

For instance, they would be incapable of evaluating all the myriad ramifications included in Professor Alfred McCoy’s masterful deconstruction of US-China geopolitics.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha is currently visiting Singapore, where he is discussing with his counterpart Lee Hsien Loong the intricacies of ASEAN-China concerning the formidably complex South China Sea disputes.

Thailand fully supports Singapore — ASEAN’s number one investor — to succeed Bangkok in the rotating role of ASEAN-China coordinator. Contrary to alarmist/paranoid scenarios paraded in the Beltway, the South China Sea disputes will be resolved diplomatically, within the ASEAN-China framework.

Lee Hsien Loong happens to be the elder son of late Singapore founding father, Prime Minister and Minister Mentor, the larger-than-life Lee Kuan Yew. He learned everything there is to know about Asia — and China — from Dad, first-hand.

When I moved to live in Asia in 1994, out of Paris, my first port of call was Singapore. That was at the height of the Asian miracle. Full immersion meant learning everything that revolved around Lee — and from Lee himself. Ideology, and political gaps aside — for instance, he was not exactly his usual razor-sharp about Iran or Russia or Latin America – Lee arguably knew more about China than any outside observer/analyst.

After all, it was Lee who dazzled the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping in person, in the late 1970s, prompting Deng to launch a modern China conceived as a sort of “a thousand Singapores”; sterling economic success under tight political control. President Xi Jinping, crucially, admires Lee as “our senior who has our respect.”

As Lee tells it, when he was asked by Chinese think tanks about “peaceful rise” as the new Chinese mantra, he responded with “peaceful renaissance, or evolution, or development. A recovery of ancient glory, an updating of a once great civilization.” Not accidentally, “peaceful development” was adopted by the previous Beijing leadership.

Now that the non-stop hysterical meme across the West is the “China threat,” or, extrapolating from the South China Sea disputes, “China aggression,” it’s quite enlightening to come back to the Grandmaster for some sobering China-related hard facts. Call it the Grandmaster’s concise China, and concise China-US, most of it compiled at Lee Kuan Yew (MIT Press, 2013). No meaningful analysis of China is possible without it.

Make no mistake; in geopolitics, Lee was pure status quo. He believed “no alternative balance can be as comfortable as the present one, with the US as a major player …The geopolitical balance without the U.S. as a principal force will be very different from that which it now is or can be if the U.S. remains a central player.”

Well, things are not so “comfortable” anymore.

The Grandmaster Speaks

On China as number 1: “Theirs is a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, many of great talent — a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number 1 in Asia, and in time the world?”

On what the Chinese people want: “Every Chinese wants a strong and rich China, a nation as prosperous, advanced, and technologically competent as America, Europe, and Japan. The reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force.”

On the master scenario: “The Chinese have calculated that they need 30 to 40, maybe 50, years of peace and quiet to catch up, build up their system, change it from the communist system to the market system. They must avoid the mistakes made by Germany and Japan … I believe the Chinese leadership has learnt that if you compete with America in armaments, you will lose. You will bankrupt yourself. So, avoid it, keep your head down, and smile, for 40 or 50 years.” (Not anymore; Xi is turning Deng’s “keep a low profile” upside down.)

On what China needs from the US: “China knows that it needs access to US markets, US technology, opportunities for Chinese students to study in the U.S. and bring back to China new ideas about new frontiers. It therefore sees no profit in confronting the U.S. in the next 20 to 30 years in a way that could jeopardize these benefits.” (And as Michael Hudson has noted, China’s new economic push is all about its thriving internal market; “China doesn’t need more dollars. Indeed, the more dollars it gets, the only thing it can safely do with them is lend them to the US Treasury, funding the military’s “Asia Pivot” to encircle China.”)

On Southeast Asia: “China’s strategy for Southeast Asia is fairly simple: China tells the region, ‘come grow with me.’ At the same time, China’s leaders want to convey the impression that China’s rise is inevitable and that countries will need to decide if they want to be China’s friend or foe when it ‘arrives.’ China is also willing to calibrate its engagement to get what it wants or express its displeasure.”

On why the U.S. “lost” Southeast Asia: “China is sucking the Southeast Asian countries into its economic system because of its vast market and growing purchasing power. Japan and South Korea will inevitably be sucked in as well. It just absorbs countries without having to use force. China’s neighbors want the U.S. to stay engaged in the Asia-Pacific so that they are not hostages to China. The US should have established a free-trade area with Southeast Asia 30 years ago, well before the Chinese magnet began to pull the region into its orbit. If it had done so, its purchasing power would now be so much greater than it is, and all of the Southeast Asian countries would have been linked to the U.S. economy rather than depending on China’s. Economics sets underlying trends.”

On Asian trade: “What are the Americans going to fight China over? Control over East Asia? The Chinese need not fight over East Asia. Slowly and gradually, they will expand their economic ties with East Asia and offer them their market of 1.3 billion consumers … Extrapolate that another 10, 20 years and they will be the top importer and exporter of all East Asian countries. How can the Americans compete in trade?” (that explains the Obama administration’s desperation to push for a China-excluding TPP.)

On China going asymmetrical: “Economically and militarily, they may not catch up for 100 years in technology, but asymmetrically, they can inflict enormous damage on the Americans.”

On the Party’s fear of chaos: “To achieve the modernization of China, her communist leaders are prepared to try all and every method, except for democracy with one person and one vote in a multi-party system. Their two main reasons are their belief that the Communist Party of China must have a monopoly on power to ensure stability; and their deep fear of instability in a multi-party free-for-all, which would lead to a loss of control by the center over the provinces, with horrendous consequences, like the warlord years of the 1920s and ‘30s.”

On why culture rules: “Can the Chinese break free from their own culture? It will require going against the grain of 5,000 years of Chinese history. When the center is strong, the country prospers. When the center is weak, the emperor is far away, the mountains are high, and there are many little emperors in the provinces and counties. This is their cultural heritage …Chinese traditions thus produce a more uniform mandarinate.”

On the inevitability of being back to number 1: “They operate on the basis of consensus and have a long view. While some may imagine that the 21^st century will belong to China, others expect to share this century with the U.S. as they build up to China’s century to follow.”

On why it’s so hard for the US to accept it: “For America to be displaced, not in the world, but only in the Western Pacific, by an Asian people long despised and dismissed with contempt as decadent, feeble, corrupt, and inept is emotionally very difficult to accept. The sense of cultural supremacy of the Americans will make this adjustment most difficult. Americans believe their ideas are universal — the supremacy of the individual and free, unfettered expression. But they are not — never were. In fact, American society was so successful for so long not because of these ideas and principles, but because of a certain geopolitical good fortune, an abundance of resources and immigration energy, a generous flow of capital and technology from Europe, and two wide oceans that kept conflicts of the world away from American shores. Americans have to eventually share their preeminent position with China.”

Now live with it: “The US cannot stop China’s rise. It just has to live with a bigger China, which will be completely novel for the US, as no country has ever been big enough to challenge its position. China will be able to do so in 20 to 30 years.” (Lee said that at the Future China Global Forum in Singapore, in 2011. Under Xi, China is already challenging the U.S.’s position.)

Moderate al-Qaeda?

Ghasem Akbari & Maria Sliwa

While terrorist groups tend to engage in violence in order to further their agenda, some terrorist groups can go through a metamorphosis and resort to quasi-nonviolent political strategies. One reason for this transformation is that the international community, with the exception of a handful of countries, condemns their actions. This stigma hinders terrorists from smoothly proceeding forward and avoiding unnecessary confrontation with superpowers.

An example of the shift from a terrorist group to a political organization is Hezbollah. For decades, Hezbollah engaged in various terrorist activities from hijacking airplanes to bombing embassies — actions that are not helpful to them anymore. Like Hezbollah, al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, feels the necessity of avoiding unnecessary confrontation with the West, in particular the United States. This does not mean that Hezbollah and al-Nusra are no longer terrorist groups.  However, they have adopted a more lenient strategy toward the West.

Recently the leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, who pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri told Al Jazeera America, “We are only here to accomplish one mission, to fight the regime [Bashar al-Assad] and its agents on the ground, including Hezbollah and others. Al-Nusra Front doesn’t have any plans or directives to target the West. We received clear orders not to use Syria as a launching pad to attack the U.S. or Europe in order to not sabotage the true mission against the regime.”

Although he did not guarantee that other branches of al-Qaeda outside Syria would not attack westerners, one thing is obvious; al-Qaeda is becoming more lenient.

But what event led to this sudden shift? To understand the rationale behind this new strategy we need to go back to the formation of al-Qaeda. To liberate Afghanistan, many jihadists from around the world rushed into that country. Some of them, including the current leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were Egyptians affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Unlike Osama Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri does not have a personal problem with the United States and is primarily focused on the mission of bringing more Islamic territories under the control of Sharia and getting rid of the Islamic countries’ corrupted leaders. Bin Laden was angry with the United States for stationing American soldiers in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, which was interpreted as the invasion of the land of the Two Holy Mosques by infidels.

Since the Muslim Brotherhood, the organization al-Zawahiri joined when he was 14 years old, allows the use of any means that helps the establishment of the Islamic State overall, the new strategy adopted by al-Nusra is justifiable. In contrast, Salafists barely relax their Islamic principles even if that relaxation brings victory to Islam.  For this simple reason, ISIS has declared war against everybody without considering the negative result.

U.S. Sunni allies in the Middle East cannot see their Sunni brothers defeated by Bashar al-Assad and the Shias, or the growing power of ISIS.  Al-Nusra is a group that does not use brutality like ISIS does.  So, for Arab allies to support al-Nusra seems to be the remaining option that serves to both defeat Bashar al-Assad and prevent ISIS from gaining an uncontrollable power that is hard to defeat.

The reason U.S. Sunni allies give voice to the leader of al-Nusra and his organization’s new strategy through a media outlet like al Jazeera America, whose main audience are westerners, might be to diminish the threat posed by al-Nusra to be able to support them with fewer objections. By saying Syria would not become “a launching pad to attack the US or Europe,” or “our mission is to defeat Syrian regime,” the leader of al-Nusra is encouraging Americans to tolerate their power and progress in Syria.

The new strategy is completely justifiable by Islamic teachings and the Muslim Brotherhood’s understanding of it. The Muslim Brotherhood focuses on the goal of Islam, al-Maqasid, which justifies the means. Al-Nusra is becoming more moderate, the way the Muslim Brotherhood is, avoiding direct confrontation when one is in a vulnerable position.

TPP the Trojan Horse of Global Conquest

Norman Pollack

Trade has never been so misused, no longer merely the vehicle for market penetration, siphoning of natural resources, creation of informal political control of the “host” country; for under Obama with the Trans-Pacific Partnership we see trade as the internally subverting element–barely disguised since China is not part of the proposed 12-nation trade arrangement—which paves the way for the all-important military encirclement and consequent (hoped-for) transformation of China into a subject client-state of American global dominance. The trade provisions, bad to begin with, in favoring categorical US prescriptive norms for the protection and expansion of the American business system, free from all roadblocks to its destructive operations and conduct, and hence, a giant step in realizing the structure of monopoly capitalism, thus far have been criticized by Democrats because of their negative impact on US labor.

Fine, yet myopic and, if ignorance didn’t reign supreme in the discussion and criticism, cowardly on the opponents’ part. Not even capitalism per se is raised as a defining issue, and rather, outsourcing, the decline of manufacturing, and for some, environmental outlawry. The entire foreign-policy dimension of TPP is ignored, as though a restoration of labor’s rights, glibly and grossly sabotaged by Obama, is sufficient for the democratization of American society. It isn’t. Domestic and foreign do not a harmless bifurcation make, in today’s world the latter, with militarization, the abrogation of civil liberties, interventions, drones, etc. etc. destroys the civic fabric by which all rights, labor’s included, blacks included, women included, radicals included, dissenters of every stripe included, enjoy protection. Thus, militarization paves the way for fascism, whether an American variety, starting from corporatism and flagrant class discrimination, or the more familiar kind, the concentration camp for those who do not toe the mark.

No word on the danger; the collective gaze is averted. Think only, self-interest, regularity, let Washington do it. Do what? In this case, using trade—beyond customary market imperialism—as a disguise, a self-justifying goal for business with the advantages to be gained, but not a word on TPP’s significance as softening the way, part of diverting the gaze, for Obama’s own Pacific-first strategy (as elaborately worked out as the US-EU confrontation with Russia) placing US military “assets” in striking range of China. Carrier battle groups, long-range nuclear-equipped bombers, even coastal vessels, the whole Pentagon ball of death-wax, stand at the ready. Trade in this context is multipurpose, none of which, however, has positive outcomes for the home front, except the further habituation, including the cultivation of false consciousness among the working class, for war and more intervention. Instead, beyond enriching business, it creates the conditions for the more forcible kind of imperialism, war, that risks the annihilation of humankind.

Ideology run amuck appears to be trumping old-fashioned imperialism, while of course keeping it intact and if anything now more effective. That is the danger posed by Obama: present a measure seemingly of benefit to working people, oversell perhaps his own party on its virtues, while simultaneously contemplating what is far worse: the forcible expansion of American capitalism, domestic society be damned.

***

For timely clarification, I turn to Peter Baker’s New York Times article, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership and a President’s Legacy,” (June 15) which assumes a) Obama has a legacy worth saving, and b) TPP is the prime candidate or perhaps accomplishment. We know Baker’s privileged status within administration circles and NYT’s largely uncritical view of Obama (even when its national-security reporters blast him openly); yet there remains useful to good reporting from which critical analysis of revealed facts is possible. Here Baker, frankly, is of little help. Noting that “the short walk from the Oval Office downstairs to the Situation Room has all too often meant bad news or grim choices,” he practically confers sainthood on Obama, as though an innocent bystander to events: “Whether it was war in the Middle East, Russian aggression in Ukraine [true to NYT’s party line] or the hunt for terrorists around the globe, President Obama’s foreign policy has felt consumed by guns and drones.”

Not here, however; the trade deal is heartfelt, exceptional statesmanship:

“So the 12-nation trade deal Mr. Obama has been negotiating in Asia took on special meaning for a president eager to change the world. It was a way to leave behind a positive legacy abroad, one that could be measured, he hoped, by the number of lives improved rather than by the number of bodies left behind. And if the Pacific really is the future, Mr. Obama wanted to position the United States to lead the way.” (Italics mine)

There is no mention of the armed state of readiness in the Pacific, no mention of China’s exclusion from TPP, just that fellow Democrats “shot down legislation crucial to finalizing the trade agreement,” raising the danger that “the centerpiece of his [Obama’s] much-touted re-engagement with Asia will slip away along with one of the last chances he has to to leave his imprint on the world before leaving office.” With praise of that kind one doesn’t need teleprompters, public relations campaigns, the majesty of office itself to sway peoples’ minds. One commentator is quoted correctly though innocent of its damaging effect. Michael Green, now of Georgertown and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former Asia adviser to Bush, writes: “’If the president cannot get [trade promotion authority (I assume he also means fast-track)] through Congress, it is a disaster for his Asia policy.’” Yes, indeed, for without the cover of trade policy, the military character of “his Asia policy” will stand out naked and clear. Green redeems himself with just the right touch of belligerence: “’The administration will be dismissed as lame duck at a time when China is flexing its muscles.’” One glimpses back to the falling-domino thesis, again alive and well. For Baker himself provided a now-or-never touch. Failure of Congress to approve TPP “would lead to Japan, Vietnam and other putative partners reversing course on economic reforms [think IMF, World Bank and US conditions as defining “economic reforms”] or tariff concessions required to join the multilateral trade zone”—Baker’s own giveaway in revealing the one-sided arrangements.

Jon Huntsman, former Obama ambassador to China, said it better: “’Domestically we tend to view trade through a political prism by way of winners and losers. In Asia, it’s seen as directly tied to our leadership and commitment to the region. A failed T.P.P. would create an influence vacuum that others, primarily China, would fill.’” China must be ours (just as, in 1949, when Mao came in, Americans ranted that we “lost” China, as though it was ours all along). We are reminded here of what an earlier generation would have said about the present, namely, that Obama, being perfectly consistent with the past, was pursuing the policy of the Open Door, itself largely geared to China. Yet I suspect one must go further, not the Open Door per se, but its explicit militarization, changing its character from the famous Gallagher and Robinson thesis of “the Imperialism of Free Trade,” to free trade be damned, with both its forcible penetration and its wider context of more inclusive global hegemony the accepted goals. That is why TPP is so dangerous (and that extends to its proposer, Obama), its inseparableness, designedly so, from military conquest of all standing in America’s way, and due subordination of those nations willing to go along.
***

My New York Times Comment on the Baker article, same date, follows:

Obama’s legacy is war, drone assassinations, covert operations, on one hand, support–like not since Herbert Hoover–for corporate wealth and multinationals via the restructuring of global trade, on the other. “Legacy” grates on one’s democratic sensibilities, given his militarism and unified Rightist posture at home and abroad.

And yet, the whole discussion of the Pacific initiative. Of course, the shielding of corporations from environmental, and other wayward practices. Of course, gaining market penetration through enforced tariff reductions. Of course, outsourcing and consequent disadvantages to American labor. But these only scratch the surface.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), done for its own sake, is, more importantly, designed to accompany the military PIVOT to the Pacific, i.e., the containment of China, purposefully excluded from TPP membership, and from containment, ultimate isolation and, if possible, regime change and/or dismemberment. Obama is leading the US on a mammoth two front campaign, directed to both Russia and China, demonized with subtle hints of menacing communism, as though recalling the worst of the early Cold War.

Democrats don’t get it. They object to the obvious, mired in their own parochial mindset, when in fact Obama is close to waging a war for world supremacy bar none. Outsourcing is imperialism lite; Obama is into imperialism heavy, the militarization of the global design.

Iraq’s Unending Woes

Cesar Chelala

Iraq’s dismal health situation is testimony to the invasion of the country by foreign forces, including now the takeover of important parts of its territory by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The Iraqi people have been the subject of mass executions, rape, torture and, in addition, the destruction of the country’s infrastructure. The international community has been mostly deaf to the needs of Iraqis, who have undergone difficulties much greater that during the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization Director-General stated recently, “The situation is bad, really bad, and rapidly getting worse,” as she launched a new humanitarian plan for Iraq. If they don’t receive appropriate support, 84% of all health projects and centers run the risk of closure before the end of June.

It is estimated that since January 2014, 2.9 million people have fled their homes, 6.9 million Iraqis need immediate access to essential health services, and 7.1 million need easier access to water, sanitation and hygiene assistance. Presently, 8.2 million people in Iraq need immediate humanitarian support.

Women and children have not been spared the brutal consequences of the war. Survivors of gender-base violence and rape experience trauma and depression, and suicides among women and girls have risen markedly in recent years. Children’s health status has deteriorated markedly in the last 12 years. In addition, they have been used as suicide bombers and human shields and have been killed by crucifixion or buried alive.

Iraqis health status is a reflection of the deterioration of the country’s health system. Medical facilities, which in the 1980s were among the best in the Middle East, have deteriorated significantly after the 2003 invasion. It is estimated that during the war 12 percent of hospitals and the country’s two main public health laboratories were destroyed.

Sanitary conditions in hospitals remain unsatisfactory, and medications and trained personnel are in short supply. Even basic health care is unavailable in regions of the country under armed conflict. As a result of the collapsed sanitation infrastructure, the incidence of cholera, dysentery and typhoid fever has increased. Malnutrition among children and other childhood diseases have also increased.

Doctors in the thousands have been leaving the country and those that remain are under constant threat to their personal safety. As Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) stated, “Until now, it is extremely difficult to find Iraqi doctors willing to work in certain areas because they fear for their security.”

Despite some government aid and reconstruction plans, several remote areas are excluded from state reconstruction and development efforts, leaving thousands of Iraqis without access to essential health care up to this day. As a result, thousands of Iraqis are obliged to sell their homes and possessions to seek health care abroad.

The widespread environmental damage caused by the war, including the degradation of forests and wetlands, destruction of wildlife, and increased air pollution will have long term impacts on people’s health. In addition, medical researchers have expressed their concern about people’s health being seriously affected by the use of white phosphorus and depleted uranium by American and British forces.

The continuing conflict has exacted a heavy toll on all Iraqis’ mental health and quality of life. “Many Iraqis have been pushed to their absolute limit as decades of conflict and instability has wreaked devastation. Mentally exhausted by their experiences, many struggle to understand what is happening to them. The feelings of isolation and hopelessness are compounded by the taboo associated with mental health issues and the lack of mental healthcare services that people can turn to for help,” said Helen O’Neill, MSF’s head of mission in Iraq.

We are facing nothing less than the almost total destruction of a country by an ill-advised invasion whose consequences are still being felt. Some day, somebody will have to respond for it.

The Holy Grail of Korean Unification

John Feffer

Reunification, for Koreans, has a mythic quality, like the Promised Land or the Holy Grail. Most Koreans dream of reunification, of a time in the future when the North and the South will join together to recreate the Korean whole that existed before division and Japanese colonialism. It’s a lovely idea, but no one has a very good idea of how to achieve it.

There have been many polls in South Korea about the what, how, and when of reunification. According to the latest Asan poll from January 2015, for instance, interest in reunification remains very high (over 80 percent), though younger people are less interested in the subject and also less interested in paying an additional tax to support reunification.

Our views of North Korean opinion, meanwhile, remain rather patchy. The North Korean government has made any number of official pronouncements. And North Korean defectors have given their opinions, but since they left the country it’s not clear how representative their views are.

But now we have some new information, thanks to a poll of 100 North Koreans in China conducted last year by researchers from Chosun Ilboand the Center for Cultural Unification Studies. These North Koreans are not defectors. They are spending some time in China working or visiting relatives, and they plan to return to their country. Since conducting a public opinion poll in North Korea is out of the question, this is the next best thing.

The views of these 100 North Koreans on the topic of reunification are nothing short of amazing.

In the aftermath of World War II, the two Koreas looked at the issue of reunification in an identical, if opposite, way. North Korea aspired to unify the peninsula under the banner of “our-style socialism.” South Korea, under Syngman Rhee, harbored hopes of absorbing the North in a similarly military fashion.

The continued stalemate on the peninsula prompted strongmen Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee to explore other methods of achieving reunification. Given the structural similarities of the two countries at that point – authoritarian politics, state-led economic development, social and cultural conformity – finding a formula for eventual reunification was not so far-fetched. Indeed, one of the chief sticking points at that time was not ideological but numerical. Because South Korea had a much larger population than North Korea, the two sides could not agree on a political structure that could ensure both equal representation of the two sides and proportional representation of the two populations.

As North Korea descended into the famine and economic crisis of the 1990s, a different vision of reunification emerged, mainly in the South. Communist states had collapsed throughout Eastern Europe. It seemed that it was just a matter of time before North Korea, too, collapsed. Reunification would therefore happen organically – not through military action or complicated political negotiations but, rather, when the North Korean regime collapsed and the South simply filled the political vacuum.

The North Korean system has stubbornly remained in place, and so this latest reunification scenario remains in limbo. Predictions of North Korea’s collapse are still routinely made, but no one is expecting that reunification will take place any time soon.

Let’s return now to the poll of North Koreans. This group of North Koreas is, of course, an unusual cohort. They have had an opportunity to travel outside their country. They’ve presumably had contact with foreigners and foreign ideas. They don’t represent North Korean public opinion as a whole. However, the group is roughly divided between men and half women and is diverse in their age and place of residence in North Korea. Only two of the 100 had college degrees, so they do not represent the North Korean elite.

Like South Koreans, the North Koreans showed a lot of interest in reunification: 95 of them said that it was necessary, largely for economic reasons. An overwhelming number believed that they would personally benefit from reunification.

When asked about how they think reunification will take place, only eight of the 100 held to their government’s position that North Korea would control the process. Only seven thought that it would take place when the North Korean regime collapses. On the other hand, 22 respondents expected that South Korea would absorb North Korea. And the vast majority expected that reunification would take place “through negotiations between the two Koreas on equal footings after reforms and an opening-up of the North.”

When asked about the system that a reunified Korea should adopt, the answers were even more startling. Only 14 opted for North Korean socialism, and 26 chose a compromise between the two systems. On the other hand, 34 respondents preferred the South Korean system and 24 others didn’t care which system the unified country adopts.

North Koreans, at least in this segment of the population, clearly revealed that they are not robotically following their government’s propaganda (whatever they might say in public). They show a diversity of opinion, which suggests that they are thinking through things on their own. And yet they converge on a couple of different choices, which suggests that they are also having discussions with others about such questions. They don’t show a great deal of confidence in the longevity of the North Korean system. But equally of importance, many are fundamentally pragmatic and don’t really care what system they have to operate within.

The two governments are not talking about reunification. They’re barely talking about anything. But people in North Korea are thinking about the subject just as much, if not more, than their compatriots in the South. That these poll respondents are not the intellectual elite of the country is even more startling, for it suggests that the discussions about the relative merits of the two systems are taking place across socio-economic lines in North Korea.

Most importantly, the poll results emphasize the importance of projects that give North Koreans an opportunity to engage with the outside world. Before change can happen in a country, it has to happen in the minds of its citizens. And that’s obviously already taking place in North Korea.

Human Experimentation: a CIA Habit

David Swanson

The Guardian on Monday made public a CIA document allowing the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research.”

Human what?

At Guantanamo, the CIA gave huge doses of the terror-inducing drug mefloquine to prisoners without their consent, as well as the supposed truth serum scopolamine. Former Guantanamo guard Joseph Hickman has documented the CIA’s torturing people, sometimes to death, and can find no explanation other than research:

“[Why] were men of little or no value kept under these conditions, and even repeatedly interrogated, months or years after they’d been taken into custody? Even if they’d had any intelligence when they came in, what relevance would it have years later? . . . One answer seemed to lie in the description that Major Generals [Michael] Dunlavey and [Geoffrey] Miller both applied to Gitmo. They called it ‘America’s battle lab.'”

Non-consensual experimentation on institutionalized children and adults was common in the United States before, during, and even more so after the U.S. and its allies prosecuted Nazis for the practice in 1947, sentencing many to prison and seven to be hanged. The tribunal created the Nuremberg Code, standards for medical practice that were immediately ignored back home. Some American doctors considered it “a good code for barbarians.”

The code begins: “Required is the voluntary, well-informed, understanding consent of the human subject in a full legal capacity.” A similar requirement is included in the CIA’s rules, but has not been followed, even as doctors have assisted with such torture techniques as waterboarding.

Thus far, the United States has never really accepted the Nuremberg Code. While the code was being created, the U.S. was giving people syphilis in Guatemala. It did the same at Tuskegee. Also during the Nuremberg trial, children at the Pennhurst school in southeastern Pennsylvania were given hepatitis-laced feces to eat.

Other sites of experimentation scandals have included the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, and Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. And, of course, the CIA’s Project MKUltra (1953-1973) was a smorgasbord of human experimentation. Forced sterilizations of women in California prisons have not ended. Torture by Chicago police has for the first time just resulted in compensation for victims.

If we are, at long last, to put such contemptible behavior behind us, it will require breaking some bad habits.

Congress has busily re-banned torture a number of times in recent years. Now it must drop that charade and instead demand that the Attorney General enforce the anti-torture statute, which made torture a felony before George W. Bush ever became president.

It’s good of John Oliver to denounce torture. And he’s right to go after the lies told about torture in popular entertainment. But he’s also spreading the false idea that it’s legal. “We checked,” he says, reporting that his crack team of investigators discovered that the only ban on torture is found in an executive order written by President Obama. This is dangerous nonsense. The U.S. was a party to the Anti-Torture Convention and had made torture a felony under the anti-torture statute and the war-crimes statute before George W. Bush ever became president.

Since then, Congress has repeatedly “banned” torture. But, just as the U.N. Charter’s ban on war actually legalized certain wars, purporting to replace the total ban in the Kellogg-Briand Pact with a partial ban, these Congressional efforts (such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006) have actually legalized certain cases of torture, replacing (at least in everyone’s mind) the total ban already existing in the U.S. Code and in a treaty to which the U.S. is party.

The latest “ban” proposal from Senator McCain and friends, would create exceptions in the form of those in the Army Field Manual, and advocates maintain that step number two would be to reform that manual. But if you skip both steps and acknowledge the existence of the anti-torture statute in the U.S. Code, you’re done. The proper task is to press for its enforcement.

Oliver’s mistake, like virtually everyone else’s, is based on two myths. One, torture began with Bush. Two, torture ended with Bush. On the contrary, torture has been around in the United States and elsewhere for a very long time. So has the practice of banning it. Torture is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In fact, under international law, torture can never be legalized and is always banned.

Myth number two is also wrong. Torture has not ended and won’t as long as it’s not punished.

An attorney general can be questioned and threatened with impeachment until our laws are enforced. A new website created Monday let’s you email Congress to demand that it do just that.

Syria: a Serious Situation for Us All

Roya Arab

London.

Daily the depth and breadth of conflict increases, people are killed and displaced, refugee camps expand as does an expressly archaic and yet perversely modern construct of Islam that the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) could surely have never foreseen.  ISIS (known in the region as Da’ ish) sweeps its bloody cloak across the Syrian and Iraqi landscapes with swords and hammers obliterating people and artefacts that fall short of their exacting demands.

ISIS is yet another child of Wahhabi based teachings, from an ultra-conservative Sunni school of Islam, nurtured in Saudi Arabia in the late 1800s, with children and cousins emerging all over the modern world, their ideas flying on wings of the world-wide-web, engaging and radicalising disenfranchised souls from all classes and creeds. East, West, North and South extremists proliferate, born out of corrupted unjust political structures that stumble from one lie to the next.
 
Looking at Syria today, international military invasions have occurred for less.  So called weapons of mass destruction led to an illegal 2003 Allied war tearing at the fabric of regional unity in what was a multicultural religiously tolerant Iraq – notwithstanding the forceful suppression of oppositional politics (imperfect, but surely better than what there is now).

Not far away in Yemen – truly the forgotten land, bounteous mountains reaching abundant seas, an ancient place where Arabs, Iranians, Indians and Africans met from early on. Lesser known is the Shia inspired Imamate that has existed since the eighth Century in Yemen. Western and Ottoman strategic interests in the region carved up this ancient land, divided for decades even in unity no peace to find, resonating in battles we hear little about today, creating yet more unstable places people want/need to escape.

Religion and politics have created a toxic cloud darkening the region’s skies. At the 69^th session of the UN General Assembly Netanyahu declared Iran to be a ‘global threat bigger than ISIS’ (Turner, 2015). A sentiment reiterated more recently in conversation with the Louisiana Republican Senator (CBS NEWS 29 may 2015) part of his continued attempts to muster world condemnation for Iran’s Nuclear energy. Iran’s supposed threat being the same argument used to hawk masses of military hardware to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some Arab states around the Persian Gulf (Law, 2012; Shanker, 2013) who are themselves busy funding ISIS and other terror groups, not to mention Israel’s not inconsiderable military might and nuclear arsenal.

In May whilst Netanyahu was beating his war drums,  Lamb’s essay on Palmyra’s endangered state in the hands of ISIS points to an “unverified report” of Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi “preaching that ‘God has sent Da’ish to fight against nations that want to destroy Israel. You are our brothers!” (Lamb, 2015) The Rabbi cited verses such as “The day on which Tadmor (Palmyra) is destroyed will be made a holiday (Yeb. 16b-17a)” (ibid).

You begin to think that everyone has definitively lost the plot, but then Dan Glazebrook’s article in CounterPunch informs us that US government documents which were subject of a two year legal case (May 15, 2014, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed that “far from being an unpredictable ‘bolt from the blue’, as the mainstream media tends to imply, the rise of ISIS was in fact both predicted and desired by the US and its allies from as far back as 2012” (Dan Glazebrook, 2015). His article further points to Hersh’s 2007 article in the New Yorker, where we learn of “the strategy…….. [in which] Bush administration officials were working with the Saudis to channel billions of dollars to sectarian death squads whose role would be to ‘throw bombs… at Hezbollah, Motada al-Sadr, Iran and at the Syrians” (Dan Glazebrook 2015).

As we look around today the Wahhabi (more recently also using  the term Salafist)  ideals are redefining Middle Eastern lands with fear and force, slaughtering Yazidis, Druze, Christians and anyone not conforming to their version of Islam including Shia, Ismaili and other Muslims groups, slayed without shame or remorse. Sort of terrifying when the U.S. Department of Internal Affairs’ annual report (referred to in Glazebrook’s article) exposes Western strategies such as “establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)” (Dan Glazebrook, May, 2015).

These concealed misguided negative policies are by no means new. There was nothing hidden about the Dual Containment policy, announced in 2003, aimed at containing Iran and Iraq, or indeed the US government allocating US$85 million ‘to produce anti-Iran propaganda and support dissidents’ (Unger, 2007).

Decades on, enemies of enemies have become friends and allies with dubious human rights records are brought into the fold. Whilst the Iranian government is not the most exemplary in the world, its Iran’s military personnel who are assisting in Yemen and putting their feet on the ground with Iraqi and Syrian soldiers, as are the Kurds (they with their own nation seeking agenda, spawned when granted semi autonomy post Bush Senior Iraq war). Iran, Iraq and Syria all have sizeable Shia populations and various strands of Shia can be found across Middle East and North Africa, threatened together with others not suiting the Salafist frame of mind.

The divide is appearing everywhere and manifests itself in many a way, with ancient co-existing communities being driven apart through extremist preaching and acts. The Shia minority in Persian Gulf Arab states are repressed as witnessed in Bahrain where their demands for equality were brutally crushed; in Pakistan the ancient use of khoda hafez (khoda a Persian word for God) is being replaced with Allah Hafez and a bus full of Ismaili innocents, young and old were blown up in a bus; in Libya Shia sites desecrated until locals stepped in; and after a decade of bombing Shia mosques in Iraq, the newly formed Saudi branch of ISIS blew up two Shia mosques in Saudi Arabia over the last weeks. The Shia are not alone, the last decades has seen a steady, now accelerating, obliteration of the region’s multi-ethnic tapestry, the fissure deepens and widens hourly. On the eleventh hour America is making noises about helping to get rid of ISIS, akin to their efforts to fight the Taliban whom they originally sent in Bin Laden to train…. Sound familiar?

The saddest part of all is realising some people not only knew, but were writing future sagas with bloodied ink. As a solitary human amongst billions, in a little corner of the world, I really wonder are human lives, cultures and histories of so little value that they can be violated, dismantled and erased intentionally in so many places around the globe without it reverberating?

Then I see in the west the tragedy of a young off duty soldier massacred on the streets witnessed by people passing by that could be you and I. We mourned the blasts that decimated blameless lives nearby; whilst all around us counter terror police are searching for terror cells and turning off ticking bombs.  Meanwhile, coasts and borders strain under the fleeing feet of innocents caught at the cutting edge, escaping the hellish chaos some politicians and religious leaders leave around.

It then becomes clear that indeed Syria and what’s going on in neighbouring regions is a serious situation for us all, wherever we are. And perhaps we should be more engaged and helping turn the tide…. just don’t quite know how?

Suggestions welcome.

Too Soon for a Rate Increase

Nicole Woo

This week, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is meeting to review the current state of the economy and decide whether or not to make any changes to monetary policy to promote the Federal Reserve’s goals of “maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.”

The main policy tool available to the Fed at this juncture is raising the federal funds interest rate, which has been pegged at essentially zero for over six years. While Fed watchers and other experts don’t expect the FOMC to raise rates at this meeting, they’ll be hanging on every word of the FOMC’s announcement and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s press conference afterwards to find out if they plan to raise the rate sooner rather than later this year.

Most of Wall Street appears to be expecting that the FOMC will wait until September or October to raise the rate, but a growing number of voices are predicting that the recent strong jobs report, which reported 280,000 jobs added to the economy in May, could motivate it to raise the rate as early as July. Another reason that is cited to support a rate increase is the fact that the official unemployment rate is currently at 5.5 percent. While that is a healthy drop from the peak of 10 percent in October 2009, many experts point out that in this weak recovery, that rate may not be an accurate measure of “full or maximum employment.” This is because the official unemployment rate fails to account for the significant numbers of part-time workers who’d like more hours, discouraged workers who’ve given up even looking for work, and others who are not counted as part of the labor force.

One way to get around these issues and more directly measure the recovery is to look at the employment to population ratio (EPOP), which basically is the percent of the population that is employed. My colleague at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Nicholas Buffie, recently did just that.

His analysis shows that, for prime-age (25 to 54 years old) workers, the EPOP was 79.7 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007. During the downturn, the prime-age EPOP hit a low of 74.8 percent, or a drop of 4.9 percentage points. By March 2015, the EPOP has risen to 77.2 percent, or an increase of 2.4 percentage points. In other words, we’re less than halfway back to where we were before the recession.

When you look at different demographic groups, the story is even more telling. For example, the prime-age EPOPs for Asian-Americans has seen just a 15.3 percent recovery. Latino Americans have fared better than other ethnicities, but have only recovered 57 percent of employment lost to the recession. Prime-age African-Americans saw their EPOP drop by 8.1 percentage points, from 74.8 to 66.7 percent, during the recession. By March 2015, African-Americans’ EPOP has risen to 71.0 percent, which means that there are still 4.3 percentage points to go. That means that prime-age African-Americans still need to close an employment gap that’s almost as large as the entire decrease faced by whites during the recession.

It’s also worth noting that before the recession, the 74.8 percent EPOP for African-Americans is equal to the lowest point for whites during the recession. In other words, black Americans were already experiencing the equivalent of a white American recession before the economy crashed at the end of 2007.

So what does this mean for the Federal Reserve? The implications seem obvious: The labor market is still far from fully recovered, so we’re not anywhere near ready to raise interest rates. Prime-age workers’ overall employment is only about halfway back to where it was before the recession, and when you look at different demographic groups, it becomes clear that as African-Americans lost the most during the downturn, they still have the most to gain from the recovery.

Simply put, if the FOMC raises rates too early, then those groups that were harmed the most by the recession will also lose the most by the resulting halt to the recovery.

Cotton Made in Africa: Improving the World of Smallholder Farmers

Michael Otto

Dear Friends of Cotton made in Africa and the Aid by Trade Foundation; On June 16, 2005, we registered a new foundation in the Hamburg Foundation Registry: the Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry in Developing Countries or FSAF. When we started this journey, our mission was to improve the world of small-holder farmers in many cotton-producing African countries.

The goal was to provide enough assistance so cotton growers in sub-Saharan Africa could earn a decent livelihood from their hard work in the fields. We wanted to stop the suffering caused by subsidies that artificially keep the global price of cotton low, leaving small-holder farmers with no way to earn a living that would allow their families to live with dignity. Involving companies in our efforts was and continues to be what made our idea so unique. The foundation’s very name clearly expresses the approach we have followed from the beginning: helping others help themselves through trade – Aid by Trade. The foundation was not set up to offer charity to African small-holder farmers; it provided an opportunity for trade on an even playing field. As our friend and member of the Board of Trustees, James Shikwati from Kenya once said: “Stop charity and let’s start doing business with each other.” Before we had even met, his critique of traditional development aid perfectly expressed the principles of the Aid by Trade Foundation and its Cotton made in Africa Initiative. So this was our goal – aid through trade in support of small-holder farmers and to protect the environment. And where are we now – ten years down the road? A lot has happened between 2005 and 2015 – through the foundation’s work and in a global context as well, of course.

Today social inequality and the North-South wealth gap are more pronounced than ever before. Thousands of people are fleeing their home countries to escape war, poverty and displacement. They come to Europe in hopes of a better life. Their homelands offer no prospects for them or their families – only hopelessness. So for many, the only option left is to cross the ocean or move to the cities where they eke out miserable existences in the spreading slums.

Dr. Michael Otto in Benin

The pressure on our ecosystems is also growing. The earth’s expanding population is driving up demand for food. At the same time, conversion, erosion and climate change are reducing the amount of arable land needed to grow this food. So it is even more important that we work to achieve ecological and social sustainability.

As a business man, I have long felt that the private sector has to step up, assume responsibility, and explore the ethical and moral challenges of its actions. This includes the sources of products and raw materials, their traceability back to the point of origin, and the conditions under which they are made, processed and finished.

The demand for more mindfulness, greater care and sufficient responsibility all along the value chain challenges us every day. And it should, since this forces companies to reflect on how they source materials and products, and contributes to ensuring that raw materials produced under sustainable conditions are used and that the workers who produce goods for the global market enjoy social working standards and fair wages.

These days, more and more companies are committing to corporate responsibility and publicly declaring their support for sustainable business. This is a wonderful step in the right direction. But is it enough? I don’t think so. We are still working from within a system that primarily focuses on optimising financial considerations.

As members of the business community though, it is up to us to change the entire system, promote sustainability, and find alternate paths to take. This involves more than just taking responsibility for workers in their home countries and pushing for good working conditions in supplier countries: Our responsibility has to go beyond the manufacturing process alone. It has to start at the beginning of the supply chain – and include the sourcing of raw materials, such as cotton. It is essential that we bring consumers on board as well, since they exert considerable influence on the type of products made and sold. They are still not prepared to pay the real price for their products though and insist that sustainability cannot be more expensive.

Even if we have successfully recognized the greatest ecological and social challenges facing us today – the path from knowing to acting is often still a long one. So energy is still needed – ours and yours – as partners, supporters and not least as multipliers to fully deploy the power of the idea behind Cotton made in Africa, and to raise the huge potential of the initiative for improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of small-holder farmers. The path still before us is long. But with the help of its partners, the Aid by Trade Foundation has already achieved a lot: We initially started in Burkina Faso, Benin and Zambia.

Today 650,000 famers in ten countries participate. Our partnerships with GIZ, the DEG and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as part of the COMPACI program have been key factors in our expansion. This partnership and close, fruitful cooperation with cotton companies has turned Cotton made in Africa into one of the most important initiatives for sustainable cotton both in Africa and worldwide. We have benefited from the support of consultants from the WWF, Welthungerhilfe and NABU over the years. They have worked with us to update and improve our standards, and ensured that Cotton made in Africa enjoys an exceptional reputation with the relevant stakeholders and can fully unfurl its social and ecological potential in Africa, such as through joint projects.

Our around 25 corporate partners, whose demand for cotton is the motor that drives Cotton made in Africa, have accompanied us on what has been a long and sometimes rocky road. From the first products that hit the market in 2007 – a men’s jacket from one of our ground-floor partners, Tom Tailor, made from Zambian cotton, featured in the OTTO catalogue and online shop, and promoted by Peter Maffay who wore it on tour – to contracts worth millions for Cotton made in Africa cotton. Some textiles are even being made in Africa today.

By awarding contracts to African manufacturers in Ethiopia or Uganda, the textile industry is showing its pioneering power to directly affect development policy. Today I want to lay the cornerstone for a new, lasting Aid by Trade Foundation institution, both as in celebration of the first 10 years of our successful activities and as encouragement for the next decade.

We have completed a number of very effective projects, such as the construction of schools and wells, and promoting women and adult literacy. These are all signs of the productive cooperation between the people involved on both ends – Africa and Europe – from small-holder farmers, cotton companies, NGOs, and the public and private sector. These projects have already provided concrete and unwavering assistance to many thousands of people in Africa, thus laying the groundwork for a better life.

To promote other similar projects in education, health care, women’s rights and nature conservation, it is my pleasure to announce a new Cotton made in Africa program. I am supporting with one million euros in initial capital.

R2P Or P2R: The Story Of A Brave New World To Save Libya That Never Was

Mohamed Awale

I thought that the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi of Libya and anything related to him would be the last thing I would say a word about  in my lifetime, much less to be sympathetic of the grizzly fate that waited for him, and that wasn`t by an accident. During the height of the Cold War in 1977-1978, this writer was among the youth of WSLF fighters in the Ethiopian Somali region against Ethiopian repression over a century. As we put on a hard fight and pushed relentlessly the mighty Ethiopian army, the battle fortunes turned against us overnight. As it turned out, the ex-Warsaw Pact launched a massive military rescue package to rescue them: a state-of-the-art logistics, superior air power and tanks and the rest was history. Other members of the pact supplied the hardware/ expertise and Gaddafi was tasked to finance the war machine. Later, he recklessly dabbled with myopic Somali oppositions to disfigure Somalia proper. From that day on, I pitied and loathed him and what he stood for.

As Libya struggles with chaos of lawlessness cum extremism and as immigrants perish at sea, the West and NATO alliance who led the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime have seemingly chosen to remain silent on the whole sad affair, save for an occasional hand wringing and some self-serving political statements about the influx of desperate African immigrants trying to reach European shores.

What a difference it makes compared to four years ago when these same foreign nations were beating up drums for a regime change. These actors were the forefront among NATO’s successful destructive campaign to topple the Libyan regime and then held victory and self-congratulatory parades at the cost of millions of tax-payers’ dollars in their respective capitals to mark the occasion. It was all about a job well-done except it wasn’t in terms of the would-be consequences of both capital and human costs. Not only that, the faux objective of the organized violent mission per se was also very questionable from the beginning. The dubious destructive war was sanctioned by the international body (UN) in the highest level despite Libya being a sovereign member and quasi-stable one that posed no or little immediate threat to others at the time.

The mission was done in the name of the much-vaunted and recently enacted UN charter of responsibility to protect (R2P) that morphed to what seemingly become a pretext to wreak havoc (R2W) soon after. The public was told it was an altruistic gesture in a new brave and caring world to save Libya from the clutches of a perennial and notorious brute and to replace it with an enlightened and democratic system for the sake of the wrenched Libyans, who would happily wave flowers to the godsend liberators. But it was not to be, if not the reverse is true, and the proof is what has happened and still is happening on the ground after the fact — more human deaths and human rights abuses, civil war, extremism, immigrants’ death trap, wanton disorder etcetera.

It was then the UN Security Council Resolution of 1973 as a cover for NATO war machine that essentially turned a supposedly humanitarian mission of no-fly zone operation into a hunt-and -destroy mission. On top of an being illegal manhunt to kill Gaddafi, the mission laid waste the country in terms of institutions, infrastructure, resources, law and order. If there was any doubt about the mission’s primary objective, Western leaders put it to rest at end of the assault by reminding the public and international bodies alike that their military war planes participated in the war and illegally cleared away Gaddafi’s remaining mechanized divisions and materially assisted the rebels – a hopeless and rag-tag militia armed and prodded none other than the same outside powers– to take Tripoli by storm.

The consequences of the ill-conceived mission are self- evident today, including the reported killing and abduction of African immigrants at the hands of extremists in the subsequent chaos. Worse yet, none among the actors are willing to take any responsibility for what it was and still is: an abject mission failure in terms of the policy outcome and human costs, on top of being illegal and unethical act to begin with. There is no mea culpa in the whole disaster, and if nothing else, the story laid bare once again the hypocrisy and new mask of neo-colonialism agendas toward Africa and elsewhere. The rest of the story about the war was either an afterthought or a cover up for PR’s exercise to legitimize the move to the gullible and weak. How else can one describe to obvious political discrepancy and collective amnesia after the fact on the party of the belligerent foreign powers? Obviously the decision of the regime change was solely based on some realpolitik and other economic and geo-strategic interest of the actors rather than genuine democratic ideals or altruistic notions.

As a matter fact, no sooner the so-called Libyan liberation mission was over in 2011 than foreign powers openly and confidently mused that the Libyan National Transitional Council couldn’t be a lesser evil than Colonel Gaddafi’s rule. Furthermore, it is not as if the potential consequences of meddling in Libya were an unknown and less predictable. As a debate on Resolution 1973 unfolded in New York in March 2011, Brazil noted that the use of force “may have the unintended effect of exacerbating tensions on the ground and causing more harm than good to the very same civilians we are committed to protecting.” As if that wasn’t enough, the African Union and some western intelligence service had also warned that Libya would disintegrate if the Gaddafi regime was removed. The war also affected large swathes of North and West African nations like Mali, Niger and Nigeria, inter alia, due to the displacement of large number of émigrés living and gainfully employed in Libya. The sad influx of mass movement and the spill-over factor destabilized those nations as well. But those warnings were conveniently ignored at all cost since they served little for a predetermined policy mindset.

The reality today is exactly as the Brazilians and others predicated. The country is gripped by chaos, extremism and lawlessness. For human traffickers and migrants from across Africa and elsewhere, all roads now lead to the Libyan coast where border posts have been deserted long ago and the coastline remains open for all sorts of illegal activities. Against this backdrop, thousands of African immigrants lose their lives in perilous journey attempts across the sea while hundreds of others are either killed or abducted in the hinterland desert by extremists.

Furthermore, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), approximately 1,750 migrants have drowned and fed by the sharks in the Mediterranean so far this year alone. And what is the response to it on the part of the original instigators of the nefarious conflagration mess so far? Nothing serious apparently. In other words, no help for what’s left of lawless Libya and certainly no humanitarian life-line of help to the abused and stranded black immigrants. On the contrary, these nations are readying now an armada blockade to catch and return those desperate black immigrants back to the coast while still busying themselves to devising various schemes to loot the oil and other resources of the broken nation.

The question now is, where is the civility, humanity and high moral standards that these nations preach so much about now and then? Don’t they have a sense of ethical obligation at least to assist to clean up the mess of their own doings? Don’t victims, including those who perished and the abused immigrants caught in the gruesome conflict deserve some sympathy or rescue on humanitarian grounds from the inferno on earth that is Libya? Or is the global players’ wish to absolve their culpability in the name of responsibility to protect (R2P) that turned a pretext to wreck (P2R) trumps over everything else?