Author: Helena

Gaza and Egypt

More unregulated border crossings between Egypt and Gaza today…
Why shouldn’t Egypt, a sovereign nation, do what it chooses to along its border with Gaza where, on the other side of the line, the ruling authority (the PA) is likewise not constrained at all by any completed contractual agreement with Israel on these matters?
(Israel, we should note, having chosen not to negotiate the modalities of its withdrawal from Gaza with the PA.)
Egypt does have obligations under its 1979 peace treaty with Israel not to deploy certain forms of armed forces anywhere in eastern Sinai. But so far as I know it is under no contractual obligation whatsoever to prevent the free movement of persons or goods between Egyptian Sinai and Gaza.
Of course, Egypt was negotiating all kinds of things with Israel about the nature of the crossing-point between Sinai and Gaza. (EU monitors, etc.) But the Israelis wouldn’t ever sign off on a final agreement for that.
Interesting days ahead, inside Cairo, if Mubarak’s government now tries to do Israel’s bidding along that border?
Between 1948 and 1967– with the interruption of Israel’s aggressive but thankfully shortlived occupation of Gaza in 1956– Egypt was the dominant power in Gaza. The Nasser regime maintained there the same kind of tight “national-security state” it maintained throughout Egypt itself… In Gaza as in Egyptian Sinai, the main concern of Nasser’s regime was to prevent any unctrolled escalations (on the behalf of the Palestinians or the Muslim Brotherhood or whomever) that might drag Egypt into a military battle with Israel.
But for much of the time Egypt was the hegemon in Gaza, the economic situation there was relatively good. (At least, many Gazans remember it that way.) The Nasserists allowed the emergence of a Free Port area there which gave the Gazans many more economic options than most Egyptians had at the time.
One could surmise that the present-day calculations of the Egyptian security apparatus with regard to Gaza would be about the same as those of the Nasserists. But with these non-trivial differences:

    (1) “People power”, in terms of an organized, community-based mass movement, is probably much better developed today among at least the Islamists in Gaza than it was in the Nasser era, which gives Gazans much more resilience than they had back then; and
    (2) It looks much more problematic for Israel to “threaten” a punitive military attack against Egypt now than it did back in Nasser’s day… Especially because (a) there is no hint at all today of Egypt or anyone else mounting a military attack against Israel that could serve as a “pretext” for any large, justified Israeli military strike, and (b) Israel’s big ally and shield, the US, must surely be aware of the effect to be expected for the far-flung and very vulnerable US military deployments throughout the Middle East of any big new Israeli military escalation…

So, interesting days ahead. Maybe I made a wise choice to go to this year’s conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, due to start later this week in Geneva: one of the main featured topics there will indeed be… the Middle East. Lots to talk about.

Gaza relieved (if not yet free)

I can just imagine the elation for the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza that the vast majority of their terrain has now been evacuated by the Israeli military. Fabulous! Now a Gazan person can do such radical things as travel the length of the Strip without having to pass through any IOF checkpoints or stroll on that large portion of the beach from which previously they all were banned.
From this description of today’s developments by AP’s Ravi Nessman and Mariam Fam, it seems as if Gazans have even be able to cross freely into the Strip from the Egyptian side of the border, which is interesting and significant.
They write:

    No people crossed through the main Rafah border crossing point, which Israel has closed indefinitely. Instead, people went around it.

Excellent. Especially since most of the people living on the Egyptian side of the border are very closely related indeed to the people on the Palestinian side.
(Until Egypt regained control over all its national terrain in Sinai, in 1982, the Israelis who were in military occupation of both Sinai and Gaza paid little heed to the fact that there was an international border there. Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai that year left the Palestinians on the Egypt side of the border stranded outside the homeland to which they have now, finally, been able to return.)
Nessman and Fam wrote,

    Egyptian security forces stood by and let the crossings take place, describing it as a “humanitarian” gesture to let people separated for years reunite. Security officials also suggested the crossings would be short-lived as Egypt deploys 750 heavily armed troops to secure its border with Gaza.

We’ll see about that. Why should Egypt cave to Israel’s demands to be able to continue to control crossings in and out of Gaza– especially since there is a solid plan to meet Israel’s legitimate security concerns (as opposed to their frequently over-the-top security “demands”) through the positioning of EU monitors at the Rafah crossing point?
The Palestinians have now been able to return to the 30% of Gaza that had previously been expropriated for the settlements and for the IOF’s previously huge military presence. Hallelujah!
It is true that their return has been marred by the torching of some of the former synagogue structures there.
Everyone had warned the Israeli government that this was likely to happen if it did not take steps itself to demolish those structures. I certainly acknowledge that those structures probably had deep meaning and significance for the Israeli families who worshiped in them, and I am sure their present destruction is painful for those families.
On the other hand, consider this:

    (1) These structures had previously been deconsecrated— primarily by the removal of the Torah scrolls from them. (Deconsecration of sacred spaces takes place all the time, in all the religions I know of, as populations move and new needs are pursued.)
    (2) Under international law, the construction of these synagogues by the Israelis had all along been just as illegal as the construction of the civilian communities to which they were attached.
    (3) Finally, the Israeli government had the chance to demolish them itself, but yesterday voted not to do so– in the almost certain knowledge that their demolition would be undertaken by the Palestinians in, quite probably, a far less “respecful” way.

But these were no longer sacred structures. They were just buildings. The Torah scrolls that they once housed have been removed and are being appropriately housed and cared for inside Israel.
As I wrote here last week, the visionary Israeli peacenik Gershon Baskin had been proposing that the synagogue buildings be handed over to the PA for them to use as they desired. I guess that proved impossible in the end because the running disagreements between the PA and the Sharon government over the terms of the withdrawal meant that there was no formal “handing-over” ceremony at all.
In general, the handover has been much less orderly than it would have been if there had been even a modicum of goodwill on the Israeli side. But Sharon has always said this withdrawal would be fundamentally “unilateral”– “my way or the highway”– and now he’s merely continuing with that approach.
What that means for the chance that Abu Mazen can retain the political leadership of the Palestinian movement into the future is something we’ll have to watch carefully in the weeks ahead…
But I don’t want to dwell on the problems and downsides of what’s happening. I haven’t been to Gaza since 2002. But I can just imagine how wonderful it feels for the Palestinians who’ve been cooped up in their little separated ghettoes up and down the Strip for so long now, subjected to continual lockdowns, military attacks, home demolitions, and denials of even their most basic rights to freedom of movement and of assembly– to finally, finally, regain the freedom of the Strip!
And yes, I write that even knowing that there are still many Israeli plans out there to keep the Strip itself isolated and tightly controlled– to keep it as merely the “bigger prison” that the Palestinians fear.
But how intriguing that– even if only for a short period– the Egyptians and Palestinians are finding a way to punch through that Israeli-planned quarantine of Gaza… It will certainly be interesting to see the “access into Gaza” issue become an increasingly big issue inside Egyptian politics over the months ahead.

Iraq open thread #6

So it looks like the latest US-“Iraqi” offensive against Tal Afar was predictably unsuccessful?

    Insurgents staged a classic guerrilla retreat from Tal Afar on Sunday, melting into the countryside through a network of tunnels… [Gosh, those sneaky Eye-raqis! Don’t you just hate it when they do that?]
    With the city swept clear of extremists for the second time in a year, Iraqi and U.S. military leaders vowed to redouble efforts to crush insurgents operating all along the Syrian frontier and in the Euphrates River valley… [bla-bla-bla]

It is, of course, almost exactly a year since the US-led forces decisively “took” Tall Afar the last time… And then, very rapidly, it fell back into the sway of anti-US insurgents.
This city has particular significance because of the strong presence within it– as within a few other key cities- of ethnic Turkmens, who have some significant backing within Turkey. A not-insignificant power in the region, in case you hadn’t noticed.
I guess my big question right now is why, in the lead-up to the October 15 referendum on the Constitution, the US and its allies inside Iraq seem so intent on antagonizing the Iraqi Sunnis?
Aaaargh, silly question, Helena. The imminence of a significant voting moment didn’t stop them from launching the attack against Fallujah last November, did it?
But you’d think that some “intelligent” power in Washington just might note that, in the run-up to a significant electoral moment in Iraq, it is not actually particularly helpful or appropriate to launch a new military offensive against the Sunnis??
Yeah, you might think that. If you cared about “democracy” and “inclusiveness” and all those fine things…
Anyway, I’m too tired to do much more to hunt down the details on this story right now. But if folks would like to post their own well-considered analyses, or info regarding the humanitarian costs of all these pointless operations, that would be really helpful.
Here’s your chance…

Iran in Iraq

Attentive JWN readers will remember that a while back I was asking some questions about the nature of the Iranian regime’s interests in Iraq. Today, a friend referred me to this March 2005 report from the International Crisis Group (registration required.)
In the Execituve Summary of this document, the ICG analysts write:

    The starting point to understand Iran’s role must be a proper assessment of its interests. These are relatively clear and, for the most part, openly acknowledged. Tehran’s priority is to prevent Iraq from re-emerging as a threat, whether of a military, political or ideological nature, and whether deriving from its failure (its collapse into civil war or the emergence of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan with huge implications for Iran’s disaffected Kurdish minority) or success (its consolidation as an alternative democratic or religious model appealing to Iran’s disaffected citizens). Iran consequently is intent on preserving Iraq’s territorial integrity, avoiding all-out instability, encouraging a Shiite-dominated, friendly government, and, importantly, keeping the U.S. preoccupied and at bay. This has entailed a complex three-pronged strategy: encouraging electoral democracy (as a means of producing Shiite rule); promoting a degree of chaos but of a manageable kind (in order to generate protracted but controllable disorder); and investing in a wide array of diverse, often competing Iraqi actors (to minimise risks in any conceivable outcome).
    These interests and this strategy, more than a purported attempt to mould Iraq in its own image, explain Iran’s involvement, its intelligence collection, its provision of funds (and possibly weapons), and perhaps its occasional decision to back armed movements. They explain, too, the paradox of Iran’s simultaneous ties to Iraq’s political elite, which is hoping to stabilise the country, to Shiite clerics, who aim to Islamicise it, and to some rebellious political activists or insurgents, bent on fuelling unrest.
    Finally, they explain why Iran so far has held back rather than try to undermine any chance of success. But this relatively cautious attitude may not last forever. Above all, it will depend on the nature of relations between Washington and Tehran: so long as these remain unchanged, Iran is likely to view events in Iraq as part of its broader rivalry with — and heightened fears of — the U.S. Highly suspicious of a large U.S. presence on its borders, concerned about Washington’s rhetoric, and fearing its appetite for regime change, Tehran holds in reserve the option of far greater interference to produce far greater instability.

Actually, as I write this, I’m waiting for the ICG website’s slightly byzantine “registration” process to complete… (Does it know I exist? Do I exist? Am I who I say I am? Beats me… ) So I’ll just have to go with the Executive Summary for now.
One of the first things that strikes me is how incredibly similar this description of Iran’s policies toward today’s Iraq is to the set of policies Syria has pursued toward Lebanon over the past 30-plus years.
In both cases, you’ll note, you have a weighty regional power flanked by a less weighty, somewhat “flighty”, and potentially very unstable neighbor with which it has many historic ties and also a historic record of antagonism. The weightier power is in a long-term situation of hostility with one or more key wetsern powers; and these western powers have gotten themselves into a situation of intervening masively in the affairs of the less weighty neighbor
So it’s complex. There are ties of blood and ideology between the two countries concerned, but also strong resentments of blood and ideology. And overlaid onto that is a contest that the weightier local power has with “the west” which involves political stakes that — for that power– is, or seem to be, truly existential.
In the immediate short- and perhaps medium-term, what ensues from Teheran is a classic realist “balancing” policy inside Iraq, as the ICG summary noted. But once the powers-that-be in Teheran judge that balance of power vis-a-vis “the west” has started to tip in their favor–? Who knows?
Well, I’ll wait to post further thoughts on this topic till the ICG’s full-site “registration” process has gone through its mysterious workings. I also have a question out there on an interesting list to which I belong– the “G2K” list– regarding whether opinion inside Iran is actually united around policy toward Iraq, or not… Maybe I’ll get fuirther answers on that one in the days ahead?
Commenter Albert Kwong suggested on JWN ten days or so ago that I ask Dr. Abdel-Aziz Sachedina about this when I see him here in Charlottesville… Well, I did go to the talk Aziz gave here about the Iranian elections; and it was very interesting. (Notes from it temporarily misplaced, I’m afraid.) However, I couldn’t stay through the end of the talk and never got a chance to ask my question on this particular topic. And now I gather Aziz is heading back for Mashhad?
C’est la vie. But anyway, I’m pretty sure some of my other potential sources of information on this will come up with some good information and analysis over the days ahead.
You have to admit, though, it is an interesting set of questions.

Lest we forget, Afghanistan

Afghanistan was where Osama Bin Laden had his headquarters. The Bushies’ first “response” to 9/11 was to take over the country with raw military force, tossing out the Taleban regime that had been so hospitable to OBL.
So you might think that today, four years after 9/11 and nearly four years after the collapse of the Taleban regime, Afghanistan might be well on the road to a return to normalcy, with a pro-US government well ensconced there?
Yes, you might think that– if the whole project of “remaking” Afghanistan along more democratic lines had not been left to the Bush administration… Which, um, decided for the heck of it to launch another nasty little war along the way there.
As it happens, Afghanistan has a parliamentary election on September 18. And in the lead-up to it there have been a lot of (in-)security incidents of some seriousness.
As usual, the Institute for War & Peace Reporting has been doing a good job on the ground there. Kabul-based reported Wahidullah Amani filed this report yesterday:

Continue reading “Lest we forget, Afghanistan”

In memoriam, 9/11

I have just spent a little time over at this September 11 victims’ memorial website, clicking through to some of the names and learning more about the people who died.
Here, picked out almost at random, is the page devoted to NYC firefighter Lt. Paul Richard Martini.
I don’t think I knew any of the nearly-3,000 people who were killed that day. My sincere condolences to any of you who did.
This page on the site tells us that 2,902 of the victims were US residents (including a number of foreign nationals). It also tells us about all the other nations that lost citizens in the attacks. These nations each lost five or more citizens:

    Britain – 67
    Colombia – 17
    Filipines – 15
    Germany – 5
    Jamaica – 16
    Japan – 23
    Mexico – 15
    Peru – 5

I remember the day very vividly. I opened my computer screen and saw the AOL newsfeed about the first plane attack in NYC. So then I went immediately downstairs to the TV and turned on CNN. Within minutes I watched as the second plane went into the towers there… And then, over the minutes that followed there were flames; then the horrific collapse of one tower– people rushing terrified in the street– then the collapse of the second tower…
Soon after, my editor from the CSM– then, it was Linda Feldman– called and asked if I could write a special column for Thursday’s paper. Since it was already Tuesday, I’d need to have it with her by later that evening. I said yes.
How do you write a column with a necessarily 36-hour-long lead-time in a situation like that?
I did what I could. Four years later, I’m still pretty pleased with what I wrote that afternoon. You can find it here.

Privatization without limits or shame

The Bush administration’s desire to put profit into the wallets of private business owners knows no bounds.
Remember what I wrote here, about the BBC reporter pleading with first responders in New Orleans to start dealing urgently with the corpses still– ten days into the emergency– littering the city?
Now we know why those first responders, who do very difficult jobs for low pay and generate “profits” for nobody, had orders not to deal with the bodies. In today’s WaPo, Ceci Connolly and Dan Eggen write that

    After several days of preparations, the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency and its private contractors began a methodical effort to locate and retrieve corpses and body parts from the floodwaters, trapped inside submerged buildings or tangled in debris…
    The bodies are being processed by Kenyon International Emergency Services, a Houston firm with close ties to the Bush administration. Kenyon employees were dressed in white suits, gloves and surgical masks. Company officials have said identification could take weeks in some cases, and next of kin will not be notified until the bodies are turned over to the state of Louisiana.
    Reporters were turned away by police in attempts to accompany recovery teams or view them at close range, and authorities said Friday that the restrictions were in place to protect the privacy and dignity of the dead.

Do you think it couldn’t get any worse than this? Well, over in Iraq, meanwhile, US commanders on the ground are starting to speak out in public– well, at least to the WaPo– about the dire problems the private mercenary forces there are causing them.
This article, by Jonthan Finer, tells us that

    Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians…
    “These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There’s no authority over them, so you can’t come down on them hard when they escalate force,” said Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is responsible for security in and around Baghdad. “They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place.”

And then there’s the situation at Baghdad airport. There, as Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri tell us— still in the WaPo–

    A standoff over a multimillion-dollar security bill owed by the Iraqi government shut down Baghdad’s international airport Friday and severed Iraq’s last safe route to the outside world…
    The dispute concerned a payment, now totaling $36 million, owed British-based Global Strategies Group for running the airport’s security. The $4.5 million monthly contract was signed by Iraq’s previous government and has gone unpaid since January as the current government tries to renegotiate it, Iraqi officials confirmed. Global shut down airport operations for 48 hours in June in a dispute over the same contract.

I guess this later report from AP tells us that the airport did finally reopen early Saturday. But think about it. As any pulp-fiction writer knows, the airport that lies close to a capital city is always a crucial node of national security…
These days, it is not only– or even mainly– Iraqis who need to have safe access to and through Baghdad International Airport. In fact, most Iraqis have a number of other possible ways of getting in and out of the country. Mainly, by road, which is not as dangerous for them as it is for the Americans and other foreigners inside the country.
It is the thousands of US troops and diplomats in and around Baghdad who are most reliant on being able to use the airport. In the event of a major crisis in Iraq, it could be literally their only way out.
So what did the Bushies do:

    (A) Approach the challenge of assuring the security of this vital node with appropriate seriousness, or
    (B) Hand it over to their profit-making pals in “Global Strategies Group” so they could skim their X percent off the top of the contract?

You guessed! It was B. If there really is a huge crisis in Iraq and the US people there need to exit the city very fast– do you think they could rely on the profit-takers still to be there for them??
Actually, you think this is bad. But I found an even worse wrinkle in the Baghdad airport story, over at the NYT. There, Richard Oppel writes that,

    After Global Strategies closed the airport at dawn on Friday, infuriated Iraqi ministry officials dispatched their own troops to secure the airport. But the Iraqis turned back to avoid a confrontation with American soldiers who had already hurried to the airport from their nearby base, according to Iraqi officials and Global Strategies…
    Giles Morgan, a spokesman for Global Strategies, said the … American military sent troops to guard the airport… specifically because they had been informed that Iraqi forces were on their way to take control.
    “The Ministry of Transportation said they were deploying interior ministry personnel to secure the perimeter, and it was on that basis that the U.S. military deployed the quick-reaction forces they have standing by at the airport,” he said.
    The acting Iraqi transportation minister, Esmat Amer, said the Iraqi government had “ordered the forces to pull back after American forces were deployed at the first checkpoint on the road,” according to The Associated Press. “We did not want to create a confrontation.”

How’s that again?? The Bush administration keeps telling us that they want to be able to pull US troops out of Iraq, some day– just as soon as the Iraqi forces are ready to take over the country’s security themselves…
The Iraqi security commanders try to send forces over there to the airport– and the US sends troops to prevent them doing that?? What the heck is going on?

Saddest image of Katrina

I think my saddest image/story from Katrina was watching Matt Frei on the BBC TV newsfeed yesterday evening racing round New Orleans with his cameraman, pointing out the many dead bodies he encountered and pleading, pleading with any emergency personnel he met as to when somebody would do something to deal with them.
Many of the bodies were very bloated and visibly decaying. Elementary principles of public health– not to mention human decency– would indicate they needed dealing with, respectfully, as a matter of prime urgency.
All the “first responders” Frei spoke to– maybe four or five different groups of them– said they had either “no orders to deal with the bodies”, or that they had orders not to deal with the bodies.
At times, Frei looked like he was about to lose it on the air. I kind of wish he had done.
I looked for a link to this reporting on the BBC website today, but found none.
Where is “the plan”? Surely any emergency-management plan worthy of the name has a section on the effective, respectful, and speedy steps to be taken to deal with corpses? These would include, I should imagine, identification and documentation of the corpses, bagging them, and getting them to a refrigerated holding-space a.s.a.p.
I see that FEMA chief “Brownie” has now been reassigned elsewhere.
But I wonder if he or others responsible for emergency management in this country has ever thought for a moment how they would feel if it were their beloved aunty who was trapped in the nursing-home or otherwise unable to evacuate… or their dear old Dad who ended up face-down and bloating in the stew of water/ industrial pollutants/ crap that will be swirling through the city’s streets for many days to come.
Lord save us all.

Religion, politics, “God’s judgment”

Some great good sense and interesting analysis today from Gershon Baskin, the Israeli co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information.
Writing in the Palestinian newspaper Jerusalem Times— unfortunately subscription only– Baskin says this about the synagogues that remain in the Gaza settlements:

    Two of the 26 synagogues in Gaza have been transferred to Israel proper. The remaining 24 synagogues are supposed to be demolished by the Israeli army according to the decision of the Israeli government. But this week the settlers petitioned the High Court to request that the Government be ordered not to destroy them. The settlers