 |
| Gene Cretz, US Ambassador to Ghana |
By Duke
Tagoe
The
United States of America prides itself as the bastion of democracy and the defender
of human rights on earth. We are often told how America grants justice to the
suffering and muscles down blood thirsty terrorists around the globe. Recent
events have however revealed that the men and women that occupy the White House
of the United States are nothing more but rabid criminals. Under the pretext of
imposing democracy on the sovereign states of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and
Syria, it has brutally killed and maimed millions of innocent men, women and
children.
The release of the US Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA
torture during the George W. Bush government has provoked worldwide
condemnation, with US embassies having taken preventive security measures faced
with the possibility of revenge attacks against US citizens and interests.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al-Hussein, stated
that there should be no "impunity" for those who carried out the
torture revealed by the report.
Al-Hussein noted that the Convention Against Torture does not allow for
"exceptional circumstances" in which detainees can be mistreated.
“The convention lets no one off the hook - neither the torturers themselves,
nor the policy-makers, nor the public officials who define the policy or give
the orders,” he said
 |
| Water-boarding, a torture technique |
A wide array of torture techniques were approved at the
highest levels of the U.S. Government and then systematically employed in
lawless US prisons around the world –at
Bagram (including during the Obama presidency), CIA black sites, even
to US citizens on US soil. So
systematic was the torture regime that a 2008 Senate report concludedthat the criminal abuses at Abu
Ghraib were the direct result of the torture mentality imposed by official
Washington. American torture was not confined to a handful of aberrational
cases or techniques, nor was it the work of rogue CIA agents. It was an
officially sanctioned, worldwide regime of torture that had the acquiescence,
if not explicit approval, of the top members of both political parties in
Congress
- The commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Janis Karpinski, estimates that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent
- The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that many of those being held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush administration officials knew that they were innocent
- U.S. military files show that many Guantánamo prisoners were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions, or being Al Jazeera reporters
- Many state that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as “suspected terrorists” (and see this movie)
Torture INTERFERES With Our Ability to Fight
Terrorism, Obtain Intelligence Information and Protect Our National Security
Virtually all of the top
interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except
for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that
torture doesn’t work:
“Experience indicates
that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for
interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields
unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce
the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”- The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated:
- According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service – said that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.”
- The CIA’s own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not “efficacious” in producing information
- A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says(as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern):
The old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work ….
- A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states:
- Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says:
- Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says:
- A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says:
The Insight Newspaper will publish the full CIA torture report in its
subsequent editions. Watch out!
Editorial
MP’s ASK FOR MORE
In an Oliver Twist fashion our Members of Parliament led by
the vociferous Hon. Akoto Osei and Hon. Nitiwul ask for more and better
conditions of service. Unlike Oliver Twist their demand does not reflect their
output, the reasons they give are that’ Minister’s of state do not respect them
because they earn more than them’,’ they have to service their car loans’,’
people walk up to them for handouts (electoral bribes) because they are elected
officials’ and they are further asking for their conditions of service to be
published for all to see.
The Insight newspaper is of the opinion that the conditions
of service of the MP’s must be put in the public domain and further their
membership of all or any public and private sector institution where they earn
income plus their allowances from the numerous meetings they attend including
their per diem from travelling allowances should be added so their true income
will be seen by all to enable us determine if the conditions of service are
fair or not.
As for the excuses given by the MP’s, they should be taken
with a pinch of salt, after all this is a public service and they have a choice
to engage in it or not, further MP’s are not debarred like judges and other
public sector officers from moonlighting or doing a second job and most of the
MPs still practice an lawyers, doctors, accountants, businessman, Planners etc
whilst still working as Members of Parliament. The contention that MP’s have to
seek the individual and personal welfare of their constituent by paying for
their health needs, school fees, funeral expenses, chop money etc does not wash
simply because that is not the job of a legislator. It is a well know fact that
the MP’s and other politicians use this so called welfare assistance to exert
undue and illegal influence on voters so as to buy their votes and we the tax
payers we strongly believe must not and are not entitled to pay for it by way
of salary increase.
The time has now come for a performance appraisal for all
these article 71 office holders to see whether their output justifies the
remunerations and End of Service package that they enjoy. For now they should
not be given anything, anybody who cannot accept the present conditions of
service may resign.
CIA torture report: the key findings
1. The CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques
was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation
from detainees.
2. The CIA’s justification for the use of its enhanced
interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.
3. The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far
worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.
4. The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were
harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.
5. The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the
Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA’s Detention
and Interrogation Program.
6. The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional
oversight of the program.
7. The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and
decision-making.
8. The CIA’s operation and management of the program
complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other
Executive Branch agencies.
9. The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA’s Office of
Inspector General.
10. The CIA coordinated the release of classified
information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the
effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
11. The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its
Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted
detention authorities.
12. The CIA’s management and operation of its Detention and
Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the program’s duration,
particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.
13. Two contract psychologists devised the CIA’s enhanced
interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation,
assessments, and management of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.
By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the
program.
14. CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation
techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not
been authorized by CIA Headquarters.
15. The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate
accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who
did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA’s claims about the
number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques
were inaccurate.
16. The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness
of its enhanced interrogation techniques.
17. The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable
for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic
and individual management failures.
18. The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal
critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management
of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.
19. The CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program was
inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized
press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and
oversight concerns.
20. The CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program damaged
the United States’ standing in the world, and resulted in other significant
monetary and non-monetary costs
Source; www.guardian.com
How the CIA tortured its
detainees
 |
| John Brennan, CIA Boss |
Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation – Oliver
Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used
by the agency
A detainee at Guantanamo
Bay in 2009. Photograph: John
Moore/Getty Images
The CIA, and the Senate intelligence committee, would rather
avoid the word “torture,” preferring euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation
techniques” and “rendition, detention and interrogation program”. Many of the techniques
employed by the CIA after capturing high-value targets have been documented in CIA memos released
by the Obama administration, and in numerous leaks, including a report
written by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Here are some of the techniques known to have been used, and
the effects on detainees:
Rectal feeding and rehydration
The torture report contains new information on the CIA’s use
of rectal feeding and rehydration. At least five detainees were subjected to
the process, the report states. The report details how accused USS Cole bomber
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was placed “in a forward facing position
(Trendelenburg) with head lower than torso”, whilst undergoing rectal feeding.
Another detainee, Majid Khan, a legal resident of the United
States and accused confident of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also subjected to
rectal feeding. According to a CIA cable released in the report, his “‘lunch
tray’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was ‘pureed and
rectally infused’”.
Mohammed was also subjected to rectal rehydration “without a
determination of medical need”. Mohammed’s chief interrogator described use of
the process as emblematic of their “total control over the detainee”.
Confinement in a box
Placing the subject inside a confined box to restrict their
movement was approved by the Bush administration in the case of Abu Zubaydah.
Zubaydah says he was placed in a number of different
confinement boxes in an intense period of interrogation in Afghanistan in 2002.
He told the ICRC that the boxes made it difficult to breathe and reopened
wounds in his legs. He could not recall how long he spent in each confinement
box, and believes he may have passed out inside.
The use of insects
inside the box was also approved, to exploit a phobia Abu
Zubaydah had. This element was not ultimately used, according to memos.
The use of cold water
A number of those interviewed by the ICRC said they were
often subjected to dousings in cold water during interrogation. Khalid Sheikh
Mohammad’s co-defendant Walid bin Attash said that for the first two weeks of
his detention in Afghanistan his naked body was wrapped in plastic after being
doused, and kept inside the cold envelope of water for several minutes.
In November 2002, a suspected Afghan militant, Gul Rahman,
died of hypothermia inside a CIA black site north of Kabul known as the Salt
Pit. Rahman had been left in a cold cell, stripped from the waist down and had
been doused in water, according to reports
from the Associated Press.
The torture report contains more details on Rahman’s death,
including details of the CIA’s interrogation methodology used. This included
“48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation a
cold shower and rough treatment”. The CIA Headquarters did not approve these
methods in advance, the report says. But the day before Rahman’s death, one CIA
officer ordered that Rahman be shackled to the wall of his cell and sat on the
cold floor whilst naked from the waist down. CIA headquarters had approved the
use of “enhanced measures” at this point.
The CIA officer who sent these instructions received no
reprimand. Instead, four months later, he was given a $2,500 cash reward for
his “consistently superior work”.
Waterboarding
The process of suffocation by water involves strapping the
individual to a tilted board, with legs above their head, placing a cloth over
their face, covering their nose and mouth. Water is then poured continuously
over the cloth to prevent breathing, simulate drowning and induce panic.
The process is carried out for about 40 seconds and is known
to have been repeated a number of times during interrogation.
The process was carried out on three detainees, Bush
administration officials have said. But the
number could be higher, according to a 2012
report from Human Rights Watch.
One of those, Abu Zubaydah, a suspected senior Bin Laden
lieutenant, told the ICRC: “I struggled without success to breathe. I thought I
was going to die. I lost control of my urine.” He underwent the process 83
times, while another of the CIA’s highest-value detainees, Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, said to be the principal architect of
the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 183 times.
Beatings and threats
Many detainees have reported being beaten by interrogators,
and the CIA memo mentions a number of approved methods of physical contact,
including “facial holds”, “insult slaps” and “attention grasps”.
Most of those interviewed by the ICRC alleged that these
beatings often occurred in the immediate aftermath of their capture, often
multiple times in the day.
One detainee said: “I was punched and slapped in the face
and on the back, to the extent that I was bleeding. While having a rope round
my neck and being tied to a pillar, my head was banged against the pillar
repeatedly.”
Six of the detainees said they were slammed into walls after
having a collar placed around their necks. The CIA called it “walling”: a fake,
flexible wall is constructed and a detainee is thrown against it, creating a
loud noise. The noise is designed to make the detainee believe they are
injured.
Detainees also reported threats of severe violence and
sexual assault made against them and their families. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
told the ICRC he was threatened with being brought to the “verge of death and
back again”.
The torture report notes that at least three detainees were
threatened with harm to their families. Interrogators implied to Nashiri that
his mother would be brought in front of him and sexually abused. The report
also notes one detainee was told his mother’s throat would be cut. It is not
clear which detainee this references.
The torture report confirms that Nashiri was threatened with
a pistol placed near his head and a cordless drill that was operated near his
body. Nashiri was blindfolded at the time.
“Al-Nashiri did not provide any additional threat
information during, or after, these interrogations,” the report concludes.
Stress positions
A variety of stress positions were used by the CIA. Ten
terror suspects alleged to the ICRC that these included beingtold to stand
upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at
intervals for over three months. Other stress positions included being shackled
to the floor with arms stretched over the head.
Three detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they were
forced to urinate and defecate on themselves in these positions, and were left
standing in their own excrement.
The use of stress positions was designed to cause muscle
fatigue, physical discomfort and exhaustion.
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation was employed routinely and was seen as a
key tool in enhanced interrogations. Many of these techniques overlap with
other interrogation procedures – the use of stress positions, and in particular
shackling a standing detainee with his hands in front of his body.
Among the most infamous was the use of loud music and white
noise, sometimes played for 24 hours a day on short loops. Cells were also
reportedly kept deliberately cold to prevent detainees falling asleep. The
agency was authorized to keep a detainee awake for up to 180 hours – about a
week – but told the Justice Department it only kept three detainees awake for
96 hours maximum.
Eleven of the 14 detainees interviewed by the ICRC said they
had been subjected to sleep deprivation. One said: “If I started to fall asleep
a guard would come and spray water in my face.”
The torture report reveals that four detainees, each with
“medical complications in their lower extremities”, including two with broken
feet, were placed in shackled standing positions for “extended periods of time”
to induce sleep deprivation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
The men with broken feet, Abu Hazim and Abd al-Karim who sustained the injuries whilst trying to escape capture, were also subjected to walling, stress positions and cramped confinement, despite recommendations that their injuries prevented this form of interrogation.
Forced nudity and restricted diets
The CIA viewed certain techniques as “conditioning”
measures, designed to get detainees used to their helplessness rather than
yielding any intelligence value on their own. Sleep deprivation was in this
category. So was stripping a detainee naked, which a 2005 memo from the Justice
Department to the CIA said carried the benefit of “reward[ing] detainees
instantly with clothing for cooperation.” (While keeping a detainee naked
“might cause embarrassment,” a Justice Department lawyer wrote, it did not
itself constitute “sexual abuse” or the threat of sexual abuse.)
Another “conditioning” technique involved feeding a detainee
“a bland, commercial liquid meal” instead of normal food. The CIA set caloric
intake guidelines – a recommended minimum was 1,500 calories daily – and relied
on medical personnel, who are sworn to do no harm to their patients, to ensure
detainees did not lose more than 10% of their body weight. A Justice Department
memo understood the dietary manipulation could “increase the effectiveness of
other techniques, such as sleep deprivation.”
• This article was amended on 9 December 2014 to correct a
sentence that stated the CIA authorized a detainee to be kept awake for up to
180 hours – “about a week and a half.” It should have said “about a week.”
Source: the guardian
 |
| Cuban President Raul Catsro |
CARICOM-CUBA SUMMIT
Toward the indispensable political, economic and social integration of Latin America and the Caribbean
• Key remarks by President Raúl Castro opening the Fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit in Havana, December 8, 2014
Toward the indispensable political, economic and social integration of Latin America and the Caribbean
• Key remarks by President Raúl Castro opening the Fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit in Havana, December 8, 2014
Honourable Gaston Alphonse Brown, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda,
and Chairman of CARICOM;
Honourable Heads of State or Government of CARICOM member countries;
His Excellency Irwin Larocque, Secretary General of CARICOM;
His Excellency Mr Didacus Jules, Director General of the Organisation of
Eastern Caribbean States;
His Excellency Mr Alfonso Múnera Cavadía, Secretary General of the
Association of Caribbean States;
Allow me to extend a warm welcome and to wish you all a pleasant stay in
our country.
It gives us great pleasure to receive here the leaders and
representatives of the Caribbean family. We share a common history of slavery,
colonialism and struggles for freedom, independence and development, which is
the melting pot where our cultures have merged. We also face similar challenges
that can only be met through close unity and efficient cooperation.
Such is the meaning and purpose of these summits held every three years,
and aimed at fostering and strengthening our fraternal engagement in
cooperation, solidarity and coordination to move towards the necessary Latin
American and Caribbean integration; a dream of the forefathers of our
independence deferred for more than 200 years, and which is today crucial to
our survival.
The successful evolution of CARICOM, the involvement of all its member
states and Cuba with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
(CELAC) and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) as well as the
participation of some of us in the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our
America (ALBA-TCP) and Petrocarib have helped to advance regional integration,
and we should continue working for its consolidation.
Esteemed Heads of State or Government;
Guests;
Every year on this day we celebrate the anniversary of the establishment
of diplomatic relations with Cuba by the first four nations of the Caribbean
Community to accede to independence.
As comrade Fidel Castro Ruz stated at the commemoration of the 30th
anniversary of that seminal event, “Probably, the leaders of these countries,
also considered the founding fathers of the independence of their nations and
of Caribbean integration, –Errol Barrow from Barbados, Forbes Burnham from
Guyana, Michael Manley from Jamaica and Eric Williams from Trinidad and
Tobago—realised that their decision to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba
was paving the way for the future foreign policy of the Caribbean Community,
which to this day stands on three major pillars: independence, courage and
concerted action.” This statement remains fully valid.
Forty-two years after that brave decision, we take pride in our
excellent relations with every country in the Caribbean, and keep diplomatic
missions in every capital. And you also have diplomatic missions in Havana; the
most recent from St. Kits and Nevis was officially opened last June 25th with
our dear friend the Very Honourable Prime Minister Denzil Douglas in
attendance.
This moment seems fit to reaffirm that despite our economic
difficulties, and the changes undertaken to upgrade our socioeconomic system,
we will honour our pledge to cooperate and share our modest achievements with
our sister nations in the Caribbean.
Currently, we have 1,806 collaborators working in the CARICOM countries,
1,461 of them in the area of healthcare. Likewise, 4,991 Caribbean youths have
graduated in Cuba while 1,055 remain studying in the Island.
Additionally, we are cooperating with the Caribbean, and shall continue
to do so, in preventing and fighting the Ebola pandemic. This we are doing
bilaterally as well as in the framework of ALBA and CELAC, with the support of
the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organisation
(PAHO).
The experts’ meeting held in Havana at the end of October brought
together specialists from the entire hemisphere, including representatives of
non-independent Caribbean states. In the past few weeks, 61 officials,
physicians, experts in healthcare and other areas from CARICOMN countries have
been training in Cuba. On the other hand, we are answering the request of nine CARICOM
States to provide Cuban assistance in training their countries’ medical staff.
As small island states and developing nations we are facing the
challenge of surviving and making progress in a world shaken by a global
economic crisis manifested in the financial and energy sectors, the environment
and the food sector, deadly diseases and war conflicts. Today, I want to
reiterate Cuba’s unwavering decision to support, under any circumstances, the
right of the small and vulnerable countries to be accorded a special and
differential treatment in terms of access to trade and investments.
The challenges of the 21st century are forcing us to unite in order to
face together the effects of climate change and natural disasters, to
coordinate our approach to the post-2015 development agenda, and particularly,
to tackle together the domination mechanisms imposed by the unfair
international financial system.
We join our voice to those of the Caribbean Community in demanding the
immediate removal of our nations from unilateral lists that jeopardize our
economic development and commercial exchanges with other countries.
Special attention is warranted by cooperation in confronting the effects
of climate change. The rise of the sea level is threatening the very existence of
many of our countries. The more frequent hurricanes, intensive rains and other
phenomena are causing huge economic and human damages. We are left with no
choice but to reinforce our coordination in order to confront this reality and
reduce its major impact on water resources, coastal areas and marine species;
biological diversity, agriculture and human settlements.
Cuba has conducted studies of dangers, vulnerabilities and risks and is
already implementing a macro-project named “Coastal Dangers and Vulnerabilities
2050-2100”. These include projects on the health condition of the coastal dunes
and mangroves as well as an evaluation of the beaches, coastal settlements and
their infrastructure; we are willing to share this experience with our sister
nations of CARICOM.
We have lots of work to do. As we have indicated, in the coming three-
year period, with the modest contribution of Cuba, a Regional Arts School will
be opened in Jamaica and the Centre for Development Stimulation of children,
teenagers and youths with special educational needs will start operating in
Guyana.
On the other hand, more Caribbean students will be given the opportunity
to pursue a college education in our country, especially in the area of
Medicine. We will also help in the preparation of experts from the CARICOM
countries in topics related to mitigation and confrontation of risks of natural
disasters, and the difficult stage of recovery in the aftermath of such events.
Likewise, we shall continue offering our fraternal assistance in the
development of human resources and in medical care. In the same token, doctors
graduated in Cuba and working in their respective countries will be offered the
possibility of studying a second specialty free of charge.
The development of trade and investments between our countries is still
an unresolved issue. The difficulties with air and maritime transportation in
the sub-region and the deterioration of our economies as a result of the
international crisis are having a negative effect on progress in these areas.
We should work toward creative and feasible solutions of benefit to all. In
this connection, we welcome the joint efforts to update and review the
Bilateral Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which will provide the free access
with no customs duties of 297 products from CARICOM countries and 47 from Cuba.
I want to take this opportunity to reaffirm our steadfast support for
the just demand of the CARICOM countries to be compensated by the colonial
powers for the horrors of slavery, and for their equally fair claim to receive
cooperation according to their real situation and necessities, and not on the
basis of statistics of their per capita income that simply characterise them as
middle-income countries and prevent their access to indispensable flows of
financial resources.
It is our inescapable duty to support the reconstruction and development
of the sister republic of Haiti, the birthplace of the first revolution in
Latin America and the Caribbean fought in pursuit of independence, for we all
have a debt of gratitude with that heroic and long-suffering people.
As I have said on previous occasions, Cubans are deeply grateful to our
brothers and sisters in the Caribbean for your upright stance of respect for
and solidarity with our Homeland.
We shall never forget your enduring support to the resolution against
the blockade nor your numerous expressions of solidarity during the debates at
the UN General Assembly and other international fora, rejecting the
illegitimate inclusion of Cuba in the List of States Sponsors of Terrorism.
Distinguished Heads of State or Government;
Guests;
I would like to suggest that in this 5th CARICOM-Cuba Summit we exchange
viable ideas and proposals to continue working together to increase our
bilateral cooperation; to expand and diversify our economic and commercial
relations; to confront the challenges imposed by the globalized, unfair and
unequal world we live in fraught with grave problems that threaten the very
existence of humankind; and, above all, to advance with steadier steps toward
the indispensable political, economic and social integration of Latin America
and the Caribbean.
We owe it to our peoples and such duty cannot be postponed.
With no further delay I declare the 5th CARICOM-Cuba Summit officially
opened.
Thank you.
The Professor As a Pretender
 |
| Prof Kwesi Yankah |
By Murray Hunter
How do they affect the quality of public policy?
The perceptions of what a professor is thought to be tends
to be wrapped up in the narratives of public images around certain 'pop'
individuals who have developed through history and fiction.
Take for example when someone uses the term
"Einstein". The term "Einstein" is now a persona meaning
someone who is brilliant, a brilliance almost untouchable for the 'average man
in the street'. It also allures to that person having a sense of pragmatism in
solving 'unsolvable' problems.
The "professor" played by Russell Johnson in the
long running TV series Gilligan's Island, showed a professor as a technically
competent man, although socially awkward around others. In the series, the
professor could invent all sorts of marvelous inventions that made life on the
island easier, However, he could not build the one thing all the castaways
wanted. Weird Al Yankovic in his parody song Isle Thing pointed out that "he (The professor)
couldn't even build a lousy raft". One of the ironies about the professor
in Gilligan's Island, is that he wasn't a university professor as most thought,
but a high school science teacher and scoutmaster.
There have been numerous other fictional professors over the
years portraying traits that people associate with the 'professorial
institution'. Some examples of these are absent-mindedness (Professor Ned
Brainard - The Absent Minded Professor), vigilant (Professor Michael Faraday -
Arlington Road), Nerdy, unkept, introverted, and accident prone (Professor
Julius Kelp - The Nutty Professor), imperious, respected, and even feared
(Professor Charles W. Kingsfield Jr - The Paper Chase), and cowardly villain
(Dr. Zachery Smith - Lost in Space) .
Through the above personic metaphors, professors are seen in
society as both a good and bad influence.
So what does the institution of 'professorial' position
constitute today? Do the professors fulfill public perceptions, or are they pretenders?
Professors preach to both their students and the world from
sheltered 'ivory towers' that
in many cases are bastions of 'old
school tie' cliques. This environment, it could be argued,
disconnects them from the rest of the world.
Statistics show that very little university
research ever becomes commercialized, and thus new
innovative intellectual property generated has little social or enterprise
value. Many pieces of research end up being solutions that
seek a problem. The comfort zone many university
professors exist within blind them to potential
opportunities.
Some of the most compelling evidence is the failure of so
many complacent academics to see the gravity of the 2008 financial crisis. This
led Queen Elizabeth to ask the question of economists on her visit to the
London School of Economics. Professor Tim Besley
replied on behalf of LSE and admitted that the economic
fraternity "lacked any
collective imagination" to see the extent of what was coming.
Nouvelle persona of academics see the entrée of celebrity
academics or 'super professors'
as coined by Richard miles, who are media savvy and public personalities in
areas adjunct or even totally unrelated to their discipline. One recent article in
the Australian website
The Conversation suggests that professors
are poor communicators in their disciplines, and the advent of these celebrity
super professors are a very positive trend in changing academia.
So let's make a few observations about this crisis in
professorial leadership of the academic world.
1. Professors appear to become tenured more through who they
know rather than what they know. Academia is closed and cliquey, protecting
itself from outsiders who are not of similar background. University boards and
Senates make rules about who can become one of the professorial clergy, and it
won't be anybody who doesn't fit the script.
2. Many, if not most professors when they retire, really
retire. Very few ever stay in public life, continue with research, or enter
private enterprise. This is a let-down from such an supposedly bright and
intellectual group.
3. Very few professors actually do the work that the public
perceive them to be doing. Teaching professors take classes not unlike high
school teachers. Administration professors run faculties not unlike
managers. Its only the research professors who tend to research, invent,
and take post graduate research students under their wings, and further
society's knowledge through both fundamental and applied research. Research
professors however constitute only a very small percentage of the total professorial
population. However research professors don't fare well to the output of
researchers based in the corporate world.
4. Most professors have a very narrow area of expertise that
hinders holistic approaches to solving problems and making contributions to
public society. Professors may be able to excel in very narrow areas, but it
appears to be others who take up these ideas and apply them for public benefit.
This issue has been so limiting on innovation, that an international innovation
initiative has just been launched to improve the capacity
of academia to be innovative along with other partners in society.
5. Many professors contribute towards making public policy.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs with much superstar fanfare, with supporters such as
U2s Bono formulated the Millennium Development Goals to supposedly eradicate
poverty from the planet. However this policy has been heavily criticized as lacking initiatives to
create any sustainable development. Others argue that
these Millennium Goals were developed without
much consultation by an elite group of people with little knowledge and
experience of developing countries, where consideration of
local conditions in various countries and regions was basically ignored. Yet
others argue that technocrats (professors)
arbitrarily put development over human needs without any discussion
and debate over what is really needed. Many professors on reputation alone are
able to impose their own policy ideas upon society, without actually having the
knowledge and experience to yield such influence in solving world problems.
Putting it another way, reputation allows them to escape scrutiny.
6. It could be argued, that with the rigid bureaucratic
structures and mechanistic processes that are employed within university
organizations, institutes of higher learning are actually the antithesis of
intellectualism. Universities are protected bastions from the events and
pressures of everyday society, which partly effects the ability of those within
these institutions to make contributions to the betterment of the practical
world out there.
This validates the pretender metaphor and highlights a
problem in world academic leadership, especially in the area of contribution in
public policy.
Perhaps it is now time to look at how to restructure the
academic hierarchy to promote the development of multidisciplinary academics
who can lead academia into the 21st Century. Maybe it's time to stand aside the
masters of any single discipline for those who are 'jacks of many trades', and thus more relevant
to the needs of contemporary society.
A 'professor' is only a temporary title, which has been
expanded with new terms like 'honorary professor'. It's based on tradition and
governing regulations that keep the institution an exclusive club rather than
an arsenal is intellectualism that can be utilized to assist society. A new
category of academic is required. Thus academia is required to look inward upon
itself to redefine the positions in the hierarchy to reflects the great need of
'new paradigms of wisdom'
required to solve the world's problems.
This is very necessary if public policy is to shed it's
uni-dimensionality, where 'out
of the box' creativity can be drawn upon to create future policy
roadmaps.
Murray Hunter
Dr,
Gary K. Busch
There are profound changes taking place in the Middle East.
These are not only as a result of the
politics of the evanescent Arab Spring, but are also the result of a
complicated interaction between political and economic forces trying to deal
with the structural and market changes in the world supply of energy. There has
been a significant shift in the basic parameters of the status quo ante in the international oil market. Until very
recently the forces of OPEC dominated the world energy market and prices soared
from US$26 a barrel to a height of close to USD$150 a barrel. Today’s market is
very different, with different players coming to the fore, There has been a
dramatic shift in the technology in this market which has changed many of its
parameters.
However, OPEC member countries still produce about 40
percent of the world's crude oil. Equally important to global prices, OPEC's
oil exports represent about 60 percent of the total petroleum traded
internationally. Because of this market share, OPEC's actions still influence
international oil prices; especially the supply policies of Saudi Arabia,
OPEC's largest producer. Since its earliest days the trade in petroleum has
been dominated by large multinational oil companies; those who had perfected
the art of drilling, especially deep water drilling, and who had enough
financial muscle and backing to be able to afford to do exploration and test
drilling of new wells. They have been able to absorb huge risks and have
established patterns of trade which define the market.
Much of their work is done in some form of partnership with
the nation in whose territory or adjacent sea areas contain the crude oil
sources. Royalties, signature bonuses, profit-sharing and joint production
agreements have kept many Third World countries as ‘rentier’ states and have
made revenues available for the development of the nation or have served to
line politicians’ purses; or both. The nations of the Middle East are the
paradigms of this structure. In a region with few other resources other than
oil or gas, stretching from the Maghreb to Pakistan, these countries have been
led by a small group of neo-feudal monarchs who administered their nations on
the basis of dividing the energy revenues among competing domestic forces. In
some cases a revolutionary leader supplanted this feudal monarchy, introducing
a charismatic military or religious figure who divided the energy resources
among competing domestic forces (Qadaffi, Al-Assad, Saddam Hussein, Khomeini,
inter alia).
The nations of the industrial world have a deep and pressing
national interest in controlling the free supply of energy to their industries.
They have had to deal with both the traditional monarchs of the region as well
as the charismatic leaders who threatened these monarchs. In many cases they
have played an important role in supporting or opposing the leaders of these
Middle Eastern states and have taken an active role in their internal political
struggles. Quite often this has led to the direct Western intervention in
choosing Middle Eastern governments and, in some cases, fighting wars against
them to preserve the flow and direction of oil. This traditional pattern has
gradually changed and a new set of problems have beset the region.
The Geopolitical Origins Of The Conflict
With Arab Nationalism
Over the years there have been several abortive efforts by
the nations of the Middle East to change their political and security
dependence on the ‘oil majors’ and the West to assert nationalist demands and
to support an effort to directly
control their national revenues. The
most notable of these was the effort by the democratically-elected Mohammed
Mosaddegh, the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953 serving under the Shah
of Iran as Head of State. Mosaddegh was a secular, progressive reformer trying
to modernise Iran. He found that although he had elected power, the economic
power in Iran was in the hands of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later ‘BP’)
which had been installed in Iran by the British in 1913.
Mosaddegh decided that it would be in the interests of Iran
that the state nationalise the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Having done so the
large multinational oil companies boycotted Iranian supplies and made
preparations to remove Mosaddegh. In Operation Ajax the CIA, in conjunction
with the British MI6, made a coup d’etat in Iran in August 1953 which toppled
Mossadegh and installed a friendly General Fazollah in his place who
de-nationalised the oil company and restored Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s
privileges.
This forced change in direction by the Western coup against
Mossadegh was an effort to protect their access to the Iranian oil reserves.
This coup polarised the Iranian political community. On the one side were the
Shah and his heavy-handed Savak imposing order and obedience in the country
and, on the other, a strange amalgam of frustrated Bazaari merchants in an
alliance with a disgruntled religious establishment. This religious-nationalist
combination was later instrumental in the expulsion of the Shah and the
installation of a clerical government under Khomeini; as well as asserting
national control of the oil industry. A concomitant of this takeover was the
creation of a Shia-led government where religious demands took precedence over
civil liberties and the secular state. It was a direct reversal of the policies
of the Shah. In 1935, Reza Pahlavi (the father of the last Shah) ordered his
troops to go into the streets of Tehran to forcibly remove – at bayonet point –
the veil from women’s heads promoting a secular Iranian state. The Khomeini
coup put a fundamentalist government in charge of a nation.
Among the Sunni states there has been a revival and
expansion of the Wahhabi religious and nationalist movement originally formed
in the late 18th century. Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth century
preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792). He led a
revivalist reaction to what he called the idolatrous practices of saints,
impurities and innovations in Islam. He advocated a ‘purer’ form of Islam
without the frills. He made an alliance with a local tribal leader, Muhammad
bin Saud (‘Ibn Saud’), who went on to found the Saudi dynasty in Saudi Arabia
in 1932. The House of Saud (the guardians of the Holy Cities) and Wahhabism
were intimately involved in the rise of the Saudi state; and remain so today.
It was a conservative force in the region.
Because Saudi Arabia was such a conservative force and
because it had control over such vast resources of oil it became the favourite
of the West (mainly the U.S. and Britain) during the Cold War. Importantly, its
strong Islamic core beliefs of Wahhabism
were opposed to the secular ideology of the Soviet Union; thus making
it attractive to Western policymakers.
During the Cold War the U.S. and Britain launched numerous
covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen anti-communist
nationalist groups in the Middle East and southern Asia, offering aid and
training to a wide variety of nationalist groups espousing religious fundamentalist beliefs as these
were often anti-Soviet as well. It encouraged the setting up of Wahhabi
madrassahs in the region with a curriculum approved by the Saudis. These
external groups supported by the West included what later became the Moslem
Brotherhood in Eygpt who were opposed to Nasser and to a variety of
anti-Qaddafi groups in Libya. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan the U.S.
supported the mujahideen with arms, funds and equipment; especially Stinger
missiles which shot down Soviet helicopters. Its main liaison in that effort
was a Saudi leader of the fundamentalist Afghani opposition to the Soviets,
Osama Bin Laden. The doctrine that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” traces its
origin to the Middle East.
After the unsuccessful Arab-Israeli War in 1948 Syria
maintained a fragile parliamentary democracy but its political leadership was
fired with the fury of Arab nationalism and frustrated by the signing of the
peace treaty with the victorious Israeli state. The West was worried about the
rise of a sustained hostility to the West in the region after the war and
feared the rebuilding of a Soviet-supported Arab bloc in the region which would
threaten the multinational oil companies and Saudi Arabia’ export capacity. The
CIA and the American Embassy in Damascus actively promoted a coup d’etat by the
Army’s Chief of Staff, Husni al-Zaim. He was assisted by two key allies, Adib
al-Shishakli and Sami al-Hinnawi, both of whom would later become military
leaders of the country.
In April 1949 he seized power and jailed many of his
opponents. Al-Zaim was in favour of a secular state. He ordered the end of
veiling of women and gave women the franchise. He forced businessmen to pay the
taxes they owed and, most importantly, he signed a number of long-term deals
with the U.S. multinational oil companies to participate in the creation of
the Trans-Arabian Pipeline (‘Tapline’) which the previous government
of Syria had refused to sign. The construction of the Trans-Arabian Pipeline
had begun while the British Mandate of Palestine was still operative in 1947.
It was designed and managed by the American company Bechtel. Originally the
Tapline was intended to terminate in Haifa which was then in the British
Mandate of Palestine, but due to the establishment of the state of Israel, an
alternative route through Syria (Golan Heights) and Lebanon was selected with
an export terminal in Sidon.
The Syrian government initially opposed the plan, but after
the Husni Al-Zaim coup it ratified the contracts for the Tapline construction.
This TAP was not the first oil pipeline in the region. That
honour belonged to the Mosul-Haifa (Mediterranean) Pipeline. This was a crude
oil pipeline from the oil fields in Kirkuk, located in northern Iraq, through
Jordan to Haifa (then under the British Mandate of Palestine). It was created
by the British who ran the Iraqi oil industry at that time and was operational
from 1935–1948. Its length was about 942 kilometres (585 mi). It took about 10 days for crude oil to travel
the full length of the line. The oil arriving in Haifa was distilled in the
Haifa refineries, stored in tanks, and then put in tankers for shipment to
Europe. It provided most of the fuel needs of the British and American forces
during the Second World War and was a key target for the Axis forces.
The Mosul-Haifa pipeline was beset by waves of protest from
the Palestinian Arabs; especially during the Arab Uprising of 1936-1940, led by
Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and later
the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Palestinians fought against the British and
the French colonial forces in their Mandate of Lebanon and Syria as well as the
Jewish settlers who had been allowed into Palestine by the British under terms
of the Balfour Declaration. Al-Qassam was captured and executed by the British
and the Grand Mufti allied himself with the Axis forces during the Second World
War. Their alliance with the Axis was an effort by the Nazis and the Vichy
French to cut off oil supplies to the Allies during the war. The Arab
irregulars consistently attacked the Mosul-Haifa pipeline and were later
supported by a team of Abwehr specialists who advised the Grand Mufti about
sabotaging the oil stream during the Second World War.
These attacks on the pipeline made it clear to the oil
industry that it would be difficult to protect the Mosul-Haifa pipeline in the
face of a sustained Arab uprising as well as the waves of strikes and go-slows
of the organised workers in their territories. In Syria there was a general strike
from 20 January to 6 March 1936 which paralysed the French territory. This
built on the strikes being conducted by the organised workers of Iraq, whose
general strike in 1931 led to the creation of the independent Iraqi state under
Nuri as-Said. The British and the French were able to control the Arab Uprising
during the war when they had large numbers of troops in the region but realised
that they were less capable of policing the pipeline after the war and so began
the construction of the Tapline from Saudi Arabia and not relying on Iraq as a
major supply source through a pipeline. The Mosul-Haifa pipeline was closed in
1948 with the birth of Israel.
Husni al-Zaim didn’t last very long in his job. His
erstwhile colleagues Adib al-Shishakli and Sami al-Hinnawi ousted him after
only about four and a half months. His efforts at trying to negotiate a new and
permanent border with Israel by Lake Tiberias (Kenneret) by offering to take in
300,000 Palestinian refugees was not a popular move and contributed to his
downfall.
The Middle East had become an important theatre of the
Second World War as each side tried to dominate the supply of oil. Moreover,
when the Soviets were forced to abandon their Nazi allies after the Germans
attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, supplying the Soviets with war
materiel depended on a risky Northern route to Murmansk or the easier route
through Iraq. By July 1941 the British had effectively cleared the Vichy French
out of the Levant on their own. By then the Soviets had been attacked and had
entered the war, Britain was desperate to supply the Soviets with equipment and
built up a transport force of 600 trucks which travelled from Jordan to the
Soviet border (Georgia). To do this and to protect the ‘Habforce’ which supervised
the British interests at Habbaniya and Baghdad, the British outbid the Germans
for the loyalties of the Iraqi tribesmen. The British delivered 250,000 gold
pieces to the Iraqis and a safe passage was granted.
Another unforeseen consequence of the re-establishment of
control by the British in the Middle East was the creation of the Palmach.
Throughout the Second World War many Palestinian Jews fought for Britain
against the Axis. Many units were raised including pioneer and transport
companies. Some Jews served with the TJFF and an infantry brigade was
raised and fought in the latter stages of the Italian campaign. Special,
commando type units were also raised and played an important role in Operation
Exporter, the British invasion of Vichy French Syria in 1941.
On 15th May 1941, the leadership of the Yishuv (the Jewish
community in Palestine), in consultation with the British military command in
Palestine, established nine pelugot machaz ("strike companies") to
assist the British in their war effort and so the Palmach was born.
Palmach is the Hebrew acronym for pelugot machaz. These nine companies
were comprised of experienced guerrilla fighters, most of them veterans of the
1936-39 Arab rebellion and many of them had been trained by Captain Orde Wingate,
later commander of the Chindits in Burma. These new units were trained
and armed by the British Army in Palestine.
Six hundred Palmachniks participated in the invasion of
Syria. Others also supported the invasion of Lebanon. Forty
hand-picked men, including Yitzhak Rabin, went in to Vichy held territory on
June 7th 1941, the day before the invasion proper, to reconnoitre the western
approach from Palestine and to sabotage transportation and communications
infrastructures. They blew up bridges and rail lines and cut telephone
and electricity lines.
The rest of the Palmachniks went in the next day to
serve as pathfinders or guides for the Allies. The frontier country was
well known to the Palmachniks for many had operated along the Syrian frontier
before. Captain Orde Wingate's Special Night Squads engaged in
counterinsurgency actions during the '36-'39 Arab rebellion, striking at Arab
insurgents in the Syrian and Lebanese border villages they used as jumping off
points. Operation Exporter forced the surrender of Vichy forces in
Syria after only six days. The Palmach became the first elements of the
Haganah and later the Israeli Defence Force. Many of its earliest military
commandos were participants in the War in Syria. This is where Moshe Dayan lost
his eye.
By 1948 the major oil companies had become active in every
Middle Eastern nation which had oil and played a strong role in their
governance. By then the Iron Curtain was falling over Europe and the Cold War
had started in earnest in the Middle East.
The
Cold War And Arab Nationalism in the Middle East
The conflict between the West and the Soviet Union led to
political and economic competition across the globe. One of the key areas of
competition was the access to unfettered supplies of oil. Saudi Arabia was firmly in an alliance with the West but areas
like Iraq and Iran were the arena of innumerable conflicts. One of the most
fruitful areas of overt and covert competition were the organised labour
movements of the region. The Western labour movements (AFL-CIO, the British
TUC, the French Force Ouvriere, etc.) were opposed by the Communist-led and
supported unions of the region and through the competing international
federations of labour. This was especially true of Iraq.
Iraq:
Iraq was a key state for the control of the oil supply from
the Middle East, especially the oil from Kirkuk and Mosul. It had developed
functioning domestic political and economic institutions under British rule.,
including strong trade union movement. Trade unionism in Iraq was not a new
phenomenon. Unlike the situation in many Middle Eastern nations, Iraq had a
number of national unions and a central national centre since the mid-1950s.
The earliest evidence of a labour movement can be traced to a 1927 strike by
railway workers. Despite a shaky start, the Iraqi trade unions played an
important role in the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958; largely under the
auspices of the strong Iraqi Communist Party(‘ICP’). In 1959, one million
people joined the May Day march in Baghdad. The population of Iraq was then 14
million. This illustrates the urban strength of the Iraqi communists and the
level of support it received from Moscow.
In 1963 the Ba’ath took over and began to crush all
opposition. In 1987, Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athists passed legislation that
outlawed independent unions, banned most strikes and banned unions from
state-owned enterprises. Much of the current Iraqi labour legislation derives
from this 1987 act. Saddam demonised independent trade unions and hundreds of
union leaders were imprisoned, tortured and executed. The regime modelled
itself on the Nazis and imitated Hitler by establishing state-run Labour
Fronts, which were part of the Ba’ath Party. This also applied to organisations
of youth, students and women. Membership of these bogus unions became
compulsory and its leaders were obliged to be Ba'athist members and to follow
its instructions.
The rump of the Communist unions, however, organised themselves
as an underground movement from 1977 and received financial assistance from the
World Federation of Trades Unions (WFTU), based in Prague and controlled by the
Russians and from the International Confederation of Arab Trades Unions (ICATU)
funded by Libya, Syria and, ultimately, Russia. These dissident unionists
formed the Workers' Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) in Iraq and tried
to organise clandestinely.
The Iraqi revolution of 1958 took place in several stages.
The first revolution was triggered on Bastille Day—July 14—1958 when the
overthrow of the British-installed monarchy by Iraqi Free Officers touched off
the most powerful demonstration of revolutionary ardour in the Near East. Armed
and highly organized, the Iraqi underground labour unions, led by the Iraqi
Communist Party (ICP), stood on the brink of seizing power. Within the ICP the
leading role in the revolution was played by Kurdish workers in the oil fields
and industries of Kirkuk and Mosul. The West was threatened with the loss of
its oil supply by these revolutionaries.
Within weeks, a peasant insurrection was sweeping across the
agricultural plains of Iraq as peasants burned landlords’ estates, destroyed
the account ledgers and seized the land. The ICP controlled the labour unions,
peasant organizations, and the union of students. Mammoth rallies, some drawing
over a million participants, were staged in Baghdad under ICP leadership.
President Eisenhower responded to the revolutionary explosion by sending
Marines to the Lebanon and preparing for a possible invasion of Iraq. The Wall
Street Journal (16 July 1958) candidly declared: “We are fighting for the oil
fields of the Middle East.”
The 1958 revolution had an enormous impact throughout the
Near East, not only on workers but also on the Kurdish people. The Kurds are an
ethnic group of about 33.5 million in the Middle East and with a substantial
overseas Diaspora in Europe and North America., About 55% of the world’s Kurds
live in Turkey where they make up about 23% of the population. They make up
about 19% of the population in Iraq, 10% in Syria and about 9% in Iran. They
have fought for the right to control their own country, Kurdistan, carved out
of Syria, Iraq and Turkey but against strong opposition. The strongest opposition
came from Turkey. This provoked the growth of a Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK)
which fought an armed struggle against Turkey from 1984 to 2013. They lost the
struggle and the PKK’s founder, Ocalan, was jailed.
One measure of the revolutionary turmoil in Iraq was that
the new constitution cited the Kurds as equal partners with Arabs in society
(without of course recognizing the Kurds’ right to independence). The Iraqi
Communist Party was not only the most proletarian of the Communist parties in
the Near East; from its inception it had a large number of members from
national and ethnic minorities, including Jews. In the period from 1949 to
1955, every general secretary of the ICP was Kurdish, as was nearly one-third
of its central committee.
From the outset of the 1958 upsurge, the ICP (under tight
Moscow guidance) threw its support behind the new government headed by
Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qassim, whom the Stalinists hailed as their “sole
leader.” The high point of the revolution came in early 1959 when the ICP
mobilized a quarter of a million people in Mosul, many of them armed, to
suppress a coup by Nasserites and counterrevolutionary officers. This triggered
several days of street fighting in which Communist-led workers and soldiers
mopped up the conspirators and their bourgeois backers, arresting many and
hanging others from lampposts. Armed militants of the People’s Resistance Force
(PRF), a popular militia that had been set up by Qassim in July 1958 and
quickly taken over by the Communists, essentially took power in the city.
At this point, the ICP had more support among military
officers than the Free Officers movement had
when it took power on 14 July 1958. The commander of the air force was
an ICP supporter, as were almost one-quarter of the pilots. A number of these
military commanders demanded that the ICP leadership take power. Above all, the
People’s Resistance Force, which had just demonstrated its power in Mosul,
numbered, by a conservative estimate, 25,000 in May 1959.
However, the threat of Communist power frightened Qassim. In
July, attention was cantered on Kirkuk, where an ICP-led demonstration
degenerated into a massacre of Turkmens,
who were prominent in the city’s commercial elite. It was used by Qassim as a pretext to repress
the ICP. He ordered the CP-led militia, the Popular Resistance Force,
disbanded, arrested hundreds of Communist supporters and sealed the offices of
the General Federation of Trade Unions (which had been taken over by the ICP).
A plenum of the ICP Central Committee responded with an
obsequious self-criticism declaring that its demand for participation in the
government had been “a mistake” because it “led to the impairment of the
party’s relations with the national government”—in other words, it displeased
Qassim. The plenum declared a “freeze” on Communist work in the army, and
informed the ranks that it was carrying out an “orderly retreat.” The Russians
supported and demanded this. They sent to Baghdad, George Tallu, a member of
the Iraqi Politburo, who had been undergoing medical treatment in Moscow, with
an urgent request to the Iraqi communist party to avoid provoking Qassim, and
to withdraw its bid to participate in the government. The Russians feared the
Western reaction to a communist victory in Iraq and demanded that the
Qassim-Army government be supported. It
also feared the rise of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq and Syria which was gaining
wide support and which was receiving covert support from the West.
In February 1963, the Ba’ath Party was strong enough and had
such powerful overseas support that it made a military coup that brought down
Qassim and unleashed the counterrevolutionary furies. Using lists of Communists
supplied by the CIA, the Ba’ath Party militia, the National Guard, launched a
house-to-house search, rounding up and shooting all suspected communists. An
estimated 5,000 were killed and thousands more jailed; many of them hideously
tortured by Saddam Hussein and others.
The CIA’s role in the 1963 Ba’ath coup has been widely
documented. King Hussein of Jordan told the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram shortly
after the coup that he knew “for a certainty” that U.S. intelligence services
provided names and addresses of Communists to be killed. The State Department
has confirmed that Saddam Hussein and other Ba’athists had made contact with
the American authorities in the late 1950s and early 1960s; at this stage, the
Ba’ath were thought to be the ‘political force of the future,’ and deserving of
American support against ‘Qassim and the Communists’.”
Meanwhile, the ICP’s record of betrayal was not forgotten.
When the Kurds ignored Moscow’s orders
they rebelled against the Qassim regime;
in 1961, the ICP had denounced their revolt as “serving imperialist
designs.” In 1972, when Saddam Hussein allied Iraq for a while with the Soviet Union, two ICP
leaders who had not had their eyes gouged out in his prisons joined his
government. From 1972 the ICP has remained underground but with strong ties to
the Iraqi GUFs (now called General Federation of Trades Unions – GFTU). The
Kurds have been isolated from the ICP and the GFTUs and the Kurds have
concentrated their work in maintaining PKK union strongholds in Mosul and
Kirkuk. The Kurds make up a powerful in underground Iraqi unionism, both in the
PUK and the KDP.
For a long period the U.S. oil multinationals continued to
support Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government involved itself in a range of
support programs in aid of a “secular force” in the region. When this
relationship ended with the increasing friendship between Saddam Hussein and
the Soviet Union the U.S. and the oil multinationals turned to the Kurds and
offered them support in their struggle against the Ba’ath (in Iraq and Syria).
Syria:
The rise of the B’ath Party in Iraq was paralleled by the
growth of a seciular Ba’ath Party in Syria. The Arabic word ba’ath means
"resurrection" or "renaissance." The party had its origins
in the desire of Syrian secular Arab nationalists to break with their feudal
past and to create a new form of government for Arab countries. The
Ba’ath Party was officially founded in 1947 and sought to create a secular and
socialist culture in Arab countries. The Ba’ath Party was able to establish
itself in Syria in 1954. The Ba’ath Party established itself in Iraq in 1963.
In Syria, Hafez Assad originally led the party which was
dominated by the Alawi (about 12% of the Syrian nation) and supported by the
network of Alawi in the army and the national intelligence establishment. Both
Assad and Hussein insisted that their branch of the party was running the
international Ba’ath movement. The two men could not agree on who was in
charge, and became bitter enemies. The Iraqi Ba’athists were almost
exclusively Sunni while Syrian Ba’athists were primarily Alawi.
The al-Assad clique which runs Syria is Alawi; a minority
group within the Syrian state. They are followers of an Ismaili belief system
that incorporates aspects of both Shi'a and Sunni Islam and some Christian
beliefs; Alawis celebrate Christmas, Easter, and Epiphany. In fact the Turkish
Alevi (a Turkish variant) maintain that
they are not Muslims as all. The majority Sunni communities agree and view the
Alawi as largely a cultural group rather than a heterodox Muslim sect. The
Sunni ordered them to build mosques, but no one worshipped there so they were
abandoned. Because many of the tenets of the faith are secret, Alawis have
refused to discuss their faith with outsiders. Only an elect few learn the
religion after a lengthy process of initiation; youths are initiated into the
secrets of the faith in stages. Their prayer book, the source of religious
instruction, is the Kitab al Majmu, believed to be derived from Ismaili
writings. The Alawis, of whom there are about 1,350,000 in Syria and Lebanon,
constitute Syria's largest religious minority. They are often called by other
names as well - they have been called Nusayris, Nusairis, Namiriya or
Ansariyya. They live chiefly along the coast in Al Ladhiqiyah Province, where
they form over 60 present of the rural population.
For several centuries, the Alawis enjoyed autonomy within
the Ottoman Empire, but, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottomans imposed
direct rule. Regarding the Alawis as infidels, the Ottomans consistently
persecuted them and imposed heavy taxation on them. During the French Mandate,
the Alawis briefly gained territorial autonomy, but direct rule was re-imposed
in 1936. For centuries, the Alawis constituted Syria's most repressed and
exploited minority. Most were indentured servants and tenant farmers or sharecroppers
working for Sunni landowners. Because of their outcast status, many government
jobs were off-limits to them and they never prospered in business. They were
able to mobilise themselves out of their rural setting by joining the Army.
They rose in the ranks and were the key elements in the Syrian Ba’ath Party.
The Syrian Alawi Baathists, after their takeover of the
Syrian state, soon gave up any notion of Arab socialism and became a corrupt
police state. In 1982 Hafez Assad banned all other political parties except the
Ba’ath. He had them ruthlessly dissolved; their leaders killed or subject to
involuntary exile. The free press of Syria was outlawed. The only newspapers
that were allowed into circulation were official Ba’ath papers.
The majority Sunni people of Syria (including the large
Druze and Kurdish communities) grew unhappy with these turns of events. A new
political party was formed; the Muslim Brotherhood. This Muslim Brotherhood
attracted a lot of support from unhappy Syrians, mostly Sunni (and with some
support from Egypt). The Muslim Brotherhood embarked upon a program to
overthrow Assad. They made their presence known with demonstrations and protest
marches and soon gathered a lot of support. In response, Hafez Assad deployed
his army to make such an example of the Muslim Brotherhood that no man would
ever dare challenge his rule again.
One centre of opposition was the city of Hama. Hafez Assad
decided that Hama would be the staging point of the example he was to make to
the Syrian people. In the twilight hours of February the 2nd, 1982, the city of
Hama was awakened by loud explosions.
The Syrian air force began to drop their bombs on the city.
The initial bombing run cost the city only a few casualties. Its main purpose
had been to disable the roads so that no-one could escape. Earlier in the
night, Syrian tanks and artillery systems had surrounded Hama. With the
conclusion of the air bombing run, the tanks and artillery began their
relentless shelling of the town. Thousands died. As homes crumbled upon their
living occupants and the smell of charred skin filled the streets, a few
residents managed to escape the shelling and started to flee. They were met by
the Syrian army under Rifaat Assad which had surrounded the city; they were all
shot dead. The artillery barrage was followed by waves of Syrian soldiers. They
quickly converged onto the town killing anything that moved.
Groups of soldiers rounded up men, women, and children only
to shoot them in the back of the head. After the majority of the people in Hama
were dead, the soldiers began looting. They took all that they could from the
now empty homes. Some were seen picking through the dead civilians looking for
money, watches, and rings. Finally the soldiers withdrew. The final horror was
yet to come. To make sure that no person was left alive in the rubble and
buildings, the Syrian army brought in poison gas generators. Cyanide gas filled
the air of Hama. Bulldozers were later used to turn the city into a giant flat
area. The lessons of the Hama Massacre were not lost on the Syrian
population and an already deep dissatisfaction with the Alawi grew deeper.
This also affected its neighbours. The Syrian Army occupied
the Lebanon as a protectorate in 1976. Assad wanted to prevent Lebanese
sectarian warfare from spilling over into Syria and had to be certain that
Lebanon maintained a unified front with Syria in any negotiations with Israel,
especially after 1979. As Syria has very little resources, Lebanon provided a
free trade zone and a place to extort money and sell drugs.
The Syrians were forced to leave the Lebanon by the passage
of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 of 2 September 2004. They left
behind a well-organised Lebanese militia force operating in Lebanon in defiance
of Resolution 1559 ; the Hezbollah (God's Party). The Hezbollah were funded,
guided and supplied from Iran through the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) with
the direct help of the Syrians.
The Al-Assad government in Syria has many domestic and
foreign enemies. The overwhelmingly Sunni Al Qaida organisations see the Alawi
as Muslim heretics, socialists and worthy of death, particularly as Syria has
become an ally of Shia Iran. Now the Sunni leaders (mainly Wahhabi Muslims) of
Qatar and Saudi Arabia have pressed forward to offer the Syrian rebels arms, cash and support in their efforts to
overthrow the Bashar al-Assad government. These arms are delivered primarily
through Turkey which has a long border with Syria. Turkey, too, is a Muslim
country, now under the religious-based AKP party. Turks are also Sunnis but
follow the Hanafi school of Islamic law. The Sunni Kurds follow the Shafii
school. The Druze, like the Alawi, have a very secretive religious
organisation, deriving primarily from the Ismaili wing of Islam. They are also
considered a cult but have usually been closer to the Sunni while maintaining
their identity. The Kurds, which had a large community in Syria have been
mostly driven out of Syria by the ISIS rebels. Many have returned to Iraqi
Kurdistan. The four year long civil war in Syria has destroyed much of the
infrastructure and created a gigantic refugee problem in neighbouring states.
Most importantly it has spawned ISIS which has joined the various Islamic
fundamentalist into a fighting force
which has gradually compelled other fundamentalists to join in its ranks.
This has become a serious problem to the West in that ISIS
has threatened to take control of the oil fields of Kurdish Iraq. This battle
is still going on and Western forces are engaging ISIS from the air in Syria
and in Iraq. It mirrors the problems of an earlier war in the region which
helped shape the conditions for the current war.
The
Iran-Iraq War:
There was a terrible war that raged between Iran and Iraq
from September 1980 to the July 1988 acceptance of UN Resolution 598 ending the
conflict which led to mass civilian and military deaths, to social and civil
unrest and to a massive loss of infrastructure during the war in both
countries. The war was characterised by massive indiscriminate ballistic
attacks on cities; the use of chemical weapons against civilian and military
targets; and attacks on oil tankers loading and transiting the oil ports of both
nations. It pitted the Revolutionary Shia government takeover by Khomeini in
Iran and the Ba’athist passions of Sunni
Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
The Saudis and Kuwaitis subsidised the Iraqi war effort and
were rewarded by higher world oil prices and the slow destruction of their main
Shia enemy, Iran. Deprived of U.S. military assistance and spare parts because
of the Khomeini takeover and bereft of an officer corps in the Iranian military
as a result of the purges by the mullahs against them the war dragged on. As it
did, Iran’s neighbours had a more peaceful environment.
When that war ended, the next war soon started when Iraq
attempted the takeover of Kuwait. The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein declared
that oil overproduction by Kuwait and United Arab Emirates was an
"economic warfare" against Iraq. In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait
an attempted to annex it. In January 1991 the U.S. announced the beginning of
“Desert Storm” and joined the conflict along with the Sunni states of the gulf.
That war ended in February 1991 with the defeat of the Iraqi forces but left
Saddam Hussein remaining in power in Baghdad.
When it became clear that the Baathists would be allowed to
remain in power Saddam Hussein expanded his oppression of Iraqi Shia, Kurds,
Marsh Arabs and the minorities. In particular, despite a ‘no-fly’ zone in the
North, the Ba’athists turned again against the Kurds in the North. He had
already shown a long history of a desire to suppress the Kurds with his attack
on Halabja in March 1988. The town of Halabja had fallen to the Iranian and
Kurdish forces which fought together against the Iraqis. The Iraqi
counterattack was brutal and used chemical weapons on a wide scale. The attack
killed between 4,000 and 5,000 people and injured 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of
them civilians. Thousands more died of complications, diseases, and birth
defects in the years after the chemical attack. This Massacre at Halabja was
part of the Ba’athist campaign against the Kurds and other minorities which
they called the Al-Anfal campaign also known as the Kurdish Genocide.
This was a campaign against the Kurdish people and other
non-Arab populations in northern Iraq, led by the Ba'athist Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid (’Chemical Ali’).The campaign
was a series of systematic attacks against the Kurdish population of northern
Iraq, conducted between 1986 and 1989. The campaign also targeted other
minority communities in Iraq including Assyrians, Shabaks, Iraqi Turkmen,
Yazidis, Jews, Mandeans and others.
Unfortunately for the Kurds they were not a united people.
They were deeply divided between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (‘PUK’) and
the Kurdistan Democratic Party (‘KDP’) – the Talabani vs. the Barzani Kurds.
Although autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan was been created in 1970 (as the Kurdish
Autonomous Region) the two Kurdish opponents could not agree on a common policy
or leadership. There were Kurdish factions in the governorates of Erbil, Dahuk
and As-Suleymaniyah which supported the Iraqi government and others who
supported a separate autonomous Kurdish state. In the 1992 Kurdish election to
the Legislative Assembly power was shared almost equally between the Barzanis
and the Talabani. That was unwelcome to both sides and tensions grew. The Iraqi
Kurdish Civil War broke out in May 1994 when fighting broke out between the two
factions. The clashes left around 300 people dead. Over the next year, around
2,000 people were killed on both sides. Members of the Iranian Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps provided limited support to the KDP and allowed the
KDP to launch attacks from Iranian territory.
This fighting among the Kurds and the involvement of the
Iranians in supporting the civil war was upsetting to the U.S. as it was then
planning on how to confront the challenges Saddam Hussein was creating for
Western interests in Iraq. In January 1995, CIA case officer Robert Baer went
to northern Iraq with a five-man team to set up a CIA station. The station in
Erbil is still in operation. He made contact with the Kurdish leadership and
was able to negotiate a truce between Barzani and Talabani. Together they began
a plan to assist those who were planning to remove Saddam Hussein.
Baer and his team agreed to support an Iraqi general who was
planning an assassination of Saddam Hussein. The assassination attempt in
Tikrit was set to occur during a planned surprise attack on the Iraqi Army by
the joint Kurdish forces in support of some rebel Iraqi troops. Saddam Hussein
was warned about this by his Jihaz Al-Mukhabarat Al-Amma (intelligence
service). Once the Mukhabarat became aware of the plot it was leaked to the
Turkish Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı- MİT (the Turkish intelligence service) who
passed it on immediately to the US National Security Advisor, Tony Lake, who
cabled Baer that the cover was blown. The station in Erbil notified the Barzani
who pulled back from the plan but somehow the Talabani were not informed and
the PUK carried out the attack on its own. They managed to destroy three
divisions and took around 5,000 prisoners before they were forced to withdraw.
Baer cabled Washington on four occasions requesting US military assistance to
the PUK but no help arrived. He was later charged with planning the
assassination of Saddam Hussein but was cleared.
There was still no agreement between the two Kurdish
factions. The Barzani KDP gradually took over the control of Kurdistan by
allowing the Iraqi Government to establish a smuggling route through Kurdistan
for its sanctioned petroleum exports through the Kabur River valley to Turkey.
The Barzanis allowed and protected this smuggling and imposed a heavy tax on
the smuggled oil; earning the KDP over
three and a half million dollars a week from the Iraqis. Eventually they agreed
to share some of this money with the PUK but remained in control. This was not
acceptable to the Talebani who built an alliance with Iran and allied the PUK
with the Pasadaran. In early 1996 they
launched a joint attack on the KDP to get a bigger share of the revenues.
Massoud Barzani called upon Saddam Hussein to protect him from the PUK. On
August 31, 1996 30,000 Iraqi troops, spearheaded by an armoured division of the
Republican Guard and the KDP attacked the PUK headquarters in Erbil which was
defended by 3,000 PUK Peshmerga led by Korsat Rasul Ali, Erbil was captured,
and Iraqi troops executed 700 PUK soldiers in a field outside Erbil.
The loss of Erbil was a blow to the U.S. and the use of
Iraqi troops by Saddam Hussein in Kurdistan violated the UN Security Council
Resolution 688. In response, the Clinton administration began Operation Desert
Strike when American ships and B-52 bombers launched 27 cruise missiles at
Iraqi air defence sites in southern Iraq. The next day, 17 more cruise missiles
were launched from American ships against Iraqi air defence sites. The United
States also deployed strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier to the Persian
Gulf, and the extent of the southern no-fly zone was moved northwards to the
33rd parallel.
In September 1988 the U.S. was able to compel the Kurdish
factions to stop their strife and sign the Washington Agreement establishing a
formal peace treaty between them. They agreed to keep the PKK out of Kurdistan
to satisfy the Turks and to share the revenues equally between them. As the
UN’s Oil-for-Food Program had begun the Kurds had a lot more revenue to spend
from Iraqi oil exports. Most importantly the U.S, guaranteed the security of
Kurdistan. The Kurds assisted the U.S. in the 2003 war with Iraq and took
prominent roles in the aftermath. Massoud Barzani became President of Iraqi Kurdistan and Jalal
Talabani became President of Iraq. This guaranteed the continued access of the
U.S. to Iraqi oil.
That continued access was important because there was a new
problem in the region which threatened the U.S. and Western interests. The U.S.
had observed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism which was expanding in the
region after the Yemen Hotel Bombings in 1990. A new group had formed under the
leadership of Bin Laden, called Al Qaeda,
whose influence was spreading through the Middle East, Afghanistan and
Pakistan. In August 1998, Al-Qaeda carried out the bombings of the U.S.
embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing more than 200
people and injuring more than 5,000 others. In October 2000 Al-Queda
succeeded further in attacking U.S. interests with the bombing of the USS Cole.
On September 9, 2001, al-Qaeda assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of
the U.S. – supported Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and led to the takeover
of the country by the Taliban.
The most momentous act was the destruction of the World
Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaeda, with almost 3,000
people killed. It was clear that some major response from the U.S. was
required. The plan was formulated by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary who
linked the attacks by Al Quaeda with the regime of Saddam Hussein and its
putative possession of weapons of mass destruction. This morphed into the “War
on Terror” and the subsequent invasion of
Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein.
However, the removal of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni base
left the country in the hands of the Shia minority. This has caused major
problems in pacifying Iraq and resisting the onslaught of ISIS. The biggest hurdle
was the West’s backing for Nouri
Al-Maliki’s Shia-led Iraqi Government, The Iraqi Shia supplanted the Sunni
leadership through Western assistance and this posed serious questions for the
states of the Gulf who have been asked by the U.S. for their support in the
fight against “The War on Terror”; especially that against Al Qaida and now
ISIS. The removal of Al-Maliki in Iraq has helped resolve some of these
tensions and allowed the Sunni states to participate in the military campaign
against ISIS.
Because of the predation of Shia lawmakers, generals and
ministers under Al-Maliki who preyed upon the Sunnis in Iraq, many of the rural
tribes in the northwest of Iraq, almost all Sunni, renounced their allegiance
to Iraq and joined up with ISIS in their
military campaign. The stepping down of Al-Maliki made negotiations with
the tribes easier and some have now gone back to the government side. However,
even now, the military response to ISIS has come mainly through the Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters and bands of Iranian Shia militias. Many of these have
continued to terrorise the Iraqi Sunni tribesmen, making unity ever harder.
$$$ Loan with 3% interest rate contact us for more details $$$.
ReplyDeleteAre you looking for a loan to clear off your dept and start up your own Business? have you being going all over yet not able to get a legit loan Company that will loan you? Here is your final solution, We can give you any amount you need provided you are going to pay back within the period of time given without any problem. Apply now and contact us for more details via email below.
Application For loan.
First Name:
Last Name:
Date Of Birth:
Address:
Sex:
Phone No:
City:
Zip Code:
State:
Country:
Nationality:
Occupation:
Monthly Income:
Amount Needed:
Duration:
Purpose of the loan:
E-mail address:
Email: henski.john46@gmail.com