CHINA'S ARMS TRADE A GLOBAL MENACE

From Burma to Nepal, and from Malaysia to Sudan, the Chinese military is engaged in a secret $1 billion a year arms trade that is fueling conflict, according to an extensive investigation by Amnesty International.
In a subsequent report, “Sustaining Conflict and Human Rights Abuses”, Amnesty has provided evidence to show that China, which refuses to divulge details its arms sales, is selling more weapons across the globe than the US and often to the most unsavory regimes in exchange for raw materials needed for rebuilding China’s crumbling infrastructure.
Amnesty says the array of weapons supplied to countries with serious human rights abuses has included combat aircraft, tanks, tanks, missiles, missile launchers and guns of all types. What most surprised Amnesty researchers was that China’s military (PLA) – Peoples Liberation Army – made large profits from the sales, yet kept no records and operated in contravention of US and EU arms sales embargoes imposed following the Tiananmen Square massacre of student protesters in 1989.
Part of the report addressed the issue of China’s expanding influence in regions of Africa and Latin America, echoing the views of some Bush administration critics who have warned that it has ignored China‘s activities in its own back yard, meaning Latin America, where the Chinese have contracts to extract large quantities of minerals from the Amazon Basin. China has also forged relations with other Latin American nations such as Argentina and Venezuela. In terms of its role in Africa, the Pentagon conducted a recent study which warned that its increasing presence on the African continent, dictated by its desperate need for oil, gas, copper wood, iron ore and even diamonds and gold, presented serious problems for US policy in the region. The Amnesty report supported that contention, pointing out that in the past 15 years China has exported large consignments of weapons to nations in the Great Lakes region of Africa where some of the worst human rights violations have occurred. In the Congo, for instance, many of the militias are now armed with the Chinese version of the Ak-47 assault rifle and Chinese small arms. Amnesty added the following footnote to the issue:

“Chinese arms deals often involve an exchange of weapons for raw materials and the increase in the numbers of these barter deals can be linked to China’s rapid economic expansion over the past 25 years and its increasing need to secure raw materials. In the 1990s the PLA actively participated in arms deals with Iran in return for oil. It was a major importer of timber from Liberia and a supplier of weapons to Liberia. It is also a major supplier of weapons to the Sudan and Chinese firms have the largest stake in Sudanese oil fields.”

In light of the fact China is now in the top ten of the world’s leading arms suppliers and a member of the U.N. Security Council, Amnesty argues it is high time the Chinese lived up to international law and were transparent about their arms exports. The Amnesty report noted that despite a Chinese central government directive in the 1990s that the PLA should get out of the export arms business it still controls the China Poly Group Corporation, the country’s largest arms exporter. Much to Amnesty’s concern, Poly Group and similar defense companies in China have managed to establish joint ventures and licensed product agreements with Canadian, Russian, European and US companies. As a result, China has acquired a range of dual use equipment which the PLA has inserted into weapons it exports, thereby making other countries culprits in its secret arms deals.
The UN also has evidence that Chinese guns were traded into conflict zones such as Albania, Zimbabwe, Burma, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Nepal and Somalia and that, between 2005-2006, China supplied the Nepalese military with 25,000 rifles and 18,000 grenades.
According to the Chinese government, its approach to arms exports is “cautious and responsible” but not so says Amnesty’s leading arms investigator, Helen Hughes. She points out that China has refused to be a signatory to international rules governing arms sales.

NEOCON HAWKS SELF DESTRUCT?

Evidence is emerging that the neo-conservative hawks who shaped the Bush administration’s Middle East Policy, and in particular the war in Iraq, are in a self destruct mode.
For some time, journalists have been unable to determine if the once powerful neocon institution PNAC –Project for the New American Century- is still functioning or has closed its doors. More puzzling is that no one answers phones at its base in Washington DC. and its last public statement was in January 2005. All of this should come as no surprise to political commentators who have watched a growing “political cannibalism” within the group. That has been characterized by some of its founders and most prominent speakers attacking each other over the direction of the war in Iraq.
The attacks began with leading neocons like Weekly Standard editor and Fox News contributor, Bill Kristol, zeroing in on Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, for his failure to anticipate the Iraq insurgency and to deploy sufficient troops to pacify the country. Further disagreements between PNAC ideologues centered on the Bush administration’s continued belief that it could still democratize the Middle East. Some PNAC officials complained that a persistent commitment to a disastrous Iraq war had contributed to a failure to anticipate the growing threat from China and to plan for the day the US might have to defend the island of Taiwan against Chinese aggression.
PNAC leaders have always lambasted their critics for attributing to them too much influence in the shaping US foreign policy and promoting America as a glob superpower, but there now is sufficient evidence to show that PNAC did indeed mould Bush White House foreign policy agendas.
PNAC began life in 1997 as a Washington DC non-profit think tank with the aim of establishing American as the world biggest economy and military superpower. The organization had powerful allies in the background, providing money and influence. Among their backers were three wealthy foundations – The Sarah Scaife, the Bradley Foundation and the John Mc Oil Foundation. One only has to look at some of the founders to see how influential it was likely to become. Apart from its chairman, Bill Kristol, the following were in its ranks: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, William Bennett, Lewis Libby, Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad and John Bolton. All those men, and more, especially Cheney and Rumsfeld who were PNAC founders, featured prominently in office after George Bush became president in 2000. Today, for example, John Bolton is ambassador to the UN and Zalmay Khalilzad is ambassador in Iraq.
From its inception PNAC made no secret of its conviction that Taiwan and Israel were America’s most important allies and required its unwavering support. Close ties were established to Israel’s Likud Party and PNAC founders began formulating strategies about how the Middle East could be shaped to further US power in the Gulf and beyond, and how the outcome had to blend with Israel’s vision of a New Middle East. An insight into how PNAC viewed the world can be found in a letter in which John Bolton and four other PNAC leaders sent to President Clinton in January 1998. The letter began with the thesis that Iraq presented the biggest threat to US interests in the Middle East and, therefore, Saddam Hussein should be removed from power as quickly as possible. There was no way, the letter’s authors argued, that UN inspections could stop Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production - weapons Saddam would undoubtedly use against American troops in a region that produced a third of the world’s oil. The letter added that the US had full UN authority to use military means to take down the Iraqi regime and it concluded with the following plea to President Clinton:
“If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of this country.”

A close reading of that letter is sufficient to convince any skeptic of PNAC’s influence on American policy that the same agenda was pitched successfully to President Bush months after he moved into the White House. By then, PNAC had enough of its founders in place – even in the White House itself - to convince the president that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein should top his agenda. As we know now, the overthrow of Saddam became the president’s agenda even before the events of 9/11 and PNAC’s leaders were in place to see it through - men like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, Armitage, Bolton, Peter Rodman, Lewis Libby and Elliott Abrams.
When things started to go badly wrong in Iraq by the end of 2004, unity within PNAC on the Iraq policy began to unravel with some members reaching out to other groupings who felt Iraq was steadily becoming a quagmire and was obscuring other vital issues such as Russia’s drift back to a hard-line communist ideology and China’s increasing desire for economic global domination. Bill Kristol, and some of his fellow PNAC members, argued that the US was much too soft on Russia and China, countries that posed greater threats to US global interests in the long term.
PNAC’s last public statement in January 2005 called for a large increase in the US troop presence in Iraq. It was a desperate final effort by some leading figures in the organization to shore up a failed Iraq. By committing more troops those PNAC members hoped to stem the descent into chaos in the country. The plea did not find favor in the White House or with Dick Cheney who had no desire to make such a politically unpopular move and further bind the US to a long term Iraq strategy.
The PNAC move highlighted the origins of a serious and seemingly implacable gulf in thinking between members of an organization that had done so much to ensure we invaded Iraq and subsequently wondered if it had been a wise move. Recent comments from some neocons indicate they know the Iraq war gamble was a disaster that shifted focus from vital areas of US foreign policy. That is a far cry from the heady days of 1997/1998 and later 2002 when PNAC founders saw the overthrow of Saddam as a first step in reshaping the Middle East with subsequent steps being regime change in Syria and Iran. In the final analysis, all PNAC has achieved has been a loss of lives – American and Iraqi – and a failed Middle East policy that has hurt the US internationally and left us blind to major issues elsewhere across the globe. Some prominent PNAC members, and their friends in the Likud Party, may still hope the US follows the organization’s founding agenda to help Israel take down the present leaders in Syria and Iran but that could ultimately prove more costly than the Iraq gamble.

GENEVA LIKELY TO BE SET ASIDE IN US ARMY FIELD MANUAL

If, as seem likely, the Pentagon’s soon to be released army field manual undercuts elements of the Geneva Conventions on the interrogation and treatment of detainees the United States will once again be condemned internationally, leaving the impression that the Bush administration has scant regard for international law.

Such a move by the Pentagon will come as no surprise to JAGs – judge advocates general – whose efforts to force the Bush administration to fall into line with the Geneva guidelines have been consistently thwarted. JAGs have made it clear to the Justice Department that any retreat from the Geneva Conventions represents a step backward for the US in its international defense of the rights of prisoners and weakens the very structure of our legal system.

The latest information leaking from Washington is that the new army field manual will permit, in direct contravention of the Geneva rules, the humiliating and degrading treatment of prisoners within its interrogation rules. Sources close to the Defense Department have acknowledged that the State Department tried to prevent elements of Geneva from being excluded from the field manual’s interrogation techniques but failed because Vice-president Dick Cheney used his powerful place in the Bush administration to argue that interrogators need more flexibility.
In the background, it is believed the vice president has also fought for the CIA and other clandestine groupings to be accorded even greater freedom in their choice of interrogation techniques and that process has been augmented by the CIA’s rendition policy that allows for suspects to be kidnapped and transferred to countries like Sudan, Jordan, Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia where torture is routinely used. That range of options regarding interrogation also includes the CIA’s secret interrogation facilities in countries like Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia.

All of this flies in the face of decades of US military commitment to Geneva which appeared to end abruptly in 2002 when President Bush set aside a common article (3) of the Conventions which banned inhumane and degrading treatment for prisoners of war and unlawful combatants. Instead, the Department of Defense instituted Directive 2310 that made it clear captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not entitled to the protection of Article 3. When elements of the US military and JAGs tried to have the common article reinstated in the DOD policy directive their views were set aside by Dick Cheney and intelligence departments of the Pentagon. They won the day by arguing that Article 3 hampered US interrogators.
The soon to be completed army field manual has been a Pentagon project for just over a year and was considered essential after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Members of Congress had hoped to see it some months ago but the military held off sending to them it while the Pentagon debated whether to classify sections of the manual to prevent a public debate on its interrogation guidelines. Earlier this year, selected members of Congress who viewed Pentagon drafts of proposed rules on the interrogation and treatment of suspects demanded changes to parts of the manual that appeared to permit the use of questionable techniques in respect of terror suspects and what were loosely termed unlawful combatants. No decision has yet been taken on whether to allow public access to the manual when it is finally released.
Irrespective of whether the new army guidelines do or do not respect the Geneva Conventions there is incontrovertible proof that the Bush administration authorized coercive interrogation techniques banned by Geneva and that the CIA may still be using them at secret centers and encouraging their use by transferring suspects to countries where they will be tortured – countries listed by our own State Department as serial human rights abusers.
In the past week it has also been reported that despite international condemnation of the force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo, the Pentagon has established new guidelines for doctors and other medical professionals and has advocated the practice. Reputable international medical groups, including doctors from at least 7 European countries, have condemned fellow professionals in the US for being involved in force-feeding, deeming the technique unethical and a breach of the medical code.
The cumulative effect, say critics, of the Bush Administration’s disregard for the Geneva Conventions led to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal because it appeared that the US military approved the use of coercive techniques to acquire information in the war in terror. That laissez faire attitude, and at times deliberate encouragement of special interrogation methods, led directly to soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan feeling they were not confined by Geneva. Now, as evidence mounts of a massacre of innocent Iraqi men, women and children by Marines at Haditha, and while the military investigates other questionable killings in Iraq, there is likely to be a growing clamor for those higher in the military chain of command to be held accountable. It will be argued that they, as well as policymakers in Washington, fomented an environment in which it was clear human rights abuses would be committed and in which soldiers would spiral out of control. Therefore, they should all be held accountable. In the months ahead as the full story of the Haditha killings comes to light and Congressional inquiries begin, questions will be asked about how much the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for the Geneva Conventions created a mindset in which events like Haditha and Abu Ghraib were inevitable.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SOUTHERN IRAQ

In the United States, little attention has been paid to a deteriorating situation in southern Iraq and that may be due to the fact that since the war began there has been a widespread misconception that the Brits have everything under control in that Shia-controlled part of the country.
However, the truth is not difficult to find and in particular the reasons why southern Iraq, and particularly its major city, Basra, have been out of the headlines. For a start, there has always been a belief on the part of major figures in Washington that the majority Iraqi Shias support the occupation. To think otherwise would run contrary to perceived neocon wisdom and would imply that the American-led occupation is not only opposed by Sunni insurgents but also by the majority Shias. But, facts now emerging show that the British have failed to stabilize Basra where assassins are killing one person per hour and where British troops spend most of their time in barracks to avoid being killed by roadside bombs and to avoid having to confront angry mobs.
The uncomfortable truth about the dangers and hatred British troops face in southern Iraq, especially in Basra, was evident at the beginning of May when a British Lynx military helicopter, filled with anti-missile technology, was shot down and five servicemen on board killed. When soldiers from the British quick reaction force rushed to the crash site they were confronted by hundreds of jubilant Iraqis, some of whom were heavily armed Shia militiamen. In an ensuing confrontation, at least five Iraqis, including a child, were shot dead. The British at first denied shooting anyone but later admitted they fired at “selected targets.”
Five hours of rioting followed before a curfew was called and calm restored but from all accounts the curfew has not stopped the daily sectarian carnage, mostly carried out by Shia militias and assassins from within the police force. It is particularly depressing for the British that they trained that same police force which they now describe as corrupt and riddled with killers and criminals. In truth, it is an organization run by militias and assassins from within the country’s Interior Ministry. Against that backdrop, the citizens of Basra and other centers in the south have limited electricity, and have difficulty making ends meet. They face rising food and gasoline prices in a market in which everything is in short supply. Overall, there is an atmosphere of fear and chaos.

The security nightmare was not contemplated by US or British planners prior to the 2003 invasion. Just weeks before the “shock and awe” bombing campaign was launched to signal the start of the war, the then US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading neocons who planned the war, provided the following optimistic assessment of what US soldiers could expect when they liberated Basra from the Saddam regime:

“I think that when the people of Basra no longer feel the threat of that regime, you are going to see an explosion of joy and relief.”

Wolfowitz, like his fellow neocons in Washington, failed to understand that the Shias of southern Iraq had bad memories of the US and of President Bush senior. They could not forget how, after the first Gulf War ended, Bush snr. told them to oppose Saddam and they did, but at a horrendous cost. After the US and its allies left Iraq, Saddam sent his death squads to southern Iraq to slaughter the Shias. No one knows how many were executed and buried in mass graves but reliable sources point to tens of thousands. The fact that America turned its back on them and left them to their fate created bitter memories. Those memories were again brought into focus in 2003 when the present President Bush launched his “shock and awe” bomb blitz. In Basra innocent women and children were killed when some bombs hit civilian centers.
The neocon strategists who predicted that Basra would quickly welcome the US and British as liberators also failed to understand that the Shias throughout Iraq had close ties to their fellow Shias in Iran. Those ties have been strengthened since the 2003 invasion, especially in the south which straddles the border with Iran. In the past year, as the US has threatened Iran, the influence of Iran in Iraqi politics has increased and there has been strong evidence of Iran supporting Iraqi insurgents. For example, the British claim their soldiers are being killed by sophisticated infra-red bombing devices supplied to Iraqi Shia militias by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Therefore, contrary to the perceived wisdom that the only forces opposing the US-led invasion are Sunnis insurgents and Al-Qaeda affiliates, the violence in southern Iraq shows that Shias are also opposing the occupation. According to the British military most of the attacks on them have come from the Mahdi Army, a powerful militia loyal to the firebrand Shia cleric, Moqtada-al-Sadr, who runs part of Baghdad known as Sadr City. In September 2005, British troops arrested Sheik Ahmed al-Fartusi, the leader of Mahdi Army in southern Iraq, and two of his relatives. British officials said the arrests were related to investigations into the killing of six British soldiers.
The British have targeted other militias and that has not found approval with the governor of Basra. In January 2006, he threatened to call for mass demonstrations after British troops arrested 5 police officers. The governor immediately contacted the Iraqi central authorities and demanded the transfer of all security in southern Iraq from the British to the Iraqi security forces. The British trace many of the problems they face to June 2003 when a mob trapped six British military policemen in a police station in Majar-al-Kabir and killed them. Since then the British have lost the support of the local population and have faced intermittent rioting and insurgent attacks. One incident which highlighted the volatility of the situation was in September last year when a mob set fire to a British armoured vehicle and Mahdi militiamen fired mortars at a British base. All of that happened after tanks demolished a police station in an operation to release two members of the elite British Special Air Service who were being held by Iraqi police. The SAS soldiers had been working undercover in Basra when they were arrested, beaten and locked up in the police station for interrogation. The British military command knew from the outset the two SAS soldiers would be tortured to give up their secrets and then shot. The Iraqi police were asked to hand over their SAS captives and refused and it was at that point the British commander decided to dispense with niceties and sent in tanks to punch a hole in the side of the police station. When that was done, elite British reaction troops stormed into the station and freed the two undercover soldiers.
On May 22, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, whose approval ratings, like those of George Bush, have plummeted as a consequence of declining public support for the war in Iraq, visited Baghdad and tried to sound upbeat. Within 24 hours, one of his officials told a leading British newspaper that British troops could be in Iraq for at least another four years and there was no likelihood of troops being withdrawn from Basra any time soon. The bulk of Britain’s 7,200 troops are in southern Iraq.