DIVIDE & CONQUER POLICY BY BUSH AND OLMERT

The US has followed Israel’s lead in developing what can only be called a divide in conquer strategy towards the Palestinians. It is a strategy that could well turn out to be another disastrous move by two leaders – George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert – whose poll ratings in their respective nations are at an all time low.
In the wake of the infighting between Palestinians, followed by the Hamas seizure of Gaza, the two leaders agreed the best course of action was to back Fatah which lost a landslide victory to Hamas in democratic elections in January 2006. Bush and Olmert have now chosen to place their trust in the Fatah leader, Abu Abbas. As president of the Palestinian authority, he has formed a new government based in the West Bank, arguing he had the constitutional authority to abolish the unity government he led with Hamas since February.
Fatah’s under Abbas, and previously under Yasser Arafat, has a history of being a deeply corrupt organization. At the time of Arafat’s death it was revealed he had stashed away a personal fortune somewhere in the region of $100 million. Over the years the Palestinian people have complained that much of the aid that flowed into the Palestinian territories found its way into the pockets of Fatah members. Nevertheless, the US and Israel are now prepared to provide the Palestinian Authority, namely Abbas and his Fatah party, with a large dose of capital. The US has promised a starter package of $40 million and Israel, which has been illegally withholding approximately $500 million owed to Palestinians in tax transfers, may release half of that to Abbas. The only requirement for Abbas as the Israelis see it would be for his Fatah Party, under the aegis of the Palestinian Authority, to publicly recognize what Israel calls its right to exist. However, extracting that recognition of Israel could prove difficult, especially if the rest of the Arab world and many Palestinians begin to view Abbas and Fatah as pawns of the US and Israel, prepared to take money while 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza starve.
The new joint Bush-Olmert policy towards the Palestinians was best articulated by the Israel’s female foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who said Israel should take full advantage of the split between Hamas and Fatah and promote it “to the end” because it separated moderates from extremists.
The US was careful to point out that aid would also be provided for Palestinians living in Gaza under the control of Hamas. However, Israel appeared happy to continue to seal off Gaza to the outside world. Gaza is a tiny strip of land bordering Israel and the Mediterranean and Israel has closed all access to it. It has an unemployment rate of 69% and some observers have argued that it has become a virtual world for Israel’s military to experiment with new weapons, especially surveillance weapons of the type sold to countries concerned about homeland security. The sales of such weapons, of which Israel claims to be the foremost designer, have increased Israeli defense exports by billions of dollars. In fence building alone, Israel has become a leader and one Israeli company has a contract costing several billions to build a border fence between Mexico and the US.
The newly announced divide and conquer policy of Bush and Olmert will likely be opposed throughout the Arab world which has long argued that a solution should be found by Israel talking to Hamas and the unity government it had formed with Abbas and Fatah. European governments had privately signaled a desire to engage with Hamas but Israel and the US resisted, arguing that Hamas was a terrorist organization like Hezbollah in Lebanon. To that end, Israel squeezed the unity government of funds and made no attempt to seek a political solution, even though Hamas offered an extended ceasefire and asked for talks with Israel.
For a deeper insight in how Israel perceives advantage in a divide and conquer strategy and sees no particular benefit in a settlement of the overall Palestinian issue, one has only to read a recently leaked “confidential” document that was ignored by the US media. It was the “End of Mission Report” from Alvaro de Soto, the retiring UN envoy in the region. In it, he condemned the violence of Hamas and the corruption within Fatah in his report but he reserved his sharpest criticisms for Israel and the US.
He lambasted Israel for financially squeezing the Palestinians and noted that irrespective of its role as an occupying power under international law it had been guilty of the following:
“…the killings of hundreds of civilians in sustained heavy incursions and the destruction of infrastructure, some of it wanton, such as the surgical strikes on the only power plant, as well as bridges in Gaza.”
He condemned Israel’s refusal to hand over hundreds of millions of dollars in customs dues owed to the Palestinians and sanctioned under international law.
“It is Palestinian money,” he pointed out.” This is money collected from Palestinian importers and exporters. It adds up to a third of Palestinian income and pays the salaries of PA employees.”
He added that, while Israel insisted on Palestinians adhering to international principles, the Israeli government flouted those principles by making it impossible for the PA to deliver basic services to the Palestinian people. In his opinion, Israel’s actions were never approved by the Quartet of nations - including America and Russia - that had developed a policy towards a two state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. In fact, two members of the Quarter, the EU and Russia, had been prevented from speaking out on this issue by the United States.
“One wonders if it is credible to judge the viability of a government to deliver when it is being deprived of its largest source of income?” de Soto asked.
Regarded by many throughout the UN as a moderate, Alvara de Soto used sections of his report to focus on Israel’s power to influence the UN and the US. He felt that in his time at the UN, Israel had been allowed “unparalleled access to the UN Secretariat at the highest levels,” and it was not because Israel had skilled permanent UN representatives. It was due to what he called a “seeming reflex,” whereby in any situation in which the UN had to take a position, the first reaction of UN staff was to ask first how Israel and Washington would react rather than what the right position was.
“I confess that I am not entirely exempt from that reflex and I regret it,” he wrote.
He concluded that the UN had to be more frank about Israel’s failings with regard to the Palestinian issue and had to be careful not to buy into the “multitude of diversions and excuses that the Israel political system can produce, sometimes in good faith, other times not..”
In his time as envoy, he became convinced that a broad swathe of Israeli opinion knew time was not on Israel’s side but the Israel tendency was to deal with immediate and not long term issues such as the need for a final settlement of the Palestinian issue.
“We are not a friend of Israel if we allow Israel to fall into the self-delusion that the Palestinians are the only ones to blame, or that it can continue to ignore its obligations under existing agreements without paying an international price in the short term and a bitter price regarding its security and identity in the long term.”
On the issue of Israel’s constant demand for recognition, de Soto had this to say:
Similarly unrealistic is the demand for the recognition of Israel, which sometimes slides into forms of words such as “recognition of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” despite the fact that a consensus in Israel itself on its Jewish character is absent, and despite Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and colonization of large chunks of it. As Colin Powell said: “You can’t negotiate when you tell the other side, ‘Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start’. Unfortunately, the international community, through a policy hastily laid down, has gone along with Israel’s rejectionism, making it very difficult to climb down even if Israel decided to do so.”
De Soto felt Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert had adopted a similar rejectionist stance towards Syria at the instigation of George Bush and it was totally unrealistic to expect Syria to give up negotiating cards before negotiating.
Just before he began his envoy role in the Middle East, de Soto bumped into former US Secretary of State, James Baker who told him to be strong because “those guys can smell weakness a mile away.” De Soto soon discovered it was sound advice and interpreted it as follows:
“What James Baker was warning me against, clearly, was the tendency that exists among US policy-makers, and even amongst the sturdiest of politicians, to cower before any hint of Israeli displeasure and to pander shamelessly before Israeli-linked audiences. It has become vividly clear to me these past two years that the same ensuing tendency towards self-censorship – treating Israel with exquisite consideration, almost tenderness – exists at the UN partly for our own reasons – the legacy of the Zionism-racism resolution, and the resulting political and budgetary cost for the UN, and Israel’s demonstrated capacity to undermine US-UN relations.”

The full text of De Soto’s “End of Mission Report”
can be found at:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf

ITALY'S CIA TRIAL EXPOSES SECRET WAR

Italy’s decision to try 26 CIA operatives in absentia, as well as five of its own top spies for their roles in the Bush administration’s secret “renditions policy” exposes a serious gulf between the way America and its allies believe the war against terrorism should be conducted. It also highlights the fact that the European public is well informed about the US-led kidnapping of terror suspects whereas Americans appear to know little about the issue because it is rarely highlighted by the US media or placed on the political agenda by members of Congress.
Effectively, the Bush administration has succeeded in convincing the media and Congress that any scrutiny of its abductions strategy and secret CIA prisons overseas would be unpatriotic and counterproductive to the overall war on terror and to the CIA’s clandestine activities. In Europe there is no such reluctance to address the issue. The media and the courts in several countries have not only exposed the policy of kidnappings by the CIA but the fact that suspects are sent for interrogation to countries that the State Department lists as routinely using torture. Some suspects are also held in secret CIA prisons in countries like Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. In Germany too, warrants have been issued for 13 CIA agents accused of abducting a German citizen and transporting him to a secret facility in Afghanistan where he was tortured.
The Italian trial, however, is likely to be the most explosive one. It began on June 6, three days before President Bush was due to tour Europe and provided an embarrassing backdrop to his visit. Since then the trial has been adjourned to allow the court to hear arguments from the prime minister’s office that investigators working for the prosecutor’s office overstepped the law when they bugged the phones of Italian spies working for the country’s foreign intelligence agency.
The Milan case revolves around the kidnapping of a Muslim imam, Hasan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to Milan’s largest mosque on the afternoon of February 17, 2003. He was dragged into a van by strange men and vanished. The involvement of the CIA and SISMI, Italy’s foreign intelligence service in his abduction might never have come to light but for the fact that officers from Digos, Italy’s internal security service were independently tracking Omar. They suspected him of raising funds for an organization whose aim was to overthrow the Egyptian government. The moment he vanished, Digos operatives wanted to know what had happened to him and were told by the CIA he had left Italy to link up with terrorists in the Balkans. By then of course, the CIA had already flown him from an airbase at Aviano on an unregistered flight to Egypt where they knew he would probably be tortured.
The matter might have ended at that point but for the fact that a year later Digos operatives in Milan discovered they had been conned. They discovered that CIA agents in Milan and Rome, as well as senior figures in SISMI, had lied to them about the circumstances surrounding the Muslim cleric’s disappearance. Digos quickly referred the matter to Milan’s judiciary and in particular to Armando Spataro, a savvy, no nonsense prosecutor. The moment he opened a file on the case Digos agents were only too happy to unearth information about the CIA and SISMI, the two organizations they believed betrayed them.
It did not take Digos staff long to discover that the CIA had been sloppy in its planning of the kidnapping. For example, its operatives in Milan ran up a bill of $160,000 in a glitzy hotel and used cell phones to communicate with each other and with bosses at CIA HQ in Langley, VA. The head of the CIA in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, even left a surveillance photo of Abu Omar in an apartment he vacated. All in all the CIA left behind so many clues of its role in the Omar abduction that it was a slam dunk case. The more difficult issue for Prosecutor Spataro was proving the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi had given SISMI a green light to be a part of the CIA’s rendition’s policy. With great relish, Digos went after the SISMI element in the rendition of Omar and uncovered a SISMI listening post in the center of Rome that had been spying on journalists and anyone opposed to the Berlusconi regime.
Prosecutor Spataro was particularly disturbed when one of his investigators helping with surveillance of top SISMI figures apparently threw himself off a motorway over-pass to his death. However, Spataro managed to strike a deal with a SISMI agent in return for a reduced prison sentence. The agent agreed to testify that the abduction of Omar was government approved and that after 9/11 a decision was taken that SISMI could aid the CIA in its renditions policy. A policeman involved in the abduction also took a plea deal as did a former reporter. Spataro has so far charged five SISMI agents including its former chief and his deputy with involvement in the kidnapping.
As for Omar, he remains in Egypt, claiming through lawyers he was tortured there. The Egyptian government has withdrawn his passport, preventing him from giving evidence in Milan. After he was abducted in February 2003 he was held in an interrogation center for close to a month and released. He immediately phoned his wife and relatives in Milan and that angered the Egyptian authorities who returned him to prison. He was not released again until February 11, 2006, five days before Milan's Prosecutor Spataro told the international media he was going to seek the extradition of CIA officers. It is believed the CIA abducted Omar as a quid pro quo for the involvement of Egypt in the interrogation of suspects abducted by CIA agents across the globe. The Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak had long wanted Omar in its clutches. Had his abduction not become an international issue some observers believe he would vanished into the Egyptian prison system in which torture and disappearances are common occurrences.
On June 9, 2007, with the Milan trial under way, Prosecutor Spataro told the media that his aim was to demonstrate that western democracies could wage a war on terror using existing laws and by showing respect for those laws.
“We want the punishment of terrorists but in our courtrooms. And we don’t need to give our enemies a justification for recruiting terrorists,” he added.
The Milan case is a spectacle that has drawn wide international scrutiny, with the exception of the United States and its media outlets that have shown little interest in the matter. Meanwhile, even with the refusal of the US to extradite those CIA agents named in the Italian indictment, Spataro has moved on with his case. The Milan courtroom where the trial is being held has cages reserved for the accused CIA agents but those cages will undoubtedly remain empty throughout the proceedings. Somewhat bizarrely, the court atmosphere otherwise seems normal with the five Italian spies in the dock. But, to add to the strange character of the event, the CIA accused are represented in court by lawyers who claim they have never spoken to their clients. The previous Berlusconi government never formally asked for the extradition of the CIA operatives and it thought unlikely the new administration of Romano Prodi wants a confrontation with the White House by making such a request. Still the trial will go ahead and it is likely when the German case gets underway later this year jurists and the public in Munich will witness a similar image of an empty dock reserved for alleged CIA kidnappers.
The renditions issue and the scandal of secret prisons in Rumanian and Poland will not go away because there are other ongoing investigations into the CIA’s activities in Europe. Some are being handled within the European parliament but others could end up in the courts in countries like Sweden. To date, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has not been involved but some experts believe it is only a matter of time before it is dragged into the controversy.
The European Parliament’s Swiss investigator, Dick Marti, continues to build a dossier on CIA secret prisons and an extensive log of CIA rendition flights in and out of European airports. He has been able to link the movement of CIA jets between Poland and Rumania, as well as destinations such as Afghanistan, Morocco, Egypt, Dubai, Jordan and Morocco. He has also uncovered information showing that the CIA, despite denials by the US, Polish and Rumanian governments ran secret prisons in Poland and Rumania between 2003 and 2005.

IRAQ'S HIRED GUNS LIVE BY DIFFERENT RULES

Ongoing investigations into shootings on the streets of Baghdad in May by hired guns from the USA private security company, Blackwater, illustrate the dangerous and often unregulated roles of security personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Blackwater, which has headquarters in North Carolina, has been in the headlines before when a blood thirsty mob in Fallujah killed four of its staff and hung their charred bodies from a bridge in the town. It is one of the largest US security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan and boasts that is has the best protection staff in the world. It has provided interrogators to the US military and CIA. Iraq has been a lucrative outlet, providing Blackwater with multi-million dollar contracts from the Pentagon and State Department and from companies involved in reconstruction. Most of its security personnel are former US military personnel, some of them with Ranger or Special Forces’ training.
In the course of one week in May, Blackwater security staff became involved in two controversial episodes that drew severe criticism from the Iraqi authorities. The first was when hired guns in a Blackwater convoy opened fire on an Iraqi driver, killing him in a hail of bullets. The Blackwater version of events was that its men feared the car was loaded with a bomb and was aimed at their vehicles. First, they waved at the driver but he ignored them. They then fired a warning shot to disable the car’s engine and when that failed they shot through his windscreen. The explanation offered by Blackwater has a familiar ring to it and mirrors explanations given in hundreds of such incidents in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. Iraqis presented an alternative account. They claimed the driver was leaving a gas station when he came across a Blackwater convoy. He presented no threat yet was shot in the head, chest and shoulder.
Immediately after the shooting there was a tense stand-off between hired guns in the Blackwater convoy and heavily armed Iraqi police and soldiers because the shooting occurred outside the Iraqi Interior Ministry. According to Iraqi sources, Blackwater personnel refused to provide identification or an explanation for their actions. Tension was quickly defused by the timely arrival of a passing US military convoy. Days later, a second Blackwater convoy transporting US State Department staff through the center of Baghdad came under heavy fire from the ground and rooftops. US and Iraqi military units were called in and a major gun battle followed in which Apache attack helicopters were used. The outcome was that after an hour of fierce fighting the Blackwater convoy was safely extracted from the area with no casualties. There were no figures for the number of insurgents killed or for dead or wounded civilians given that the episode occurred in a heavily populated neighborhood.
Shootings by hired guns under contract to a US company like Blackwater or one of the ten British security firms that operate in Iraq and Afghanistan are hard to investigate because of a lack of oversight of their activities. It is estimated there are 40,000 to 50,000 security personnel in Iraq alone, representing a large private army which is kept in place by lucrative contracts from the US and British governments, as well as international corporations like Halliburton, who do not trust the Iraqi police or military to guard installations, food transports, pipelines, diplomatic staff or key installations. When the White House cities the figure of 150,000 for the numbers of US military personnel in Iraq it conveniently ignores the role of this smaller army that eases the overall military burden of the US and coalition forces.
Hired guns get paid well but have to risk their lives in Iraq every day. Between January and March this year 149 were killed, bringing the overall death toll of security personnel since 2003 to 900. But even those figures may not tell the full story since there are few facts one can authenticate about this private army. For example, it is difficult to establish how much it costs to keep such a larger number of highly paid former soldiers on the battlefield. There is another troubling mystery and that is the lack of information about transgressions committed by security staff. It is not known how many investigations have been carried out into their role in controversial shootings and in into their use of questionable interrogation techniques in places like Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities. If there are files on all these matters they are kept a closely guarded secret.
Lately, the situation in Iraq has become so unstable that contractors like Kroll Security International have pulled out, realizing that there is easier money to be earned elsewhere. One of the interesting statistics to emerge about the private security world in Iraq is that almost half the hired guns are Brits who number more than three times the British military force in Iraq. From the 1960s onwards, British ex-soldiers have been prominent in mercenary armies across the globe. It is a phenomenon that either reflects a warrior-like mentality among British ex-servicemen or the fact that they feel it is the only way they can earn high rewards for long years spent in the military. There is also the fact that from the 1940s the British acquired considerable counter insurgency experience fighting in what they called “colonial emergencies” in far flung British outposts like Palestine, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus. Many soldiers who fought in N. Ireland later offered their services to contractors in African conflict zones.
The size of the British contingent of hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan is slightly overmatched by Americans but there are many white South Africans who were mercenaries in African war zones. Most security companies have a scale of payments for ex-soldiers and policemen ranging from $800 to $1,000 a day. Half that sum is paid to men with limited military service, or those who can only claim to have experience providing security at nightclubs. Alongside the hired guns are staffs that provide basic services such as driving, cleaning etc and they are often Asians who are paid basic salaries but salaries considerably higher than what they would earn in their own countries.
The risks facing security personnel were highlighted with the recent kidnapping of four Britons working for Garda World, a Canadian security company. It is thought their kidnappers were members of a Shiite militia group that had support and inside information from Iraqi Interior Ministry security personnel. The overall image of hired guns in Iraq has not been an uplifting one. One of the most notorious examples of how they sometimes operate was displayed in a video posted on the internet. It showed security personnel shooting at Iraqi civilian cars like they were in an amusement arcade. According to human rights campaigners there have been scores of examples of civilian vehicles being randomly fired on and no action taken. Some British members of parliament have accused the British and US governments of allowing this private army to operate outside the law by providing it with legal immunity.
Since 2004 security companies have been bound only by a memorandum issued by the then Coalition Provisional Authority, that strange body which was later unable to account for the disappearance of over $20 billion US taxpayer dollars sent to Iraq in cash. The CPA under the control of the L. Paul Bremer, who had the grand title of US Presidential Envoy and Administrator, issued Memorandum 17. It was a set of guidelines that permitted security personnel to use “deadly force” if their lives or the lives of those they were paid to protect were in danger. There was a stipulation that while they were not to engage directly in combat operations with the US and Iraqi militaries they could do so to keep their clients safe. Controversially they were also accorded the right to stop search, detain and disarm Iraqi civilians. These guidelines were judged to contravene international law. What bothered some observers was the fact that hired guns could move freely in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan and were often not available for interview by investigators. They also appeared to have the same legal immunity accorded to the US military which guaranteed that the Iraqi authorities had no right to detain, interrogate or prosecute anyone employed by a contractor. That feature of the relationship between contractors and the Iraqi authorities may have been the catalyst for enabling some security personnel to feel they could do whatever they wanted to Iraqis without fear of retribution.
From a US perspective, one of the effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially Iraq, is that major components of the US defense sector have been outsourced to the private sector, even within homeland security. Those areas that have seen the greatest private sector growth have been in the fields of intelligence gathering, diplomatic protection, border and port security, overseas training of foreign police and military and the guarding of US corporate installations and staff across the globe.
So far, Congress has shown little appetite to investigate and regulate the private security industry which is a billion dollar business that has used its wealth to develop a powerful Washington lobby. It has also become such an integral part of the Pentagon’s overseas strategies that is difficult to see how its growing power can be curbed.