AAARGH

Numéro 24 -- 15 mai 2003 >[email protected]< Nouvelles en français et en anglais Créée en 1991 par Serge Thion News in French and English Established 1991 by Serge Thion

La Commission des droits de l'homme de l'ONU réaffirme le droit des Palestiniens à résister

New York, 15 avril 2003. La Commission des droits de l'homme de l'ONU a adopté ce matin à Genève trois résolutions ayant trait aux violations des droits de l'homme dans les territoires occupés. Dans le premier de ces textes, elle réaffirme que le peuple palestinien a le droit légitime de résister à l'occupation israélienne afin de libérer sa terre et de pouvoir exercer son droit à l'auto détermination. Dans une seconde résolution portant sur les droits de l'homme dans le Golan syrien occupé, la Commission engage Israël, puissance occupante, à renoncer à modifier le caractère physique, la composition démographique, la structure institutionnelle et le statut juridique du Golan syrien occupé. Elle souligne également que les personnes déplacées de la population du Golan syrien occupé doivent pouvoir rentrer chez elles et recouvrer leurs biens. Enfin, par la résolution sur les colonies israéliennes dans les territoires arabes occupés, la Commission prie instamment le Gouvernement israélien d'empêcher toute nouvelle installation de colons dans les territoires occupés et de mettre un terme à la construction de la barrière dite de sécurité dans les territoires palestiniens occupés, y compris Jérusalem-Est et alentour. La Commission avait déjà adopté hier une résolution sur la situation en Palestine occupée par laquelle elle réaffirmait "le droit inaliénable, permanent, absolu du peuple palestinien de disposer de lui-même, y compris son droit d'établir son Etat palestinien souverain et indépendant" ainsi que trois résolutions portant respectivement sur la question du Sahara occidental, l'utilisation de mercenaires et la lutte contre la diffamation des religions. Veuillez consulter le site du Centre de nouvelles ONU pour plus d'information:

 

A propos de l'accord entre l'Europe et Israël

a) Violations israéliennes des droits de líhomme

         - Líarticle 2 de líaccord stipule que "Les relations entre les parties, de même que toutes les dispositions du présent accord, se fondent sur le respect des droits de líhomme et des principes démocratiques, qui inspire leurs politiques internes et internationales et constitue un élément essentiel du présent accord". Israël a commis des violations systématiques des droits de líhomme dans les territoires palestiniens occupés. Ces violations sont particulièrement graves puisque Israël, la Puissance occupante, ne remplit pas les obligations juridiques qui lui incombent en vertu de la quatrième Convention de Genève de 1949 relative à la protection des personnes civiles en temps de guerre. En effet, Israël:

         -- Impose des punitions collectives aux civils palestiniens; pilonne sans distinction des quartiers résidentiels; détruit et confisque couramment les biens des Palestiniens; entrave la liberté de circulation des personnes et des marchandises par des barrages intérieurs et extérieurs; empêche la circulation des vivres et des fournitures médicales; porte gravement atteinte à la santé publique; attaque des établissements et services médicaux et hospitaliers, des écoles, des mosquées et des églises; porte atteinte au droit à líéducation et à la liberté de religion; capture et torture illégalement des citoyens palestiniens, y compris des enfants; pratique systématiquement líhomicide extrajudiciaire de civils palestiniens, y compris de hauts représentants de líAutorité palestinienne; transfert sa population vers les territoires palestiniens occupés. Ces actions, qui ne sont pas justifiées par des nécessités militaires et qui sont exécutées de façon illicite et arbitraire, représentent des infractions graves à la quatrième Convention de Genève.

b) Violations israéliennes des principes démocratiques

         Outre les infractions graves à la quatrième Convention de Genève au regard des Palestiniens dans les territoires occupés, Israël viole les droits de líhomme et les principes démocratiques eu égard aux Palestiniens qui sont citoyens israéliens et vivent à líintérieur de líÉtat díIsraël. Les Israéliens palestiniens font líobjet de discriminations, tant du fait des lois écrites israéliennes que des pratiques coutumières (voir le point 3 ci-dessous: "LíÉtat díIsraël níest-il pas la seule démocratie du Moyen-Orient ?").

c) Violation israélienne de la Charte des Nations unies

         Israël, qui est membre de líOrganisation des Nations unies, viole systématiquement la Charte en ne se conformant pas à son obligation de síabstenir de recourir à líemploi de la force dans les relations internationales (art. 2.4 de la Charte des Nations unies) et en refusant au peuple palestinien le droit à disposer de lui-même (articles 1.2 et 55), normes péremptoires du droit international général.

d) Violations israéliennes des dispositions de líaccord relatives aux échanges commerciaux

         Depuis le début de líoccupation de la Cisjordanie et de la bande de Gaza, les services douaniers israéliens successifs ont systématiquement certifié les produits fabriqués dans les territoires occupés (la Cisjordanie et la bande de Gaza palestiniennes, et le plateau du Golan syrien), y compris les colonies de peuplement israéliennes implantées dans líÉtat díIsraël, comme étant originaires de líÉtat díIsraël aux fins des régimes préférentiels institués par les accords commerciaux successifs conclus entre Israël et la Communauté européenne.

Israël viole ouvertement:

         -- le champ territorial de líaccord (article 83: "Le présent accord síapplique, díune part, aux territoires où les traités instituant la Communauté européenne et la Communauté européenne du charbon et de líacier sont díapplication et dans les conditions prévues par lesdits traités et, díautre part, au territoire de líÉtat díIsraël");

         -- les règles díorigine (le protocole 4 "relatif à la définition de la notion de "produits originaires" et aux méthodes de coopération administrative" prévoit líoctroi du traitement préférentiel aux produits fabriqués à líintérieur du territoire des Parties, excluant de ce fait les produits fabriqués en tout ou partie dans les territoires palestiniens occupés);

         -- les dispositions sur la coopération douanière (le protocole 5 "sur líassistance mutuelle en matière douanière entre les autorités administratives" stipule, à líarticle 2, alinéa 1, que "les parties se prêtent mutuellement assistance, dans les domaines relevant de leur compétence, selon les modalités et dans les conditions prévues par le présent protocole, en vue de garantir la bonne application de la législation douanière, notamment en prévenant, recherchant et constatant les opérations qui lui sont contraires"). [...]

Extrait de Groupe de travail Aprodev sur le Moyen-Orient. LíAccord díassociation entre líUnion européenne et Israël. Introduction

Pour les Palestiniens, c'est une feuille de route qui ne conduit nulle part

Par Sa'id Ghazali

         La publication de la "feuille de route", et la nomination du nouveau Premier Ministre palestinien, Mahmoud Abbas, sont considérées dans le monde comme une nouvelle opportunité de résoudre le conflit du Proche-Orient.Mais la plupart des Palestiniens, de l'homme de la rue au leader politique, ne pensent pas que la feuille de route soit une si grosse affaire ni qu'elle mettra un terme à leur souffrance pas plus qu'elle ne leur permettra de réaliser leurs aspirations nationales. La feuille de route n'est rien d'autre qu'un ticket d'entrée pour la salle de bal dans laquelle les Israéliens continueront à jouer les mêmes vieilles rengaines contre le "terrorisme". Les officiels palestiniens avec leurs cartes de VIP et ce qu'il reste de leurs voitures de fantaisie, se sont préparés pour la danse excitante qui les placera une fois de plus au centre de l'attention internationale. Une lecture attentive de la feuille de route laisse présager une fin malheureuse. Le plan de paix prend en compte les exigences israéliennes concernant la fin des attentats suicides et les autres attaques des militants palestiniens. Mais il n'accorde pas une égale importance aux demandes des Palestiniens Pourquoi la feuille de route n'inclut-elle pas clairement et sans équivoque la demande principale, à savoir qu'Israël se retire dans ses frontières internationalement reconnues d'avant 1967? Au lieu de cela, elle fait référence à la Résolution 242 des Nations-Unies, dont Israël ne tient aucun compte depuis longtemps. Qu'en est-il du futur des quartiers arabes de Jerusalem et des lieux saints musulmans et chrétiens? Où est la solution pour les millions de Palestiniens réfugiés à travers tout le Proche-Orient?

         La feuille de route ne reconnaît pas le conflit israélo-palestinien comme la première source d'instabilité dans la région. Au contraire, tout est de la faute des Palestiniens, qui ont déclenché l'Intifada contre Israël. En réalité, la feuille de route n'est rien d'autre que la mise en place progressive d'un plan de sécurité pour Israël, qui ouvre la porte à une collaboration entre l'Autorité Palestinienne (AP) et les Israéliens pour réprimer le Hamas, les Brigades des Martyrs d'al-Aqsa et les autres groupes de combattants. L' AP doit le faire en premier. Tant qu'elle n'y réussira pas - la tâche n'est pas facile - il n'y aura pas de pas en avant de la part d'Israël. L'armée israélienne ne se retirera même pas des villes palestiniennes réoccupées. Et si L'AP réussit? Alors les négociations commenceront sur un état palestinien avec des frontières provisoires. Les questions difficiles - les frontières permanentes, ce qu'il advient de Jerusalem (que les deux parties veulent comme capitale), le droit au retour des réfugiés palestiniens- devront attendre jusqu'à la création de l'état provisoire. Selon Ariel Sharon, cet état palestinien ne couvrirait que 42% de la Cisjordanie. Dernièrement, il a exigé que les Palestiniens renoncent à leur demande du droit au retour pour les Palestiniens, obligés de fuir de leurs maisons en 1948. Renoncer à cette demande est la condition préalable pour qu'Israël consente à accepter la feuille de route. Mais ce qui importe n'est pas d'argumenter contre la feuille de route. Les faits sur le terrain tels qu'ils sont vécus quotidiennement par le peuple palestinien sont plus révélateurs. Les conditions montrent l'impossibilité de créer un état palestinien indépendant, sans considérer le conflit israélo-palestinien comme la source première du problème. Le refus d'Israël, des Etats-Unis et de la Grande-Bretagne de ne pas voir les changements sur le terrain dans les territoires occupés ne signifie pas que ces changements n'existent pas. Les colonies qui ne cessent de se développer, la construction de routes de contournement à l'usage exclusif des colons, les camps et les zones d'entraînements de l'armée israélienne, le nouveau mur de séparation qu'Israël est en train de construire pour enfermer les Palestiniens en Cisjordanie, les ressources d'eau sous contrôle israélien, voilà la réalité.

         J'ai parlé dernièrement de la feuille de route avec l'un des ministres du nouveau cabinet de M. Abbas. Il a reconnu qu'il n'était pas sûr que le plan de paix aboutirait au retrait de l'armée israélienne de toute la Cisjordanie et la Bande de Gaza. Il m'a dit que la victoire écrasante des Etats-Unis en Irak oblige l'Autorité Palestinienne à baisser la tête. Pour lui, la feuille de route est une ligne de sauvetage diplomatique pour l'AP. "Nous ne pouvons pas la rejeter parce que nous ferions face à une catastrophe", dit-il. Mais qu'y a-t-il de plus catastrophique que le fardeau écrasant de 36 ans années d'occupation? Trente-six ans au cours desquels plus de deux cents colonies ont été construites et des milliers de Palestiniens tués. L'Autorité Palestinienne est née de l'expérience ratée d'Oslo. D'après les accords d'Oslo, un état palestinien était censé mettre fin au conflit. Maintenant on demande aux Palestiniens de considérer un état comme une autre phase intérimaire, à travers laquelle ils doivent sauter dans l'inconnu.

         Les Palestiniens et les Israéliens ont perdu un temps précieux à négocier ces questions importantes sans succès. Le résultat de sept ans de négociations marathon sous le processus d'Oslo a été nul. La même dynamique a été mise en place délibérément dans la feuille de route. L' Autorité Palestinienne doit finalement accepter ce qu'Israël proposera ou être écrasée à nouveau, comme elle a été écrasée par Israël au cours des trente mois de soulèvement. Dans la rue palestinienne, on entend un point de vue très différent de celui de l' Autorité. A Naplouse, j'ai parlé avec un groupe représentatif de gens: un médecin, un charpentier, un épicier, un homme modéré qui dirige la prière à la mosquée locale et un ancien combattant qui a perdu sa main droite dans une explosion. Je leur ai demandé ce qu'ils pensaient de la feuille de route. Les réponses ont été abruptes: "Un autre Oslo." "Vide de sens". "Une nouvelle expérience défaillante, une viande pourrie." "Même un collaborateur ne l'accepterait pas."

The Independent - 1er Mai 2003, traduit par D. Mourgue.

         Prominent Israeli Professor, Ilan Pappe, Praises Jenin Book

         "This May Be the Most Authoritative Report We Will Ever Get"

         Palestine Chronicle Editor's Note: Despite a year of a ceaseless attempts by the Israeli government and media to discount the war crimes committed in the refugee camp of Jenin in April, 2002, the truth of what many believe to have been a massacre, has forced itself on the conscience of humanity in a forceful and compelling way. Many believe that "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion", edited by Ramzy Baroud, with a preface by Noam Chomsky, played a key role in reversing the tide, by presenting a worthy challenge to the Israeli depiction of what happened there. Only a few months after its publishing, "Searching Jenin" stirred a controversy that extended to radio talk shows and universities in United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and throughout the entire world. The book was recently reviewed by one of the most notable and respected Israeli academics, Professor Ilan Pappe. Pappe, the Director of the International Relations Division at Haifa University in Israel!, was the first Israeli scholar to publicly take a stance on the material contained in the book. The Palestine Chronicle, the editors and publishers of this book are indebted to Professor Pappe, for his courage and truthfulness. They also wish to thank all of those who were involved in making this effort so successful. We are deeply grateful for all of you.

Searching Jenin:

"This May Be the Most Authoritative Report We Will Ever Get"
by Ilan Pappe

         Over a year has passed now, since the Israeli army invaded the refugee camp in Jenin, destroyed its houses, killed many of its inhabitants and committed one of the worst war crimes in this present Intifada, Intifada al-Aqsa. With a successful campaign of distortion and manipulation of evidence, the Israeli foreign ministry, with the help of the United States, succeeded in hiding from the world the horrors of Jenin, and even worse, in intimidating anyone daring to tell the truth about what had happened there. This is the great significance and enormous importance of this book. "Searching Jenin" is the first systematic account, through eyewitness reports, on the events in April 2002. Two other books appeared in Arabic, but this is the first one in English. It puts the events in context and it highlights the true nature of the crime, while not falling into the pitfall laid by the Israelis who succeeded in drawing the UN inquiry commission into supposedly academic discussion of how to describe a massacre. As comes out vividly from this book, Jenin was not just a massacre, it was an inhuman act of unimaginable barbarism.

         Noam Chomsky, in his introduction to the book, puts it in the context of crimes sponsored by America and he is someone who recorded meticulously these crimes in the past. Ramzy Baroud, in his preface, notes rightly that the book will not answer the question of how many people were killed, nor will it cover every aspect of the crime. But it does convey the message, as one of the witnesses put it that, 'what I have seen are crimes; sometimes greater than an earthquake'. And this is not just an impression, as this book makes it all too clear: every aspect of the Israeli actions in Jenin can easily be identified as war crimes, according to the Hague convention. Testimonies like the ones presented do not only help to shed light on many of the chapters hidden by the Israeli screening and news' manipulation, it also brings forcefully the emotions, sounds and smells of the catastrophe. The pain is still there in those telling the stories. The book conveys the lingering agony through the italic interventions of the editors. Through them, we learn that while witnesses recall the horror of April 2002, like Hussein Hammad, they have to stop several times ˆ sometimes to repose and occasionally to weep, before being able to resume, like Hammad does, their stories.

         Sometimes the testimonies, at first glance, seem not to tell enough ˆ as if the survivors wish to repress the horror rather than tell it in full. But the economy of words reveals quite often, even more about what had happened. Rafidia al-Jamal is very laconic in a way, in her testimony, but the full extent of the atrocity comes out in a very short sentence she utters. This is the case when she describes how she prevented desperately her husband - who had saved her life a moment earlier ˆ from searching after his sister. "Don't go" I told him, "She is Dead". And then she reports dryly: 'my children have nightmares'. Other witnesses, especially mothers, feel the need to expand when it comes to their children's nightmares. Each with her own way of coping with the persisting torment of their children. Mothers all over the West Bank, and not only in Jenin a year after the massacre, spent sleepless nights with terrified children who witnessed the brutality at first hand. In Jenin, Farid and Ali Hawashin are such typical victims of continued nightmares of fear, that according to their mother, haunt them even during daylight. For them it is mainly the noise that disturbs their peace of mind: that of the loudspeaker that arrived near midnight at their home, that of the brutal burst into the house, that of the men pleading with the soldiers before being thrown out to the street, and then, worst of all, that of shots, the groaning of wounded and the silence of the dead. Noise and death repeat themselves in the memories of everyone in this book.

         With these memories of sound and vision, the search for Jenin continues throughout this powerful document. It is a search for truth, but for other things as well. It is a search for loved ones unaccounted for, long after the massacre ended, and then there is a search for a remedy to the pain of the nightmare, and these searches were far more important than the question of how many exactly died in Jenin. Even without this question being answered, there is a sense that this is the most authoritative report we will ever get. Each reader will take something different from this book. For me as an Israeli, I find the description of the soldiers' conduct the most disturbing and most convincing part of the evidence. It is a story of the dehumanization that raged in Jenin. This is so well epitomized in the chronicles of Nidal Abu al-Hayjah as reported by Ihab Ayadi. After Nidal was wounded and lay crying for help, anyone who tried to come to his rescue was shot by Israeli snipers. He bled to death as so many others. Technically, he was not massacred, he was tortured to death. The deadly precision of the snipers as a means of deterring rescue operations is being reported in other testimonies in this book, such as that of Taha Zbyde, who was killed eventually by a sniper. This mode of action was and still is enacted wherever there is an Israeli operation in the occupied territories. It is part of the vicious repertoire of the inhuman occupation ˆ the daily physical harassment and mental abuse at check! points, the prevention from pregnant mothers or the wounded to get to hospitals, the starvation and the confiscation of water. No wonder some Israelis felt this brings back memories from the darker days of the Second World War. I remembered Anna Frank's diary when I read Um Sirri's horrorific recollection of how women tried to swallow a cough that irritated the Israeli soldiers standing above them, pointing their loaded guns at them.

         But there are ways of opposing the inhumanity of the occupier. This is why mothers in this collection talk proudly of babies born after the massacre. The expectant young Sana al-Sani decided to call her baby, if it is a girl, 'Zuhur', which means 'flowers'. This wish is expressed in the book after Sana recalls one of the most horrid memories brought in this collection. Her husband was slaughtered on his house's doorsteps, and yet it is not revenge or retribution that guides Sana, but a dream of having a different kind of life. But can flowers such as Sana's daughter flourish once more in the 'camp of martyrs' as the survivors called what was once their home? The flowers will have to overcome the desolation and bareness. Most of the houses were destroyed during the invasion. The Israeli army, after it expelled the resistance forces, located its artillery near the mosque and shelled the camp indiscriminately. Moreover, for blooming to take place where death once reigned, the smell would have to evaporate first. An American volunteer, Jennifer Lowenstein, until today can not sleep as the odor of death still troubles her nights and the nights of those few westerners, who gave evidence in this book, and who were fortunate enough not to be killed. They helped to tell the world the truth of what had happened. One of them is Tevor Baumgartner, who is the one who revealed the existence of mass graves, an allegation that was refuted early on in the Israeli denial, a denial that was so eagerly accepted by the United States. This is a must, albeit a very difficult, reading. The campaign against the continued dehumanization of the Palestinians in the occupied territories can not be based on slogans and general accusations. There is a need for indictments such as one provided here, which will hopefully very soon arise enough public indignation so as to vie governments around the world to take action to save the Palestinian people before it is too late.

Attack on freedom of worship in Jerusalem

In unprecedented move, Israeli police blocked today (Saturday)all access to the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest Christian shrine in the world, in the midst of Easter celebration. Just as thousands of pilgrims gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the Easter Saturday feast of Light, the main Christian Orthodox feast attended by Christians of all denominations, Israeli police blocked off bigger parts of the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem. Never, since the Jewish takeover of Jerusalem in 1967 , the city witnessed such display of brutal anti-Christian force.

This step comes after the government of Israel discussed the new bill calling for heavy prison sentences of persons publically praising Christ or baptising others. The move was "explained" by desire of the Jews to prevent clashes between Christian denominations. However, there were no such clashes, and it looked like a rather forced explanation to me and other observers. For a few years, the Jewish authorities of Jerusalem interfere with freedom of Muslim worship in the city, and they do not allow anybody below forty to come to the holy Mosque al-Aqsa. Now the same strongarm methods are used against Christian pilgrims. As for the Christians of the Holy Land, they were prevented to come to the Easter services to Jerusalem, and priests - among them Father Atalla Hanna - carried with them the Holy Fire, like Prometheus, to the besieged Palestinian Christians of Ramallah and Bethlehem.

It was an explicit attack on freedom of Christian worship in the Holy City, this display of brutal force, with its unneeded blocking of streets. I write these lines now in Jerusalem that looks like being occupied again, and I read an email (below) sent by "Christians" who call ... to support Israel in its war against Christ. If they are Christians, Nazis were Zionists. Read and respond to these so-called Christians! Do not let JINSA and its slaves to misuse the name of Christ!

Israel Adam Shamir, 26 avril 2003

Join us on the Lawyers' Mission...

Get the latest Legal Activist News from Israel. Subscribe to the Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center Update.

Join with attorneys, law professors and jurists from around the world on

THE ULTIMATE LAWYERSí MISSION TO ISRAEL

Sunday June 22 - Tuesday July 1, 2003

"a judicial, military, humanitarian, historical, religious, and political reality check"

Shurat HaDin ‚ Israel Law Center presents a first-of-its-kind mission to Israel for English-speaking lawyers, jurists and legal academics. "The Ultimate Lawyersí Mission to Israel", will be in Israel from June 22 through July 1, 2003.

The mission program will focus on the military and strategic dangers to the Jewish state from Arab terrorism and Islamic extremism, with a special emphasis on the legal challenges involved in combating these threats. The participants will meet with legal advisors and prosecutors from the Israeli Justice Ministry and the IDF JAG Corps to learn about the complex and fascinating legal challenges involved in effectively conducting the war on terror. Mission participants will receive briefings from senior commanders of Israelís security services and other strategic decision-makers who shape and lead Israeliís multifaceted war on terrorism.

The mission will also visit military and security installations and meet with the dedicated members of Israelís intelligence, military and security services who actually carry out fight against terrorism on a daily basis.

Mission Highlights:

-- Briefings by past and present officers in the IDF Intelligence and Operations branches, including the senior commanders of the Shin Bet security service and Mossad.

-- An exhibition by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) undercover soldiers who carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinian terrorists and deep penetration raids in Arab territory.

-- Observing the trial of Hamas terrorists in an IDF military court.

-- Discussions with Israelís Arab agents who infiltrate the terrorist groups and provide real-time intelligence. Intensive, hands-on tours of the front line military positions, the border check-points and intelligence bases.

-- A jeep tour in the Judean Desert, water activities on Lake Kinneret, a cook-out barbecue and a Shabbat enjoying the rich religious and historic wonders of Jerusalemís Old City.

First Class Arrangements

The mission includes five-star accommodations at the Sheraton Plaza Jerusalem, luxury bus transportation and glatt kosher dining through Israel as coordinated by Isram Travel, the recognized leader in luxury travel to Israel. A dedicated Executive Communications Center at the hotel will be open around-the-clock with Internet, telephone and facsimile capabilities, and each mission participant will receive a personal cell phone for use while in Israel, all designed to help keep in touch with the office back home.

*** Spouses and non-lawyers are also invited ***

Mission Costs

The cost of the nine-day Lawyersí Mission, including plane fare, hotel accommodations, meals and full program (including all tariffs and taxes) is US $2,750.

Participants are also required to make a tax-deductible donation to Shurat HaDin to aid in the fight against Arab terror (details below).

Shurat HaDin reserves the right to refuse participation to anyone in its sole discretion.

Donations

Mission participants are required to make a tax-deductible donation of $500 to $5,000 to Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center to assist in the funding of the terror victim litigation against the Palestinian terrorist organizations, their leaders and financial patrons. These civil actions are currently being brought in Israel, the United States and Europe on behalf of the victims and families of the victims of the suicide bombings and drive-by shootings and enable them to fight back against those who have killed and injured their loved ones and devastated their lives forever.

These lawsuits are an effective means of bankrupting the perpetrators of these heinous crimes and providing long term financial security for the victims and families, many of whom have been economically crippled with the lose [loss] and wounding of breadwinners.

The donations will permit the survivors of the hundreds of killed and injured to seek justice and compensation through the court systems around the world. Shurat Hadin will provide all donors with a tax-deductible receipt for Internal Revenue Service purposes.

Les prisonniers de Guantanamo reviennent dans le débat public

Patrick Jarreau

Alors que John Ashcroft, ministre américain de la justice, devait évoquer le dossier à Paris, lundi 6 mai, en marge de la préparation du sommet du G 8 dont la France sera l'hôte, à Evian, début juin, la situation des prisonniers de Guantanamo Bay, la base américaine située sur l'île de Cuba, est revenue dans le débat public aux Etats-Unis. L'hebdomadaire US News révèle que le secrétaire d'Etat, Colin Powell, a adressé à son collègue de la défense, Donald Rumsfeld, le 14 avril, une lettre "vigoureuse" critiquant les décisions prises par les militaires au sujet de ces détenus. Selon des responsables ayant eu connaissance de cette lettre, M. Powell relève, notamment, la présence, dans cette prison, de quatre adolescents âgés de 13 à 16 ans et de deux vieillards de 88 et 98 ans.

M. Powell fait état des plaintes de huit pays, alliés des Etats-Unis, dont des ressortissants sont détenus à Guantanamo Bay et qui réclament, en vain, qu'ils leur soient remis. Parmi ces pays figurent la Grande-Bretagne, l'Espagne, la Russie et le Pakistan. Le chef de la diplomatie américaine s'étonne que plus d'un an se soit écoulé depuis le transfert des premiers prisonniers arrêtés en Afghanistan, en janvier 2002, sans que leur situation ait été clarifiée.

"Un processus lent"

M. Rumsfeld a répondu à M. Powell en reprochant au département d'Etat de ne pas avoir négocié avec les pays concernés des accords d'extradition garantissant que ces détenus passeraient en jugement. Fin avril, les deux ministres ont discuté de ce problème avec le président Bush. Interrogé sur CNN, dimanche, M. Rumsfeld a déclaré qu'il aimerait, lui aussi, que les décisions concernant les prisonniers de Guantanamo Bay aillent plus vite. "C'est un processus lent", a-t-il dit, rejetant le blâme, implicitement, sur les services de renseignement et de police chargés d'interroger les détenus et de se prononcer sur le cas de chacun d'eux. Le Pentagone a exclu que des Irakiens soient transférés à Guantanamo Bay, mais refuse de donner des indications précises sur le nombre et la nationalité des personnes qui y sont détenues.

Officieusement, il y en aurait 660, de 42 nationalités. Les militaires ont reconnu qu'il y a, parmi elles, des mineurs. Il semble que ces garçons, dont la situation a provoqué les protestations d'Amnesty International et de Human Rights Watch, soient arrivés à la base cette année. Au motif que tous ces détenus sont des "combattants irréguliers", capturés dans la lutte contre Al-Qaida et les talibans, les Etats-Unis leur refusent la protection de la Convention de Genève sur les prisonniers de guerre.

Le Monde, 6 mai 2003.

JOURNAL DE GUANTANAMO

17/04/03 : Noir, gris et blanc: Les autorités US ont divisé les 662 détenus de Guantanamo en 3 catégories: les noirs, les gris et les blancs. Les noirs devraient être jugés aux USA, les gris pourraient être renvoyés dans leurs pays pour y être jugés et les blancs pourraient être remis en liberté. C'est le secrétaire d'Etat à l'Intérieur du Pakistan, Tasneem Noorani, qui a révélé cela à son retour d'une réunion à Washington du groupe de travail conjoint pakistano-US sur le terrorisme. D'après Noorani, aucun des 60 Pakistanais détenus à Guantanamo ne fait partie des noirs, la plupart font partie des gris et pourraient donc être livrés au Pakistan pour y être jugés. Des officiels US à Washington ont déclaré qu'ils étaient disposés à remettre d'autres prisonniers de Guantanamo à leurs pays d'origine, mais que ces pays refusaient de les recevoir, par crainte de représailles de la part d'Al Qaïda. ´Ils veulent que ce soit les USA qui s'occupent de ces casª, a déclaré un officiel à Washington.

D'autre part, Noorani a déclaré que, selon ses interlocuteurs US, le millier de prisonniers pakistanais encore détenus en Afghanistan pourraient être bientôt remis au Pakistan, les services US ayant presque fini de les interroger. Ils en auraient mis une centaine à part pour d'ultérieurs interrogatoires. Plusieurs milliers de Pakistanais avaient été capturés en Afghanistan, mais une bonne partie d'entre eux avaient été libérés après que leurs familles eurent payé des rançons importantes aux seigneurs de guerre, notamment le général Dostom

14/04/03 -- Le gouvernement saoudien et Guantanamo: Le prince Naif Ibn Abdul Aziz, ministre de l'Intérieur saoudien, a déclaré au cours d'une conférence de presse le 10 avril que dix citoyens saoudiens qui avaient séjourné en Afghanistan avaient été remis aux autorités saoudiennes par les autorités syriennes. Il a ajouté que son gouvernement suivait de près la situation des détenus saoudiens à guantanamo, espérant qu'ils seraient prochainement extradés vers l'Arabie saoudite.

10/04/03 -- Le gouvernement attaque une Coalition en faveur des prisonniers devant la Cour suprême: Dans une requête adressée lundi 7 avril à la Cour suprême des USA, le département US de la justice demande à cette juridiction de confirmer la sentence de la 9ème Cour d'appel fédérale de San Francisco, émise en novembre dernier. Cette sentence déclarait que la Coalition du clergé, des professeurs et avocats n'avait aucune autorité pour entamer une action légale en faveur des prisonniers de Guantanamo. Cette Coalition basée en Californie demande que le gouvernement permette l'accès d'avocats aux prisonniers, définisse les charges retenus contre eux, rende publiques leurs identités et leur permette d'accéder à un tribunal fédéral. Le département de la Justice argue que les prisonniers, capturés à l'étranger et détenus à l'étranger, n'ont pas le droit d'accéder à la juridiction US, en se référant à une sentence de la Cour suprême de 1950 concernant des prisonniers allemands de guerre capturés en Chine. Il estime d'autre part que la Coalition n'a aucune relation avec des prisonniers de Guantanamo qui justifierait qu'elle plaide en leur faveur. De son côté la Coalition estime que son "intérêt général pour le sort des prisonniers" est suffisant pour qu'elle intervienne en leur faveur. La Cour suprême devra décider dans le courant du printemps si elle accepte d'examiner l'affaire, enregistrée sous le nƒ 02-1155, sous le titre: "Coalition of Clergy, Lawyers and Professors, et al, vs. George Walker Bush, president of the United States, et al."

03/04/03 -- 24ème tentative de suicide: Un nouveau prisonnier a tenté de se suicider lundi 31 mars dans sa cellule au camp de Guantanamo. Les gardiens sont intervenus rapidement et l'ont transféré à la section psychiatrique ouverte le 23 mars. Selon le porte-parole militaire, le lieutenent-colonel Barry Johnson, qui a donné cette information, 20 des 35 lits de cette nouvelle section sont actuellement occupés par des prisonniers. 80 prisonniers seraient actuellement traités pour des problèmes de santé mentale, dont 60% seraient sous médication.

Les oubliés de Guantanamo: C'est le titre d'un article de Daikla Dridi publié le 21 mars 2003 sur le site Algeria Interface

World War III Revisionism

by Robert Faurisson

If ever Americans and British do not find evidence of Saddam's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" or of Saddam's (six ?) doubles (in French: sosies), this will be the best possible evidence that those WMDs and those doubles really existed.

Remember the witchcraft trials, the Nazi war criminals trials or the Revisionists trials.

In the past centuries (especially from 1450 to 1650), according to some experts, there were allegedly sixty possible traces on the body of a witch that she had intercourse with Satan but, finally, it seems it was decided, in spite of descriptions made by those naive experts, that the best possible evidence of such an intercourse was that Satan had erased every trace; otherwise he would not have been Satan.

In the last century (especially from 1945), the same thing happened with the Nazi gas chambers and with the witnesses of the gassings of the Jews. There was alledgedly a lot of evidence and testimonies but, finally, it seems it was decided, in spite of demonstrations made by naive experts, that the best possible evidence was that Hitler had ordered the destruction of all those chemical slaughterhouses and the killing of all the witnesses; otherwise he would not have been Hitler. As Simone Veil already put it in 1983: "Everyone knows that the Nazis destroyed those gas chambers and systematically eliminated the witnesses" (France-Soir Magazine, 7 May 1983, p.47).

At the beginning of this very century (especially from 2002), it seems we'll have the same scenario with Saddam's WMDs, and his doubles.

If that is the case, the lies (and the liars ?) should be the same, and Revisionism of WW 3 practiced by Revisionists of WW 2 should be an easy job.

11 May 2003

Baghdad: è stato dato l'ordine di non combattere

´I russi, solo i russi...ª

 Testimonianza esclusiva di un tenente colonnello di Saddam Hussein

Cosa è veramente successo in Iraq? All'inizio del conflitto abbiamo creduto che l'esercito alleato avrebbe con facilità conquistato il deserto, ma che intorno a Baghdad si sarebbe dovuto arrestare. L'assedio della capitale sarebbe durato settimane difesa com'era dal corpo militare scelto di Saddam. Ma la presa di Baghdad è stata meno sofferta di quanto si pensasse. E la prevista opposizione della guardia repubblicana di Saddam che fine ha fatto? Abbiamo incontrato il Tenente Colonnello Amer Fuad Ahmad, professore dell'Accademia militare di Baghdad. Ahmad è fuggito dall'Iraq una settimana prima che cadesse la capitale irachena per sottrarsi alle rappresaglie che sarebbero seguite. L'ufficiale ha accettato di incontrarci in una capitale araba. Dà con amarezza la sua testimonianza di "ufficiale di uno dei più grandi eserciti in Medio Oriente", con tristezza si racconta.

Cosa è stato nascosto all'opinione pubblica? Quanto le parole d'ordine hanno occultato la vera natura del conflitto?

È probabile che i piloti americani non sapessero la verità e pensavano di trovarsi in una vera battaglia e bombardavano tutto quello che vedevano senza pietà colpendo obiettivi civili e la gente innocente. L'America ha sostenuto di volere questa guerra perché c'erano armi di distruzioni di massa in Iraq. Hanno detto che volevano la testa di un dittatore responsabile di crimini contro il suo popolo. Gli alleati hanno ottenuto una vittoria "schiacciante" ma non sono state utilizzate armi chimiche e non ci sono prove certe sulla loro presenza. E intanto Blair tranquillizzava non so chi che i pozzi petroliferi erano al sicuro.

Anche Saddam Hussein ha rassicurato il suo popolo che sarebbe rimasto a combattere fino all'ultimo. Che lui e il suo esercito sarebbero rimasti a difendere l'Iraq dagli invasori fino all'ultimo.

La verità è un'altra. Baghdad è stata consegnata, con i suoi difensori e il suo popolo agli alleati. Saddam l'ha consegnata in cambio della sua salvezza.

Ma non è vero piuttosto che tutta la popolazione irachena non ha voluto difendere il tiranno?

Tutti nel campo di battaglia hanno mentito. L'unica verità è che "l'eroe" di Baghdad, Saddam, si è vendicato del suo popolo. Sapeva che lo odiava e che obbediva ai suoi ordini perché era terrorizzato. La popolazione irachena non ha voluto combattere e difendere il regime, non è bastato a convincerli neanche l'odio verso gli americani ritenuti responsabili di 12 anni di un embargo pesantissimo. Saddam ha lasciato gli iracheni morire sotto i bombardamenti degli alleati chiedendo alla popolazione di sparare mentre l'esercito regolare si stava fasciando. Saddam ha sacrificato tutti per salvarsi perché l'Iraq era lui, e senza di lui l'Iraq non deve esistere.

Perché Baghdad non ha resistito ed è caduta con questa facilità?

Non è strano che siano stati ritrovati così facilmente tutti i prigionieri di guerra americani, prima le due donne, e poi gli 11 marines, quando Saddam poteva utilizzargli come scudi umani per tentare almeno di salvare la sua vita? Non le fa mistero il caso dell'ambasciatore russo che rischia la vita per fuggire da Baghdad e poi ritorna all'improvviso? Per fare che? Dal primo giorno del conflitto ho capito che c'era un complotto, un compromesso. Che i soldati che combattevano sarebbero stati lasciati al loro destino, a farsi massacrare, mentre, il vertice si preparava a scappare.

Ma chi è rimasto a difendere la capitale?

Sono stati le tribù fedeli al carisma del Rais, erano armati e credevano che l'esercito iracheno avrebbe combattuto fino all'ultimo e che dovevano dare sostegno. Interi contingenti sono stati sterminati. Gli alleati hanno affermato di aver ucciso migliaia di soldati, è vero. Ho visto i 320 soldati che dovevano difendere l'aeroporto di Saddam venir sterminati. Nella mia accademia militare sono stati uccisi quasi tutti, solo pochi sono riusciti a salvarsi. Presto scoprirete ancora tanti altri massacri simili, scoprirete formazioni militari e para militari sterminati in massa. Altri ufficiali che sono fuggiti come me mi hanno raccontato di aver visto due giorni prima della caduta di Baghdad il Colonnello Sufian Jaheib, uno dei più fedeli a Saddam, girare le postazioni chiedendo agli ufficiali di non combattere e senza dare alcuna istruzione alternativa. Li ha lasciati allo sbando creando disordine nelle loro file ed esponendoli ai bombardamenti degli alleati senza nessuna copertura di contraerea. Questi ufficiali hanno visto combattere e morire come veri eroi centinaia di combattenti arabi che sono giunti dal Libano, Siria, Giordania, Yemen e il Sudan, persone che credevano di difendere il luoghi sacri come Karballah e Najiaf. Sono tutti morti.

Tenente Colonnello Amer chi può aver salvato l'ex Presidente dell'Iraq?

I russi, solo i russi potevano giungere a questo compromesso. Avevano tentato già prima dello scoppio della guerra con la visita di Primakov ma Saddam non era convinto. Lo dovevano fare per più di una ragione, la prima della quale è per difendere i loro segreti militari in Iraq. C'è stato un compromesso, ne sono convinto: salvare il Presidente e tutti i loro segreti in cambio della resa della Capitale. Ora Saddam è come Bin Laden, al sicuro, e più di quanto lo fosse in passato.

Talal Khrais

GazzettaPolitica.it - Copyright 2002 "La Gazzetta Politica" - "Centro studi Giuseppe Federici", via Sarzana 86 -- 47828 San Martino dei Mulini (RN), Italie. <[email protected]>

Pour le peuple dans les rues, ce n'est pas une libération mais une nouvelle oppression coloniale.

par Robert Fisk

La guerre de "libération" étatsunienne est peut-être fini. Mais le guerre de libération de l'Irak des mains étatsuniennes est sur le point de commencer.

17 Avril 2003, Baghdad. Ça tourne mal, plus vite que quiconque aurait pu l'imaginer. L'armée de "libération" est déjà devenu l'armée d'occupation. Les Chiites menacent de combattre les Étatsuniens, pour faire leur propre guerre de libération.

La nuit, sur chaque barricade des Musulmans Chiites de Sadr City, il y a 14 hommes armés de fusils automatiques. Même les Marines E.-U. à Baghdad parlent des insultes qu'on leur lance. "Fous-le camp ! Va-t-en d'ici !" criait un soldat étatsunien à un Irakien qui tentait de s'approcher du fil de fer entourant une unité d'infanterie, hier dans la capitale. J'ai regardé le visage de l'homme, rouge de colère. "Dieu est grand ! Dieu est grand ! a rétorqué l'Irakien. "Va te faire foutre !"

Les Étatsuniens ont maintenant émis un "message aux citoyens de Baghdad", un document aussi colonial dans l'esprit que démontrant une insensibilité de ton. "Veuillez éviter de quitter vos maisons pendant la nuit après la prière du soir et avant l'appel à la prière du matin" dit-il aux gens de la ville. "Nous savons que pendant la nuit, des forces terroristes associées à l'ancien régime de Saddam Hussein, ainsi que différents éléments criminels, se déplacent dans la zone÷ Veuillez ne pas quitter vos maisons pendant cette période. En tout temps, veuillez approcher les positions de forces de la coalition avec une extrême précaution÷"

Ainsi -- sans électricité ni eau courante -- On ordonne aux millions d'Irakiens de rester chez eux de la tombée de la nuit jusqu'au lever du jour. Enfermés. C'est une forme d'emprisonnement. Dans leur propre pays. Rédigé par le commandement de la 1ère division des Marines des É.-U., c'est un couvre-feu sauf le nom.

"Si j'étais irakienne et que je lisais ça, me cria une femme arabe, Je deviendrais kamikaze". Et partout à Baghdad, les religieux musulmans chiites comme les hommes d'affaires sunnites disent la même chose, que les Étatsuniens sont venu seulement pour le pétrole et que bientôt -- très bientôt -- une guérilla de résistance doit commencer. Il ne fait aucun doute que les Étatsuniens déclareront que ces attaques sont des "vestiges" du régime de Saddam ou "des éléments criminels" Mais ce ne sera pas le cas.

Partout, on voit des signes d'effondrement. Et partout, les signes que les promesses étatsunienne de "liberté" et de "démocratie" ne seront pas tenues. Pourquoi, demandent les Irakiens, les Etats-Unis ont-ils laissé s'échapper la totalité du cabinet irakien ? Et ils ont raison. Non seulement la Bête de Baghdad et ses deux fils Quoussay et Ouday, mais le vice-président Taha Yassin Ramadan, le Premier ministre Tariq Aziz, le conseiller personnel de Saddam, le Dr A K Hashimi, les ministres de la défense, de la santé de l'économie, du commerce et même Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, le ministre de l'information qui il y a longtemps, dans les jours avant que les journalistes ne se mettent dans ses bonnes grâces, était l'officiel qui lisait la liste des "frères" exécutés dans la purge qui a suivi la révolution de Saddam. Les parents des prisonniers se bourraient de valium avant chaque apparition de Sahaf.

C'est ce dont les Baghdadis se rendent compte. Et ce que les Irakiens constatent dans les principales villes du pays. Prenez l'impressionnant appareil de sécurité dont Saddam s'entourait, les chambres de torture et l'énorme bureaucratie qui était son fondement. Le président Bush a promis que les États-Unis faisait campagne pour les droits de l'homme en Irak et que les coupables et les criminels de guerre seront mis en accusation devant des tribunaux. Les 60 quartiers généraux de la police secrète sont vides, même le complexe de plus de 7km2 du service de renseignement irakien.

Je me suis rendu dans beaucoup d'entre eux. Mais il n'y a aucune trace sur ces sites du passage d'un seul officier médico-légal britannique ou étatsunien pour faire le tri de l'abondance de documents laissés là ou pour parler au ex-prisonniers retournant à leurs anciens lieux de torture. Est-ce de la paresse, ou est-ce délibéré ?

Prenez le poste de sécurité Qasimiyeh à côté du Tigre. C'est une charmante villa -- ayant appartenu à un Irakien, iranien de naissance, qui a été déporté en Iran dans les années 1980. Il y a une petite pelouse et des massifs d'arbustes et au premier coup d'œil, vous ne remarquez pas les trois gros crochets au plafond de chaque pièce ou le fait que de grandes feuilles de papier rouge, décorées de footballeurs, ont été collées sur les fenêtres pour cacher les pièces aux gens de l'extérieur. Mais partout, sur les planchers, dans le jardin, sur le toit, on trouve les dossiers de cet endroit de souffrance. Ils montrent par exemple que le chef de ce centre de torture était Hashem al-Tikrit et que son assistant se nommait Rashid al-Nababy.

Mohammed Aish Jassem, un ex-prisonnier, m'a montré comment le Capitaine Amar al-Isawi qui croyait que Jassem était membre du parti religieux Dawa l'a fait suspendre au plafond. "Ils m'ont lié les mains derrière le dos et ils m'ont soulevé dans les airs par mes poignets liés" m'a t-il dit. "Ils se servaient d'un petit générateur pour me soulever jusqu'au plafond, puis ils relâchaient la corde dans l'espoir que je me rompe les épaules en tombant". Les crochets au plafond sont juste en face du bureau du Capitaine Isawi. J'ai compris ce que cela signifiait. Il n'y avait pas de chambre de torture séparée et de bureau pour la documentation. La chambre de torture était le bureau. Tandis que l'homme ou la femme poussaient des hurlements de souffrance au-dessus de lui, le Capitaine Isawi signait des papiers, répondait au téléphone et -- d'après le contenu de sa poubelle -- fumait de nombreuses cigarettes en attendant le renseignement qu'il espérait de ses prisonniers.

Étaient-ce des monstres, ces hommes ? Oui. Les Étatsuniens les recherchent-ils ? Non. Travaillent-ils maintenant pour les Étatsuniens ? Oui, très probablement -- en fait certains d'entre eux peuvent très bien se trouver dans la longue file de brutes de l'ex-sécurité qui font la queue tous les matins devant l'Hôtel Palestine dans l'espoir d'être réengagé par l'Unité des affaires civiles des Marines étatsuniens.

Les noms des gardes du centre de torture de Qasimiyeh à Baghdad se trouvent dans les papiers qui traînent sur le plancher. Ils s'appelaient Ahmed Hassan Alawi, Akil Shaheed, Noaman Abbas et Moham-med Fayad. Mais les Étatsuniens ne se sont pas donné la peine de les trouver. Alors, Messieurs Alawi, Shaheed, Abbas and Fayad sont les bienvenus pour travailler pour eux. Il y a des papiers d'identité des prisonniers sur les bureaux et dans placards. Qu'est-il arrivé à Wahid Mohamed, Majid Taha, Saddam Ali or Lazim Hmoud ? Une femme en tchador noir s'est approchée du centre de torture. Quatre de ses frères ont été amenés ici et plus tard, quand elle a demandé ce qui s'était passé, on lui a dit que les quatre avaient été exécutés. On lui a ordonné de partir. Elle n'a jamais vu ni enterré les corps. Des ex-prisonniers m'ont dit qu'il y avait un charnier dans le désert de Khedeer, mais personne - et moins que quiconque les nouveaux occupants de Baghdad - n'est intéressé à le trouver.

Et les hommes qui ont souffert sous Saddam ? Qu'ont-ils à dire ? "Nous n'avons commis aucun crime" m'a dit l'un d'entre eux, un homme de 40 ans dont la tâche dans la prison comprenait le nettoyage de la potence du sang et des excréments après chaque exécution. "Nous ne sommes pas coupables. Pourquoi nous ont-ils fait ça ?" Les États-Unis, oui, ils ont éliminé Saddam. Mais l'Irak nous appartient. Le pétrole nous appartient. Nous voulons garder notre nationalité. Je veux rester en Iraq. Les Étatsuniens doivent partir".

Si les Étatsuniens et les Britanniques veulent comprendre la nature de l'opposition religieuse ici, ils n'ont qu'à consulter les dossiers dans les archives du service secret de Saddam. J'en ai trouvé un : Rapport No 7481, daté du 24 février cette année sur le conflit qui opposait Sheikh Mohammed al-Yacoubi et Mukhtada Sadr, le petit-fils de 22 ans de Mohammed Sadr qui a été exécuté sur les ordres de Saddam, il y a plus de 20 ans. La querelle montrait la passion et la détermination avec laquelle les leaders religieux chiites se combattent, même entre eux. Mais bien sûr, personne ne s'est donné la peine de lire ces documents ni même de les chercher.

A la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale, les officiers de renseignement britanniques et étatsuniens qui parlaient allemands ont scruté chaque document dans les bureaux de la Gestapo et de l'Abwehr à travers l'Allemagne de l'Ouest. Les Russes ont fait la même chose dans leur zone. En Irak, cependant, Les Britanniques et les Étatsuniens ont simplement ignoré ces témoignages.

Il existe un endroit encore plus terrifiant que les Étatsuniens devraient visiter à Baghdad: le quartier général de tout l'appareil de renseignement, un énorme bloc peint en gris que les EU ont bombardé et une série de villas et de bureaux qui sont remplis de dossiers, de papiers, de catalogues, de fiches.. C'est là que les prisonniers politiques particuliers de Saddam étaient amenés pour des interrogations brutaux -- l'électricité en étant une partie essentielle - et c'est là que Farzad Bazoft, le correspondant de l'Observer, a été amené pour être questionné avant d'être remis au bourreau.

J'ai rencontré -- de façon extraordinaire -- un scientifique nucléaire irakien marchant dans le complexe, un collègue de l'ancien chef de la physique nucléaire d'Irak, le Dr Sharistani. "C'est la dernière place que j'aurai voulu voir et je n'y reviendrai jamais" m'a t-il dit. "C'est endroit représente la malfaisance la plus grande du monde"

Les dirigeant de la sécurité du régime de Saddam étaient occupés durant les dernières heures à déchiqueter des millions de documents. J'ai trouvé de grandes piles de sacs à poubelle en plastique noir derrière chaque villa. Chaque sac remplit de déchets de milliers de papiers. Ne devrait-on pas les ramener à Washington ou à Londres pour les reconstituer et apprendre leurs secrets ?

Même les dossiers non déchiquetés contiennent une foule de renseignements. Mais, encore une fois, les Étatsuniens ne se sont pas donné la peine -- ou ne veulent pas -- chercher dans ces papiers. S'ils le faisaient, ils trouveraient les noms de douzaines de d'officiers du renseignement, beaucoup d'entre eux identifiés par les lettres de félicitations qu'ils avaient l'habitude de s'envoyer chaque fois qu'ils avaient une promotion. Où sont maintenant le Colonel Abdulaziz Saadi, le Capitaine Abdulsalam Salawi, le Capitaine Saad Ahmed al-Ayash, le Colonel Saad Mohammed, le Capitaine Majid Ahmed et les nombreux autres ? Nous ne le saurons sans doute jamais. Ou peut-être que nous ne devons pas le savoir.

Les Irakiens ont raison de se demander pourquoi les Étatsuniens ne recherchent pas ces renseignements, comme ils sont en droit de demander à savoir pourquoi le cabinet de Saddam au complet -- absolument tout le monde -- s'est échappé. La capture par les Étatsuniens du demi-frère de Saddam et du vieux tireur palestinien Abu Abbas, dont le dernier acte violent date de 18 ans est une compensation pathétique.

Maintenant, il y a une autre question que se posent les Irakiens -- et à laquelle je peux fournir une réponse. Le 8 avril, trois semaines après le début de l'invasion, les Étatsuniens ont lâché quatre bombes d'une tonne sur la zone résidentielle de Mansour à Baghdad. Ils affirmaient que Saddam se cachait là. Ils savaient que des civils seraient tués, car ce n'était pas comme l'a dit un mandarin du centre de commandement "une entreprise sans risque" (sic). Ils ont donc lâché leurs bombes et tué 14 civils à Mansour, la plupart d'entre eux membres d'une famille chrétienne.

Les Étatsuniens ont dit qu'ils ne pouvaient pas êtres sûrs que Saddam était mort avant d'avoir effectué des tests médicaux-légaux sur le site. Mais cela s'est avéré un mensonge. J'y suis allé, il a deux jours. Pas un officiel étatsunien ou britannique n'a pris la peine de visiter les cratères de bombes. En fait, quand je suis arrivé sur les lieux, il flottait une odeur de putréfaction et des familles exhumaient les restes d'un bébé au milieu des gravats.

Aucun officier étatsunien ne s'est excusé pour cette effroyable tuerie. Et je peux jurer que le bébé que j'ai vu sous une feuille de plastique noir n'est sûrement pas Saddam Hussein. S'ils avaient pris la peine de venir voir cet endroit - comme ils avaient déclaré qu'ils le feraient - Ils auraient au moins trouvé l'enfant. Les cratères sont maintenant un endroit de pèlerinage pour les gens de Baghdad.

Ensuite, il y a les feux qui ont consumé presque tous les ministères de la ville - excepté, évidemment le ministère de l'intérieur et le ministère du pétrole - ainsi que les bureaux de l'ONU, les ambassades et les centres d'achats. J'ai compté un total de 35 ministères détruits par le feu et le nombre va en augmentant.

Hier, je me suis trouvé devant le ministère du pétrole, sévèrement gardé par les soldats étatsuniens dont certains masquaient leurs bouches de leurs vêtements à cause des nuages de fumée qui tourbillonnaient vers eux du ministère voisin de l'irrigation agricole. Difficile à croire, n'est-ce pas qu'ils ne se soient pas rendu compte que quelqu'un mettait le feu au bâtiment voisin ?

Puis, j'ai repéré un autre feu, à trois kilomètres de là. Je me suis rendu sur les lieux pour voir les flammes sortir de toutes les fenêtres du département des sciences informatiques du ministère de l'éducation supérieure. Et juste à côté, perché sur un mur, un marine étatsunien, disant qu'il gardait l'hôpital voisin et qu'il ne savait pas qui avait allumé le feu à côté, parce que "vous ne pouvez pas regarder partout".

Je suis persuadé que le Marine ne se moquait pas de moi ou était malhonnête. Si les Étatsuniens ne croit pas cette histoire, il s'agit du caporal Ted Nyholm du 3e Régiment, 4e Marines et oui, j'ai appelé sa fiancée, Jessica, aux Etats-Unis pour lui dire qu'il l'aimait, mais il a quelque chose de terriblement anormal quand des soldats étatsuniens ont reçu l'ordre de regarder simplement de grands ministères incendiés par des voyous et de ne rien faire.

Car il y a quelque chose de dangereux -- et de profondément dérangeant -- concernant ces foules qui mettent le feu aux bâtiments de Baghdad, y compris aux grandes bibliothèques et aux archives de l'Etat. Car ce ne sont pas des pillards. Les pillards sont venus en premier. Les incendiaires sont venus après, souvent dans des cars bleu et blanc. J'en ai suivi un après que ses passagers aient mis le feu au ministère du commerce et il est sorti de la ville. La ligne officielle des Étatsuniens sur ce sujet c'est que le pillage est une vengeance -- une explication de plus en plus mince -- et que les feux sont allumés par des "vestiges du régime de Saddam", les mêmes "éléments criminels" qui sont mentionnés dans les ordres de couvre-feu des Marines. Mais les gens de Baghdad ne croient pas que ce soient les anciens supporters de Saddam qui allument ces feux. Et moi non plus.

Les pillards font de l'argent avec leurs saccages, mais il faut payer les incendiaires. A l'évidence, les passagers de ces cars sont directement amenés sur leurs cibles. Si Saddam les avait payés d'avance, ils n'allumeraient pas de feux. Dès sa disparition, ils auraient gardé l'argent et oublié le projet. Alors, qui fait parti de cette armé d'incendiaires ? J'en ai reconnu un l'autre jour, un homme d'âge moyen, mal rasé, en T-shirt rouge, et la deuxième fois qu'il m'a vu, il a pointé sur moi une Kalashnikov. De quoi avait-il peur ? Pour qui travaillait-il ? Quels sont ceux qui sont intéressés à détruire la totalité de l'infrastructure physique de l'Etat et son héritage culturel ? Pourquoi les Étatsuniens n'y mettent-ils pas fin ?

Comme je l'ai dit, il y a quelque chose de terriblement anormal à Baghdad et c'est quelque chose qui exige que de sérieuses questions soient posées au gouvernement de Etats-Unis. Pourquoi, par exemple, Donald Rumsfeld, secrétaire de la défense, a-t-il déclaré qu'il n'y avait pas de pillages importants, ni de destruction à Baghdad ? Sa déclaration était un mensonge, Alors pourquoi l'a-t-il fait ?

Les Étatsuniens disent qu'ils n'ont pas assez de soldats pour contrôler les feux. Cela aussi est faux. Si c'est le cas, que font ces centaines de soldats déployés dans les jardins du mémorial de la guerre Iran-Irak ? Ou les centaines qui campent dans les jardins de roses du palais présidentiel ? Alors les gens de Baghdad se demandent qui est derrière la destruction de leur héritage culturel, le pillage de leurs trésors archéologiques du musée national, l'incendie de la totalité des archives ottomanes, royales et de l'état et celle de la bibliothèque coranique ; et ils se posent des questions à propos de l'immense infrastructure de la nation que nous déclarons vouloir créer pour eux.

Pourquoi, disent-ils, n'ont-ils toujours pas d'eau et d'électricité ? Dans l'intérêt de qui l'Irak devait-il est déconstruit, divisé, incendié, dé-historiser, détruit ? Pourquoi des ordres de couvre-feu de leurs soi-disant libérateurs ? Et ce n'est pas seulement le peuple de Baghdad, mais les Chiites de Najaf et de Nasiriyah - où 20 000 personnes ont protesté contre la première tentative étatsunienne d'établir un gouvernement fantoche mercredi- qui posent ces questions " Il y a maintenant du pillage à Mossul où on rapporte que des milliers ont mis le feu à la voiture du gouverneur pro-étatsunien après qu'il ait promis que les É.-U. allait restaurer l'électricité.

Il est facile pour un journaliste de prédire des malheurs, spécialement après une guerre brutale qui manquait de toute légitimité internationale. Mais le catastrophe attend les optimistes au Moyen-Orient, en particulier les faux optimistes qui envahissent les nations riches en pétrole avec des excuses idéologiques, des prétentions morales et des accusations, comme l'existence encore improuvée d'armes de destruction massive. Alors je vais faire une horrible prédiction. Cette guerre de " libération " par les États-Unis est terminée. La guerre de libération de l'Irak va commencer. Autrement dit, l'histoire véritable et terrifiante commence maintenant.

Traduction française bénévole de Jean-Paul Salaun -- Les Humains Associés

<http://www.paxhumana.info/article.php3?id_article=164>

Version originale : Robert Fisk : For the people on the streets, this is not liberation but a new colonial oppression

<http://www.paxhumana.info/article.php3?id_article=164>

Edited by Natacha on 23 Avril 2003, 15:08

 

Une lettre de Saddam Hussein

The text of a letter allegedly written and signed by Saddam Hussein, published by the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. 'And yet they had already covenanted with Allah not to turn their backs, and a covenant with Allah must (surely) be answered for.' [Koranic verse]

Iraq, 28 April 2003, from Saddam Hussein to the great Iraqi people, the sons of the Arab and Islamic nation and the honourable ones everywhere, God's peace, mercy and blessings be with you.

In the same way that Hulagu entered Baghdad, Bush entered it with an Alqami and with more than one Alqami [reference to Alqam, a Shia who helped Mongol invader Hulagu Khan enter Baghdad in 13th Century].

They only triumphed over you -- o you who reject the occupation and humiliation and you who have Arabism and Islam in your hearts -- by treachery. By God, it is not a victory as long as the resistance remains in your hearts.

What we have been saying has now become a fact. We do not live in peace and security as long as the freak Zionist entity is on our Arab land. Therefore, there is no division in the unity of the Arab struggle.

O sons of our great people, rise against the occupier and do not trust those who talk about the Sunnis and Shias, for the only issue that the homeland, your great Iraq, is facing at present is that of occupation.

There are no priorities other than the expulsion of the infidel, criminal, murderous and cowardly occupier with whom not a single honourable person, only the traitors and agents, shook hands.

I tell you that all the countries around you are against your resistance, but God is with you because you are fighting the infidels and defending your rights.

The traitors have allowed themselves to speak openly of their treachery, though it is a shame. Speak openly of your rejection of the occupier for the sake of the great Iraq, the nation, Islam and humanity.

Iraq, the sons of the nation and the honourable ones will triumph and we will retrieve the antiquities and rebuild Iraq, which they want to split into parts, may God shame them.

Saddam did not have any possessions in his name. I challenge anyone to prove that the palaces were in the name of anyone other than the Iraqi State. I left them a long time ago to live in a small house.

Forget everything and resist the occupation. The sin begins when there are priorities other than the occupier and his expulsion. Remember that they are seeking to bring in those fighting each other [for power] so that your Iraq will remain weak and they can loot it as they wish.

Your party, the Arab Socialist Baath Party, is proud that it has not extended its hand to the Zionist enemy and has not conceded to a cowardly American or British aggressor.

Those who have stood against Iraq and plotted against it will not enjoy peace at the hands of the United States.

Greetings to everyone who resists, to every honourable Iraqi citizen and to every woman, child and old man in our great Iraq. Unite, and the enemy and the traitors who have entered with him will run away from you.

Be aware that those with whom the invading forces came and their aircraft that flew to kill you will only bring you poison.

God willing, the day of liberation and victory will come to us, the nation and Islam before anything else. Right will triumph this time, like it does every time and the coming days are going to be more beautiful.

Protect your possessions, districts and schools. Boycott the occupier; boycott him because this is the duty of Islam, religion and the homeland.

Long live the great Iraq and its people. Long live Palestine, free and Arab from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.

God is Great. Let the accursed be cursed.

[Signed] Saddam Hussein, 26 Safar 1424 [AH], 28/4/2003.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3170.htm>

Now, let me begin by saying the situation at the moment, especially in the South, is very messy and complicated. I think the fundamental explanation for this arises from the vacuum of authority that was left after the sudden collapse of the Baath regime. Whether this could have been predicted or not is a question that I think historians and others will ponder for a long time. Let me say that I and many other Iraqis have long argued and tried to convince the administration that, given the nature of this regime, the kind of arguments that we have developed in books about its nature, its inner workings, its precise method of functioning, one should always have expected this regime not to fall cleanly, but to shatter like a sheet of glass.

Namely, the idea that parts of it could be won over in the course of the war, large chunks of the army for instance which would simply join the allied effort, did not materialize. That part of the current situation in Iraq was not surprising to a person -- certainly not to myself and to many Iraqis.

What transpired was a collapse -- "collapse" is not even the right word, but like a sheet of glass, a breaking up into thousands of tiny pieces. This I do not think the United States appreciated adequately, and as a consequence of that it did not prepare for what is today the most paramount, central missing ingredient in the political situation in Iraq, which I shall call for the moment a new Iraqi force, imbued -- police force, law and order force, imbued with the values of the coalition, that is the values of the new Iraq that we wish to see here, a force that would immediately fill the vacuum of authority that was created, in part, because of the infighting inside Washington, because of the view of some sections of the American administration that, in fact, the Baath, large sections of the Baath regime, could be won over at a sufficiently senior enough level that these people would retain loyalty and the command of their troops and of those who worked under them, civil servants.

Because of that belief, there was an active discouragement of the creation of an independent Iraqi force that would work as an ally of the coalition in the bringing down of this regime. As a consequence, we have no Iraqis today, or very, very few who are in fact inside Iraqi cities carrying the values of the coalition.

Professor Kanan Makiya. chalabiste.

<http://www.benadorassociates.com/iraq_makiya.php>

 

Shiites in Revolt: Why Paul Wolfowitz Is in a State of Shock

By Juan Cole

Religious Shiite parties and militias in Iraq have recently stepped into the gap resulting from the collapse of the Baath Party, especially in the sacred shrine cities. This development must have come as a shock to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who in early March preferred Iraqis as US allies to Saudis, saying that they are secular and "overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory." Wolfowitz and other pro-war policymakers were right that large numbers of Shiites, from the educated middle class to factory workers, are secular Iraqi nationalists. But they were dead wrong to discount the power of the religious forces, and seem ignorant of the centrality of the shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. The neo-conservative fantasy of Iraq is now meeting the real Iraq, on the ground, in the shrine cities as well as in the smaller, mostly Shiite towns in the south of the country. Western audiences are discovering that Iraqi Shiites, while perhaps unified in their hatred for the dissipated Baathist regime, are not unified in their vision for a post-war Iraq.

Najaf rivalries

The leading cleric at Najaf -- shrine city of holy figure Ali b. Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad -- is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, age 73. Born in Mashhad, Iran, he came to Najaf (pop. 560,000) in 1952 and settled permanently. Like most of the Najaf establishment, he rejects Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's theory of clerical rule or the "guardianship of the jurisprudent" -- the doctrine by which Khomeini overturned centuries of quietism among Shiite clergy, helping to fuel the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Sistani and his circles have also been critical of human rights abuses in post-revolutionary Iran. Not long after US troops entered Najaf on April 8, 2003, he was reported to have made an oral proclamation urging Shiites not to interfere with the soldiers, a statement eagerly cited by Wolfowitz as the "first pro-American fatwa." (The statement was not actually a fatwa.) The following week, however, Sistani insisted that Iraq must be ruled "by the best of its children." His spokesman and eldest son, Muhammad Rida Sistani, probably distilled his father's thoughts when he said, "The Americans are welcome, but I don't think that it's a good thing that they stay for long."

When the US military apparently briefly arrested Sheikh Muhammad al-Fartusi and two other clerics who had been sent to Baghdad on April 21, it immediately provoked a protest of 5,000 angry Shiites across from the downtown Palestine Hotel. Al-Fartusi had been sent by the Najaf establishment to Baghdad to preach the Friday prayer sermon at the al-Hikma mosque to a congregation of 50,000. His sermon said in part that the US could not impose a formal "democracy" on Iraq that allowed freedom of individual speech but denied Iraqis the ability to shape their own government.

Sistani emerged as the most senior ayatollah in Najaf after the 1999 assassination of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday for defying the deposed Iraqi dictator. Today Muqtada al-Sadr, the 30 year-old son of the martyred cleric, is among Sistani's most important rivals in Najaf. In 1999, after his father was killed, Muqtada went underground. He organized the desperately poor Shiites of Najaf and nearby Kufa, and established authority, as well, in the Shiite slums of eastern Baghdad, home to 2 to 3 million people. The Sadr movement that he leads insists that only the rulings of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr may be followed, and is opposed to immigrant Iranian clerics like Sistani having authority in Iraq. These ideas are unorthodox in the mainstream Usuli Shiism which predominates in Iraq and Iran. According to these mainstream teachings, it is forbidden to follow the rulings of a deceased jurisprudent, and it is recognized that Shiites may follow any learned, upright jurisprudent they choose. Muqtada is young to gain such authority.

Saddam City renamed

The Sadr movement appears to be intolerant and authoritarian, and to have a class base in the poverty-stricken neighborhoods brutalized by Baath Party goons. Eyewitness accounts of the mob killing on April 10 of an American-backed rival ayatollah, Abd al-Majid al-Khoei, flown into Najaf from a decade-long exile in London, implicate the Sadr movement. Members of this movement then surrounded the houses of Sistani and Ayatollah Said al-Hakim, nephew of Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), demanding that these two leave Najaf immediately. This attempt at a coup in the clerical leadership of the shrine city was forestalled when 1,500 Shiite tribesmen came in from the countryside to protect Sistani and al-Hakim.

Muqtada views Sistani as spineless for having refused to step out of his quietism and oppose Saddam Hussein. He views expatriate politicians and clerics now returning to Iraq in the same light, heaping abuse on Ahmad Chalabi and the secular-leaning Iraqi National Congress, for instance. The Sadr movement wants an Islamic republic in Iraq, even if not one exactly like the one Khomeini built in Iran. Press reports from the slums of Baghdad suggest that Muqtada is idolized there and that most of the armed militiamen now patrolling the neighborhoods of the renamed Sadr City (formerly Saddam City) are his followers. One report said that they had repelled an attempt to infiltrate the city by a rival Shiite militia, the Tehran-based Badr Brigade of SCIRI. Like most other Iraqi Shiite clerics, Muqtada wants the Americans out of Iraq on a short timetable.

ToKarbala

SCIRI, headed by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, is in essence an offshoot of the revolutionary al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya Party founded in the late 1950s. Al-Hakim was forced abroad to Tehran in 1982 by Saddam's persecution of key al-Da'wa figures. SCIRI has a paramilitary wing of 10,000 to 15,000 armed fighters, likely trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and commanded by Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim. The al-Hakims are said to be close to hardliners like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini's successor as Supreme Leader in Iran. SCIRI formed part of the Iraqi National Congress and was given 15 out of 65 seats on the provisional governing council formed at the Iraqi opposition meeting in London in December 2002. SCIRI figures attended State Department meetings about overthrowing Saddam, and spoke to the press about their negotiations with the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about a role for the Badr Brigade in fighting alongside US troops during an invasion. Since the Bush administration had labeled SCIRI's backers in Iran part of the "axis of evil," this initial willingness to cooperate with them was breathtaking in its cynicism.

From January of 2003, however, ideology asserted itself over pragmatism, and the Bush administration suddenly broke with SCIRI. Attempts were made by US National Security Council official Zalmay Khalilzad, reportedly in coordination with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, to dilute SCIRI influence within the INC. Then, at meetings with the opposition groups in Turkey in late January, Khalilzad made it known that the US intended to administer Iraq itself for some time after "regime change," instead of working through an Iraqi provisional government. Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim immediately denounced this plan as equivalent to a US colonial occupation, and threatened that the Badr Brigade would attack US troops if they overstayed their welcome. He clearly felt betrayed by this dramatic turnabout in US policy.

The US warned Iran not to allow Badr Brigade forces into Iraq during the US invasion. Al-Hakim maintains that they slipped into the country even so. As of April 17, Badr Brigade gunmen controlled the town of Baquba (pop. 163,000) near the Iranian border, and a Badr Brigade force allowed SCIRI cleric Sayyid Abbas to occupy the mayor's mansion in Kut (pop. 360,000). When Marines attempted to intervene, a crowd of 1,200 townspeople gathered, chanting slogans against INC leader Ahmad Chalabi, and the soldiers decided to back off. US officers marginalized Abbas at a town hall meeting on April 19, but afterward, the cleric held an afternoon rally that was reported to be "bigger than ever." According to the Daily Telegraph's correspondent, "Mr. Abbas voiced what are quickly becoming the standard demands: an Islamic, Shia-dominated state for Iraq, and an end to American occupation."

Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, deputy head of SCIRI, returned to Iraq on April 16, arriving at Kut to cheers, presumably preparing the way for his older brother to do the same. In a press interview, the younger al-Hakim pledged that SCIRI would work together with other parties in the new Iraq. In Kut on April 18, he gave an interview with Iranian television in which he said, "we will first opt for a national political system, but eventually the Iraqi people will seek an Islamic republic system." He added that the will of Shiites for an Islamic system would prevail in democratic elections, since they are 60 percent of the population.

On April 18 Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, still in Tehran, called upon Shiites to converge on the shrine city of Karbala on April 22 "to oppose a US-led interim administration and defend Iraq's independence." SCIRI spokesman Abu Islam al-Saqir added, "To the Iraqi people, US domination is no better than the dictatorship of the ousted brutal regime of Saddam Hussein." Tens of thousands of Iraqi Shiites are currently on their way to the city to commemorate the martyrdom of the prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, who died in a battle on the Karbala plain in the seventh century. Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim's appeal to the symbology of Karbala for political purposes is an attempt to depict the US military as equivalent to Yazid, the opponent of Hussein in the epochal battle who is viewed by Shiites as the martyred imam's oppressor.

"No one represents us"

Despite having birthed SCIRI, the Al-Da'wa al-Islamiyya Party itself remains a separate organization, with a commitment to Islamic government. It has London, Tehran and Iraq-based factions, of which only the London representatives have been willing to talk to the Americans. Some reports say many in the Iraqi al-Da'wa are loyal to Lebanese Hizballah leader Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah. Fadlallah was born and educated in Najaf, going to Lebanon only in 1965. Hizballah has threatened violence against US troops in Iraq. Other than its Tehran branch, al-Da'wa, like the Sadr movement, is oriented toward an indigenous Iraqi politics and rejects Khomeini's "guardianship of the jurisprudent" in favor of the theories of Islamic government developed by Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, who was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime in 1980. (This figure is the uncle of Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, eponymous founder of the al-Sadr movement, also murdered by the late regime.)

A somewhat more moderate al-Da'wa leader, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, refused to attend the US-sponsored leadership meeting near Nasiriyya on April 16, saying he objected to cooperating with a US military administration. His view seems to have predominated in the party. Al-Da'wa organized the demonstration held on April 15 at Nasiriyya (pop. 535,000) to protest the conference being presided over by retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, head of the Office of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction charged by Washington with administering post-war Iraq. Press reports said "thousands" demonstrated. They chanted, "No, no Saddam! No, no United States" and "Yes, yes for Freedom! Yes, Yes for Islam." Their placards read: "No one represents us in the conference." On April 19, al-Jaafari signed a letter to a meeting of countries neighboring Iraq, calling for the immediate establishment of a technocratic provisional government, suggesting that al-Da'wa remains less clerically oriented than other Shiite factions. Among the al-Da'wa leaders in Nasiriyya is the newly returned former exile, Muhammad Bakr al-Nasri, a prominent cleric. He is said to be the party's "philosophical guide." Al-Da'wa Party officials fear that they will be locked out of political competition by the superior paramilitary capabilities of SCIRI and the Sadr movement.

Vacuum filled

Among the big surprises of the two weeks following the fall of the Baath Party in Iraq is the way in which Shiite religious leaders and parties moved immediately into the vacuum. This process was facilitated by the thinness on the ground of US troops, in accordance with the Rumsfeld military plan that rejected Pentagon requests for larger military forces. Eastern cities like Baqubah and Sadra are reportedly under Shiite control with apparent backing from Iran. Some Failis or Shiite Kurds who largely emigrated to Iran under Saddam Hussein's regime are now coming back to Iraq with Iranian backing (a Faili militia from Iran is reported to have recently taken over the eastern city of Badra). SCIRI has also attempted to assert itself in Kut, and has stymied the Marines there because of popular support. Nasiriyya appears to be virtually ruled by the al-Da'wa Party. Sadr City is patrolled by militias of the Sadr movement, and it is powerful in Najaf and Kufa. The other sacred city, Karbala, has also established a council of clerics and tribal sheikhs for self-rule.

Among major Shiite population centers, only Basra appears to have resisted this trend, in part perhaps because of different policies pursued by the British commanders there, and in part because of the influence of the secular Shiite middle and working classes. Outside Basra, secular-leaning Shiites have been hampered in asserting themselves by their lack of organization and lack of any paramilitary force. It may be that many are also stunned by the humiliating defeat of an avowed champion of secular Arab nationalism by a Western power.

It remains to be seen if the US interim administration can disarm the Shiite religious militias and recover enough control of the Shiite urban areas to allow something like free multi-party politics to emerge. Certainly, the Sadr movement mobs in Najaf would not countenance such a thing if they can stop it. Nor is SCIRI probably interested in genuine popular politics. The Shiite religious political parties and movements tend to be hierarchical and authoritarian despite their popular appeal, in accordance with Usuli convictions about the need to give blind obedience to trained jurisprudents. Shiite religious demands for an Islamic state are foredoomed to created conflict with Sunni Arabs and Kurds, who will not tolerate rule by ayatollahs or imposition on everyone of strict Shiite law. The Kurds, of course, have their own militias. Historian Ervand Abrahamian has compared the ideology of Khomeini's Iran to the corporatism that prevailed in the Argentina of Peron. At least initially, the neo-conservatives, who hoped that Shiite militias would fight Saddam Hussein's armies alongside invading US soldiers, may have unleashed this sort of mass politics in the formerly rigidly controlled Iraq.

This article was first published by the Middle East Report Online, April 22, 2003, under the title: "Shiite Religious Parties Fill Vacuum in Southern Iraq" at this link:

<http://www.merip.org/mero/mero042203.html>

Juan Cole is professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan

<www.juancole.com>

Les canards assis

Extrait: Standing guard Friday in the open courtyard of a burned and looted Baghdad bank, an Iraqi machinegun blasting away just down the street, Corporal Richard MacDougal extinguished one Marlboro and lit another. He's been away from his two young children so long, eight months, that when he called home the day before his six-year-old son had nothing more to say than, "Hey."

 "We're sitting ducks," he said. "And there's nothing here worth dying for anymore."

Soldiers are finding Iraq to be a terrifically dangerous place -- perhaps more so today than immediately following their victory. But some also seem to have concluded that being a soldier in the world's best-trained, best-equipped military brings little comfort in a lawless land where many people carry guns and want you to leave or to die.

When a group of four Civil Affairs soldiers left their compound last week and drove through the city, they went by the book: fully armed, wearing their protective gear and taking two Humvees. A gunman on a rooftop opened fire. One round pierced a soldier's flak vest at its collar seam, medics said, and traveled down through his chest and out his back. Two others suffered less serious wounds. All survived.

Another soldier patrolling a Baghdad intersection last week was shot in the head by a gunman in the crowd. Badly wounded, he survived. Two others died last week, one when his tank went into a river, the other when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle crashed while rushing to aid other troops under fire.

On Friday, three more soldiers died and a fourth was injured when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed, lifting the American death toll here to 146. They were on a mission to pick up a child who had been badly injured in an explosion.

Two soldiers were badly wounded this week when their Humvee ran over an anti-tank mine. Someone had apparently wrapped the device in a paper bag and placed it on Highway 8, the main route between the capital and Baghdad [Saddam] International Airport. It looked, Army officials said, like another piece of roadway trash.

Eric Slater, (du Los Angeles Times )The Arizona Republic, 10 mai 2003.

International Mission Information Source | Iraq Mission

On behalf of the United States Department of States, Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, DynCorp Aerospace Operations (UK) Ltd. (DAOL), a CSC Company, is seeking individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq. Interested applicants must be active duty, retired or recently separated sworn police officers, correctional officers or experienced judicial experts. US citizenship is required. If interested, please call toll-free 866-258-8770 or email [email protected] or visit www.policemission.com.

Qualifications

  * US Citizen

  * Applicant must have a total of ten (10) years of sworn civilian domestic law enforcement experience.

  * Actively serving sworn law enforcement officer, or recently separated sworn law enforcement official (within 5 years but 3 years is prefered).

  * Ability to communicate in English.

  * Valid US driver's license and ability to operate a standard transmission vehicle.

  * Unblemished background.

  * Excellent health.

  * Valid U.S. passport will be required.

* We are seeking specialized skills - this is not a generalist position.

Additional details will be discussed.

How to Apply

If you meet all the requirements for this position and are interested in this challenging assignment, please send us a resume using our ResumeMaker. Include special training, assignments and certifications in your resume.

For mission recruiting and status, call our recruiting line:

1-866-258-8770

Scandal-Hit US Firm Wins Key Contracts

by Antony Barnett

A US military contractor accused of human rights violations has won a multi-million-dollar contract to police post-Saddam Iraq, The Observer can reveal.

DynCorp, which has donated more than £100,000 to the Republican Party, began recruiting for a private police force in Iraq last week on behalf of the US State Department.

The awarding of such a sensitive contract to DynCorp has caused consternation in some circles over the company's policing record. A British employment tribunal recently forced DynCorp to pay £110,000 in compensation to a UN police officer it unfairly sacked in Bosnia for whistleblowing on DynCorp colleagues involved in an illegal sex ring.

An Observer reporter who contacted the firm's US headquarters purporting to be a potential police recruit for Iraq was told it was hoping to 'get people on the ground in two to four weeks'. The recruiter told the reporter he could expect a salary of $80,000 plus 'hazard bonuses'. He was offered a contract of between three months and a year and told he did not need to be able to speak Arabic. He had to be a US citizen who had served as a police officer in America, and when the reporter said he had worked in Texas for a number of years he was told he sounded 'ideal'.

Despite DynCorp's demands for US citizens only, it is offering the private contracts through its British office in Aldershot.

Former Labour Defense Minister Peter Kilfoyle said last night: 'I find it difficult to believe that, at a time when bringing law and order to Iraq needs to be handled with delicacy and sensitivity, a private American firm like DynCorp is entrusted with this job.'

DynCorp's advert, posted on a US website and headed 'Iraq mission', stated that it was acting on behalf of the US Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. It was seeking 'individuals with appropriate experience and expertise to participate in an international effort to re-establish police, justice and prison functions in post-conflict Iraq'.

The company is looking for active duty or recently retired policemen and prison guards and 'experienced judicial experts'.

While the US has promised help in bringing law and order to Iraq, the involvement of DynCorp has caused concern as it has been involved in a series of recent high-profile scandals involving personnel in sensitive missions overseas.

DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women.

When Dyncorp employee Kathy Bolkovac blew the whistle on the sex ring she was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehavior, according to the ruling of a British employment tribunal in November. DynCorp has also been heavily criticized over its involvement in Plan Colombia, instigated by Bill Clinton, that involves spraying vast quantities of herbicides over Colombia to kill the cocaine crop. A group of Ecuadorean peasants have filed a class action against the company alleging that herbicides spread by DynCorp in Colombia were drifting across the border, killing legitimate crops, causing illness, and killing children. The company denies the charges.

DynCorp, which has its headquarters in Reston, Virginia, employs almost 25,000 staff, many of them former US military personnel. The Observer was unable to reach DynCorp for comment.

April 13, 2003 by The Observer/UK

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0413-05.htm

Nouveau massacre à Falluja

Une foule d'environ 500 personnes s'est rassemblée pour manifester contre la présence américaine en Iraq, à la fin des prières du soir près d'une mosquée de Falluja, ville à approximativement 50 kilomètres à l'ouest de Baghdad, le lundi soir 28 avril.

Autour de minuit locale, les manifestants, s'étaient rendus dans une école occupée par des soldats américains et leur avaient demandé de partir, quelqu'un a tiré des pierres, les Américains ont répondu en ouvrant le feu, selon des témoins, 17 personnes ont été tuées, dont six enfants de 7 à 8 ans, et blessant 70.

Un incident semblable s'est produit également à Mossul dimanche, dans le nord de l'Irak, quand au moins six personnes ont été tuées par les soldats américains.

29.04.2003 Collectif Bellaciao

<http://www.bellaciao.org/>

Iraqis emulate Palestinians by stoning troops

By Phil Reeves in Baghdad

A tactic of the Palestinian intifada has spread ominously to Iraq, less than three weeks after US tanks rolled into the middle of Baghdad. American troops are coming under attack from Iraqi children throwing stones, replaying scenes from the West Bank and Gaza Strip that were broadcast on state-run television before the fall of Saddam Hussein. News reports said that children - who at first flocked around the American forces, and were given sweets by the soldiers - have begun hurling rocks in Mosul and the Shia city of Najaf. In one incident this weekend, a group of youths threw stones at a group of soldiers moving through Mosul on foot. "They were throwing them like they were pitching a baseball," said Sgt John McLean, who was hit on the helmet, in the back and on the heel. The crowd was only dispersed when the Americans fired a warning shot over their heads. Crowds of 250-300 Iraqi teenagers hurled stones at American marines patrolling Najaf on Thursday and Friday, US officers said. Although this phenomenon represents no serious threat to the US forces, it is a highly symbolic gesture in the Middle East, where it is seen by Arabs as a heroic form of resistance to an illegal occupying force. It also disrupts the US military's efforts to adopt a more relaxed posture on the streets -- part of the larger American and British drive to win support from the 24 million Iraqi population.

         It will raise concerns over whether such assaults are organised by anti-US elements in an attempt to draw a violent response from the soldiers that will widen the opposition to their presence. The Israeli military responded to stones and firebombs thrown by youngsters by shooting plastic bullets, tear gas canisters and, at times, live ammunition, killing a large number of children, especially early in the uprising. Since the allied invasion of Iraq, there have been three suicide bombings - another intifada tactic. During the height of the looting in Baghdad, there were reports of arson against government institutions, and US troops are still being fired on, including those guarding the headquarters of Jay Garner, the retired US general heading the coalition reconstruction team. To the disapproval of some Iraqis and aid agencies, Mr Garner has established his headquarters inside a palace compound once lorded over by Saddam Hussein. Some here say that the choice of a palace, ringed now by razor wire and protected by tanks, sends entirely the wrong message to the Iraqi people.

The Independent, 27 April 2003

 Mr. Zobeidi's arrest highlights a growing confusion over who is running Iraq in the absence of a strong, visible central authority. Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, the commander of American land forces here, warned last Wednesday that allied military forces were the sole authority in the country. But General McKiernan is unknown to most Iraqis

NYT 28 Avril

Iraq: US restructuring Baath units

By Ravil Musin

Teheran, May 5 (Itar-Tass) - Americans are restructuring special paramilitary units of the former Baath Party of Iraq, intending to use them for suppressing possible protest actions of the Iraqi population. The military intelligence of the U.S. Army, FBI and CIA agents are working on the creation of the new special units, the IRNA news agency reported with reference to reliable sources.

 The task of the new Iraqi units will be to find out who of the civilians opposes the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as to take part in suppressing anti-American actions in the country. The sources stress that Americans explain the prolongation of their presence in Iraq by a possibility of the resumption of armed actions on the part of the forces, which continue to be loyal to Saddam Hussein.

5 mai 2003

<http://www.itar-tass.com/different/oper_lenta/english/iraq/294104.html>

Testimonies recently heard by Al Bawaba from homebound Jordanians who fought in Iraq as volunteers [Mujahideen] revealed some aspects of a possible 'deal' that may have been concluded by the Iraqi commander of the Republican Guard General Maher Al Tikriti, and the US forces.

The alleged agreement led to the staged 'defeat' of Baghdad by coalition forces in return for the commander's safety, after he was 'sure' that his cousin -- Saddam Hussein -- had concluded a much larger one guaranteeing his safety as well. The same eyewitnesses told Al Bawaba about the fierce fighting they were engaged in [against US forces] on April 9, while the Iraqi forces were retreating from their positions in and around the city [of Baghdad] after they had received orders to stop fighting and hand over any remaining Arab volunteer fighters to American forces. "We were shocked by the sudden fall [of Baghdad] which we never imagined", one Jordanian volunteer said, while another added, "all the Arab fighters -- which the former regime claimed to have been in the thousands -- had no clue about what was happening around them, and in the end, every one of them [the volunteers] was trying to save himself by avoiding getting captured by American soldiers".

"Later on", one volunteer said, "things started to become clearer, and it was apparent that an agreement was reached between the Americans and Saddam's cousin, General Maher al Tikriti, commander of the Republican Guard unit in Baghdad". The General was given the responsibility of protecting Baghdad by blowing its bridges and blocking possible routes that the invading US forces may use. Volunteers fought alone. According to one account, the Iraqi forces left Baghdad early the morning of April 9. "There were no Republican Guards, no Fedayeen Saddam or any other Iraqi official for that matter. No armed men were available to face the invading US forces except what remained of the Arab volunteers who were deserted", said one of the men, adding "they left us exposed; we were exposed and even attacked by the retreating Iraqi forces". "I woke up at dawn on April 9 to discover that the Iraqi armed forces have withdrawn from their positions without notifying the Arab volunteers -- who were left on the frontlines of the battlefield; most of us were from Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon", a Jordanian volunteer said.

He went on by saying that "the Arab fighters" main objective became one of saving themselves, especially after discovering that the Iraqi forces have also agreed [in their alleged 'deal'] to open fire at them, which is perhaps due to American fear that such 'unorganized' resistance could be faced elsewhere in Iraq". Another volunteer said he saw Fedayeen Saddam "running while retreating from their positions". He added that "he could not believe himself when he saw Iraqi soldiers shooting at a group of Arab volunteers who were taking positions near one of the bridges, killing many of them". "The overall assessment", he said, "was that most of the Arab volunteers were killed either by Iraqi or American bullets. The remaining survivors were left to fall as victims in the hands of some Iraqis [civilians] who viewed them as supporters of a dead regime".

Al Tikriti's deal

The stories of most of these witnesses seem very similar and equally stunning, as was the fall of Baghdad on April 9. According to some diplomatic sources, there have been reports about communication between the Americans and both leaders of the Republican Guard as well as the Commanders of Saddam's Fedayeen at top levels, prior to the war and unbeknownst to the Iraqi leader and his sons -- Uday and Qusay, who were put in charge of this large military outfit. The reports detailed that initial American communication with General Tikriti failed, however when the general had not heard from his cousin (Saddam Hussein) following the announcement of a US aerial bombardment of a Baghdad building (that purportedly claimed the lives of Saddam, his two sons and other aides) he came to his own conclusion about Saddam's whereabouts. According to the reports, al-Tikriti did not believe the American account and suspected that Saddam might have left Iraq  for another country. The report added that al-Tikriti perceived this a result of a 'deal' concluded between the Russians and the US, and that Saddam left Iraq (possibly with the Russian ambassador to Syria and then to Moscow.

Al-Tikriti's fear of being the scapegoat was what eventually drove him to talking to the Americans, which resulted in a 'ceasefire' between the two sides and a release from military duty for the Republican Guard troops fighting under him.

<www.malaysiakini.com> 2003-04-26 00:22:15

<http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/article.php?id=1263>

Movimiento de documentalistas: Babilonia en ruinas

por Jorge Falcone

         De estos días aberrantes recordaremos la noche ardiente, como cuando otra autoridad decretó que lloviera fuego y pedrisco infernal sobre Sodoma y Gomorra. De estos días genuflexos recordaremos a los hispanos que fueron al frente por ser connacionales del Imperio. De estos días canallescos recordaremos a los periodistas latinos que jugaron la parodia de consultarse ante las cámaras de CNN.

         De estos días de "daños colaterales" recordaremos el mercado hecho añicos y la habitación 15 del Hotel Palestina. De estos días de prepotencia recordaremos la tanqueta de Mc Donalds volteando el milenario portalón de los sumerios. De estos días de obsceno embuste recordaremos las armas químicas que nunca aparecieron. De estos días de traiciones recordaremos a los "irakíes libres" de Rumsfeld listos para virreynar. De estos días sin justicia recordaremos la repartija de acciones petroleras entre los socios de Dick Cheney. De estos días de preparto recordaremos a los pueblos del mundo movilizados gritando NO en el rostro del texano.

         De estos días de intransigencia recordaremos al campesino que bajó un helicóptero Apache valuado en veintidós millones con un fusil oxidado, a las familias que volvieron del exilio no por bancar a un dictador sino por salvar a su Patria, a la mujer embarazada que se inmoló contra tres marines, al torcito que lloraba en un hospital de campaña. Acaso estos congéneres, estos hermanos, estos compañeros, supieron desde un principio que no tenían chance. Pero pelearon. Con palos. Con piedras. Con muñones. Nosotros tenemos el deber de envidiar su derrota. Porque en aquel desierto se batió la humanidad en nombre nuestro.

Fri, 11 Apr 2003 Movimiento de Documentalistas

 <[email protected]>

<http://www.documentalistas.org.ar>

 

 

Graffiti relevé sur un mur de l'université de Baghdad:

Sur un autre tableau, un témoin anonyme a décrit à la craie ce qu'il a vu lors des scènes de pillage en intitulant son texte ´Notre tragédieª. ´Les pilleurs ont commis des mauvaises choses dans notre université, ils criaient dans les couloirs, et ils sont restés jusqu'à ce qu'il n'y ait plus rien à voler. (...) Des gens sont entrés (des Koweïtiens et des gens du Golfe) portant des masques et habillés à l'américaine. Après qu'ils furent partis, la fumée a commencé, couvrant toute l'université, pour que les gens du voisinage soient au courant de ce qui s'est passé.ª [...] A l'Université de Baghdad, seuls les murs sont intacts.

Judith Lachapelle, La Presse (Montreal)

<http://www.cyberpresse.ca> 25 avril 2003

United States Treasury officials have been told that at least $660 million in "hard" currency - US dollars, euros and British pounds - was stolen from the vaults of banks in Baghdad and other cities.

A further 20 billion Iraqi dinars -- worth about $16 million at the current volatile black market exchange rates -- was also stolen from the reserves of Iraq's central bank. (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 avril 2003)

The U.S. Army has had a cultural-protection unit since  1943, when archeologists followed the army across Europe and protected museums as soon as they were  seized. Inexplicably, however, the cultural unit was not permitted to follow the troops to Iraq. Members of  the unit were finally allowed into Baghdad on  Wednesday, four days after looting ended. Some of them  privately contacted the British School of Archeology in Baghdad to say they were "infuriated and ashamed" at being sidelined, according to a source at the  school. Globe and Mail

Afghan Muhahideen Attack New Military Base,

Seven US Soldiers Dead

In Afghanistanís South Western province of Arzagan, in the district of Gaizab Mujahideen attacked a recently established American military base from three sides and managed to kill 7 American soldiers and injured several others. News has also been received of the killing of Afghan soldiers while two vehicles were destroyed.

The Mujahideen used rocket launchers and other new generation weapons in the attack. Meanwhile, a Taliban representative has claimed to have captured the district headquarters of Gaizab Province. Arzaganís governor Jan Mohammad while confirming the attack said that the attackers were turned back. Arzaganís Governor also said that these Taliban soldiers also attacked the American military convoys coming from Tareen Kot and Dehrawad and that three American soldiers were injured. Meanwhile American military spokesman Col. Roger King while briefing the journalists in Bagram said that they martyred one Mujahid and arrested seven during attacks on three different suspected Taliban hide outs in the south of the country. Refraining from telling the name of the area, he said that fighting is still underway. According to sources, this area is Gaizab.

In Arzagan, Afghan public officials complained that Taliban have better weapons which are more powerful than those used by public officials.

Apr 25, 2003. Source: Sada News, Translated by JUS

<http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=52861&list=/home.php&>

First public hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

The first public hearing of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was held on March 31 - April 1, 2003 at the U.S. Custom House, One Bowling Green, New York City, New York.

The purpose of this public hearing was to engage those whose lives were forever changed by the events of September 11 in a public dialogue about the Commission's goals and priorities. The Commission also sought to learn about work already completed and the state of current knowledge, in order to identify the most important issues and questions requiring further investigation.

After brief opening statements by the Commissioners, they heard from New York Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, survivors, representatives of victims' families, and members of Congress. On the second day, the Commissioners heard testimony from experts on various topics related to September 11.

The hearing was open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. The hearing was also broadcast live from this website, and archived video is available. Members of the media were asked to register in advance.

[...]  The Intelligence Community missed opportunities to place several of the 19 terrorists on watch lists. More important, several suggestive leads were not pursued. But, even 18 months later, the trail on the 19 hijackers is surprisingly bare.

<http://www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing1.htm>

Why the Left and Right Must Unite and Fight

The View from the Left

by Neil Clark

These are truly desperate days. "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?" As the world's greatest democracy unleashes the full might of its military power on the people of Iraq, Mahatma Gandhi's words have a special relevance.

 One thing is for sure. The war against Iraq will not be the war to end all wars. It will be followed by others, all fuelled by the insatiable appetite for profits and power. Three years ago, the same forces now executing Shock and Awe were dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium on civilian targets in Yugoslavia. In 2001, it was the impoverished Afghans' turn to get the B-52 treatment, with over 5,000 dying in the process.

And two years from now we will no doubt be reading in the Wall Street Journal of the danger Syria poses to world peace and how President Assad is the New Hitler. After that it will be turn of Iran, Belarus and Libya.  The neocons and their liberal imperialist allies appear unstoppable. They have hijacked the major parties on both sides of the Atlantic. Large sections of the free world's media are in their hands, and they have a whole entourage of journalists, eager and ready to peddle their lies, acting, in the words of John Pilger, as "handmaidens of a murderous power."

 Yet despite all the propaganda, sound bites, and outright lies, the overwhelming majority on both sides of the Atlantic oppose the endless war policy of their mainstream political parties. The demonstrations against war in Iraq have been the biggest since Vietnam. In the U.S. and Europe, antiwar marches have attracted people from all walks of life, not just the usual peaceniks, trade unionists, and women's groups, but soldiers, farmers, and businessmen too. After some initial squeamishness, conservatives and socialists, right-wingers and Trotskyites, have been marching together, united in their desire for peace. But encouraging as all of this is, it will not be enough. To stop the War Party much more is needed. The antiwar alliance has to be put on a more permanent and formal footing. And that means the Left making a bold and historic step. If we really do want to "give peace a chance," we need to take off our beads, remove Joan Baez from our turntables, and start to embrace warmly those at whom we have been hurling insults for the last forty years.

 I write as a committed, and totally unreconstructed, Old Leftist. Yet if Pat Buchanan announced he was standing for president again, I would be on the next plane out to join his campaign team. But how many of my fellow socialists would join me? Until the Left is ready in its hordes to link up electorally with the Old antiwar Right, the brutal truth is that we have no chance of defeating the Bush/Blair axis. With the black smoke clouds rising above Baghdad, I believe it is now or never for the antiwar Left to answer the call.

 In order to do so, and to make the "Peace Party" work, the Left needs to jettison some baggage and spruce up some of its thinking.  Since the 1960s, we have picked up several false friends, who have done our cause no good at all, lost us immeasurable support, and who have prevented us from making the alliances it was in our interest to make. The first of these is political correctness. I was a card-carrying member of the British Labour Party until Blair came along in 1994 and told us we had to stop worrying and love Big Business, Big Macs, and Big Bombs. I supported, and continue to support the notions of a national health service, free school meals, and state pensions. But I have never understood why a belief in the mixed economy, where transport, the utilities, and the coal mines are publicly owned and run for the benefit of the whole community also entails assenting to same-sex marriages, an open door immigration policy, and free abortion on demand. The most destructive, anti-conservative force in our societies is not Old Left socialism, but unbridled free market capitalism, which destroys communities, the environment, and traditional ways of living. Pete Seeger, the authentic voice of the old American Left, a man once described as "so far Left he has probably never been called a liberal," got it spot on when he said that he was more conservative than Barry Goldwater. Goldwater just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax: Seeger meanwhile wanted to turn the clock back to "when people lived in villages and took care of one another." Political correctness, the biggest threat to free speech of our time, has plenty to do with neo-liberalism, but precious little to do with socialism. It is time once and for all to end what Eugene Genovese has referred to as "the irrational embrace by the Left of a liberal program of personal liberation" and for the Left to stress, like Seeger did forty years ago, its positive conservatism.

On the key issue of globalization, there is much muddled thinking too. The anti-globalizers of the Left correctly point out the destabilizing effects of unregulated capital flows and rail against the nefarious activities of parasitical currency speculators like George Soros. Yet at the same time, most also welcome the unrestricted movement of people, which too can destabilize societies, as well as leading to the unemployment and lowering of wage rates of indigenous workers.

 Next up, the Left has to drop its traditional antipathy to organized religion and, in particular, to the Catholic Church. The Vatican has always been anti-Marxist-socialist, but it has, at least in some teachings, occasionally been anti-capitalist too. Pope Pius XI believed liberal capitalism and communism to be "united in their satanic optimism." Under the present Pope, the Catholic social teaching has again been pushed to the fore and the Vatican's criticism of hedonistic international capitalism has intensified. The significance of the Pope's speech in Riga in 1993, where he condemned "the international imperialism of money" and spoke of Marxism's "kernel of truth" was, I believe, missed by many on the Left. Far from being an enemy, the Catholic Church is an ally of all those who oppose the tyranny of neo-liberal globalization and the cult of materialism it engenders. It is also on the side of those who oppose war. The Vatican stands for peace now as resolutely as it did twelve years ago in the first Gulf War and in 1999 in the war against Yugoslavia.

Last, but certainly not least, the Left needs loudly and unequivocally to declare its support for the increasingly endangered concept of national sovereignty. We must defend national sovereignty not because we are nationalists but because we are democrats. The very essence of democracy is that decisions are taken as close as possible to those affected, and that those affected have a say in the decision-making process. But this cannot be the case when the decisions are imposed by supranational bodies such as the WTO, World Bank, NATO, and the EU. The War Party of course sees national sovereignty very differently. If there is one issue that clearly demonstrates this and that demarcates who exactly the Peace Party's enemies are, it is that of Kosovo. The "humanitarian" intervention, in which a sovereign state that threatened no other was bombed for 78 days and nights for the way in which it prosecuted its own "war against terrorism" brought all the imperialists out of the woodwork for us to see in broad daylight. And what a sight it was. The Clintons, the Bushes, Albright and Rubin, Gore, Lieberman and Dole, Tony Blair and William Hague, Richard Cohen and William Cohen, Baroness Thatcher, and last but not least, the "contrarian" Christopher Hitchens, all clamoring to bomb Belgrade back to the Stone Age.

The very same people are as dismissive of Iraqi sovereignty today as they were of Yugoslavia's four years ago. For the War Party, national sovereignty is a tiresome, outdated, and disposable notion that gets in the way of their plan to globalize the entire world and, in the name of democracy and human rights, eliminate all known dangers to the freedom of operation of Goldman Sachs.

 The steps outlined above are ones I believe the Left must take if an alliance with the Old Right is to stick. At the same time, the Old Right needs to shift a little ground too. Its antiwar, anti-interventionist foreign policy stance is unimpeachable. But even something as splendid as isolationism has to know its limits. Whether or not the U.S. executes its murderers, denies transvestites the right to marry, or wishes to protect its domestic steel industry is its own concern and nobody else's, but issues such as global warming, wildlife conservation, and a ban on the use of landmines can only be solved by international co-operation. Acknowledging this does not make one a Wilsonian liberal, nor does it undermine a principled defense of national sovereignty. Even if an Old Right and Old Left alliance can be forged, many differences of opinion will of course remain. My views on public ownership, health care, and redistributive taxation would, I expect, be anathema to many conservative readers. My instinct on passing any branch of McDonalds or Starbucks to search for the nearest brick, however, is one I believe many conservatives would share.

On the most important issues of the day though, the issues that really matter: globalization, war, the threats to national sovereignty, and the seemingly relentless march of transnational capitalism, the Old Right and Old Left are already, by and large, singing from the same hymn sheet. The world of 2003, with its standardised shopping malls, skinny lattes, and stealth bombers, is not the world any of us wanted. Many believe that a move from the Left will never come. But there are already positive signs. In France, Jean-Claude Michea in his book, The Adam Smith Impasse, has called for socialism to be uncoupled from liberalism and instead to draw its strength from "the altruism of ordinary people." The veteran British leftist Tariq Ali argues for a "campaigning coalition" that unites "all sections of society" to defend the public and its needs against the pirate politicians who serve the interests of global and local financial institutions. And when Pravda reprints an antiwar article written by the editor of the American Conservative, something strange and wonderful is surely starting to happen.

By allying ourselves with the Old Right, the Old Left has nothing to lose and much to gain. Far from giving up our identity, we will, I believe, be reclaiming parts long lost to liberalism. We will be able to get back to basics and start to reiterate our core beliefs. Our opposition to the international rule of money power and the idolatry of market forces. Our unequivocal rejection of all forms of imperialism, whether they fly under a military, financial, or human rights banner. And above all, our denunciation of war as the primary method of solving international disputes.

For the moment, the imperialist bandwagon appears unstoppable. But if we on the Left can conjure up enough courage to step into the unknown and embrace an old enemy, then the days of the War Party will be numbered. What is lacking today is a permanent, populist, broad-based political force to challenge the worldview of the serial globalizers and the advocates of endless war. The Peace Party can be that force. The global crisis we face today makes the old Left-Right arguments over public ownership and tax rates irrelevant. Let's have those debates later, but first let's get rid of those who threaten us with Armageddon. If we fail to grasp this historic opportunity and allow political correctness and petty tribalism to hold us back, the prognosis is bleak. One can only hope then that they are starting to build plenty of air raid shelters in Damascus.

1er avril 2003. {about the author} Neil Clark is a British journalist specialising in Middle Eastern and Balkan affairs. He is a regular contributor to The New Statesman (UK) and his work has also appeared in The Spectator (UK), The Australian, The American Conservative and The Guardian (UK) among others. This is a revised piece from the 10th March issue of The American Conservative, updated to take into account the start of the war. {end}

<http://www.antiwar.com/orig/n-clark1.html>

Postwar Reconstruction Efforts Have Had Dicey History

By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway

         From Haiti to Bosnia to East Timor, the United States and the United Nations have stumbled time and again while pressing forward ambitious programs designed to keep the peace and deliver democracy to war-pocked landscapes. Lawlessness, spotty oversight and ethnic strife all have vexed past rebuilding efforts, according to audits and reports by public and private institutions. In Afghanistan, where U.S. forces intervened 18 months ago, security remains so precarious that a recent federal analysis concluded that auditors may be unable to track the spending of U.S. tax dollars. So far, $500 million has been paid out and an additional $1.5 billion is earmarked over the next two years. "The risks are high" for illegal spending, misleading bookkeeping and project failure, according to a March 11 memorandum prepared by the inspector general's office of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Similar risks loom in Iraq, where the stakes are greater. The Bush administration's nation-building vision there is the boldest since the United States rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II. Analysts believe it may cost as much as $20 billion a year to fund reconstruction and maintain a U.S. military presence.

[...] Afghanistan showed the essential need for security and accountability. Administrators of AID programs in Kabul are barred from leaving their compound without high-level approval and a heavily armed military escort, the inspector general's report noted. Even then, bandits, landmines and fractured roads make travel difficult or impossible. One consultant recently wrote in a private assessment, obtained by The Washington Post, that security issues have made it "almost impossible" for U.S.-backed education officials to work in 24 of the nation's 34 provinces.

 The Washington Post 28 April 2003

Treasury Says U.S. Could Face Default

Washington (AP) - The Treasury Department says the United States could face the prospect of not being able to pay its bills in late May unless Congress raises the government's borrowing authority, now capped at $6.4 trillion. Treasury's debt managers have taken a number of steps since February to prevent the government from defaulting on the national debt, but "on current projections, the extraordinary measures taken since Feb. 20, 2003, will only be adequate to meet the government's needs until the latter half of May," said a statement released Tuesday.

After that -- absent a boost in the government's borrowing authority by Congress -- Treasury would breach the current $6.4 trillion ceiling on the national debt.

"The Treasury will continue to work with Congress to ensure the government's ability to finance its operations,'" Treasury said.

Treasury has asked Congress to boost the government's borrowing authority, although it has not suggested a specific amount. A proposal is pending on Capitol Hill that would raise the debt ceiling to $7.38 trillion. Last year, Congress boosted the old debt limit by $450 billion, from $5.95 trillion to the current $6.4 trillion.

 At that time Treasury warned that Congress would need to again increase the government's borrowing authority. Boosting the debt limit is more a matter of politics than economics. Economists doubt Congress will refuse to raise the limit. A federal default is considered unimaginable because it would rattle bond markets, force interest rates higher, weaken the world economy and deliver a political blow to President Bush.

 Democrats point to the government's need to borrow more to ridicule President Bush's tax cuts, his handling of the economy and ballooning federal government budget deficits, which are expected to hit records this year and next.

Republicans blame the lingering effects of the 2001 recession and the costs of fighting terrorism for the need to extend the debt limit.  By Memorial Day, Republicans hope to have pushed through Congress a tax-cut bill with a price tag of between $350 billion and $550 billion through 2013.  If Congress must approve a debt-limit extension during the same period of time, it could play into Democrats' political argument that the new tax cut will only make the government's red ink worse.  The government had to borrow a record $111 billion in the January-March quarter to cover the shortfall between expenses and tax revenue. It expects to borrow another $79 billion in the current quarter.

AP via Guardian, Wednesday, April 30, 2003

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-2620546,00.html>

03/05/03 - Le service d'ordre de la LCR gaze les manifestants pro-palestiniens

Ginette Hess-Skandrani, qui a participé à la manifestation du 1er mai à Paris, rapporte ce qui suit:

Dès le départ du cortège, les polémiques commencent. Au milieu des militant/es, connus pour leurs positions de soutien à la lutte des peuples palestiniens et irakiens, une camionnette apparaissait, décorée de drapeaux palestiniens et irakiens, d'affiches pacifistes avec le missile barré (qui était le logo des mouvements de femmes pour la paix dans les années 76). Un représentant d'ACG (Agir contre la guerre) accuse le propriétaire de la camionnette d'avoir copié leur logo. Ses arguments étaient tout à fait incompréhensibles et ont été pris pour tels.

Plus tard, des gens sont venus nous voir pour nous dire que certains slogans condamnant le sionisme étaient interdits par les différentes coordinations "Palestine", car assimilés à des slogans antisémites. Nous ne savons toujours pas si cette interdiction était officielle ou simplement intentionnelle. Parmi les différents slogans lancés dans la foule, entre les appels condamnant l'occupation de l'Irak et de la Palestine, le soutien à l'Intifada, à la résistance irakienne, à la condamnation du colonialisme, nous avons repris le fameux: "sionistes, fascistes, c'est vous les terroristes" qui a toujours résonné sur les pavés parisiens depuis plus de vingt ans. C'est suite à ce slogan ainsi qu'à un autre, vite abandonné " Bush, Sharon, Hitler ou est la différence ?" que les agressions se sont déchaînées. Le service d'ordre de la LCR (Ligue communiste révolutionnaire, organisation trotskyste) voulait interdire la présence de la camionnette dans la manifestation. Nous avons tenu bon. Ils ont fini par asperger de gaz lacrymos les femmes et les gamins qui précédaient la camionnette. Malgré les gaz, les coups, nous avons tenu bon et sommes restés dans la manifestation continuant à lancer tous nos slogans, y compris ceux qu'ils voulaient nous interdire.

<http://quibla.stcom.net>.

30 avril - Une association extrémiste juive américaine, dont les dirigeants nient tout droit aux Palestiniens, se propose de tenir la quinzaine prochaine une réunion haineuse à Paris, placée qui plus est sous le signe de la ´ tolérance ª !

Le Centre Simon Wiesenthal de Los Angeles propage du matin au soir l'idée que la France, terre de l'Affaire Dreyfus, est le pays le plus antisémite du monde. Il a publiquement participé l'an dernier à la campagne de boycottage de la France, lancée par une autre association extrémiste américaine, l'American Jewish Congress, comme on peut le lire sur le site spécialement créé à cet effet,

<http://www.boycottfrance.com>

Même un boutefeu comme Roger Cukierman, président du Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF), s'était senti obligé, pour des raisons évidentes, de se démarquer un minimum de ses collègues américains. Mais c'est quand même à Paris, dans l'enceinte de l'UNESCO, que devrait avoir lieu du 12 au 14 mai prochain cette conférence officiellement intitulée ´L'éducation pour la tolérance : le cas de l'antisémitisme résurgentª. Les organisateurs se targuent du soutien, entre autres, du maire de Paris Bertrand Delanoë qui a prévu une réception en leur honneur, et du ministre de l'Intérieur Nicolas Sarkozy, dont la présence est annoncée à la conférence.

De quelle ´toléranceª est-il question, notamment concernant les droits du peuple palestinien, à l'heure où une réouverture du dossier israélo-palestinien, par le biais de la ´feuille de routeª est à l'ordre du jour ?

La liste des intervenants parle d'elle-même. Natan Sharansky : Ce politicien israélien, actuellement ministre de Jérusalem et des affaires de la diaspora dans le gouvernement Sharon, est un adversaire acharné de la plus petite concession aux Palestiniens. Il s'est par exemple toujours opposé à la moindre discussion sur le statut de Jérusalem, ou à un démantèlement, même partiel, des colonies. Le Grand Rabbin (ashkénaze) d'Israël, Israel Meir Lau. Pas vraiment un modèle d'ouverture, lui non plus. Partisan déclaré de la colonisation, il a aussi donné sa bénédiction à la pratique des ´assassinats ciblésª de militants palestiniens par l'armée israélienne. Mais il condamne les Juifs qui fêtent Noël ou le Nouvel An chrétien, les accusant de ´saper les fondements de la Nation Juiveª. Quant à la question de Jérusalem, pas question de partage des Lieux Saints: tout appartient à l'Etat Juif. Jeb Bush: On ne présente plus le gouverneur de la Floride, frère du président américain. Non plus que le général américain Wesley Clarke, ancien patron des forces de l'OTAN. Arno Klarsfeld, champion de la tolérance ? En attendant de revêtir l'uniforme de l'armée israélienne dans les territoires palestiniens occupés, comme il vient de l'annoncer, cet homme s'est fait condamner par la Justice, en France, pour diffamation envers le mouvement antiraciste MRAP, qu'il avait traité ´d'antisémiteª. Mais sans rire, [le faux-juif] Arno Klarsfeld est invité à s 'exprimer sur la ´Jurisprudenceª de la répression de l'antisémitisme !

Les références des animateurs du Centre Simon Wiesenthal sont à l'avenant. Exploitant leur ´nom de marqueª, qu'ils achètent très cher, celui du pseudo chasseur de nazis Simon Wiesenthal qui vient de prendre officiellement se retraite à l'âge de 95 ans, estimant avoir accompli sa tâche, ses épigones américains poursuivent de tous autres objectifs. Le Rabbin Abraham Cooper, docteur en antisémitisme virtuel, parlera de ´La haine sur Internetª. Mais n'allez pas chercher dans ses oeuvres la dénonciation des sites racistes se réclamant du judaïsme (comme amisraelhai.org, qui a invité ses ouailles à lyncher les pacifistes juifs), vous ne la trouveriez pas. Shimon Samuels, patron du bureau parisien du Centre Simon Wiesenthal et coordinateur du colloque, était de ceux qui appelaient l'an dernier au boycottage, par les Etats-Unis, du Festival de Cannes. Il s'était de même permis de critiquer le ministre israélien des Affaires étrangères, Shimon Peres, lorsque ce dernier s'était déclaré ´certain que la France n'est pas un pays antisémiteª. ´Les déclarations d'apaisement de Peres encouragent la négation de la réalité de la judéophobie en France, et affaiblissent les protestations stridentes d'organisations comme la nôtreª, avait déploré ce pompier-pyromane, qui parle des Juifs de France comme d'une ´communauté assiégée.

Mais c'est lui qui renforce, ouvertement, la mentalité de repli, en réservant la promotion de son colloque au seul public juif, ou plus exactement à la partie la plus communautaire de celui-ci, comme il l'a fait mercredi à l'antenne de Radio J. ´Il faut qu'il y ait le plus possible de Juifs à ce colloque populaire, l'entrée sera gratuiteª, a-t-il dit, avant de donner les informations pratiques pour se procurer les cartons d'invitation. L'une des principales activités du Centre Simon Wiesenthal de Los Angeles est la gestion d'un ´Musée de la Toléranceª, consacré au génocide nazi des Juifs, et uniquement à celui-ci. Ce caractère exclusif lui vaut d'être critiqué par un autre lobby, arménien celui-là. La communauté arménienne locale reproche ainsi au musée d'être volontairement silencieux sur le génocide des Arméniens par les Turcs (1915-1918, plus d'un million de morts), pour ne pas déplaire à la Turquie, partenaire d'Israël au Proche-Orient. Elle ajoute que le Centre Simon Wiesenthal a bénéficié d'importantes subventions de la part de l'Etat de Californie, à la condition expresse que le thème du génocide arménien soit présent dans les expositions permanentes du musée, mais que cet engagement n'a pas été tenu.

Cette conférence n'a évidemment pas pour objectif de combattre l'antisémitisme, mais, une fois de plus, de tenter d'empêcher toute critique de la politique d'Israël vis-à-vis de la Palestine, en exerçant une fois de plus un chantage éhonté à l'antisémitisme. D'ailleurs, le camp de la haine anti-palestinienne sera officiellement représenté à la conférence, avec la présence annoncée de deux parlementaires européens, Ilke Schröder et François Zimeray, qui animent à Bruxelles et à Strasbourg un lobby pour mettre fin aux subventions européennes à l'Autorité Palestinienne.

Shimon Samuels n'a pas caché, toujours sur Radio J, que le thème de l'antisémitisme était avant tout un instrument pour empêcher toute critique de la politique d'Israël. ´L'anti-israélisme, l'anti-sionisme c'est-à-dire l'antisémitisme, débordent désormais du seul cadre des organisations qui soutiennent les Palestiniens. On le voit dans les Forums anti-mondialisation, comme à Porto Alegre où j'étais, qui sont devenus des Forums anti-juifsª.

Spain: Draft law to criminalise public opposition to war

A draft law to change the Spanish military criminal code proposes that participation in public acts opposing military intervention in a situation of armed conflict could lead to prison sentences of between one and six years for the people involved, if convicted of "defeatism". Civilians could find themselves before military courts. The proposals would mean a severe limitation of freedom of expression and political activity. Article 49 of the draft, produced by the Defence ministry and quoted in Spanish daily El País on 22 April 2002, reads as follows:

"A person who, in a situation of armed conflict of an international nature in which Spain is involved, with the aim of discrediting Spain´s participation in (the conflict), publicly carries out acts against it ... will be punished with a sentence of between one and six years in prison. The same penalty will apply to a person who ... divulges false news or information with the aim of weakening the morale of the population or to provoke disloyalty or a lack of spirit among members of the Spanish military".

 Voir El País, 22.4.03

<http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/apr/17spainwarlaw.html>

Bonjour,

"Sautons ici un passage où l'infortuné Beketch avale un méchant canular sur une prétendue "pile électrique" " (Gazette, nƒ 23)

Je doute que ce soit un canular; en faisant une recherche sur Google, on se rend compte que, toute révisionniste qu'elle soit(*), c'est la théorie qui prévaut. Voici par exemple un extrait d'une page de la BBC :

Though most archaeologists agree the devices were batteries, there is much conjecture as to how they could have been discovered, and what they were used for.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2804257.stm>

et une autre apparemment tirée d'une revue italienne :

<http://digilander.libero.it/LuigiGarlaschelli/Altrepubblicazioni/baghdad.htm>

(*) puisque ce ne serait pas Volta qui aurait inventé la pile

électrique; j'espère seulement que ces braves gens ne seront pas traînés en justice...

Americans: The Jews of the World

By Daniel G. Jennings

FrontPageMagazine.com | April 23, 2003

<http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7444>

And the Arab fanatics are far from alone. The American flag is burned regularly in the streets around the world and not just in Third World countries. In March 2003, the Stars and Stripes was publicly burned in the center of Paris. In other words thousands of people around the world are publically demonstrating their desire to destroy America and Americans. The Islamist idiots burning the American flag today would jump at the chance to burn Americans and American cities tomorrow.

Like the Jews in the 1920s, Americans today should be afraid, very afraid. Just as the anti-Semites believed they could solve the world's problems by killing Jews, the Anti-Americans believe they can solve the world's problems by killing Americans. And they're willing to go to great lengths to do it. They will even sacrifice their own lives for a chance to kill us.

The United States -- and this is a generalization -- does not understand the Third World, and does not care to. (I mean, come on, how well does it understand Canada?) And the CIA employs an army of spooks, sub-spooks, hangers-on, informants, fixers and all-purpose greasers to keep things as muddy as possible for its own purposes, just like John Le Carré describes in his novel, The Tailor Of Panama.

It's like that, except maybe seedier. It's not fiction. I've seen it throughout Latin America -- in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile and Colombia -- where civilians are dying by the tens of thousands. FRAPH, for example, was a CIA creation in Haiti in the early 1990s. This "Front for Advancement and Progress" was full of Tontons Macoute killers from the old "Papa Doc" Duvalier terror regime. [...] It's such a tired story.

Lindia Diebel dans le Toronto Star du 3 mai 2003.

<http://www.thestar.ca/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1035780136946&call_page=TS_Columnists&call_pageid=970599109774&call_pagepath=Columnists>

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