Global Research, July 30, 2010

by Eric Walberg

Russia’s accommodation of the US and NATO continues apace, with new support of the Afghan war and even missile defence, notes Eric Walberg 　 The Atlantists are on the ascendant these days in Moscow. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev’s hamburger lunch with United States President Barack Obama during his visit to Silicon Valley last month apparently left a pleasant taste in his mouth. Now relations with NATO are on the mend, as Russia plans to send 27 Mi-17 helicopters to Afghanistan, NATO Military Committee Chairman Giampaolo di Paola said after a meeting with Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Nikolai Makarov last Friday. Rosoboronexport has even offered to throw in the first three helicopters for free.

Makarov went further, telling di Paola that Russia was now ready to work with NATO “to pool efforts to find solutions to contemporary challenges and threats to international security”. Di Paola welcomed the Russian general’s offer, assuring him that NATO views Moscow as a “strong strategic partner, not as a threat or an enemy”. He spoke vaguely about new members having to “meet NATO standards”, avoiding the U(kraine) and G(eorgia) words during their press conference. Russian and NATO experts will draft a joint action plan for 2011 within the next few months, he said.

Russian NATO Ambassadoor Dmitri Rogozin recently boasted that “Russian helicopters will ideally fit Afghan conditions: they are easy to operate, reliable, efficient and known by Afghan pilots.” He offered to train Afghan pilots in addition to the Afghan police Russia is now helping train. Makarov even offered “consultancy in military and combat training based on our Afghan experience, including our mistakes”. The deal is estimated at $300m though Rogozin hinted that a discount beyond the three free copters was possible and that Russia could kick in another 19 in 2012. So, if I understand this correctly, Russia’s Afghan communist allies from the days of Soviet occupation are now going to man the same old Russian helicopters to kill yet more Afghan patriots, the only difference being the language the occupiers speak and their capitalist pedigree.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is also feeling the chilly wind of Russia-US detente these days. The Russian state-owned NTV, watched by millions of Belorussians, broadcast a scathing two-part documentary “The Belarusian Godfather” last week as the Kremlin was hosting leading Belarusian opposition figures, in a campaign to unseat their troublesome ally in the presidential elections next February. The Russian ire peaked last month over unpaid gas bills, disagreements over the proposed new customs union with Kazakhstan, and Lukashenko’s refusal to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as it, like Russia, seeks to curry favour in Brussels. Upping the ante, a sympathetic interview with Russian nemesis Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was broadcast on Belarusian TV and Lukashenko is currently hosting deposed Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Bakiyev’s overthrow was approved if not abetted by Moscow, and the comparison of Lukashenko and Bakiyev in “The Godfather-II” is a stark warning to Lukashenko that his days are numbered.

What accounts for this sudden effusion of East-West friendship, after years of complaining about NATO encirclement and missile bases in Poland?

Obama’s more accommodating tone and NATO’s pause in its eastward march has clearly mollified the Russians. It also looks like disagreements over Ukrainian/ Georgian membership in NATO and South Ossetian/ Abkhazian independence are all on the backburner now as the US sinks deeper and deeper into its Afghan quagmire. Russia backs the losing war there because it is very worried about the prospects of a Taliban victory. Better a pro-US dictatorship than another Islamic neighbour. Besides, the helicopter deal (and who knows what else?) will replace its $1 billion loss on Iranian missile sales.

But Afghanistan is not Belarus, and rather than moving forward and trying to reach an accommodation with Afghanistan’s popular resistance movement, Russia is ignoring the lesson it learned with such pain two decades ago, gambling that the US can produce a miracle where it failed. It is also gambling that the US and NATO are too preoccupied — and grateful to a newly nice Russia — to try to pull off another colour revolution in Belarus, where Russia is counting on a largely pro-Russian nation finding a replacement to Lukashenko who will not cause the headaches that he, the orange, rose and tulip revolutionaries have caused.

Whatever happens in Afghanistan and Belarus, Medvedev’s two greatest wishes now are to get SALT through the US senate and to pave the way for Russia to join Europe. To clinch this westward reorientation, there are now signs that Russia will do the unthinkable: work with the US on missile defence. In a New York Times oped, ex-Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov and ex-German US ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, co-chairmen of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative Commission, joined former senator Sam Nunn in calling for “North America, Europe and Russia to make defence of the entire Euro-Atlantic region against potential ballistic missile attack a joint priority”. They propose the creation of a “more inclusive and better-defended Euro-Atlantic community … what national leaders in their moment of hope at the Cold War’s close spoke of as a ‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals whole and free for the first time in 300 years’.”

Acceding to US plans for missile defence will kill Medvedev’s two birds with one stone. The NYT oped panders to Russian self-image by calling for the US, EU and Russia to “undertake as equal parties to design from the ground up a common architecture to deal with the threat”. It soothingly assures us that a joint Starwars will “aid progress in bolstering the nuclear nonproliferation regime”. Left out of the equation is the glaring fact that a world encircled by hair-trigger missiles is more likely to be a trigger for war than peace, that the whole point of Starwars is to create facts-on-the-ground for the US empire which will allow it to dictate just what kind of world order is acceptable. As for boosting the NPT, the only way to discourage countries from emulating the nuclear powers is for them to give up their deadly weapons and stop threatening the world with them. It is naive of Russia to think it will be able to veto, say, a war on Iran or some other “offender” of what the US deems to be OK, or that countries threatened by US invasion will stop trying to acquire weapons that will make the US think twice.

This new accommodating Russia is very much in the US global interest and Obama is sure to keep courting Medvedev, despite attempts by Cold Warriors to undermine the budding friendship, as witnessed in the mock spy scandal last month. Given the new westerly wind blowing out of the Kremlin, geopolitical logic could mean an end to Brzezinski-like plans to encircle Russia. Much better to leave the problems of a remote Kyrgyzstan to a friend. Let it deal with complex ethnic and economic problems which Americans can’t hope to understand or solve, using a Russian (NATO?) military base as the occasion demands rather than maintaining an unpopular US one. Ukraine? Georgia? Bela-who? Afghanistan is what’s important, if it can be secured in the Western fold, with Russia in tow. And Starwars.

The goal of Obama’s imperial team is to rally Russia to the US (oops, I mean NATO) flag and push on. Ivanov et al explain that if all goes well, soon along with China, we “can explore cooperation on the role and place of missile defense in a multipolar nuclear world.” It looks like Medvedev has opted for US empire even as it implodes. Will Hu get the hint? ***

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com

References:

Atlantists http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=210

hamburger lunch http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=266

Soviet occupation http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=126

Lukashenko http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=87

new accommodating Russia http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=255

problems of a remote Kyrgyzstan http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=264

unpopular US one http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=262

Ukraine http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221

Georgia http://ericwalberg.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=231

By Helena Norberg-Hodge

06 March, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“Fundamentalism and fascism have always emerged when societies are pushed into deep insecurity by outside forces — most commonly those of imperialism and economic globalisation…. Today, these forces are creating deep-seated insecurities and resentments across the world, as traditional cultures, value systems and even elected governments crumble before the onslaught of rapid technological change, the Americanisation of culture and the spread of the corporate monoculture.”
Vandana Shiva

It did not take long for the horrifying images of September 11 to mutate into the increasingly familiar spectacle of high-tech, stage-managed warfare, complete with cruise missiles, laser-guided bombs, and remote satellite imagery of their destructive effects. So little time was devoted to considering how we arrived at this pass that we are likely to revisit it again and again. For the frightening response by the US and British governments will almost certainly lead to more fundamentalism in the South, heightened rivalries and friction between local ethnic groups (as is already happening in Afghanistan), the undermining of regional governments (as is already happening in Pakistan), and further anger and resentment aimed at westerners in general and Americans in particular (as is already happening in Indonesia and elsewhere in the Islamic world). In the long run, it will lead to more terrorism as well.

Long before September 11, anger and violence were on the increase, particularly in the South. According to the Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity (INCORE), ethnic conflicts are underway in at least 43 countries around the world. Westerners are largely unaware of most of these, thanks to the parochial focus of the mainstream media — which devotes an inordinate amount of attention to the gyrations of the stock market and the sexual pursuits of politicians and movie stars. Most of us are only dimly aware, if at all, of the ethnic conflicts that simmer and periodically boil over in Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Bhutan, Turkey, Guatemala and many other regions, including Afghanistan. These conflicts become `newsworthy’ only by virtue of their proximity to western industrial countries — Chechnya and Bosnia, for example — or when they slake the media’s thirst for sensationalism — as was the case in Rwanda. But unbeknownst to most Westerners, fanaticism, fundamentalism, and ethnic conflict have been growing for many decades — and not just in the Islamic world.

Failure to recognise this trend can lead us to focus on the attack on America in isolation, and to ignore the broader pattern of which it is part. Thus, speculation on what motivated the terrorists has ranged from the ridiculous (they simply “hate us for who we are — `infidels’ who don’t share their faith”) to the reasonable (they were driven by anger over the Gulf War, US support for Israel, the presence of US troops in Muslim holy lands, and so on). Some of these analyses may approach the immediate reasons for this tragedy, but they fall well short of reaching the root causes common to most such conflicts today.

To really understand the rise in religious fundamentalism and ethnic conflict, we need to look at the deep impacts of what might be described as the jihad of a global consumer culture against every other culture on the planet. Doing so not only allows us to better understand the September 11 tragedy, but to see a way forward that lessens the violence on all sides.

My perspective comes from experiences in numerous cultures in both the North and South over the past 35 years. When I studied in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1966, the Tyrol conflict was raging; during several stays in Spain in the 1980s and 1990s, the Basque separatist group ETA was active, as they still are today; as a resident of England I’ve seen the effects of the IRA’s long-running battles with the UK government; having worked for a quarter-century on the Indian subcontinent, I’ve also seen tensions and open conflict among Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims in India, and between Buddhists and Hindus in Bhutan.

Most important of all, I have been able to witness first-hand the evolution of tensions between the Buddhist majority and Muslim minority in Ladakh, or `Little Tibet’, in the western Himalayas. For more than 600 years these two groups lived side by side with no recorded instance of conflict. They helped each other at harvest time, attended one another’s religious festivals, even intermarried. But within a decade of the imposition of western-style `development’, Buddhists and Muslims were engaged in pitched battles — including the bombing of each other’s homes — that took many lives. Even mild-mannered grandmothers — who a decade earlier would have been drinking chang, eating tsampa and laughing with their Muslim neighbours — told me, “we have to kill all the Muslims or they will finish us off.”

How did relations between these two ethnic groups change so quickly and completely? The sudden transformation is unfathomable, unless one understands the impact of globalisation — an impact being felt by individuals and diverse cultures worldwide. In Ladakh, the integration of the largely self-reliant local economy into the global economy was both debilitating and demoralising, and led to what can best be described as a cultural inferiority complex — and consequently to a rise in religious fundamentalism and violence. As `development’ and `modernisation’ continue to level cultures and undermine rural life, they are having similar consequences virtually everywhere.

From cooperation to competition

When I first arrived in Ladakh 25 years ago, there was absolutely no indication that Ladakhis thought of themselves as poor or inferior. Though natural resources were scarce and hard to obtain, the Ladakhis had, in fact, a remarkably high standard of living. Most of the region’s self-reliant farmers only really worked four months of the year, and poverty and unemployment were alien concepts. Resources were used sustainably, and pollution was non-existent.

In 1975, I was shown around the remote village of Hemis Shukpachan by a young Ladakhi named Tsewang. Since all the houses I saw seemed especially large and beautiful, I asked Tsewang to show me the houses where the poor lived. He looked perplexed for a moment, then replied, “We don’t have any poor people here.”
Even though Tsewang’s self-confidence was typical of Ladakhis at the time, the seeds of dissatisfaction were already being sown. In 1962 a road linking the region with the rest of India had been built by the Indian Army, ending Ladakh’s near-total isolation from the influences of the global economy. In 1975 — the year Tsewang showed me his village — the region was fully opened up to the process of `development’. Within a few years Ladakhis were exposed to television, western movies, advertising and a seasonal flood of western tourists. Subsidised food and consumer goods — from Michael Jackson CDs and plastic toys to Rambo videos and pornography — poured in on the new roads that development brought. Ladakh’s local economy was being incorporated into the global economy, and its traditional culture displaced by a global monoculture.
Almost immediately, competition increased dramatically. The `cheap’ subsidised food imported into the region made farming seem uneconomic, thereby undermining the agricultural foundation of the village-scale economy. Meanwhile, development pressures were fracturing the intricate structure of human relationships on which local agriculture — indeed the whole of Ladakhi culture — depended. Men and children were being drawn into urban areas where modern-sector jobs and schooling were centralised, leaving behind farmers — many of them women — who could no longer rely on family members or cooperative labour, and were forced to compete for the services of paid labourers. Those that left their villages, meanwhile, quickly found themselves in competition with one another for the scarce jobs of the new money economy.
Competition also increased for political power. In the past, most Ladakhis wielded real influence and power within their human-scale economy. In the new world brought by modernisation and development, Ladakhis were being absorbed into a national economy of 800 million, and a global economy of six billion. Their influence and power were reduced almost to zero. The little political power that remained within the region was funnelled through highly centralised institutions and bureaucracies, many of them prone to favouritism and abuse.

Competitive pressures increased further as development replaced plentiful local materials with the scarce materials of the global monoculture: thus mud brick and stone gave way to concrete and steel; sheep’s wool and yak skin to imported cotton and polyester; barley and cow’s milk to instant noodles and bottled soft drinks. The result was artificial scarcity: people who had thrived for centuries on local materials were now, in effect, competing for resources with everyone else on the planet.
Everywhere in the world, competition puts those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder at a great disadvantage. The implicit promise of `development’ — that people will eventually attain the standard of living enjoyed by citizens of the richest industrialised countries — is realised by only a small handful. The gap between rich and poor widens, and anger and resentment steadily increase.

Psychological pressures

Throughout the South, `development’ systematically destroys local economies, thereby sapping villages of their vitality. Even still, life in a village offers far better prospects than life in one of the South’s rapidly expanding cities, where little more than unemployment, urban squalor and crushing poverty await the majority. But an almost irresistible urban pull is exerted by the media and advertising, whose images consistently portray the rich and the beautiful living an exciting and glamorous version of the American Dream. Satellite television now brings shows like `Baywatch’ to the most remote parts of the world, making village life seem primitive, inefficient and boring by contrast. Young people in particular are made to feel ashamed of their own culture. In Ladakh, the psychological impact was sudden and stark: eight years after telling me his village had no poor people, I overheard Tsewang saying to some tourists, “if you could only help us Ladakhis, we’re so poor.”
This undermining of self-esteem, occurring throughout the South, is actually a conscious goal of global advertisers, who promote their own products by imparting a sense of shame about anything local. An ad executive in Beijing admitted that the message being drummed into Third World populations today is: “imported equals good, local equals crap”.

But it is not just local products that are denigrated by advertising and media images: it is local people as well. In Ladakh and around the world, the one-dimensional media stereotypes are invariably based on an urban, Western consumer model: blonde, blue-eyed and clean. If you are a farmer or are dark-skinned, you are made to feel primitive, backward, inferior. Thus, advertisements in Thailand and South America urge people to `correct’ their dark eye colour with blue contact lenses: “have the colour of eyes you wish you were born with,” the ad copy reads. For the same reason, women in the South use dangerous chemicals to lighten their skin and hair, and some Asian women even have operations to make their eyes look more Western. These are profound statements of self-rejection — of embarrassment at being who you really are.
Few in the South have been able to withstand this assault on their cultural and individual self-esteem. A few years ago I visited the most remote part of Kenya’s Masailand, where I was told that people had withstood the pressures of the consumer monoculture, and still retained an untarnished dignity and pride. So I was horrified when a beautiful young Masai leader introduced me to his father saying, “Helena is working in the Himalayas with people who are even more primitive than we are.” The old man replied, “That is not possible: no one could be more primitive than us.”

The rise of fundamentalism

In the past, Ladakhis would be unlikely to define themselves primarily as Buddhists or Muslims, instead focusing on their village or their extended family. But with the heightened competition brought by `development’, that began to change. Political power, formerly dispersed throughout the village-scale economy, became concentrated in bureaucracies controlled by the Muslim-dominated state of Kashmir, of which Ladakh was part. In any country, the group in power inevitably tends to favour its own kind, while the rest often suffer discrimination, and Ladakh was no exception. Buddhists became convinced that political representation and government jobs — virtually the only jobs available to formally-schooled Ladakhis — were disproportionately going to Muslims. Thus, ethnic and religious differences — once largely ignored — began to take on a political dimension, causing bitterness and enmity on a scale previously unknown.

Young Ladakhis for whom religion had been just another part of daily life took exaggerated steps to demonstrate their religious affiliation and devotion. Muslims began requiring their wives and daughters to cover their heads with scarves. Buddhists in the capital began broadcasting their prayers over loudspeakers, so as to compete with the Muslim calls to prayer. Religious ceremonies that once were celebrated by the whole community — Buddhist and Muslim alike — became instead occasions to flaunt one group’s numbers and strength. Within a few years, tensions between the two groups exploded into violence. This in a place where, previously, there had not been a fight of any sort in living memory.

It was clear to me that the young men who were ready to kill people in the name of Islam or Buddhism had not had much exposure to the traditional teachings of their respective religions. Instead, they were the ones who had studiously modelled themselves on Rambo and James Bond, and who were the most psychologically insecure. On the other hand, those who had managed to maintain their deeper connections to the community and to their spiritual roots were psychologically strong enough to remain gentle.

It was also the case that the Ladakhis most prone to fundamentalism and violence had long exposure to western-style schooling, another feature of conventional `development’. The forces of `modernisation’ pulled Ladakhi children away from the traditional education that prepared them for life on the Tibetan Plateau, instead offering them an education suited to a modern, urban way of life that will forever be beyond their reach, and training them for jobs that simply don’t exist. As Sonam Angchuk, leader of a students’ organisation in Ladakh points out, young western-educated Ladakhis “are really in trouble…. They are rejected by the modern and they are cut off from the traditional. They are really lost.”

This is true all over the South, where young people — who are highly susceptible to both the implicit promise of western-style schooling and the urban lure of media and advertising — are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry. Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University, agrees that this ranks among the root causes of fundamentalism and terrorism:

“The people involved in fundamentalist movements, Islamic or otherwise, are often people with advanced educations. Most of them do not become terrorists, of course. But these are intelligent, ambitious young people who aspire to put their educations to use in a modern, developed economy, and they become frustrated by the lack of jobs, the lack of opportunity. They are cross- pressured as well by the forces of globalisation…. They are attracted to Western culture, obviously, but they are also repelled by it.”
The story of Buddhists and Muslims in Ladakh is thus by no means unique. The rise of divisions, violence and civil disorder around the world are a predictable effect of the attempt to force diverse cultures and peoples into a single global monoculture. The loss of personal and cultural self-esteem, along with greatly heightened competition, can lead to divisions deep enough to result in fundamentalist reaction and ethnic conflict. This is particularly true in the South, where people from many differing ethnic backgrounds are pulled into cities where they are cut off from their communities and cultural moorings, and face ruthless competition for jobs and the basic necessities of life. In the intensely demoralising and competitive situation they face, differences of any kind become increasingly significant, and tension between differing ethnic or religious groups can easily flare into violence.

Since the North’s own rural communities and economies are being undermined by many of the same destructive forces at work in the South, it should be no surprise that the effects are similar even here. Christian fundamentalism, for example, has taken root in America’s rural heartland, as have increasing levels of hostility towards immigrants, blacks, Jews and other ethnic minorities. It is even reasonable to argue that the deadly domestic terrorist attack on Oklahoma City in 1996 ultimately sprang from the same source as the more recent attack on New York and Washington.

Despite the clear connection between the spread of the global monoculture and ethnic conflict, many in the west lay the blame at the feet of tradition rather than modernity, putting the onus on `ancient hatreds’ that have smouldered beneath the surface for centuries. Certainly ethnic friction is a phenomenon which predates colonialism and modernisation. But after a quarter-century of firsthand experience on the Indian subcontinent, I am convinced that globalisation and its partner, `development’, not only exacerbate existing tensions but in many cases actually create them. They break down human-scale structures, destroy bonds of reciprocity and mutual dependence, and encourage people to substitute their own culture and values with the artificial values of advertising and the media. In effect this means rejecting one’s own identity, rejecting one’s self. In the case of Ladakh, it is clear that `ancient hatreds’ never existed, and cannot account for the sudden appearance of violence.

Stopping the violence

If we wish to prevent the spread of ethnic and religious violence, the first place to start is by reversing the policies that now promote economic globalisation. Those policies include `free trade’ treaties, public investments in trade-based infrastructures, subsidies — both hidden and direct — for the huge corporations involved in global trade, and of course conventional `development’ efforts in the South.

The attempt to create a global monoculture in the image of the west has proven disastrous on many counts, none more important than the violence it does to cultures that must be pulled apart to accommodate the process. When that violence spins out of control, finally reaching us in the West as it did on September 11, it should remind us of the heavy cost of levelling the world’s diverse multitude of social and economic systems, many of them much better at sustainably meeting people’s needs than the system that aims to replace it.

Until relatively recently, those diverse cultures were a product of a dialogue between humans and a particular place, growing and evolving from the `bottom up’ in response to local conditions. Though outside influences like trade always changed cultures, what has happened since the end of World War II is something completely new. Today, investments and corporations from outside are transforming every aspect of life — people’s language, their music, their buildings, their agriculture, the way they see the world. That `top down’ form of cultural change works against diversity, against the very fabric of life.

In any case, the western model that is being pushed on the world is not replicable: the one-eyed economists who look at electronic signals to tell them whether economies are `healthy’ or `growing fast enough’ never do the arithmetic needed to see if the earth has enough resources for their abstract models to work. It is little more than a cruel hoax to promise the poor of the world that `development’ and `free trade’ will enable them to live as Americans or Europeans do, when that promise is a physical impossibility.
It is therefore important to look critically even at those well-meaning proposals for further `aid’ to the South as a means of alleviating poverty — a presumed cause of terrorism. The elimination of poverty is certainly a worthy goal, but when our `aid’ serves to tie people more tightly to a global economy over which they have no control — and undermines their ability to produce their own needs, maintain their own culture, and determine their own future — it is unlikely to prevent either poverty or terrorism. Like `free trade’ — also claimed by some to be the solution to terrorism — most `development’ aid benefits only the corporations poised to exploit the labour, resources and markets of cultures being integrated into the global economy.

Would a shift in policy — away from the costly effort to create a global consumer monoculture, towards support for diversity through stronger local and regional economies — help reduce fundamentalism, ethnic conflict, and terrorism? Recent experiences in Ladakh clearly show that ethnic tensions do diminish when people are encouraged to maintain their own culture and economy. This has been among the goals of many years of `counter-development’ work in Ladakh by ISEC and its predecessor, the Ladakh Project. Those efforts have aimed at de-idealising the west by painting a fuller picture of modern urban life — including the crime, unemployment, loneliness and alienation — thereby helping to reinstill respect for the indigenous culture. Efforts to strengthen the agricultural economy — using Ladakh’s own traditions as a base — have helped to revitalise the human-scale village economy. The introduction of simple technologies that make use of locally-available renewable energies (solar, wind, and water power) have limited the need to trade global dependence for an improved material standard of living. And giving voice to women (the keepers of tradition) through the formation of an indigenous Women’s Alliance has provided an important link between the past and the future.

These efforts have led to a growing sense that Ladakh’s future is in the hands of the Ladakhis themselves, and have helped to revitalise both cultural and individual self-esteem. This change is apparent even among young Ladakhis, the most vulnerable to the psychological impact of `development’. Today, tensions between Buddhists and Muslims have subsided and religious fundamentalism has ebbed. The likelihood of civil war or `ethnic cleansing’ in Ladakh appears remote, and the future looks peaceful. Our political leaders should be informed that no smart bombs or cruise missiles were needed to accomplish this miracle.

Thomas L. Friedman, “A Tweezer Defense Shield?”, New York Times, Oct. 19. 2001.

Ancient Futures Learning from Ladakh, (video), ISEC, 1993.

“A Head-On Collision of Alien Cultures?”, interview with Samuel Huntington, New York Times, Oct. 20, 2001.

Helena Norberg-Hodge is an analyst of the impact of the global economy on cultures and agriculture worldwide and a pioneer of the localisation movement. She is the founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC). He book Ancient Futures has been described as an “inspirational classic” by the London Times and together with a film of the same title, it has been translated into 42 languages. She is also co-author of Bringing the Food Economy Home and From the Ground Up: Rethinking Industrial Agriculture. In 1986, she received the Right Livelihood Award, or the “Alternative Nobel Prize” as recognition for her work in Ladakh

by Andy Worthington

July 27, 2010 | UrukNet

Last week, in the first part of this two-part series, I began looking at how the Conservative-dominated D.C. Circuit Court has responded to the rulings in the District Court regarding the habeas petitions of the prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay, where, to date, 38 out of 53 cases have been won by the prisoners. In my article, I examined the first three appeals considered by the Circuit Court, and noted that, although none were contentious (to the extent that they were appeals against habeas petitions that had been denied), in each case the Circuit Court, while upholding the men’s detention, made a point of trying to expand the government’s powers.

In January this year, the Court attempted (against the government’s wishes) to argue that the international laws of war were irrelevant to the detention of men at Guantánamo and the legislation underpinning it (the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed the week after the 9/11 attacks), and in two cases in June, the Court took exception to the prevailing requirement for detention accepted in the District Court — that the men be part of the “command structure” of al-Qaeda or the Taliban — arguing that merely being “part of” either organization was enough.

As I have maintained for the last year and half, the problems with the AUMF — which the District Court judges are not empowered to discuss, even if they wanted — is that it fails to distinguish between al-Qaeda (a terrorist organization) and the Taliban (the government of Afghanistan at the time of the US-led invasion in October 2001). The result of this confusion is that the majority of the men who have lost their habeas petitions (and whose detention is being robustly upheld by the Circuit Court) were, at best, minor players in a military conflict that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda’s international terrorist operations, and therefore the Circuit Court, with its enthusiasm for endorsing detention, is taking us further away from the kind of discussion we should be having about the purpose of Guantánamo and the ongoing detention of the men held there.

A rare victory: Circuit Court orders lower court to reconsider the case of Belkacem Bensayah, an Algerian kidnapped in Bosnia

Despite the Circuit Court’s prevailing enthusiasm for endorsing ongoing detention, there was a surprise on June 28, when a panel led by Judge Douglas Ginsburg actually ruled in favor of a prisoner, ordering the lower court to reconsider whether Belkacem Bensayah, an Algerian, and one of six men kidnapped in Bosnia-Herzegovina in January 2002 and rendered to Guantánamo, was involved in any way with al-Qaeda.

In November 2008, Judge Richard Leon had granted the habeas petitions of five men seized with Bensayah, but had ruled that the government had provided “credible and reliable evidence,” from a number of sources, “linking Mr. Bensayah to al-Qaeda and, more specifically, to a senior al-Qaeda facilitator,” and had denied his petition.

In dismissing Judge Leon’s conclusion on June 28 (PDF), Judge Ginsburg said “the evidence upon which the district court relied in concluding Bensayah ‘supported’ al-Qaeda is insufficient … to show he was part of that organization.” He added, “The government presented no direct evidence of actual communication between Bensayah and any al-Qaeda member,” and also noted that, after Judge Leon had delivered his ruling, the Obama administration stepped back from a claim that a “senior al-Qaeda operative and facilitator” was a witness against Bensayah.

That man, it is clear from analyses of the case over many years, was Abu Zubaydah, the supposed “high-value detainee,” for whom the CIA’s torture program was initially introduced, and who, it turned out, was not a member of al-Qaeda at all, and had no knowledge of any international terrorist plots, including 9/11. In a case appealed in the Circuit Court the week before Bensayah’s — that of Sufyian Barhoumi, an Algerian seized with Zubaydah — the judges failed to recognize that the government had backed down from most of its claims about Zubaydah, and, shamefully, relied on long-discredited statements made by Ahmed Ressam, the failed “Millennium Bomber,” who is now serving a 22-year sentence in a US prison, as part of its justification for upholding Barhoumi’s detention.

The collapse of the case against Zubaydah — primarily because torture encourages its victims to make up a pack of lies to get it to stop — has been so significant that allegations made by him or about him have stealthily disappeared from the charge sheets in numerous cases — not only at Guantánamo, but also in other countries. In Bensayah’s case, however, the discussions regarding his significance — or lack of it — have surfaced over the years, and in an article in the New York Times in March this year, Charlie Savage explained how Bensayah’s case had also provided a test for the Obama administration regarding the perceived scope of its detention powers.

The article was fascinating for the revelations that, last spring, career lawyers at the Justice Department resisted narrowing the definition of who could legally be held at Guantánamo, after Judge John D. Bates asked for a current definition, fearing that “rolling back the Bush position might make it harder to win,” but that White House Counsel Greg Craig shepherded President Obama to a position in which “only people who were part of al-Qaeda or its affiliates, or their ‘substantial’ supporters” could be detained — the definition that Judge Bates later refined by proposing that the “key inquiry” for determining whether an individual has become “part of” one or more of these organizations is “whether the individual functions or participates within or under the command structure of the organization — i.e., whether he receives and executes orders or directions.”

Last summer, after Craig had already been sidelined for his fearless approach to dismantling the Bush administration’s policies, the case of Belkacem Bensayah arose as a test for the administration, given that he had been seized “far from the active combat zone” and had, essentially, only been accused of “facilitating the travel of people who wanted to go to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda.”

Savage reported that Harold Koh, who became the State Department’s senior lawyer in June, “produced a lengthy, secret memo contending that there was no support in the laws of war for the United States’ position in the Bensayah case.” Koh was up against Jeh Johnson at the Pentagon, who also produced a secret memo arguing for “a more flexible interpretation of who could be detained under the laws of war.”

In September, according to Savage, Koh and Johnson debated the issues in a packed room in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (which advices the Executive branch on what is legally permissible), with David Barron, the OLC’s acting head, called upon to “decide who was right.” Instead, however, Barron refused to decide, circulating a memo in which he stated that the OLC “had found no precedents justifying the detention of mere supporters of al-Qaeda who were picked up far from enemy forces” and “was not prepared to state any definite conclusion.”

As Savage explained, the upshot was a mess, a “tactical approach” that involved lawyers trying to avoid the question “as long as possible.” He added, “They changed the subject by instead asking courts to agree that people like Mr. Bensayah, looked at from another angle, had performed functions that made them effectively part of the terrorist organization — and so were clearly detainable.”

In the end, however, the Circuit Court concluded that there was no evidence that Bensayah had “performed” any “functions” for al-Qaeda at all. The key allegation, which apparently involved phone calls that Bensayah had supposedly made to Abu Zubaydah, disappeared like a will o’ the wisp, and perhaps hinged on a solitary document marked, “INFORMATION REPORT, NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE.” In its place, as Judge Ginsburg noted, there was little more than a claim that Bensayah had “experience in obtaining and traveling in and out of numerous countries on fraudulent passports,” and, as Bensayah himself admitted, he had “used multiple travel documents, ‘some of which were in an assumed name,’ but [only] in order to avoid being sent back to Algeria, “where he reasonably feared prosecution.” As Judge Ginsburg added:

He presented “unrebutted declarations” that “mere possession and use of false travel documents is neither proof of involvement with terrorism nor evidence of facilitation of travel by others.” We agree.

While Bensayah waits to see if his case will indeed by reconsidered by Judge Leon, or whether, as his Bosnian wife told a Balkan website, he “will be released soon,” he is probably fortunate that, even with no evidence against him, his appeal came up before a panel led by Judge Ginsburg, rather than, for example, Judge A. Raymond Randolph, whose record on Guantánamo is notoriously inflexible, and is discussed below.

Fawzi al-Odah, who attended a training camp for one day, has his appeal denied

Two days after the Bensayah ruling, on June 30, a different Circuit Court panel dismissed the appeal of Fawzi al-Odah, a Kuwaiti who lost his habeas petition last August, when, as I explained at the time:

[T]he government secured another shallow victory when Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied the habeas petition of Fawzi al-Odah, a Kuwaiti prisoner, agreeing with the government that it was “more likely than not” that he “became part of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.” Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling was based on a dubious assemblage of information that relied more on inconsistencies in al-Odah’s account of his activities than it did on anything resembling concrete evidence, as she herself admitted, when she wrote that there were “significant reasons why the Government’s proffered evidence may not be accurate or authentic.”

Al-Odah has always claimed that he took a break from work and traveled to Afghanistan in August 2001 to teach the Koran and provide humanitarian aid (which he had done previously in other countries), and has also admitted that he established contact with the Taliban, as they were the government at the time, and spent one day at a Taliban-controlled training camp. He has also stated that, after the US-led invasion, he was sent by a Taliban representative to a safer location outside Kabul, and, from there, traveled to Jalalabad, where he stayed with another family, who gave him an AK-47 assault rifle to protect himself. He then joined other people crossing the mountains to Pakistan, where he handed himself in to the border guards, and was subsequently handed over — or sold — to US forces.

While Judge Kollar-Kotelly was undoubtedly justified in finding numerous holes in al-Odah’s account of his activities, including asking why he did not flee Afghanistan before traveling to Jalalabad, and why he allowed himself to travel with other armed men through the Tora Bora mountains, the result of her ruling, as I explained at the time, was that:

[N]early eight years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States is still asserting that it has the right to hold a young man who spent just one day at a training camp, who did not flee Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks (perhaps because he feared reprisals if he was found escaping), who traveled with other men to Kabul, and then to Logar and then to Tora Bora and his eventual capture, with no evidence that he ever used the weapon he was given, and no evidence that his training involved anything more than firing a few rounds from an AK-47 in a practice session.

In al-Odah’s appeal, the Circuit Court panel, led by Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, dismissed challenges regarding the “preponderance of evidence” standard for detention, and the use of hearsay evidence, dismissing the first “under binding precedent in this circuit,” and the second because the Supreme Court in Hamdi [v. Rumsfeld, the 2004 case that approved the detention of prisoners under the AUMF] stated that “[h]earsay … may need to be accepted as the most reliable available evidence from the Government” in the prisoners’ habeas petitions, and because of the precedent established by the Circuit Court in the cases of Adham Ali Awad and Sufyian Barhoumi, discussed in the first part of this article.

When it came to examining the basis of the evidence against al-Odah, the court began by noting that he “has a heavy burden to meet to have this court reverse the district court’s factual findings that are the underpinnings of its determination,” and then, predictably, dismissed all of his challenges, leaving unanswered the question I asked last year — about whether it ought to be justifiable to hold indefinitely a young man who attended a training camp for one day, and does not appear to have ever raised arms against US forces.

The Circuit Court’s disdainful dismissal of Mohammed al-Adahi’s successful habeas petition

A final blow for the prisoners came on July 13, when the Circuit Court, for the first time, reversed a successful habeas petition (PDF). The prisoner in question is Mohammed al-Adahi, a Yemeni who had accompanied his sister to Afghanistan to marry a man who was undoubtedly connected to al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, last August, Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that, despite this, al-Adahi himself had no connection to al-Qaeda, and granted his habeas petition.

There was abundant evidence to suggest that she was correct — primarily that he had never previously left Yemen, where he had a respectable job, that he was obliged to accompany his sister, who was not allowed to travel alone, and that he was kicked out of a training camp during his stay because he broke the rules by smoking — but when the government’s appeal came before a panel including Judge Randolph (notorious for endorsing every piece of Guantánamo-related legislation that was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court), the Court reversed Judge Kessler’s ruling, with Judge Randolph describing it as “manifestly incorrect — indeed startling.”

In what I can only characterize as a vile assault on Judge Kessler’s integrity, Judge Randolph, as Law.com explained, wrote that Kessler’s “consideration of each piece of evidence on its own merits, instead of as part of a whole, was a ‘fundamental mistake that infected the court’s entire analysis.’” He then chastised Kessler for having “failed to consider ‘conditional probability analysis’ in weighing the government’s evidence, which he explain[ed] as a theory that the occurrence of one event makes another event either more or less likely.”

Judge Randolph also stated that the District Court “erred in its treatment of the evidence” and “reached [its] conclusion through a series of legal errors,” adding, “When the evidence is properly considered, it becomes clear that Al-Adahi was — at the very least — more likely than not a part of al-Qaeda. And that is all the government had to show in order to satisfy the preponderance standard.”

One of al-Adahi’s lawyers, John A. Chandler, said he was “utterly stunned” by the ruling, telling the New York Times, “Mr. al-Adahi is not and has never been a member of al-Qaeda or a terrorist.” Law.com reported that his team would either ask for an en banc rehearing or petition the Supreme Court to hear the case, and stated that Chandler “criticized the appeals court for reassessing the evidence being used to hold al-Adahi instead of assessing the trial court’s ruling for errors of law.” As Chandler explained, “The appellate court pretty clearly wanted to find he was al-Qaeda and substituted their judgment on the facts for the judgment of the trial court, when the trial court is supposed to make decisions of fact.”

However, what was more worrying than Judge Randolph’s dismissal of Judge Kessler’s reasoning was his additional assault on the “preponderance of the evidence” standard established by Senior District Judge Thomas F. Hogan in the Case Management Order governing the habeas petitions in November 2008, which, of course, is already considerably lower than what is required in federal court trials.

After a hearing in February in al-Adahi’s case, Judge Randolph had ordered the government and al-Adahi’s lawyers to file new briefs “suggesting what factual proof — ‘if any’ — the government needed to support continued detention,” as SCOTUSblog explained, and had found that the results “were not exactly illuminating.” Fudging — as was to be expected from the analysis of backroom maneuvering described above — the government defended the “preponderance” standard as “appropriate,” but added that “a different and more deferential standard” might be appropriate in other, unexplained situations.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Judge Randolph stated in the ruling on al-Adahi that “we doubt” that the Constitution “requires the use of the preponderance standard.” He added that the District Court judges “had not said why they were using that approach, but that Judge Hogan had indicated it was based on the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision” in June 2008, which granted the prisoners habeas rights.

“But,” Judge Randolph wrote, “Boumediene held only that the ‘extent of the showing required of the Government in these cases is a matter to be determined,’” and then proposed that it “should equal the scope of habeas rights as they existed in 1789, when the Constitution was written” (as SCOTUSblog described it), and when, as Randolph obviously delighted in pointing out, there appeared to be “no precedent in which 18th Century English courts adopted a preponderance standard.”

To understand quite how depressing this proposal is, it should be noted that, the last time anyone argued in a court that “some evidence” should be sufficient to justify detentions in wartime — or, to be more accurate, in the “War on Terror” — was during the Bush administration, before the Supreme Court intervened to try to ensure that the men in Guantánamo were held for some reason other than the kind of inadequate evidence that Judge Randolph finds appropriate.

And yet, eight and a half years after Guantánamo opened, Judge Randolph has shifted the clock back to the intolerably poor detention standards of those years, which the District Court has been doing so much to challenge in the two years since Boumediene. The result, as SCOTUSblog explained, is that “even if the Justice Department did not now take the Circuit Court’s hint to propose a ‘some evidence’ standard for use in the remaining Guantánamo cases, the way the panel interpreted the preponderance standard would seem to ease the government’s burden of proof significantly.”

If al-Adahi’s case is anything to go by, that is nothing short of a disaster.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation, as “Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Wins and Losses, Part 2.”

Global Research, July 26, 2010 by Eva Golinger

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced this Saturday US plans to attack his country and overthrow his government. During a ceremony celebrating the 227th birthday of Independence hero Simon Bolivar, Chavez read from a secret memo he had been sent from an unnamed source inside the United States.

“Old friend, I haven’t seen you in years. As I said to you in my three prior letters, the idea remains the generation of a conflict on your western border”, read Chavez from the secret missive.

“The latest events confirm all, or almost all, of what those here discussed as well as other information that I have obtained from above”, the letter continued.

“The preparation phase in the international community, with the help of Colombia, is in plain execution”, manifested the text, referring to last Thursday’s session in the Organization of American States (OAS), during which the Colombia government accused Venezuela of harboring “terrorists” and “terrorist training camps” and gave the Chavez government a “30-day ultimatum” to allow for international intervention.

The letter continued with more details, “I told you before that the events wouldn’t begin before the 26th, but for some reason they have moved forward several actions that were supposed to be executed afterward”.

“In the United States, the execution phase is accelerating, together with a contention force, as they call it, towards Costa Rica with the pretext of fighting drug trafficking”.

On July 1, the Costan Rican government authorized 46 US war ships and 7,000 marines into their maritime and land territory.

The true objective of this military mobilization, said the letter, is to “support military operations” against Venezuela.

ASSASSINATION AND OVERTHROW

“There is an agreement between Colombia and the US with two objectives: one is Mauricio and the other is the overthrow of the government”, revealed the document. President Chavez explained that “Mauricio” is a pseudynom used in these communications.

“The military operation is going to happen”, warned the text, “and those from the north will do it, but not directly in Caracas”.

“They will hunt ‘Mauricio’ down outside Caracas, this is very important, I repeat, this is very important”.

President Chavez revealed that he had received similar letters from the same source alerting him to dangerous threats. He received one right before the capture of more than 100 Colombian paramilitaries in the outskirts of Caracas that were part of an assassination plan against the Venezuelan head of state, and another in 2002, just days before the coup d’etat that briefly outsted him from power. “The letter warned of snipers and the coup”, explained Chavez, “and it was right, the information was true, but we were unable to act to prevent it”.

US MILITARY EXPANSION

This information comes on the heels of the decision last Thursday to break relations between Colombia and Venezuela, made by President Chavez after Colombia’s “show” in the OAS.

“Uribe is capable of anything”, warned Chavez, announcing that the country was on maximum altert and the borders were being reinforced.

Last October, Colombia and the US signed a military agreement permitting the US to occupy seven Colombian bases and to use all Colombian territory as needed to complete missions. One of the bases in the agreement, Palanquero, was cited in May 2009 US Air Force documents as necessary to “conduct full spectrum military operations” in South America and combat the threat of “anti-US governments” in the region.

Palanquero was also signaled as critical to the Pentagon’s Global Mobility Strategy, as outlined in the February 2009 White Paper: Air Mobility Command Global En Route Strategy, “USSOUTHCOM has identified Palanquero, Colombia (German Olano Airfield SKPQ), as a cooperative security location (CSL). From this location nearly half of the continent can be covered by a C-17 without refueling”.

The 2010 Pentagon budget included a $46 million USD request to improve the installations at Palanquero, in order to support the Command Combatant’s “Theater Posture Strategy” and “provide for a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters”.

The May 2009 Air Force document further added that Palanquero would be used to “increase our capacity to conduct Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), improve global reach…and expand expeditionary warfare capability”.

In February 2010, the US National Directorate of Intelligence (NDI) classified Venezuela as “Anti-US Leader” in the region in its annual threat assessment.

The US also maintains forward operation locations (small military bases) in Aruba and Curazao, just miles off the Venezuelan coast. In recent months, the Venezuelan government has denounced unauthorized incursions of drone planes and other military aircraft into Venezuelan territory, originating from the US bases.

These latest revelations evidence that a serious, and unjustified conflict is brewing fast against Venezuela, a country with a vibrant democracy and the largest oil reserves in the world.
Global Research Articles by Eva Golinger

June 1, 2010

by Dr. Elias Akleh

As expected by many, the serial terrorist Israeli army attacked on May 31st 2010, the “Freedom Flotilla” ships with gas bombs and live fire, murdering at least 19 humanitarian international activists, 16 of them Turks including one MP, and injuring 29 others. The Israeli navy, then, kidnapped the 700 humanitarian activists and their ships to Israel.

Since the declaration by the humanitarian activists that they intend to challenge the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza in order to deliver humanitarian aid to starved and sick Palestinian civilians, the Israeli officials and military had threatened to intercept the Freedom Flotilla, and send the activists back. When activists insisted on going through with their journey Israelis declared that such journey is considered a provocation to Israeli laws and a threat to its security. Later on, the Israelis announced that the organizers of the flotilla are pro-Hamas and pro-Al Qaeda terrorists attempting to smuggle weapons to Gaza, and that every passenger on the flotilla is a potential terrorist. I wonder if this includes the Israeli citizens who joined the flotilla volunteers.

The Israeli attack against the Freedom Flotilla was pre-meditated and pr- planned by the Israeli military headed by its defense minister, Ehud Barak, and approved by its prime minister, Netanyahu. Five large tents were erected at the Israeli port of Ashdod to hold humanitarian activists hostage. Three Israeli military ships loaded with 300 specially trained Israeli commandos accompanied by military helicopters and associated attack speed boats, headed to intercept unarmed humanitarian ships. This was the biggest Israeli naval battle since its illegal establishment in 1948.

Once again Israel had lived up to its infamous terrorist reputation. Israel’s 62 years old history is full of terrorism, genocide, wars, violations of all human rights, breaking of all national laws, and war crimes that would fill large volumes. Israel’s latest terror attack on the Freedom Flotilla is an international compounded crime. To start with, the Israeli navy attacked the ships in the international water. They attacked unarmed civilians. They attacked a humanitarian mission to aid people in need, similar to any humanitarian missions to a devastated area like Haiti for example, which gives the mission a special protection status by international law. The Israelis killed unarmed humanitarian activists. They kidnapped all the activists and took them hostages. They took the ships and put their hands on all the goods they carry similar to what they had done in the past with previous “Break the Siege” ships.

To cover their crime and war crimes against Gaza and the illegal siege the Israeli have just committed international crimes against representatives from 40 different countries including members of parliaments. Besides the crimes of murdering different internationals the Israelis have committed an act of piracy in the international waters.

The Israelis, as usual, portrayed themselves as the perpetual victims claiming that they had to kill the activists in an act of self-defense. They want us to believe that the humanitarian activists had come from 40 different countries with a conspiratorial plan to attack the Israeli well-armed navy, and that these activists had illegally boarded the Israeli battle ships using military helicopters and shooting live fire and gas grenades. The poor Israeli soldiers could do nothing but defend themselves. This reminds of me of Golda Meir’s statement: “We could never forgive the Palestinians for making us shoot their children.”

Israel’s justification for boarding the Freedom Flotilla because they don’t know what these vessels carry is a childish justification. There are hundreds of vessels in the Mediterranean, whose contents are not known to the Israelis. Does that mean that they have the right to board all of them?

The Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Israeli genocidal war crimes against Palestinians, especially the illegal and lethal siege of Gaza, are being increasingly recognized and opposed by many nations. The unremitting “Break the Siege” campaigns had exposed Israel’s genocidal plan against Palestinians, and are gaining more international support.

Israel’s criminal attack against the Freedom Flotilla is meant to terrorize other possible future humanitarian internationals out of organizing or participating in more humanitarian “Break the Siege” campaigns. Their special emphasis on the Turkish vessel came as a revenge for Turkey’s courageous opposition of Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians, and Turkey’s successful mediation in the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Israel’s siege of Gaza and its attack on Freedom Flotilla are clear indications that Gaza is still under the Israeli occupation. Israeli so-called withdrawal from Gaza, September 2005, is just a redeployment of Israeli forces rather than a withdrawal as Israelis like us to believe. Israel still controls every aspect of life in Gaza. Israel wants us to believe that its siege of Gaza is a response to capturing their soldier, Shalit, who was, in fact, participating in the siege at the time of his capture. Palestinians have the right to defend their lives from the terror of such soldiers. On the other hand, Israel does not want us to remember the 10 thousand Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, who were kidnapped and snatched from their families by the Israeli terrorist army after midnight.

The Freedom Flotilla is the 9th attempt of “Breaking the Siege” campaign to deliver humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza, a humanitarian duty the UN had poorly and almost not delivered. Five of these trips were successful, while the rest had suffered from Israeli piracy and kidnapping. The volunteers came from 40 different countries including European countries and from the US. They include some members of parliaments of these countries. These volunteers, unlike some of their bought pro-Zionist governments, represent the humanitarian cumulative compassion of many nations, and their courageous will to help their human needy brothers and sisters. They are not terrorists, as Israel claims, rather they represent civilized humanity.

The Israeli piracy and criminal attack against the ships have ignited a spontaneous global intifada, whose anger has echoed through the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the US. Thousands of protesters against Israeli terror walked through the capitals of major countries towards Israeli consulates. Governments of many countries, especially those with citizens among the flotilla volunteers, summoned the Israeli ambassadors to protest the attack.

Turkey-Israeli relationship is destined to suffer a great deal by this Israeli piracy. Turks have surrounded the Israeli consulates in Istanbul and Ankara, and the house of the Israeli ambassador and vowed not to leave until the Turkish vessels and Turkish volunteers are released. Turkey has summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest the attack and has called back its own ambassador from Israel. Turkey had also cancelled three joined military exercises with Israel. The Prime Minister, Erdogan, had called Israel’s attack “state terror”.

An urgent meeting of the Security Council was called by Arab governments, yet the US, as usual, came to Israel’s rescue and had sabotaged the issuance of any resolution against Israel. The US called of “impartial investigation” of the matter. Such an investigation is a waste of time. It is as clear as the sun that Israeli forces had forcefully and illegally boarded the flotilla ships. Israelis are the aggressors not the victims. They were armed to the teeth attacking unarmed humanitarian activists.

American rescue of Israeli terror is not surprising, since the American administration is a full partner in imposing siege on Gaza. “The Gaza Bombshell” report by Vanity Fair explains how the American administration had conspired to topple the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza. The administration is also paying the Egyptian Mubarak’s government to join into the siege against Gaza, and to build the steel wall and watch towers on the Egyptian border with Gaza.

Most of the American congress members are more loyal to Israel than to their own country. They spend the tax money of their citizens to subsidize Israeli illegal colonies and roads on usurped Palestinian land to provide almost-free homes to Israeli extremists while American tax payers are losing their homes. They vote to spend billions of dollars to provide free education to Israeli students, and full free medical coverage to every Israeli Jewish citizen, while American schools are facing budget cuts and crowded class rooms, and American citizens cannot afford to pay for any medical coverage of their own. They give Israel billions of dollars worth in financial aid and military technology. Such support to terrorist Israel is the major cause for increasing anti-American sentiments around the globe.

Israel’s attack against the Freedom Flotilla is grave piracy, and an act of terrorism that is violating all international laws. It demonstrates to us that Israelis consider themselves above the law, and that their own laws are supreme laws that no one should even challenge.

Those countries claiming to be partners in fighting global terror should also join in fighting Israeli terror. Those countries, which are fighting Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, should also fight Israeli piracy in the Mediterranean.

Palestinian youth organize mock funeral for flotilla martyrs.

In a growing series of youth demonstrations against the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla, which left many peace activists killed and injured, free Palestinian Youth Groups’ Network has continued to organize demonstrations onto Gaza streets protesting Israeli bloody massacre against peace groups who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid and solidarity to the blockaded Gazans, after Israel has imposed its draconian siege, now in its fourth consecutive year.

Along with some International solidarity activists, hundreds of enraged Palestinian youth spilled onto streets waving the Palestinian flag and carrying an empty coffin plastered with flags of countries participating in the flotilla, in a symbolic funeral for the killed by Israeli occupation forces.

The crowd marched to Gaza’s seaport, where demonstrators centered in front of the reception set up in mourning of the killings from solidarity boats, and started chanting anti-Israeli slogans, such as “free free Gaza, free free Palestine, and sending heartfelt salutations to the Freedom Flotilla”, and demanding the international community to break the silence and take a firm stand against Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and international supporters as well. Amidst youthful enthusiasm, some demonstrators burned the piracy flag in reference to Israel’s hideous piratical actions against sea voyages which trying to provide support for the distressed Gazans.

Majed Abusalama, general coordinator of Palestinian Youth Groups’ Network in Gaza, delivered a speech at the reception, in which he said that what Israel did was cold-blood carnage against the people who were trying to break the unjust siege.

“We are independent Palestinian youth, away from any political party, have decided that we should uprise in rage against Israel’s crimes against our brothers onboard the flotilla,” said Abusalama. “I think it is time for all the Palestinian factions to act in concert to be one hand, because we can never be strong enough to resist the occupation unless there is a national reconciliation. We are definitely paying a heavy price for this internal dissension,” he added.

“It is shameful that the international community is watching without doing anything that would deter Israel from killing the Palestinians and anyone who is even thinking of giving support whatsoever,” said Mousheera Abushmass, project and program coordinator of PYG.

After that, demonstrators stood at the edge of the port, and some young men lowered the coffin into the water and pushed it further—a message to Israel that international convoys will never stop until the siege is permanently lifted.

“They are with us in blood and spirit, and if Israeli kills them all, a lot others will catch up, and we would still be waiting for them,” said Abusalama.

Majed Abusalama

Gaza Strip, Palestine

+972599828830

http://www.gazareporting.com/

May 30th, 2010 | Michael Moore.com

A convoy of boats carrying food and aid to Gaza, attempting to defy an Israeli blockade, has been approached by three Israeli ships, according to the Twitter page of Free Gaza, one organization participating in the flotilla.

At least one of the six boats in the flotilla have also been contacted by Israel Defense Forces radio, the page said.

“We didn’t expect them now,” said one tweet about 11 p.m. (4 p.m. ET), adding the participants thought Israeli forces would arrive Monday morning.

Three Israeli navy missile boats left a Haifa naval base just after 9 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) to intercept the flotilla.

“This is a help message,” said one post from the flotilla on the Free Gaza website. “We have been contacted by the Israelis but are still fine, don’t worry.”

“The signals are going up and down,” the website said. “Israel is doing its best to block the satellite.”

Contacted by CNN, the IDF reiterated the Israeli government’s offer for the flotilla to dock at Israel’s Ashdod port, where supplies would be unloaded and transferred to Gaza.

Osama Qashoo of the Free Gaza organization said earlier Sunday that morale onboard the ships was high. “It’s the best cruise you could ever take. People are singing and laughing.”

The flotilla was delayed for a while after two boats developed mechanical problems, but set out on the last leg of the journey Sunday. One boat was repaired, while the other will head to Gaza next week, organizers said.

The flotilla is expected to arrive near Gaza at about 9 a.m. Monday (2 a.m. ET), according to the Free Gaza Movement website.

The boats left European ports in a consolidated protest organized by two pro-Palestinian groups to deliver tons of food and other aid to Gaza to break a blockade imposed by Israel in 2007.

The Israeli government said Thursday it would stop the convoy, and that the IDF has been given instructions to reroute the flotilla to Ashdod. The activists remain adamant that they are headed to Gaza.

Both sides insisted on Sunday they do not want a confrontation.

“We are determined. We are going to bust through the Israeli navy,” Qashoo said. But “we are not seeking any confrontation … we are simply a humanitarian mission.”

He said the participants will defend themselves if they must.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, meanwhile, said Israeli civilians were plagued a year ago by rockets and missiles fired from Gaza that originated in places like Iran and Syria.

The government wants to check vessels heading into Gaza to make sure rockets and missiles aren’t being smuggled in, he said. “For us, it’s a life and death issue.”

Qashoo said participants are prepared — some have written their wills, while others are in contact with family and friends. As of Sunday afternoon, he said, no Israeli ships or aircraft could be seen.

Flotilla participants said in a statement they plan to hold a memorial service on Sunday for U.S. soldiers killed in a 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in the eastern Mediterranean. Thirty-four American soldiers died and 173 were injured.

The service will be led by Joe Meadors, who was a signalman on the Liberty and is a member of the Free Palestine Movement delegation to the flotilla, the statement said.

“I am sailing again in the eastern Mediterranean,” Meadors said in the statement, “to remember the brave heroes from the Liberty and the forgotten 1.5 million people trapped in Gaza.”

The maritime convoys are being organized by both the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish-based IHH, a humanitarian relief foundation affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood religious group.

Regev said Sunday that Western and Turkish authorities have accused IHH of having “working relations” with different terrorist organizations.

He reiterated that the flotilla is invited to stop at Ashdod, and noted the Egyptian government has made a similar offer.

While flotilla participants speak of human rights, Regev said, they don’t mention the human rights of Israelis on the receiving end of Hamas rockets, or even the “brutal suppression” of human rights within Gaza by Hamas.

“If you’re gay, if you’re Christian, if you’re a woman dressed, in their terms, immodestly, you’ll face violent retribution,” Regev said.

“Free Gaza seems to ignore all that. What sort of human rights activists are they?”

About 15,000 tons of humanitarian aid flows into Gaza per week, Regev said. He questioned whether the flotilla is really interested in helping people in Gaza, or just wants to “make a political point, which is difficult to understand.”

In the meantime, Stand With Us, a pro-Israel advocacy group, has organized a six-boat flotilla as a counter-demonstration against the Turkish flotilla.

Michael Dixon, a member of the pro-Israeli group, says the real aim of the Turkish group is not humanitarian, but to draw attention to itself.

“We are here today to protest the hypocrisy of the boats coming in towards Gaza right now. They profess to be human rights activists, but they don’t say anything about the suffering of the Palestinians under the brutal Hamas regime,” Dixon said late last week.

“The people on the boat refused a letter to Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who has been kept captive in isolation for three years. That shows you the type of people we are dealing with,” he said.

CNN’s Ben Wedeman, Guy Azriel and Kareem Khadder contributed to this report.

Israel Attacks Freedom Flotilla: 19 Killed
By Aljazeera

http://www.countercurrents.org/aljazeera310510.htm

Israeli commandos have attacked a flotilla of aid-carrying ships off the coast of the Gaza Strip, killing up to 19 people on board. Dozens of others were injured when troops raided the convoy of six ships, dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, early on Monday

World Outcry Over Israeli Flotilla Attack
By Ma’an News Agency

http://www.countercurrents.org/maan310510.htm

International outcry is pouring over Israeli flotilla attack

End Israeli Impunity Now
By Cynthia McKinney

http://www.countercurrents.org/mckinney310510.htm

Cynthia McKinney Mourns the Dead of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza: People of the U.S. and the world must end Israeli impunity now!

The Gaza Flotilla – Your Move, Mr. President
By Alan Hart

http://www.countercurrents.org/hart310510.htm

As I write from America, with the drama and implications of Israel’s murderous attack on the Gaza Flotilla still being played out, I find myself wondering if President Obama will have the balls to say to Israel, “Enough is enough”

“Those Responsible Must Be Held
Criminally Accountable”
By Richard Falk (UN Rapporteur for Palestine)

http://www.countercurrents.org/falk310510.htm

This incident should serve as a wakeup call for a complicit international community

Israel: Massacre At Sea
By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

http://www.countercurrents.org/muzaffar310510.htm

The cold-blooded massacre of 20 unarmed peace activists by commandos from the Israeli army in the eastern Mediterranean in the early hours of 31st May 2010 has once again revealed to the world what this rogue regime is all about. It is evil incarnate

Brave Israeli Commandos Slaughter
Aid Activists at Sea
By Stephen Lendman

http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman310510.htm

Even America’s major media can’t duck a crime this grave – attacking and slaughtering up to 20 Gaza Freedom Flotilla activists and injuring dozens more

“Criminal Pirate” Israel Makes A Fool Of The OECD
Only Days After It Clasped The Viper To Its Bosom
By Stuart Littlewood

http://www.countercurrents.org/littlewood310510.htm

This morning I’m hearing reports of 20 or more dead and dozens injured after Israeli forces attacked the Free Gaza flotilla in international waters and gunned down unarmed crew and passengers. This is no surprise. Israel had been threatening for weeks to use violence, as is its style, to intercept the peaceful mission

Welcome To BBC Israel
By William Bowles

http://www.countercurrents.org/bowles310510.htm

The BBC has outdone itself this time with an outrageous piece of blatant Israeli propaganda

Attack On Freedom Flotilla Was Beyond The Pale
By Gul Jammas Hussain

http://www.countercurrents.org/hussain310510.htm

The blood of the men and women who sacrificed their lives on Monday for the cause of Palestine will not have been spilt in vain and will usher in a new era of hope for the oppressed people of Palestine

Washington, Moscow, Beijing and the Geopolitics of Central Asia by F. William Engdahl
Global Research, May 25, 2010

Part I: Kyrgyzstan as a Geopolitical Pivot

The remote Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan is what Britain’s Halford Mackinder might call a geopolitical ‘pivot’—a land that, owing to its geographical characteristics, holds a pivotal position in Great Power rivalries.

Today the tiny remote country is being shaken by what appears to be an extremely well-planned popular uprising to topple US-backed president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Preliminary analysts suggested that Moscow had more than a passing interest in promoting regime change there and that the events unfolding might be Moscow’s attempt to stage its own ‘reverse’ version of Washington’s ‘Color Revolutions’ — Georgia’s Rose Revolution of 2003 or Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004, as well as the 2005 Tulip Revolution that brought the pro-US Bakiyev to power. In the midst of this ongoing power shift in Kyrgyzstan, however, who is doing what to whom, is far from clear.

At the very least, what is playing out has huge strategic implications for military security throughout the Eurasian Heartland — from China to Russia and beyond. It therefore has staggering implications for the future of the United States in Afghanistan and Central Asia and by extension in all Eurasia.

Political tinderbox

The protests again the US-backed Bakiyev began in March over allegations of extreme corruption on the part of the President and his family members. In 2009, Bakiyev began amending an article in the country’s constitution regulating presidential succession in case of death or unexpected resignation, a move widely seen as an attempt to introduce a “dynastical system” of power transfer in the country, one factor which fuelled the recent nationwide protests in Kyrgyzstan. He placed his son and other relatives in key posts where they raked in huge sums for the US airbase rights at Manas – reportedly as much as $80 million a year — and other enterprises. [1]

Kyrgyzstan is one of the poorest countries in Central Asia with more than 40% living below the official poverty line. Bakiyev named his son, Maxim — who also managed to find time and funds to buy part ownership of a UK football club — to be head of the country’s Central Agency for Development, Investment and Innovation, where he gained control over the country’s richest assets, including the Kumtor gold mine.[2]

Late in 2009 Bakiyev sharply hiked taxes on small and medium businesses and early this year imposed new taxes on telecoms. He privatized the country’s largest electricity company and in January the private company, rumored to have been sold to friends of the family for less than 3% of its estimated worth, doubled electricity prices. The price of heating gas was raised by up to 1000%. Kyrgyzstan’s winters are extremely cold.

The opposition charged that Maxim Bakiyev had arranged a sweetheart privatisation of the state telecom to a friend domiciled in an offshore company in the Canary Islands. In short, popular rage against Bakiyev and company existed for good reason. The key issue was how efficiently that rage was channelled and by whom.

The protests erupted following the decision by the government in March to dramatically raise prices of energy and telecommunications by fourfold and more, in an extremely poor country. During early March protests, Otunbayeva was named spokesperson for a united front of all opposition groups. She appealed at that time to the US government to take a more active interest in Kyrgyzstan’s Bakiyev regime and its lack of democratic standards, obviously with no result.[3]

According to informed Russian sources, at that point Roza Otunbayeva spoke with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to discuss the deteriorating situation. Immediately on its formation of an Interim Government under Otunbayeva, Moscow was the first to recognize the acting government and made an offer of $300 million in immediate stabilization aid, transferring a portion of a 2009 Russian loan of $2.15 billion that was promised Bakiyev’s regime for construction of a hydropower plant on the Naryn river.

The $2.15 billion was originally announced just after Bakiyev declared he would close the US base at Manas, a decision that American dollars managed to reverse some weeks later. Clearly in Moscow’s eyes, the Russian aid and Bakiyev’s announced closing of the US base at Manas were linked.

The latest $300 million tranche of the pledged $2.15 billion from Moscow, re-opened after the ouster of Bakiyev, will reportedly go directly to the Kyrgyz National Bank.[4]

According to a report in Moscow’s RIA Novosti, ousted Prime Minister, Daniyar Usenov, told Russia’s ambassador in Bishkek that Russian media outlets, which enjoy a major influence within the former Soviet state—whose official language is still Russian—had been biased against the Bakiyev-Usenov government. [5]

Bakiyev government security forces, reportedly including Special Forces sharpshooters on rooftops, killed some 81 opposition demonstrators, leading to a dramatic escalation of the protests in the first week of April.

What is remarkable about the events and suggests that there is more going on behind the curtains, is the fact that the full-blown popular uprising exploded onto the scene with little pre-warning in the international media.

There had been protest demonstrations repeatedly since Bakiyev took control in the Washington-financed 2005 Tulip Revolution. [6] That Washington-financed regime change of 2005 had involved the usual list of US NGO’s including Freedom House, The Albert Einstein Institution, The National Endowment for Democracy and USAID.[7] None of the previous protests until this April, however, had the obvious thoroughness and sophistication of the latest one. Events seem to have caught everyone by surprise, not the least the corrupt Bakiyev family and his Washington backers.

The smoothness with which allegiance of the army, police and border security was gained within the first hours of protest suggests very sophisticated pre-planning and masterful coordination. Not clear at this point is whether that came from operative s from abroad, and if so, whether from Russia’s FSB or CIA or whomever.

On April 7, as Bakiyev was losing control, he reportedly rushed to the Americans, but as they saw the blood on the streets caused by Bakiyev’s sharpshooters and the growing fury of the crowds against the government, they reportedly whisked the President and his family to his hometown of Osh, apparently hoping to bring him back after events had calmed.[8] That never happened.

Following the resignation of his entire government, including the heads of the army and national police and border guard, Bakiyev resigned on April 16 and fled to neighboring Kazakhstan. At latest report he is holed up in Belarus, having reportedly gained entry by bringing with him over $200 million for cash-strapped Belarus President Lukashenko.[9]

Kyrgyzstan’s new, interim opposition government, under the nominal leadership of former Foreign Minister Roza Otunbayeva, has declared it wants to set up an international investigation into alleged crimes committed by Bakiyev. Criminal charges have already been filed against him, his sons and brother and other relatives.

Bakiyev had little choice but to flee. The army and police had already sided with the Otunbayeva opposition days before he fled, in an indication that the events were at the very least extremely well planned by at least some parts of the opposition.

A geographical pivot

Kyrgyzstan today plays the role of a geographical pivot. The land-locked country shares a border with China’s Xinjiang Province, a highly strategic point for Beijing. One of the smallest of the Central Asian states, it is also bordered to its north by oil-rich Kazakhstan, on the West by Uzbekistan and on the South by Tajikistan. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan overlaps the politically explosive resource-rich area known as the Ferghana Valley, a multinational ethnic and political friction zone located also in Uzbekistan and Tajikstan.

Image source: US Central Intelligence Agency

The country itself is highly mountainous, with the Tian Shan and Pamir mountains taking some 65% of all land area. Approximately 90% of the country is more than 1500 meters above sea level.

In terms of natural resources — other than agriculture ,which comprises a third of GDP – Kyrgyzstan has gold, uranium, coal and oil. In 1997 the Kumtor Gold Mine opened one of the largest gold deposits in the world.

Until recently the state agency, Kyrgyzaltyn, owned all the mines and operated many of them as joint ventures with foreign companies. The Kumtor Gold Mine, near the border of China, is 100% owned by Canada’s Centerra Gold Inc. Until the ouster of President Bakiyev, his son, Maxim, head of the State Development Fund, ran Kyrgyzaltyn which is also the largest shareholder of Centerra Gold, the Canadian company that today owns Kumtor.

Significantly, even though he has not been formally elected by Kyrgz voters, Centerra in Toronto, perhaps with a nudge from the US State Department, has already announced it has named Maxim Bakiyev’s “replacement,” as head of Kyrgyzaltyn, Aleksei Eliseev, Deputy Director of the Kyrgyz State Development Agency, to the Board of Directors of Centerra.[10]

Kyrgyzstan also has significant reserves of uranium and antimony. Kyrgyzstan also has considerable remaining deposits of coal of an estimated at 2.5 billion tons, especially in the Kara–Keche deposit in northern Kyrgyzstan.

However, even more pivotal than the mineral riches is the major US Air Force base at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, opened within three months of  the US declaration of a global ‘War on Terror’ in September 2001. Shortly thereafter, Russia established its own military airbase not far from Manas. Kyrgyzstan today is the only country that hosts both Russian and American military bases, an uneasy state of affairs to put it mildly.

In sum, Kyrgyzstan, sitting in the center of the world’s most strategic landmass, Central Asia, is a geopolitical prize coveted by many.

Washington walks on political eggshells

The US State Department had tried to get Bakiyev to hold on in apparent hopes they could disperse the protestors, quell the street riots and keep their Tulip man in power. Hillary Clinton initially called on the Parliamentary opposition – government ministers who objected to Bakiyev’s corruption and nepotism — to “negotiate” and “develop a dialogue” with the US-financed Basiyev Presidency. The State Department then issued statements that the government of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev was still functioning, despite reports that his entire administration had resigned.[11]

On April 7, during the peak of the drama when the outcome was still unclear, US Assistant Secretary of State P. J. Crowley told reporters, “We want to see Kyrgyzstan evolve, just as we do other countries in…the region. But, that said, there is a sitting government. We work closely with that government. We are allied with that government in terms of its support, you know, for international operations in…Afghanistan.” [12]  George Orwell would have admired the exercise in diplomatic doublespeak.

On April 15, when it was clear Bakiyev had little support within the country, the US State Department declared that it will side with neither the country’s ousted president nor the Parliamentary opposition. In a statement indicating Washington is walking on eggshells hoping not to crack any, especially affecting its Manas airbase rights, State Department spokesman Phillip Crowley declared, “We want to see the situation resolved peacefully. And we’re not taking sides.”[13] Since then, after talks with Foreign Minister Otunbayeva and her associates, the State Department and Obama have warmly backed the new political reality.

Otunbayeva, a leading Communist Party member during the Soviet days, had served as the first Kyrgyz ambassador to the United States in the post-Soviet era, and later as a special assistant to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The interim government headed by Otunbayeva says they are going to write a new constitution within six months and prepare for a democratic election in the country. The opposition claims to be in control of the situation in Kyrgyztan though riots and looting outside Bishkek are still being reported.[14]

Whose coup?

While there is much speculation about an on-the-ground role by Russian intelligence in the ‘anti-tulip revolution,’ we must leave that as an open question.

In comments during his Washington visit on April 14, a week into the upheaval, Russia’s Medvedev expressed concern about the stability of the country: “The risk of Kyrgyzstan’s breakdown into two parts – north and south – really exists. This is why our task is to help our Kyrgyz partners to find the mildest way out of this situation.” He outlined a worst-case scenario where an unstable Kyrgyz government could be left powerless as extremists flood into the country, creating a second Afghanistan.[15]

US White House Adviser on Russia, Michael McFaul, speaking from the Prague arms control talks, referring to the unfolding events in Kyrgyzstan, stated, “This is not some anti-American coup. That we know for sure; and this is not a sponsored-by-the-Russians coup.” [16]

At least nominally, Washington might well have reason to believe they can “work” with the new Interim Kyrgyz leaders.

Roza Otunbayeva is well known in Washington since she served there as Ambassador during the 1990’s.

Her Number Two in the Interim Government, former Parliament Speaker and a key figure in Washington’s 2005 Tulip Revolution that brought Bakiyev to power, Omurbek Tekebayev, was brought to Washington back then by the State Department for one of their “visitors programs” — where emerging foreign political figures are presumably taught the beauties of the American way of life.

Tekebayev spoke openly at the time of that experience: “I found that the Americans know how to choose people, know how to make an accurate evaluation of what is happening and prognosticate the future development and political changes.” [17]

Thus there is evidence that the latest events in Kyrgyzstan could have been backed by Moscow as a “reverse” Color Revolution, one executed to control growing US military presence in Central Asia. And there is evidence it may also have been a second US-backed regime change, perhaps after the Obama Administration became alarmed that its man, Bakiyev, was getting too economically close to Beijing. The third and least likely version is that the events were executed by a rag-tag disorganized domestic opposition that never before managed to rally more than a few thousands to the streets to protest Bakiyev policies in the past five years.

Clear at this point is that both Moscow and Washington are going to considerable lengths to show some minimal unity on the emerging events in the country.

Kanat Saudabayev, head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), on April 15 said the safe exit of Kyrgyzstan President Bakiyev from Kyrgyzstan was the result of joint efforts by Obama and Russian President Medvedev. [18]

Clearly both Washington and Moscow eagerly want to have a strong presence in whatever government emerges from the strife-torn Central Asian country of five million people. What is less well known but equally clear, is the vital stake China has in stable relations with Kyrgyzstan, a neighbor with whom it shares a long border. Most interesting from here is where events will go in the forlorn but geopolitically strategic country.

Manas Airbase future?

One of the most pressing questions for Washington is the future of the vital US airbase at Manas near the capitol, Bishkek. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stressed the “important role Kyrgyzstan plays in hosting the Transit Center at the Manas Airport,” according to an official State Department statement of April 11. She left little doubt what Washington’s priority is in the country. It’s not democracy nor is it economic development.[19]

Following the Washington declaration of the War on Terror in September 2001, the Pentagon got basing rights in several strategic Central Asian countries, ostensibly to help wage the war against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. In addition to basing rights in Uzbekistan, Washington got the Manas concession in Kyrgyzstan as well.

Most extensive of course has been the US military presence in Afghanistan. In one of his first acts as President, Obama authorized the ‘surge’ — adding some 30,000 troops and approving construction of another 8 new ‘temporary’ US bases in Afghanistan, bringing the total bases there to an astonishing 22, including the huge airbases at Bagram and Kandahar.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has refused to put a time limit on the duration of the US military presence in Afghanistan. That is not because of the Taliban, but clearly rather the long-term Washington strategy of spreading the ‘war on terror’ across all Central Asia including into the strategically vital Ferghana Valley bordering Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This is where the latest events in Kyrgyzstan become geopolitically more than interesting for Russia, for China and for Washington.

On April 14, Gates told the press that he was confident the US would retain rights to use Manas for what the Pentagon calls its Northern Distribution Network, flying supplies into the Afghanistan war theatre.[20] Just days before, interim government figures in Bishkek had indicated US rights to Manas were high on the list to be cancelled.

During a meeting with Russia’s Medvedev, President Obama agreed that the Kyrgyz events were definitely not a Russian counter coup. He extended immediate US recognition of the Interim regime of Roza Otunbayeva.

The question at this point is what role Kyrgyzstan will play in the high drama geopolitical chess game for control of Central Asia, and with it, control of the Eurasian Heartland as British geopolitician Halford Mackinder termed it. The key major actors outside Kyrgyzstan in this geopolitical high-stakes chess game across Central Asia are China, Russia, and the United States. In the next part we examine the geopolitical interest of China regarding fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organization member Kyrgyzstan.
F. William Engdahl is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

Notes

[1] RIA Novosti, Russia‘s Medvedev blames Kyrgyz authorities for unrests, says civil war risk high, April 14, 2010, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/exsoviet/20100414/158570646.html

[2] John C.K. Daly, op. cit.

[3] Leila Saralayeva, Kyrgyz opposition protests rising utility tariffs, AP, March 17, 2010, accessed in http://blog.taragana.com/politics/2010/03/17/thousands-of-kyrgyz-demonstrators-protest-utility-tariffs-hike-and-political-oppression-23948/

[4] RIA Novosti, Russia throws weight behind provisional Kyrgyz govt., April 8, 2010, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/exsoviet/20100408/158480874.html. Well-informed former Indian Ambasador, K. Gajendra Singh in an article published in Russia’s RIA Novosti also states that Putin had spoken with Otunbayeva twice since the protests began on April 7 and that she had also visited Moscow in January and March of this year. (K. G. Singh, Geopolitical battle in Kyrgyzstan over US military Lilypond in central Asia, Ria Novosti, 13 April 2010, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/valdai_foreign_media/20100413/158555369.html).

[5] RIA Novosti, Kyrgyz prime minister protests Russian media reporting of riots, April 7, 2010, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/world/20100407/158462398.html

[6] Richard Spencer, Quiet American behind tulip revolution, London, The Daily Telegraph, April 2, 2005, accessed in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/kyrgyzstan/1486983/Quiet-American-behind-tulip-revolution.html

[7] Philip Shishkin, In Putin’s Backyard, Democracy Stirs — With US Help, The Wall Street Journal, February 25, 2005.

[8] Kyrgyzstan National Security Service ‘source’, Specially for War and Peace.ru, April 10, 2010, translated from Russian for the author from www.warandpeace.ru/ru/news/view/46021/

[9] Report from Russian political blog War and Peace.Ru. accessed in www.warandpeace.ru/ru/news/view/46417/

[10] Centerra Gold website, Toronto, Canada, accessed in http://www.centerragold.com/about/management/

[11] David Gollust, US Urges Dialogue in Kyrgyzstan, 7 April, 2010, Voice of America, accessed in http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/US-Urges-Dialogue-in-Kyrgyzstan-90120737.html

[12] P.J. Crowley, comments to press regarding events in Kyrgyzstan, April 7, 2010, cited in John C.K. Daly, The Truth Behind the Recent Unrest in Kyrgyzstan, www.oilprice.com.

[13] AFP, US ‘not taking sides’ in Kyrgyzstan political turmoil, April 15, 2010, accessed in http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/World/Story/A1Story20100415-210389.html

[14] Hamsayeh.net, New Interim Kyrgyz Government to Shut Down the US Airbase at Manas, April 9, 2010, accessed in http://www.hamsayeh.net/hamsayehnet_iran-international%20news1114.htm

[15] Karasiwo, Nuclear deals and Kyrgyz fears – Medvedev in Washington, April 14, 2010, accessed in http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5610284-nuclear-deals-and-kyrgyz-fears-medvedev-in-washington

[16] Maria Golovnina and Dmitry Solovyov, Kyrgyzstan’s new leaders say they had help from Russia, The Globe and Mail, Toronto, April 8, 2010, accessed in http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/kyrgyzstans-new-leaders-say-they-had-help-from-russia/article1527239/

[17] Sreeram Chaulia, Democratisation, NGOs and ‘colour revolutions’, 19 January 2006 accessed in http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-institutions_government/colour_revolutions_3196.jsp

[18] BNO News, OSCE says Kyrgyzstan President Bakiyev’s departure is the result of joint efforts with Obama, Medvedev, April 15, 2010, accessed in http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world/osce-says-kyrgyzstan-president-bakiyevs-departure-is-the-result-of-joint-efforts-with-obama-medvedev_100348625.html

[19] Philip Crowley, Assistant Secretary of State, US Clinton Urges Peaceful Resolution of Kyrgyz Situation, 11 April, 2010, cited in RIA Novosti, accessed in http://en.rian.ru/world/20100411/158517788.html

[20] Donna Miles, Gates expresses confidence in continued Manas access, American Forces Press Service, April 14, 2010, accessed in http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123199625
F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research.