Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: war

  • Nonviolence Timely Topic At College

    On the same day Vice President Dick Cheney urged a military strike against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, students in a Moorpark College classroom were discussing philosopher William James’ “The Moral Equivalent of War.”

    The students, enrolled in a new four-week Philosophy of Nonviolence course, joined in guest lecturer John Birmingham’s discussion, which compared James’ essay to what it means to be a patriot.

    “War is romantic because it conjures up ideals of honor and value,” Birmingham said. “Even in academics, those who are less inclined to be militaristic will list being involved in World War II on their resumes.”

    The course is the only one of its kind in the Ventura County Community College District. Both Ventura and Oxnard colleges have a number of philosophy classes, including ethics, logic, introduction to philosophy and some focusing on Western and Eastern religions.

    Students meet Tuesdays and Thursdays for a couple of hours to discuss the works and thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi, existentialist Albert Camus, naturalist Henry David Thoreau, Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh and philosopher William James.

    Moorpark College professors are brought in as guest speakers to lead discussions on topics relating to those works, while philosophy professor Janice Daurio oversees the program.

    The class was the brainchild of 20-year-old Gazal Humkar, a Muslim from Simi Valley who has been very active in the college’s Muslim Students Association and Philosophy Club.

    She got the idea after leafing through an old college catalog, which contained a similar course.

    “It needed to be taught and I persuaded Dr. (Janice) Daurio to teach the class,” Humkar said. “My hope is that I will look at different aspects and try to lead a life in which I promote human understanding and tolerance and that everyone in the class does the same.”

    An instructor at the college since 1994, Daurio said the timing of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks combined with an increasingly violent society give proof that the nonviolence class is a must at Moorpark.

    “We live in a violent society. People are not only violent in obvious ways but in subtle ways, too. There’s a lack of civility and manners … of common courtesy, disrespectful to people,” Daurio said.

    Only by community building, such as volunteerism and club participation, can society begin to turn itself around, she said.

    The course includes A Celebration of Life event from 10 a.m. to noon Sept. 11 in the college’s Performing Arts Center. The two-hour event will feature speakers; a geography presentation; a dramatic presentation of “Profiles in Grief,” taken from the New York Times series; and a lecture by Leah Wells, founder of Peace Education in Nuclear Age.

    On Sept. 10, Maha Hamoui, founder of the Islamic Education Foundation, will give a talk from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center.

    For more information, call 378-1400.

  • Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Statement Opposing War Against Iraq

    We are firmly opposed to waging war against Iraq.

    The rush to war against Iraq violates the spirit and letter of the US Constitution, as well as disregards the prohibitions on the use of force that are set forth in the UN Charter and accepted as binding rules of international law. The proposed war would also have dangerous and unpredictable consequences for the region and the world, and would likely bring turmoil to the world oil and financial markets, and might well lead to the replacement of currently pro-Western leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia with militantly anti-American governments.

    The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation opposes on principle and for reasons of prudence, the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear weapons, by any country, including, of course, Iraq. Our position is one of support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a temporary expedient, while a good faith effort is being made to achieve the overall abolition of nuclear weapons through a disarmament treaty with reliable safeguards against cheating. Unfortunately, at present, no effort to achieve nuclear disarmament is being made.

    At the same time, the acquisition of nuclear weaponry, prohibited to Iraq by Security Council resolution, is not itself an occasion for justifiable war. After all, the United States, along with at least seven other countries, possesses, and continues to develop such weaponry. There is no good reason for supposing that Iraq cannot be deterred from ever using such weapons, or from transferring them to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. The government of Iraq, notwithstanding its record of brutality and regional aggression, has shown a consistent willingness to back down in the face of overwhelming force, as it did in the Gulf War and during the subsequent decade.

    It is necessary to take seriously the possibility that al Qaeda operatives could gain access to weaponry of mass destruction, and would have little hesitation about using it against American targets. Unlike Iraq, al Qaeda cannot be deterred by threats of retaliatory force. Its absence of a territorial base, visionary worldview, and suicidal foot soldiers disclose a political disposition that would seek by any means to inflict maximum harm. The US government should guard against such risks, especially with respect to the rather loose control of nuclear materials in Russia. Going to war against Iraq is likely to accentuate, rather than reduce, these dire risks. It would produce the one set of conditions in which Saddam Hussein, faced with the certain death and the destruction of his country, would have the greatest incentive to strike back with any means at his disposal, including the arming of al Qaeda.

    The recent hearings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee did not provide an occasion for public debate, as the witnesses called accepted the premise of a regime change in Baghdad, disagreeing only with respect to the costs and feasibility of a war strategy. No principled criticism of the strategy itself was voiced, and thus the hearings are better understood as building a consensus in favor of war than of exploring doubts about the war option. As well, it is regrettable that the hearings paid no attention to the widely criticized punitive sanctions that have had such harsh consequences on Iraqi civilians for more than a decade.

    Granting the concerns of the US government that Saddam Hussein possesses or may obtain weapons of mass destruction, there are available alternatives to war that are consistent with international law and are strongly preferred by America’s most trusted allies. These include the resumption of weapons inspections under United Nations auspices combined with multilateral diplomacy and a continued reliance on non-nuclear deterrence. This kind of approach has proved effective over the years in addressing comparable concerns about North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.

    We are encouraged by the reported opposition to the proposed war by important US military leaders and most US allies. We urge the American people to exercise their responsibilities as citizens to join in raising their voices in opposition to waging war against Iraq.

  • Summer in Iraq Yields Lessons About War

    Published in the Ventura County Star

    Before we talk about a new war with Iraq, we must recognize that the “old war” never ended. Last month, an airstrike by the United States killed one Iraqi and injured 17 others — and we should not miss the significance of this fact. More than a thousand Iraqis have been killed and many more wounded since the illegal no-fly zones were imposed in 1991 — areas that we purportedly patrol to keep Iraqis safe.

    In spite of the slanted testimony of the recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the potential for a renewed war with Iraq, where no dissenters were allowed to speak, the entire world seems to be sending a message to the United States that invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein is an unequivocally bad idea.

    Nations such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Germany have demonstrated outright disapproval and nonsupport for a U.S.-led war against Iraq.

    Not invited to testify were Scott Ritter, the ex-U.S. Marine who led the UNSCOM weapons inspection team until December 1998 when the United Nations withdrew the group prior to a heavy bombing raid on Baghdad, and Dennis Halliday and Hans Graf von Sponeck, two career United Nations officials who resigned their posts as chief humanitarian coordinators in Iraq in protest of the devastating effects of the sanctions. These three would have provided vital information regarding the status of the Iraqi population, the deaths of more than half a million children due to preventable illnesses and malnutrition, and more than a million total people in Iraq since the Gulf War of 1991.

    “I bear personal witness through seven years as a chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations to both the scope of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and the effectiveness of the U.N. weapons inspectors in ultimately eliminating them. While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq’s proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90 to 95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq,” wrote Ritter July 20 for the Boston Globe.

    Noticeably absent from the dialogue about Iraq is the impact a “new” war would have on the civilian population. A Los Angeles Times report states that much of the fighting this time around would be centered in cities and urban areas, increasing the likelihood of high numbers of civilian casualties.

    Also unmentioned is the impact the war preparation is having on the children of Iraq whose lives are suspended in wait of more bombings. In a letter to American students in reference to the December 1998 bombing, “Please send us gifts and not bombs from Father Christmas.” We must consider the psychological toll that even the preparation for war takes on the children.

    The following stories attempt to humanize the lives of average Iraqis as I encountered them last summer. Not much has changed since then.

    Scenes of war

    Iraq is the cradle of civilization, home to the famed Garden of Eden, to Babylon, to the Tigris and Euphrates, to the Fertile Crescent. It houses the birthplace of Abraham, the mosque of Imam Ali and the most widely accepted evidence of the Great Flood — seashells atop a 4,000-year-old ziggurat in the middle of the desert. Yet, since the Gulf War, the sanctity of this historically significant land has been desecrated and its people demoralized, as I learned while visiting Iraq July and August 2001.

    Daily calls to prayer broadcast throughout the city awakened me to the impact of the sanctions and the residual effects of the Gulf War. The call begins with “God is greater than all.” I quickly learned that since Aug. 6, 1990, the effects of war are even more far-reaching than God.

    Omran

    Omran was a 12-year-old shepherd boy walking through his family’s field in May 2000 when a stray bomb fell from a U.S. plane patrolling the illegal no-fly zones over the southern portion of Iraq. This bomb instantly killed him — and ripped apart the social fabric of his tiny village near Najaf.

    I visited Omran’s family last summer. I tried my best to explain to Omran’s mother, father, brothers and entire village that the memory of their son is not forgotten. Omran’s story has been told hundreds of times to high school students, to colleges, to peace and justice and religious groups across the United States as part of a nationwide project to remember Omran.

    I listened as Omran’s father told of his inexplicable loss, of the pain of losing a child, of no apology from anyone, save the five American pacifists sitting before him hot and dusty in the dry Iraq desert. Omran’s mother, who has scarcely spoken since he was killed and who is suffering from a serious heart condition, embraced me and we shed tears together over the helplessness of the situation.

    Cancer ward

    It is 140 degrees inside the hospital at Amara. The air conditioning does not work because the electrical facilities were bombed during the Gulf War and spare parts are routinely denied as dual-use items by the Sanctions Committee at the United Nations.

    A mother sits cross-legged on her son’s bare hospital bed, a piece of torn cardboard in one hand, fanning her child. She is sobbing uncontrollably, rocking back and forth. Her son is unconscious, dying of cancer; he has no IV bag, no medicine, no painkillers. She has no tissue, so I ask for a handful and give them to her; she glances at me with tired appreciation.

    She places the cardboard fan on the bed and begins to knead at her son’s body — his torso, his legs — in a desperate attempt to rouse him. He does not move. I sit helpless on the sheetless bed next to her, watching, invading this private moment, glued to this scene, futile tears rolling down my cheeks. I think, “This is my fault.” The guilt endures.

    Across the room, the doctor escorting our group through the hospital pokes and prods at sleeping, sick babies causing them to wake up screaming in pain to demonstrate the malignancies, tumors and gross deformities that have mysteriously appeared since the Gulf War. All the children are crying now; all their mothers try to comfort them and not look annoyed that the gawking Americans have disturbed their lives.

    The car accident

    We fasted for a day across from the United Nations on Aug. 6, 2001, in the oppressive heat. At the end of the day, a blowout on the road a few feet from us caused a car to spin out of control and crash into our Iraqi friend’s car — our 70-year-old friend who is a taxi driver and who relies on his car for income. Both cars are totally wrecked, blood everywhere. Spare car parts and new tires are expensive. The transfer rate for the Iraqi dinar to U.S. dollars has been devalued from 3:1 to 2000:1, meaning average Iraqis have virtually no purchasing power.

    I call out for our friend who miraculously emerges from the back seat of his smashed vehicle, banged, bruised and filled with glass in his eyes. He is dazed, then suddenly realizes that his livelihood has been instantaneously taken from him. He starts to cry. I try to negotiate with Kalashnikov-toting soldiers to let our friend get examined by a United Nations doctor for internal injuries before they take him to the police station. We ask another Iraqi how much to junk the car and buy a new one. He looks surprised. “Junk the car? In Iraq, we fix everything.”

    While we in the United States live out foreign wars vicariously through our movies, through the news and through the threats of nuclear force made by those in power, I recall the people I met in Iraq whose lives are considerably less glamorous than the remote Hollywood versions we see and hear about. I often wonder if the case of Iraq is an example of the best our foreign policy can be.

    Iraq is more than its one leader. It is a country of 23 million people who all have stories, hopes and fears.

    Basketball and books

    When 58-year-old Zuhair Matti moved to Los Angeles from Baghdad, Iraq, in March 1977, he hardly figured that returning to his homeland would be an intangible goal.

    A member of the 1973 Iraqi Olympic basketball team, Matti played against athletes from all over the world in the games that symbolize internationalism, peace and sportsmanship. Held in Tehran, Iran, just a few years prior to the Iran-Iraq war, the 1973 Olympics were a chance for Matti to shine as a national celebrity for Iraq. His athletic ability and love of his country and people made him a national superhero with fame and status.

    In 1977, Matti moved to Los Angeles at the behest of his wife, whose family lived here. Now an American citizen with two American-born sons, ages 23 and 14, Matti makes ends meet by working at Home Depot, still pining for a family half a globe away whom he has not seen for 24 years.

    When Matti fled Iraq, he was an officer in the army; he took a vacation and never returned. That, compiled with travel made more difficult by the U.N.-imposed and U.S./U.K.-upheld economic sanctions, which disallow travel to and from Iraq, dims hopes that Zuhair will return to his native country soon. He explains: “Travel is so expensive and I don’t want to return with only a few dollars in my pocket. I want to be able to treat everyone very well when I go back. Iraqis are the most generous people on Earth. They are magnanimous people.”

    Al-Mutannabi Street in Baghdad is a well-known book market there, which offers evidence to the academic and intellectual impact of embargo. Half a mile long, lined on both sides of the street with books ranging from 1980s computer manuals to linguistics textbooks to copies of the Qu’ran, the book market demonstrates the impact on the educated class through a persistent starvation of minds and deprivation of information.

    The street is lined with children peddling comic books and middle-aged men selling novels, manuals and movie posters. The children ought to be in school and the men ought to be working in their professional capacities. Fifty-year-old shoe shiners were at one time physics professors. Taxi drivers were electrical engineers.

    Since it is illegal to send anything weighing more than 12 ounces to Iraq through the U.S. Postal Service, medical textbooks and other professional journals cannot be sent. None of the books I saw was published later than 1989.

    That hot day on Aug. 3, 2001, I met Matti’s brother Gassan selling books on Al-Mutannabi Street. Through a translator, he asked where I live. When I replied that I live near Los Angeles, his face lit up. “Please call my brother when you get back home,” he implored. “Tell him I am well! Tell him our mother is well! Tell him how I look; you see I look well, right? I have not seen him in more than 20 years!”

    One of the few promises I can make to the Iraqis I met last summer is that upon my return, I will tell their stories to as many people as will listen. Upon returning to the United States, I called and subsequently met Zuhair Matti, fulfilling Gassan’s wish.

    “You are a nice young woman, Leah,” Matti tells me. “Thank you for what you are doing for my people.” His gratitude surprises me, yet marks a quintessentially Arab sentiment that for however good you are to someone, the goodness will be returned tenfold to you.

    Perhaps Zuhair Matti will be able to travel to Iraq, whether or not he violates the inhumane sanctions that divide families and isolate the Fertile Crescent from the rest of civilization. Perhaps he will see his aging mother before she passes away. He says that the most important thing is “to judge a person based on how nice he is,” and how important it is to have diverse friends. He believes that people are good, regardless of race and ethnicity.

    Perhaps if more Americans knew Iraqis like Zuhair Matti, we would not be so quick to condemn all Iraqis to a slow death via sanctions or an even more expedient death in a new war.

    Precarious situation

    Prior to 1990, Iraq was deemed an emerging first-world country by the United Nations. The oil empire had brought Iraqi citizens great wealth and a prosperous society that boasted free medical care for every citizen as well as free education up through university. In many ways, the standard of living in Iraq once was comparable to middle-class American life.

    Because of the sanctions, no currency flows in or out of Iraq. Any financial transactions must be approved by the Sanctions Committee 661 at the United Nations in New York. It is illegal to wire money from the United States — or anywhere else — to family inside Iraq’s borders. All goods and funds entering or leaving Iraq must have the approval of the five permanent members of the Security Council whose representatives sit on the 661 Committee. The economy has been at a standstill for 11 years, targeting the civilian population while a powerful few score illegal contracts to smuggle oil out of the country.

    Yet for most Iraqis in 2002, many of the basic health and household amenities are far out of reach. Prior to the Gulf War in 1991, the transfer rate of dinar:dollars was 3:1. Now the transfer rate soars at nearly 2,000 dinar to $1, effectively stripping the average, middle-class Iraqis of any meaningful purchasing power.

    During a visit to a pharmacy in Baghdad, I learned that only the wealthiest private sector can afford higher-quality toothpaste, costing 1,250 dinar (71 cents). The rest of the population buys lower-quality toothpaste at 250 dinar (14 cents). Prior to 1990, diapers cost 18 dinar and were widely used throughout Iraq. A box of 10 diapers in August 2001 cost between 2,000 to 4,000 dinar ($1.14 to $2.29). One bottle of shampoo costs 1,500 dinar, or $1.86.

    An average salary in Iraq is roughly 5,000 dinar per month. The Iraqi government, dominated by the Ba’ath party, employs many people — doctors, teachers, engineers and other civil servants. Prior to the Gulf War, teachers in Iraq earned the equivalent of $300 to $400 per month. They now earn the equivalent of $3 to $4 per month.

    Health care has gained a price tag as well in Iraq. Once-affordable medicines like aspirin are too expensive for people to buy now. Ibuprofen and vitamins cost 200 dinar each (11 cents) for 10 tablets. Twelve capsules of Erythromyacin, an antibiotic, cost 500 dinar (29 cents). Some health-care and household items are available in Iraq and to a certain extent are available to the general public. But, families must spend their money only on necessities such as rent and food rather than on aspirin and cough syrup or trips to the hospital.

    Iraqi families finding themselves in financially precarious situations often take their children out of school and send them to beg, steal, peddle candy or cigarettes or shine shoes. I spent a great deal of time with Achmed and Saif, 13 and 12, respectively, who shined our shoes every day for 750 dinar, less than 50 cents. They arrived at our hotel long before we awoke and stayed until late at night.

    Because of the devaluation of the dinar, often only one child per family will be able to attend school due to the cost of supplies such as books, shoes and clothes. A remarkable increase in both depression and juvenile delinquency has occurred in Iraq in the past 11 years. One 10-year-old boy had been sent by his father to sell cigarettes on the street to increase the family’s income rather than attend school. Many customers took advantage of his naivete, taking cigarettes and promising to return with payment later. At the end of the day, when the boy had no cigarettes and no money to show, his father scolded him and sent him to bed with no dinner. This young boy went to his room, wrapped himself in towels and set himself on fire.

    Once-rare crimes like theft and vandalism are now more commonplace among the young, and because the onset of social problems only began within the last 11 years, state-supported social services have only a feeble infrastructure to deal with the ever-expanding magnitude of these issues.

    Desperation and poverty have contributed to a breakdown in family structure and support. The hopelessness for a better future pervades the culture of Iraq, especially among the youth. Their scholastic apathy shows a scary trend signifying their awareness of their dim future. Regardless of how hard they study in school, they know they do not have promising prospects.

    We must not allow Iraqis to take steps backward toward enforced child labor, divestment from quality education and further poverty. Justice and peace for Iraqis mean that they must have a sense of economic mobility and stability in their society.
    *Leah C. Wells of Santa Paula serves as peace education coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She also teaches at local high schools.

  • Real Fireworks, or Just Bombs Again?

    Published in Common Dreams

    As Interdependence Day approaches, the United States humbly admitted error in bombing a wedding party in Afghanistan, killing around 40 people and injuring more than 60. Bombs and rockets in our country symbolize a celebration of freedom, but in other parts of the world, these explosions are all too real, bringing carnage, death and grueling efforts to survive destruction of homes and livelihood.

    This error, undoubtedly labeled ‘collateral damage’, stands next to a smattering of misguided bombs which have inadvertently and regrettably killed hundreds of civilians in numerous countries over the past few years. As reported by the BBC, during the current Bush administration’s war on terror in Afghanistan, U.S. planes accidentally killed four Canadians in April, bombed the town of Hazar Qadam in January, fired at a caravan of tribal elders en route to the inauguration ceremony for Hamid Karzai and last October hit a residential area in Kabul rather than the intended helicopter at the airport. Oops.

    For the pilots and American citizens, these mistakes are akin to losses while playing a video game. From afar, with targets merely illuminated points on a screen, the people who die are unreal, just numbers and statistics. When we kill by remote control, our hands are theoretically clean. The computer won’t show blood and won’t cry; it’s a machine, an abstraction.

    The people affected by our ubiquitous blunders, however, are terribly real, as is their pain. In February of 1991, during the Gulf War, U.S. planes bombed a women’s and children’s shelter in Baghdad called al-Amiriya. Hundreds of civilians died as a result of the two bombs hitting this supposed-safe haven. The U.S. apologized after realizing what happened, but still continues to bomb the country, even in the past week.

    The rhetoric about a “new war” with Iraq is a farce. We are already at war informally with them. Friday June 28th we dropped bombs in the South of Iraq. Wednesday the 26th of June as well. On Thursday the 20th of June four people in Iraq were killed when U.S. planes bombed them. Eighteen people were wounded when bombs fell on Iraq on the 25th of May. And another four were killed when we bombed Iraq on February 6th. I’d imagine that Iraqis feel attacked and besieged as bombs continue to fall in an undeclared, ongoing, indefinite war that inevitably targets civilians.

    When I tell people this, they invariably say, “Where’d you hear this? Why didn’t I know about it?” It’s in the news, alright, but it’s just hard to find. These statistics get buried in the middle of stories about deposing Saddam Hussein and vilifying his evil acts.

    “But Saddam kills his own people!” He did this in the 1980’s as well when he was our friend. We just turned a blind eye then. Besides, we kill our own people, executing hundreds of people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The crime of a state murdering its own civilians looks different when it’s on our own soil.

    Incidentally, these bombs that rain down on Iraq are illegal under international law. They were not approved by Congress nor by the United Nations. The United States justifies dropping bombs as we unlawfully patrol Iraqi borders enforcing the bogus “no fly zones.” Iraqis have become sadly accustomed to the noisy air raid sirens.

    You cannot achieve peace through war. The United States cannot continue to be proud guardians of weapons of mass destruction and deify their usage, apologize for their errors and claim that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. Do these mistakes which take innocent lives make us safer or prove our strength or our liberty? Is it righteous or noble to kill unarmed guests at a wedding? Moreover, to what end are we still bombing Afghanistan – has it brought us closer to capturing Osama bin Laden? Has enough justice not been rendered on the citizens of Afghanistan to make up for the loss of lives on September 11th?

    We are not alone on this small planet, a fact that ought to be in the hearts and minds of all Americans as the nationally celebrated holiday approaches. We drive automobiles made in Japan, drink coffee from South America, wear clothes made in Southeast Asia, buy oil from the Middle East and Africa and import furniture from Sweden. Even our fireworks are made in China!

    On July 4th, millions of American children will be lighting sparklers and tracing their names in the night sky. They should also trace the names of any of the thousands of displaced Afghani children, due to the bombings, who are still refugees on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They should trace the names of the Iraqi children who are their same-age counterparts, held captive under the sanctions and threatened almost daily by U.S. bombs. On Interdependence Day, each and every one of us is affected by an errant bomb.
    *Leah C. Wells serves as Peace Education Coordinator for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. This article was also published at Commondreams.org and Counterpunch.org

  • The President’s Other Two Wars

    The President’s Other Two Wars

    During his first year in office, George W. Bush has engaged in three wars. His war against terrorism is widely known and discussed. His resolve to fight against evildoers with America’s military might is said to have defined his presidency.

    The president’s other two wars have received far less attention, but they may end up defining his presidency even more than his war against terrorism. These are his war against international law and his war against the international control of armaments.

    In the war against international law, the president has shown remarkable boldness in his disdain for the remainder of the international community. He has pulled out of the Kyoto Accords on Global Warming, perhaps the most critical environmental treaty of our time. He has also demonstrated his contempt for the creation of an International Criminal Court that would hold individuals accountable for the types of serious international crimes that were prosecuted by the United States at Nuremberg following World War II.

    The president’s war against the international control of armaments, however, has been his most successful undertaking. In one area of arms control after another, he has demonstrated that he plans to chart the course of US unilateralism when it comes to decisions on controlling armaments.

    He has made clear that he does not intend to resubmit the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to the Senate for ratification. When the CTBT came up at the 2001 United Nations General Assembly, the US was the only country to vote against carrying over an item supporting the treaty to the next session of the General Assembly.

    The president has also requested studies from the Pentagon on the possible resumption of nuclear testing. When the parties to the CTBT met last November to discuss ways to bring the Treaty into force more rapidly, the US did not even bother to show up and participate.

    Mr. Bush has opposed signing the International Treaty to Ban Landmines, despite the solid international support to ban these weapons that go on killing civilians long after the soldiers have left a war zone. At a UN conference on small arms, the US blocked key provisions to stem the illegal traffic in small arms, those most used in combat. The US also torpedoed a six-year effort to create a Protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention that would allow for verification procedures including on-site inspections.

    The president’s boldest act, however, in his war against the international control of armaments was his announcement that the US is withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Despite Russian opposition to taking this step, the president gave his notice of withdrawal on December 13, 2001, starting the six months running for withdrawal under the provisions of the treaty. Withdrawal from the ABM Treaty will give the US the ability to test weapons for use in outer space, leading to their deployment in outer space and the undermining of the Outer Space Treaty as well.

    In his November 2001 Crawford Summit with Russian President Putin, Mr. Bush announced his intention to lower the size of the US strategic nuclear arsenal to some 1,700 to 2,200 nuclear weapons over a ten year period. This unilateral action did not even go as far as President Putin had been offering for over a year (reductions to 1,500 strategic weapons or possibly lower). The president’s plan will keep overkill the principal US nuclear strategy for at least the next decade. Further, since it has been unilaterally initiated, it will be subject to unilateral reversal by Mr. Bush himself or a successor to the presidency.

    In taking these steps, Mr. Bush has also demonstrated his contempt for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which the US has promised to pursue good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. The International Court of Justice has interpreted this phrase to mean complete nuclear disarmament in all its aspects.

    As recently as May 2000, the parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty promised to preserve and strengthen the ABM Treaty “as the cornerstone of strategic stability and as a basis for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons.” At the same time, the US joined the other parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty in promising an “unequivocal undertaking…to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.” The president’s actions have helped convince our allies and treaty partners that US promises are worth very little, but perhaps this is to be expected when a president is engaged in war on so many fronts.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • Open Letter from an American to the World: HELP!

    The Bush Administration is blundering into a global conflagration. There is currently no force within the U.S. likely to stop it. It is up to the rest of the world, and especially America’s friends and allies — both governments and their citizens — to constrain its rush to disaster.

    The Bush administration was warned by its European and Arab allies and its friends around the world to avoid:

    A long bombing campaign with significant civilian casualties in Afghanistan. –Seizure of Kabul by the Northern Alliance. Bombing Afghanistan during Ramadan. Failure to reestablish the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Each of these warnings was ignored. And the emerging result of these and similar Bush Administration policies is a vast global destabilization that is acquiring a momentum going far beyond the responses to September 11. As The New York Times reports, “new battlegrounds” have opened up “from the Palestinian territories to Kashmir.”

    Whether or not the war in Afghanistan was justified, the issue is no longer about destroying Al Qaeda, or removing the repressive Taliban regime, or even whether the U.S. will attack Iraq.

    The issue is now an emerging world crisis provoked by a superpower administration that is acting without rational consideration of the effects of its actions. The number of additional civil and international wars it may stir up is simply incalculable — and certainly is not being rationally calculated by the Bush administration.

    This represents a new stage in testing what it means to be the world’s only superpower. As a German official put it in The New York Times, in the past Washington determined its national interest in shaping international rules, behavior, and institutions.

    “Now Washington seems to want to pursue its national interest in a more narrowly defined way, doing what it wants and forcing others to adapt.”

    The Bush Administration has a list of dozens of countries for possible intervention, and it is presently debating who’s next. “Pentagon officials have openly agitated to finish off Mr. [Saddam] Hussein…. Recently an American delegation from the State Department was in northern Iraq, discussing activities in that part of Iraq with Kurdish leaders… [S]ome administration officials say that Pakistan may be where the next phase of the war must unfold.”

    Somalia, the Sudan, the Philippines — the shopping list goes on and on.

    The Bush administration’s global destabilization is not limited to the war on terrorism. U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty is initiating a new nuclear arms race.

    Joseph Biden, Jr., the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, cites widely reported U.S. intelligence community conclusions that “pulling out of ABM would prompt the Chinese to increase their nuclear arsenal tenfold, beyond the modernization they are doing anyway…. And when they build up, so will the Indians, and when the Indians do, so will the Pakistanis. And for what? A system no one is convinced will work.”

    It is an illusion to believe that the U.S. is in any way in control of events. Consider the mid-East peace process. Just as Bush and Powell were rolling out a major peace initiative, the combination of war parties in Israel and Palestine sabotaged it completely.

    The U.S. then tilted wildly toward the very forces in Israel that had sabotaged the U.S. initiative. The attack on the Indian parliament — believed by our new friend India to have been organized with the connivance of our old friend Pakistan — threatens to provoke a war that the U.S. will now be in the middle of.

    The U.S. justification for its attack on Afghanistan as “harboring terrorists” has already been echoed almost word for word by India, Israel, Russia, and China for their own purposes. The use of the “right of self-defense” as a justification for a unilateral decision to attack any country one accuses of harboring terrorists provides a pretext that any national leader can now use to make war against anyone it chooses in complete disregard of international law.

    Internal constraints?

    There is something that peoples and governments around the world need to understand: There are currently no effective internal constraints on what the Bush Administration can or will do. Because of popular response to the September 11 attacks, the Administration feels –correctly, at least for a time — that it can do anything without having to fear dissent or opposition.

    It withdrew from the AMB treaty with barely a ripple of public questioning. Its endorsement of Sharon’s attacks on the Palestinian Authority wins overwhelming Congressional support. Open advocacy of a military attack and occupation of Iraq causes no stir.

    The peace movement that has challenged Bush administration policies may become a significant restraint in the future, but it isn’t now.

    Nor is there any effective institutional constraint. The U.S. Congress has almost unanimously given the Administration a blank check to conduct any military operations it chooses.

    Practical concerns of senior military officers at the Pentagon are apparently ignored by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his ubiquitous supporters. Secretary of State Colin Powell, looked to by many as a source of reason and restraint, has been unable to make the Administration heed any of the warnings listed above. It is hard to detect any indication of a business or foreign policy “Establishment” putting any constraints on the unleashing of US power.

    Most serious of all is a lack of constraint based on rational evaluation of long-term consequences. As an “exuberant senior aide” put it recently, the Bush administration is “on a roll”; its “biggest concern” is “how to make maximum use of the military as well as the diplomatic momentum he has built up abroad and the political capital he has accumulated at home.”

    As an article in The Guardian entitled “Washington hawks get power boost: Rumsfeld is winning the debate” puts it, “For the time being, at least, there is little in Washington to stop Mr. Rumsfeld chasing America’s foes all the way to Baghdad.”

    A time for friends to help friends

    The U.S. in the Cold War era at least purported to be protecting its allies. But today, as the U.S. projects its power unilaterally, it friends and allies are the ones most likely to feel the blowback from destabilization in the form of terrorism, refugees, recession, and war.

    It is up to governments and civil society outside the U.S. to put constraints on what it does — both for their own sake and for America’s.

    In the Suez Crisis of 1956, the armies of Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt and began advancing on the Suez Canal. The U.S. under President Eisenhower intervened — not to support the invaders but to restrain them. It is time for the world to return the favor. For example:

    * A “coalition” in which the U.S. Goliath cuts a separate deal with each “coalition partner” is a formula for U.S. dictation. U.S. coalition partners must insist that the U.S. spell out its intentions for open world discussion before they agree to provide any support.

    * U.S. coalition partners with few exceptions oppose U.S. attacks on Iraq, Somalia, the Sudan, or anywhere else. Yet it is no secret that planning for such attacks is under way in Washington. Coalition partners must move from private grumbling to a concerted public united front against such actions.

    * The U.N. can serve as an arena for challenging and providing alternatives to superpower supremacy. At the least, the U.S. can be forced to isolate itself by vetoing resolutions that run counter to its unilateralism.

    (The Security Council recently voted 12 to 1, with Britain and Norway abstaining, for a resolution calling for international monitors in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The U.S. vetoed the resolution — thereby isolating itself from many of its own “coalition partners.”)

    Strong, unified, public endorsement of Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s campaign against an attack on Iraq would have a big impact in the U.S. at this point.

    * It has been widely reported in the U.S. that foreign critics of the war in Afghanistan have now concluded that they were wrong because the war was short and because it freed Afghans, especially women, from the tyranny of the Taliban.

    This is being used in Washington to argue that popular opinion abroad need not be regarded as an impediment to further U.S. attacks elsewhere. Washington needs to hear a clear message that that is not the case.

    * There are concrete ways in which people and governments can begin putting the brakes on Washington. The refusal of European countries to extradite suspects who may be subject to military tribunals or the death penalty provides an excellent example.

    This is going to be a long struggle, not just about one policy, but about a basic historical tendency of the world’s only superpower. It is sad but true that the rest of the world may not have enough leverage in the short run to stop the U.S. from attacking whomever it chooses to target next. But it is time to begin laying the groundwork for a long-term strategy of containment.

    Such international pressure can serve as a deterrent to the craziest actions the Bush administration is considering. For example, press reports suggest that opposition from Russia, Europe, and Arab countries may be leading Bush’s advisors at least to delay an attack on Iraq on the grounds that “there is insufficient international backing.”

    If U.S. friends and coalition partners toll the alarm bell, it will begin to evoke different responses in Congress, the Pentagon, corporate elites, and the American public as well, especially as the untoward consequences of the Bush administration juggernaut become apparent.

    Without an outside wake-up call, these forces are currently prepared to plunge into the abyss in an empty-minded trance.

    Restraining the Bush Administration is anything but anti-American. It is the best thing America’s friends can do for us right now. We have a slogan here: “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

    PLEASE: America’s friends need to take the car keys away until this power-drunk superpower sobers up.

    *Jeremy Brecher is an historian and the author of twelve books, including GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW, and producer of the video documentary GLOBAL VILLAGE OR GLOBAL PILLAGE? (website: www.villageorpillage.org) Anyone is welcome to forward or reprint this piece.

  • Stop the Bombing and Bring In the UN

    The US military action in Afghanistan is failing. Many innocent Afghans are being killed, and the US is no closer to finding or defeating the terrorists responsible for perpetrating the September 11th crimes against humanity. The United Nations and other relief organizations are warning that millions of Afghans could die of starvation this winter unless the bombing is halted soon. In other words, the bombing of Afghanistan is leading to a humanitarian crisis of unprecedented proportions. We, therefore, call on the US and British forces to halt the bombing to allow relief organizations to do their job of getting food to the Afghan people.

    Terrorism is a global problem that can only be solved globally. Every country on Earth, every person on the planet, has a stake in ending the threat of terrorism. This matter must go back to the United Nations Security Council and must be handled by the United Nations as a matter of priority. If the US and UK continue their bombing, killing more innocent people, they will simply be adding fuel to the fire of terrorism. Some have suggested that they are providing the spark to ignite a global conflagration.

    On the other hand, if the international community joins together in a serious effort to combat terrorism, it could lead to unprecedented cooperation between national police and intelligence services. Such efforts could leave terrorists with no place to hide, and are essential to preventing terrorism.

    A global action through the United Nations will also demonstrate that this is not simply retaliation or vengeance on the part of the United States. To make a United Nations effort effective will require leadership and support by the United States, but it must be an effort that is truly directed by the Security Council of the United Nations.

    The United Nations should also set up a special International Tribunal for terrorists until the International Criminal Court is established, which will probably be next year. A trial before an impartial International Tribunal will help educate the world on the need to put an end to all terrorism. Such a trial will also be acceptable to virtually all countries throughout the world, whereas a trial of terrorists in the US would be viewed as biased in many countries.

    In sum, step one on the path to ending terrorism is to stop the bombing of Afghanistan now; step two is to turn over to the United Nations Security Council the job of preventing terrorism and bringing terrorists to justice.

    Military force is deepening the crisis without producing significant results. The vulnerability of civilization to determined and suicidal terrorists makes prevention the key to victory. Our future security, and that of the rest of the world, will be dependent on multilateral and cooperative efforts under an internationally accepted legal framework.

    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

  • The Geopolitics of War

    There are many ways to view the conflict between the United States and Osama bin Laden’s terror network: as a contest between Western liberalism and Eastern fanaticism, as suggested by many pundits in the United States; as a struggle between the defenders and the enemies of authentic Islam, as suggested by many in the Muslim world; and as a predictable backlash against American villainy abroad, as suggested by some on the left. But while useful in assessing some dimensions of the conflict, these cultural and political analyses obscure a fundamental reality: that this war, like most of the wars that preceded it, is firmly rooted in geopolitical competition.

    The geopolitical dimensions of the war are somewhat hard to discern because the initial fighting is taking place in Afghanistan, a place of little intrinsic interest to the United States, and because our principal adversary, bin Laden, has no apparent interest in material concerns. But this is deceptive, because the true center of the conflict is Saudi Arabia, not Afghanistan (or Palestine), and because bin Laden’s ultimate objectives include the imposition of a new Saudi government, which in turn would control the single most valuable geopolitical prize on the face of the earth: Saudi Arabia’s vast oil deposits, representing one-fourth of the world’s known petroleum reserves. To fully appreciate the roots of the current conflict, it is necessary to travel back in time–specifically, to the final years of World War II, when the US government began to formulate plans for the world it would dominate in the postwar era. As the war drew to a close, the State Department was enjoined by President Roosevelt to devise the policies and institutions that would guarantee US security and prosperity in the coming epoch. This entailed the design and formation of the United Nations, the construction of the Bretton Woods world financial institutions and, most significant in the current context, the procurement of adequate oil supplies.

    American strategists considered access to oil to be especially important because it was an essential factor in the Allied victory over the Axis powers. Although the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, it was oil that fueled the armies that brought Germany and Japan to their knees. Oil powered the vast numbers of ships, tanks and aircraft that endowed Allied forces with a decisive edge over their adversaries, which lacked access to reliable sources of petroleum. It was widely assumed, therefore, that access to large supplies of oil would be critical to US success in any future conflicts.

    Where would this oil come from? During World Wars I and II, the United States was able to obtain sufficient oil for its own and its allies’ needs from deposits in the American Southwest and from Mexico and Venezuela. But most US analysts believed that these supplies would be insufficient to meet American and European requirements in the postwar era. As a result, the State Department initiated an intensive study to identify other sources of petroleum. This effort, led by the department’s economic adviser, Herbert Feis, concluded that only one location could provide the needed petroleum. “In all surveys of the situation,” Feis noted (in a statement quoted by Daniel Yergin in The Prize), “the pencil came to an awed pause at one point and place–the Middle East.”

    To be more specific, Feis and his associates concluded that the world’s most prolific supply of untapped oil was to be found in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But how to get at this oil? At first, the State Department proposed the formation of a government-owned oil firm to acquire concessions in Saudi Arabia and extract the kingdom’s reserves. This plan was considered too unwieldy, however, and instead US officials turned this task over to the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO), an alliance of major US oil corporations. But these officials were also worried about the kingdom’s long-term stability, so they concluded that the United States would have to assume responsibility for the defense of Saudi Arabia. In one of the most extraordinary occurrences in modern American history, President Roosevelt met with King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi regime, on a US warship in the Suez Canal following the February 1945 conference in Yalta. Although details of the meeting have never been made public, it is widely believed that Roosevelt gave the King a promise of US protection in return for privileged American access to Saudi oil–an arrangement that remains in full effect today and constitutes the essential core of the US-Saudi relationship.

    This relationship has provided enormous benefits to both sides. The United States has enjoyed preferred access to Saudi petroleum reserves, obtaining about one-sixth of its crude-oil imports from the kingdom. ARAMCO and its US partners have reaped immense profits from their operations in Saudi Arabia and from the distribution of Saudi oil worldwide. (Although ARAMCO’s Saudi holdings were nationalized by the Saudi government in 1976, the company continues to manage Saudi oil production and to market its petroleum products abroad.) Saudi Arabia also buys about $6-10 billion worth of goods per year from US companies. The Saudi royal family, for its part, has become immensely wealthy and, because of continued US protection, has remained safe from external and internal attack.

    But this extraordinary partnership has also produced a number of unintended consequences, and it is these effects that concern us here. To protect the Saudi regime against its external enemies, the United States has steadily expanded its military presence in the region, eventually deploying thousands of troops in the kingdom. Similarly, to protect the royal family against its internal enemies, US personnel have become deeply involved in the regime’s internal security apparatus. At the same time, the vast and highly conspicuous accumulation of wealth by the royal family has alienated it from the larger Saudi population and led to charges of systemic corruption. In response, the regime has outlawed all forms of political debate in the kingdom (there is no parliament, no free speech, no political party, no right of assembly) and used its US-trained security forces to quash overt expressions of dissent. All these effects have generated covert opposition to the regime and occasional acts of violence–and it is from this undergroundmilieu that Osama bin Laden has drawn his inspiration and many of his top lieutenants.

    The US military presence in Saudi Arabia has steadily increased over the years. Initially, from 1945 to 1972, Washington delegated the primary defense responsibility to Britain, long the dominant power in the region. When Britain withdrew its forces from “East of Suez” in 1971, the United States assumed a more direct role, deploying military advisers in the kingdom and providing Saudi Arabia with a vast arsenal of US weapons. Some of these arms and advisory programs were aimed at external defense, but the Defense Department also played a central role in organizing, equipping, training and managing the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), the regime’s internal security force.

    American military involvement in the kingdom reached a new level in 1979, when three things happened: The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Shah of Iran was overthrown by antigovernment forces and Islamic militants staged a brief rebellion in Mecca. In response, President Jimmy Carter issued a new formulation of US policy: Any move by a hostile power to gain control of the Persian Gulf area would be regarded “as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America” and would be resisted “by any means necessary, including military force.” This statement, now known as the “Carter Doctrine,” has governed US strategy in the gulf ever since. To implement the new doctrine, Carter established the Rapid Deployment Force, a collection of combat forces based in the United States but available for deployment to the Persian Gulf. (The RDF was later folded into the US Central Command, which now conducts all US military operations in the region.) Carter also deployed US warships in the gulf and arranged for the periodic utilization by American forces of military bases in Bahrain, Diego Garcia (a British-controlled island in the Indian Ocean), Oman and Saudi Arabia–all of which were employed during the 1990-91 Gulf War and are again being used today. Believing, moreover, that the Soviet presence in Afghanistan represented a threat to US dominance in the gulf, Carter authorized the initiation of covert operations to undermine the Soviet-backed regime there. (It is important to note that the Saudi regime was deeply involved in this effort, providing much of the funding for the anti-Soviet rebellion and allowing its citizens, including Osama bin Laden, to participate in the war effort as combatants and fundraisers.) And to protect the Saudi royal family, Carter increased US involvement in the kingdom’s internal security operations.

    President Reagan accelerated Carter’s overt military moves and greatly increased covert US support for the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan. (Eventually, some $3 billion worth of arms were given to the mujahedeen.) Reagan also issued an important codicil to the Carter Doctrine: The United States would not allow the Saudi regime to be overthrown by internal dissidents, as occurred in Iran. “We will not permit [Saudi Arabia] to be an Iran,” he told reporters in 1981.

    Then came the Persian Gulf War. When Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, President Bush the elder was principally concerned about the threat to Saudi Arabia, not Kuwait. At a meeting at Camp David on August 4, he determined that the United States must take immediate military action to defend the Saudi kingdom against possible Iraqi attack. To allow for a successful defense of the kingdom, Bush sent his Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, to Riyadh to persuade the royal family to allow the deployment of US ground forces on Saudi soil and the use of Saudi bases for airstrikes against Iraq.

    The subsequent unfolding of Operation Desert Storm does not need to be retold here. What is important to note is that the large US military presence in Saudi Arabia was never fully withdrawn after the end of the fighting in Kuwait. American aircraft continue to fly from bases in Saudi Arabia as part of the enforcement mechanism of the “no-fly zone” over southern Iraq (intended to prevent the Iraqis from using this airspace to attack Shiite rebels in the Basra area or to support a new invasion of Kuwait). American aircraft also participate in the multinational effort to enforce the continuing economic sanctions on Iraq.

    President Clinton further strengthened the US position in the gulf, expanding American basing facilities there and enhancing the ability to rapidly move US-based forces to the region.Clinton also sought to expand US influence in the Caspian Sea basin, an energy-rich area just to the north of the Persian Gulf.

    Many consequences have flowed from all this. The sanctions on Iraq have caused immense suffering for the Iraqi population, while the regular bombing of military facilities produces a mounting toll of Iraqi civilian deaths. Meanwhile, the United States has failed to take any action to curb Israeli violence against the Palestinians. It is these concerns that have prompted many young Muslims to join bin Laden’s forces. Bin Laden himself, however, is most concerned about Saudi Arabia. Ever since the end of the Gulf War, he has focused his efforts on achieving two overarching goals: the expulsion of the American “infidels” from Saudi Arabia (the heart of the Muslim holy land) and the overthrow of the current Saudi regime and its replacement with one more attuned to his fundamentalist Islamic beliefs.

    Both of these goals put bin Laden in direct conflict with the United States. It is this reality, more than any other, that explains the terrorist strikes on US military personnel and facilities in the Middle East, and key symbols of American power in New York and Washington.

    The current war did not begin on September 11. As far as we can tell, it began in 1993 with the first attack on the World Trade Center. This was succeeded in 1995 with an attack on the SANG headquarters in Riyadh, and in 1996 with the explosion at the Khobar Towers outside of Dhahran. Then followed the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the more recent attack on the USS Cole. All these events, like the World Trade Center/Pentagon assaults, are consistent with a long-term strategy to erode US determination to maintain its alliance with the Saudi regime- and thus, in the final analysis, to destroy the 1945 compact forged by President Roosevelt and King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud.

    In fighting against these efforts, the United States is acting, in the first instance, to protect itself, its citizens and its military personnel from terrorist violence. At the same time, however, Washington is also shoring up its strategic position in the Persian Gulf. With bin Laden out of the way, Iran suffering from internal political turmoil and Saddam Hussein immobilized by unrelenting American airstrikes, the dominant US position in the gulf will be assured for some time to come. (Washington’s one big worry is that the Saudi monarchy will face increasing internal opposition because of its close association with the United States; it is for this reason that the Bush Administration has not leaned too hard on the regime to permit US forces to use Saudi bases for attacks on Afghanistan and to freeze the funds of Saudi charities linked to Osama bin Laden.)

    For both sides, then, this conflict has important geopolitical dimensions. A Saudi regime controlled by Osama bin Laden could be expected to sever all ties with US oil companies and to adopt new policies regarding the production of oil and the distribution of the country’s oil wealth–moves that would have potentially devastating consequences for the US, and indeed the world, economy. The United States, of course, is fighting to prevent this from happening.

    As the conflict unfolds, we are unlikely to hear any of this from the key figures involved. In seeking to mobilize public support for his campaign against the terrorists, President Bush will never acknowledge that conventional geopolitics plays a role in US policy. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is equally reluctant to speak in such terms. But the fact remains that this war, like the Gulf War before it, derives from a powerful geopolitical contest. It will be very difficult, in the current political environment, to probe too deeply into these matters. Bin Laden and his associates have caused massive injury to the United States, and the prevention of further such attacks is, understandably, the nation’s top priority. When conditions permit, however, a serious review of US policy in the Persian Gulf will be in order. Among the many questions that might legitimately be asked at this point is whether long-term US interests would not best be served by encouraging the democratization of Saudi Arabia. Surely, if more Saudi citizens are permitted to participate in open political dialogue, fewer will be attracted to the violent, anti-American dogma of Osama bin Laden.

  • Walk Softly and Look Ahead in Nuclear South Asia

    Before September 11th, South Asia’s problems were legion: over a billion people, most of them desperately poor; a history of war and violent conflicts; rising religious militancy; hard-line Hindu nationalists in power in India, the army in charge in Pakistan; newly tested nuclear weapons and a get-tough mood. Now, it is also the frontline of the US war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. South Asia may not be able to take the strain. The US needs to ensure that it does nothing to worsen the many crises in South Asia and that it thinks long-term, not short-term, about its policies in the region.

    The US bombing campaign against Afghanistan in response to the terrible attacks of September 11th has opened wide the door for Pakistan’s Islamist groups, with their history of anti Americanism and strong ties to the Taliban. Hoping to mobilize the widespread public resentment and anger at the hopelessness of everyday life in Pakistan, these groups have taken to the streets to challenge the military government of President Pervez Musharraf and his decision to support the US. The longer the US bombs Afghanistan and the more civilians get killed, the greater the humanitarian and refugee crisis and the more organized and dangerous the Islamists’ challenge.

    There are obvious steps the US should take in the present crisis that would serve also to strengthen the hand of Pakistan’s government against the militants. The US should heed the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and suspend its bombing campaign to allow relief supplies to reach the more than seven million Afghans in direst need. Similarly, the US could acknowledge the vital role of the UN and call in Secretary General and new Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kofi Annan, show him the evidence, and ask him to mediate with the Taliban for a hand-over of Osama bin Laden for trial.

    Pakistan is also trapped by its conflict with India. Reflecting the intensity and depth of this battle, India and Pakistan have each sought to take advantage of the situation since September 11th. India immediately offered political and military support to the United States in its conflict with the Taliban and urged it to include Pakistani-supported Islamic militants fighting in Kashmir as targets of the US assault on terrorism. Pakistan, under enormous pressure from the US, eventually decided to turn a liability into an asset and sought to cash in on its location and its leverage over the Taliban.

    Seeing Pakistan win the US over to its side, and with the militants continuing their attacks in Kashmir, India is now trying another, more dangerous gambit. It has threatened to follow the US example and attack militant training camps and bases in Pakistan. In an ominous development, India has ended a 10 month long effective cease-fire and started shelling Pakistani forces across the border that divides Kashmir.

    The US must press Pakistan to end its support for the militants, restrain India from actions that may trigger a South Asian war, and get serious in working with the international community to resolve the half century-old Kashmir dispute. For this effort to be taken seriously, the US must show by word and deed that unilateral military action is not the order of the day.

    A longer-term danger are the nuclear weapons in South Asia. The May 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan put the world on watch. The US and the international community used sanctions to pressure both countries to exercise restraint, and to signal a refusal to accept new nuclear weapons states. But, in its search for support in the region, the Bush administration has let go the already waning US efforts to reverse the nuclearization of South Asia. The US is lifting all its sanctions against India and most if not (yet) all sanctions against Pakistan–and economic and military assistance is being offered to both.

    India and Pakistan may return with renewed vigor to their conventional and nuclear arms race. India seeks US arms to add to its $4 billion arms deal with Russia and $2 billion deal with Israel. Pakistan’s limited funds have stalled its military purchases. With the army in charge, any resources freed by a blanket lifting of sanctions may go to catching up with India. With political and economic pressures eased, both sides may speed deployment of their nuclear warheads. South Asia may escape the frying pan of terrorism only to fall into the nuclear fire.

    Alternatives to Military Aid

    While military aid will make things worse, economic aid can play an important role. There is no doubt South Asia’s poor need support. But this will be near useless if the money is simply handed over to the very governments that have for so long neglected their people. Resources must be directed to where the people are and in ways that they can usefully manage to improve the conditions of their daily lives. The US, the international community, and institutions like the World Bank would do well to heed Mahatma Gandhi’s advice: “recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny?”

    Also long-term is democracy. General Musharraf’s new status as ally in the war against Afghanistan and the man most likely to hold Pakistan together may lead to the lifting of the US sanctions levied after his coup. But, concern about Pakistan’s stability should not translate into abandoning democracy, and Musharraf should not be allowed or encouraged to stay in power. The two previous Pakistani generals who seized power each kept it for the better part of a decade. Civil society withered both times.

    Musharraf should hold to his promise of elections and restoring democracy by next October. Elections may be just what it takes to mobilize the majority of Pakistanis in the battle against radical Islam. Whenever they have been allowed to choose who should govern them in the past, Pakistanis have decisively rejected Islamic political parties. They would do so again now. The small crowds on the streets supporting the Islamist groups are testament to that, but another ten years without democracy may change their minds.

    *Zia Mian researches South Asian security issues with the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. He has also taught at Princeton, Yale, and Quaid-i-Azam University (Islamabad, Pakistan). He is the co-editor of Out of The Nuclear Shadow, a collection of South Asian writing on nuclear disarmament.

  • Statement on the Bombing of Afghanistan

    (The following statement was made at a Press Conference of Prominent Canadians Calling for a Halt to the Bombing of Afghanistan in Toronto)

    The relentless bombing of Afghanistan, now in its 18th day, goes beyond the intent of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368. When the Security Council gave its assent “to take all necessary steps” to respond to the September 11 attacks, it did not approve a bombing campaign that would kill innocent civilians in their Afghan villages, drive 70 percent of the people in Herat (population 800,000) out of their homes, kill 10 civilians yesterday on a bus at the city gates of Kandahar, and destroy a Red Cross warehouse among other unfortunate acts of what is drily called “collateral damage.”

    It may seem comforting to say that civilians are not targeted, but it is not “collateral damage” when thousands of refugees fleeing the bombs are jammed along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in unspeakable conditions. UNICEF warns that the crisis “is threatening the lives of millions of women and children” and that “1.5 million children may not make it through the winter.” Christian Aid, which reported that 600 people have already died in the Dar-e-Suf region of northern Afghanistan due to starvation and related diseases, says needy people are being put at risk by government spin-doctors who are showing a callous disregard for life.

    The bombing of Afghanistan, one of the most desperate and vulnerable regions of the world, is producing an international catastrophe. The bombing is immoral, unproductive and only by the most dubious logic can it be said to possess even a shred of legality.

    As Article 51 of the U.N. Charter makes clear, it is the Security Council that has the authority and responsibility to maintain or restore international peace and security. Let me emphasize: the bombing coalition, in exceeding the exercise of the right of self-defence, which gave a legal cover to the bombing, has sidelined the legitimate authority of the Security Council to manage this crisis.

    It is said that the invocation for the first time of Article 5 of the NATO Charter provides the legal grounds for Canada to give its support to the military campaign. The Article provides the solidarity that an attack on one member will be considered an attack on all and thus NATO will take the responsive actions it deems necessary. But where has it been proven that the government of Afghanistan, despotic as it is, engineered or carried out the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? It has yet to be confirmed that any of the 19 suspected hijackers comes from Afghanistan. Is the belief that Osama bin Laden, the terrorist leader, is in Afghanistan justification for imposing catastrophe on the whole populace?

    Continued bombing is not what the United Nations intended. The bombing must stop now – and Canada, to be faithful to its own values, must press the United States and its coalition partners to call a halt so that humanitarian aid can reach the desperate people of Afghanistan.