JustPeace#16

Hot News

• Supporting the Government’s decision to send New Zealand mine clearers to Iraq under UN auspices, Keith Locke nevertheless urged that NZ make further diplomatic efforts through the UN to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction. On 22 April he said that NZ should support Syria’s Security Council resolution to free the Middle East of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. ”If the United States opposes this, because they support Israel having nuclear weapons, it would expose just how serious the Bush administration is about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction.” Read
  
  Keith’s release
  
  .
• Helen Clark should include a strong antiwar message to give European leaders on her 12-day visit to Europe. Keith Locke said she should adopt a strong position against widening the Iraq war to Syria when she meets the leaders of Great Britain, France, Belgium and the European Commission. Read
  
  Keith’s release
  
  .

Hot Action

• WATCH some independent documentaries on war and peace issues AUCKLAND INDYMEDIA DOCO NIGHT Tues 29 April 7PMN260 Queen Street (above McDonald’s)
  
  $5.00 Waged; $3.00 Unwaged

  NOT IN MY NAME (41mins)
  
  The story of the US attack on Afghanistan which we didn’t see on our television screens.

  WOOMERA 2002 (34mins)
  
  A documentary about last year’s protests at the Woomera Detention Centre for asylum seekers in Australia which resulted in the break out of 50 refugees.

  PLAN B:PEACE (25mins)
  
  Made by Aotearoa Indymedia, this doco looks at NZ’s role in the worldwide
  
  anti-war demonstrations on Feb 15 that tallied into the millions.

  Fundraiser for
  
  Aotearoa Independent Media Centre
  
  .

• MARCH CHRISTCHURCH Sunday May 4, 2 p.m. — rally in Cathedral Square and move out from there.
• WELLINGTON Embassy of Peace and Justice
  
  The Embassy of Peace and Justice will be opening on Friday morning, April 25 at 8:00am on the grounds of Parliament in Wellington. The public is invited to visit the Embassy all day and be issued with a ‘Passport to Peace’. The Embassy will close on Sunday evening with a Candlelight vigil from 5-6pm at the Cenotaph. All are welcome.
  
  For more information, please contact Valerie 383-9315 or Lenka 021-147-3517.
• NATIONAL PEACE WORKSHOPS, Christchurch, May 9-11, 2003. The programme and registration details are on the
  
  Peace Movement Aotearoa website
  
  or available by ringing Peace Movement Aotearoa on (04) 382 8129.

Hot Analysis

• This week we include three articles, one on
  
  India’s position on the Invasion of Iraq
  
  , one on
  
  debt and debt forgiveness
  
  (which has huge importance for the future of Iraq, a massively indebted nation) and one on the political implications of the
  
  Kerbala Shi’ite pilgrimage
  
  .
• 
  Where
  
  does the world’s largest democracy stand on the war on Iraq and relations with the US? Given where India is located and the fact that it too possesses nuclear weapons, perhaps we should be paying more attention to what it is happening there. The full text of the edited article below can be found at
  
  Foreign Policy in Focus
  
  .
  

  India’s “Middle Path” Through War In Iraq: A Devious Route To The U.S. Camp
  

  By Ninan Koshy

  India’s political leaders’ responses to the U.S.-led war in Iraq are notable for what they say about the country’s willingness to sacrifice traditional concerns regarding nonalignment and international law for the opportunity to raise its profile and power on the world stage. They have, in all but words, chosen to side with empire.

  Neither supporting the United States nor openly criticizing it for its aggression against Iraq, India’s government has taken what it calls the “middle path,” an indirect route to the U.S. post-war camp. But the policy is based on a misguided perception of strategic and economic interests, which is shaped by Indian authorities’ obsession with what they view as “Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.”

  For its part, the United States would have liked to have received India’s support in the war against Iraq, but it recognizes that the middle path in effect endorses the U.S position. On the eve of the war, U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwell claimed in a statement that the U.S. and Indian positions were the same.

  Even after the United States defied the UN, international laws, and the international community with its massive military campaign against Iraq, the Indian government stuck to the middle path. The government of Prime Minister Shri Atal Bijari Vajpayee rejected opposition demands for a parliamentary resolution on the crisis.

  It was not without significance that on March 26, the very day the UN Security Council was discussing the U.S. attack on Iraq, Christina Rocca, U.S. assistant secretary of State for South Asia, in her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hailed India as a “rising global power” and said the United States was expanding security cooperation with New Delhi through military exercises. The middle path, it was evident, was within the framework of the role assigned to India.

  The Indian leadership hopes that in the new world order being fashioned by the military might of the United States, which will transform institutions such as the UN and NATO as well as strategic and nuclear orders, it will have a more prominent place than at present, and for that it is important to be on the winning side. There is no apology in New Delhi for the replacement of principles with pragmatism.

  But is there a middle path between war and peace, between occupation and freedom, between foreign military-established rule and sovereignty of a nation? The misguided policymakers in New Delhi want us to believe there is. The people of Iraq know better: There is none. It is therefore not surprising that in trying to explain such an untenable and unethical policy, the Indian prime minister utters inanities bordering on nonsense only to be parroted by spokespersons and emissaries.

  The middle path is a euphemism for a Washington-approved policy that India has adopted with the clear intent of attaining a prominent position in the new imperial world order made in the name of the War on Terror. The United States knows full well that India is with the empire, not against it.

  (Dr. Ninan Koshy is a political commentator based in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, author of The War on Terror: Reordering the World (DAGA Press, 2002), and a regular analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at
  
  www.fpif.org
  
  ).)

• 
  More
  
  on the ”debt and death” connection — Uruguayan analyst Eduardo Gudynas looks back at what happened post-World War II and makes comparisons with what is happening today. Iraq’s debt stands at several hundred billion US dollars (anywhere from $60 billion to close to $400 billion, depending on who is asked) — far more, relative to GDP, than countries such as Argentina. The full article can be found on the
  
  Americas Policy
  
  website.
  

  Fifty Years Forgetting London
  

  By Eduardo Gudynas

  The foreign debt in southern countries continues to grow and is once again becoming a major problem. By the end of 2002, the Latin American debt had grown to over $725 billion; the most indebted nations were Brazil ($230 billion), Argentina ($150 billion), and Mexico ($140 billion).

  The origin and composition of this debt differs from that accumulated in the eighties, when the last widespread financial crisis hit the region. In contrast to the past, the current debt was contracted by democratic governments and many of those governments applied the development strategies emphatically promoted by the industrialized countries, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Also, the composition of the debt has diversified. There has been a notable increase in the issuance of bonds and other papers–both by governments and private companies–that are now held by brokers, and investment and pension funds.

  All attempts at changing the mechanisms for managing foreign debt have failed. Today, wealthy countries, international organizations (the World Bank and the IMF), and private institutions all reject any modification. Words like “moratorium,” “reduction,” or “arbitration” provoke nervousness that is immediately reflected in the markets, regardless of the social situation in the country. The response of these institutions is cause for serious concern when we consider that they have accepted the financial and social collapse of a country as if it were an inevitable consequence of indebtedness. The last-minute bail-outs that happened in Mexico and Turkey did not happen when Ecuador and Argentina declared moratoria on IMF payments.

  Creditor nations, international banks, and the IMF have been forgetting that there is another path. It seems nobody remembers the foreign debt agreements of 1953 in London. This lack of memory is unpardonable since those resolutions are exactly what several southern countries are calling for today.

  The novel approach in London was designed to solve the debts of the recently created Federal Republic of Germany, including those pending since the First World War and others generated in the Second World War (especially as a result of the Marshall Plan). The United States actively promoted the negotiations, and sought to create a solid basis for the German economy in order to avoid political crisis and assure internal stability, permit economic development, and offer fair treatment for both debtors and creditors. The talks lasted a year, and finally on February 27, 1953 the parties signed the “Agreement on the German Foreign Debt” in London. The agreement stipulated a reduction of 50% of the debt.

  The attitude of Washington and its allies back then is nearly the complete opposite of today. Today they reject any debt reduction, they are not interested in a country’s internal stability, and they did little in the face of the political chaos that took place in Argentina and Ecuador.

  But London achieved something even more surprising: the agreement recognized that Germany should be able to develop economically and export its products, and indicated that the surplus in foreign trade should be applied to payment of the foreign debt without demanding that the country dip into monetary reserves to pay its debt.

  Today many citizens’ organizations have demanded mechanisms similar to the London Agreement. They have developed proposals that link the payment of foreign debt to improvements in the international prices of products exported by Latin American countries and to fair access to northern markets. Others postulate the creation of an international tribunal for the arbitration of sovereign debt. Still others demand that payment be conditioned on the state of the national economy.

  These demands are very similar to the London Agreement of 1953–a fact that many citizens’ organizations have forgotten throughout the past fifty years. It is time to remember.

  (Eduardo Gudynas is senior analyst at D3E (Development, Economy, Ecology and Equity Latin America), a research and advocacy center based in Montevideo, Uruguay.)

• 
  The
  
  massive expression of religious sentiment in Kerbala this week has political significance beyond the symbolism of the end of Saddam’s repression. Saddam repressed popular religious rituals because they provided the environment for a wider expression of political and social grievances. Now the Iraqi masses are taking to civic engagement and have begun to articulate political demands that reject occupation.
  

  
  The Real Significance of Kerbala
  
  

  Religious leaders are legitimising Iraqi resistance to occupation
  
  Kamil Mahdi
  
  Wednesday April 23, 2003
  
  The Guardian

  The massive expression of religious sentiment in Kerbala this week has political significance beyond the symbolism of the end of Saddam’s repression. Saddam repressed popular religious rituals because they provided the environment for a wider expression of political and social grievances. Now the Iraqi masses are taking to civic engagement and have begun to articulate political demands that reject occupation.

  Both Shia and Sunni religious leaders have emerged as voices for unity and as legitimising authorities for political action, not necessarily as substitutes for political leadership. Last Friday’s prayer at the Imam Abu-Hanifa shrine in Baghdad reflected the coming together of Shias and Sunnis in times of crisis, and the commemoration of Imam Hussein at Kerbala has also been conducted in a manner that emphasises freedom rather than ascendancy.

  Iraq is under a foreign military occupation that has shown little respect for international law, and the people of Iraq need institutions that can symbolise their unity and prevent the US from hijacking their national will. Iraqis have suffered decades of war, sanctions and dictatorship – the country now needs the support of friends and the extensive involvement of UN and humanitarian organisations. However, a distinction must be made between such involvement and commercial, political and cultural intervention through the illegal channel of occupation.

  The occupation forces came with an administration blueprint and detailed policies formulated by the US state department. Under the pretext of a search for banned weapons, foreign troops are continuing the destruction of Iraq’s civil administration and attempting to install a new apparatus answerable to them. Former Iraqi exiles have been financed and organised by the US government and are being set up in positions of authority. This is not liberation.

  For a decade now, Iraq has been disarmed both literally and proverbially. Its people have endured, under sanctions, astronomical rises in infant mortality, malnutrition and disease. Having instilled terror and fatalism through this latest one-sided military campaign, the occupation forces unleashed criminal elements in Iraqi society on to the fabric of the society itself, and against its institutions and culture. Troops have assisted the destruction of that which is indispensable for a stable civic life. Population, land, employment, business, the banking system, schools, hospitals, public utilities, public sector institutions, industrial plants, food and medicine warehouses, shops and even homes have been looted and destroyed. Under the pretext of security operations, the forces of occupation smashed into public buildings, leaving them unsecured. Occupation troops were able to control extensive oil facilities while claiming lack of capacity to protect civil facilities.

  British and US military commands in Iraq have tried to bypass the entire Iraqi state administrative infrastructure, and appear to be working to dismantle central state institutions in order to replace them with a weak framework and stronger ethnically and tribally based local administrations. The attacks on Iraq’s culture and institutions are perceived by many Iraqis as part of this effort to undermine the country’s national integrity and identity.

  The thrust of occupation policies and propaganda is to create conditions of dependency. But Iraqi professionals and community leaders remain confident in their ability to manage their basic utilities and civil institutions and to repair most of the damage already done. They do not need US and British engineers to operate their utilities, nor do they need the occupation to manage their economic and political affairs. Ministries and public establishments can be managed by committees of their own employees, while civil affairs at local levels can be run by communities, led by respected elders.

  Iraqis need humanitarian assistance from organisations which they themselves invite. Iraqis will also want to do business with outsiders on the basis of mutual benefit, but not with those who come to seek unfair imperial advantage.
  
  In order to rebuild their national institutions and conduct foreign affairs, Iraqis need help from the UN and from Arab and Islamic countries. Any security element must be multinational, short-lived and under UN command. Above all, a credible security force must exclude participation from countries that have supported or participated in this war.

  Iraq’s oil revenues must be placed under professional Iraqi management with UN supervision until a constitutional government is established. It is important that France, Russia and Germany do not compromise on this fundamental issue. The oil-for-food programme must remain under UN care until all foreign military forces leave.

  The Saddam regime is gone, and a new Iraq is in the making in which the popular will is likely to be stronger.

  JustPeace is produced by Christine Dann, Tim Hannah and Keith Locke, MP

  If you have feedback on the content of JustPeace, or news items, please
  
  
  christine [dot] dann
  
  [at]
  
  clear [dot] net [dot] nz
  
  >email Christine Dann
  
  .