Op-Ed Columnist at The New York Times says – Islam needs a Mandela and means three of them.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: August 21, 2010

I love that line: “We have to surprise them.” I was watching the movie on an airplane and scribbled that line down on my napkin because it summarizes what is missing today in so many places: leaders who surprise us by rising above their histories, their constituencies, their pollsters, their circumstances — and just do the right things for their countries.

I tried to recall the last time a leader of importance surprised me on the upside by doing something positive, courageous and against the popular will of his country or party. I can think of a few: Yitzhak Rabin in signing onto the Oslo peace process. Anwar Sadat in going to Jerusalem. And, of course, Mandela in the way he led South Africa.

But these are such exceptions. Look at Iraq today. Five months after its first truly open, broad-based election, in which all the major communities voted, the political elite there cannot rise above Shiite or Sunni identities and reach out to the other side so as to produce a national unity government that could carry Iraq into the future. True, democracy takes a long time to grow, especially in a soil bloodied by a murderous dictator for 30 years. Nevertheless, up to now, Iraq’s new leaders have surprised us only on the downside.

Will they ever surprise us the other way? Should we care now that we’re leaving? Yes, because the roots of 9/11 are an intra-Muslim fight, which America, as an ally of one faction, got pulled into. There are at least three different intra-Muslim wars raging today. One is between the Sunni far right and the Sunni far-far right in Saudi Arabia. This was the war between Osama bin Laden (the far-far right) and the Saudi ruling family (the far right). It is a war between those who think women shouldn’t drive and those who think they shouldn’t even leave the house. Bin Laden attacked us because we prop up his Saudi rivals — which we do to get their oil.

In Iraq, you have the pure Sunni- versus-Shiite struggle. And in Pakistan, you have the fundamentalist Sunnis versus everyone else: Shiites, Ahmadis and Sufis. You will notice that in each of these civil wars, barely a week goes by without one Muslim faction blowing up another faction’s mosque or gathering of innocents — like Tuesday’s bombing in Baghdad, at the opening of Ramadan, which killed 61 people.

In short: the key struggle with Islam is not inter-communal, and certainly not between Americans and Muslims. It is intra-communal and going on across the Muslim world. The reason the Iraq war was, is and will remain important is that it created the first chance for Arab Sunnis and Shiites to do something they have never done in modern history: surprise us and freely write their own social contract for how to live together and share power and resources. If they could do that, in the heart of the Arab world, and actually begin to ease the intra-communal struggle within Islam, it would be a huge example for others. It would mean that any Arab country could be a democracy and not have to be held together by an iron fist from above.

But it will be impossible without Iraqi Shiite and Sunni Mandelas ready to let the future bury the past. As one of Mandela’s guards, watching the new president engage with South African whites, asks in the movie, “How do you spend 30 years in a tiny cell and come out ready to forgive the people who put you there?” It takes a very special leader.

This is also why the issue of the mosque and community center near the site of 9/11 is a sideshow. The truly important question “is not can the different Muslim sects live with Americans in harmony, but can they live with each other in harmony,” said Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on interfaith relations and author of “Beyond America’s Grasp: a Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East.”

Indeed, the big problem is not those Muslims building mosques in America, it is those Muslims blowing up mosques in the Middle East. And the answer to them is not an interfaith dialogue in America. It is an intrafaith dialogue — so sorely missing — in the Muslim world. Our surge in Iraq will never bear fruit without a political surge by Arabs and Muslims to heal intracommunal divides. It would be great if President Obama surprised everyone and gave another speech in Cairo — or Baghdad — saying that.

We feel that if the data here is accurate, Arab business is rather looking for new talent in the new world. We believe that most young recruits to businesses in North Africa and the Middle East are returning young talent and that this positions well these business companies for the changing global atmosphere. It is rather that then looking to hire on the cheap. The business slow down has just helped refresh the human capital of MENA (The Middle East – North Africa Arab region).

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 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/595422-me…

MENA firms hire new graduates to cut costs – poll

by

Elsa Baxter,  Sunday, 22 August 2010.

GRADUATES: 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates post recession. (Getty Images)

Almost 40 percent of Middle East and North African (MENA) employees said their company was more interested in hiring new university graduates since the global recession, according to the latest poll by Bayt.com.

The survey, which consulted 13,197 respondents from across the region, found that 37.6 percent of people said their employers preferred to hire fresh graduates, while 26.4 percent said they were less inclined to do so. A further 19.2 percent of respondents said things were unchanged.

More than half (51.7 percent) of participants said the number one motivation behind the hiring was financial because new graduates command lower salaries and fewer benefits, while 12.7 percent said it was because they would have more passion for the job.

A further 10.4 percent it was because new graduates would have more creativity, 8.4 percent said it was due to their fresh analytical thinking, and 5.1 percent cited better communication skills. {our math says this is 37.6% or that one out of 2,9 respondents was honest about the motives. The others belong to the commonly held  idea that age makes people wiser while we rather think that today ag makes most people more obsolete}

“The results of our most recent poll show that in times of economic strife employers are perceived as more likely to hire fresh graduates mostly due to the fact that they accept a lower salary and require fewer benefits,” said Amer Zureikat, vice president of sales, Bayt.com.

State Dept. sponsors trip for imam connected to N.Y. mosque project

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Park51 Muslim community center and mosque proposed on a site near New York’s Ground Zero, leaves this week for a three-nation Middle East tour on behalf of the State Department, during which he is expected to speak about the controversy surrounding his project.

Rauf will leave New York and travel to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, a State Department official tells The Cable. The cost of the trip is $16,000.

The State Department has no knowledge or control of the specifics of what Rauf will talk about as he tours the region, but officials note that his agenda could not be more directly related to the backlash against his project, still slated to be built in Lower Manhattan.

“His program is about religious diversity and tolerance in America. Will he relate that to his personal situation? Probably,” another State Department official said.

The State Department has been shy about talking about Rauf and the trip, ostensibly to avoid wading into the controversy over the community center. But that didn’t stop officials from posting New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s impassioned defense of the project on the State Department-run Web site America.gov. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that because the site is directed at foreign audiences, State was not violating the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from spreading propaganda inside American borders.

Rauf’s trip is organized by the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs and will not include any fundraising. This is his third trip with the State Department; the first was in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration. Rauf also visited Egypt in January.

A push to assist Iraqis who aided U.S.

As the drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq accelerates, the thousands of Iraqi citizens who have worked with the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion face an even more uncertain future. Members of Congress are calling on the administration to devise a new plan to help them.

In 2008, a shocking article in the New York Post, written by U.S. Marine Owen West, described the harrowing experience of translators and aides to U.S. troops in Iraq as they tried to escape the threats on their lives and transition to a better life in America. It was an excruciatingly long process full of bureaucratic hurdles.

Those who have made it the United States — more than 35,000 Iraqi refugees have arrived since 2003 — face another set of near-insurmountable challenges. Eligible for one-time grants ranging from $900 to $1,800, most have trouble finding work and are still fighting with the State Department for permanent resident status.

Congress held hearings and eventually passed legislation in 2008 to expand services for Iraqis who had worked with the U.S. military. But now, as the U.S. military leaves Iraq, Congress members are calling on the administration to do more.

Twenty-two senators and representatives wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently to demand that the administration come up with a comprehensive plan to support the thousands of Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. military.

“The United States has a moral obligation to stand by those Iraqis who have risked their lives — and the lives of their families — to stand by us in Iraq for the past seven years,” the lawmakers wrote.

Senator contests pick for ambassador to Turkey

The GOP is holding up the nomination of Frank Ricciardone to be the next U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday explaining his objections to the nomination.

Brownback, who will retire from the Senate at the end of this year, has long been critical of Ricciardone, dating to the nominee’s time as ambassador to Egypt during the Bush administration and as one of the key officials chosen to strengthen Iraqi opposition groups in early 2003. Brownback states in his letter that Ricciardone “downplayed” the Bush administration’s pro-democracy efforts in Egypt and “did not favor” a strong effort to work with Iraqi opposition groups in the run-up to the invasion.

“From the latter days of the Bush administration to today, opposition groups from Africa to the Middle East to Asia have been questioning the U.S. commitment to democracy and human rights. Given these questions, I am not convinced that Ambassador Ricciardone is the right ambassador for Turkey at this time — despite his extensive diplomatic experience,” Brownback wrote.

Breaking News – Blackwater follows Haliburton to The United Arab Emirates – will Dick Cheney follow also eventually?

Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents released today.

Haliburton headquarters are in Dubai since 2007. The two companies were prominent in the US oil war mess in Iraq and Mr. Cheney was involved with them financially.

Excerpts from “At UN, Of Africa Days and Al Qaeda Evenings, Burundi and Bacardi Gold.”
By Matthew Russell Lee.

UNITED NATIONS, July 15 — With small countries in Africa dominating the Security Council’s July 15 schedule … one of the four countries already on the “Peace Building Commission” (PBC) agenda, Burundi, recently had a one party election marred by tossed grenades and now the threat of attack by Al Shabab.

Burundi has soldiers in Somalia {and this is the reason why it has become fair game to Al Shabab}. Inner City Press spoke this week with the UN’s envoy to Burundi Charles Petrie. He put a positive spin on the one party election, saying it was not as violent as it might have been.

Petrie said the opposition is weak, and the UN must play the counter-balance that civil society and opposition parties would in other countries. He should know: he was thrown out of Myanmar by the government, then served for a time in a humanitarian role on, but not in, Somalia. He was in the French military …. The Council should have heard from him but didn’t.

The same might be said of the UN’s new envoy to Somalia, Augustine Mahiga. He went into the Council’s quiet room on July 14, but was not heard from by the Council as a whole. He met with the Permanent Five, one by one. He stopped to speak to Inner City Press, about including Al Shabab on the Al Qaeda sanctions list under Council Resolution 1267 in the wake of the Kampala bombings {This again, because Uganda has military forces for peace Keeping in Somalia.}.

Later on July 14, at an ill-attended UK reception on climate change in the General Assembly lobby, Inner City Press asked UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant about 1267 and the Shabab. He pointed out that they are already on the Somalia sanctions list, and who knew who is or is not truly affiliated with Al Qaeda. An Ethiopian diplomat added, not surprisingly, they are “definitely” with Al Qaeda.

But the Council sticks to its schedule. Guinea Bissau was the topic for July 15. The coup leader now heads the military; the UN “took note” of it. A Presidential Statement is to be drafted in the coming days.

Still and all, the Permanent Representatives of France, Japan and Mexico strode into the Council just after 10 a.m..

{Liberia is now becoming the fifth small African Country on the PBC operating table.}
* * *
{And further at the UN} - In Wake of Uganda Bombing, UNSC Statement Does Not Assign Blame, Even After Al Shabab Takes Credit.

UNITED NATIONS, July 12, updated — A day after the Kampala double bombing which killed more than 60 people, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had yet to issue any kind of statement. In front of the Security Council on Monday morning, one non-permanent member’s spokesperson wondered under what agenda item the Council might issue a statement: Somalia?

Another spokesperson said moves were afoot for the issuance of a press statement, later in the day. Would it say who is responsible? After the bombing of trains in Madrid, the Council issued a statement blaming it on ETA. When Al Qaeda later took responsibility, the Council’s statement was never retracted.

Here, nearly all speakers including Uganda authorities are pointing the finger at Islamist Somali insurgents. They had vowed retaliation for the Ugandan and Burundian AMISOM peacekeepers’ shelling of a market in Mogadishu. Others pointed out the targeting of “Ethiopian Village,” given antagonism between irridentist Somalia and Ethiopia. Motive is certainly there– and, the media pointed out, opportunity.

As the draft text of the press statement was distributed to members, a Council diplomat told Inner City Press it did not assign blame, only the Council’s “standard terrorist attack language.” Might that change?

Update of 3:20 p.m. — Nigeria’s Ambassador, the Council’s president for July, read out a four paragraph statement. As Inner City Press predicted this morning, it did not assign blame. But in the interim, the spokesman for Al Shabab has taken credit for the bombings, saying they were months in the planning.

Inner City Press asked Nigeria’s Ambassador on camera why blame was not ascribed, and if this might not discourage countries from sending peacekeepers to Somalia. She declined the first, and to the second question said “there is a peace to keep in Somalia.”

Afterward, Inner City Press was told that Al Shabab’s confession came after the statement was circulated and concurrence obtained. They didn’t want to delay it. But wouldn’t it have been stronger if more specific? An Ethiopian diplomat spoke about Eritrea. If ten Taliban are coming off the 1267 Al Qaeda sanctions list, does that mean there’s room for Al-Shabab?

In Kampala, the Ethiopian Village?

Incoming UN envoy on Somalia, Tanzania’s former Ambassador Mahiga, spoke to Inner City Press at the UN in New York last week, including about the peacekeepers’ use of “long range artillery” and the civilian casualties caused. Will Mahiga take this so-called “collateral damage” more seriously than Ould Abdallah did?

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From the above we see clearly that when it come to the need to blame an Islamic insurgency, the UN is very slow at pointing a finger. There clearly must internal UN be reasons for that.

Now let us see what Fared Zakaria and his high-brow participants in his circle of policy reviewers think about the situation:

His program included Jeffrey Gettleman, the New York Times Bureau Chief in East Africa Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya) who saw the situation on location in Somalia, and Ken Menkhaus of Davison College in New Jersey, who served as UN Political Advisor in Somalia 1993-94.
 http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.z…

 http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcast…

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Chaos and lawlessness rule in Mogadishu, Somalia. And Al Shabab, a Somali affiliate of Al Qaeda, is exploiting that power vacuum and exporting terror.

Al Shabab claimed responsibility for the bombing of World Cup viewers in Uganda and is practicing an extreme form of Islamic justice.

What exactly is Al Shabab doing in Somalia and what can we expect next? Is there anything the U.S. or its allies can do to help the country that is called “the world’s worst failed state?”

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Somalia is a country of 6-8 million people and at the end of the cold war they were the most militarized country in the world. Now there are 1-1.5 million people living outside Somalia and the country was destroyed – not by bombings but by small caliber guns. There is no central authority in the country and it has become ideal terrain for an Al Qaeda base.

In 1992 the First President Bush had there 20,000 troops and left to avoid worst disaster leaving behind total vacuum.

The locals are incapable of establishing a functioning government. Foreign funds that go to an interim government are dissipated but nevertheless there is a will on the outside to view this government as a transition – the question transition to what?

The Al Shabab is widely unpopular but viewed as an alternative to useless government. This Al Shabab practices the most tuthless of Islam justice – like the cutting off of arms for suspected thieves.

In this second level of vacuum move in the foreigners – be these the Al Qaeda people from Pakistan who want to see if they can move here as a new home base, and some more benevolent home comers from among the Somali diaspora that actually are ready to provide their skills in building government at locality levels like cities. These are very welcome by the elders who are ready to back their efforts with the elder prestige.

This latter is the hope – but this is a bottom up government – and who will say that this will lead to a National government in its present borders? Would it not make sense to let them rule according to the ethnic divisions of the country and resulting in two or three smaller States that can then go their own ways? Jeffret Gettleman has seen this function on the ground in several locations where the situation is thus much better then in the country at large.

The importance of this goes well beyond Somalia and the case that came to mind in this CNN/GPS program was Iraq.

With the Iraqi elections held 133 days ago and a Parliament that todate has met only for the grandiose time of 18 minutes, and with the upcoming holidays, the evidence that nothing else can be expected before September and the US troops starting by then to leave the country, is Iraq going to be next Somalia?

So – the conclusion is that government can be built only bottom up if the idea is to reach up to democracy – and then why insist on having a non-unified country when the only evidence at hand is that the people actually hate each other and belong to various groups with the only semblance of unity is the unity of cleptocrats?

This disaster of Somalia may turn out to speak not only of Africa, but also of Iraq and why not of Afghanistan?

These problem go well beyond the limited scope we started out with.

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 http://ipsterraviva.net/UN/currentNew.as…

Somalia Centre Stage Ahead of AU Summit.
Joshua Kyalimpa -   ipsterraviva.netKAMPALA, Jul 18 (IPS) – The African Union summit opens in Kampala on July 19 amid heightened security following twin bomb attacks a week earlier. The official theme of child and maternal mortality will likely be overshadowed by discussion of the AU’s mission in Somalia.

The blasts, which killed at least 74 people and wounded 82 others watching the World Cup finals on big screens at the Ethiopian Village Restaurant in Kampala’s Kabalagala neighbourhood, and at the Kyaddondo rugby grounds. The attacks came just two days after a spokesperson for Somalia’s al-Shabaab group, which is fighting against the weak Transitional Federal Government (TFG) for control of the country, said Uganda would be targeted for its role in the conflict.

Questioning military solutions Some analysts argue that a troop surge will achieve little, pointing to the difficulties faced by Ethiopia. Ethiopian soldiers entered Somalia in December 2006 to push back the Union of Islamic Courts, an Islamist group with ambitions to establish sharia law in Somalia, from which al-Shabaab subsequently emerged. But while the UIC’s bid for control was halted, this larger force was unable to fully capture the capital or impose itself in the countryside; the Ethiopians pulled out and were replaced by the Ugandan-dominated AMISOM. Makerere University political scientist Yassin Olum believes it is time for Uganda to review its position in Somalia, with a view to withdrawing. “We have to ask ourselves why other African countries are not sending troops to Somalia. Maybe they have realised it’s a hot potato or they view it as an internal matter,” says Olum.

Targeting the AU mission in Somalia

Uganda contributes the majority of the 5,000 troops in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has helped the TFG maintain a tenuous hold over parts of the capital, Mogadishu, but little more.

“We are sending a message to every country who is willing to send troops to Somalia that they will face attacks on their territory,” said al-Shabaab spokesman Ali Mohamoud Rage following the attacks. He added that Burundi, the second-largest troop contributor to AMISOM after Uganda, “will face similar attacks if they don’t withdraw.”

Bahoku Barigye, spokesperson for AMISOM, told IPS that the mission’s mandate should be expanded from peace-keeping – its terms of reference originate in a U.N. resolution authorising a “training and protection” mission – to one of peace enforcement, for which more soldiers would be needed.

“We have troops guarding the airport, the presidential palace, the port and other key installations this leaves us with few men to defend the civilians,” says Barigye.

Security personnel in Uganda have so far made 20 arrests; two men have also been detained in neighbouring Kenya in connection with the bombings.

Despite previous commitments by members of the African Union to contribute to a force of 20,000 peacekeepers, there are only about 5,000 troops in the Somali capital in support of the weak transitional federal government. Over 3,000 of these are from Uganda, the rest are from Burundi.

Uganda undeterred

At a Jul. 14 meeting called after the Kampala bombings, the Inter Government Authority on Development, a regional bloc of countries in the Horn of Africa, agreed to send an additional 2,000 soldiers.

Uganda has indicated it will send in more of its own troops if other countries are not willing.

Addressing a news conference at his private home in Ntugamo, western Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni said, “It was a very big mistake on their side; we shall

Development goals overshadowed by conflict? African civil society has voiced concerns that the AU summit to be held in Kampala from Jul. 17-19 could be dominated by the Somalia question. The official theme of the summit is “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa,” but consideration of this development goal seems likely to suffer the same fate as previous themes on water and sanitation and promotion of agriculture: a formal declaration will be made, but the summit will be dominated by al-Shabaab’s bombing of Uganda, the leading contributor of troops to the AU’s mission in Somalia. Civil society organisations organised a forum in Kampala ahead of the summit to enable civil society, ordinary citizens and key stake holders deliberate on the key issues and demand action, but now doubt they will get a platform to present their case to African leaders.

l deal with the authors of this crime.” He is also reported to have assured the U.S., which takes an active interest in Somali Islamist activity, that Uganda would not try to disentangle itself from the conflict in Somalia.

The U.S. ambassador to Uganda, Jerry Lanier, said, “We believe the Uganda mission is more important than ever now.”

The ambassador said the U.S. planned to increase assistance to Uganda and AMISOM.

Political scientist Yassin Olum says the Ugandan president needed more time to reflect on the matter before making statements.

“What this means is that we are no longer neutral in the conflict and we are fighting on the side of the Transitional Federal Government which is dangerous. This is not conventional warfare where you need more troops to defeat the enemy.”

Fred Bwire, a Kampala city resident, voices the attitude of many ordinary Ugandans towards the Somali mission. “What are we doing there? Our people are being killed for nothing. Why aren’t Kenyans – who are neighbors with Somalia – bothered?”

Hussein Kyanjo, an opposition member of parliament, believes the main beneficiary of Uganda’s continued involvement in Somalia is President Museveni himself. “He knows that the United States of America opposes the al-Shabaab and so he fights U.S. enemies to blind them to his dictatorial tendencies.”

Amama Mbabazi, Uganda’s minister for security, responds that Kyanjo forgets that Uganda was suffered terrorist attacks long before it sent troops to Somalia.

“The Allied Democratic Forces – another rebel outfit with links to Al-Qaeda – killed many people in the past and my friend Kyanjo seems to have forgotten this.”

In their struggle against the government, the Islamist ADF rebels attacked police posts, schools and trade centres in the west of the country beginning in 1996; in 1998, it carried out several bombings in Kampala, killing five and wounding six others. Military action by the Ugandan army largely destroyed the group the following year.

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July 21, 2010 as per official UN NEWS we are not convinced the UN has the faintest idea of what to do about Somalia beyond calling for wasting some more money on it:

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE
21 July, 2010 =========================================================================

UN SOUNDS THE ALARM AS DIRE HUMANITARIAN SITUATION CONTINUES TO GRIP SOMALIA .

As Somalia remains in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, it is vital to ensure adequate funding to assist the 3.2 million people – or more than 40 per cent of the population – who rely on international aid, a senior United Nations aid official stressed today.

UN agencies and their partners have so far received only 56 per cent of the $600 million needed to fund critical areas such as health, water and sanitation, nutrition and livelihood support in Somalia, which is recovering from drought and years of chaos and is also in the throes of ongoing violence.

“My major concern at this time of the year is that there is a renewed emphasis on ensuring that we do address the funding gaps in Somalia to help us to sustain the achievements that can continue to be made in one of the world’s most difficult and acute humanitarian crises,” said Mark Bowden, the UN Humanitarian and Resident Coordinator for Somalia.

He told a news conference in New York that the situation in the Horn of Africa nation is characterized by severe child malnutrition, loss of livestock and livelihoods, as well as ongoing displacement owing to continued clashes between Government forces and Islamist militant groups.

The conflict has led to Somalia being one of the countries with the highest number of uprooted people in the world – an estimated 1.4 million displaced within the country and almost 595,000 living as refugees in neighbouring countries.

“Conflict is the driving cause behind displacement and most of it comes from Mogadishu,” he said, noting that 20,000 people were displaced in the capital in June, and an estimated 200,000 people have been displaced from the city this year.

In addition, fighting in Mogadishu since March this year has led to more than 3,000 conflict-related casualties.

“What I genuinely hope is that we try to find some way of reducing the impact of this conflict on the civilian population and all parties need to find more peaceful means of settling their disputes,” he said, adding that where that is not possible, to at least avoid the considerable collateral damage on civilians.

Despite the ongoing crisis, Mr. Bowden noted that the situation in Somalia “isn’t all bad news,” although it is one of the most complicated humanitarian situations the UN is facing.

Some major achievements include keeping the country free of polio amid a resurgence of the disease in a number of other African countries. This is thanks to the provision of clean water to 1.3 million people, as well as vaccination campaigns that were carried out, even in volatile areas.

“We are able to make progress in terms of managing humanitarian operations in extremely difficult circumstances, which include control of large parts of the country by rebel groups and active conflict in other parts,” he noted.

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And Inner City Press from the UN continues its bleak reporting from the UN that really shows again and again that the UN will not lead the Somalis out of their misery.

See - http://www.innercitypress.com/un1soa0721…

Killing of Civilians by UN Supported Troops in Somalia Admitted But Not Acted On.

By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 21 — In the wake of the World Cup finals bombing in Uganda, there has been even less discussion of the civilians being killed in Mogadishu by the peacekeeping mission which the UN is supporting. But a memo leaked from within that AMISOM mission notes continued firing into civilian neighborhoods.
Inner City Press asked UN Humanitarian coordinator Mark Bowden whether there is a special responsibility on the UN to ensure that the troops to which it provides logistical support through its UNSOA office are not killing civilians. “Yes there is,” Bowden said, adding that he’s “had discussions” with Ambassador Diarra of the African Union about “reducing civilian casualties.” ………..  it continues

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On Child Soldiers Supported by UN in Somalia, UNSC Will Respond After 3 Years.

By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 16, updated — Days after the UN-supported Somali Transitional Federal Government’s use of child soldiers was widely exposed, the UN Security Council’s lack of seriousness on the issue was on display on Wednesday. Mexican foreign minister Patricia Espinosa presided over a day-long series of speeches about children and armed conflict. At noon, Inner City Press asked her what she and the Council would do about their support of the TFG, which uses children as young as nine and 12 to wield AK-47s in Mogadishu.

This has not been raised to the Security Council, Secretary Espinosa replied, not even to the Working Group. …… more

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The shifting sands of the Middle East

By Ted Belman

Shimon Peres, President of Israel, has, for the last thirty years, called for a New Middle East.  In fact he wrote a book by that title in 1993, the year of the Oslo Accords. He believed that economic cooperation in the ME was the starting point for cementing ties and reconciling peoples.  The Oslo Accords, of which he was the main architect and instigator, was intended to lead in that direction.  It failed miserably.

In those days the main players on the Muslim side, were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt and Syria, all Sunni. And, of course, we cannot leave out Arafat, also a Sunni.

All this began to change with the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003. Talk about unintended consequences. The defeat of Iraq, created a power vacuum which Shiite Iran was salivating to fill. Although Iraq under Hussein was in the Sunni camp, its population was 60% Shiite. Luckily, the Iraqi Shiites prefer independence from Iran perhaps due in part to the fact they are Arab and not Farsi; at least for now but that could change.

Iran had aspirations of grandeur and imperialist ambitions.  She began to plot a course which would lead to her dominance of the Muslim world and in the Middle East. No small task, since 80% of Muslims are Sunni and Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites in Islam, are located in Saudi Arabia.

This course had two prongs; the development of its own nuclear bomb and the confrontation with Israel, the Little Satan and the US the Big Satan on behalf of all Muslims everywhere.

Iran also had a natural advantage, her location. Egypt, with its population of 55 million is poor and on the periphery. It also made peace with Israel thereby taking her out of the race for now.  Iran borders on Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Caspian Sea.  The US needs Iran to be cooperative in each of these theaters.

Iran’s first success was to win over Syria the most rejectionist Sunni state. This was easier than you might expect as Syria is ruled the Alawites, a Shiite sect. Their alliance is constantly growing and seems to have no bounds.  This is so notwithstanding that the US has attempted to wean Syria away from Iran. Syria is important because it borders on Jordan, Lebanon and Israel, with whom she has a casus belli for the return of the Golan.

Syria also has imperialist ambitions. She has visions of recovering all lands which were part of the Ottoman province of Syria.  Britain and France entered into the Sykes-Picot Agreement during WWI in which they agreed that Britain would control Mesopotamia (Iraq) and southern Syria, (Jordan and Israel) and France would control the rest of Ottoman Syria (Syria, Lebanon and Hatay province of Turkey). The League of Nations formalized this agreement in 1923 when it created the British Mandate and the French Mandate.

In pursuance of these ambitions, in 1970, Syria invaded Jordan only to be repulsed by Israel.  During the recent decades, Syria extended its influence over Lebanon.  This was made easier with the growth of Hezbollah which was predominantly Shiite. It was natural for Syria and Iran to come together on this.  Together they have armed Hezbollah to the teeth in order to have a proxy for the war against Israel. In truth there is no casus belli  between Hezbollah and Israel.

Iran took Hamas under its wing after Hamas took over Gaza from the Sunni backed Palestinian Authority in 2007.  It was natural for this to happen since they both are dedicated to destroying Israel.

This is a development which has put Egypt in the cross hairs. Hamas is an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood which was founded in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood has been a thorn in Egypt’s backside ever since. It believes that Muslim society is no longer Islamic and must be transformed by an Islamic vanguard through violent revolution. Thus, the Brotherhood and Iran are natural allies.

There is great concern that when Mubarak dies, Egypt will be vulnerable to a Brotherhood takeover. Hamas, with the backing of Iran, could greatly assist in this takeover.

Turkey was the last to join the Iranian axis. With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established the modern state of Turkey. He ruled as President until his death in 1938.  During this time he sought to transform Turkey into a modern and secular nation-state. The Turkish army maintained this orientation until the election of islamist Recep Tayyip Erdogan as Prime Minister in 2003.  This victory was made possible by the changing demographics of the country. The higher birth rates of the rural class in Turkey (and in Hezbollah in Lebanon) made possible the shift in power.

The US championed the admission of Turkey to NATO and to the EU. Turkey maintained a friendship with Israel to gain favor with the US and with the EU. She succeeded in being admitted to NATO but not to the EU. The EU was not in the mood to admit a Muslim state and set all kinds of preconditions. Erdogan decided to chart his own course rather than the one dictated by the EU. Turkey gave up on admission and turned increasing islamist and anti-Israel and, I might add, anti-American.

——————–

In Turkey’s MidEast Gambit, Sam Segev notes,

“Since his Justice and Development party (AKP) came to power in 2002, Erdogan has cautiously but consistently moved to reclaim Turkey’s “grandeur” of the Ottoman Empire era.

“This necessitated a slow but cautious distancing from Israel and the U.S. In 2003, it refused an American request to allow American troops to enter Iraq through Turkish territory. Then a Turkish diplomat was elected secretary general of the 53-member Organization of Islamic Countries and relations with Israel cooled.

“Erdogan ramped up his Islamic-oriented policy after his re-election in 2007. He reconciled with Syria, welcomed Hamas leaders in Ankara, hosted Sudanese President Omar Hassan el-Bashir, who is accused of war crimes, and began to undermine Egyptian and Saudi roles in the Sunni moderate Arab world. “

“ Turkey is the only NATO member to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and its alignment with Brazil to extricate Iran from stronger sanctions agreed upon by the five permanent members of the Security Council is a direct challenge to American influence in the region.

“Turkey’s attempt to break the blockade on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip was a direct affront not only to Israel, but also to Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.”

——————

And yet President Obama still believes “Turkey can have a positive voice in this whole process.”

To make matters worse, the opinion makers in the US and the EU have come out in favor of lifting the blockade which in effect is in support of Hamas, a terrorist organization. And Obama is on their side.

The strengthening of Hamas effectively strengthens Iran, strangles the peace process and scares the bejeesus out of Egypt and Jordan.

As Obama stands astride the shifting sands what possible vision can he have?

You would think that as the U.S. is losing control of the Middle East and plans to bring most of the boys home before the end of next year, she would need a strong Israel all the more.
Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel

Turkey signs deal with Arab neighbors to create free trade zone

Meanwhile, EU announces plan to grant duty-free access for Palestinian products.  June 10, 2010

from: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/589356-ir…

Iran oil rig fire may blaze for one month.

by Reuters. on Sunday, 30 May 2010

A fire blazing at an Iranian oil rig may take up to one month to extinguish, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Sunday.

Three oil workers were killed and at least 10 injured when the fire broke out at well number 24 at the Naft Shahr oil field early on Saturday.

“Extinguishing the fire will take from two weeks to a month,” Shahpour Etesami, an official at the Western Oil and Gas Co told Mehr.

Oil officials blamed the fire on a structural fault inside the rig.

Naft Shahr is the only active oil field in Kermanshah province, bordering Iraq, with estimated oil reserves of 692 million barrels.

The fire poses no risk to Iran’s oil exports. (Reuters)

Iran and Iraq in future oil and gas drilling talks.
by Reuters on Monday, 26 April 2010
 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/586851-ir…

OIL TALKS: The neighbors, which fought a fierce war in the 1980s, are in negotiations over future oil and gas drilling plans.

Officials from Iran and Iraq have begun talks over possible future oil and gas drilling in Iraq, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.

“We are currently involved in negotiations with Iraqi officials in regard to beginning oil drilling operation in Iraq and we are trying to set up an office in Iraq,” IRNA quoted Heidar Bahmani, an official of the state-owned National Iranian Drilling Company (NIOC), as saying in a report late on Sunday.

“We are awaiting the Iraqi government’s positive response,” he added.

Bahmani said Iran was able to compete with established foreign entities from the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China in Iraq’s oil and gas sector.

The dispute, which Tehran called a “misunderstanding”, ended in January when troops withdrew after talks between the two countries’ foreign ministers.

Iran and Iraq, which share a border of almost 1,500 km (900 miles) fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.

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Iraq to be top oil producer in 6-7 years – minister.
by Ed Attwood on Sunday, 31 January 2010
 http://www.arabianbusiness.com/580353-ir…

Iraq will become the world’s largest oil-producing nation in “six or seven years”, according to oil minister Hussain Al Shahristani.

The official told Reuters that Baghdad is seeking to raise capacity to 12 million barrels per day (bpd) in that timeframe, which he believes will help the country negotiate its future oil quotas with OPEC.

“We can’t find a reason to prevent Iraqi production becoming higher than any other OPEC state or even states outside OPEC,” said Al Shahristani.

“We expect that to happen in the next six to seven years with co-ordination and agreement with other OPEC producers,” he said.

Iraq is currently exempt from OPEC quotas, although the country is raising its exports significantly, which the organisation believes could depress the oil price.

“Iraq has been deprived of having a fair export level over the last years, during which we were not able to produce or export oil while other states got benefit from this and were able to export at higher levels,” Al Shahristani said.

“Opec should put into consideration Iraq’s need for oil revenues to rebuild its economy and country. Iraq has a definite need for these revenues.”

Local news agency Aswat Al Iraq said that oil revenues were up to $4.5bn in December.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, supermajor BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, indicated that it was not impossible that Iraq could lift its production to 10 million bpd in a decade’s time.

However, Hayward told The Times newspaper that the realities of the challenges of execution on the ground and the need to build capability on the ground mean things will happen “a little slower than all of us are perhaps planning for today”.

Seven years since the US toppled Sadam Hussein and also the secular Sunni Baath  party from power, and unleashed centripetal forces, it seems that the return of Iyad Allawi with potential Kurdish and moderate Shiia allies, with less emphasis on religious differences, could allow from some steps backwards that make strangely for progress to a more open society.

Iraqi parliamentary elections this month (March 7, 2010) were credible and no evidence has been found of any systematic or widespread fraud during the vote count, the top United Nations official in the country said today after authorities announced the final election results.  Ad Melkert, from the Netherlands and formerly number 2 at UNDP, now the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Iraq, and the head of the UN political mission (known as UNAMI) to the country, said in a statement that Iraqis deserved credit for “an historic achievement.”

The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) of Iraq unveiled the results tonight (March 26th local time) for the national polls  in which more than 6,000 candidates competed for 325 seats in the Council of Representatives. Over 12 million people cast their votes.

Media reports indicate that Iraqiya, the party headed by Iyad Allawi, a former prime minister, holds a two member lead over the party of Nuri al-Maliki, the current premier, in the number of parliamentary seats won – if it holds it will be 91 to 89 for “The State of Law Alliance” of current prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Mr. Melkert called on all candidates to accept the results of the polls and “to assume responsibility to lead Iraq to the next stage of democracy, stability and prosperity for all. Whether winning or losing, participation in the elections has been a collective victory.”  “No election in the world is perfect. There were imperfections and at some places serious issues. We condemn acts of intimidation that have occurred in the course of the process” he said.

In his statement Mr. Melkert said UN officials were confident that the counting process contained the necessary checks and balances, and “there is now a solid basis for ratification by the Supreme Court” of the results.

“All results of almost 50,000 voting stations have been checked at least eight times. On the basis of specific complaints submitted by different entities, specific audits have been held on places with indications of irregularities. Ballot boxes that could not stand the test have not been included in the count. We have not found evidence of systematic failure or fraud of widespread nature.”
Mr. Melkert added that the conclusion was therefore that the overall election process, including the campaigning period, polling day and the count “has met reasonable demands and standards, with errors and doubts remaining within normal margins.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, declared that he would not recognize the results. He said he would challenge them in court.
“Some of these results are unacceptable and unreasonable,” he said.

Allawi, a secular Shiite who stepped down as prime minister five years ago, is returning to the center of Iraqi politics as he received millions of votes from Sunni Arabs that did not vote in the 2005 elections, a minority that has felt marginalized since Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003.

Allawi and his political coalition won Sunni support in part because he is considered less sectarian than other Shiite leaders and was not in office during the vicious sectarian bloodletting that marked the first two years of Maliki’s tenure.

On Friday, today, in Sunni and mixed Shiite-Sunni areas across the capital, where Allawi was most popular, residents shot bullets into the air in celebration.

Iraqis have witnessed five changes of government in the 7 years since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

An estimated 12 million Iraqis voted for their next parliament, which will assume control as the U.S. military draws down significantly over the summer, and ultimately leaves Iraq at the end of 2011.

The process has been clouded by cries of fraud from Maliki and his allies, who invoked the prime minister’s role as “commander in chief of the armed forces” in demanding a manual recount on Sunday. Maliki warned that if elections are deemed illegitimate, the country could descend into chaos.

U.N. and U.S. officials have said that there are no signs of widespread fraud.

Analysts and officials worry that Maliki and his allies are implicitly calling for supporters in the south and the capital to rise up if a recount is not conducted. U.S. officials hope for a smooth transfer of power.

“When one looks at the challenges that this country has gone through you can take some heart from the fact that people seem to manage to survive these challenges, to get through them,” the United States’ ambassador to Iraq, Christopher R. Hill, said in an interview this week. “We try to deal with things in a calm way with the understanding that this is monumental and emotions are high.”

Allawi, who has been tarnished in the past by his alliances with groups that Shiites consider sympathizers of Hussein’s Baath Party, The Washington Post thinks, he might now find it hard to get together with Kurdish and Shiite groups. Nevertheless, he will need their support in order to garner the votes needed to endorse a future government with himself as prime minister.

The two other large blocks of seats in parliament are The Iraqi National Alliance which is an Iranian backed Shiia religious party that includes pro-Iranian cleric Moktada al Sadr that got 70 seats,  and the Kurdistan Alliance that includes both main Kurdish parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which together got 43 sets, but lost 8 seats to a third Kurdish movement called Goran or Change. So, besides of the four main blocks, there are further 32 deputes that are outside those blocks, like the 8 members from Kurdistan.

Frictions between Allawi and the Kurdish block will arise because of the contested Kirkuk region, but even if this gets smoothed, there will not be enough votes in Parliament, as it seems hard to believe that Allawi could get all of the 32 outsiders, so he must chip away from one of the two major Shiia blocks. After all – Iraq has a majority of Shiia and this will show through any democratic process. The UN enthused reception of the results may be factually true, but in practice, from a good election to a stable government – the road is still very long.

The questions that pop up from the American reporting might perhaps have to do with the lack of understanding in Washington of  Iraq in the first place. If Saddam’s megalomenia was the enemy that started it all, then having dismantled his bureaucracy and army, removed all trappings of a State, lead Iraq into the resultant mess. Then insisting Iraq does not fall apart into its three ingredients allowed for the Shiia majority takeover, more instability, and eventually the present correction so that a more balanced State can be born from the ashes, in time for the US to declare mission accomplished, and leave the Iraqis in a state good enough to let them find their own destiny within their own borders.Will the Iraqis be now magnanimous enough to the US and play along?

Will after all of this, Iraq become the first democratic, secular, modern Arab State of the Middle East? Ahead of the potential Palestinian State near the west bank of the river Jordan? Or will Iraq fall back to bickering among its three major ingredients and eventually give birth to Sunni – Kurdish warfare over Kirkuk and an alliance of the two basically more Arab ethnic blocks as in the presently competing two leading blocks?

At the UN meeting of women commemorating Beijing+15, we picked up a TerraViva IPS handout that made us aware that THE WOMEN OF IRAQ MISS SADDAM. The fscts are that under secular Dictator Saddam Hussein the women had it better then under the present touted democracy.

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Women Miss Saddam.
Abdu Rahman and Dahr Jamail, March 13, 2010
 http://original.antiwar.com/jamail/2010/…

BAGHDAD – Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year’s maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.

Now they have Article 2 of the Constitution: “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation.” Sub-head A says “No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Under this Article the interpretation of women’s rights is left to religious leaders – and many of them are under Iranian influence.

“The U.S. occupation has decided to let go of women’s rights,” Yanar Mohammed, who campaigns for women’s rights in Iraq, says. “Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law.”

With the new law has come the new lawlessness. Nora Hamaid, 30, a graduate from Baghdad University, has now given up the career she dreamt of. “I completed my studies before the invaders arrived because there was good security and I could freely go to university,” Hamaid tells IPS. Now she says she cannot even move around freely, and worries for her children every day. “I mean every day, from when they depart to when they return from school, for fear of abductions.”

There is 25-percent representation for women in parliament, but Sabria says “these women from party lists stand up to defend their party in the parliament, not for women’s rights.” For women in Iraq, the invasion is not over.

The situation for Iraq’s women reflects the overall situation: everyone is affected by lack of security and lack of infrastructure.

“The status of women here is linked to the general situation,” Maha Sabria, professor of political science at Al-Nahrain University in Baghdad tells IPS. “The violation of women’s rights was part of the violation of the rights of all Iraqis.” But, she said, “women bear a double burden under occupation because we have lost a lot of freedom because of it.

“More men are now under the weight of detention, so now women bear the entire burden of the family and are obliged to provide full support to the families and children. At the same time women do not have freedom of movement because of the deteriorated security conditions and because of abductions of women and children by criminal gangs.”

Women, she says, are also now under pressure to marry young in family hope that a husband will bring security.

Sabria tells IPS that the abduction of women “did not exist prior to the occupation. We find that women lost their right to learn and their right to a free and normal life, so Iraqi women are struggling with oppression and denial of all their rights, more than ever before.”

Yanar Mohammed believes the constitution neither protects women nor ensures their basic rights. She blames the United States for abdicating its responsibility to help develop a pluralistic democracy in Iraq.

“The real ruler in Iraq now is the rule of old traditions and tribal, backward laws,” Sabria says. “The biggest problem is that more women in Iraq are unaware of their rights because of the backwardness and ignorance prevailing in Iraqi society today.”

Many women have fled Iraq because their husband was arbitrarily arrested by occupation forces or government security personnel, says Sabria.

More than four million Iraqis were estimated to have been displaced through the occupation, including approximately 2.8 million internally. The rest live as refugees mainly in neighboring countries, according to a report by Elizabeth Ferris, co-director of the Brookings Institution-University of Bern Project on Internal Displacement.

The report, titled, “Going Home? Prospects and Pitfalls For Large-Scale Return Of Iraqis,” says most displaced Iraqi women are reluctant to return home because of continuing uncertainties.

The Washington-based Refugees International (RI) says in a report “Iraqi Refugees: Women’s Rights and Security Critical to Returns” that “Iraqi women will resist returning home, even if conditions improve in Iraq, if there is no focus on securing their rights as women and assuring their personal security and their families’ well-being.”

The RI report covered internally displaced women in Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region and female refugees in Syria. “Not one woman interviewed by RI indicated her intention to return,” the report says.

“This tent is more comfortable than a palace in Baghdad; my family is safe here,” a displaced woman in northern Iraq told RI.

The situation continues to be challenging for women within Iraq.

“I am an employee, and everyday go to my work place, and the biggest challenge for me and all the suffering Iraqis is the roads are closed and you feel you are a person without rights, without respect,” a 35-year-old government employee, who asked to be referred to as Iman, told IPS.

“To what extent has this improved my security?” she asked. “We have better salaries now, but how can women live with no security? How can we enjoy our rights if there is no safe place to go, for rest and recreation and living?”

——————————
(*Abdu, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who reports extensively on the region) (Inter Press Service)

This posting is about four events on New York snowy day – Thursday February 25, 2010 and one previous event.

Yesterday, Thursday, started for me by walking in between the snow flakes along First Avenue, to a 10-12 am book launch and discussion called for by the UN University in the new -so-called northern temporary UN Headquarters building.

The topic was: “FAULT LINES OF INTERNATIONAL LEGITIMACY” which is also the title of a new book released by Cambridge University Press, New York www.caambridge.org, and edited by Hilary Charlesworth and Jean Coicaud.

Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud is the Director of the UNU office at the UN Headquarters in New York City. He was also one of the three people of the panel, and was responsible for at least one quarter of the 400 page book. The other two members of the panel were also participants in the book itself – responsible each for a chapter in the book. They were:

Ian Johnstone, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, who prior to joining Fletcher, served as a legal and political officer at the United Nations at the time of UNSG Kofi Annan, including five years in the Office of the Secretary-General, one in the Department of Peace-keeping Operations, and one in the Office of Legal Affairs. He wrote the chapter – “Legal Deliberation and Argumentation in International Decision Making.” (30 p)

Vasuki Nessiah, Professor in International Relations and Gender Studies at Brown University. Before that she was Senior Associate and Head of Gender Program at the International Center for Transition Justice and with SIPA at Columbia University. She wrote the chapter – “From Berlin to Bonn to Baghdad: A Space for Infinitive Justice.” (30 p)

The introductory remarks by Dr. Coicaud made it clear that the topic is about the relation between power and principles. Since the establishment of the League of Nations and later the UN we started to outline what is International Law and what it should do. Further – the basic question is international security and at the UN this is embodied in the Security Council.

When the mike was passed to Prof. Johnstone it became clear that from a legal thinking point of view – a main stage in order to have justice is the stage of presenting arguments by both sides. This is the way in a deliberative democracy and what most lawyers would say that neither Iraq, nor Kosovo, evolved at the UNSC in such a way that the outside intervention was a legal act. But he also said that the theory of deliberative democracy says that voting alone cannot be the decision maker. The UN has to operate by consensus, but the Security Council takes up voting when there is no consensus – but then not all votes are equal. Also, the participants in a democratic deliberative debate are supposed to have similar backgrounds and share values, history … but at the UN they do not even share a language. We have a four teared structure – the Permanent equal 5 united by their individual veto, then the added temporary 10, then the broader UN membership with their interests, eventually the even larger real broader level of the interested public opinion. The public opinion level creates that “Interpretive Community” that is supposed to be neither objective nor subjective but intersubjective including lawyers and experts. But then experts are just as good as the interests they pursue. Eventually a legal case is decided by precedents.

On Iraq, President Bush went to the UN to launch a very intensive deliberative exercise. The fact that the US shifted interpretation to terrorism shows that the interpretive community mattered.

To the matter of our posting here, I would like to emphasize that wherever we discussed the issues in the Q & A period of the UNU meeting we had to come back to Iraq. The demonstration of most of what the issues meant can be found in this case.

I for one raised the question of the legitimacy of the UN itself according to – if it adheres to its constitution – The UN Charter?

There it says clearly WE THE PEOPLES – NOT WE THE GOVERNMENTS ELECTED OR UNELECTED. Here we have thus a big shadow overhanging this UN community. I also mentioned that to redress this somewhat the UN under UNSG Kofi Annan established THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT but this is not adhered to. The problem that when Iraq invaded Kuwait this was a clear UN transgression against a neighboring government, but when Iraq gassed and killed its own people that was seen as OK it is an internal problem.

Prof. Johnstone said – yes, established in 1945 that was the language but clearly it is now governments and more and more investigations into what they do internally – but in the end the veto-power has it. Chapter 7 of the Charter can be interpreted that what a government does to its own people can disturb international peace. A comment from the floor came back to the issue saying that the Responsibility to Protect is at a very low bar level but the bar is set much higher for action.

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My second event was 12:30 – 1:30 pm at the New York University Wagner School in the old Puck Building (295 Lafayette Street).

Part of the  Conflict Security and Development Series – Issues, Actors, and Approaches – co-hosted by NYU’s Center for Global Affairs, NYU’s Masters in Global Public Health Program, and the Office of International Programs at NYU Wagner.

The topic was: “PEACEBUILDING IN IRAQ – WHAT ROLES CAN UNIVERSITIES PLAY?“

Thomas Hill, Associate Research Scholar, Center for International Conflict Resolution, Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).was the speaker.

The Announcement said: Among the most well-respected and stable institutions in Iraq, universities allow representatives of different communities to interact and peacefully contest the country’s future. The recent establishment of a master’s program in peace and conflict studies at one Iraqi public university, and the development of a center dedicated to peace and security studies at a private university suggest a growing acceptance of responsibility for a role in peacebuilding by Iraq’s academics. Drawing on experiences teaching in Iraq, this discussion focuses on both the possibilities for, and the limitation of, university-led peacebuilding efforts in Iraq and elsewhere.

This was terrific and honestly put everything else I will be covering in this posting to clear shame.

Dr. Hill was with the University of Dahuk on the Turkish border of Kurdistan. He pointed out that when talking peacebuilding in Iraq, today the only the university is the area where all Iraqis can come – irrelevant of the religion they have or do not have.

In other parts the neighborhood is mosque or church dominated – the university is free territory – perhaps even secular for those that wish it this way. He told us that when a new foreign teacher at the university was kidnapped for ransom by Muslims, Muslim students participated in raising the money to free him. That was something new in Iraq – and he was there last time November 2009.

The Iraqi head of that program told him that all what he wants is to educate a small number of leaders for the next generation. They take in just 4 students to the program per year and this is the second year of this particular program – similar programs sprout also at other Universities in Iraq. In some way, having a small number of students from various backgrounds forms an interactive community and this helps further the program – the Iraqi head of the program actually told him that had they accepted more students, groups could have formed and fights could have resulted – now they participate at each others events and learn also to do away with preconceptions on a personal basis.

Peace building he talks about is the social sciences meaning repair, strengthening, creating personal relationships. This leads to comprehensive conflict transformation – from an unpeaceful to a peaceful relationship. Conflict can be transformed into a constructive resolution. In this structure, obviously are according to John Paul Lederach  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_L…) who wrote about this in 2005, a high-level inspiration – Mid-level actors in this case the University Professors and Deans that educate the Grassroots Leaders. There is a CRITICAL MASS NOT OF NUMBERS OF PEOPLE BUT OF THE QUALITY OF THE PLATFORM. This happens with small groups of very dedicated people.

The Dahuk University itself is 16 years old. It is Kurdish in a Kurdish majority area. The Kurds are predominantly Sunni but religion is not a big issue. It was the politicians that manipulated the religion idea.

There is an Iraqi Peace Foundation – academics, civil society, activists and the Foundation head is from Baghdad – a Professor of Urban Planing – Dr. Kamal. He is a returnee who came from Canada. Iraq had Universities already 1300 years ago, Medicine and Engineering are the most seeked subjects. Students submit to an exam and the administrators of that exam would decide what they had to study. People could not control their own life but wanted to study – so they would accept their fate and study what was handed down to them. But the students wanted to take control of their life and their community. They are the society’s depository of knowledge and can be next generation that will carry Iraq to its future. This one University program’s contribution of 4 leaders per year is thus not negligible.

There are 18 governments in Iraq – the Iraq Peace Foundation has established relations with all of them. The central system does not yet support financially this program but they ought – because it is Iraq’s future. Indeed, until very recently, Iraq was a mixed society and, as said, it had a highly educated group of people that lived in harmony and it was not unknown for them to intermarry.

Professor Vera Jelinek, the Divisional Dean and Clinical Associate Professor, Center for Global Affairs, School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS) at NYU, who was in the audience, asked how to transfer these experiences to other peace-building areas like Kosovo, Bosnia …

The answer was that if you get a society that values higher education it could work. YOU MUST HAVE A HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION he said. In Afghanistan there is no intellectual capital like Baghdad. Afghanistan may not be the place for it. Iraq – the paradox is that in its diversity is its strength. You can have in Iraq politi conversations between people that have been in government and those that will be. Dahuk University will contravene the first Peace-Making country-wide conference in Iraq. Baghdad University is very respected – it is the biggest and has convening capacity. Things will pick up in Baghdad.

Here I decided to ask if with all this introspection, if the Iraqi students will not end up forgetting that there are also other problems in the world?

I was amazed at the gusher of comments I got from the speaker who explained that he wished US students had so much global awareness as the Iraqi students. Clearly, they read all sorts of sources and are well rounded of what goes on in the world.

AHA I said, my follow up question is thus – why do they not rally with the understanding that they were manipulated and try to better their future with that knowledge? To this the answer was less satisfying because the reality is that they have been manipulated to the point that it is easier to comply and fight against each other – and it will be only with the change of leadership to people educated according to the lines we just listened to – that such change will indeed occur.

Another question came from an Arab gentleman who identified himself as belonging to the UN and involved with consortia of universities. I tried later to exchange cards with him but he had no card – told me of the great new plans that the UN Department of Public Information (UN DPI) is establishing with Universities and thought he had to explain to me what that department does. I flatly told him that I wish they keep out of this as they are not known for doing the right things. Besides – there is a UN University to handle contacts with academia – as academia is not the kind of place to swallow UN self serving propaganda. He did not seem happy and I wonder if he was really from the UN.

——————

My third event was 4-6 pm organized by Professor John Rajchman, an Adjunct Professor and Director of Modern Art M.A. Programs in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University.

He invited to his class  Dr. Wang Hui, Professor of Chinese  Language, Literature and History, Tsinghua University, Beijing, who among his many publications is included also the 2010 Verso, Brooklyn, NY,  release titled: “THE END OF THE REVOLUTION: China and The Limits Of Modernity.” Professor Rajchman just thought that his art history students ought to understand the interconnect between old established culture and political upheavals with a view of how far this could be feasable for a culture like China. That is an interesting Professor at a good University!

Wang Hui research focuses on contemporary Chinese literature and thinking. He was the executive editor (with Huang Ping) of the influential magazine Dushu (??, Reading) from May 1996 to July 2007. The US magazine Foreign Policy named him as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world in May 2008.

Wang Hui has his particular Chinese intellectual of our days view of globalization, neoliberalism, and finds the economic miracle of China these days as a deficient remedy for failures of socialism. I think it fortunate that I came to Columbia right after having hears the presentation, by the way also of someone from Columbia, on the promise of the Iraqi academia. Again – just in passing – let me again tell the UN DPI – the UN disinformation service – hands off please of Academia – this is just not your field of competence.

Wang Hui is worried that the later growth can be seen as legitimization of the early heavy-handed transformation of the Chinese farmer. Even now the basic issue is agriculture he said. In fact, it was the 1911 revolution that allowed for the precondition for the agriculture change. It also introduced new education system and in the economy.

The 80′s democratization ended with a democratic crisis and the traditional capitalization and international economics created a fiscalization of democracy.

In the 1980′s the idea was to separate the party from the State – but in Chinese tradition the Party represents the Will of the people. Will there be a democratization of the Party? People return now to sentimentalism towards Mao. The web is an issue for the population. They see in it a technological control – not just political. People are wary of China Americanization. They prefer an accent on developing nations. Now the involvement in Africa.

I tried to find out what he thinks of a G2 idea with mutual interest in developing a gren economy. His idea is that the population will be worried and are affraid of too close cooperation.

for more about Professor Wang Hui:
 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/13/world/…

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My fourth event for the day – 6-8 pm – was supposed to be at the SIPA Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University – the conversation of Mr. Alvaro de Soto with Sir Brian Urquhart. An actual throw-back to what the UN was meant to become at its creation in 1945.

Sir Brian was a British intelligence officer in WWII who was sent by the UK to assist in creation. He has been involved with every UN Secretary General since and was the organizer of the first UN Peacekeeping force. As UnderSecretary-General he was involved in the Middle East and Cyprus – clear British interests in those years.

Alvaro de Soto, from Peru, In 1982 he joined the United Nations staff as a special adviser to Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-1991) – also a Peruvian. Alvaro de Soto continued to hold positions at the UN, mainly in Peasekeeping, till 2007.

I was prepared with questions, but the event got canceled because of the weather – very befitting the UN that is normally a fair weather institution.

—————–

That brings me to the last event that I would like to mention in this article. This was the Wedneday, February 17, 2010 UN University hosting of the Permanent Representative of Iraq to the UN, Ambassador Dr. T. Hamid Al-Bayati.

The topic was “IRAQ AND THE UN: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.”

This was clearly something new – an Ambassador making himself available for questioning to a forum at the UN that is not controlled by the UN Department of Public Information – kudos to the Ambassador.

The Ambassador explained the history of military takeovers 1968, a second coup of 1968 by the Baath Party bringing to power the Saddam regime and then the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the eventual undoing of the regime in 2003.

On the legal side – the first constitution was of 1950 and then the start of the new constitution of 2005. Elections is now the norm and next election will be in April 2010. He stressed the peaceful history in Iraq in past years, and delved even into the place Jews used to have in Iraqi society – and that is as far as we know quite accurate for past years. Will there be a return to more peaceful days after the experiences of more recent times?

He enlarged on security and transparency issues for the elections. He also explained that also Iraqis outside the country will be able to vote. This last item caused me to raise the question on how will they know that indeed Iraqis will vote in the outside-the-country voting? He answered that food ration tickets are base for the lists – but we know from the experience with the Palestinians that people are born but never die and others take over such cards as highly praised commodities. There will clearly be inflated voting that will skew the results. Further, as he said that Iraqis came back from neighboring countries, again, that will be another source of inroads by non-Iraqis. Whatever, it was – this meeting was quite enlightening because of the exchanges – something that even the press enjoyed more here then in the Briefing Room. I wish that event were after what I learned from the other first three events I mentioned above, so I could follow up with questions, but I feel confident that the Ambassador will answer directly a well structured question even now and that get-to=know you event at UNU was just clearly an asset.

Michael Klare, The Blowback Effect, 2020
Posted by Michael Klare, January 5, 2010, on TomDispatch.com
 http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175186/t…

You can already see a new style of writing about China emerging in our American world.  The New York Times set it off recently by publishing a front-page piece on a $3.4 billion Chinese investment in one of the planet’s last great copper reserves — in Afghanistan.  In passing, reporter Michael Wines also pointed out that Chinese energy companies had gained a stronger foothold in the future exploitation of Iraq’s massive oil reserves than had U.S. multinationals.  The ironies were legion and painfully visible.

Our two wars have been sucking us dry in two countries where state-owned Chinese companies have just scored significant economic victories.  “While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda [in Afghanistan],” wrote Wines, “China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.”

Already, the follow-up pieces are starting to come out and heady cocktails they are:  one part awe and one part bitterness mixed with one part despair.  In Esquire online, Thomas P.M. Barnett put it this way:  “Worse still: Will the rest of the world end up profiting from our blood and money?… The reason why Obama neglects to mention any regional interests like Pakistan’s? Admitting the larger logic of regionalization would make too painfully obvious the nature of our current strategic bankruptcy. Because it would suggest that the only ‘victory’ to be found would be ‘won’ by those neighboring powers who did nothing to stabilize the situation. In other words, their ‘treasure’ and our ‘blood.’”  At Foreign Policy online, Stephen M. Walt chimed in:  “While we’ve been running around playing whack-a-mole with the Taliban and ‘investing’ billions each year in the corrupt Karzai government, China has been investing in things that might actually be of some value, like a big copper mine.”

Under George W. Bush, the U.S. set out, in part, to turn the Greater Middle East into an American “lake” of energy reserves via two invasions, and you know how that worked out.  The Chinese, on the other hand, only last year sent their warships abroad — to hunt pirates as part of an international flotilla in the Gulf of Aden — for the first time since the eunuch Zheng He commanded a Ming dynasty armada that reached Africa six centuries ago.  Unfortunately, as Michael Klare, TomDispatch regular and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, makes clear below, China’s leaders are as unlikely to learn from our deepest mistakes as they were 30-odd years ago when China’s post-Cultural Revolution leadership looked our way and made a logical but calamitous decision: that the auto industry — all those millions of individual cars burning fossil fuels — would be a crucial pillar of their future industrial development.

Right now, they may still seem to be acting out a key lesson of this American moment:  Stay off the hard stuff.  You know, all that advanced weaponry (and the military-industrial complex that goes with it), all those aircraft carrier battle groups, all those “expeditionary forces” ready to be sent thousands of miles from home to fight “little wars.”  Once again, however, as Klare suggests, our present symbols of “power” are likely to be their paragon and the future will be a mess.  It’s not enough, it seems, to make money, not war.  Once you have the money, it has to be spent on something and our imaginations remain so limited.

Too bad.  Here’s where you could only wish the future might be a little less predictable.  No such luck, Klare tells us, when it comes to military power as the measure of greatness on planet Earth in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Tom

The Second Decade
The World in 2020
By Michael T. Klare

As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all.  If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain fundamental respects:  the United States remained the world’s paramount military power, the dollar remained the world’s dominant currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three.

By the end of the second decade of this century, however, our world is likely to have a genuinely different look to it.  Momentous shifts in global power relations and a changing of the imperial guard, just now becoming apparent, will be far more pronounced by 2020 as new actors, new trends, new concerns, and new institutions dominate the global space.  Nonetheless, all of this is the norm of history, no matter how dramatic it may seem to us.

Less normal — and so the wild card of the second decade (and beyond) — is intervention by the planet itself.  Blowback, which we think of as a political phenomenon, will by 2020 have gained a natural component.  Nature is poised to strike back in unpredictable ways whose effects could be unnerving and possibly devastating.

What, then, will be the dominant characteristics of the second decade of the twenty-first century?  Prediction of this sort is, of course, inherently risky, but extrapolating from current trends, four key aspects of second-decade life can be discerned: the rise of China; the (relative) decline of the United States; the expanding role of the global South; and finally, possibly most dramatically, the increasing impact of a roiling environment and growing resource scarcity.

Let’s start with human history and then make our way into the unknown future history of the planet itself.

The Ascendant Dragon

That China has become a leading world power is no longer a matter of dispute.  That country’s new-found strength was on full display at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December where it became clear that no meaningful progress was possible on the issue of global warming without Beijing’s assent.  Its growing prominence was also evident in the way it responded to the Great Recession, as it poured multi-billions of dollars into domestic recovery projects, thereby averting a significant slowdown in its economy.  It spent many tens of billions more on raw materials and fresh investments in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, helping to ignite recovery in those regions, too.

If China is an economic giant today, it will be a powerhouse in 2020.  According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), that country’s gross domestic product (GDP) will jump from an estimated $3.3 trillion in 2010 to $7.1 trillion in 2020 (in constant 2005 dollars), at which time its economy will exceed all others save that of the United States.  In fact, its GDP then should exceed those of all the nations in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East combined.  As the decade proceeds, China is expected to move steadily up the ladder of technological enhancement, producing ever more sophisticated products, including advanced green energy and transportation systems that will prove essential to future post-carbon economies.  These gains, in turn, will give it increasing clout in international affairs.

China will undoubtedly also use its growing wealth and technological prowess to enhance its military power.  According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China is already the world’s second largest military spender, although the $85 billion it invested in its armed forces in 2008 was a pale shadow of the $607 billion allocated by the United States.  In addition, its forces remain technologically unsophisticated and its weapons are no match for the most modern U.S., Japanese, and European equipment.  However, this gap will narrow significantly in the century’s second decade as China devotes more resources to military modernization.

The critical question is:  How will China use its added power to achieve its objectives?

Until now, China’s leaders have wielded its growing strength cautiously, avoiding behavior that would arouse fear or suspicion on the part of neighbors and economic partners.  It has instead employed the power of the purse and “soft power” — vigorous diplomacy, development aid, and cultural ties — to cultivate friends and allies.  But will China continue to follow this “harmonious,” non-threatening approach as the risks of forcefully pursuing its national interests diminish?  This appears unlikely.

A more assertive China that showed what the Washington Post called “swagger” was already evident in the final months of 2009 at the summit meetings between presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao in Beijing and Copenhagen.  In neither case did the Chinese side seek a “harmonious” outcome:  In Beijing, it restricted Obama’s access to the media and refused to give any ground on Tibet or tougher sanctions on key energy-trading partner Iran; at a crucial moment in Copenhagen, it actually sent low-ranking officials to negotiate with Obama — an unmistakable slight — and forced a compromise that absolved China of binding restraints on carbon emissions.

If these summits are any indication, Chinese leaders are prepared to play global hard-ball, insisting on compliance with their core demands and giving up little even on matters of secondary importance.  China will find itself ever more capable of acting this way because the economic fortunes of so many countries are now tied to its consumption and investment patterns — a pivotal global role once played by the United States — and because its size and location gives it a commanding position in the planet’s most dynamic region.  In addition, in the first decade of the twenty-first century Chinese leaders proved especially adept at nurturing ties with the leaders of large and small countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that will play an ever more important role in energy and other world affairs.

To what ends will China wield its growing power?  For the top leadership in Beijing, three goals will undoubtedly be paramount: to ensure the continued political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to sustain the fast-paced economic growth which justifies its dominance, and to restore the country’s historic greatness.  All three are, in fact, related:  The CCP will remain in power, senior leaders believe, only so long as it orchestrates continuing economic expansion and satisfies the nationalist aspirations of the public as well as the high command of the People’s Liberation Army.  Everything Beijing does, domestically and internationally, is geared to these objectives.  As the country grows stronger, it will use its enhanced powers to shape the global environment to its advantage just as the United States has done for so long.  In China’s case, this will mean a world wide-open to imports of Chinese goods and to investments that allow Chinese firms to devour global resources, while placing ever less reliance on the U.S. dollar as the medium of international exchange.

The question that remains unanswered:  Will China begin flexing its growing military muscle?  Certainly, Beijing will do so in at least an indirect manner.  By supplying arms and military advisers to its growing network of allies abroad, it will establish a military presence in ever more areas.  My suspicion is that China will continue to avoid the use of force in any situation that might lead to a confrontation with major Western powers, but may not hesitate to bring its military to bear in any clash of national wills involving neighboring countries.  Such a situation could arise, for example, in a maritime dispute over control of the energy-rich South China Sea or in Central Asia, if one of the former Soviet republics became a haven for Uighur militants seeking to undermine Chinese control over Xinjiang Province.

The Eagle Comes in for a Landing

Just as the rise of China is now taken for granted, so, too, is the decline of the United States.  Much has been written about America’s inevitable loss of primacy as this country suffers the consequences of economic mismanagement and imperial overstretch.  This perspective was present in Global Trends 2025, a strategic assessment of the coming decades prepared for the incoming Obama administration by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an affiliate of the Central Intelligence Agency.  “Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor [in 2025],” the NIC predicted, “the United States’ relative strength — even in the military realm — will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained.”

Some unforeseen catastrophe aside, however, the U.S. is not likely to be poorer in 2020 or more backward technologically.  In fact, according to the most recent Department of Energy projections, America’s GDP in 2020 will be approximately $17.5 trillion (in 2005 dollars), nearly one-third greater than today.  Moreover, some of the initiatives already launched by President Obama to stimulate the development of advanced energy systems are likely to begin bearing fruit, possibly giving the United States an edge in certain green technologies.  And don’t forget, the U.S. will remain the globe’s preeminent military power, with China lagging well behind, and no other potential rival able to mobilize even Chinese-level resources to challenge U.S. military advantages.

What will change is America’s position relative to China and other nations — and so, of course, its ability to dominate the global economy and the world political agenda.  Again using DoE projections, we find that in 2005, America’s GDP of $12.4 trillion exceeded that of all the nations of Asia and South America combined, including Brazil, China, India, and Japan.  By 2020, the combined GDP of Asia and South America will be about 40% greater than that of the U.S., and growing at a much faster rate.   By then, the United States will be deeply indebted to more solvent foreign nations, especially China, for the funds needed to pay for continuing budget deficits occasioned by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon budget, the federal stimulus package, and the absorption of “toxic assets” from troubled banks and corporations.

Count on this, though:  in an increasingly competitive world economy in which U.S. firms enjoy ever diminishing advantages, the prospects for ordinary Americans will be distinctly dimmer.  Some sectors of the economy, and some parts of the country, will certainly continue to thrive, but others will surely suffer Detroit’s fate, becoming economically hollowed out and experiencing wholesale impoverishment.  For many — perhaps most — Americans, the world of 2020 may still provide a standard of living far superior to that enjoyed by a majority of the world; but the perks and advantages that most middle class folks once took for granted — college education, relatively accessible (and affordable) medical care, meals out, foreign travel — will prove significantly harder to come by.

Even America’s military advantage will be much eroded.  The colossal costs of the disastrous Iraq and Afghan wars will set limits on the nation’s ability to undertake significant military missions abroad.  Keep in mind that, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a significant proportion of the basic combat equipment of the Army and Marine Corps has been damaged or destroyed in these wars, while the fighting units themselves have been badly battered by multiple tours of duty.  Repairing this damage would require at least a decade of relative quiescence, which is nowhere in sight.

The growing constraints on American power were recently acknowledged by President Obama in an unusual setting:  his West Point address announcing a troop surge in Afghanistan.  Far from constituting a triumphalist expression of American power and preeminence, like President Bush’s speeches on the Iraq War, his was an implicit admission of decline.  Alluding to the hubris of his predecessor, Obama noted, “We’ve failed to appreciate the connection between our national security and our economy.  In the wake of the economic crisis, too many of our neighbors and friends are out of work and struggle to pay the bills…. Meanwhile, competition in the global economy has grown more fierce.  So we simply can’t afford to ignore the price of these wars.”

Many have chosen to interpret Obama’s Afghan surge decision as a typical twentieth-century-style expression of America’s readiness to intervene anywhere on the planet at a moment’s notice.  I view it as a transitional move meant to prevent the utter collapse of an ill-conceived military venture at a time when the United States is increasingly being forced to rely on non-military means of persuasion and the cooperation, however tempered, of allies.  President Obama said as much:   “We’ll have to be nimble and precise in our use of military power…. And we can’t count on military might alone.”  Increasingly, this will be the mantra of strategic planning that will govern the American eagle in decline.

The Rising South

The second decade of the century will also witness the growing importance of the global South:  the formerly-colonized, still-developing areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  Once playing a relatively marginal role in world affairs, they were considered open territory, there to be invaded, plundered, and dominated by the major powers of Europe, North America, and (for a time) Japan.  To some degree, the global South, a.k.a. the “Third World,” still plays a marginal role, but that is changing.

Once a member in good standing of the global South, China is now an economic superpower and India is well on its way to earning this status.  Second-tier states of the South, including Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey, are on the rise economically, and even the smallest and least well-off nations of the South have begun to attract international attention as providers of crucial raw materials or as sites of intractable problems including endemic terrorism and crime syndicates.

To some degree, this is a product of numbers — growing populations and growing wealth.  In 2000, the population of the global South stood at an estimated 4.9 billion people; by 2020, that number is expected to hit 6.4 billion.  Many of these new inhabitants of planet Earth will be poor and disenfranchised, but most will be workers (in either the formal or informal economy), many will participate in the political process in some way, and some will be entrepreneurs, labor leaders, teachers, criminals, or militants.  Whatever the case, they will make their presence felt.

The nations of the South will also play a growing economic role as sources of raw materials in an era of increasing scarcity and founts of entrepreneurial vitality.  By one estimate, the combined GDP of the global South (excluding China) will jump from $7.8 trillion in 2005 to $15.8 trillion in 2020, an increase of more than 100%.  In particular, many of the prime deposits of oil, natural gas, and the key minerals needed in the global North to keep the industrial system going are facing wholesale depletion after decades of hyper-intensive extraction, leaving only the deposits in the South to be exploited.

Take oil:  In 1990, 43% of world daily oil output was supplied by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (the major Persian Gulf producers plus Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Libya, Nigeria, and Venezuela), other African and Latin American producers, and the Caspian Sea countries; by 2020, their share will rise to 58%.  A similar shift in the center of gravity of world mineral production will take place, with unexpected countries like Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Niger (a major uranium supplier), and the Democratic Republic of Congo taking on potentially crucial roles.

Inevitably, the global South will also play a conspicuous role in a series of potentially devastating developments.  Combine persistent deep poverty, economic desperation, population growth, and intensifying climate degradation and you have a recipe for political unrest, insurgency, religious extremism, increased criminality, mass migrations, and the spread of disease.  The global North will seek to immunize itself from these disorders by building fences of every sort, but through sheer numbers alone, the inhabitants of the South will make their presence felt, one way or another.

The Planet Strikes Back

All of this might represent nothing more than the normal changing of the imperial guard on planet Earth, if that planet itself weren’t undergoing far more profound changes than any individual power or set of powers, no matter how strong.  The ever more intrusive realities of global warming, resource scarcity, and food insufficiency will, by the end of this century’s second decade, be undeniable and, if not by 2020, then in the decades to come, have the capacity to put normal military and economic power, no matter how impressive, in the shade.

“There is little doubt about the main trends,” Professor Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in awarding the Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore in December 2007:  “More and more scientists have reached ever closer agreement concerning the increasingly dramatic consequences that will follow from global warming.”  Likewise, a growing body of energy experts has concluded that the global production of conventional oil will soon reach a peak (if it hasn’t already) and decline, producing a worldwide energy shortage.  Meanwhile, fears of future food emergencies, prompted in part by global warming and high energy prices, are becoming more widespread.

All of this was apparent when world leaders met in Copenhagen and failed to establish an effective international regime for reducing the emission of climate-altering greenhouse gases (GHGs).  Even though they did agree to keep talking and comply with a non-binding, aspirational scheme to cut back on GHGs, observers believe that such efforts are unlikely to lead to meaningful progress in controlling global warming in the near future.  What few doubt is that the pace of climate change will accelerate destructively in the second decade of this century, that conventional (liquid) petroleum and other key resources will become scarcer and more difficult to extract, and that food supplies will diminish in many poor, environmentally vulnerable areas.

Scientists do not agree on the precise nature, timing, and geographical impact of climate-change effects, but they do generally agree that, as we move deeper into the century, we will be seeing an exponential increase in the density of the heat-trapping greenhouse-gas layer in the atmosphere as the consumption of fossil fuels grows and past smokestack emissions migrate to the outer atmosphere.  DoE data indicates, for example, that between 1990 and 2005, world carbon dioxide emissions grew by 32%, from 21.5 to 31.0 billion metric tons.  It can take as much as 50 years for GHGs to reach the greenhouse layer, which means that their effect will increase even if — as appears unlikely — the nations of the world soon begin to reduce their future emissions.

In other words, the early manifestations of global warming in the first decade of this century — intensifying hurricanes and typhoons, torrential rains followed by severe flooding in some areas and prolonged, even record-breaking droughts in others, melting ice-caps and glaciers, and rising sea levels — will all become more pronounced in the second.  As suggested by the IPCC in its 2007 report, uninhabitable dust bowls are likely to emerge in large areas of Central and Northeast Asia, Mexico and the American Southwest, and the Mediterranean basin.  Significant parts of Africa are likely to be devastated by rising temperatures and diminished rainfall.  More cities are likely to undergo the sort of flooding and destruction experienced by New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.   And blistering summers, as well as infrequent or negligible rainfall, will limit crop production in key food-producing regions.

Progress will be evident in the development of renewable energy systems, such as wind, solar, and biofuels.  Despite the vast sums now being devoted to their development, however, they will still provide only a relatively small share of world energy in 2020.  According to DoE projections, renewables will take care of only 10.5% of world energy needs in 2020, while oil and other petroleum liquids will still make up 32.6% of global supplies; coal, 27.1%; and natural gas, 23.8%.  In other words, greenhouse gas production will rage on — and, ironically, should it not, thanks to expected shortfalls in the supply of oil, that in itself will likely prove another kind of disaster, pushing up the prices of all energy sources and endangering economic stability.  Most industry experts, including those at the International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, believe that it will be nearly impossible to continue increasing the output of conventional and unconventional petroleum (including tough to harvest Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, and shale oil) without increasingly implausible fresh investments of trillions of dollars, much of which would have to go into war-torn, unstable areas like Iraq or corrupt, unreliable states like Russia.

In the latest hit movie Avatar, the lush, mineral-rich moon Pandora is under assault by human intruders seeking to extract a fabulously valuable mineral called “unobtainium.”  Opposing them are not only a humanoid race called the Na’vi, loosely modeled on Native Americans and Amazonian jungle dwellers, but also the semi-sentient flora and fauna of Pandora itself.   While our own planet may not possess such extraordinary capabilities, it is clear that the environmental damage caused by humans since the onset of the Industrial Revolution is producing a natural blowback effect which will become increasingly visible in the coming decade.

These, then, are the four trends most likely to dominate the second decade of this century.  Perhaps others will eventually prove more significant, or some set of catastrophic events will further alter the global landscape, but for now expect the dragon ascendant, the eagle descending, the South rising, and the planet possibly trumping all of these.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Owl Books). A documentary film version of his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation at Bloodandoilmovie.com.

Copyright 2010 Michael T. Klare

In Iraq, an opening for successful diplomacy. Remember Iraq? For months our attention has been focused on Afghanistan, and you can be sure that the surge will be covered exhaustively as it unfolds in 2010. But next year could be even more pivotal in Iraq.

By Fareed Zakaria
An Opinion Column in The Washington Post. Monday, December 21, 2009
The country will hold elections in March to determine its political future. Months of parliamentary horse-trading are likely to ensue, which could provoke a return to violence. The United States still has 120,000 troops stationed in Iraq, and all combat forces are scheduled to leave by August, further testing the country’s ability to handle its own security. How we draw down in Iraq is just as critical as how we ramp up in Afghanistan: If handled badly, this withdrawal could be a disaster. Handled well, it could be a significant success.

Let’s review some history. The surge in Iraq was a success in military terms. It defeated a nasty insurgency, reduced violence substantially and stabilized the country. But the purpose of the surge was, in President George Bush’s formulation, to give Iraq’s leaders a chance to resolve their major political differences. It was these differences — particularly between Sunnis and Shiites — that fueled the civil war in the first place. If they were not resolved, the war might well begin anew or take some other form that would doom Iraq to a breakup or a breakdown.

Iraq’s political differences have not been resolved. The most fraught remains the tussle between the Shiites, the Muslim sect that comprises a majority of the population, and the Sunnis, a minority that has traditionally been the country’s elite. The simplest indication that issues between these two communities remain unsettled is the fact that only a few of the 2 million Iraqis who fled the country from 2003 to 2007 — the vast majority of whom were Sunni — have returned. (Firm numbers are hard to come by, but they did not add up to more than a few tens of thousands as of this summer.) This month the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reaffirmed that Iraq remains a dangerous place for members of minority groups and that they should therefore not be forced to return to Iraq.

Sunnis in Iraq remain politically marginalized. And there are growing tensions with the Kurds, who run an autonomous quasi-state in Iraq’s north. The Kurds control three of Iraq’s 18 provinces but lay claim to three important cities just across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan that have mixed populations. They have also been flouting the central government’s authority regarding oil contracts, negotiating 30 deals of their own and blocking the flow of oil out of the Kurdish region. Add to these problems disputes over the drawing of boundaries and election rules.

The basic challenge sounds simple but is extremely difficult to meet. Iraq needs a stable power-sharing deal that keeps all three groups invested in the new country. To make this happen, all three will need to compromise. And the central positive force in all of this can be the United States. In the early years of the occupation, the Bush administration never pushed the Iraqi government enough to force officials to cut deals. This was a historic error because Washington had enormous political leverage with the Iraqis at the time. Even later, the Bush administration shied away from pressing the Iraqis too hard, a common thread in its relations with Afghans and Pakistanis, too.

Yet the United States continues to have considerable influence in Iraq. By all accounts, U.S. diplomacy has been crucial to getting the Kurds to agree to the March elections. President Obama is reported to have called Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and pressed him to withdraw his objections to the election legislation, removing the final obstacle. As American troops draw down, American diplomacy should get aggressive and persistent, pushing the three groups to resolve the basic issues of power sharing.

The costs of the Iraq war have been great and perhaps indefensible. But Iraq could still turn out to be an extraordinary model for the Arab world. Its people are negotiating their differences for the most part peacefully; its politics is becoming more pluralistic and democratic; its press is free; its provinces have autonomy; its focus has shifted to business and wealth creation, not religion and jihad. At a conference in Baghdad last October, the Iraq government focused on its current obsession — investment. It released a well-produced document, “Open for Business,” that details the business opportunities that await capitalists in Iraq. Politics in Iraq feels different from other Arab countries. Friday sermons in Baghdad are mostly about the corruption and competence of Iraq politicians, not the evil designs of America of the perfidy of the Jews. It could be the weakening of the victim complex in which the Arab world has been stuck — forever seeing itself as acted upon by foreign forces and never in charge of its own destiny.

In 2010, the Obama administration has a window of opportunity to push these positive trends forward. If they stay engaged, are successful, and get lucky, perhaps this is what America will ultimately be remembered for in Iraq.

Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International. His e-mail address is  comments at fareedzakaria.com.

Troubling Portrait of Suspect Emerges.
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE ,  AP

WASHINGTON (Nov. 5) - His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.
There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive. But details of his life and mindset, emerging from official sources and personal acquaintances, are troubling.
For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, Texas, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing his career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.
While an intern at Walter Reed, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients. He recalled Hasan as a “mostly very quiet” person who never spoke ill of the military or his country.
“He swore an oath of loyalty to the military,” Grieger said. “I didn’t hear anything contrary to those oaths.”
But, more recently, federal agents grew suspicious.
At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.
They had not determined for certain whether Hasan is the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.
One of the officials said late Thursday that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of Hasan’s computer.
Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with Hasan, told Fox News that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said Hasan got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars, and had tried hard to prevent his pending deployment.
Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,” Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.”
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,” Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.”
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes, Pam Hess, Lolita C. Baldor and Brett Zongker in Washington and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Press Release from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee:
ADC Appalled by Attack on Fort Hood, Community Urged to Take Safety Precautions.

Washington, DC | November 5, 2009 | www.adc.org | The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is appalled by the attack that took place earlier today against soldiers and others at Fort Hood, Texas. Preliminary news reports have indicated that a rogue Army Major Malik Hasan and two others shot and killed at least 12 people and injured numerous others.

ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said, “This attack is absolutely deplorable. ADC has been consistent and on record in condemning any attacks aimed at innocents, no matter who the victims or the perpetrators may be.  Such violence is morally reprehensible and has nothing to do with any religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin.  ADC urges the FBI and law enforcement agencies to make every effort to see that justice is served.” Oakar continued, “ADC also calls upon law enforcement agencies to provide immediate protection for all Mosques, community centers, schools, and any locations that may be identified or misidentified with being Arab, Muslim, South Asian or Sikh as a clear backlash has already started.  The actions of a few should not invite a backlash on innocent members of any community and we urge law enforcement and others to keep that in mind.

Additionally, due to these tragic developments, ADC is releasing the following advisory statement to members of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities. ADC feels it prudent to issue this advisory statement due to the potential of a backlash against these communities and given the historically documented acts of hate-motivated violence including vandalism against these communities.

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community. ADC urges everyone to exercise common sense and rely on their own best judgment, but offers the following as suggestions should the need arise:

1) IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW IS PLACED IN PHYSICAL DANGER BECAUSE OF YOUR ETHNICITY, RELIGION, OR NATIONAL ORIGIN:

Call the police (dial 911 in most communities)

Contact the local FBI office, It is the FBI’s job to investigate hate-motivated crimes and specific threats of violence. A list of FBI field offices is included on our website, please see: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

If the threat is imminent, go to a safe location such as a police station or church.

If you feel threatened in your home or community, move to a friend’s house, or a hotel for as long as necessary.

Contact ADC to file a complaint by emailing the ADC Legal Department at<  legal at adc.org > or by calling (202) 244-2990.

2) IF YOUR PLACE OF WORK, PLACE OF WORSHIP, OR SCHOOL IS IDENTIFIED OR CAN BE MISIDENTIFIED WITH ARABS AND/OR MUSLIMS:

Make sure the location has an open line of communication with law enforcement.

Make sure you know all the exits to your building.

Make sure the location has a current emergency plan that is defined and can be implemented should the need arise.

3) IF YOUR CHILD CAN BE IDENTIFIED AS ARAB OR MUSLIM, OR MAY BE CONFUSED FOR BEING OF MIDDLE-EASTERN ORIGIN:

Make sure you discuss the events with your children and that they feel comfortable speaking with an adult if they face harassment by others.

Make sure your children know what steps to take to avoid confrontation with other students.

Work with your children’s school to implement an anti-discriminatory policy.

Click on the following link for a list of the FBI Field Offices across the country: http://adc.org/fbi_field_office.htm

ADC would like to emphasize that it is issuing this advisory based on experiences in the community in recent years, and purely as a precautionary measure. ADC presents these suggestions for the consideration of the Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Sikh American communities, to be evaluated by each family and individual according to their own best judgment and in the context of their own situation and relationship with their local community.
NOTE TO EDITORS: The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), which is non sectarian and non partisan, is the largest Arab-American civil rights organization in the United States. It was founded in 1980, by former Senator James Abourezk to protect the civil rights of people of Arab descent in the United States and to promote the cultural heritage of the Arabs. ADC has 38 chapters nationwide, including chapters in every major city in the country, and members in all 50 states.

The ADC Research Institute (ADC-RI), which was founded in 1981, is a Section 501(c)(3) educational organization that sponsors a wide range of programs on behalf of Arab Americans and of importance to all Americans. ADC-RI programs include research studies, seminars, conferences and publications that document and analyze the discrimination faced by Arab Americans in the workplace, schools, media, and governmental agencies and institutions. ADC-RI also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the Arabs.

The Nobel Prize Committee that dishes out the Nobel Peace Prizes, included Barak Obama in the list of candidates just only two weeks into the Obama Presidency of the United States – let us face it – JUST BECAUSE HE WAS NOT G.W. BUSH – this in full recognition that the whole world had just felt extreme relief by having celebrated “good riddance”  of that US Presidency.

Now, less then nine full months of the Obama Presidency, with the papers full with news that the US will attain a 1,4 trillion deficit this year, with Obama deep in the mud in his effort to extricate the US from the Iraq oil war, and being pulled deeper into the Vietnam-alike Afghanistan war that was set on the back burner by the Bush people in their attempt to take over the oil of Iraq, thus creating the present AfPak disaster, those Republicans that can see nothing wrong with imposing on the US and the world the dependence on oil interests, just foam and furry about the world’s celebrating Obama.

Norway is a complicated State. It is an oil country, but it has a clear strata of pure humanists. They do not back a strong Europe as what they see as their national interest, but they love to see a strong US as they got their lesson in WWII that you must have a strong outside ally. A strong US is not the US of Abu Ghuraib or Guantanamo. They would rather see for the 21-st century a US of good education, racial calm, and national health care system. A US of high technology and science and that has vision and power to lead the world at a time that it becomes clear that global leadership is moving anyway away from the cross-Atlatic to the cross-Pacific. They hate the revival of monkey-trials and back sliding to middle ages that the US never had, but Europe knew so well. Rush Limbaugh found his European ally in Vaclav Klaus, and the Norwegians have no use for either – so they decided to give the prize to progressive America and hope that this will strengthen Obama in his efforts to change the America as it was left behind by the Cheney-Bush Washington DC forces.

The Republican leadership is left to chose between honest US patriotism, or back-stabbing mindless infighting.

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Columnist
From Silence to Outrage, Republicans React to Nobel News
POSTED: 10/9/09
FILED UNDER:THE CAPITOLIST
1052 Comments   Even before President Obama stood in front of the Rose Garden microphones to react to the news of his Nobel Peace Prize, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele sent out a statement asking, “What has President Obama actually accomplished?”

Steele went on to rap both Obama and the Nobel committee, saying, “It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has out-shined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.”

Steele’s harsh words fell at one end of the spectrum of Republican reaction Friday as party leaders and pundits navigated the tricky terrain of discussing an international honor for an American president. And, even some Democrats were left scratching their heads.

Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves Friday to slam Obama’s “incompetence” and the Nobel committee’s bias.”I think the people who used to run the election board for Saddam Hussein’s government were hired by the Nobel committee here to tally the votes,” he said.

Fred Thompson, the former Republican presidential candidate and current radio host, wrote on his Twitter feed, “I awoke 2 THE ONION headline Obama had won Nobel Peace prize by appeasing all dictators of world.”

Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said, “I don’t mean to compare Barack Obama to Gorbachev, who was, whatever his faults, a truly historic and courageous figure. But let’s hope the parallel extends this far: that a year from now the Democrats suffer a major electoral repudiation.”

Beyond media types and media seekers, elected Republican officials and potential candidates took a more muted, even positive, approach to the Nobel news.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, said in a radio interview, “Regardless of the circumstances, anytime somebody wins a Nobel Prize I think an appropriate response is to say, ‘Congratulations’.”

Mike Huckabee, another possible 2012 contender, counseled Republicans on his Web site, “There will be an outcry from those on the right who will say that Obama’s nomination, made two weeks into his presidency, is impossible to justify, but I think such an outcry will sound like right-wing whining. The better response is simply to allow those on the left to explain what he did in his first two weeks as president that merited such recognition.”

Lou Zickar, editor of the moderate Republican Ripon Forum, said Republicans would have done themselves a favor by doing what the rest of America did: “scratch their heads and accept the award for what it is — an honor.” Zickar said Obama’s muted reaction showed his ability to find the right tone and “the complete inability of Republicans to do the same thing.”

Of course, Republicans weren’t the only ones guilty of post-prize hyperbole. In response to Steele’s missive, the Democratic National Committee fired off a statement saying the GOP had “no boundaries, no shame,” and had “thrown its lot in with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning — in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize.”

In the meantime, the truly powerful Republicans in Washington took a different approach entirely. By the end of the day Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner had said nothing at all.

IRAQ MUST STEP UP OVERSIGHT OF ITS RESOURCES, SECURITY COUNCIL SAYS – as reported August 28,2009 - in UN News.

The Security Council believes the Iraqi Government must take greater responsibility for the management of its own resources, the head of the United Nations body said today. 

The Council was briefed in a closed meeting today by UN Controller Jun Yamazaki on the fund administering proceeds from export sales of petroleum from Iraq, known as the Development Fund for Iraq. 

That Fund was established in 2003, the same year the Security Council phased out the oil-for-food programme, under which a sanctions-bound Iraq was allowed to use monitored oil sales revenue for humanitarian purchases. 

Also discussed in today’s meeting was the International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), an independent body set up by the Council. 

“Council members expressed some concern about the need for further steps to improve the internal controls” in the Fund, Deputy Permanent Representative Philip John Parham of the United Kingdom, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month, told reporters following the consultations. 

In a report to the Council made public yesterday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the IAMB has found that the Committee of Financial Experts, created by Iraq’s Council of Ministers in 2006, is ready to assume oversight responsibilities of the Fund. 

“It will be important to ensure that a proper succession mechanism and process be considered,” the Secretary-General wrote. 

From its establishment in 2003 till the end of 2008, the Fund has received nearly $180 billion from oil exports, the balance of the oil-for-food funds held under escrow by the UN and proceeds from frozen assets, according to the report. 

Smoking in Iraq

Butt out, please

Aug 13th 2009 | BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

Imposing the mother of all cigarette bans

APMore lethal than terrorists

IT’S the health and safety measure Iraqis have not been waiting for. The government in Baghdad last week banned smoking in public buildings. Anyone found lighting up will have to pay a fine equivalent to $4,300, enough to buy 17,200 packs of cigarettes at the local price of about 25 cents. “Do the politicians have nothing better to do?” asks Abu Yasser, as he takes a drag while filling up his car at a petrol station. “My cousin was recently murdered by terrorists, my neighbour was tortured by the police, my electricity is cut for most of the day, the same is true in most hospitals in the city. And they are worried about smoking?”

As soon as parliament ratifies the cabinet-imposed ban, Iraqi smokers will be forced to loiter on street corners exposed to car bombs and 45-degree heat in the summer. But according to a recent study, smoking kills an average of 55 Iraqis a day, compared to a current average of ten deaths daily from terrorist shootings or bombings. So the government argues that it is perfectly reasonable to outlaw smoking on public-health grounds.

Nonetheless, the ban has done nothing to improve the already low opinion many Iraqis have of their democratically elected government. “Bring back Saddam,” says a cigarette vendor. “We were free to smoke anywhere then.” Others link the ban to reports of torture in official detention. “Prisons are public buildings, right? So will they now prevent guards from stubbing out cigarettes on the arms, legs and backs of inmates?” asks one university student. With nerves jangled from years of upheaval, nicotine is often the first and only comfort. Stuck at checkpoints, Iraqis pass around cigarettes. Faced with recalcitrant bureaucrats, they do the same.

In parliament though, the ban is popular. Islamists want to get rid of tobacco outright. Of course, many ministers and MPs smoke too, often in their offices. But, given their elevated positions, few rules apply to them.