A Saudi, a pressure cooker and the FBI…

Ali Khan Mahmudabad
14 May 2013, 09:34 PM IST

 

 

What do you get when you put a Saudi student, the FBI and a ‘bullet coloured’ pressure cooker together? Kabsah! Talal al-Rouqi, an Arab student in Michigan had cooked his favourite rice and meat dish, Kabsah (also know as Mandi) and was walking over to share it with his other Arab friend when a neighbor spotted him strolling in public with a ‘bullet coloured’ pressure cooker. Naturally, worried about the swarthy looking young man’s intentions, especially given the Tsarnaev brother’s use of the pressure cooker as a bomb container, the conscious citizen decided to report the incident to the FBI. Armed agents surrounded the Al-Rouqi’s apartment, asked to enter the premises and then quizzed him on his sojourn of two days earlier. Al-Rouqi explained that he was merely cooking dinner and sharing it with a friend. I am sure if he had not been so nervous, as he admitted to the Saudi newspaper ‘Ukaz, he would have offered to cook a pot so that they could take it, though obviously the public parading of the pressure cooker would risk upsetting passers-by. When leaving al-Rouqi’s apartment the FBI officer present turned to him and said ‘you need to be more careful moving around with such things, Sir.’ Of course, calling him Sir makes it alright. Next they will be telling Arabs to be careful when appearing in public, just in case someone gets upset.

In another incident a Saudi man who was being held for irregularities to do with his passport was also quizzed and detained for bringing two pressure cookers from Saudi Arabia for his nephew. The nephew had complained the ones in America are cheap, break easily and generally don’t do a good job. He helpfully also added that in case he did want to create an improvised device he would not try and import an authentic Saudi pressure cooker rather than use the cheap western ones which are widely available. 

Obviously, the threat from an ‘Ay-Rab’ pressure cooker is much greater than one sold in the U.S. of A. Incidentally, the international transport of pressure cookers is becoming quite a serious issue. An Indian friend in Cambridge wanted to bring a pressure cooker from India to cook daal but was wisely advised against it by his friends. Having read the news of the Saudi student he seems very relieved. In an unexpected twist, the import of pressure cookers to America from abroad by visiting aliens, in the rest of the world also known as tourists, might actually be a very real need because in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, Williams-Sonoma, a home furnishing chain, temporarily pulled pressure cooker stocks from their shops.

Now that carrying everyday items is a sign of being a potential suspect, especially if one has too much melanin (even though the Tsarnaev brothers looked more Caucasian than anything else), I have some advice for brown people and in particular Muslims in America. Please be more careful about using your cycles in public because they have steel ball bearings. If you want to hang a painting on your wall please do not go out and buy nails but rather ask someone else to buy them for you. In general avoid hardware stores because Muslims only ever go there to shop for improvised explosive devices. Your trip to fix the barbecue might result in the whole area being shut down. Never ever carry a bag or rucksack in public unless it is made of completely transparent material. Please carry pocket watches or a sun-dial as the digital watches most people wear could be construed to be timers. Most importantly, only use plastic boxes to carry food to friend’s houses. And before I forget, a quick disclaimer: I typed all this on a samurai-sword coloured computer. I know, I know! I will get a white one soon.

While pressure cookers are causing such angst, in America it is still be possible for people to go out and buy pistols, guns, sniper rifles and even automatic weapons over the counter. The day the war on pressure cookers was being conducted in Michigan, an average of 8 children and 75 adults would have died because of gun related crimes. Zero American citizens died that day because of terrorism. We are told about the war on terror everyday but then where is the war on guns? The war on poverty? The war on diseases? The war on road accidents? The war on obeisity? The war on smoking? The answer probably lies in the fact that all these problems need care, investment and money to be spent on them but do not provide a way of making money.

Iraq War: 'we have to face the truth and admit we failed'

Andrew Gilligan, who reported from Baghdad throughout the invasion of Iraq, highlights the failures of the British military as well as those of the politicians.

British forces transfer authority over Basra to the Americans in 2009 Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Andrew Gilligan

10:00PM GMT 09 Mar 2013

On the last day of Britain’s combat mission to Iraq, 30 April 2009, we lowered the flag with characteristic verve and style. In the morning, at our base in Basra, there was a deeply affecting service in honour of our military dead. It took 29 minutes to read out all the names.

In the afternoon came a more upbeat ceremony. Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, chief of the defence staff, said British forces had made an “outstanding contribution to the transition of Iraq.” They pulled out, he said, with “their reputation intact.”

Brigadier Tom Beckett, commander of 20th Armoured Brigade, the British formation, said: “We leave knowing we have done our job, and done it well. We leave with our heads held high.”

Gordon Brown, the prime minister (though sadly too busy to make it down himself) had earlier said that British troops remained “the best in the world” and had made Iraq “a success story”. The leaders’ very need, of course, to say such things showed that they were no longer quite true.

The Basra event was telling in one other way. Newspapers and broadcasters had known about it for some time, but were strictly forbidden from even mentioning that it would take place until afterwards. If the victory ceremony has to be kept secret on security grounds, what does that tell you about the victory? 

Iraq was a huge blow to the moral and international standing of this country. It changed, probably permanently, the relationship between the people of Britain and their leaders. I, for one, can never see our government – or our feeble democratic institutions, which did so little to prevent the disaster – in quite the same light again.

But, less widely understood, Iraq was also a military humiliation for the UK. In the debacle that was the war, and above all the occupation which followed, one group of people – Britain’s military leadership — got off far too lightly. And because we never faced up to this, the humiliation continues, right now, in Afghanistan and in Whitehall. One cherished part of the country’s self-image – the power and reputation of our armed forces — is now at serious risk.

For years, the top brass has been essentially exempt from the kind of criticism dished out to other public-sector leaders. All the failings of Iraq and Afghanistan are blamed on conniving politicians or cheese-paring bureaucrats. But evidence from those conflicts shows some of our generals, admirals and air marshals to be rather too much like, say, NHS managers for comfort.

Iraq’s greatest disaster was not the deceit beforehand, or the brief phase of “major combat operations” which began 10 years ago next week. It was the occupation which followed. That was when the vast majority of victims — perhaps 190,000 of them – died. If the occupation had gone better, the politicians’ lies would have been forgiven by now. And it was during the occupation that Britain’s brass fell down on the job.

The key evidence is hundreds of pages of official interviews, conducted by the Army itself with those in charge of the operation. A full set of classified transcripts, leaked to The Sunday Telegraph in 2009, painted a disturbing picture of complacency and misjudgment at senior levels.

Major-General Graeme Lamb, commander of 3 Division in the first months of the occupation, told his interlocutors: “It is easy to become fixated by the enemy. Securing military victory over the enemy is probably not a reality.”

Instead, Lamb favoured “soft effects,” such as improving the lives of the local people, which “really wasn’t that difficult and didn’t require that many experts. Once you knew what you needed to do, you then dispatched the nearest captain with the 'find me 100 trucks’ order and it all worked.”

With apologies to Lamb — who went on to high command in Afghanistan — the enemy surely was quite important. And sending out a captain with a hundred trucks did not “all work”. Basra’s infrastructure remained in ruins, partly because there were not “that many experts” — indeed any at all – and because security was never satisfactorily tackled by the British.

Instead, the British preferred to make deals with the enemy, the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army militia commanded by Muqtada Sadr. In the classified interviews, Major-General Andrew Stewart, the overall British commander, described how he “evaded” and “refused” American orders to confront Sadr, saying: “I was trying to achieve the same result through different means – trying to neutralise Sadr through the use of local Iraqis and succeeding.”

He did not succeed. Sadr was not a solution to the insecurity, but its key source. By 2006, Basra was in anarchy. By the following year, the policy of negotiation had led Britain to what was essentially a surrender. To the intense frustration of many British officers, we secretly signed a deal that we would not enter Basra in return for a promise that Sadr’s forces would stop attacking us.

It kept the body count down, which was all that mattered in London. But it also abandoned Basra to the Mahdi Army, who swaggered through the streets closing down video shops and enforcing headscarves on women.

The tragedy — as many of the classified interviewees recognised – was that Britain’s part of Iraq, the Shia south, was not like the centre of the country. Brutalised by Saddam, Iraqi Shias supported the invasion and might have been prepared to back the occupation. But Britain’s failure to improve infrastructure and security alienated them.

It is true that, by the time we left, the situation in Basra had dramatically improved. But that was due to an Iraqi- and US-led military offensive, Charge of the Knights, in which we took virtually no part.

Constrained by their surrender agreement, the British, theoretical guardians of Basra, stayed in their secure base on the outskirts until the closing moments, as the Iraqis and Americans drove the Mahdi Army out of town. By that stage, such was both nations’ contempt for Britain that they didn’t even tell us they were coming until the last minute.

Of course, you could say that without enough troops, and without enough political commitment, the British Army made the only choice it could. That is one of the reasons why Mr Blair’s deceits beforehand ended up mattering so much: because he could not admit he was planning a war, the forces could not prepare properly for either it or the aftermath. And afterwards, public disgust at the lies sapped will to resource the occupation.

As it happens, the military leadership was culpable there, too. In the run-up to the war, top-level figures in the defence establishment privately told journalists, including me, of their scepticism that Saddam was a serious threat. None was ever prepared to go on the record. Only in their memoirs — or at the Chilcot inquiry, when a stampede of brass wore out the carpets to dump on Blair – did the public learn of these brave warriors’ doubts.

Nor, with one or two exceptions, did they speak out against the years of disastrous procurement and kit that contributed to Britain’s Basra reckoning. Some soldiers only had five rounds of ammunition. The very first British casualty of the war, Sergeant Steven Roberts, died because his unit didn’t have enough body armour.

^{Sergeant Steven Roberts from Bradford, West Yorkshire, who was the first British armed forces personnel to be killed in the Gulf War in 2003.}

Underlying the failed Basra strategy, too, was a flawed British assumption that they were good at counter-insurgency. We understand the natives, the generals would tell you — unlike those brutal, clumsy Americans. But smiles and handshakes could never alone have worked. Even previous peace support operations, such as Bosnia, had only been resolved by the use, or threat, of sufficient force.

The Americans were indeed appallingly brutal, to begin with, but they learned, and they changed — and, unlike us, they didn’t give up. They did surge men and resources; and in the end, helped by the overreach of their enemies, they did at least in part prevail. Both countries suffered political humiliation in Iraq. But only Britain was defeated militarily.

The clear lesson from Iraq was that you should do something properly, or not at all. But in Afghanistan, Britain’s generals repeated the same half-baked, penny-packet approach, the same self-delusion about their rapport with the locals, and drew the same contempt from their American allies.

General Benjamin Freakley, the main US commander in southern and eastern Afghanistan at the beginning of Britain’s campaign, admits that he was “scathing” to the British about their efforts in Helmand province. He said he warned especially strongly against Britain’s “disastrous” tactic of sending small groups of soldiers to far-flung “platoon houses,” sitting ducks for the Taliban. The practice was finally changed, but not before dozens of British lives were needlessly lost. These were operational decisions, nothing to do with British politicians — some of whom, indeed, were aghast at their generals’ recklessness.

The irony of Iraq is that an operation intended to strengthen the Anglo-US “special relationship,” the bar to which the British diplomatic and military establishment so desperately clings, did the exact opposite.

Basra cost us much respect in the Pentagon. In the leaked Iraq interview transcripts, the British brass complain that the overall US commander, General Rick Sanchez, never visited and never called: he didn’t, they complained, even install a secure phone link with them. Britain’s chief of staff, Colonel JK Tanner, likened the Americans to “a group of Martians”, saying: “Despite our so-called 'special relationship,’ I reckon we were treated no differently to the Portuguese.”

Soon, in Afghanistan, we will declare victory and leave. But it seems unlikely that we will leave much lasting trace of our presence, or much in return for the 440 British lives so far sacrificed there. And unlike the politicians of Iraq, the generals have moved on, reputations unsullied, to more lucrative work.

General Lamb, for instance, has recently taken to the media, extravagantly praising a dictatorial Arab regime which paid his lobbying company £1.5 million to “support [its] stance before the international community”. The Iraq war sandblasted the credibility of the British government, the intelligence agencies, and the diplomatic corps. But with the forces there is still, perhaps, an unwillingness among the media and public to confront reality; still a strong wish to believe that Britain is the best, the undefeated.

But for the sake of the self-respect and the very future of those forces, still among the proudest assets of this country, it is essential that they, and we, face the truth and learn the lessons.

The UK's Protection racket in the Middle East

The Gulf protection racket is corrupt and dangerous folly

Sooner or later the Arab despots David Cameron is selling arms to will fall, and the states that backed them will pay the price

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 6 November 2012 22.20 GMT

Illustration by Helen Wakefield

On the nauseating political doublespeak scale, David Cameron's claim to "support the Arab spring" on a trip to sell weapons to Gulf dictators this week hit a new low. No stern demands for free elections from the autocrats of Arabia – or calls for respect for human rights routinely dished out even to major powers like Russia and China.

As the kings and emirs crack down on democratic protest, the prime minister assured them of his "respect and friendship". Different countries, he explained soothingly in Abu Dhabi, needed "different paths, different timetables" on the road to reform: countries that were western allies, spent billions on British arms and sat on some of the world's largest oil reserves in particular, he might have added by way of explanation.

Cameron went to the Gulf as a salesman for BAE Systems – the private arms corporation that makes Typhoon jets – drumming up business from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Oman, as well as smoothing ruffled feathers over British and European parliamentary criticism of their human rights records on behalf of BP and other companies.

No wonder the prime minister restricted media coverage of the jaunt. But, following hard on the heels of a similar trip by the French president, the western message to the monarchies was clear enough: Arab revolution or not, it's business as usual with Gulf despots.

The spread of protest across the Arab world has given these visits added urgency. A year ago, in the wake of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, it seemed the Gulf regimes and their western backers had headed off revolt by crushing it in Bahrain, buying it off in Saudi Arabia, and attempting to hijack it in Libya and then Syria – while successfully playing the anti-Shia sectarian card.

But popular unrest has now reached the shores of the Gulf. In Kuwait, tens of thousands of demonstrators, including Islamists, liberals and nationalists, have faced barrages of teargas and stun grenades as they protest against a rigged election law, while all gatherings of more than 20 have been banned.

After 18 months of violent suppression of the opposition in Bahrain, armed by Britain and America, the regime has outlawed all anti-government demonstrations. In western-embraced Saudi Arabia, protests have been brutally repressed, as thousands are held without charge or proper trial.

Meanwhile, scores have been jailed in the UAE for campaigning for democratic reform, and in Britain's favourite Arab police state of Jordan, protests have mushroomed against a Kuwaiti-style electoral stitchup. London, Paris and Washington all express concern – but arm and back the autocrats.

Cameron insists they need weapons to defend themselves. When it comes to the small arms and equipment Britain and the US supply to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Gulf states, he must mean from their own people. But if he's talking about fighter jets, they're not really about defence at all.

This is effectively a mafia-style protection racket, in which Gulf regimes use oil wealth their families have commandeered to buy equipment from western firms they will never use. The companies pay huge kickbacks to the relevant princelings, while a revolving door of political corruption provides lucrative employment for former defence ministers, officials and generals with the arms corporations they secured contracts for in office.

Naturally, western leaders and Arab autocrats claim the Gulf states are threatened by Iran. In reality, that would only be a risk if the US or Israel attacked Iran – and in that case, it would be the US and its allies, not the regimes' forces, that would be defending them. Hypocrisy doesn't begin to describe this relationship, which has long embedded corruption in a web of political, commercial and intelligence links at the heart of British public life.

But support for the Gulf dictatorships – colonial-era feudal confections built on heavily exploited foreign workforces – is central to western control of the Middle East and its energy resources. That's why the US has major military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Bahrain.

The danger now is of escalating military buildup against Iran and intervention in the popular upheavals that have been unleashed across the region. Both the US and Britain have sent troops to Jordan in recent months to bolster the tottering regime and increase leverage in the Syrian civil war. Cameron held talks with emirates leaders this week about setting up a permanent British military airbase in the UAE.

The prime minister defended arms sales to dictators on the basis of 300,000 jobs in Britain's "defence industries". Those numbers are inflated and in any case heavily reliant on government subsidy. But there's also no doubt that British manufacturing is over-dependent on the arms industry and some of that support could usefully be diverted to, say, renewable technologies.

But even if morality and corruption are dismissed as side issues, the likelihood is that, sooner or later, these autocrats will fall – as did the Shah's regime in Iran, on which so many British and US arms contracts depended at the time. Without western support, they would have certainly been toppled already. As Rached Ghannouchi, the Tunisian leader whose democratic Islamist movement was swept to power in elections last year, predicted: "Next year it will be the turn of monarchies." When that happens, the western world risks a new backlash from its leaders' corrupt folly.

Ways of bidding Farewell - Goodbye, God be with you, Khuda Hafiz, Allah Hafiz...

In Pakistan, saying goodbye can be a religious statement

To some, the growth of 'Allah hafiz' over 'Khuda hafiz', using a Qur'anic rather than Urdu name for God, is a symbol of change

• 
• • Syed Hamad Ali
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 April 2012 10.15 BST

Pakistanis who continue to use 'Khuda hafiz' see the phrase as 'part of an ideological battle to retain what they see as a more pluralistic approach towards religion'. Photograph: M. SAJJAD/AP

 

Does it matter what name people use for God? This is the question thrown up as a result of a strange development in Pakistani etiquette.

Until about 10 years ago "Khuda hafiz", which means "God protect you", was the phrase commonly used to say goodbye. But, in the past decade, "Khuda hafiz" began to be overtaken by a new term "Allah hafiz". Now, "Allah hafiz" is used by everyone from religious clerics to fashion models and the country's top TV anchors.

While languages change and evolve with time, and Pakistan certainly has bigger problems such as corruption and militancy, the alteration has unsettled liberals in Pakistan, who say it reflects a wider change in the country's cultural landscape.

Khuda is the Urdu word for God, borrowed from Persian. Yet today, some people claim that Khuda can refer to any God, while Allah is the specific name for God in the Qur'anic scripture. Others have gone so far as to claim the word Khuda may even have pagan origins.

The promotion of "Allah hafiz" first began in the 1980s under the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq when Pakistan was involved in the US- and Saudi-backed jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. According to some reports, "Allah hafiz" was first used in public in 1985 by a well-known TV host on the state-run PTV. However it would be years later that the greeting took off.

The arguments used by Muslims who are against using the name Khuda appear similar to the ones used by those Christians in the United States who say Allah is a different God to the one they worship. There is no denying there are key theological differences between Islam, Christianity and other religions when it comes to the nature of God, but these don't necessarily mean people from different faiths can't use the same name, while simultaneously holding on to their own unique beliefs.

A few years back, a Roman Catholic bishop from the Netherlands, Tiny Muskens, attracted media interest after calling on people of all faiths to use the name Allah for God: "Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? What does God care what we call him? It is our problem."

And millions of English-speaking Muslims have no hesitation in using the name God to refer to Allah. There are more than 10 million Christians who live in the Middle East who use Allah to refer to God. In Malaysia, there has been controversy on the matter for years about Christians being allowed to use Allah to refer to God, with even churches being attacked by some Muslims who object.

Some have speculated the name Khuda may actually come from the word "Khud" which means "self" ("Khud-a" therefore translating as "self-revealing"). In Pakistan, the name Khuda is rooted in the very culture and history of the country. In the national anthem the final verse makes a reference to Khuda. A few years back a very popular film came out with the title Khuda Kay Liye ("For the Sake of God"). When former president Pervez Musharraf left office in 2008 he famously said in his farewell speech "Pakistan ka Khuda hafiz hai" ("God protect Pakistan").

Some continue to use the "Khuda hafiz" despite the popularity of "Allah hafiz". To these people, "Khuda hafiz" is part of an ideological battle to retain what they see as a more pluralistic approach towards religion, yet for others it is tradition or nostalgia that keeps the usage alive. Outside Pakistan, "Khuda hafiz" is also known to be used in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and among Muslims in India.
Interestingly, while Allah is an Arabic word, the Arabs themselves don't use "Allah hafiz" – which is a purely Pakistani-manufactured invention mixing Arabic with Persian. Rather the Arabs use "ma salama" or "Allah ysalmak" when parting company. And for any who feel there is no need to mention God in a greeting in any language, remember even the English word "goodbye" derives from "God be with you", which was the standard greeting at one time.

Tarek Fatah on the Arab Identity of Pakistan

The demise of the dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading 

By Robert Fisk

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.
Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Why I had to leave The Times

Robert Fisk:

When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn't stay...

Monday, 11 July 2011 in The Independent

He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.
You hear all these awful things about Arab dictators and then, when you meet them, they are charm itself. Hafez al-Assad once held my hand in his for a long time with a paternal smile. Surely he can't be that bad, I almost said to myself – this was long before the 1982 Hama massacres. King Hussein would call me "Sir", along with most other journalists. These potentates, in public, would often joke with their ministers. Mistakes could be forgiven.
The "Hitler Diaries" were Murdoch's own mistake, after refusing to countenance his own "expert's" change of heart over the documents hours before The Times and The Sunday Times began printing them. Months later, I was passing by the paper's London office on my way back to Beirut when the foreign editor, Ivan Barnes, held up the Reuters wire copy from Bonn. "Aha!" he thundered. "The diaries are forgeries!" The West German government had proved that they must have been written long after the Führer's death.
So Barnes dispatched me to editor Charles Douglas-Home's office with the Reuters story and I marched in only to find Charlie entertaining Murdoch. "They say they're forgeries, Charlie," I announced, trying not to glance at Murdoch. But I did when he reacted. "Well, there you go," the mogul reflected with a giggle. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Much mirth. The man's insouciance was almost catching. Great Story. It only had one problem. It wasn't true.
Oddly, he never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he's been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it's because his editors and sub-editors and reporters repeatedly second-guessed what Murdoch would say. Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. The Israelis tried to rubbish my reporting; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. "I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing," he told me later. "He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn't demand it. I didn't show it to him."
But things changed. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that "there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk" and – for heaven's sake – that "perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis."
All of which, of course, was official Israeli government policy at the time.
Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home's full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that the men had been murdered – the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn't see how we would be "justified" in running a report "so long after the event".
In other words, the very system of investigative journalism – of fact-checking and months of interviews – became self-defeating. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli "inquiry" was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to "justify" publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home's concerns evaporated.
When he died, of cancer, it was announced that his deputy, Charles Wilson, would edit the paper. Murdoch said that Wilson was "Charlie's choice" and I thought, so, all well and good – until I was chatting to Charlie's widow and she told me that it was the first time she had heard that Wilson's editorship had been her late husband's decision. We all knew Murdoch had signed up to all manner of guarantees of editorial independence, oversight and promises of goodwill when he bought The Times – and had then fired his first editor, Harold Evans. He would deal with the trade unionists later.
Charles Wilson – who much later became, briefly, the editor of The Independent – was a tough, friendly man who could show great kindness, as well as harshness, to his staff. He was kind to me, too. But once, when I was visiting Wilson in London, Murdoch walked into his office. "Hallo, Robert!" Murdoch greeted me, before holding a jocular conversation with Wilson. And, after he had left, Wilson said to me in a hushed voice: "See how he called you by your first name?" This was laughable. It was like the Assad smile or the King Hussein "Sir". It meant nothing. Murdoch was joking with his ministers and courtiers.
A warning sign. Still in west Beirut, where dozens of Westerners were being kidnapped, I opened The Times to discover that a pro-Israeli writer was claiming on our centre page that all journalists in west Beirut, clearly intimidated by "terrorism", could be regarded only as "bloodsuckers". Was the paper claiming that I, too, was a bloodsucker? In all this time, Murdoch had expressed exclusively pro-Israeli views, and had accepted a "Man of the Year" award from a prominent Jewish-American organisation. The Times editorials became more and more pro-Israeli, their use of the word "terrorist" ever more promiscuous.
The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after the USS Vincennes had shot down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Gulf. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US ships had routinely been threatening British Airways airliners, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American "leaks" that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.
Next day, my report appeared with all criticism of the Americans deleted, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it. This was when I first made contact with The Independent. I didn't believe in The Times any more – certainly not in Rupert Murdoch.
Months later, a senior night editor who had been on duty on the night my Vincennes report arrived, recalled in a letter that he had promoted my dispatch as the splash, but that Wilson had said: "There's nothing in it. There's not a fact in it. I wouldn't even run this gibberish." Wilson, the night editor said, called it "bollocks" and "waffle". The night editor's diary for that day finished: "Shambles, chaos on Gulf story. [George] Brock [Wilson's foreign editor] rewrites Fisk."
The good news: a few months later, I was Middle East correspondent for The Independent. The bad news: I don't believe Murdoch personally interfered in any of the above events. He didn't need to. He had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence. If I hadn't been living in the Middle East, of course, it might have taken me longer to grasp all this.
But I worked in a region where almost every Arab journalist knows the importance of self-censorship – or direct censorship – and where kings and dictators do not need to give orders. They have satraps and ministers and senior police officers – and "democratic" governments – who know their wishes, their likes and dislikes. And they do what they believe their master wants. Of course, they all told me this was not true and went on to assert that their king/president was always right.
These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a "news" story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.
In the sterile world of the Murdochs, new technology was used to deprive the people of their freedom of speech and privacy. In the Arab world, surviving potentates had no problem in appointing tame prime ministers. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The Super Rich Sabotage The Arab Revolutions

By Shamus Cooke

20 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org

With revolutions sweeping the Arab world and bubbling-up across Europe, aging tyrants or discredited governments are doing their best to cling to power. It's hard to over-exaggerate the importance of these events: the global political and economic status-quo is in deep crisis. If pro-democracy or anti-austerity movements emerge victorious, they'll have an immediate problem to solve -- how to pay for their vision of a better world. The experiences thus far in Egypt and Greece are proof enough that money matters. The wealthy nations holding the purse strings are still able to influence the unfolding of events from afar, subjecting humiliating conditions on those countries undergoing profound social change.

This strategy is being ruthlessly deployed in the Arab world. Take for example Egypt, where the U.S. and Europe are quietly supporting the military dictatorship that replaced the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Now Mubarak's generals rule the country. The people of Egypt, however, still want real change, not a mere shuffling at the top; a strike wave and mass demonstrations are testing the power of the new military dictatorship.

A strike wave implies that Egyptians want better wages and working conditions; and economic opportunity was one of the central demands of the revolutionaries who toppled Mubarak. But revolutions tend to have a temporarily negative effect on a nation's economy. This is mainly because those who dominate the economy, the rich, do their best to sabotage any social change.

One defining feature of revolutions is the exodus of the rich, who correctly assume their wealth will be targeted for redistribution. This is often referred to as "capital flight.” Also, rich foreign investors stop investing money in the revolutionary country, not knowing if the company they're investing in will remain privately owned, or if the government they're investing in will strategically default and choose not to pay back foreign investors. Lastly, workers demand higher wages in revolutions, and many owners would rather shut down -- if they don't flee -- than operate for small profits. All of this hurts the economy overall.

The New York Times reports:

"The 18-day [Egyptian] revolt stopped new foreign investment and decimated the pivotal tourist industry... The revolution has inspired new demands for more jobs and higher wages that are fast colliding with the economy's diminished capacity...Strikes by workers demanding their share of the revolution's spoils continue to snarl industry... The main sources of capital in this country have either been arrested, escaped or are too afraid to engage in any business..." (June 10, 2011).

Understanding this dynamic, the rich G8 nations are doing their best to exploit it. Knowing that any governments that emerge from the Arab revolutions will be instantly cash-starved, the G8 is dangling $20 billion with strings attached. The strings in this case are demands that the Arab countries pursue only "open market" policies, i.e., business-friendly reforms, such as privatizations, elimination of food and gas subsidies, and allowing foreign banks and corporations better access to the economy. A separate New York Times article addressed the subject with the misleading title, Aid Pledge by Group of 8 Seeks to Bolster Arab Democracy:

"Democracy, the [G8] leaders said, could be rooted only in economic reforms that created open markets ...The [$20 billion] pledge, an aide to President Obama said, was “not a blank check” but “an envelope that could be achieved in the context of suitable [economic] reform efforts.” (May 28, 2011).

The G8 policy towards the Arab world is thus the same policy the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have pursued against weaker nations that have run into economic problems. The cure is always worse than the disease, since "open market" reforms always lead to the national wealth being siphoned into the hands of fewer and fewer people as public entities are privatized, making the rich even richer, while social services are eliminated, making the poor even poorer. Also, the open door to foreign investors evolves into a speculative bubble that inevitably bursts; the investors flee an economically devastated country. It is no accident that many former IMF "beneficiary" countries have paid off their debts and denounced their benefactors, swearing never to return.

Nations that refuse the conditions imposed by the G8 or IMF are thus cut off from the capital that any country would need to maintain itself and expand amid a time of social change. The rich nations proclaim victory in both instances: either the poorer nation asks for help and becomes economically penetrated by western corporations, or the poor country is economically and politically isolated, punished and used as an example of what becomes of those countries that attempt a non-capitalist route to development.

Many Arab countries are especially appetizing to foreign corporations hungry for new investments, since large state-run industries remain in place to help the working-class populations, a tradition begun under the socialist-inspired Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser that spread across the Arab world. If Egypt falls victim to an Iraq-like privatization frenzy, Egypt's working people and poor will pay higher prices for food, gas, and other basic necessities. This is one reason, other than oil, that many U.S. corporations would also like to invade Iran.

The social turmoil in the Arab world and Europe have fully exposed the domination that wealthy investors and corporations have over the politics of nations. All over Europe "bailouts" are being discussed for poorer nations facing economic crises. The terms of these bailout loans are ruthless and are dictated by nothing more than the desire to maximize profits. In Greece, for example, the profit-motive of the lenders is obvious to everyone, helping to create a social movement that might reach Arab proportions. The New York Times reports:

"The new [Greece bailout] loans, however, will only be forthcoming if more austerity measures are introduced...Along with faster progress on privatization, Europe and the [IMF] fund have been demanding that Greece finally begin cutting public sector jobs and closing down unprofitable entities." (June 1, 2011).

This same phenomenon is happening all over Europe, from England to Spain, as working people are told that social programs must be slashed, public jobs eliminated, and state industries privatized. The U.S. is also deeply affected, with daily media threats about the "vigilante bond holders" [rich investors] who will stop buying U.S. debt if Social Security, Medicare, and other social services are not eliminated.

Never before has the global market economy been so damningly exposed as biased and dominated by the super-wealthy. These consciousness-raising experiences cannot be easily siphoned into politicians promising "democracy,” since democracy is precisely the problem: a tiny minority of super-rich individuals have dictatorial power due to their enormous wealth, which they use to threaten governments who don't cater to their every whim. Money is thus given to subservient governments and taken away from independent ones, while the western media never questions these often sudden shifts in policy, which can instantly transform a longtime U.S. ally into a "dictator" or vice-versa.

The toppling of dictators in the Arab world has immediately raised the question of, "What next"? The economic demands of working people cannot be satisfied while giant corporations dominate the economy, since higher wages mean lower corporate profits, while better social services require that the rich pay higher taxes. These fundamental conflicts lay just beneath the social upheavals all over the world, which came into maturity with the global recession and will continue to dominate social life for years to come. The outcome of this prolonged struggle will determine what type of society emerges from the political tumult, and will meet either the demands of working people or serve the needs of rich investors and giant corporations.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action ( www.workerscompass.org ) He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

Who's in control? Not just governments, that's for sure

Andreas Whittam Smith in The Independent

How did the media on the one hand and the financial markets on the other build themselves up as such great forces in society?

Thursday, 26 May 2011

We have seen two big powers in action this week. They are not countries. But they can take on governments and win. They are the media and the financial markets. While British newspapers were forcing the UK Government to rethink the use of injunctions issued by courts to protect privacy, the financial markets were maintaining almost unbearable pressure on the currencies of the weaker members of the eurozone.
It was surely resentment at the power of the media that led a gang of masked men to vandalise reporters' cars outside the home of Ryan Giggs on Tuesday. An injunction taken out by Mr Giggs to prevent press coverage of an alleged extramarital affair had been dramatically revealed in the House of Commons on Monday after details had been made freely available on Twitter.
As to the power of the financial markets, my colleague Hamish McRae noted yesterday that the Greek government "may have the electorate's mandate but it does not set policy. That is being determined... in Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt and Washington. Power has gone". In turn the politicians and civil servants in such cities look to the financial markets to discover what actions are required. Take another case, Spain. As the Financial Times commented: "Watching Spain's agony as it tries to escape the clutches of the eurozone's expanding sovereign debt crisis is like being a spectator at a particularly cruel gladiatorial fight. Whenever the weaker contestant skilfully sidesteps an assault by his opponent, he is promptly confronted with a still more ferocious attack."
How did the media and the financial markets build themselves up as great powers? The most significant date in plotting the growing influence of national newspapers in Britain was 17 November 1969 when Rupert Murdoch launched the Sun as a tabloid. Thirteen years later Associated Newspapers created the Mail On Sunday. In little over a decade, therefore, the market for scandalous news had been substantially expanded. Until then the Daily Mirror and the News Of The World had dominated this area.
This was an era when everything began to change, as much in the financial markets as in the behaviour of the media. Governments strictly controlled exchange rates, for instance, until the early 1970s. When US President Richard Nixon closed the so-called "gold window" on 15 August 1971, ending free exchange between US dollars and gold, he brought to a close a 25-year period during which the world's leading currencies, including sterling, had been fixed in terms of the dollar. Speculation against them had been almost impossible.
From then onwards they could "float", and when a particular currency declined in value against its neighbours', the government concerned began to feel the pressure. In 1979, one of the first decisions of Mrs Thatcher's newly formed government was to abolish UK exchange control. It was a welcome act of self-confident liberation, but it also, in accordance with the law of unintended consequences, handed a weapon to currency speculators, who would use it ruthlessly in 1992 to drive Britain out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on a day known forever afterwards as "Black Wednesday".
Repeated oil shocks since the 1970s have also contributed to the power of financial markets. Essentially a higher oil price takes spending power out of the pockets of consumers and places it into the treasuries of countries, mainly in the Middle East, who have no means of spending their new wealth – other than by investing it back into the financial markets of the West. By this mechanism the financial markets have become larger and larger in relation to national economies. Since the first oil shock in 1973 when the price of oil shot up to $10 a barrel – it's now $100 – there have been at least a dozen oil spikes, each time magnifying the size of the financial markets as the unspent surplus was invested in securities.
During the same period, the power of the media has also continued to increase. In the UK, the politicians partly brought this on themselves. From the early 1990s they began a process of non-stop electioneering. So great are the penalties for losing power – the splitting of the party into warring groups, the lengthy period in exile – that party leaders feel they must do what it takes to regain or retain office.
In relationship to the press, Tony Blair described what was needed: "Our news today is instant, hostile to subtlety or qualification... To avoid misinterpretation, strip down a policy or opinion to one key clear line before the media does it for you. Think in headlines." Then when Labour came to power in 1997, the Government Information Service was taught the same rule. Alastair Campbell told Whitehall press officers a few months after the election: "Decide your headlines. Sell your story and if you disagree with what is being written, argue your case." But the more the political parties sought control, the more aggressively the press struck back.
Add to this the dramatic expansion of unregulated digital media. The first email was sent in 1971 (the two computers were sitting next to each other!). The first web browsers became available in 1978. The first social networking site saw the light of day in in 1994. MySpace was created in 2003, Facebook in 2004 and Twitter in 2006.
I don't describe the rise of the media and the financial markets to positions of great power to argue that something should be done about them, though they are both, in their different ways, crude and rough. I particularly dislike the untrammeled greed of bankers though doubtless they equally hate the untrammeled inquisitiveness of journalists. Where the power of media and finance is at its most objectionable, however, is in their ability to deter governments from protecting us from their worst excesses.
In the United States the banks, for instance, use their formidable lobbying skills and resources in Congress to deter lawmakers from curbing their abuses and this phenomenon in turn has the effect of holding back regulation in other markets around the world. In Britain, so far as the media is concerned, there is a strong case for a law on privacy, but I doubt whether any Cabinet would have the courage to propose such a measure. Of course even democratically elected governments can be frightening bodies, but so are their most formidable opponents, finance and media.

Iceland broke the rules and got away with it

Now Ireland and Portugal wish they too had got tough with the markets


* Aditya Chakrabortty
o The Guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011


Remember Iceland? In the autumn of 2008, it became the first national casualty of the financial meltdown; the first rich country in more than three decades to take an IMF bailout. Commentators declared it the Icarus economy, which had finally come crashing back down to earth. It became both parable and laughing stock. What's the difference between Iceland and Ireland, joked traders – one letter and a few months.

You don't hear much about the insolvent island any more – apart from occasions such as this weekend, when Icelandic voters were asked to repay the £3.5bn owing on collapsed bank Icesave, and replied with a firm "Nei".

Unnoticed it may be, but Reykjavik now serves as a very different kind of parable, of how to minimise the misery of financial collapse by ignoring economic orthodoxy. And in those other broke European economies – from Dublin to Athens to Lisbon – politicians and voters are starting to pay attention. After its three biggest banks – 85% of the country's financial system – failed in the same week, Iceland did two remarkable things. First, it let the banks go under: foreign financiers who had lent to Reykjavik institutions at their own risk didn't get a single krona back. Second, officials imposed capital controls, making it harder for hot-money merchants to pull their cash out of the country.

These policies were not just controversial; they represented a two-fingered salute to the polite society of academics and policy-makers who normally lay down the laws on economic disaster management.

Compare Iceland's policies with those followed by another tiny country in the North Atlantic, which also has a banking industry much bigger than its national economy. When the credit crunch came to Dublin, the government decided to underwrite the entire banking industry – including tens of billions of euros of loans made by foreign investors. That landed the country with a debt worth something like €80,000 for every household – a debt that effectively bankrupted the country.

"A reverse Robin Hood – taking money from the poor and giving to the rich," is how Anne Sibert, a member of the Central Bank of Iceland's monetary policy committee, describes the Irish policy. But Dublin was merely following the old free-market tradition that rules governments should never break faith with financiers.

Yet looking at the two countries now, it's hard to say that Ireland has prospered out of being orthodox, or that Iceland has suffered an especially terrible punishment for not sticking to the Way of the Markets.

Indeed, the evidence seems to point the opposite way: Iceland has come through in better condition than anyone in 2008 dared hope. The worst of its recession is over, even though it's still too early to talk about sustained growth, and the unemployment rate (7.5%) is just over half that of Ireland (13.6%). Remarkably, after the krona lost more than half its face value, inflation is also coming down quite sharply. And without having to pay back foreign creditors, the government's finances are also in better shape. In Ireland, on the other hand, the government has just injected more money into its banking sector – the fifth time it has had to do so.

Now, this is a picture that needs more qualifications than a brain surgeon. For a start, you wouldn't wish Iceland's fate on any economy. Huge spending cuts are still to kick in, and a lot more pain is in store. Thor Gylfason, an economist at the University of Iceland, reckons it will take another seven to 10 years before his country recovers from one of the worst economic disasters in recent history. This will be a long, slow haul.

But landed with an almost unbearable burden, Iceland has made the load easier on itself – and it has done so by getting tough with foreign speculators who lent money to the country at their own risk. In Dublin, on the other hand, as Irish MP Stephen Donnelly puts it, "the entire Irish people were made collateral for the banking system" – and its economic performance has not been remarkably better. More than that, there is a basic point about fairness: in Ireland, keeping the markets on side was deemed to be more important than keeping people in jobs – in Iceland, the priorities have been reversed.

Donnelly says that the Icelandic example is beginning to attract interest in the Dáil and in the media. An Icelandic politician was recently interviewed by Vincent Browne, the Irish equivalent of Jeremy Paxman. In the bust countries of southern Europe they're also starting to take notice. Last week, on the day that Portugal finally admitted it would need a bailout from Brussels, I was talking to Joana Gorjão Henriques, a journalist from Lisbon. She told me that her contacts were pasting stories about Iceland on Facebook, and that newspaper columnists were using Iceland's case as an example that Portugal, Greece and Ireland should follow – make an allegiance and say to the EU that they won't pay the debt.

There are echoes here of the Asian financial crisis of the late 90s. Then Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad brought in capital controls to shore up a battered financial system – and he was pilloried from Washington to Wall Street. Nobel laureates in economics predicted imminent catastrophe for Malaysia; the International Monetary Fund effectively told Mohamad off. But the year after, Malaysia began a strong economic recovery, and now the IMF issues papers on the usefulness of capital controls.

Iceland was a country wrecked by implementing free-market dogma crudely and quickly; it may yet became another such lesson of how an economy can ignore free-market dogma – and come out far better than its critics predicted.

African Dissent on No-Fly Zone Counts

By M K Bhadrakumar

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For, from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech by Martin Luther King Jr, April 4, 1967, New York

At the height of the Egyptian uprising, well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with al-Jazeera that the United States had a "Plan B" in the event of Hosni Mubarak stepping down. According to Hersh, it was none other than Amr Moussa - "whether he knows or not". There is nothing so far to show Moussa doesn't know.

He's far too well connected not to know - career diplomat and foreign minister for over 45 years and secretary general of Arab League (AL) since 2001. He hopes to succeed Mubarak as Egypt's next president.

Moussa delivers ...
Moussa's bid got great fillip by the AL decision Saturday to recommend imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. His star has risen far above Mohammed ElBaradei's. Two major Arab countries opposed the AL statement - Syria and Algeria - but Moussa rammed it through, thanks to the AL heavyweights clamoring for democracy to succeed and autocracy to end - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan.

What bizarre drama! The plain truth is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) commanded AL to speak since they need a fig leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council.

The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Cairo on Saturday by Moussa's side to ensure America's "Plan B" delivered. And he did. Promptly, the US, Britain, France and Canada "welcomed" the AL statement. NATO will meet on Tuesday to tone up its stance on Libya.

Britain and France, who spearhead the breathtaking campaign to mobilize Arab "support" for NATO intervention in Libya, have had a dream run. British Prime Minister David Cameron and newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe visited Cairo to explore how far the military junta could take charge of the oil-rich eastern Libyan province of Cyrenica.

... but Africa dissents
The Western powers had earlier mentioned the AL and African Union (AU) in the same breath as representing "regional opinion". Now it seems the AU isn't so important - it has become an embarrassment. African leaders are proving to be tough nuts to crack compared to Arab playboy-rulers.

Unsurprisingly, there is a virtual media blackout on the AU's activities on Libya. It is, therefore, useful to recapitulate. "The [AU] council reaffirms its firm commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security stated in Addis Abbaba. The AU's 15-member peace and security council decided to "put in lace a high-level ad-hoc committee" to monitor the Libyan crisis.

The leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali would form the ad-hoc committee. "The ad hoc committee was set up ... to engage with all parties in Libya, facilitate an inclusive dialogue among them, and engage the African Union partners ... for the speedy resolution of the crisis in Libya," the bloc said. Lamamra said events in Libya needed "urgent African action" to bring about an end to the hostilities.

Most important, the AU "took note of the readiness of the government of Libya to engage in the path of political reforms. The council expressed the solidarity of the AU with Libya, and stressed the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Libyan peoples for democracy, political reforms, justice, peace and security as well as economic and social development".

Specter of disintegration
The paradox is, if you accept the principle of ascertaining the "regional opinion", then the AU's opinion becomes, arguably, more important to know than the AL's. Libya is as much an African country as an Arab country - if not more. The narrative of Libyan developments as a template of "Arab awakening" overlooks that reverberations and after-shocks of what happens are going to be felt deep inside Africa. As prominent Russian scholar on the region Yevgeny Satanovsky recently said:
It [unrest] won't be limited to the Middle East and North Africa ... The region will go through what Europe experienced in 1914-18. These processes always take a long time ... In Europe, the shooting started in 1914 and didn't stop until 1945 ... We have not seen what would happen to the other Gulf monarchies. We have not yet seen the end of the unrest that has gripped North Africa and the Middle East.

Algeria could still follow Libya's suit and Morocco might do the same. In January we saw Sudan split peacefully, but separatist elements have not been extinguished there. Former colonies tied together in unnatural conglomerates in the past by the English or the French never became integrated states. If this is so, we may still see disintegration of Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries.
Therefore, the British Foreign Office is opportunistic when it says the AL statement "is very significant and provides important regional support" for the idea of a no-fly zone. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Qaboos Bin Al Said of Oman, Abdullah II of Jordan - these autocrats cannot be hailed as stakeholders in Libya's march to democracy.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes are tottering on the abyss and themselves hoping NATO will salvage them. Their rulers keep their personal wealth of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars hoarded in Western banks and the umbilical cord cannot easily be broken.

Scarred memories
But, how is it that African states are different? First, when they hear Cameron or French President Nikolas Sarkozy or NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen speak of military intervention in North Africa, it rings a bell in their collective consciousness - of scarred memories of imperial domination, the horrendous crimes that the British, French or Dutch perpetrated on African people. They know how difficult it will be to get a NATO army to vacate its occupation of Africa. (Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday: "I would like to ask NATO and the US with honor and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land. We are a very tolerant people but now our tolerance has run out.")

Africans know NATO will eventually slither its way into the heart of their resource-rich continent from the North African beachhead. So, the AU faces an existential problem - unlike the GGC client states or Jordan, which have no conception of national liberation. The only "Arab revolt" Abdullah or Abdullah II ever knew is what British intelligence and Lawrence of Arabia financed in the debris of the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago.

Besides, what dreads the AU countries is that Libya has a history of disunity. It was only in 1951 that King Idris unified the three autonomous provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenica. In the wake of the current strife, centrifugal tendencies have quickly resurfaced. Libya has dozens of tribes and Muammar Gaddafi knit together a tenuous alliance of some tribes but tribal feuds are common. The African countries share similar experience.

To be sure, Western intervention in Libya will necessitate at some stage involvement in "nation-building' - interference in the domestic affairs in the post-Gaddafi period. The native peoples will resent this involvement. And in the fullness of time, only the Islamist forces stand to gain. The stunning political reality of Libya is that Islam is the only unifying factor for the tribes and provinces of that fragile nation.

African leaders are genuinely nervous that the US is being myopic about the complexities involved. President Barack Obama should get to know them better, call them up from the Oval Office, reach out to them and consult them and ascertain whether they will accept NATO intervention in Libya. They are the real "stakeholders" - not the playboy kings, sheikhs or sultans from the bleached Arabian deserts. King would be pleased.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
rica,