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| April 9, 2004 |
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World Media Watch by Gloria R. Lalumia BUZZFLASH NOTE: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints. * * * WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR APRIL 9, 2004 1//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong--WHEN FEAR TURNS TO ANGER (The Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq may finally silence the ideologically motivated optimists who led America into Iraq in the first place and clung to their delusions in defiance of reality. But things will only get worse. The likelihood of civil war has only been delayed a bit as Sunnis and Shi'ites fight against the common foe. Should the Americans leave, they will turn on each other...This war has been escalating with increasingly brazen critiques of the rival communities that were not seen even two months ago. The only things they agree on are the need for an Islamic government (though they disagree on what it will look like) and their insistence that the Jews and Americans are to blame for all their woes...The Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, is known by soldiers as "can't produce anything" because, as one army major explained, "it is understaffed, getting funds is a long and drawn out process, they are out of touch with the reality on the ground and their mission is unrealistic given their constraints".) 2//Inter Press Service News Agency, Italy--VIOLENCE THREATENS TO UNRAVEL U.N. PLANS FOR IRAQ (Growing military attacks on foreign civilians and the violent uprising against the U.S. military occupation are threatening to unravel a U.N. plan for nation-wide elections in Iraq and to jeopardise a proposed role for the world body in stabilising the country...Salim Lone, former spokesman for the late U.N. Under-Secretary-General, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in a bomb blast at the U.N. compound in Baghdad last August, advises against U.N. participation in Iraq in the current environment. ''I do not think that any U.N. staff should be in Iraq now,'' he told IPS. Lone, who was injured in the Baghdad blast, said it would be a ''terrible mistake'' to send U.N. staff back to Iraq ''when the security situation is infinitely worse than it was last August, and when there is now public criticism of the United Nations, even from mainstream Iraqi public figures, including from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani''.) 3//The Toronto Star, Canada--CANADA DOESN'T HAVE TROOPS FOR IRAQ (Canada is unlikely to participate in an international force to protect United Nations employees in Iraq because military resources are tapped out, Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested today... Canada hasn't been approached for help and apparently isn't offering any...The prime minister made the announcement during a campaign-style swing through Quebec, where anger over the Iraqi invasion runs deep.) 4//TurkishPress.com, U.S.--GUL: THERE HAS BEEN A DANGEROUS ESCALATION IN IRAQ (''There has been a dangerous escalation in Iraq. We are extremely concerned about recent developments,'' Turkish Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters on Thursday. When asked about news stories claiming that the United States had requested Turkey to send soldiers to Iraq, Gul said, ''dispatch of Turkish soldiers to Iraq is out of question.'' ''We have been telling from the very beginning that tension could escalate because of lack of information about culture and structure of the region. We hope that our recommendations would be taken into consideration. There has been a dangerous escalation in the country.'' ) 5//Deutsche Welle/dw-Worlde.de, Germany--SEPT. 11 TERROR SUSPECT RELEASED ON BAIL (Mounir el Motassadeq, the only man worldwide convicted over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, has been freed by a German court on Wednesday pending a new trial ordered by a federal tribunal...Motassedeq's lawyers believe that the sentence could be quashed entirely when the case goes to retrial, saying that there is a possibility that it could collapse on the same grounds as his original conviction due to key evidence being withheld by the United States. Motassadeq's new trial is likely begin on June 16, but with a different panel of judges than that which convicted him last year.) * * * 1//Asia
Times Online, Hong Kong April 9, 2004 WHEN FEAR TURNS TO ANGER BAGHDAD - The Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq may finally silence the ideologically motivated optimists who led America into Iraq in the first place and clung to their delusions in defiance of reality. But things will only get worse. The likelihood of civil war has only been delayed a bit as Sunnis and Shi'ites fight against the common foe. Should the Americans leave, they will turn on each other. Though Shi'ite and Sunni leaders hastened to mouth professions of unity following the attacks in Karbala and Kadhimiya last month that killed scores of mostly Shi'ites, and their militias have joined forces to fight the Americans this week, they hate each other. Sunnis view Shi'ites the way that many white South Africans viewed blacks, and now feel disenfranchised, seeing the "barbaric heathens" threatening to rule their country. Many Sunnis cling to the fiction that they are in fact the majority. Even alJazeera broadcasts from Sunni Qatar claim that Shi'ites are only 53 percent of the population, rather than the 65 percent that they probably are. Other Sunnis fear a Shi'ite takeover of Iraq if anything resembling a democratic election takes place. Shi'ites do not fear the Sunnis, they dislike them. Shi'ites also hate the Kurds now, blaming them for attempting to divide the country with their calls for federalism and autonomy. Arab Shi'ites have already started supporting Turkmen in the north, who are often Shi'ite as well, in their bloody clashes with Kurds. A war of words has begun in the newspapers belonging to the religious parties. Sunni papers insist that Sunnis are a majority and warn of the "Persians" who are coming in by the millions to claim citizenship. For successive Sunni governments, the Shi'ite Arabs of Iraq have been Persians, and the leading Sunni clerics of Iraq continue that tradition. Shi'ite newspapers warn of the "crimes of the Wahhabis" and remember the Wahhabi assaults from Arabia that threatened Iraq's Shi'ites in the 19th century. This war has been escalating with increasingly brazen critiques of the rival communities that were not seen even two months ago. The only things they agree on are the need for an Islamic government (though they disagree on what it will look like) and their insistence that the Jews and Americans are to blame for all their woes. Sunni Arabs no longer threaten the Shi'ites, who know Iraq is theirs now. Only America stands in the way of the long suppressed Shi'ite hope to control Iraq and establish a theocracy. Their expectations are high, now is their time to inherit Iraq. Leading Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has not left his house for nearly a decade, but he pronounces judgments on everything from elections to whether or not women should wear high heel shoes (they cannot because it makes their asses shake too much). (SNIP) What happens in the "Green Zone" of the occupiers behind their walls is a land of make-believe that does not affect the rest of Iraqis living in the "Red Zone", which is the rest of the country. The people who work for the occupation in the Green Zone rarely venture beyond its walls, and Iraq is as alien to them as they are to Iraqis. The Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, is known by soldiers as "can't produce anything" because, as one army major explained, "it is understaffed, getting funds is a long and drawn out process, they are out of touch with the reality on the ground and their mission is unrealistic given their constraints". Morale is low among the soldiers, who have no mission and now view Iraqis as "the enemy" through a prism of "us and them". An officer returning from a fact-finding mission complained of "a lot of damn good individuals who received no guidance, training or plan and who are operating in a vacuum". Congressional staffers put in six months to spice up their resumes, former military or State Department officials fish for contracts with General Electric or KBR after they finish their stint. They don't have to deal with many Iraqis. In the Rashid cafeteria for military and civilian servants of the occupation, non-Iraqis serve the food. When they do deal with Iraqis, they have interesting choices. The deputy minister of interior has been diverting arms and stockpiling them privately. He is accompanied by two doting American intelligence agents. Perhaps he is their last hope, should all else fail. The Americans here all complain "we don't have an Iraqi [Hamid] Karzai", as though the US-approved leader of Afghanistan is a success. The minister of higher education has banned all student unions that are not ethnically or religiously based. He is forcing even Christian girls to cover their heads, and instituting mandatory Islamic education. In the bathroom of the country director of an important Washington-based and US-funded democratization institute I found, in the bidet by the toilet (Americans don't use bidets), a thick orange book entitled The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Koran, a brochure explaining that Arabic is written from right to left, and a guide to focus groups. It is from these focus group results that the people in the Green Zone learn "what Iraqis want". A motivated and well compensated man with experience in Asia and Eastern Europe, the country director was dejected, his advice ignored by the CPA, the tribal leaders he lectured about democracy interested only in securing contracts with the Americans. He seemed to be missing the point when he was lecturing to the Farmers' Union about civil society, while the war was going on in Iraq. He was looking forward to November, he said, when he would return home to "vote [George W] Bush out of office". (MORE)
VIOLENCE THREATENS TO UNRAVEL U.N. PLANS FOR IRAQ UNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 (IPS) - Growing military attacks on foreign civilians and the violent uprising against the U.S. military occupation are threatening to unravel a U.N. plan for nation-wide elections in Iraq and to jeopardise a proposed role for the world body in stabilising the country. The situation in Iraq has deteriorated so far that the United Nations is refusing -- primarily for security reasons -- to provide specifics of any meetings being conducted by a U.N. team now holed up in the nation. The group, led by U.N. Special Adviser for Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi, is consulting with academics, human rights advocates, religious leaders, trade unionists and members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) over proposed elections scheduled for January 2005. ''The Brahimi team will not provide details in advance of its meetings,'' U.N. Spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Thursday. ''The security situation is of concern,'' he added, ''but Brahimi has nevertheless been able to conduct meetings with a wide spectrum of Iraqis''. (SNIP) The United States is dismissing the insurgency as the work of ''terrorists and thugs'', but reports from Iraq suggest a broad uprising that involves Iraqis of all ethnic and religious groups. Since Shia and Sunni Muslim groups are moving towards coordinated attacks against the occupying power, the only ''safe haven'' for U.S. forces is apparently the autonomous Kurdish region bordering Iran. A senior U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted that U.N. plans for elections are obviously up in the air. ''But we have to work on the assumption that things would get better, come January'', he added. Salim Lone, former spokesman for the late U.N. Under-Secretary-General, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in a bomb blast at the U.N. compound in Baghdad last August, advises against U.N. participation in Iraq in the current environment. ''I do not think that any U.N. staff should be in Iraq now,'' he told IPS. Lone, who was injured in the Baghdad blast, said it would be a ''terrible mistake'' to send U.N. staff back to Iraq ''when the security situation is infinitely worse than it was last August, and when there is now public criticism of the United Nations, even from mainstream Iraqi public figures, including from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani''. Prior to the August bombing, the United Nations had more than 650 international staff in Iraq, all of whom were soon after withdrawn and relocated in neighbouring Jordan and Cyprus. U.N. operations are now run by about 2,000 local employees. Al-Sistani, one of the most powerful Shiite clerics, has expressed disappointment that the United Nations refused to support his proposal for nation-wide elections by the end of June. A U.N. team that visited Iraq last month concluded it was not logistically feasible to hold elections under such a short deadline. The U.N. Electoral Assistance Division is now preparing a plan of action that will spell out the logistics of the proposed elections, including details of the number of staff required to conduct the polls nationwide. ''I think that the inability of the United Nations to play even a small role as a mediator in arresting the current spiral of violence reflects the acute crisis U.N. Iraq policy is in,'' Lone said. (MORE)
STE-ANNE-DES-MONTS, Que. (CP) - Canada is unlikely to participate in an international force to protect United Nations employees in Iraq because military resources are tapped out, Prime Minister Paul Martin suggested today. The United States has reportedly asked more than a dozen countries to participate in such an effort, which is seen as a crucial step in the fragile transition to an Iraqi-led government later this year. But Canada hasn't been approached for help and apparently isn't offering any. "It would be very, very hard for us to respond to such a request in a substantial way at the present time," Martin said after meeting local leaders in a small shoreside town in the eastern Gaspe peninsula. "We've had a very, very heavy involvement in Afghanistan, one that will be continuing. We have taken on a role in Haiti. And our forces are stretched very, very thin." The past year has been taxing for a Canadian military already strapped for personnel and cash even before the recent deployments. And those deployments overlap with an existing commitment in the former Yugoslavia, compounding the strain, the prime minister added. The new force is considered essential because the U.S. is relying on the UN to return to Iraq to help organize elections after the July transition. But the UN is wary of returning after two massive suicide attacks on its Baghdad headquarters last year. The prime minister made the announcement during a campaign-style swing through Quebec, where anger over the Iraqi invasion runs deep. (MORE)
GUL: THERE HAS BEEN A DANGEROUS ESCALATION IN IRAQ ANKARA - ''There has been a dangerous escalation in Iraq. We are extremely concerned about recent developments,'' Turkish Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters on Thursday. When asked about news stories claiming that the United States had requested Turkey to send soldiers to Iraq, Gul said, ''dispatch of Turkish soldiers to Iraq is out of question.'' ''Earlier, we proposed to send soldiers to Iraq. However, our proposal was rejected. In those days, the parliament had given the necessary authority to this end. But we gave up the idea of sending Turkish soldiers to Iraq mutually. Now, dispatch of Turkish soldiers to Iraq is out of question.'' (SNIP) ''We have been telling from the very beginning that tension could escalate because of lack of information about culture and structure of the region. We hope that our recommendations would be taken into consideration. There has been a dangerous escalation in the country.'' Stressing that a new era had begun in Iraq following the war, Gul added that developments in Iraq could have negative impacts both on Turkey and the world.
SEPT. 11 TERROR SUSPECT RELEASED ON BAIL A Hamburg court has released Mounir el Motassadeq,
the only person to be convicted of involvement
in the September 11 terror attacks, on bail ahead
of a retrial. He was ordered freed on condition that he stay
in Hamburg and not be issued a new passport, said
Sabine Westphalen, spokesperson for the Hamburg
state court. El Motassadeq's whereabouts were not
immediately known. (SNIP) Motassedeq's lawyers believe that the sentence could be quashed entirely when the case goes to retrial, saying that there is a possibility that it could collapse on the same grounds as his original conviction due to key evidence being withheld by the United States. Motassadeq's new trial is likely begin on June 16, but with a different panel of judges than that which convicted him last year. | ||||||
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