October 25, 2004

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.

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WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR OCTOBER 25, 2004

1//The Scotsman, UK--ALL EYES ON EXIT AS SCOTS TROOPS ENTER DANGER ZONE (One day they are in the news because they are about to be abolished as a regiment. The next they are on their way to one of the most dangerous places on earth, the so-called Triangle of Death in Iraq. It is hardly surprising that reaction from families of the Black Watch ranged from bewilderment to outrage last week as the government announced that the regiment was to be redeployed outside the relatively quiet British sector of Basra, into a highly volatile American sector close to Baghdad...Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said: "The next six months are likely to be decisive in demonstrating either the US's ability to control the insurgency or its entrapment in a situation that is becoming more untenable." He believes that the US is "wrongly fixated" on the idea that the insurgency can be snuffed out by taking out centres of resistance like Falluja. "The US is completely misreading a developing insurgency that is much more deep-seated than it thinks, may not actually have important 'centres', and may simply not be controllable by the application of superior military force," he said.)

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon--IRAQI PIPELINES HIT AGAIN AS OIL LOSSES GROW ("It's very clear that oil isn't going to make Iraq rich," said Keith Crane, an economist with the Rand Corp. and former adviser to the U.S.-led occupation in Baghdad. Even if Iraq succeeds in tripling output by 2010, as is hoped, Iraq's oil bounty will, by itself, provide a per capita income of around $1,500 per year, making Iraqis in 2010 poorer than the average Brazilian is today, Crane said.)

3//Arab News, Saudi Arabia--ARAB-EUROPEANS FIGHTING ON SIDE OF TERRORISTS, SAYS DAWOOD (Large numbers of Arabs with European passports have entered Iraq and are fighting on the side of the terrorists in the so-called "Death Triangle", Iraq's Minister of State for Security Qassem Dawood said yesterday. The Iraqi official said terrorists from many countries were converging on Iraq to multiply attacks ahead of the US presidential election next week. Some have been captured and would be put on trial in Baghdad.)

4//The Independent, UK--PM CLAIMS PARTY WILL BE MORE 'BLAIRITE' AFTER NEXT ELECTION (Tony Blair believes that the Labour Party will emerge from the next election more "Blairite" than before, despite the growing number of MPs who are critics of the Iraq war... But Tony Blair has told friends that two-thirds of the new Labour MPs elected at the next general election will be Blairite. He has privately admitted that he has only 50-50 support among longer-serving Labour MPs, who entered the Commons in the 1980s, but he has claimed a "significant majority" of the newer MPs, first elected in 1997 or later, are "with us". An analysis by The Independent on Sunday has shown that while Mr Blair is right as far as domestic policy goes, the same is not true in relation to Iraq.)

5//The Times of India, India--US MAY CRUMBLE BRIC BY BRIC (China and India may emerge as the world's No 1 and No 2 car markets. Within 20 years, China could have overtaken the US as the world's largest auto market, with India displacing the US perhaps as soon as 15 years later. In a decade, the middle class in BRICs (the largest emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China) would have outnumbered the population of the US, Western Europe and Japan combined...These are the latest startling projections from Goldman Sachs, which supplied much food for thought worldwide with its first report on BRICs last year projecting China and India to become the World's No 1 and No 3 economies with the US in the No 2 place in a little over 30 years. Goldman Sachs' new report, "The BRICs and Global Markets: Crude, Cars and Capital", shows what that growth story could mean for the commodities, consumer goods and financial markets.)

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1//The Scotsman, UK Sun 24 Oct 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1233572004

ALL EYES ON EXIT AS SCOTS TROOPS ENTER DANGER ZONE
Ian Mather and Brian Brady

One day they are in the news because they are about to be abolished as a regiment. The next they are on their way to one of the most dangerous places on earth, the so-called Triangle of Death in Iraq.

It is hardly surprising that reaction from families of the Black Watch ranged from bewilderment to outrage last week as the government announced that the regiment was to be redeployed outside the relatively quiet British sector of Basra, into a highly volatile American sector close to Baghdad.

"It's like us going in and blowing up the Vatican City in Rome," said James Buchanan, 56, from Arbroath in Angus, who has two sons in the Black Watch. "It's going to cause real turmoil and the Muslims are going to rise up against us. Our boys are going to be slap-bang in the middle of it."

(SNIP)

Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, said: "The next six months are likely to be decisive in demonstrating either the US's ability to control the insurgency or its entrapment in a situation that is becoming more untenable."

He believes that the US is "wrongly fixated" on the idea that the insurgency can be snuffed out by taking out centres of resistance like Falluja.

"The US is completely misreading a developing insurgency that is much more deep-seated than it thinks, may not actually have important 'centres', and may simply not be controllable by the application of superior military force," he said.

"In addition, the human and physical damage from the use of force may further strengthen opposition to the US presence."

A major attack against Falluja, a Sunni stronghold, could also backfire by alienating the Sunni minority, which already fears that an election could produce a government dominated by their Shiite rivals.

That may already be happening. Last week, Iraq's largest group of Sunni Muslim clerics, the Muslim Scholars Association, ordered its followers to boycott the elections if US forces do not stop their military campaign in Falluja. Those followers make up 35% of Iraq's population.

In a statement that carried echoes of calls from Osama bin Laden for jihad or holy war against the West, the association, which has previously played a major role in negotiating ceasefires in Falluja, said the faithful had a religious duty to fight US-led forces. "The esteemed clerics bless the Falluja sons for their jihad and patience," they said.

Their intervention is the strongest open opposition yet to pledges by US officials and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to retake Falluja from insurgents, and underscores the serious consequences that the battle for the city could have.

It is also another ominous indication that a further upsurge of violence is to be expected as the election day approaches.

The likelihood is that Iraqi voters will vote along religious lines, as they still do in the Balkans, with the result that the Shiites, who form the majority of the population, will dominate the new parliament at the expense of the minority Sunnis and Kurds.

The United Nations, which will run the elections, has decreed that electoral lists must have at least 12 candidates, which will make it even more difficult for independent candidates to run and tip the scales further in favour of the big religion-based battalions.

Moreover, political parties, banned for decades under Saddam's government, are in their infancy. Khalaf al-Munshidi said: "The majority of the democratic parties are still in a slow process of growth, and all are suffering from insecurity, instability, and an absence of vision. Furthermore, they are suffering from permanent financial difficulties because their members are either unemployed or have low incomes."

There are also signs that the Kurdish minority, which has been enjoying the benefits of autonomy in northern Iraq, is becomingly increasingly restless as the date of the election approaches. The uncertainty and antagonisms within the cauldron of Iraq have produced a remarkably hostile atmosphere into which some of Scotland's finest soldiers must now march.

(MORE)

2//The Daily Star, Lebanon Monday, October 25, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=3&article_id=9552

IRAQI PIPELINES HIT AGAIN AS OIL LOSSES GROW
Latest sabotage leaves export revenues far below prewar estimates

Compiled by Daily Star staff

Saboteurs bombed two oil pipelines transporting crude from northern and eastern Iraq to Baghdad's Dora refinery late on Saturday.

Major Ali Mahmoud said National Guard forces were trying to extinguish a fire that damaged 150 meters of the Khana pipeline northeast of Baghdad. He said another bomb was found on Saturday along the same line and was safely defused.

An official said saboteurs on Friday blew up a section of another oil pipeline in the Mashahdeh area, some 50 kilometers north of Baghdad.

The pipeline also feeds the Dora refinery, which processes 110,000 barrels per day.

Oil was supposed to be the linchpin of Iraq's bright, postwar future, but some 250 attacks have blown apart pipelines and other oil infrastructure, contributing to losses estimated at between $7 billion and $12 billion in potential export revenue.

The country's sputtering oil revenues have fallen far short of prewar predictions by U.S. President George W. Bush's administration that Iraq could finance its own reconstruction.

"The country has been deprived of badly needed revenue to rebuild infrastructure, jump-start the economy and alleviate high unemployment," said Jamal Qureshi, an Iraq oil sector analyst for Washington-based consultancy PFC Energy.

More than $1 billion in Iraqi oil revenues also flowed to American and British companies, who landed expensive contracts from the now defunct U.S.-led occupation authority, often without competitive bidding.

Halliburton Co., the oil services company that Vice President Dick Cheney once ran, landed 60 percent of the large contracts financed by Iraqi oil funds, audits show.

But Iraq's losses don't just affect Iraqis.

They also mean U.S. taxpayers must pay a larger share of the reconstruction, starting with the massive $18.4 billion approved by Congress last year.

(SNIP)

"There is an aggressive assault on our oil installations, and some of our people have been killed," said Sameer Jassim, spokesman for Iraq's Southern Oil Co. "As a country that just came out of a war, we need the income to reconstruct the country. That $7 billion should have gone to provide services Iraqis need."

(SNIP)

The incessant pipeline blasts, which have destroyed crucial choke points, have left crews repairing creaky 1970's oil infrastructure they were sent here to replace.

"What Iraq needed to do was rehabilitate the industry, but the focus has been on repairing the damage from sabotage," said Walid Khadduri, an Iraqi who edits the Cyprus-based journal Middle East Economic Survey.

(SNIP)

Khadduri said known oil fields could produce some 2 million more barrels per day if they were developed.

"It's very clear that oil isn't going to make Iraq rich," said Keith Crane, an economist with the Rand Corp. and former adviser to the U.S.-led occupation in Baghdad.

Even if Iraq succeeds in tripling output by 2010, as is hoped, Iraq's oil bounty will, by itself, provide a per capita income of around $1,500 per year, making Iraqis in 2010 poorer than the average Brazilian is today, Crane said.

Smuggling also has taken a chunk of oil receipts. Iraq uses oil revenue to import $200 million in gasoline per month. As much as 25 percent of that subsidized fuel, which sells at the pump for the equivalent of 5 cents per gallon, is smuggled and resold in neighboring countries.

3//Arab News, Saudi Arabia 25 October 2004
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=53412&d=25&m=10&y=2004

ARAB-EUROPEANS FIGHTING ON SIDE OF TERRORISTS, SAYS DAWOOD
Staff Writer

JEDDAH/BAGHDAD - Large numbers of Arabs with European passports have entered Iraq and are fighting on the side of the terrorists in the so-called "Death Triangle", Iraq's Minister of State for Security Qassem Dawood said yesterday.

The Iraqi official said terrorists from many countries were converging on Iraq to multiply attacks ahead of the US presidential election next week. Some have been captured and would be put on trial in Baghdad.

Speaking in a telephone interview, Dawood also confirmed that the man captured by the Americans in Fallujah on Friday was "a senior associate" of Abu Mussab Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terror chief believed to be behind the worst atrocities in Iraq in recent months.

Dawood said he expected the terrorists and insurgent groups to step up their campaign of violence in a bid to influence the outcome of the American presidential election next week and to prevent the holding of elections in Iraq early next year.

The terrorists' plan is to multiply attacks by the middle of the fasting month of Ramadan that has a special meaning for Shiite Muslims because it marks the martyrdom of Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam. "It seems that many militant groups have asked their members to converge on Iraq for big fireworks," Dawood said. "Among those we have arrested are Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians, Palestinians, Sudanese and Tunisians."

He said many of those arrested carried European Union passports that seemed to be genuine.

The US-led coalition forces hold the captured terrorists for initial debriefing. But, they are expected to be handed over to the Iraqi authorities, and would be charged and tried under Iraqi law. The Iraqi official claimed "major successes against terrorist forces" but predicted no early end to violence.

"We have killed and captured many terrorists," Dawood said. "But this thing could go on for some time yet. Militants from many countries now see Iraq as the major battleground between their ideology of terror and the forces of democracy in the Muslim world."

(MORE)

4//The Independent, UK 24 October 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=575485

PM CLAIMS PARTY WILL BE MORE 'BLAIRITE' AFTER NEXT ELECTION
By Andy Mcsmith Political Editor

Tony Blair believes that the Labour Party will emerge from the next election more "Blairite" than before, despite the growing number of MPs who are critics of the Iraq war.

Last week's decision to deploy the Black Watch in US-controlled areas of Iraq roused protests from Labour MPs who had previously backed the decision to go to war. Some have privately warned that if the number of British casualties rises sharply, the political situation could get "out of control".

More than 60 Labour MPs publicly backed a move initiated by the Labour rebel Alice Mahon, which would have allowed the House of Commons to vote on the deployment.

But Tony Blair has told friends that two-thirds of the new Labour MPs elected at the next general election will be Blairite. He has privately admitted that he has only 50-50 support among longer-serving Labour MPs, who entered the Commons in the 1980s, but he has claimed a "significant majority" of the newer MPs, first elected in 1997 or later, are "with us".

An analysis by The Independent on Sunday has shown that while Mr Blair is right as far as domestic policy goes, the same is not true in relation to Iraq. Half the 138 Labour MPs who voted against the decision to go to war last year were new MPs, who first entered the Commons in 1997 or later. Last week several of the new MPs, who had previously backed the war, criticised the decision to deploy British troops outside southern Iraq.

The Labour Party has also embarked on a major expansion of its election machine, in anticipation of the general election which is thought to be less than a year away.

(MORE)

5//The Times of India, India Sunday, October 24, 2004 11:30:05 PM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/897637.cms

US MAY CRUMBLE BRIC BY BRIC
Times News Network

NEW DELHI: China and India may emerge as the world's No 1 and No 2 car markets. Within 20 years, China could have overtaken the US as the world's largest auto market, with India displacing the US perhaps as soon as 15 years later.

In a decade, the middle class in BRICs (the largest emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China) would have outnumbered the population of the US, Western Europe and Japan combined.

The number of people with income over $3,000 a year (a level consistent with entry into the 'middle class') in the BRICs could nearly double in three years. Over 800 million people may have crossed that threshold in BRICs in a decade.

The middle class could grow 14 times in India and 10 times in China in the next decade. In Brazil and Russia, that number could more than double.

These are the latest startling projections from Goldman Sachs, which supplied much food for thought worldwide with its first report on BRICs last year projecting China and India to become the World's No 1 and No 3 economies with the US in the No 2 place in a little over 30 years.

Goldman Sachs' new report, "The BRICs and Global Markets: Crude, Cars and Capital", shows what that growth story could mean for the commodities, consumer goods and financial markets.

How could the expansion of BRICs, which could replace all but the US and Japan among the six largest economies in 2050, affect the world economy?

(MORE)