BOOKS-US: When Neocons Ruled Washington

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Michael Flynn

GENEVA, Dec 16 (IPS) – In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been ”colossally erroneous” and ”disastrous to U.S. interests”, that the Iraq War is a ”blunder of colossal proportions”, and that an attack on Iran is a ”highly likely” ”disaster” unless the country ”eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy”.

It is hard to argue with these points. But the book’s relentless, partisan rhetoric serves to confirm what is obvious from its title: ”The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel” is yet another treatise on the pernicious influence of the neocons on foreign policy.

So many studies have been penned on this subject that the noted international relations scholar Robert Jervis, in a 2005 review of a similar book, wrote that ”one may wonder whether more is needed”.

Sniegoski’s contribution is to thoroughly review the mountain of material already published on the neocons to support a thesis held by many war critics — that neocons, abetted by the 9/11 attacks and their supporters within the administration, were able to ”gain control” of U.S. policy.

The book does one thing better than most other treatments — it hones in on the centrality of Israel in the neoconservative worldview, drawing out the significance of the relationship between neocons and the Israeli right, and placing the ”war on terror” squarely within the neocon-Likud vision of Mideast peace.

Much of the book is a conscientious — if tedious — exercise in checking off all the boxes about the neocons. We read about the leftist origins of many early neoconservatives; their ”powerful, interlocking network of think tanks, organisations, and media outlets”; misconceptions spurred by their support for democratic change, which Sniegoski dismisses as a rhetorical ”weapon, not a political objective”; and their tendency to accuse critics of anti-Semitism (the author could have added a fuller assessment of how racists have exploited the Jewish backgrounds of many neoconservatives to stoke anti-Semitism).

It describes the relationship between neocons like Richard Perle and the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi; how Douglas Feith and his colleagues in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans pushed through cherry-picked ”evidence” on Iraq; and the alliance between neocons and the Christian Right.

Sniegoski is at his best when he departs from these well-worn narratives to assess the geopolitical context within which Bush administration decision-making occurred and analyses issues that have vexed observers, like the role of the oil lobby in influencing policies after 9/11 and the reason Iraq emerged as a target.

Chapter 8, titled ”George W. Bush Administration: The Beginning”, is a case in point. The chapter opens with a discussion of how a network of neocons were given mid-level posts in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon, and how this insider position proved instrumental once the country and the president were willing to accept their ideas.

After discussing several key neocons and their ties to Israel, Sniegoski abruptly shifts to an assessment of what Business Week described as a struggle between ”the pro-Israeli lobby and the U.S. oil industry” over Mideast policy.

It is here that the book gets interesting. Many observers argue that ”Big Oil” was the driving force for the war. However, Sniegoski argues that oil interests lobbied the Bush administration to ease sanctions on Mideast countries and improve ties in the region. He also cites analysts who pointed to the diminishing role of the oil lobby after 9/11, including Salon’s Damien Cave, who wrote in late 2001 that ”there is no clear evidence …of oil company desires affecting current U.S. foreign policy. If anything, the terrorist attacks have reduced oil industry influence.”

The results of this were felt in a number of policy areas, including Central Asia, which had long been in the crosshairs of analysts and energy suppliers because of its proximity to Caspian oil. After 9/11, however, it lost importance. Writes Sniegoski: The terrorist attacks ”provided the United States with the golden opportunity to intervene militarily in Afghanistan on a major scale and thus go far to achieve its hegemonical goal in Central Asia… [B]ut any effort at establishing stability in Afghanistan was irretrievably undermined by the American focus on the war on Iraq. The goals of the American establishment imperialists and energy producers…thus would be overcome by the neoconservatives with their Israelocentric view of American foreign policy.”

Why Iraq? Going back to the origins of the Likud Party in the early 1970s, Sniegoski shows how the Israeli right has consistently advocated destabilising the Middle East so as to leave its opponents powerless and ensure Israeli security. He points to a widely cited 1982 publication by Oded Yinon, a one-time Israeli Foreign Ministry official. Calling Iraq ”the greatest threat to Israel”, Yinon argued that the ”dissolution” of Lebanon, which Israel invaded in 1982, was a ”precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula”

The 1982 invasion of Lebanon, however, was widely condemned in and out of Israel, and spurred criticism from President Ronald Reagan. This debacle taught the Israeli right a key lesson, writes Sniegoski: It showed that ”no military campaign to destabilize Israel’s enemies could achieve success if it antagonized Israeli public opinion and… lacked extensive backing from Israel’s principal sponsor, the United States.”

This Likud notion, which was reinforced after the first Gulf War when George Bush pere failed to overthrow Hussein and pressured Israel to draw back from the West Bank, was championed by neocons during the 1990s, when many of their publications argued for using an attack on Iraq as a lynchpin for a Mideast restructuring along lines elaborated by Israeli hardliners.

One such publication, titled ”A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, was issued in 1996 by the Israel-based think tank the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. A policy proposal for the then-incoming Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the paper argued for dropping the Oslo peace process and putting in place a plan — with U.S. support — to reconfigure the Mideast political map using the overthrow of Hussein as a starting point.

Among the participants in the study group that produced this paper were eventual Bush administration advisers Perle, Feith, and David Wurmser. Sniegoski calls the study an ”astounding document”, adding: ”Though written to advance the interests of a foreign country, it appears to be a rough blueprint for actual Bush administration policy, with which some of [its] authors — Perle, Feith, and Wurmser — were intimately involved… When formulating and implementing American policy for the Bush II administration, were they acting in the interests of America or of Israel?”

This is a very controversial question, one which goes to the heart of Sniegoski’s book — but one which many U.S. readers who support Israel will find unsettling. Scholars should not be afraid to ask the questions their evidence leads to; but when broaching such divisive topics, it might be best to take a less partisan approach than Sniegoski’s.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

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SPECIAL SERIES: Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Gareth Porter*

TEHRAN, Dec 15 (IPS) – Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, ”Yes, but…”

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there’s a big difference between Iranian and U.S. ideas of what such an accord would look like.

Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed here indicate that an agreement would only be possible if it represented a fundamental change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Iranian officials and analysts see the problem of U.S.-Iranian relations as a seamless web of issues on which agreement must be reached as a whole. And in addition to the bilateral issues of normal diplomatic and economic relations, they see a new U.S.-Iranian understanding on the Middle East as essential.

The problem for Iran, they observe, is that it feels it must base its policies across the entire region on the assumption of U.S. hostility. ”As long as there is a lack of understanding between the United States and Iran, any move by the United States worries us,” said Hamid Reza Dehghani, director of the Centre for the Persian Gulf and Middle East at the Iranian foreign ministry’s think tank, the Institute for Political and International Studies.

On the other hand, Iranian officials appear to recognise that the United States and Iran do have some objective interests in common in the region — especially opposition to al Qaeda and related Islamic terrorists. Despite past U.S. policies that threaten Iranian interests, therefore, they see potential opportunities for U.S.-Iranian cooperation in the region.

”If there is a chance for finding commonalities with the United States,” said Dehghani, ”it will be found in the Middle East.”

An adviser to the foreign ministry who asked not to be named, because he is not authorised to speak to foreign journalists, told IPS that a ”grand bargain” — an agreement on all the issues that both sides wish to raise — is possible, based on a joint recognition of the threat from al Qaeda and related terrorist groups.

He added that U.S.-Iran understandings on both Iraq and Afghanistan would be ”central” to any such agreement.

Iran has long been willing to deal directly with the United States on both Afghanistan and Iraq, having participated in a series of secret meetings with U.S. diplomats in Geneva from late 2001 to spring 2003 before the George W. Bush administration cut them off.

Dehghani explained the Iranian eagerness to deal with the United States on Iraq now as a function of relatively greater Iranian capabilities and leverage. But he also admitted Iranian officials are concerned over whether the United States will abide by the agreement it has reached with the Iraqi government to withdraw all of its forces by 2011.

Despite President-elect’s Obama’s campaign pledges on troop withdrawal, and the U.S. commitment to Iraq to withdraw completely by the end of 2011, Dehghani said, ”I’m doubtful about it.” He cites factors that are favourable to U.S. withdrawal: the fact that the U.S.-Iraqi withdrawal agreement was imposed on an unwilling U.S. government by Iraqi public opinion, and factions in the Iraqi government ”friendly to Iran” — an obvious reference to Iraqi Shi’a political parties which had long enjoyed Iranian patronage and are now part of the Nouri al-Maliki regime in Baghdad.

What worries Iranian strategists are elements of the Iraqi regime they view as responsive to U.S. interests. ”Iraqi government security and military forces were established directly by the United States,” said Dehghani, ”and the heads of these systems are not friendly to Iran.”

But Dehghani denied the Bush administration charge that it has been ”favouring special groups in Iraq, regardless of the central government”.

If the U.S. and Iran reached a broader agreement to end their hostility, Dehghani said, it would make a complete U.S. withdrawal from Iraq ”more feasible”, implying that the main U.S. interest in keeping troops in Iraq now is to contain Iranian influence.

On Afghanistan, Iranian officials appear to view the brief period of U.S.-Iran cooperation against the Taliban and al Qaeda after 9/11, which was terminated as a result of a neoconservative initiative in Washington, as the template for what should occur in the future. Dehghani hinted that Iran is more concerned about the danger of rising Sunni extremist power in Afghanistan than it is with Obama’s intention to increase U.S. troop strength there.

He said nothing about U.S. troops in Afghanistan except that they were suffering more casualties than those in Iraq. Instead, Dehghani made it clear Iran opposes peace negotiations with the Taliban, as proposed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

U.S. support for a ”dialogue” with the Taliban, he said, ”would be a great mistake”.

Europeans and Arab states may be supporting an accommodation with the Taliban, said Dehghani, but the ”the real policymakers in the U.S. are not”. He suggested that such an accommodation ”cannot be supported by the U.S. public”.

Dehghani thus implied that Iran and the United States both oppose the same enemy — Sunni extremism — in Afghanistan, providing an objective basis for a broader regional accord.

Perhaps the most politically sensitive issue for both sides in any broad U.S.-Iran negotiations, apart from Iran’s nuclear programme, would be Iran’s relations with Hezbollah and other anti-Israel organisations.

A secret May 2003 Iranian proposal offered to support the Saudi-sponsored Arab League plan for a peace settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would result in Iranian recognition of Israel if the plan were carried to completion. But, as opponents of engagement with Iran have noted, the U.S. State Department’s Near East Bureau doubted that the proposal represented anything more than the position of the Mohammad Khatami administration’s reformist faction, which they believed was too weak to carry out such an agreement.

It was conservative editor and political strategist Amir Mohebbian, a long-time supporter of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who suggested in an interview that a U.S.-Iran accord could ”help the United States solve the Israel-Palestinian issue”.

Cutting through Iranian propaganda on Israel aimed largely at appealing to Arab populations across the region, Mohebbian said Iranian policy toward Israel has to be viewed as a two-level operation. ”As a slogan,” he told IPS, ”Iran says we can’t accept the reality of Israel, but we have slogans and we have action. There is a difference between the two.”

According to the foreign ministry’s top official on U.S. affairs, Ali Akbar Rezaie, the main obstacle to a broad U.S.-Iran agreement is not conflicts over objective interests, but U.S. concern with Iran’s status as a ”great power in this region”.

”The only way for the United States to reverse this vicious circle is to agree to coexist with this greater status of Iran,” said Rezaie. ”Sooner or later they will have to recognise this.”

*Gareth Porter, an investigative journalist and historian specialising in U.S. national security policy, has just completed a 12-day visit to Tehran to find out how Iranian officials, analysts and political figures view possible negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran. This is the fourth of a five-part series of articles. Part 5 will appear on Dec. 16.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

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TERRORISM & THE BUSINESS WORLD —AN UPDATE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.481

Global Intelligence News

by B. Raman

( A talk delivered at a symposium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology at Delhi on December 13,2008)

Terrorists target human beings—combatants and non-combatants (civilians)— as well as capabilities—economic and strategic.

2. Till the 1980s, they focused more on targeting human beings. Targeting of capabilities—-which may or may not cause human fatalities—- came into vogue in the 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out explosions in London’s financial district.

3. Targeting of capabilities does not create the same kind of public revulsion against the terrorists as the targeting of human beings does. Whereas the after-effects of the targeting of human beings remain localised in the area where they were targeted, the impact of the targeting of capabilities has a ripple effect far beyond the area where the act of terrorism was carried out.

4. The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US homeland had a ripple effect right across the world because of the increase in insurance premia for various business transactions and dislocation of international flights.The successful terrorist strikes in Bali had an impact on the tourist economy of not only Indonesia, but also of neighbouring countries. The effect of a successful terrorist strike on the oil installations of Saudi Arabia or on commercial shipping in the Malacca Strait would be felt right across the world with varying degrees of intensity. The impact of a successful terrorist strike on the information technology (IT) industries of Bangalore would be felt not only in Bangalore, but also in the stock markets of different cities, where the shares of the IT companies are traded. Because of networking, the repercussions of a successful terrorist operation against the critical information infrastructure in one city can spread the resulting damage right across the world.

5.Globalisation and decentralisation are the defining characteristics of the business world of today. Very often many of the core tasks of multinational companies are performed not by their headquarters in their country of origin, but by their field offices spread across the world. Western multinationals delegate many of their core tasks to their offices in India because of the availability in India of highly-qualified managerial experts, who are prepared to work for emoluments, which are high by Indian standards, but not so high by the standards of the country of origin of the multinational. If an act of terrorism disrupts the workling of their Indian offices it would affect not only their business operations in India, but also their operations right across the world.

6. Many studies of terrorist operations across the world since 9/11 have brought out how the international terrorist organisations of various hues have successfully adapted for their operations the same concepts and techniques of globalisation and decentralisation, which they have borrowed from the business world. They are globalised in their thinking and outlook and decentralised and autonomous in their operations In the field.

7.The terrorist strike in Mumbai from the night of November 26,2008 to the morning of November 29,2008, has sent a shiver right across the world not just because it was spectacular, but because there was a fearsome brain, which had conceptualised the entire operation, planned it to the minutest details and had it carried out through remote control from Pakistan with the help of not more than 10 terrorists. There might have been—-I apprehend there would have been— many, many more terrorists involved in various peripheral roles such as intelligence collection, reconnoitring, logistics etc, but the core group, which carried out the strike was not more than 10 in number, but it managed to have an important corner of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, under its control for more than 48 hours. A force of nearly 600 men of the Mumbai Police and the National Security Guards was required to eliminate this small group of 10. This was asymmetric urban warfare of a kind not seen in the world ever since terrorism assumed its major dimensions in the post-1967 world after the Arab-Israeli war of that year.

8. We saw in Mumbai a mix of attacks on human beings and capabilities, a mix of attacks on Indians and foreigners and a mix of various strategies. A strategy to disrupt the peace process between India and Pakistan was mixed with a strategy for reprisal against the expanding strategic co-operation of India with Israel and the Western world. A strategy for discrediting India’s political leadership and professional national security managers in the eyes of the Indian public was combined with a strategy for discrediting them in the eyes of the international community and the international business world. These strategies focussed on a mix of targets—-the man in the street and the elite. The man in the street was attacked in places like a railway station, a hospital and other public places. The elite was attacked in the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Oberoi-Trident Hotels.

9. These hotels are not just the favourite spots of tourists who travel on shoe-string budgets. These are the favourite spots of the cream of the international business world, who come to Mumbai not for pleasure, but for their business. Imagine what impressions the business managers of the world, who escaped being killed by the terrorists, would have carried back to their corporate headquarters— about the security of life and property in India, about the efficiency of India’s national security managers, about the quality of our political and professional leadership.

10. In an article on the terrorist strike in Mumbai, the “Guardian” of the UK wrote: ” Analysts are worried that the constant reminder of the attacks will heighten investors’ concerns at a time when the Indian economy is slowing and foreign capital is being repatriated. ‘This is the last thing India needs,’ said businessman Sir Gulam Noon. The British-based multimillionaire, who made his fortune in ready meals, escaped unhurt from the Taj Mahal after spending a frightening night holed up in his suite on the third floor. ‘The attacks will temporarily have an impact. It’s clearly not good for the economy at a time when the world is in a financial crisis.’ That the Taj Mahal and Oberoi play host to the cream of the international business elite is clear given the high-profile executives caught up in the tragedy. Along with Noon, Unilever chief executive Patrick Cescau and his successor, Paul Polman, escaped the Taj Mahal. ‘The security landscape has changed overnight,’ said Jake Stratton of investment risk consultancy Control Risks. ‘This will have a serious effect on how foreign companies perceive India as a business destination.’

11. The success of the terrorists in Mumbai was due to various factors—- inaction or inadequate action on available intelligence about the plans of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) to target Mumbai with a sea-borne operation,the rusting of our rapid response capability, our failure to draw the rigt lessons about crisis management from the unsatisfactory manner in which the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft to Kandahar in 1999 was handled,and the lack of a joint action capability in our counter-terrorism community consisting of the intelligence agencies, the police, the armed forces, the NSG, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) and the Joint Intelligence Committee.

12. The intelligence about the plans for a sea-borne strike in Mumbai had reportedly started flowing in from September when the attention of our policy-makers and senior national security managers was turned towards Vienna where the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) was meeting to consider the question of a waiver for India. In their preoccupation with the Vienna meeting of the NSG, the task of co-ordinating the follow-up action on the flow of intelligence appears to have been relegated to junior officials. whose decisions and directions did not have the same impact on the various dramatis personae involved in joint action. Moreover, during the months preceding the attack the Joint Intelligence Committee, whose task it would have been to analyse and assess the intelligence and decide on follow-up action, was without a head just as it was during the months when the Pakistan Army was getting ready to launch its intrusions into the Kargil area in 1998-99. One of the important lessons of the Kargil conflict was the danger of leaving important posts in our national security apparatus remain unfilled, but we seem to have repeated that mistake once again.

13. Terrorist attacks directed against economic and business targets have a tactical as well as a strategic impact, an economic as well as a psychological impact. The tactical impact is in respect of replaceable damages . The strategic impact has a long-term effect on the profitability of their business operations due to factors such as an increase in insurance premia for business transactions, an increase in their expenditure on physical security, and an increase in their tax liability due to a surge in Govt. spending on counter-terrorism for which the money has to come from the tax-payers. It has been estimated that the 9/11 terrorist strikes have resulted in a one-third increase in the expenditure on counter-terrorism in the US Defence Department alone. This does not include the expenditure of the Department of Homeland Security.The total US expenditure on counter-terrorism now amounts to US $ 500 billion per annum, which is 20 per cent of the total federal budget. This money has to come from the tax-payers.

14. The psychological impact arises from the nervousness of the business community. A businessman, who ventures abroad, looks for two things—-profitability and security of life and property. If we are not able to assure the security of life and property, no amount of profitability will induce him to take the risk of operating from India.

15. It is important to hold a thorough, time-bound enquiry into what went wrong in Mumbai and to share its findings with the Parliament and the public. The 9/11 terrorist strikes in the US led to an enquiry by a National Commission constituted jointly by the President and the two Houses of the Congress. Its report was released to the public and discussed in the Congress. A bipartisan resolution to implement its recommendations was passed in 2004. The London blasts of July 2005, were followed by a detailed enquiry by the joint Intelligence and Security Committee. Its report was discussed in the Parliament and its recommendations implemented. So too in Spain after the Madrid blasts of March,2004.In Singapore, there was a detailed enquiry into the escape from jail of a member of the pro-Al Qaeda Jemmah Islamiyah some months ago. Its report was placed before the Parliament and discussed. Since 9/11, there have been many acts of mass casualty terrorism in India—- seven since November,2007, alone. We have not had a thorough enquiry into any of them. How can we identify the weaknesses in our counter-terrorism machinery unless we enquire into the terrorist strikes?

16. The National Commission in the US, which went into the 9/11 terrorist strikes, pointed out that there was no culture of joint action in the US counter-terrorism community. We have no culture of joint action either. The basic principle underlying the concept of joint action is that every organisation in the counter-terrorism community is individually and jointly responsible for preventing an act of terrorism. Had we developed this culture of joint action, we would not be seeing the unedifying spectacle of the intelligence agencies, the Navy and the Mumbai Police blaming each other for not preventing the Mumbai strike.

17. Terrorists calculate that repeated and sustained successful terrorist strikes against capabilities would make the States more amenable to pressure and intimidation from them than successful terrorist strikes against human beings. Their calculations are not far wrong. In the case of terrorism against capabilities, even fears or rumours of a possible terrorist strike against them can have a negative effect on the economy.

18. Protection of capabilities against terrorist strikes has, therefore, become an important component of counter-terrorism. Protection of the capabilities of the State is the exclusive responsibility of the State for which it has a preventive intelligence capability and specially trained physical security agencies or forces.

19. Protection of the capabilities in the private sector is basically the responsibility of the physical security set-ups of the companies concerned, but the State too has an important responsibility for guiding them and helping them to improve their physical security set-ups through appropriate advice. There may be sensitive industries in the private sector, where the State’s role extends beyond guidance and advice to actually buttressing the physical security set-up of the company through its (the Government’s) own trained and armed personnel.

20. Effective physical security rests on a strong information base. The security set-ups of private companies and other establishments suffer from a major handicap in this regard. Their ability to collect intelligence is confined to the interior of the company or establishment. They will have no means of collecting intelligence about threats, which could arise from outside the company or establishment.

21. For this awareness of likely external threats they are dependent on the media, the police and the governmental intelligence agencies. The media reporting often tends to be sensational and over-dramatised. The reliability of their reports is often questionable. While open source information from the media is important for increasing awareness of likely threats, the ability to have it verified, analysed and assessed is equally important. Otherwise, physical security set-ups will be groping in the dark.

22. Such verification, analysis and assessment have to come from the Police and the intelligence agencies and the results of this process have to be shared promptly with the companies or establishments, which are likely to face a threat, with appropriate suggestions for follow-up action. It should not be left to the security set-ups of private companies to take the initiative to contact the police and other counter-terrorism agencies to find out if there are any external threats to them—particularly after reading media reports in this regard.

23. The police and other counter-terrorism agencies should play a proactive role in creating and strengthening credible information awareness among the heads of the security set-ups of vulnerable private companies and their CEOs. This has to be constantly achieved through periodic interactions organised by the police in the form of brain-storming sessions, round-table discussions etc. Such interactions at the initiative of the governmental agencies seem to be more sporadic than regular—-often triggered only by an actual crisis than by the anticipation of a possible crisis.

24. Heads of the security set-ups of private companies should have easy access, when warranted, to senior officers of the police and other counter-terrorism agencies. One gets an impression that such access is often restricted to officers at the middle or lower levels, who do not have the required degree of professionalism and self-confidence to be able to interact meaningfully and satisfactorily with senior officers of the private sector.

25. The effective physical security of any establishment—sensitive or non-sensitive, private or public— depends on effective access control. Access control is ensured through means such as renewable identity cards for the permanent members of the staff; temporary identity cards to outsiders coming on legitimate work; numbered invitation cards to those invited to conferences, meetings etc; restrictions on the entry of vehicles of outsiders into the campus; restricting the number of entry points and exits to the minimum unavoidable; identity checking at doors; checking for weapons and explosives through door-frame detectors; checking of vehicles for explosives; installation of closed circuit TV at the points of entry and exit and at sensitive points in the establishment; a central control room to monitor all happenings at the entry points and exits and inside the premises through the CCTV etc.Better access control by the security staff is facilitated through the advance sharing of information with them about the outsiders, who are expected to visit the premises for meetings, conferences, seminars etc.

26. These are the minimum measures considered necessary for any company or establishment, which is considered vulnerable to terrorist strikes. It is important for the Police to prepare and revise periodically lists of vulnerable companies/establishments in their jurisdiction and share their conclusions with the security set-ups concerned.

27. Similarly, it is important for each vulnerable company or establishment to prepare and revise periodically a list of vulnerable points/occasions, which would need the special attention of the security staff and brief the security staff on the follow-up action to be taken. It would also be necessary to discuss this list with the Police and seek their advice on the adequacy of the security measures, which the security set-up of the company or establishment proposes to take. The Police should not consider such consultations as unnecessary intrusions on their time. They should welcome such consultations or interactions as a necessary component of their counter-terrorism strategy.

28. IT companies and other establishments in South India often face work interruptions due to hoax telephone calls and E-mail and Fax messages regarding possible terrorist strikes. A basic principle in physical security is, “treat every information, hoax call etc as possibly correct unless and until it is proved to be false and take the necessary follow-up action. Never start on the presumption that the information is probably false or the message a hoax. This would be extremely inadvisable and even dangerous.

29.Even the best of intelligence cannot prevent a terrorist strike, if the physical security set-up is weak or inefficient. A competent physical security set-up can prevent a terrorist strike even in the absence of preventive intelligence.

30. Sometimes, despite the best of physical security, terrorists might succeed in staging an incident. That is where the role of the crisis management drill comes in to limit the damage. A well-prepared and frequently rehearsed crisis management drill is a very important part of the counter-terrorism strategy in any establishment—private or public.

31. Effective physical security is the outcome of constant enhancements in the security personnel of professionalism, self-confidence, information awareness, threat and vulnerability perceptions and protective capability. Achieving these enhancements is primarily the responsibility of the security set-up of the establishment, but the Police has an important role in facilitating this. This is a responsibility, which they should not evade. Well-structured police—security set-up interactions to enhance security in the private sector is the need of the hour.

32. Business resilience and business continuity management in terrorism-affected situations are two concepts increasingly figuring in discourses in the Western countries. They have also formed the subject of many studies by the business community and the counter-terrorism community—-separately of each other as well as jointly. It is said that the best contribution that the business community can make to counter-terrorism is by staying in business despite terrorist strikes. They may not be able to do it alone. The Government has to help them by playing a proactive role.

33. New ideas and new institutions have come up in the West to promote partnership between the Government and the business community for ensuring their security and for keeping their resilence undamaged. One example is the Overseas Security Assistance Council established in 1985 by the U.S. State Department to facilitate the exchange of security related information between the U.S. Government and the American private sector operating abroad. Another example is the creation of posts of Counter-Terrorism Security Advisers in important police stations in the UK after the London blasts of July,2005. One of their tasks is to keep in touch with the business establishments in their jurisdiction and advise them on security-related matters. 243 posts of Counter-Terrorism Security Advisers have been created since July 2005 and it has been reported that each important Police Station in London has at least two advisers attached to it. The London Police have established a programme called “London First” in which the Police and the private sector co-operate closely to ensure better security in London. The principle underlying it is that it is the joint responsibility of everyone in London to ensure its security from terrorist attacks. Let us have our own Delhi First,Mumbai First, Chennai First, Kolkata First, Bangalore First and Hyderabad First partnerships to ensure that November 26 will not be repeated again. (12-12-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group (www.southasiaanalysis.org)

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RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

By Rebecca Murray

Children play at the Harbel marketplace.

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia.

Lavella’s neighbourhood of Firestone contractors, retirees, marketers and squatters — estimated by community leader, Reverend Johnson Flumo, to be around 3,000 — is crowded into breezeblock and corrugated metal shacks haphazardly built in the town of Harbel’s marketplace.

But after more than two decades of selling food, clothing and plastic Chinese goods, the market dwellers’ days are numbered. Firestone intends to shift the vendors to a newly constructed market next month and tear down the old commercial lot. The new location will have over 1000 stalls, but no housing. Both sites are on land Firestone says is theirs until their lease runs out in 2041.

“Firestone has permitted individuals — who do not work for the company — to live free of charge on the site of the old marketplace since the end of the civil war in 2005,” says Firestone, in a statement to the media. “These individuals have been notified of the plans for renovation and have been asked to find alternative housing.”

Meanwhile, the market community residents have filed for a court injunction protesting the company’s Jan. 15 eviction order in the county capital of Kakata.

“In 1987 a gentleman’s agreement was reached with Firestone, where the market would be detached and autonomous under the [government-run Liberian Marketers Association] LMA,” explains Henry Mulbah, a former Firestone employee and union official, now coordinating the market residents’ legal effort with Reverend Flumo. “They allowed people to build their shops and warehouses with a dwelling room for someone to sleep there. The marketers were allowed to move their families in slowly over time.”

“They want to stay because they have no place to go, but in the event they have to relocate, they want compensation,” Mulbah continues. “The key thing is that the Liberian government has been collecting real estate taxes on these structures.”

Firestone, a U.S. company bought by the Japanese rubber conglomerate, Bridgestone, twenty years ago, was granted exclusive rights over one million acres of fertile land in 1926. The company has since been linked to labour abuses, including use of child workers, an over-zealous private security presence and a poor environmental record.

The Monrovia-based non-profit, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU), which partners with international watchdog Global Witness to monitor the plantation, reports: “Firestone, now under immense pressure, has made some changes to address some of these problems. However, some of these changes fall far short of the holistic and far reaching reforms that are needed to improve the living and working conditions of employees.”

After a controversial contract renegotiation in 2005, brokered by the then- transitional government in the aftermath of Liberia’s protracted brutal civil war, worker unrest and strong criticism from international bodies like the United Nations peacekeeping Mission in Liberia helped push the company to revise the terms of its concession once more with President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf’s government in March.

SAMFU’s director, James Makor, in an interview with IPS, said, “The new contract does not consider a third party — it’s just the government and Firestone. So the labourers do not have claims, as third party rights are not recognised for local people, employees and dependents.”

“Firestone flushed the system,” Makor says. “People wanted a public hearing but the next day the bill was passed by the Liberian national legislature. The speed was too fast; it was like everything was already programmed. There was nothing anyone could do.”

Eric Lavella first arrived at Firestone from rural Lofa County in Liberia’s north twenty years ago. He stayed on as the refuge swelled with families fleeing the fighting between Charles Taylor’s militia and government troops in 1990, but left when the violence and looting reached the plantation itself.

Now supporting a family of eight, Lavella is back and contracted by Firestone to work a 12-hour night shift helping supervise the conversion of raw latex to processed rubber, which is shipped from Monrovia’s commercial port to markets overseas.

After automatic deductions for taxes and two bags of rice, Lavella’s monthly take-home pay amounts to about $46. As a contractor, he receives no Firestone benefits or housing.

“I’m overseeing the process, but they don’t want to give me a staff position, because they don’t want to pay me for it,” he says. “Getting a job with Firestone is a very hard thing. We find it very difficult — our children don’t go to Firestone schools or clinics.”

SAMFU estimates Firestone directly employs 7,000 people, most of them rubber tappers making the equivalent of $3.38 a day. Starting work before dawn to meet a daily quota scraping 700 trees for latex, tappers frequently enlist family members or subcontractors to help them complete the arduous task. An additional 4,000 contractors, commonly factory workers and drivers, are paid substantially less at $2.65 a day.

Work as an illegal tapper at night is dangerous but profitable; they can fetch $100 a bucket but risk confrontation with ‘the Gravel Ants’, ex-militia members hired by Firestone to combat illicit workers, and notorious for their brutality during the civil war.

The Harbel market area is sandwiched between rows of crowded red brick houses — official Firestone housing for company staff — while the market dwellers are hemmed into ramshackle lean-tos in and around the commercial stalls. Most pay private property owners to rent a room, who in turn pay real estate taxes to the Ministry of Finance.

President Sirleaf intervened to postpone the company demolition, originally slated for October, so the dwellers would have time to find new homes. But market residents hope the amount of years they’ve lived there — some over twenty years — will help convince the courts to let them stay.

Ami Kamara is a 28-year-old mother from Sierra Leone, and one of those affected by the eviction notice. She lives at the end of a dank, narrow makeshift corridor in one room with her two children and her husband, an engineer sub-contracted to Firestone earning $60 a month. “During the war we were here — things were very hard,” she sighs. “Now we are satisfied with the peace. We have nowhere else to go.”
All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

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RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘Maoists Slow to Return Seized Property’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Renu Kshetry

KATHMANDU, Dec 9 (IPS) – Tej Bahadur Roila, a member of the Nepal army, is unable to return to his home in the Khotang district of Eastern Nepal because his property, seized by Maoist rebels in the middle of the decade-long civil war they waged against the monarchy, has not been returned.

The political arm of the rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) — which emerged as the largest political party elections held in April following the 2006 peace deal — has done little to fulfil pledges to return property grabbed by cadres from absentee landlords and people who fled the rural areas for safety.

Chances are slim that Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, still known by his nom de guerre ‘Prachanda’, will be able to fulfil solemn promises made in Parliament on Nov. 10 that seized property will be returned to owners by mid-December.

Dahal had also promised to pay compensation to those who do not get their property back and create conditions to let more than 200,000 people return to their homes.

Roila has little confidence in the promises. The tin roof and other materials used to construct his house have already been sold and he has no means to get his land released from the custody of local Maoists.

Hangdip, the Maoist who is in charge of Khotang district, told IPS that Roila’s land was seized because he was involved in the killing of three locals: Hari Bhattarai, Dakmani Koirala and Durga Koirala. Some 13,000 people are estimated to have died in the civil war which ended with peace deal and the abolition of the monarchy.

Gopi Khadka of Chisapani too has not been able to return home since 2003 after he was charged with helping the Nepal army kill local Maoist cadres. ”How will I prove my innocence? It is now impossible [to get the property back] because their party is in the government,” said Khadka.

According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal, local level Maoist cadres were preventing people from returning. ”Internally displaced people trying to return home have been chased away, and in some cases, beaten up by local Maoist cadres and in other cases made to appear before the Maoist ”people’s courts,” a U.N. official said.

During the war, the Maoists routinely captured the land and property of rich landlords, security personnel and members of political parties that were seen to be sympathetic to the monarchy that was dethroned at the end of the ten-year, armed conflict. Their hands may be tied because they came to power promising revolutionary land reforms in Nepal.

One difficulty with returning seized property is that the records are vague or missing. While the Maoists admit to capturing the lands of 28 people and the houses of 452 persons, the former peace minister Ram Chandra Poudel said around 1,400 cases related to capture of land and property were recorded during his tenure that ended three months ago.

Poudel, a member of the opposition Nepali Congress, says that hundreds of his party workers alone have lost land or property to the Maoists. The party holds 115 seats in the 601-member constituent assembly that is tasked with drafting a new constitution.

Pessimism also arises from the fact that Maoists cadres in the rural areas have not given up their predatory ways. Despite the Premier’s assurances of returning seized property, Maoist cadres raided rice stocks from 32 houses in the Bardia district of mid-western Nepal, late last month.

Mohan Baidya, central committee member of CPN-M, blames such action on locals unconnected his party. ”The landless people did that as it was their right as well. If citizens loot or seize property then nobody can blame it on the Maoists,” said Baidya.

”The Maoist-led government is showing double standards. On the one hand it announces plans to return seized property and on the other it encourages its cadres to loot,” said Purusottam Dahal, president of the voluntary Human Rights and Peace Society.

Dahal also said if the government compensates for property seized by the Maoists from state funds, then it would promote anarchism. ”It shows the statelessness of the system,” he said.

The prime minister’s views on compensation have also resulted in protests from the opposition party. Girija Prasad Koirala, chairman of Nepali Congress, has opposed the government’s idea of granting compensations out of state funds.

Arjun Narsingh of Nepali Congress said that under the 12-point agreement signed by the Maoists, the properties of 13,000 people needed to be returned. ”Only 450 people have got their property back so far,” Narsingh said.

According to Narsingh those who did get their properties back in Rolpa, Rukum and Dang were forced to join the CPN-M or sign documents stating that they would not indulge in political activities. ”We doubt that the Maoist would abide by the agreement… If they fail to do so, it could become the biggest element that could threaten the peace process and prevent it from reaching a logical end.”

However, minister for information and communications Krishna Bahadur Mahara told IPS that the government has formed a committee to finalise data collection with a view to restoring property. ”We are collecting data from across the country, but before returning the seized land there is a need to assess the relationship between the landowners and the farmers,” he said.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Katmanddu Street Scene
Author: Pavel Novak
Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5
Wikimedia Commons

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