http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_isrorgs.htm
While the neoconservatives were the driving force behind the American invasion of Iraq and the consequent efforts to bring about regime change throughout the Middle East, the idea for such a war did not originate with American neocon thinkers but rather in Israel. An obvious linkage exists between the war position of the neocons and what has long been a strategy of the Israeli Right and, to a lesser extent, of the Israeli mainstream.
The idea of a Middle East war had been bandied about in Israel for many years as a means of enhancing Israeli security. War would serve two purposes. It would enhance Israel's external security by weakening and splintering Israel's neighbors. Moreover, such a war and the consequent weakening of Israel's external enemies could help resolve the internal Palestinian demographic problem, since the Palestinian resistance has derived material and moral support from Israel's neighboring states.
A brief look at the history of the Zionist movement and its goals will help to provide an understanding of this issue. The Zionist goal of creating an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine was complicated by the fundamental problem that the country was already settled with a mostly non-Jewish population. Despite public rhetoric to the contrary, the idea of expelling the indigenous Palestinian population (euphemistically referred to as a "transfer") was an integral part of the Zionist effort to found a Jewish national state in Palestine.
"The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, first appearing in Theodore Herzl's diary," Israeli historian Tom Segev observes. "In practice, the Zionists began executing a mini-transfer from the time they began purchasing the land and evacuating the Arab tenants.... 'Disappearing' the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence.... With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer — or its morality." However, the Zionist leaders learned not to publicly proclaim their goal of mass expulsion because "this would cause the Zionists to lose the world's sympathy." [1]
The challenge was to find an opportune time to initiate the mass-expulsion process when it would not incur the world's condemnation. In the late 1930s, Ben-Gurion wrote: "What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out — a whole world is lost." [2] Those "revolutionary times" would come with the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, when the Zionists were able to expel 750,000 Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the indigenous population) and thus achieve an overwhelmingly Jewish state, though the area did not include the entirety of Palestine, or the "Land of Israel," which Zionist leaders thought necessary for a viable country.
The opportunity to grab additional land came as a result of the 1967 war; however, the occupation of that territory brought with it the problem of a large Palestinian population. World opinion was now totally opposed to forced population transfers, equating such an activity with the unspeakable horror of Nazism. According to Norman Finkelstein, the landmark Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949, had "unequivocally prohibited deportation" of civilians under occupation. [3] Since the 1967 war, the major issue in Israeli politics has been what to do with that conquered territory and its Palestinian population.
Because Israel's neighbors opposed the Zionist project of creating an exclusivist Jewish state, the idea of weakening and dissolving those neighbors was not an idea just of the Israeli Right but a central Zionist goal from a much earlier period, promoted by David Ben-Gurion himself. As Saleh Abdel-Jawwad, a professor at Birzeit University in Ramallah, Palestine, writes:
Israel has supported secessionist movements in Sudan, Iraq, Egypt, and Lebanon and any secessionist movements in the Arab world which Israel considers an enemy. Yet the concern for Iraq and [Israel's] attempts to weaken or prevent it from developing its strengths has always been a central Zionist objective. At times, Israel succeeded in gaining a foothold in Iraq by forging secret yet strong relationships with leaders from the Kurdish movement. [4]
Israel's goal has been not simply to weaken external enemies, but, by so doing, also isolate and weaken the position of the Palestinians — the internal demographic threat that poses the greatest danger to the Jewish-supremacist state. The reason for this is that the Arab states provide spiritual and material aid to the Palestinian cause. Without outside aid the Palestinians would give up hope and be more apt to acquiesce in whatever solution the Israeli government might offer. Abdel-Jawwad writes: "Sequential wars with the Arab world have given Israel opportunities to exhaust the Arab world, as well as tipping the demographic and political situation against Palestinians. Even regional wars which Israel has not participated in have benefited Israel and weakened the Palestinian national movement. The first and second Gulf War are a few examples."
Abdel-Jawwad continues: "Finally, the ... Gulf War of 1991 resulted in the expulsion of the Palestinian community from Kuwait, which formed one of the primary arteries of Palestinian income and power in the occupied territories." [5]
With the coming to power of the right-wing Likud government in 1977 under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel would pursue a more militant policy whereby war would be seen as the major means of improving Israel's geostrategic situation. The departure of relatively moderate Cabinet ministers after 1980 reinforced that hard-line orientation. Historian Ilan Peleg refers to this dramatic change as the start of Israel's "second republic." [6] He writes:
Begin quickly deserted the traditional defensive posture [of the Israeli Left], of which he was highly critical in the first three decades of Israel when he was in the opposition. He adopted an offensive posture characterized by grandiose expansionist goals, extensive and frequent use of Israel's military machine, and political compellence [sic] rather than military deterrence as a controlling factor. Begin's final objective was to create a new, Israeli-dominated order in the Middle East, an order that would have as one of its elements nominal autonomy for the West Bank Palestinians. For the purpose of shaping the new order, he was willing to shift from a position of deterrence and prevention, which characterized Labor's defense policy, to a position of compellence and control. His was a Clausewitzian approach, the use of warfare for purely political goals. [7]
The Right had not governed Israel before 1977, and while there was not a total dichotomy between the Left and Right regarding internal and external relations with Arabs, the Israeli Right was the more militant in its policies toward the Palestinians and toward Israel's Arab neighbors. Those policies rested on strong ideological roots.
The Israeli Right originated in Revisionist Zionism, whose founder and spiritual guide was the gifted writer Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Its policies were characterized by the quest for "Eretz Israel" — which entailed, at the minimum, complete Jewish control of all land on both sides of the Jordan River; and also accorded primacy to military force in foreign-policy matters. Peleg writes: "Jabotinsky's approach to the conflict came to be dominated by popular ideas of 'blood and soil,' a Jewish version of Social Darwinism." [8]
It was inevitable that, under the leadership of Begin, Israel would follow the hard-line policy of Jabotinsky. In fact, historical events had made Begin and his followers even more militant than Jabotinsky. Their radicalism emerged from Begin's leadership of the terrorist Irgun Tsvai Leumi, which fought the British and Palestinians in the 1940s, and the trauma of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe. Begin tended to view all criticism of Israel as tantamount to anti-Semitism, and the militant opposition of the Arabs as comparable to Nazi genocide. [9]
Begin headed the Herut Party at the beginning of the Israeli state in 1948. However, it was not until after the formation of the Likud bloc of right-wing parties in 1973, of which the Herut constituted the central core, that the Right had the chance to win enough votes to govern.
That first Begin government in 1977 had its moderate and restraining elements, and its crowning achievement was the Camp David Accords with Egypt. Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, along with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, steered Begin away from expressing his warlike instincts. With the departure of those moderates, the Begin Cabinet fell under the domination of more-militant figures, the most important of whom was Ariel Sharon, who served as defense minister from 1981 to 1983. Sharon, who came from a military background involving counter-terrorism and even terrorism itself, translated Begin's hard-line thinking into actual policy. [10]
With the Likud assumption of power, the most far-reaching militant proposals entered mainstream Zionist thinking, involving militant destabilization of Israel's neighbors and Palestinian expulsion. An important article in that genre was Oded Yinon's "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s," which appeared in the World Zionist Organization's periodical Kivunim (Directions) in February 1982. Yinon had been attached to the Foreign Ministry, and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. According to Peleg, "The Yinon article was an authentic mirror of the thinking mode of the Israeli Right at the height of Begin's rule; it reflected a sense of unlimited and unrestrained power.... There can be no question that the hard-core Neo-Revisionist camp as a whole subscribed, at least until the Lebanese fiasco, to ideas similar to those of Yinon." [11]
Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution of regional Arab states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of ethnic and sectarian groupings. He believed that this would not be a difficult undertaking because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-states that could in no way confront Israeli power.
Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon's model for the entire Middle East. He wrote:
Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. [12]
Note that Yinon sought the dissolution of countries — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — that were allied to the United States.
Yinon looked upon Iraq as a major target for dissolution, and he believed that the ongoing Iran-Iraq war would promote its breakup:
Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization. [13]
Yinon's 1982 prediction that war would bring about the religious/ethnic fragmentation of Iraq fits nicely with what actually occurred in the aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion. Certainly his forecast was far closer to being accurate than the neocons' rosy public prognostications, before the invasion, about the easy engineering of Iraqi democracy. But from the Likudnik perspective, the reality of a conquered Iraq was much to be preferred to the neocon pipe dream. It comes as no surprise, then, that Israel has developed close ties with the Kurdish separatists. [14]
The goal of Israeli hegemony was inextricably tied to the expulsion of the Palestinians. According to Yinon, the policy of Israel must be "to bring about the dissolution of Jordan; the termination of the problem of the [occupied] territories densely populated with Arabs west of the [River] Jordan; and emigration from the territories, and economic-demographic freeze in them." He added, "We have to be active in order to encourage this change speedily, in the nearest time."
Like many Israeli advocates of population transfer, Yinon believed that "Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and shortly after the [1967] war.... Such a line would have saved us the bitter and dangerous conflict ever since which we could have already then terminated by giving Jordan to the Palestinians." [15]
In a foreword to his English translation of Yinon's piece, Israel Shahak made an interesting comparison between the neoconservative position and actual Likudnik goals: "The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the U.S.A. is very prominent, especially in the author's notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the 'defense of the West' from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest." [16]
The Yinon article embodied the thinking of Likud strategists of the early 1980s. As Noam Chomsky wrote in Fateful Triangle: "much of what Yinon discusses is quite close to mainstream thinking." Chomsky described the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 1982 as representing an attempt to implement Yinon's geostrategy. "The 'new order' that Israel is attempting to impose in Lebanon is based on a conception not unlike what Yinon expresses, and there is every reason to suppose that similar ideas with regard to Syria may seem attractive to the political leadership." [17]
To bolster his thesis regarding Likudnik war strategy, Chomsky discussed an analytical article by Yoram Peri — former advisor to Prime Minister Rabin and European representative of the Labor Party, and a specialist on civil-military relations in Israel — that came out in the Labor party journal Davar in October 1982. [18] Peri described a "true revolution" in "military-diplomatic conception," which he dated to the coming to power of the Likudniks. (Chomsky saw the shift as being more gradual and "deeply rooted" in the Israeli elite.) Summarizing Peri, Chomsky wrote:
The earlier conception [during the reign of the leftwing Zionists] was based on the search for "coexistence" and maintenance of the status quo. Israel aimed at a peaceful settlement in which its position in the region would be recognized and its security achieved. The new conception is based on the goal of "hegemony," not "coexistence." No longer a status quo power, having achieved military dominance as the world's fourth most powerful military force, and no longer believing in even the possibility of peace or even its desirability except in terms of Israeli hegemony, Israel is now committed to "destabilization" of the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. In accordance with the new conception, Israel should now use its military dominance to expand its borders and "to create a new reality," a "new order," rather than seek recognition within the status quo. [19]
Destabilization of its surrounding enemies would seem to be a perfectly rational strategy for Israel. Certainly, all countries, if they had enemies, would prefer them to be weak rather than strong. As Chomsky pointed out:
It is only natural to expect that Israel will seek to destabilize the surrounding states, for essentially the reasons that lead South Africa on a similar course in its region. In fact, given continuing military tensions, that might be seen virtually as a security imperative. A plausible long-term goal might be what some have called an "Ottomanization" of the region, that is, a return to something like the system of the Ottoman empire, with a powerful center (Turkey then, Israel with U.S. backing now) and much of the region fragmented into ethnic-religious communities, preferably mutually hostile. [20]
Peri, however, thought that this destabilization policy would ultimately harm Israel because it would alienate the United States, upon which Israel's security ultimately depended. Chomsky summarized Peri's critical stance: "The reason is that the U.S. is basically a status quo power itself, opposed to destabilization of the sort to which Israel is increasingly committed. The new strategic conception is based on an illusion of power, and may lead to a willingness, already apparent in some of the rhetoric heard in Israel, to undertake military adventures even without U.S. support." [21]
Israel embarked on just such a unilateral adventure in its invasion of Lebanon in 1982. And the disastrous result demonstrated the grave limitations of a unilateral war-oriented strategy for Israel.
When Israel Defense Forces invaded Lebanon on June 6, 1982, propagandists represented "Operation Peace for Galilee" to the public as a limited operation to remove Palestinian bases. The real objectives of the operation were far more ambitious: to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization's military and political infrastructure, to strike a serious blow against Syria, and to install a pro-Israeli Christian regime in Lebanon. Israeli troops advanced far into Lebanon, even beyond Beirut, coming into conflict with Palestinians, Lebanese Muslims, and Syrians. Despite Israeli's deep military penetration, the objectives remained unachievable. Israel became ensnared in Lebanon's ongoing civil war, from which it was unable to free itself for the next three years. [22]
Israel's invasion of Lebanon, which caused well-publicized civilian casualties, including the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps outside Beirut, was a public-relations disaster for the Begin government. World opinion turned against Israel. Strong criticism even arose in Israel, with the country's first mass peace movement demonstrating on the streets of Tel Aviv. The Israeli military was angry about the no-win war. And recriminations flew back and forth within the Likud Party itself, centering on the claim that Defense Minister Sharon had not informed Begin of the extent of the planned invasion. [23]
Significantly, Israel's brutal actions in Lebanon shook support for the country in the United States, even among American Jews. On August 12, 1982, President Reagan personally demanded of Begin that Israel stop the bombardment of Beirut. Later that month, Reagan insisted that Israeli forces withdraw from West Beirut. Israel quickly complied. Given the fact that Israel was so heavily dependent on American arms, the Begin government realized that it would severely harm Israel's power if it were to alienate its major sponsor. [24]
The war in Lebanon ultimately led to Begin's resignation in 1983. The invasion turned out to be Israel's least successful and most unpopular conflict in its history. It was Israel's Vietnam.
The failure in Lebanon led to much soul-searching in Israel. Israeli foreign-policy expert Yehoshafat Harkabi critiqued the overall Likudnik strategy, oriented as it was toward war, writing of "Israeli intentions to impose a Pax Israelica on the Middle East, to dominate the Arab countries and treat them harshly," in his significant work, Israel's Fateful Hour, published in 1988. Writing from a "realist" perspective, Harkabi argued that Israel did not have the power to achieve the goal of Pax Israelica, given the strength of the Arab states, the large Palestinian population involved, and the vehement opposition of world opinion. Harkabi hoped that "the failed Israeli attempt to impose a new order in the weakest Arab state — Lebanon — will disabuse people of similar ambitions in other territories." [25]
Likudniks, however, did not see the Israeli strategy in the Lebanon debacle as inherently flawed. Some on the Israeli Right held that Israel did not push hard enough to crush its enemies — that it was affected too much by outside criticism. Harkabi maintained that even if Israeli forces had crossed into Syria and occupied Damascus, Israel still would have failed to achieve true victory but instead would have provoked an interminable guerrilla war. Harkabi wrote, "The Lebanon War revealed an ongoing Israeli limitation: no matter how complete [the] Israeli military triumph, the strategic results will prove to be limited. Ben-Gurion understood this when he said that Israel could not solve its problems once and for all by war. But this view is in stark contradiction to the spirit of the Jabotinsky-Begin ethos. It is no wonder that those who adhere to it cannot accept that the great event is of no avail." [26]
Harkabi was correct about the "spirit of the Jabotinsky-Begin ethos." To many strategically minded Likudniks, the fiasco of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon had not disproven the claim that destabilization of the area would be beneficial to Israeli security; nor had it disproven the notion that such destabilization was achievable. Instead, the principal lesson many Likudnik-oriented thinkers drew from the failed Lebanon incursion was that no military campaign to destabilize Israel's enemies could succeed without extensive backing from Israel's principal sponsor, the United States.
But the chance that the United States would back Israeli destabilization efforts, much less act as Israel's proxy to fight its enemies, seemed slim at the time. In the 1980s, U.S. Middle East policy, although sympathetic to Israel, differed significantly from Israel's on the issue of stability. As Yoram Peri recognized, Washington was supportive of the status quo. While Likudnik thinking focused on destabilizing Israel's Middle East enemies, the fundamental goal of U.S. policy was to promote stable governments in the Middle East that would allow the oil to flow to the Western industrial nations. It was not necessary for oil-rich nations to befriend Israel — in fact, they could openly oppose the Jewish state. The United States worked for peace between Israel and the Arab states, but it was a compromise peace that would try to accommodate some demands of the Arab countries — most crucially demands involving the Palestinians.
Peri had argued that if Israel went off on its own in destabilizing the Middle East, the United States would abandon Israel, to Israel's detriment. What was needed for the destabilization plan to work was a transformation of American Middle East policy. If the United States adopted the same destabilization policy as Israel, then such a policy could succeed. U.S. influence among its allies and in the United Nations, where it held a veto, would be enough to shelter Israel from the animosity of world opinion, preventing it from ending up as a pariah state such as the white-ruled Republic of South Africa. Better yet, though perhaps unimagined in the 1980s, would be to induce the United States to act in Israel's place to destabilize the region.
Even if imagined, such a policy revolution was certainly impossible in that decade. However, through the long-term efforts of the American neoconservatives, the transformation actually occurred in the Bush II administration. The neocon advocacy of dramatically altering the Middle Eastern status quo stood in stark contrast to the traditional American position of maintaining stability in the area — though it did, of course, mesh perfectly with Israel's long-established goal of destabilizing its enemies.
As neocon Kenneth Adelman would put it during George W. Bush's first term, "The starting point is that [neo] conservatives now are for radical change, and the progressives — the establishment foreign-policy makers — are for the status quo." Adelman emphasized that "conservatives believe that the status quo in the Middle East is pretty bad, and the old conservative belief that stability is good doesn't apply to the Middle East. The status quo in the Middle East has been breeding terrorists." [27]
But even many neocons did not directly move to the idea that the United States would actually be the military instigator of destabilization in the Middle East. After the Bush I administration failed to occupy Iraq and remove Saddam in the Gulf War of 1991, as the neoconservatives would have liked, [28] the neocons were thinking in terms of an Israeli military venture, but one enjoying extensive American moral and political support. A clear illustration of the neocon view on this subject — and the intimate connection with Israeli security — was a 1996 paper titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," published by an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Included in the study group that produced it were men who would loom large in the Bush II administration's war policy in the Middle East — Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser. Perle was listed as the head of the study group. [29]
The "realm" that the study group sought to secure was that of Israel. The purpose of the policy paper was to provide a political blueprint for the incoming Israeli Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The paper stated that Netanyahu should "make a clean break" with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would "shape its strategic environment," beginning with the removal of Saddam and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad. By removing Saddam, the study held, Israel would be in a better strategic position to get at its more dangerous foes. In short, elimination of Saddam was a first step toward reconfiguring the entire Middle East for the benefit of Israel: "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." [30]
To prevent the debilitating American criticism of Israeli policy that took place during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the "Clean Break" report advised Netanyahu to present Israeli actions "in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well to Israel." For example, the report stated that "Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state. Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel's survival, but it would broaden Israel's base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense." [31]
Israel could also gain American support, the report maintained, by appealing to Western ideals. The Netanyahu government should "promote Western values and traditions. Such an approach ... will be well received in the United States." The appeal to American values loomed large in the report's reference to Lebanon: "An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon." In short, the report saw the use of moral values in largely utilitarian terms. References to moral values were for American consumption. This was a means to get American support for a policy to advance Israeli national interests. [32]
Intelligence writer James Bamford cut to the core of the Israeli manipulations:
To gain the support of the American government and public, a phony pretext would be used as the reason for the original invasion.
The recommendation of Feith, Perle, and Wurmser was for Israel to once again invade Lebanon with air strikes. But this time, to counter potentially hostile reactions from the American government and public, they suggested using a pretext. They would claim that the purpose of the invasion was to halt Syria's drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure located there. They were subjects in which Israel had virtually no interest, but they were ones, they said, with which America can sympathize.
Another way to win American support for a pre-empted war against Syria, they suggested, was by drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program. This claim would be that Israel's war was really all about protecting Americans from drugs, counterfeit bills, and WMD — nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. [33]
Still, in the "Clean Break," neocons were advising Israeli military action. It should be emphasized that the same people — Feith, Wurmser, Perle — who advised the Israeli government on issues of national security would also advise the George W. Bush administration to pursue virtually the same policy regarding the Middle East, but employing American armed forces. As political observer William James Martin would astutely comment about "Clean Break": "This document is remarkable for its very existence because it constitutes a policy manifesto for the Israeli government penned by members of the current U.S. government." [34] Martin went on to point out that the similarity between that document's recommendation for Israel and the neocon-inspired Bush administration policy, purportedly designed for the benefit of American interests, was even more remarkable:
It is amazing how much of this program, though written for the Israeli government of Netanyahu of 1996, has already been implemented, not by the government of Israel, but by the Bush administration. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the two-year-old house arrest of Arafat and the attempt to cultivate a new Palestinian leadership, the complete rejection by Sharon of the land for peace agreement on the Golan Heights, with little U.S. demurral, and the bombing inside of "Syria proper" with only the response from Bush, "Israel has a right to defend itself." [35]
The dramatic similarities between the "Clean Break" scenario and actual Bush II administration Middle East policy are evident not only in the results but also in the sequence of events. Notably, the "Clean Break" report held that removing Saddam was the key to weakening Israel's other enemies; and after removing Saddam in 2003 the United States would indeed quickly threaten Iran and Syria, and talk of restructuring the entire Middle East. [36] Evident, too, is a similarity between actual events and the Yinon proposal of 1982, which also saw regime change in Iraq as a fundamental move in destabilizing Israel's enemies.
To reiterate the central point of this essay: the vision of "regime change" in the Middle East through external, militant action originated in Israel, and its sole purpose was to advance the strategic interests of Israel. It had nothing to do with bringing "democracy" to Muslims. It had nothing to do with any terrorist threat to the United States. Those latter arguments accreted to the idea of regime change as the primary military actor changed from Israel to the United States. But the Israeli government would continue to be a fundamental supporter of the regional military action, even as the ostensible justifications for action changed. The Sharon government advocated the American attacks on Iraq and has preached the necessity of strikes on Iran.
It would appear that for Ariel Sharon during the Bush II administration, the strategic benefits that would accrue to Israel from such a militant restructuring of the Middle East were the same as those that Likudniks sought in the 1980s. But unlike Begin's failed incursion into Lebanon in 1982, the Bush II effort not only relied upon the much greater power of the United States but also was wrapped in a cover of "democracy" and American national interest, effectively masking the true objective of Israeli hegemony. That helps to explain the much greater success of this intervention, which has come at no cost to Israel.
Instead, it has come at a cost to the United States. The United States has tarnished its international reputation through its militarily aggressive actions in contravention of prevailing international norms. It has also had to pay significant costs in blood and money: rather, the American people have had to pay those costs. And the United States has made itself, and the American people, a major target of international terrorism. In short, the benefits derived by the United States from its Middle East military adventure are highly questionable; but that is easily understood if one recognizes that the policy the Bush II administration has pursued did not originate as one to benefit the interests of the United States but rather to benefit those of Israel, as those interests have been perceived by the Israeli Right.
Sunday, 12 April 2009
Federal Reserve - Jewish Private Bankers
Federal Reserve - Jewish Private Bankers
http://www.rense.com/general85/feddrec.htm
JEWS CONTROL THE MONEY IN AMERICA. Period. End of story.
Jews own and run the Federal Reserve Bank that the US government continually borrows from...and is in debt to.
Napoleon said: When a government is dependent for money upon the bankers, they and not the government leaders control the nation. This is because the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency.
The Federal Reserve Bank is a consortium of 9 Jewish-owned & associated banks with the Rothschilds at the head:
$1. Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin.
$2. Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris.
$3. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy.
$4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam.
$5. Lehman Brothers of NY.
$6. Kuhn, Loeb Bank of NY (Now Shearson American Express).
$7. Goldman, Sachs of NY.
$8. National Bank of Commerce NY/Morgan Guaranty Trust (J. P. Morgan Bank - Equitable Life - Levi P. Morton are principal shareholders).
$9. Hanover Trust of NY (William and David Rockefeller & Chase National Bank NY are principal shareholders).
TIME LINE OF THE JEW-OWNED FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
1791-1811: Rothschilds' First Bank of the United States.
1816-1836: Rothschilds' Second Bank of the United States.
1837-1862: Free Banking Era - no formal Central Bank through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.
1862-1913: System of National Banks through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.
1913-Current: Federal Reserve Act effects a consortium of privately held Jewish & associated banks called the Federal Reserve Bank. The largest shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank are the Rothschilds of London holding 57% of the stock, which is not available for public trading.
On May 23 1933, Congressman Louis T. McFadden brought impeachment charges against the members of the Federal Reserve Bank. A smear campaign against McFadden ensued and he was poisoned 3 years later.
JEWS RUN THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
Here are the Jews that control the government of America:
1) Ben Shalom Bernanke: Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2020.
2) Donald L. Kohn: Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2016.
3) Randall S. Kroszner: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve.
4) Frederic S. Mishkin: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2014.
5) Alan Greenspan: Advisor to Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Recent Chairman.
HOW THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK WORKS:
JEWISH BANKERS PRINT MONEY at heavily-armed & guarded Federal Reserve Bank buildings throughout the US. Then these Jewish bankers of the Federal Reserve Bank *loan* the money to the US government at *interest.*
Since the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (and all the others) is listed in Dun & Bradstreet. But according to Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue money and regulate its value.
Thus it is *illegal* for private interests to issue US money. But because influential Jews like Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff bribed into enactment the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank were to be kept a secret. Only recently have the Jewish stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank come to light.
International cooperation with the Jew-owned Federal Reserve Bank has been intense to coordinate currency. In 1985, officials from the JP Morgan Bank of NY met with the Credit Lyonnais Bank of France. They established the European Currency Unit Banking Association (ECUBA) to get world cooperation for a unified currency.
In October 1987, the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (AMUE) secretly met and recommended that the ECU (European Currency Unit) replace existing national currencies and that all European Central Banks be combined into one and issue the ECU as the official unified currency. This occurred in 1999 with the issuing of the Euro.
The plan of the international Jewish banking cabal is to have only 3 central banks in the world: The Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, and the Central Bank of Japan. All of these banks are headed by the Rothschilds.
And Next To Come Will Be The One World Government Run By Anti-Christian Jews.
Read the source article from Real Jew News with links here.
http://www.rense.com/general85/feddrec.htm
JEWS CONTROL THE MONEY IN AMERICA. Period. End of story.
Jews own and run the Federal Reserve Bank that the US government continually borrows from...and is in debt to.
Napoleon said: When a government is dependent for money upon the bankers, they and not the government leaders control the nation. This is because the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Financiers are without patriotism and without decency.
The Federal Reserve Bank is a consortium of 9 Jewish-owned & associated banks with the Rothschilds at the head:
$1. Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin.
$2. Lazard Brothers Banks of Paris.
$3. Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy.
$4. Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam.
$5. Lehman Brothers of NY.
$6. Kuhn, Loeb Bank of NY (Now Shearson American Express).
$7. Goldman, Sachs of NY.
$8. National Bank of Commerce NY/Morgan Guaranty Trust (J. P. Morgan Bank - Equitable Life - Levi P. Morton are principal shareholders).
$9. Hanover Trust of NY (William and David Rockefeller & Chase National Bank NY are principal shareholders).
TIME LINE OF THE JEW-OWNED FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
1791-1811: Rothschilds' First Bank of the United States.
1816-1836: Rothschilds' Second Bank of the United States.
1837-1862: Free Banking Era - no formal Central Bank through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.
1862-1913: System of National Banks through the efforts of President Andrew Jackson.
1913-Current: Federal Reserve Act effects a consortium of privately held Jewish & associated banks called the Federal Reserve Bank. The largest shareholders of the Federal Reserve Bank are the Rothschilds of London holding 57% of the stock, which is not available for public trading.
On May 23 1933, Congressman Louis T. McFadden brought impeachment charges against the members of the Federal Reserve Bank. A smear campaign against McFadden ensued and he was poisoned 3 years later.
JEWS RUN THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK
Here are the Jews that control the government of America:
1) Ben Shalom Bernanke: Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2020.
2) Donald L. Kohn: Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2016.
3) Randall S. Kroszner: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve.
4) Frederic S. Mishkin: Member of Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Term ends 2014.
5) Alan Greenspan: Advisor to Board of Governors of Federal Reserve. Recent Chairman.
HOW THE FEDERAL RESERVE BANK WORKS:
JEWISH BANKERS PRINT MONEY at heavily-armed & guarded Federal Reserve Bank buildings throughout the US. Then these Jewish bankers of the Federal Reserve Bank *loan* the money to the US government at *interest.*
Since the Federal Reserve Bank is privately owned, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (and all the others) is listed in Dun & Bradstreet. But according to Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution, only Congress has the right to issue money and regulate its value.
Thus it is *illegal* for private interests to issue US money. But because influential Jews like Paul Warburg and Jacob Schiff bribed into enactment the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank were to be kept a secret. Only recently have the Jewish stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank come to light.
International cooperation with the Jew-owned Federal Reserve Bank has been intense to coordinate currency. In 1985, officials from the JP Morgan Bank of NY met with the Credit Lyonnais Bank of France. They established the European Currency Unit Banking Association (ECUBA) to get world cooperation for a unified currency.
In October 1987, the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (AMUE) secretly met and recommended that the ECU (European Currency Unit) replace existing national currencies and that all European Central Banks be combined into one and issue the ECU as the official unified currency. This occurred in 1999 with the issuing of the Euro.
The plan of the international Jewish banking cabal is to have only 3 central banks in the world: The Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank, and the Central Bank of Japan. All of these banks are headed by the Rothschilds.
And Next To Come Will Be The One World Government Run By Anti-Christian Jews.
Read the source article from Real Jew News with links here.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Neo-Nazi, Germany
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,614209,00.html#ref=nlint
03/19/2009 11:48 AMFAR RIGHT WARNING
Neo-Nazi Threat Growing Despite NPD Cash Woes
By David Crossland in Berlin
Germany's far-right National Democratic Party may be on the brink of financial collapse, but the neo-Nazi scene is alive and kicking. And, experts warn, it is becoming more dangerous.
The right-extremist National Democratic Party is almost broke. That, at least, has been the message delivered recently by both media reports and the party itself. Even the NPD chairman Udo Voigt admitted that his party was in an "existential crisis."
The NPD, which Germany's domestic intelligence agency describes as a "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" party bent on removing democracy and forming a Fourth Reich, is on the brink of insolvency because it faces heavy fines for accounting irregularities in recent years.
To the overwhelming majority of Germans, that will naturally come as good news. But regardless of the NPD's financial problems and the possibility that it may cease to function, the country's far-right scene is becoming more dangerous, experts say.
"The neo-Nazi scene, both inside and outside the NPD, is becoming stronger, not as a nationwide electoral force but in its influence on racist attitudes and violence," Professor Hajo Funke, a prominent analyst of the far right at Berlin's Free University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "There are places I wouldn't advise anyone who looks foreign to go without protection."
Racist Youth
Funke's analysis was backed up this week by a major new study which showed that fully one in seven German teenagers -- 14.4 percent -- have attitudes deemed highly xenophobic. They agreed with statements like, for example, "Most immigrants are criminal."
The two-year, government-commissioned survey of more than 20,000 15-year-old schoolchildren concluded that a further 26.2 percent held "fairly xenophobic" attitudes. A proportion of 5.2 percent of teenagers were classified as far-right because they had racist views, listened to neo-Nazi music, wore corresponding fashions or had committed a far-right crime, the survey showed. A further 11.5 percent had strong far-right sympathies.
"It was known that the figures were high," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told a news conference on Tuesday. "But I'm appalled that they're this high."
Apart from the new survey, analysts point to a surge in far-right crimes last year and to a surprisingly strong showing of neo-Nazis on Feb. 14 to mark the 64th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II. An estimated 7,000-8,000 neo-Nazis, many of them wearing black hooded jackets, marched silently through the eastern German city with banners condemning the "Bombing Holocaust."
They were outnumbered by anti-Nazi demonstrators, but the fact that the NPD managed to attract more than twice as many supporters to the event as last year underlines that the far-right scene is growing, especially in the economically depressed east. And it is an impression backed by the numbers. Far-right crimes reached a new high of 13,985 in 2008, a 28 percent rise over 2007, according to preliminary figures from the German interior ministry. Such crime statistics are often revised upwards.
"The crimes statistics show right-wing extremism is steadily expanding," confirmed Funke.
Crimes Small and Large
Most of those offenses are non-violent, such as daubing swastikas on headstones in Jewish cemeteries or smashing the windows of takeaway restaurants run by immigrants. Unfortunately, they have become so commonplace that they don't usually make the headlines anymore.
But the number of violent far-right crimes, such as arson and assault, is likewise rising -- by 14.5 percent to 735 in 2008. The incidence of such attacks is far higher in the east than the west, and anti-Nazi campaigners have been warning for years that parts of the east have become no-go areas for immigrants.
Typical cases include the beating of a 44-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker in the town of Brandenburg near Berlin last May. He was attacked from behind by men shouting "Get out of here you pig" and sustained serious head injuries, according to Opferspektive, a government-funded group that monitors such attacks.
In Niedergörsdorf near Berlin in June, a man who was overheard speaking Russian in the street was punched by a neighbor who yelled: "You Russian Jew pig, Hitler would have gassed something like you!"
On March 7 in the eastern town of Mügeln, two men assaulted an Indian man outside a pizza restaurant and broke his nose. Prosecutors aren't ruling out a racist motive. Outside that same restaurant in August 2007, eight Indian men were assaulted by a mob chanting "Foreigners Out" in a case that attracted international attention.
Declining Economy May Boost NPD Support
Funke said that despite its internal problems, the NPD remains well organized in the two eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where it has seats in the regional parliaments, and that it may even win enough support to enter the parliament of another eastern state, Thuringia, in an election on August 30. He said the government had underestimated the far-right threat for years, and that police needed to get much tougher on offenders.
"It's irrelevant that the NPD keeps embarrassing itself in the eyes of liberal voters, because they would never support the party anyway," said Funke. "It continues to appeal to people who are frustrated, who are uninterested in democracy or even opposed to it, and who see foreigners as scapegoats for their problems."
The NPD has more than 7,000 members but many neo-Nazis aren't enrolled in the party because it's too moderate for them or they don't want to pay the dues. Of more concern is the fact that the financial crisis may boost the NPD, which has proved before that it can win protest votes by tapping discontent about the economy. In 2004, it won 9.2 percent in the last regional election in Saxony after it campaigned against cuts to unemployment benefits.
"It's known that right-wing extremists seize on political and economic problems. They offer supposedly simple solutions to issues that people are worried about in an attempt to gain support," said Alrik Bauer, spokesman for the Saxony state intelligence service. But he said there was no sign so far that the NPD was gaining from the financial crisis ahead of a state election in Saxony in August.
Authorities have increased spending on projects such as setting up youth centers to prevent young people from joining the neo-Nazis, or funding citizens' advice organisations. But the measures are having little effect. The far-right scene remains a powerful draw for young, uneducated men with poor job prospects.
"The lure of the scene is far too great," said Bernd Wagner, a former police officer who co-founded EXIT, a group that helps people get out of the neo-Nazi scene. "Who's going to keep young people out of it? Nagging teachers? The priest who's more focused on his crooked church spire? The country policeman who wants a quiet life?"
Nazis Seeking to Broaden Public Appeal
"There's no force in society that is seriously challenging the scene," Wagner continued. "Not the domestic intelligence service, not the police, not the more than 3,000 'projects' funded by the various regional governments."
Wagner said violent neo-Nazis were growing increasingly disenchanted with the NPD's lack of success in nationwide elections. The party scored just 1.8 percent in the 2005 general election, and is usually well below 1 percent. "I have the impression the militant ones have lost faith. That's why they're becoming more uninhibited in their violence. It's a very dangerous trend," said Wagner.
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
The NPD, which remains a legitimate political party, has in recent months looked intent on destroying itself. In addition to its financial problems, its leadership looks hopelessly divided, and Voigt is expected to be ousted at a party congress in April.
There's a bitter dispute over who is to succeed him. One contender, Andreas Molau, withdrew his candidacy after the deputy chairman, Jürgen Rieger, accused him of being "one-eighth Jew." Rieger, a lawyer, is himself is in trouble after a vintage Wehrmacht assault rifle was found in a police search of his private home last month.
"It's a morbid scene, and it resembles suicide in stages," said Wagner. "But we shouldn't underestimate the ability of Nazi fronts to rebuild. Despite the turmoil, the scene is continuing to grow.
The NPD has been trying to broaden its appeal by presenting a moderate public image. Its spokesmen tend to avoid the look that makes neo-Nazis identifiable on the street -- shaven heads or Hitler Youth-style haircuts, combat boots and far-right symbols on their clothing. "It may seem surprising but the strategy of pretending to be moderate actually works with many voters, even if it's a lie that conceals a brutal vision of a Fourth Reich," said Funke.
Recent comments by a former senior NPD member gave a glimpse of its true face. Hitler salutes are commonplace at closed-door meetings and members talk about sending their opponents off in "freight trains," in reference to the trains that took Jews to the concentration camps, said Uwe Luthardt, who belonged to the regional NPD leadership in the eastern city of Jena, in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE.
"The aim is the restoration of the Reich in which a new SA takes revenge on anyone who disagrees with them," Luthardt said. SA refers to Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party's para-military brown shirts.
Luthardt, who said he quit the party in disgust after just three months on its board, said the Nazi anthem was regularly sung at meetings and that the NPD often received donations from old Nazis in South America.
Ban of NPD Unlikely Anytime Soon
Few politicians doubt that the NPD warrants banning. But there's a dispute about whether to launch another bid to outlaw it after a previous attempt failed in 2003. The case was thrown out by Germany's highest court because several NPD officials called to testify turned out to be informants for the intelligence service, and their testimony was deemed invalid.
That failure gave the party a boost in subsequent elections, and conservative politicians now argue that any new attempt to outlaw the NPD must be absolutely watertight. "I don't think there'll be a new attempt to ban the NPD in the near future," said Funke.
03/19/2009 11:48 AMFAR RIGHT WARNING
Neo-Nazi Threat Growing Despite NPD Cash Woes
By David Crossland in Berlin
Germany's far-right National Democratic Party may be on the brink of financial collapse, but the neo-Nazi scene is alive and kicking. And, experts warn, it is becoming more dangerous.
The right-extremist National Democratic Party is almost broke. That, at least, has been the message delivered recently by both media reports and the party itself. Even the NPD chairman Udo Voigt admitted that his party was in an "existential crisis."
The NPD, which Germany's domestic intelligence agency describes as a "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" party bent on removing democracy and forming a Fourth Reich, is on the brink of insolvency because it faces heavy fines for accounting irregularities in recent years.
To the overwhelming majority of Germans, that will naturally come as good news. But regardless of the NPD's financial problems and the possibility that it may cease to function, the country's far-right scene is becoming more dangerous, experts say.
"The neo-Nazi scene, both inside and outside the NPD, is becoming stronger, not as a nationwide electoral force but in its influence on racist attitudes and violence," Professor Hajo Funke, a prominent analyst of the far right at Berlin's Free University, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "There are places I wouldn't advise anyone who looks foreign to go without protection."
Racist Youth
Funke's analysis was backed up this week by a major new study which showed that fully one in seven German teenagers -- 14.4 percent -- have attitudes deemed highly xenophobic. They agreed with statements like, for example, "Most immigrants are criminal."
The two-year, government-commissioned survey of more than 20,000 15-year-old schoolchildren concluded that a further 26.2 percent held "fairly xenophobic" attitudes. A proportion of 5.2 percent of teenagers were classified as far-right because they had racist views, listened to neo-Nazi music, wore corresponding fashions or had committed a far-right crime, the survey showed. A further 11.5 percent had strong far-right sympathies.
"It was known that the figures were high," German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble told a news conference on Tuesday. "But I'm appalled that they're this high."
Apart from the new survey, analysts point to a surge in far-right crimes last year and to a surprisingly strong showing of neo-Nazis on Feb. 14 to mark the 64th anniversary of the Allied bombing of Dresden during World War II. An estimated 7,000-8,000 neo-Nazis, many of them wearing black hooded jackets, marched silently through the eastern German city with banners condemning the "Bombing Holocaust."
They were outnumbered by anti-Nazi demonstrators, but the fact that the NPD managed to attract more than twice as many supporters to the event as last year underlines that the far-right scene is growing, especially in the economically depressed east. And it is an impression backed by the numbers. Far-right crimes reached a new high of 13,985 in 2008, a 28 percent rise over 2007, according to preliminary figures from the German interior ministry. Such crime statistics are often revised upwards.
"The crimes statistics show right-wing extremism is steadily expanding," confirmed Funke.
Crimes Small and Large
Most of those offenses are non-violent, such as daubing swastikas on headstones in Jewish cemeteries or smashing the windows of takeaway restaurants run by immigrants. Unfortunately, they have become so commonplace that they don't usually make the headlines anymore.
But the number of violent far-right crimes, such as arson and assault, is likewise rising -- by 14.5 percent to 735 in 2008. The incidence of such attacks is far higher in the east than the west, and anti-Nazi campaigners have been warning for years that parts of the east have become no-go areas for immigrants.
Typical cases include the beating of a 44-year-old Pakistani asylum seeker in the town of Brandenburg near Berlin last May. He was attacked from behind by men shouting "Get out of here you pig" and sustained serious head injuries, according to Opferspektive, a government-funded group that monitors such attacks.
In Niedergörsdorf near Berlin in June, a man who was overheard speaking Russian in the street was punched by a neighbor who yelled: "You Russian Jew pig, Hitler would have gassed something like you!"
On March 7 in the eastern town of Mügeln, two men assaulted an Indian man outside a pizza restaurant and broke his nose. Prosecutors aren't ruling out a racist motive. Outside that same restaurant in August 2007, eight Indian men were assaulted by a mob chanting "Foreigners Out" in a case that attracted international attention.
Declining Economy May Boost NPD Support
Funke said that despite its internal problems, the NPD remains well organized in the two eastern states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where it has seats in the regional parliaments, and that it may even win enough support to enter the parliament of another eastern state, Thuringia, in an election on August 30. He said the government had underestimated the far-right threat for years, and that police needed to get much tougher on offenders.
"It's irrelevant that the NPD keeps embarrassing itself in the eyes of liberal voters, because they would never support the party anyway," said Funke. "It continues to appeal to people who are frustrated, who are uninterested in democracy or even opposed to it, and who see foreigners as scapegoats for their problems."
The NPD has more than 7,000 members but many neo-Nazis aren't enrolled in the party because it's too moderate for them or they don't want to pay the dues. Of more concern is the fact that the financial crisis may boost the NPD, which has proved before that it can win protest votes by tapping discontent about the economy. In 2004, it won 9.2 percent in the last regional election in Saxony after it campaigned against cuts to unemployment benefits.
"It's known that right-wing extremists seize on political and economic problems. They offer supposedly simple solutions to issues that people are worried about in an attempt to gain support," said Alrik Bauer, spokesman for the Saxony state intelligence service. But he said there was no sign so far that the NPD was gaining from the financial crisis ahead of a state election in Saxony in August.
Authorities have increased spending on projects such as setting up youth centers to prevent young people from joining the neo-Nazis, or funding citizens' advice organisations. But the measures are having little effect. The far-right scene remains a powerful draw for young, uneducated men with poor job prospects.
"The lure of the scene is far too great," said Bernd Wagner, a former police officer who co-founded EXIT, a group that helps people get out of the neo-Nazi scene. "Who's going to keep young people out of it? Nagging teachers? The priest who's more focused on his crooked church spire? The country policeman who wants a quiet life?"
Nazis Seeking to Broaden Public Appeal
"There's no force in society that is seriously challenging the scene," Wagner continued. "Not the domestic intelligence service, not the police, not the more than 3,000 'projects' funded by the various regional governments."
Wagner said violent neo-Nazis were growing increasingly disenchanted with the NPD's lack of success in nationwide elections. The party scored just 1.8 percent in the 2005 general election, and is usually well below 1 percent. "I have the impression the militant ones have lost faith. That's why they're becoming more uninhibited in their violence. It's a very dangerous trend," said Wagner.
Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
The NPD, which remains a legitimate political party, has in recent months looked intent on destroying itself. In addition to its financial problems, its leadership looks hopelessly divided, and Voigt is expected to be ousted at a party congress in April.
There's a bitter dispute over who is to succeed him. One contender, Andreas Molau, withdrew his candidacy after the deputy chairman, Jürgen Rieger, accused him of being "one-eighth Jew." Rieger, a lawyer, is himself is in trouble after a vintage Wehrmacht assault rifle was found in a police search of his private home last month.
"It's a morbid scene, and it resembles suicide in stages," said Wagner. "But we shouldn't underestimate the ability of Nazi fronts to rebuild. Despite the turmoil, the scene is continuing to grow.
The NPD has been trying to broaden its appeal by presenting a moderate public image. Its spokesmen tend to avoid the look that makes neo-Nazis identifiable on the street -- shaven heads or Hitler Youth-style haircuts, combat boots and far-right symbols on their clothing. "It may seem surprising but the strategy of pretending to be moderate actually works with many voters, even if it's a lie that conceals a brutal vision of a Fourth Reich," said Funke.
Recent comments by a former senior NPD member gave a glimpse of its true face. Hitler salutes are commonplace at closed-door meetings and members talk about sending their opponents off in "freight trains," in reference to the trains that took Jews to the concentration camps, said Uwe Luthardt, who belonged to the regional NPD leadership in the eastern city of Jena, in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE.
"The aim is the restoration of the Reich in which a new SA takes revenge on anyone who disagrees with them," Luthardt said. SA refers to Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party's para-military brown shirts.
Luthardt, who said he quit the party in disgust after just three months on its board, said the Nazi anthem was regularly sung at meetings and that the NPD often received donations from old Nazis in South America.
Ban of NPD Unlikely Anytime Soon
Few politicians doubt that the NPD warrants banning. But there's a dispute about whether to launch another bid to outlaw it after a previous attempt failed in 2003. The case was thrown out by Germany's highest court because several NPD officials called to testify turned out to be informants for the intelligence service, and their testimony was deemed invalid.
That failure gave the party a boost in subsequent elections, and conservative politicians now argue that any new attempt to outlaw the NPD must be absolutely watertight. "I don't think there'll be a new attempt to ban the NPD in the near future," said Funke.
Balochistan, Pakhtoonistan, Baluchs, Pushtan
http://www.countercurrents.org/maitra310309.htm
Pakistan’s Western Frontiers In Tumult:
Olaf Caroe’s Lengthening Shadows
By Ramtanu Maitra
31 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org
This is the second and final installment of a two-part article; the first part appeared in the March 25 issue. Read Part I
Pakistan’s western provinces, Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), are in the midst of a violent upheaval caused immediately by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001. The U.S. invasion, which was joined later by a number of NATO countries, and some assistance from a few non-NATO nations, was designed to capture, or eliminate, the alleged masterminds behind the 9/11 attack in the United States, and also to remove the Afghan Taliban regime that had provided shelter to the al-Qaeda militants.
The invasion failed in the sense that the al-Qaeda militants moved eastward across the undefined Durand Line that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban dispersed from Kabul and other cities, to rural areas where they have fully re-built themselves, posing a serious threat to the foreign troops inside Afghanistan.
The al-Qaeda militants, now inside Pakistan, began to carry out operations along the border areas inside Afghanistan to harass the foreign troops. They were soon joined by the tribal groups from FATA. Islamabad, under President Pervez Musharraf, which had joined the Bush Administration’s War on Terror, could not prevent its citizens along the border areas from opposing the War on Terror. As a result, a very difficult situation developed when Islamabad, under pressure from the Bush Administration’s hardliners, represented by Vice President Cheney, was forced to deploy troops and paramilitary forces to counter the FATA militants helpingthe Afghan Taliban.
Within a very short time, the situation worsened. Aided by Saudi funding, to spread Wahhabi-led jihadinside the tribal areas, and huge sums of cash generated
by the opium explosion inside Afghanistan, militants almost paralyzed the Pakistani troops inside the FATA, and Islamabad was unable to maintain law and order in the area. As it stands today, Islamabad’s writ is virtually lost in the FATA, and weakened vastly in Balochistan and the NWFP.
The Swat Valley, located at the northeastern part of the NWFP (Figure 1), has already become autonomous, and has imposed Wahhabi-style Islamic Sharia law, in violation of Pakistan’s constitution. For all practical purposes, Islamabad has handed the Swat Valley over to the Saudi-funded Wahhabis. Since all these developments have occurred within the short span of eight years, one wonders what caused such rapid deterioration.
Where are its roots?
The answers to that question can be found in the almost 60-plus years of British rule in that part of the Subcontinent, prior to the formation of Pakistan in 1947, and in the continuance of British colonial policy towards that area, by Pakistani leaders.
By pursuing the old colonial policy towards the Baloch people and the tribal areas, Pakistani leaders have opened a floodgate to various forces in Britain, who would like the area separated from Pakistan, to form a buffer between oil- and gas-rich Central Asia; to the Saudi-funded Wahhabis, who are on a rampage recruiting terrorists and setting up Islamic schools (madrassahs) to convert moderate Muslims to hard-core Salafism in Pakistan and Central Asia, with the plan to set up an Islamic Ummah (nation) under a caliphate; and the Americans, who with their short-term geopolitical objectives in mind, have formed self-destructive alliances with both the British and the Saudis.
British Raj in Balochistan
Much of Balochistan was under the control of the King of Iran and the autonomous principality of Kalat, a part of Balochistan, when the British wrested control away from the Khan of Kalat in the early 1840s. The British objective at the time, was to set it up as a staging ground for various Afghan-British wars that took place in the latter half of the 19th Century. The 1876 treaty between the Khan of Kalat and Robert Groves Sandeman, an administrative officer of the British Raj, accepted the independence of the Kalat as an allied state with British military outposts in the region, according to Pakistani historian Sudhir Ahmad Afridi.
After the 1878 Afghan War, the British established Balochistan as a provincial entity, centered on the municipality of Quetta, while Kalat, Makran, and Lasbella continued to exist as princely realms. It was evident that the British had the intention to keep various tribes with their feudal chiefs separated from one another, and except for a train track, and the development and settlement of British holdings, the tribal population was excluded from all economic activities.
Around the 1930s, Baloch nationalist parties emerged to fight for freedom from British rule. They took the princely state of Kalat as the focal point of a free and united Balochistan. Baglar Begi Khan declared the independence of
Kalat on Aug. 15, 1947. It was evident from the outset, that Baglar Begi Khan, a powerful chieftain, was not acting on his own. He had the support of Olaf Caroe, who was very knowledgeable about the area and was posted by the then-
Viceroy of the British Raj, Lord Wavell, as governor of the NWFP. Caroe, a quintessential colonialist, whose policy was to keep all groups divided and fighting each other, in order to assert control over them, had been foreign secretary in Delhi from 1939-46, serving two Viceroys, Linlithgow and Wavell. His objective was to forestall alleged Soviet expansionism in Afghanistan, Xinjiang, and the region of the Persian Gulf. Caroe defined his task as to insure that the “lengthening shadows from the north” (i.e., the Soviet Union), did not reach the “wells of power” (i.e., the oil wells of the Persian Gulf), nor cast a shadow over Afghanistan. Caroe agreed with Churchill’s concept at the time, that an independent entity in the northwest of India should remain linked to Britain, and serve as an area from which London could exercise its influence over
Afghanistan. In 1945, Churchill’s Cabinet debated the possibility of detaching Balochistan to maintain military bases there, in Quetta, the area of the Bolan Pass, and along the Makran coast near the entry of the Persian Gulf.
In March 1948, the Pakistani Army entered Balochistan, and forced Baglar Begi Khan to accede to Pakistan, ending the British game. Nonetheless, neither the
British, nor Olaf Caroe, could get over that “loss.” After his retirement from the British Foreign Office, Caroe toured the United States, speaking on behalf of the somewhat depleted British Empire. These lectures were later put together in the form of a book, The Wells of Power. He pointed out in his lectures that the Port of Karachi and the coastline of Balochistan (the Makran coast, through which the bulk of Afghan opium and heroin travels to Europe today), standing at the mouth the Persian Gulf, were “vital to British reckoning.”
Caroe’s Shadow and Policy in Force
Caroe went on to claim that the British base in India—now in Pakistan—had maintained stability in the Middle East since 1801, defying Tsar Paul’s ambitions. He said “the Indian anchor is lost,” but Pakistan, “a new India,” has emerged, a Muslim state that could help to establish a defense community of Muslim states, and “show the way for reconciliation between the Western and Islamic model.”
From the very outset, it was evident that that Pakistani leadership (at the beginning, it comprised of Urdu-speaking Muslim leaders who migrated from the
then-Indian state of United Province) had no understanding of the Baloch situation. They could neither speak the Baloch language, nor did they have any familiarity with the Baloch customs and traditions.
The annexation by force of Balochistan by Caroe’s “new India,” immediately provided the British, and the Baloch, a stick to beat up the Pakistani leaders from time to time. One of the descendants of Baglar Begi Khan, Khan Suleman Daud, the 35th Khan of Kalat, is still in Cardiff, Wales, and is seeking asylum in Britain.
In Britain, the 60th anniversary of the Pakistani invasion, annexation, and occupation of the independent state of Balochistan, was commemorated on April 1, 2008. The British intelligence-linked Amnesty International, and Soros-linked International Crisis Group, among others, were shouting themselves hoarse over the years on behalf of the British Crown about Pakistan’s human rights violations in Balochistan. The British news daily, The Guardian, claimed on that occasion, that Pakistan illegally occupies Balochistan, and Islamabad has looted Balochistan’s natural resource. It also said: “Thousands of Baloch people have been massacred, hundreds of thousands made refugees, and thousands more have disappeared or been tortured and jailed, often without trial. Pakistan is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In June 2006, during President Musharraf’s regime, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” (Balochistan). Reports indicate that ten British MPs were in a closed-door session of the Committee, regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists.
The history of the British Empire indicates that Britain has not changed, and therefore, its present role in Balochistan is no surprise at all. But two other things happened to worsen the situation.
First, the American role: Having been manipulated into an anti-Iran policy, beginning in 1979, and then seizing upon the opportunity to whip the reckless
Soviet Army invading Afghanistan in 1979, Washington joined hands with the British, carrying all the dirty laundry. Washington brought in a lot of money to maintain the British assets, and to develop their own assets, whom they promptly dumped, after the Soviets turned tail in 1989. The outcome of this insane policy is now bearing fruit in Afghanistan and in the western part of Pakistan.
The Bush Administration, until its final days, backed the anti-Iran Jundullah terrorists who operate from Balochistan, while carrying drugs for the British and destabilizing Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led War on Terror.
Pakistan’s Adoption of Colonial Policies
The other factor contributing to Pakistan’s deterioration, one which is perhaps even more important than the historic British role, was Islamabad’s adoption of the British policy in dealing with its citizens living along the Afghan borders. To begin with, instead of integratingBalochistan with the Republic in order to uproot a deep-rooted feudal system, which is sheltered by the British, Pakistan’s powers-that-be have treated their own citizens in Balochistan as unwanted foreigners.
In 1954, Islamabad merged the four provinces of West Pakistan—Balochistan, NWFP, Punjab, and Sindh—into “One Unit.” This was done to counter the population strength of East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh). One Unit was formed without adequate dialogue and, as a result, an anti-One Unit movement emerged in Balochistan. To overcome this opposition, the Pakistani Army was deployed, and the Khan of Kalat was arrested, but not before the Baloch oppositionists to the One Unit had engaged the Pakistani Army in pitched battles.
In 1973, following his visit to Iran, then-Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, dismissed the elected provincial government of Balochistan. The pretext for dismissal was that a cache of 350 Soviet submachine guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition had supposedly been discovered in the Iraqi attaché’s house, and were destined for Balochistan, according to Ray Fulcher in his Nov. 30, 2006 article, “Balochistan’s History of Insurgency.” Other reports indicate that Bhutto acted that way because the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, had warned him against allowing nationalist movements on Iran’s border.
The ensuing protest against the dismissal of the duly-elected government brought in another wave of the Pakistani Army—78,000 men, to be precise—supported by Iranian Cobra helicopters. The troops were resisted by some 50,000 Baloch. The conflict took the lives of 3,300 Pakistani troops, 5,300 Baloch, and thousands of civilians, Fulcher pointed out. That 1973 invasion created deep divisions between the Baloch people and Islamabad, and made the Baloch vulnerable to London’s machinations.
However, Islamabad’s British colonial-like policy towards Balochistan did not end in 1973. As the Baloch internal security situation deteriorated, following the
2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Islamabad, under President Musharraf, began to become uneasy. Between December 2005, when the Pakistan military launched its most recent assault on Balochistan, and June 2006, more than 900 Baloch were killed, about 140,000 were displaced, 450 political activists (mainly from the Baloch National Party) disappeared, and 4,000 activists were arrested, some reports indicate. There were also reports that the Frontier Corps (FC)—a creation of the
British Raj that remained intact in Balochistan, the NWFP, and the FATA—has been responsible for indiscriminate rocket, artillery, and helicopter gunship attacks causing significant destruction of civilian areas.
FATA: The Legacy of Colonial Britain
The FATA, which borders Afghanistan, is now a hotbed of Wahhabi-influenced jihadi movements. It is divided into seven districts called agencies: Bajaur,
Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan. The population of about 3 million is predominantly Pushtun and tribal. Contrast this with Pakistan’s total population of about 170 million, and it becomes clear that the FATA is very thinly populated; it also has a very rough terrain. The total Pushtun population in Pakistan and Afghanistan is about 36 million (31 million in Pakistan and 5 million in Afghanistan). Cross-border ties are strong, and movement is hardly restricted by the non-demarcated Durand Line, a line in the sand, drawn arbitrarily by the British Raj, more than a hundred years ago.
The NWFP, along with Balochistan, was brought under British control in 1880, after the second Afghan War (1878-80), when some of the Afghan areas were wrested from Afghanistan, which brought the British-controlled territories within 50 miles of Kabul. In 1893, the British Raj drew the Durand Line, which was never accepted by Kabul. Following that, the British divided up the Pushtun tribes within the Raj territory. Britain maintained at least 10,000 troops in the area, afraid that the tribes would break away.
The administrative system that prevails today, more than 60 years following the formation of Pakistan, is almost identical to that which originated under the British Raj. The FATA is officially under the President’s directive, who has empowered the governor of neighboring NWFP as his representative. The governor, in turn, appoints an “agent” for each agency of the FATA.
These agents are senior administrators in their region, and are governed by rules established by a British Act of Parliament in 1901. This set of rules is called the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). The FCR comprises a set of laws enforced by the British Raj in the Pushtun-inhabited tribal areas in Northwest British India, as it was called then. The laws were devised especially to counter the fierce opposition of the Pushtuns to British rule; their main objective was to protect the interests of the British Empire. The FCR dates back to the occupation of the Pushtun-inhabited frontier districts by the British in 1848. The regulation was re-enacted in 1873, and again in 1876, with minor modifications. Over time, the Regulation was found to be inadequate, and new acts and offences were added to it to extend its scope.
According to the FCR that prevails in FATA, despite the presence of popularly elected tribal representatives, parliament can play no role in the affairs of the area. Article 247 of the Pakistani Constitution provides that no Act of Parliament applies to the FATA, unless the President so desires. Only the President of Pakistan is authorized to amend laws and promulgate ordinances for the tribal areas.
The FCR used to apply to the greater part of Pakistani territory, the NWFP until 1963, and Balochistan until 1977. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 technically made the FCR null and void, yet it was maintained by Pakistan’s government in exchange for greater autonomy for the affected region, and the removal of national troops from the FATA. Under this set of regulations, FATA tribesmen have no recourse to the constitutional and political rights granted to others in the country.
Fossilized FATA
Although they were part of Pakistan, the tribal areas did not have an adult franchise until 1996, when the late Premier Benazir Bhutto gave them that right. The Pakistani Police do not have the authority to enter and operate inside the FATA.
Traditionally, the role of maintaining security in the FATA has been assigned to the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), a legacy of British rule. The FC is recruited
from the FATA tribal people, while officers are recruited from the regular Pakistan Army.
Under the Raj, the British opted to employ the locals as soldiers, and placed British officers in command of these formations. The British rulers deliberately designed the Frontier Corps as an internal security force, whose prime objective was maintaining law and order in the volatile tribal belt, and ensuring the safety of all strategic communication routes.
What is astonishing is that the Frontier Corps has remained virtually fossilized since the British era. Most of the outposts and garrisons of the Frontier Corps are located in areas through which strategic communication routes pass, or in areas where tribes are known to be unruly and are controlled by force.
Although Pakistan has gone through immense changes, materially and politically, since its formation in 1947, the FATA has remained untouched. One government after another left it alone, putting no effort into integrating this crucial area within Pakistan. It was particularly important to do so, because the Pakistani leaders were well aware that Pushtuns inside Pakistan have long aspired to form a Greater Pushtunistan (or, Pakhtoonistan) in collaboration with their Afghan cousins.
More important, perhaps, is the issue of economic development. Pakistani historians point out that the British accomplished more infrastructure development in the FATA areas, than the Pakistani government had done since independence. The British Raj developed some infrastructure within the FATA in order to ensure security and collect taxes. On the other hand, Pakistani governments utilized the same infrastructure and did very little to improve the lot of these tribal people.
Criminalization of the FATA
While the rules and regulations that control the FATA have remained virtually the same as those imposed f economic development has brought about very many negative aspects. To begin with, the FATA has become a major center of smuggling. The Lahore-based Daily Times pointed out recently that remittances by FATA workers in the Gulf, funneled through the notorious hundi (money-laundering) system, have financed smuggling of a vast array of goods, such as automobiles, consumer durables, electronics, and cloth, all of which can now be purchased in, or ordered, via the tribal belt. This has badly undermined the country’s industrial and tariff policies. Industry is deprived of legitimate protection, and the treasury has lost huge revenues in recent years.
Even more dangerous, is the flow of opium and heroin through FATA. In the 1990s, FATA itself became a major producer of opium, producing about 800 tons annually. An American intervention through monetary enticement, and Islamabad’s law enforcement intervention, has led to the end of opium cultivation in most areas. However, the explosion of opium on the other side of the Durand Line has criminalized the FATA tribal people, and has accompanied the rise of the Pakistani Taliban.
No less diabolical to the body politic of the country as whole, is gun-running in the FATA. Long gone are the days of World War II replicas, hammered and chiseled in little Darra hamlets reminiscent of the Wild West. The standard fare now is Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, and sophisticated explosives, the Daily Times reported.
Islamabad must remember that the FATA was a handmaiden of the British colonial rulers, and until they left, they had aspired to make it, along with the Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, a part of Greater Pushtunistan. History shows that Gen. Robert Lockhart, who replaced Olaf Caroe as the governor of the NWFP, in his last reply to Louis Mountbatten, the then-Viceroy to British India, on July 12, 1947 (just about a month before India was partitioned and British rule ended) wrote: “Pakhtoonistan located and the idea, I think, proving attractive to many Pathans [the British choose to use the word “Pathan” to describe a Pushtun].
Rumours and reports of the Fakir of Ipi flow in details [Ipi wanted to proclaim himself Amir of Waziristan]..." .
The British objective, as expressed at length by Churchill and Caroe, prior to the partition of India, to set up an independent state, comprised of Balochs and Pushtuns, was an attempt back then, to set up a buffer nation, between the Subcontinent’s large nations and the “wells of power.” But when that became impossible, as nationalist Indian leaders, such as Nehru, Gandhi, and Azad, among others, opposed further “balkanization” of India, the British adopted Pakistan as the “new India,” which would protect the British interests in the Middle East.
It seems Britain cannot depend on Pakistan any longer on that score, and now, it once more wants to set up a buffer state between the Indian Subcontinent and the “wells of power.”
Pakistan’s Western Frontiers In Tumult:
Olaf Caroe’s Lengthening Shadows
By Ramtanu Maitra
31 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org
This is the second and final installment of a two-part article; the first part appeared in the March 25 issue. Read Part I
Pakistan’s western provinces, Balochistan, the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), are in the midst of a violent upheaval caused immediately by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001. The U.S. invasion, which was joined later by a number of NATO countries, and some assistance from a few non-NATO nations, was designed to capture, or eliminate, the alleged masterminds behind the 9/11 attack in the United States, and also to remove the Afghan Taliban regime that had provided shelter to the al-Qaeda militants.
The invasion failed in the sense that the al-Qaeda militants moved eastward across the undefined Durand Line that separates Afghanistan from Pakistan, and the Afghan Taliban dispersed from Kabul and other cities, to rural areas where they have fully re-built themselves, posing a serious threat to the foreign troops inside Afghanistan.
The al-Qaeda militants, now inside Pakistan, began to carry out operations along the border areas inside Afghanistan to harass the foreign troops. They were soon joined by the tribal groups from FATA. Islamabad, under President Pervez Musharraf, which had joined the Bush Administration’s War on Terror, could not prevent its citizens along the border areas from opposing the War on Terror. As a result, a very difficult situation developed when Islamabad, under pressure from the Bush Administration’s hardliners, represented by Vice President Cheney, was forced to deploy troops and paramilitary forces to counter the FATA militants helpingthe Afghan Taliban.
Within a very short time, the situation worsened. Aided by Saudi funding, to spread Wahhabi-led jihadinside the tribal areas, and huge sums of cash generated
by the opium explosion inside Afghanistan, militants almost paralyzed the Pakistani troops inside the FATA, and Islamabad was unable to maintain law and order in the area. As it stands today, Islamabad’s writ is virtually lost in the FATA, and weakened vastly in Balochistan and the NWFP.
The Swat Valley, located at the northeastern part of the NWFP (Figure 1), has already become autonomous, and has imposed Wahhabi-style Islamic Sharia law, in violation of Pakistan’s constitution. For all practical purposes, Islamabad has handed the Swat Valley over to the Saudi-funded Wahhabis. Since all these developments have occurred within the short span of eight years, one wonders what caused such rapid deterioration.
Where are its roots?
The answers to that question can be found in the almost 60-plus years of British rule in that part of the Subcontinent, prior to the formation of Pakistan in 1947, and in the continuance of British colonial policy towards that area, by Pakistani leaders.
By pursuing the old colonial policy towards the Baloch people and the tribal areas, Pakistani leaders have opened a floodgate to various forces in Britain, who would like the area separated from Pakistan, to form a buffer between oil- and gas-rich Central Asia; to the Saudi-funded Wahhabis, who are on a rampage recruiting terrorists and setting up Islamic schools (madrassahs) to convert moderate Muslims to hard-core Salafism in Pakistan and Central Asia, with the plan to set up an Islamic Ummah (nation) under a caliphate; and the Americans, who with their short-term geopolitical objectives in mind, have formed self-destructive alliances with both the British and the Saudis.
British Raj in Balochistan
Much of Balochistan was under the control of the King of Iran and the autonomous principality of Kalat, a part of Balochistan, when the British wrested control away from the Khan of Kalat in the early 1840s. The British objective at the time, was to set it up as a staging ground for various Afghan-British wars that took place in the latter half of the 19th Century. The 1876 treaty between the Khan of Kalat and Robert Groves Sandeman, an administrative officer of the British Raj, accepted the independence of the Kalat as an allied state with British military outposts in the region, according to Pakistani historian Sudhir Ahmad Afridi.
After the 1878 Afghan War, the British established Balochistan as a provincial entity, centered on the municipality of Quetta, while Kalat, Makran, and Lasbella continued to exist as princely realms. It was evident that the British had the intention to keep various tribes with their feudal chiefs separated from one another, and except for a train track, and the development and settlement of British holdings, the tribal population was excluded from all economic activities.
Around the 1930s, Baloch nationalist parties emerged to fight for freedom from British rule. They took the princely state of Kalat as the focal point of a free and united Balochistan. Baglar Begi Khan declared the independence of
Kalat on Aug. 15, 1947. It was evident from the outset, that Baglar Begi Khan, a powerful chieftain, was not acting on his own. He had the support of Olaf Caroe, who was very knowledgeable about the area and was posted by the then-
Viceroy of the British Raj, Lord Wavell, as governor of the NWFP. Caroe, a quintessential colonialist, whose policy was to keep all groups divided and fighting each other, in order to assert control over them, had been foreign secretary in Delhi from 1939-46, serving two Viceroys, Linlithgow and Wavell. His objective was to forestall alleged Soviet expansionism in Afghanistan, Xinjiang, and the region of the Persian Gulf. Caroe defined his task as to insure that the “lengthening shadows from the north” (i.e., the Soviet Union), did not reach the “wells of power” (i.e., the oil wells of the Persian Gulf), nor cast a shadow over Afghanistan. Caroe agreed with Churchill’s concept at the time, that an independent entity in the northwest of India should remain linked to Britain, and serve as an area from which London could exercise its influence over
Afghanistan. In 1945, Churchill’s Cabinet debated the possibility of detaching Balochistan to maintain military bases there, in Quetta, the area of the Bolan Pass, and along the Makran coast near the entry of the Persian Gulf.
In March 1948, the Pakistani Army entered Balochistan, and forced Baglar Begi Khan to accede to Pakistan, ending the British game. Nonetheless, neither the
British, nor Olaf Caroe, could get over that “loss.” After his retirement from the British Foreign Office, Caroe toured the United States, speaking on behalf of the somewhat depleted British Empire. These lectures were later put together in the form of a book, The Wells of Power. He pointed out in his lectures that the Port of Karachi and the coastline of Balochistan (the Makran coast, through which the bulk of Afghan opium and heroin travels to Europe today), standing at the mouth the Persian Gulf, were “vital to British reckoning.”
Caroe’s Shadow and Policy in Force
Caroe went on to claim that the British base in India—now in Pakistan—had maintained stability in the Middle East since 1801, defying Tsar Paul’s ambitions. He said “the Indian anchor is lost,” but Pakistan, “a new India,” has emerged, a Muslim state that could help to establish a defense community of Muslim states, and “show the way for reconciliation between the Western and Islamic model.”
From the very outset, it was evident that that Pakistani leadership (at the beginning, it comprised of Urdu-speaking Muslim leaders who migrated from the
then-Indian state of United Province) had no understanding of the Baloch situation. They could neither speak the Baloch language, nor did they have any familiarity with the Baloch customs and traditions.
The annexation by force of Balochistan by Caroe’s “new India,” immediately provided the British, and the Baloch, a stick to beat up the Pakistani leaders from time to time. One of the descendants of Baglar Begi Khan, Khan Suleman Daud, the 35th Khan of Kalat, is still in Cardiff, Wales, and is seeking asylum in Britain.
In Britain, the 60th anniversary of the Pakistani invasion, annexation, and occupation of the independent state of Balochistan, was commemorated on April 1, 2008. The British intelligence-linked Amnesty International, and Soros-linked International Crisis Group, among others, were shouting themselves hoarse over the years on behalf of the British Crown about Pakistan’s human rights violations in Balochistan. The British news daily, The Guardian, claimed on that occasion, that Pakistan illegally occupies Balochistan, and Islamabad has looted Balochistan’s natural resource. It also said: “Thousands of Baloch people have been massacred, hundreds of thousands made refugees, and thousands more have disappeared or been tortured and jailed, often without trial. Pakistan is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In June 2006, during President Musharraf’s regime, Pakistan’s Senate Committee on Defence accused British intelligence of “abetting the insurgency in the province bordering Iran” (Balochistan). Reports indicate that ten British MPs were in a closed-door session of the Committee, regarding the alleged support of Britain’s Secret Service to Baloch separatists.
The history of the British Empire indicates that Britain has not changed, and therefore, its present role in Balochistan is no surprise at all. But two other things happened to worsen the situation.
First, the American role: Having been manipulated into an anti-Iran policy, beginning in 1979, and then seizing upon the opportunity to whip the reckless
Soviet Army invading Afghanistan in 1979, Washington joined hands with the British, carrying all the dirty laundry. Washington brought in a lot of money to maintain the British assets, and to develop their own assets, whom they promptly dumped, after the Soviets turned tail in 1989. The outcome of this insane policy is now bearing fruit in Afghanistan and in the western part of Pakistan.
The Bush Administration, until its final days, backed the anti-Iran Jundullah terrorists who operate from Balochistan, while carrying drugs for the British and destabilizing Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led War on Terror.
Pakistan’s Adoption of Colonial Policies
The other factor contributing to Pakistan’s deterioration, one which is perhaps even more important than the historic British role, was Islamabad’s adoption of the British policy in dealing with its citizens living along the Afghan borders. To begin with, instead of integratingBalochistan with the Republic in order to uproot a deep-rooted feudal system, which is sheltered by the British, Pakistan’s powers-that-be have treated their own citizens in Balochistan as unwanted foreigners.
In 1954, Islamabad merged the four provinces of West Pakistan—Balochistan, NWFP, Punjab, and Sindh—into “One Unit.” This was done to counter the population strength of East Pakistan (which later became Bangladesh). One Unit was formed without adequate dialogue and, as a result, an anti-One Unit movement emerged in Balochistan. To overcome this opposition, the Pakistani Army was deployed, and the Khan of Kalat was arrested, but not before the Baloch oppositionists to the One Unit had engaged the Pakistani Army in pitched battles.
In 1973, following his visit to Iran, then-Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, dismissed the elected provincial government of Balochistan. The pretext for dismissal was that a cache of 350 Soviet submachine guns and 100,000 rounds of ammunition had supposedly been discovered in the Iraqi attaché’s house, and were destined for Balochistan, according to Ray Fulcher in his Nov. 30, 2006 article, “Balochistan’s History of Insurgency.” Other reports indicate that Bhutto acted that way because the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, had warned him against allowing nationalist movements on Iran’s border.
The ensuing protest against the dismissal of the duly-elected government brought in another wave of the Pakistani Army—78,000 men, to be precise—supported by Iranian Cobra helicopters. The troops were resisted by some 50,000 Baloch. The conflict took the lives of 3,300 Pakistani troops, 5,300 Baloch, and thousands of civilians, Fulcher pointed out. That 1973 invasion created deep divisions between the Baloch people and Islamabad, and made the Baloch vulnerable to London’s machinations.
However, Islamabad’s British colonial-like policy towards Balochistan did not end in 1973. As the Baloch internal security situation deteriorated, following the
2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Islamabad, under President Musharraf, began to become uneasy. Between December 2005, when the Pakistan military launched its most recent assault on Balochistan, and June 2006, more than 900 Baloch were killed, about 140,000 were displaced, 450 political activists (mainly from the Baloch National Party) disappeared, and 4,000 activists were arrested, some reports indicate. There were also reports that the Frontier Corps (FC)—a creation of the
British Raj that remained intact in Balochistan, the NWFP, and the FATA—has been responsible for indiscriminate rocket, artillery, and helicopter gunship attacks causing significant destruction of civilian areas.
FATA: The Legacy of Colonial Britain
The FATA, which borders Afghanistan, is now a hotbed of Wahhabi-influenced jihadi movements. It is divided into seven districts called agencies: Bajaur,
Mohmand, Khyber, Orakzai, Kurram, North Waziristan, and South Waziristan. The population of about 3 million is predominantly Pushtun and tribal. Contrast this with Pakistan’s total population of about 170 million, and it becomes clear that the FATA is very thinly populated; it also has a very rough terrain. The total Pushtun population in Pakistan and Afghanistan is about 36 million (31 million in Pakistan and 5 million in Afghanistan). Cross-border ties are strong, and movement is hardly restricted by the non-demarcated Durand Line, a line in the sand, drawn arbitrarily by the British Raj, more than a hundred years ago.
The NWFP, along with Balochistan, was brought under British control in 1880, after the second Afghan War (1878-80), when some of the Afghan areas were wrested from Afghanistan, which brought the British-controlled territories within 50 miles of Kabul. In 1893, the British Raj drew the Durand Line, which was never accepted by Kabul. Following that, the British divided up the Pushtun tribes within the Raj territory. Britain maintained at least 10,000 troops in the area, afraid that the tribes would break away.
The administrative system that prevails today, more than 60 years following the formation of Pakistan, is almost identical to that which originated under the British Raj. The FATA is officially under the President’s directive, who has empowered the governor of neighboring NWFP as his representative. The governor, in turn, appoints an “agent” for each agency of the FATA.
These agents are senior administrators in their region, and are governed by rules established by a British Act of Parliament in 1901. This set of rules is called the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). The FCR comprises a set of laws enforced by the British Raj in the Pushtun-inhabited tribal areas in Northwest British India, as it was called then. The laws were devised especially to counter the fierce opposition of the Pushtuns to British rule; their main objective was to protect the interests of the British Empire. The FCR dates back to the occupation of the Pushtun-inhabited frontier districts by the British in 1848. The regulation was re-enacted in 1873, and again in 1876, with minor modifications. Over time, the Regulation was found to be inadequate, and new acts and offences were added to it to extend its scope.
According to the FCR that prevails in FATA, despite the presence of popularly elected tribal representatives, parliament can play no role in the affairs of the area. Article 247 of the Pakistani Constitution provides that no Act of Parliament applies to the FATA, unless the President so desires. Only the President of Pakistan is authorized to amend laws and promulgate ordinances for the tribal areas.
The FCR used to apply to the greater part of Pakistani territory, the NWFP until 1963, and Balochistan until 1977. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 technically made the FCR null and void, yet it was maintained by Pakistan’s government in exchange for greater autonomy for the affected region, and the removal of national troops from the FATA. Under this set of regulations, FATA tribesmen have no recourse to the constitutional and political rights granted to others in the country.
Fossilized FATA
Although they were part of Pakistan, the tribal areas did not have an adult franchise until 1996, when the late Premier Benazir Bhutto gave them that right. The Pakistani Police do not have the authority to enter and operate inside the FATA.
Traditionally, the role of maintaining security in the FATA has been assigned to the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), a legacy of British rule. The FC is recruited
from the FATA tribal people, while officers are recruited from the regular Pakistan Army.
Under the Raj, the British opted to employ the locals as soldiers, and placed British officers in command of these formations. The British rulers deliberately designed the Frontier Corps as an internal security force, whose prime objective was maintaining law and order in the volatile tribal belt, and ensuring the safety of all strategic communication routes.
What is astonishing is that the Frontier Corps has remained virtually fossilized since the British era. Most of the outposts and garrisons of the Frontier Corps are located in areas through which strategic communication routes pass, or in areas where tribes are known to be unruly and are controlled by force.
Although Pakistan has gone through immense changes, materially and politically, since its formation in 1947, the FATA has remained untouched. One government after another left it alone, putting no effort into integrating this crucial area within Pakistan. It was particularly important to do so, because the Pakistani leaders were well aware that Pushtuns inside Pakistan have long aspired to form a Greater Pushtunistan (or, Pakhtoonistan) in collaboration with their Afghan cousins.
More important, perhaps, is the issue of economic development. Pakistani historians point out that the British accomplished more infrastructure development in the FATA areas, than the Pakistani government had done since independence. The British Raj developed some infrastructure within the FATA in order to ensure security and collect taxes. On the other hand, Pakistani governments utilized the same infrastructure and did very little to improve the lot of these tribal people.
Criminalization of the FATA
While the rules and regulations that control the FATA have remained virtually the same as those imposed f economic development has brought about very many negative aspects. To begin with, the FATA has become a major center of smuggling. The Lahore-based Daily Times pointed out recently that remittances by FATA workers in the Gulf, funneled through the notorious hundi (money-laundering) system, have financed smuggling of a vast array of goods, such as automobiles, consumer durables, electronics, and cloth, all of which can now be purchased in, or ordered, via the tribal belt. This has badly undermined the country’s industrial and tariff policies. Industry is deprived of legitimate protection, and the treasury has lost huge revenues in recent years.
Even more dangerous, is the flow of opium and heroin through FATA. In the 1990s, FATA itself became a major producer of opium, producing about 800 tons annually. An American intervention through monetary enticement, and Islamabad’s law enforcement intervention, has led to the end of opium cultivation in most areas. However, the explosion of opium on the other side of the Durand Line has criminalized the FATA tribal people, and has accompanied the rise of the Pakistani Taliban.
No less diabolical to the body politic of the country as whole, is gun-running in the FATA. Long gone are the days of World War II replicas, hammered and chiseled in little Darra hamlets reminiscent of the Wild West. The standard fare now is Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers, and sophisticated explosives, the Daily Times reported.
Islamabad must remember that the FATA was a handmaiden of the British colonial rulers, and until they left, they had aspired to make it, along with the Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, a part of Greater Pushtunistan. History shows that Gen. Robert Lockhart, who replaced Olaf Caroe as the governor of the NWFP, in his last reply to Louis Mountbatten, the then-Viceroy to British India, on July 12, 1947 (just about a month before India was partitioned and British rule ended) wrote: “Pakhtoonistan located and the idea, I think, proving attractive to many Pathans [the British choose to use the word “Pathan” to describe a Pushtun].
Rumours and reports of the Fakir of Ipi flow in details [Ipi wanted to proclaim himself Amir of Waziristan]..." .
The British objective, as expressed at length by Churchill and Caroe, prior to the partition of India, to set up an independent state, comprised of Balochs and Pushtuns, was an attempt back then, to set up a buffer nation, between the Subcontinent’s large nations and the “wells of power.” But when that became impossible, as nationalist Indian leaders, such as Nehru, Gandhi, and Azad, among others, opposed further “balkanization” of India, the British adopted Pakistan as the “new India,” which would protect the British interests in the Middle East.
It seems Britain cannot depend on Pakistan any longer on that score, and now, it once more wants to set up a buffer state between the Indian Subcontinent and the “wells of power.”
South Asia
South Asian Terrorism: All Roads
Lead To The British Empire
By Ramtanu Maitra
25 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org
This is the first part of a two-part series. Next week:“Baluchistan and FATA in Pakistan.”
The growing violence throughout Pakistan since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001, the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and many other smaller terrorist-directed killings in India, and the gruesome killing of at least 70 top Bangladeshi Army officers in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month, were evidence that the terrorists have declared war against the sovereign nation-states in South Asia. The only bright spot in this context is Sri Lanka, where a powerful terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, are about to lose their home base. That, however, may not end the LTTE terrorism, particularly since it is headquartered in London, where many South Asian terrorists are maintained in separate cages for future use by British intelligence, with the blessings of Her Majesty’s Service.
Since none of the South Asian countries, where the terrorists are gaining ground, have, so far, shown the ability to evaluate, and thus, eliminate, the growth of this terrorism, it is necessary to know its genesis, and how it has affected the leaders of the South Asian nations to the detriment of their respective security. What is evident is that the South Asian terrorism has little to do with territorial disputes among nations, but everything to do with the past British colonial rule which poisoned the minds of the locals, so they have become disloyal to their own countries.
In this article, we will deal with the terrorism that continues to prosper in India’s northeast; and the terrorism in Sri Lanka, brought about by the British-induced ethnic animosity among its citizens. This history is the narration of a tragedy, since those who fought for independence in these South Asian nations, made enormous sacrifices to bring about their independence; many of those heroic figures turned out to be mental slaves of the British Empire, and pursued relentlessly the policies that the British had implemented to run their degenerate Empire.
India’s Northeast
Six decades after India wrested independence from its colonial rulers, its northeast region is a cauldron of trouble. Located in a highly strategic area, with land contiguous to five countries—Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China—it is full of militant separatists, who take refuge in the neighboring countries under pressure from Indian security forces. Since most of these neighboring countries do not have the reach to control the border areas, the separatist groups have set up armed training camps, which, over the years, have attracted international drug and gun traffickers. As a result of such unrelenting terrorist actions, and violent demonstrations over the last five decades, this part of India remains today a dangerous place.
These secessionist groups were not created by New Delhi, although New Delhi failed to understand that the promotion of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and tribal identities were policies of the British, who had come to India to expand their empire. The British Empire survived, and then thrived, through identification, within the subcontinent, of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups and their conflict points; and then, exploited those conflict points to keep the groups divided and hostile to each other.
India and the other South Asian nations failed to comprehend that it was suicidal to allow a degenerate colonial power to pursue such policies against their nations. As a result, they were carried out by New Delhi for two ostensible reasons: One, to appease the militants, and the other, to “allow them to keep” what they wanted— their sub-national ethnic identity. The policy deprived the majority of the people of the Northeast of the justification for identifying themselves as Indians.
The die was cast in the subversion of the sovereignty of an independent India by the British Raj in 1862, when it laid down the law of apartheid, to isolate “the tribal groups.” The British came into the area in the 1820s, following the Burmese conquest of Manipur and parts of Assam. The area had become unstable in the latter part of the 18th Century, following the over-extension of the Burmese-based Ahom kingdom, which reached into Assam. The instability caused by the weakening of the Ahom kingdom prompted the Burmese to move to secure their western flank. But the Burmese action also helped to bring in the British. The British East India Company was lying in wait for the Ahom kingdom to disintegrate.
The Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 ended with a British victory. By the terms of the peace treaty signed at Yandaboo on Feb. 24, 1826, the British annexed the whole of lower Assam and parts of upper Assam (now Arunachal Pradesh). The Treaty of Yandaboo provided the British with the foothold they needed to annex Northeast India, launch further campaigns to capture Burma’s vital coastal areas, and gain complete control of the territory from the Andaman Sea to the mouth of the Irrawaddy River. What were London’s motives in this venture? The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.”
The ‘Apartheid Law’
Following annexation of Northeast India, the first strategy of the British East India Company toward the area was to set it up as a separate entity. At the outset, British strategy toward Northeast India was:
• to make sure that the tribal people remained separated from the plains people, and the economic interests of the British in the plains were not disturbed;
• to ensure that all tribal aspirations were ruthlessly curbed, by keeping the bogeyman of the plains people dangling in their faces; and,
• to ensure the tribal feudal order remained intact, with the paraphernalia of tribal chiefs and voodoo doctors kept in place. Part of this plan was carried out through the bribing of tribal chiefs with paltry gifts.
Lord Palmerston’s Zoo
The British plan to cordon off the northeast tribal areas was part of its policy of setting up a multicultural human zoo, during the 1850s, under the premiership of Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston. Lord Palmerston, as Henry Temple was called, had three “friends”—the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, and Whitehall.
The apartheid program eliminated the Northeast Frontier Agency from the political map of India, and segregated the tribal population from Assam, as the British had done in southern Africa and would later do in Sudan. By 1875, British intentions became clear, even to those Englishmen who believed that the purpose of Mother England’s intervention in India, and the Northeast in particular, was to improve the conditions of the heathens. In an 1875 intelligence document, one operative wrote: “At this juncture, we find our local officers frankly declaring that our relations with the Nagas could not possibly be on a worse footing than they were then, and that the non-interference policy, which sounds excellent in theory, had utterly failed in practice.”
Apartheid also helped the British to function freely in this closed environment. Soon enough, the British Crown introduced another feature: It allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize among the tribal population and units of the Frontier Constabulary. The Land of the Nagas was identified as “virgin soil” for planting Christianity.
“Among a people so thoroughly primitive, and so independent of religious profession, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful,” stated the 1875 document, as quoted in the “Descriptive Account of Assam,” by William Robinson and Angus Hamilton.
Missionaries were also encouraged to open government-aided schools in the Naga Hills. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of native Christians increased 128%. The chief proselytizers were the Welsh Presbyterians, headquartered in Khasi and the Jaintia Hills.
British Baptists were given the franchise of the Mizo (Lushai) and Naga Hills, and the Baptist mission was set up in 1836.
British Mindset Controlled New Delhi
Since India’s Independence in 1947, the Northeast has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity, and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized.
New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil.
Two terrorist groups in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic front of Bodoland (NDFB) (set up originally as the Bodo Security Force), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas. To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the NDFB have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. In 1972, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam through a peaceful process. Unfortunately, peace did not last long in this “abode of the clouds.” In 1979, the first violent demonstration against “foreigners” resulted in a number of deaths and arson. The “foreigners” in this case were Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis, many of whom had settled in Meghalaya decades ago. By 1990, firebrand groups such as the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo People (FKJGP), and the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) came to the fore, ostensibly to uphold the rights of the “hill people” from Khasi, Jaintia, and the Garo hills. Violence erupted in 1979, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The last violent terrorist acts were in 1992.
Similar “anti-foreigner” movements have sprouted up across the Northeast, from Arunachal Pradesh in the East and North, to Sikkim in the West, and Mizoram and Tripura in the South. Along the Myanmar border, the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram remain unstable and extremely porous.
While New Delhi was busy maintaining the status quo in this area by telling the tribal and ethnic groups that India is not going to take away what the British Raj had given to them, Britain picked the Nagas as the most efficient warriors (also, a large number of them had been converted to Christianity by the Welsh missionaries), and began arming and funding them. The British connection to the NSCN existed from the early days of the Naga National Council. Angami Zapu Phizo, the mentor of both factions of the NSCN, had led the charge against the Indian government, spearheading well-organized guerrilla warfare. Phizo left Nagaland hiding in a coffin. He then turned up in 1963 in Britain, holding a Peruvian passport. It is strongly suspected that the British Baptist Church, which is very powerful in Nagaland, is the contact between British intelligence and the NSCN terrorists operating on the ground at the time.
‘Dirty Bertie’ and the Nagas
Once Phizo arrived in Britain, Lord Bertrand (“Dirty Bertie”) Russell, the atheist, courted Phizo, and became his new friend. Russell was deeply impressed with Phizo’s “earnestness” for a peaceful settlement. What, perhaps, impressed Russell the most is that Phizo had control over the militant Nagas, who had launched a movement in the mid-1950s under the Naga National Council (NNC) to secede from the Indian Republic. In a letter dated Feb. 12, 1963, Sir Bertrand told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India.”
It is believed in some circles that New Delhi’s 1964 ceasefire with the Nagas might have been influenced by the letter from Russell that was handed to Nehru by Rev. Michael Scott. Scott later went to Nagaland as part of a peace mission, along with two senior Indian political leaders.
While Russell was pushing Nehru to make the Nagas an independent country through peaceful negotiations, British involvement in direct conflict continued. On Jan. 30, 1992, soldiers of the Assam Rifles arrested two British nationals along the Nagaland-Burma border. David Ward and Stephen Hill posed as members of BBC-TV, and were travelling in jeeps with Naga rebels carrying arms. Subsequent interrogation revealed that both were operatives of Naga Vigil, a U.K.-based group. Both Ward and Hill claimed that they started the organization while in jail, influenced by Phizo’s niece, Rano Soriza. Both have served six-year prison terms for various crimes in Britain. Naga Vigil petitioned for their release in the Guwahti High Court. Phizo’s niece took up the issue with then-Nagaland Chief Minister Vamuzo.
Sri Lanka’s Violent Ethnic Strife
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger terrorist group is in its last throes. Ousted by the Sri Lankan Army from almost all of its “claimed” territories, the militants are now holding on to about 19 square kilometers of land, with about 70,000 Sri Lankan citizens, mostly of Tamil ethnic origin, as their hostages. It is evident that they will be totally routed by the end of this month.
While the U.S. Pacific Command personnel in contact with New Delhi are formulating an evacuation plan for the hostages, London and the European Union are trying to protect the last vestiges of Tiger territory by urging Colombo to work out a cease fire with the terrorists.
The emergence of violent conflict between the Tamil Sri Lankans and the Sinhala Sri Lankans, which gave birth to the London-backed Tamil Tigers, was yet another product of the British colonial legacy. This ethnic conflict, which has engulfed this little island, and unleashed unlimited violence in the region for almost three decades, is, as in the case of Northeast India, due to the British mindset of the Sri Lankan and Indian leaders involved in “resolving “the crisis.
To begin with, Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon) had the misfortune to be colonized by three brutal European colonial powers—the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Nonetheless, it is to the credit of the locals that they withstood these brutes and prevented the break-up of the country.
After the Dutch ceded Sri Lanka in the 1801 Peace of Amiens, it became Britain’s first crown colony. Immediately, the British colonials started setting up the chess pieces. The ruling Kandyan King, of Tamil ancestry, was ousted with the help of local chieftains of Tamil and Sinhala origin. The coup set up the British crown as the new King.
As part of the “divide and rule” policy, the British colonials promoted the Buddhist religion, resulting in the 1817 Uva rebellion. The Buddhist religion was given protection by the Crown, and the people were told that Christianity would not be imposed on the unwilling masses as had happened during Portuguese and Dutch rule. Following the quelling of the rebellion, the British did what they do best: They carried out one of the worst massacres of the 19th Century, wiping out all able-bodied Sinhalese men from the Hill Country, and 80% of the native population of able-bodied, according to one report. The Kandyan Kingdom was the kingdom of both the Tamils and Sinhalas—both these groups came from India to settle on that island.
One specific impact of the British colonial presence was the emergence of English as the local language, undermining both the Sinhala and Tamil languages. According to one historian, the two most important effects observed during British rule were: one, by the start of 20th Century, the English language became the passport to getting employment; and those who had an English education became dominant in Britain’s handcrafted Sri Lankan society. Due to input of the Christian missionaries, more minority Tamils could read and write English, as opposed to the southern Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese.
The other observed impact on Sri Lankan society of British colonial rule, was the reconstituting of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly of 1921 had 12 Sinhalese and 10 non-Sinhalese, at a time when the Sinhalese constituted more than 70% of the population. Things changed in 1931, when, out of 61 seats, the Sinhalese won 38. This troubled the Tamils, because they had had special privileges under British, and never wanted to accept the dominance of the Sinhalese majority.
In addition, the British also brought to the island a million workers of Tamil ethnic background from Tamil Nadu, and made them indentured laborers in the Hill Country. This was in addition to the million Tamils already living in the provinces, and another million Mappilla Muslims, whose mother tongue is Tamil. Thus, the British sowed seeds of ethnic discord. During the colonial rule, the minority Tamils had a disproportionate representation in the bureaucracy.
The Role of British Assets in Independent Sri Lanka
However, when in 1948, the British finally left the island, they left behind their assets, in powerful places, many of whom were educated at Oxford-Cambridge, and some of whom had adopted Christianity, on both sides of the ethnic divide London had so carefully created.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to build the nation and set about undoing the misdeeds they were forced to carry out under British rule, beginning in the 1950s, Sinhalese-dominated governments implemented public policies that would institutionalize the majority community’s dominance. Sinhala was declared to be the country’s sole official language; Buddhism was favored as the state religion; and the unitary nature of the state ensured Sinhalese political domination. Major Sinhalese-Tamil riots in 1956, 1981, and 1983 further heightened Tamil insecurities.
Meanwhile, the Tamils began to press for autonomy. Political parties, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), utilized conventional means, which included participating in coalition governments. Militant Tamils, the LTTE, sought the creation of an independent Tamil state, referred to as Tamil Eelam, which would comprise the North and East of the country.
Throughout the 1980s, various Tamil rebel groups engaged in attacks against the Colombo government and its security apparatus. However, the situation worsened on that island because of the British mindset of New Delhi, which made a number of attempts to intervene in the violent Sri Lankan situation. Besides helping the Tamils to get armed training and intelligence, New Delhi, under late-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, deployed around 50,000 Indian peacekeepers (IPKF) in Tamil areas in Sri Lanka to help ensure peace. In return, the Sri Lankan government agreed to devolve power to the North and East through the creation of autonomous provincial councils.
Neither Colombo nor the Tamil militants were sincere about the deal; both were looking at the Indian troops as the barriers against their independent state. The failure of the Indian intervention led to more deaths and the assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and India’s Rajiv Gandhi, among many other high-level Sri Lankan officials, by the terrorist Tamil Tigers.
London: Break Up India into 100 Hong Kongs
But, the British were in the middle of all this. Besides the fact that the LTTE was headquartered in London, and raising most of its illegitimate funds from Britain and its former colonies in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, within ten days of Gandhi’s death, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who would be assassinated by the LTTE in May 1993, forced the hasty departure from Sri Lanka of British High Commissioner David Gladstone. The charge was that Gladstone, a descendant of the Victorian-age Prime Minister William Gladstone, was interfering in local election politics. But he had also been criticized earlier for allegedly meeting with known drug traffickers in Sri Lanka. Gladstone, who had previously spent years in the Middle East, was a known British intelligence link to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, which was involved in training both the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE.
Britain’s continuing intent to break up India was also expressed openly in this political context. On May 26, 1991, only five days after the British-controlled LTTE-led assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Times of London, the premier voice for the British Foreign Office, put forward this view in an editorial entitled “Home Truths”: “There are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India, and most are being muttered too politely. The over-huge federation of almost 900 million people spreads across too many languages, cultures, religions, and castes. It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union, which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India. . . .
“The way forward for India, as for the Soviet Union, will be to say a great prize can go to any States and sub-States that maintain order without murders and riots. They should be allowed to disregard Delhi’s corrupt licensing restrictions, run their own economic policies, and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like. Maybe India’s richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs
Lead To The British Empire
By Ramtanu Maitra
25 March, 2009
Countercurrents.org
This is the first part of a two-part series. Next week:“Baluchistan and FATA in Pakistan.”
The growing violence throughout Pakistan since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 2001, the November 2008 attack on Mumbai, India, and many other smaller terrorist-directed killings in India, and the gruesome killing of at least 70 top Bangladeshi Army officers in a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed last month, were evidence that the terrorists have declared war against the sovereign nation-states in South Asia. The only bright spot in this context is Sri Lanka, where a powerful terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, are about to lose their home base. That, however, may not end the LTTE terrorism, particularly since it is headquartered in London, where many South Asian terrorists are maintained in separate cages for future use by British intelligence, with the blessings of Her Majesty’s Service.
Since none of the South Asian countries, where the terrorists are gaining ground, have, so far, shown the ability to evaluate, and thus, eliminate, the growth of this terrorism, it is necessary to know its genesis, and how it has affected the leaders of the South Asian nations to the detriment of their respective security. What is evident is that the South Asian terrorism has little to do with territorial disputes among nations, but everything to do with the past British colonial rule which poisoned the minds of the locals, so they have become disloyal to their own countries.
In this article, we will deal with the terrorism that continues to prosper in India’s northeast; and the terrorism in Sri Lanka, brought about by the British-induced ethnic animosity among its citizens. This history is the narration of a tragedy, since those who fought for independence in these South Asian nations, made enormous sacrifices to bring about their independence; many of those heroic figures turned out to be mental slaves of the British Empire, and pursued relentlessly the policies that the British had implemented to run their degenerate Empire.
India’s Northeast
Six decades after India wrested independence from its colonial rulers, its northeast region is a cauldron of trouble. Located in a highly strategic area, with land contiguous to five countries—Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and China—it is full of militant separatists, who take refuge in the neighboring countries under pressure from Indian security forces. Since most of these neighboring countries do not have the reach to control the border areas, the separatist groups have set up armed training camps, which, over the years, have attracted international drug and gun traffickers. As a result of such unrelenting terrorist actions, and violent demonstrations over the last five decades, this part of India remains today a dangerous place.
These secessionist groups were not created by New Delhi, although New Delhi failed to understand that the promotion of ethnic, sub-ethnic, and tribal identities were policies of the British, who had come to India to expand their empire. The British Empire survived, and then thrived, through identification, within the subcontinent, of various ethnic and sub-ethnic groups and their conflict points; and then, exploited those conflict points to keep the groups divided and hostile to each other.
India and the other South Asian nations failed to comprehend that it was suicidal to allow a degenerate colonial power to pursue such policies against their nations. As a result, they were carried out by New Delhi for two ostensible reasons: One, to appease the militants, and the other, to “allow them to keep” what they wanted— their sub-national ethnic identity. The policy deprived the majority of the people of the Northeast of the justification for identifying themselves as Indians.
The die was cast in the subversion of the sovereignty of an independent India by the British Raj in 1862, when it laid down the law of apartheid, to isolate “the tribal groups.” The British came into the area in the 1820s, following the Burmese conquest of Manipur and parts of Assam. The area had become unstable in the latter part of the 18th Century, following the over-extension of the Burmese-based Ahom kingdom, which reached into Assam. The instability caused by the weakening of the Ahom kingdom prompted the Burmese to move to secure their western flank. But the Burmese action also helped to bring in the British. The British East India Company was lying in wait for the Ahom kingdom to disintegrate.
The Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 ended with a British victory. By the terms of the peace treaty signed at Yandaboo on Feb. 24, 1826, the British annexed the whole of lower Assam and parts of upper Assam (now Arunachal Pradesh). The Treaty of Yandaboo provided the British with the foothold they needed to annex Northeast India, launch further campaigns to capture Burma’s vital coastal areas, and gain complete control of the territory from the Andaman Sea to the mouth of the Irrawaddy River. What were London’s motives in this venture? The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from “tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region.”
The ‘Apartheid Law’
Following annexation of Northeast India, the first strategy of the British East India Company toward the area was to set it up as a separate entity. At the outset, British strategy toward Northeast India was:
• to make sure that the tribal people remained separated from the plains people, and the economic interests of the British in the plains were not disturbed;
• to ensure that all tribal aspirations were ruthlessly curbed, by keeping the bogeyman of the plains people dangling in their faces; and,
• to ensure the tribal feudal order remained intact, with the paraphernalia of tribal chiefs and voodoo doctors kept in place. Part of this plan was carried out through the bribing of tribal chiefs with paltry gifts.
Lord Palmerston’s Zoo
The British plan to cordon off the northeast tribal areas was part of its policy of setting up a multicultural human zoo, during the 1850s, under the premiership of Henry Temple, the third Viscount Palmerston. Lord Palmerston, as Henry Temple was called, had three “friends”—the British Foreign Office, the Home Office, and Whitehall.
The apartheid program eliminated the Northeast Frontier Agency from the political map of India, and segregated the tribal population from Assam, as the British had done in southern Africa and would later do in Sudan. By 1875, British intentions became clear, even to those Englishmen who believed that the purpose of Mother England’s intervention in India, and the Northeast in particular, was to improve the conditions of the heathens. In an 1875 intelligence document, one operative wrote: “At this juncture, we find our local officers frankly declaring that our relations with the Nagas could not possibly be on a worse footing than they were then, and that the non-interference policy, which sounds excellent in theory, had utterly failed in practice.”
Apartheid also helped the British to function freely in this closed environment. Soon enough, the British Crown introduced another feature: It allowed Christian missionaries to proselytize among the tribal population and units of the Frontier Constabulary. The Land of the Nagas was identified as “virgin soil” for planting Christianity.
“Among a people so thoroughly primitive, and so independent of religious profession, we might reasonably expect missionary zeal would be most successful,” stated the 1875 document, as quoted in the “Descriptive Account of Assam,” by William Robinson and Angus Hamilton.
Missionaries were also encouraged to open government-aided schools in the Naga Hills. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of native Christians increased 128%. The chief proselytizers were the Welsh Presbyterians, headquartered in Khasi and the Jaintia Hills.
British Baptists were given the franchise of the Mizo (Lushai) and Naga Hills, and the Baptist mission was set up in 1836.
British Mindset Controlled New Delhi
Since India’s Independence in 1947, the Northeast has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity, and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized.
New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil.
Two terrorist groups in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the National Democratic front of Bodoland (NDFB) (set up originally as the Bodo Security Force), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas. To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the NDFB have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. In 1972, Meghalaya was carved out of Assam through a peaceful process. Unfortunately, peace did not last long in this “abode of the clouds.” In 1979, the first violent demonstration against “foreigners” resulted in a number of deaths and arson. The “foreigners” in this case were Bengalis, Marwaris, Biharis, and Nepalis, many of whom had settled in Meghalaya decades ago. By 1990, firebrand groups such as the Federation of Khasi, Jaintia, and Garo People (FKJGP), and the Khasi Students’ Union (KSU) came to the fore, ostensibly to uphold the rights of the “hill people” from Khasi, Jaintia, and the Garo hills. Violence erupted in 1979, 1987, 1989, and 1990. The last violent terrorist acts were in 1992.
Similar “anti-foreigner” movements have sprouted up across the Northeast, from Arunachal Pradesh in the East and North, to Sikkim in the West, and Mizoram and Tripura in the South. Along the Myanmar border, the states of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram remain unstable and extremely porous.
While New Delhi was busy maintaining the status quo in this area by telling the tribal and ethnic groups that India is not going to take away what the British Raj had given to them, Britain picked the Nagas as the most efficient warriors (also, a large number of them had been converted to Christianity by the Welsh missionaries), and began arming and funding them. The British connection to the NSCN existed from the early days of the Naga National Council. Angami Zapu Phizo, the mentor of both factions of the NSCN, had led the charge against the Indian government, spearheading well-organized guerrilla warfare. Phizo left Nagaland hiding in a coffin. He then turned up in 1963 in Britain, holding a Peruvian passport. It is strongly suspected that the British Baptist Church, which is very powerful in Nagaland, is the contact between British intelligence and the NSCN terrorists operating on the ground at the time.
‘Dirty Bertie’ and the Nagas
Once Phizo arrived in Britain, Lord Bertrand (“Dirty Bertie”) Russell, the atheist, courted Phizo, and became his new friend. Russell was deeply impressed with Phizo’s “earnestness” for a peaceful settlement. What, perhaps, impressed Russell the most is that Phizo had control over the militant Nagas, who had launched a movement in the mid-1950s under the Naga National Council (NNC) to secede from the Indian Republic. In a letter dated Feb. 12, 1963, Sir Bertrand told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “I find it hard to understand the difficulty of coming to an agreement which would put an end to the very painful occurrences incidental to the present policy of India.”
It is believed in some circles that New Delhi’s 1964 ceasefire with the Nagas might have been influenced by the letter from Russell that was handed to Nehru by Rev. Michael Scott. Scott later went to Nagaland as part of a peace mission, along with two senior Indian political leaders.
While Russell was pushing Nehru to make the Nagas an independent country through peaceful negotiations, British involvement in direct conflict continued. On Jan. 30, 1992, soldiers of the Assam Rifles arrested two British nationals along the Nagaland-Burma border. David Ward and Stephen Hill posed as members of BBC-TV, and were travelling in jeeps with Naga rebels carrying arms. Subsequent interrogation revealed that both were operatives of Naga Vigil, a U.K.-based group. Both Ward and Hill claimed that they started the organization while in jail, influenced by Phizo’s niece, Rano Soriza. Both have served six-year prison terms for various crimes in Britain. Naga Vigil petitioned for their release in the Guwahti High Court. Phizo’s niece took up the issue with then-Nagaland Chief Minister Vamuzo.
Sri Lanka’s Violent Ethnic Strife
In Sri Lanka, the Tamil Tiger terrorist group is in its last throes. Ousted by the Sri Lankan Army from almost all of its “claimed” territories, the militants are now holding on to about 19 square kilometers of land, with about 70,000 Sri Lankan citizens, mostly of Tamil ethnic origin, as their hostages. It is evident that they will be totally routed by the end of this month.
While the U.S. Pacific Command personnel in contact with New Delhi are formulating an evacuation plan for the hostages, London and the European Union are trying to protect the last vestiges of Tiger territory by urging Colombo to work out a cease fire with the terrorists.
The emergence of violent conflict between the Tamil Sri Lankans and the Sinhala Sri Lankans, which gave birth to the London-backed Tamil Tigers, was yet another product of the British colonial legacy. This ethnic conflict, which has engulfed this little island, and unleashed unlimited violence in the region for almost three decades, is, as in the case of Northeast India, due to the British mindset of the Sri Lankan and Indian leaders involved in “resolving “the crisis.
To begin with, Sri Lanka (then, Ceylon) had the misfortune to be colonized by three brutal European colonial powers—the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Nonetheless, it is to the credit of the locals that they withstood these brutes and prevented the break-up of the country.
After the Dutch ceded Sri Lanka in the 1801 Peace of Amiens, it became Britain’s first crown colony. Immediately, the British colonials started setting up the chess pieces. The ruling Kandyan King, of Tamil ancestry, was ousted with the help of local chieftains of Tamil and Sinhala origin. The coup set up the British crown as the new King.
As part of the “divide and rule” policy, the British colonials promoted the Buddhist religion, resulting in the 1817 Uva rebellion. The Buddhist religion was given protection by the Crown, and the people were told that Christianity would not be imposed on the unwilling masses as had happened during Portuguese and Dutch rule. Following the quelling of the rebellion, the British did what they do best: They carried out one of the worst massacres of the 19th Century, wiping out all able-bodied Sinhalese men from the Hill Country, and 80% of the native population of able-bodied, according to one report. The Kandyan Kingdom was the kingdom of both the Tamils and Sinhalas—both these groups came from India to settle on that island.
One specific impact of the British colonial presence was the emergence of English as the local language, undermining both the Sinhala and Tamil languages. According to one historian, the two most important effects observed during British rule were: one, by the start of 20th Century, the English language became the passport to getting employment; and those who had an English education became dominant in Britain’s handcrafted Sri Lankan society. Due to input of the Christian missionaries, more minority Tamils could read and write English, as opposed to the southern Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese.
The other observed impact on Sri Lankan society of British colonial rule, was the reconstituting of the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly of 1921 had 12 Sinhalese and 10 non-Sinhalese, at a time when the Sinhalese constituted more than 70% of the population. Things changed in 1931, when, out of 61 seats, the Sinhalese won 38. This troubled the Tamils, because they had had special privileges under British, and never wanted to accept the dominance of the Sinhalese majority.
In addition, the British also brought to the island a million workers of Tamil ethnic background from Tamil Nadu, and made them indentured laborers in the Hill Country. This was in addition to the million Tamils already living in the provinces, and another million Mappilla Muslims, whose mother tongue is Tamil. Thus, the British sowed seeds of ethnic discord. During the colonial rule, the minority Tamils had a disproportionate representation in the bureaucracy.
The Role of British Assets in Independent Sri Lanka
However, when in 1948, the British finally left the island, they left behind their assets, in powerful places, many of whom were educated at Oxford-Cambridge, and some of whom had adopted Christianity, on both sides of the ethnic divide London had so carefully created.
Instead of seizing the opportunity to build the nation and set about undoing the misdeeds they were forced to carry out under British rule, beginning in the 1950s, Sinhalese-dominated governments implemented public policies that would institutionalize the majority community’s dominance. Sinhala was declared to be the country’s sole official language; Buddhism was favored as the state religion; and the unitary nature of the state ensured Sinhalese political domination. Major Sinhalese-Tamil riots in 1956, 1981, and 1983 further heightened Tamil insecurities.
Meanwhile, the Tamils began to press for autonomy. Political parties, such as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), utilized conventional means, which included participating in coalition governments. Militant Tamils, the LTTE, sought the creation of an independent Tamil state, referred to as Tamil Eelam, which would comprise the North and East of the country.
Throughout the 1980s, various Tamil rebel groups engaged in attacks against the Colombo government and its security apparatus. However, the situation worsened on that island because of the British mindset of New Delhi, which made a number of attempts to intervene in the violent Sri Lankan situation. Besides helping the Tamils to get armed training and intelligence, New Delhi, under late-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, deployed around 50,000 Indian peacekeepers (IPKF) in Tamil areas in Sri Lanka to help ensure peace. In return, the Sri Lankan government agreed to devolve power to the North and East through the creation of autonomous provincial councils.
Neither Colombo nor the Tamil militants were sincere about the deal; both were looking at the Indian troops as the barriers against their independent state. The failure of the Indian intervention led to more deaths and the assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, and India’s Rajiv Gandhi, among many other high-level Sri Lankan officials, by the terrorist Tamil Tigers.
London: Break Up India into 100 Hong Kongs
But, the British were in the middle of all this. Besides the fact that the LTTE was headquartered in London, and raising most of its illegitimate funds from Britain and its former colonies in Australia, South Africa, and Canada, within ten days of Gandhi’s death, Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who would be assassinated by the LTTE in May 1993, forced the hasty departure from Sri Lanka of British High Commissioner David Gladstone. The charge was that Gladstone, a descendant of the Victorian-age Prime Minister William Gladstone, was interfering in local election politics. But he had also been criticized earlier for allegedly meeting with known drug traffickers in Sri Lanka. Gladstone, who had previously spent years in the Middle East, was a known British intelligence link to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, which was involved in training both the Sri Lankan Armed Forces and the LTTE.
Britain’s continuing intent to break up India was also expressed openly in this political context. On May 26, 1991, only five days after the British-controlled LTTE-led assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Times of London, the premier voice for the British Foreign Office, put forward this view in an editorial entitled “Home Truths”: “There are so many lessons to be learnt from sorrowing India, and most are being muttered too politely. The over-huge federation of almost 900 million people spreads across too many languages, cultures, religions, and castes. It has three times as many often incompatible and thus resentful people as the Soviet Union, which now faces the same bloody strains and ignored solutions as India. . . .
“The way forward for India, as for the Soviet Union, will be to say a great prize can go to any States and sub-States that maintain order without murders and riots. They should be allowed to disregard Delhi’s corrupt licensing restrictions, run their own economic policies, and bring in as much foreign investment and as many free-market principles as they like. Maybe India’s richest course from the beginning would have been to split into 100 Hong Kongs
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
Richard Niwon, Kissinger
Khmer Rouge jailer says U.S. contributed to Pol Pot rise
Mon Apr 6, 2009 6:10am EDT
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Pol Pot's chief torturer told Cambodia's "Killing Fields" tribunal on Monday that U.S. policies in Indochina in the 1970s contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
Duch, the first of five Pol Pot cadres to face trial for the 1975-79 reign of terror in which 1.7 million Cambodians died, said the Khmer Rouge would have faded if the U.S. had not got involved in Cambodia.
"Mr Richard Nixon and Kissinger allowed the Khmer Rouge to grasp golden opportunities," the 66-year-old former jailer said at the start of the second week of his trial by the joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was chief of the notorious S-21 prison where more than 14,000 enemies of the revolution were tortured and killed.
Last week, he apologized and begged forgiveness for his crimes. Duch faces life in prison if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and homicide. When asked by a judge to explain how he joined the Khmer Rouge, Duch gave a long, rambling answer that included references to former U.S. President Richard Nixon and ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Cambodia became a Cold War battlefield in 1969 when the Nixon administration began bombing routes in the east of the country that Soviet-backed North Vietnamese troops were using to transport men and supplies for their war against the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon.
In 1970, then Prince Norodom Sihanouk was ousted in a coup led by U.S.-backed General Lon Nol, who cranked up the war against Vietnamese and Cambodian communists.
Sihanouk later formed an alliance with the Khmer Rouge and he urged Cambodians to join the fight against Lon Nol's regime, which fell to Pol Pot's army in 1975.
"Prince Sihanouk called on the Cambodian people to go and join the communist Khmer Rouge in the jungle and that allowed the Khmer Rouge to build up their troops from 1970 to 1975," he said.
Without these events, Duch said: "I think the Khmer Rouge would have been demolished."
The tribunal, set up to prosecute those deemed most responsible for Khmer Rouge atrocities, can only pursue individuals for crimes committed in Cambodia between April 17, 1975 and January 6, 1979, when the regime fell to invading Vietnamese troops.
After Pol Pot's death in 1998, Kissinger defended the decision to bomb Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War and said it could not be linked with Pol Pot's killings later on.
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Mon Apr 6, 2009 6:10am EDT
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Pol Pot's chief torturer told Cambodia's "Killing Fields" tribunal on Monday that U.S. policies in Indochina in the 1970s contributed to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.
Duch, the first of five Pol Pot cadres to face trial for the 1975-79 reign of terror in which 1.7 million Cambodians died, said the Khmer Rouge would have faded if the U.S. had not got involved in Cambodia.
"Mr Richard Nixon and Kissinger allowed the Khmer Rouge to grasp golden opportunities," the 66-year-old former jailer said at the start of the second week of his trial by the joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunal.
Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, was chief of the notorious S-21 prison where more than 14,000 enemies of the revolution were tortured and killed.
Last week, he apologized and begged forgiveness for his crimes. Duch faces life in prison if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes, torture and homicide. When asked by a judge to explain how he joined the Khmer Rouge, Duch gave a long, rambling answer that included references to former U.S. President Richard Nixon and ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Cambodia became a Cold War battlefield in 1969 when the Nixon administration began bombing routes in the east of the country that Soviet-backed North Vietnamese troops were using to transport men and supplies for their war against the U.S.-backed regime in Saigon.
In 1970, then Prince Norodom Sihanouk was ousted in a coup led by U.S.-backed General Lon Nol, who cranked up the war against Vietnamese and Cambodian communists.
Sihanouk later formed an alliance with the Khmer Rouge and he urged Cambodians to join the fight against Lon Nol's regime, which fell to Pol Pot's army in 1975.
"Prince Sihanouk called on the Cambodian people to go and join the communist Khmer Rouge in the jungle and that allowed the Khmer Rouge to build up their troops from 1970 to 1975," he said.
Without these events, Duch said: "I think the Khmer Rouge would have been demolished."
The tribunal, set up to prosecute those deemed most responsible for Khmer Rouge atrocities, can only pursue individuals for crimes committed in Cambodia between April 17, 1975 and January 6, 1979, when the regime fell to invading Vietnamese troops.
After Pol Pot's death in 1998, Kissinger defended the decision to bomb Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War and said it could not be linked with Pol Pot's killings later on.
(Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Congresswoman brags of checking with Zionist Organization president before she signs on to legislation
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/03/congresswoman-brags-of-checking-with-zionist-organization-president-before-she-signs-on-to-legislati.html
From the JTA report on the Zionist Organization of America's lunch on Capitol Hill last week. Best moments belong to Shelley Berkley. Emphasis mine:
Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) joked that she always brings [ZOA President] Mort Klein her ZOA membership check each time our Mission is in Washington but that today she had left her checkbook in her car. She said that “being Jewish is a lifelong occupation. It’s what we do as Jews, more than any place else, we are experiencing the liberties our ancestors only dreamt of for generation after generation. There is a price to pay for this and the price is being engaged in our government process and no one does this better than ZOA.” Speaking of the rocket falling on Israeli towns like Sderot, she said that she “knows every neighborhood of Sderot … Israel has exercised extraordinary restraint and did not use disproportionate force. On the contrary, it didn’t use enough, soon enough. Many of my colleagues were concerned at this – I ask them, ‘Would you have been happier if a thousand more Jews had died?’ ... UNRWA is nothing but the face and arm of Hamas. We are giving funds to rebuild Gaza for UNRWA to administer – I couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous than this. I was delighted when my colleagues Mark Kirk and Steve Rothman introduced it – but first I called Mort to make sure it was strong enough before I signed on … There is no way on G—’s green earth that we can allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. I remember Ariel Sharon telling a group of us at Blair House that a nuclear Iran is as much a threat to the U.S., to the West and the Arab nations and that the world should not be expecting Israel to take care of its dirty work. And I couldn’t agree more.”
Remember, she's a Democrat.
From the JTA report on the Zionist Organization of America's lunch on Capitol Hill last week. Best moments belong to Shelley Berkley. Emphasis mine:
Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV) joked that she always brings [ZOA President] Mort Klein her ZOA membership check each time our Mission is in Washington but that today she had left her checkbook in her car. She said that “being Jewish is a lifelong occupation. It’s what we do as Jews, more than any place else, we are experiencing the liberties our ancestors only dreamt of for generation after generation. There is a price to pay for this and the price is being engaged in our government process and no one does this better than ZOA.” Speaking of the rocket falling on Israeli towns like Sderot, she said that she “knows every neighborhood of Sderot … Israel has exercised extraordinary restraint and did not use disproportionate force. On the contrary, it didn’t use enough, soon enough. Many of my colleagues were concerned at this – I ask them, ‘Would you have been happier if a thousand more Jews had died?’ ... UNRWA is nothing but the face and arm of Hamas. We are giving funds to rebuild Gaza for UNRWA to administer – I couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous than this. I was delighted when my colleagues Mark Kirk and Steve Rothman introduced it – but first I called Mort to make sure it was strong enough before I signed on … There is no way on G—’s green earth that we can allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. I remember Ariel Sharon telling a group of us at Blair House that a nuclear Iran is as much a threat to the U.S., to the West and the Arab nations and that the world should not be expecting Israel to take care of its dirty work. And I couldn’t agree more.”
Remember, she's a Democrat.
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