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Spring 2004 Can Civil War in Iraq Be Averted? by Bob Neveln Sistani, Has Consistently Been a Force Reaching Prewar Levels

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Spring 2004 Can Civil War in Iraq Be Averted? by Bob Neveln Sistani, Has Consistently Been a Force Reaching Prewar Levels DELAWARE COUNTY PLEDGE OF RESISTANCE P.O. Box 309 ~ Swarthmore, PA 19081 ~ phone & fax: 610-543-8427 Spring 2004 Can Civil War in Iraq Be Averted? by Bob Neveln Sistani, has consistently been a force reaching prewar levels. Oil prices are for moderation. Also fortunately, Am- high. Iraqi government ministers are cur- Despite the relentless death toll of Ira- bassador L. Paul Bremer III, presiden- rently in Amman being trained on the qis killed in bombings, presumably by tial envoy and chief civilian U.S. official intricacies of World Bank loans. Debt outsiders for the purpose of instigating in Iraq, has been consistently concilia- forgiveness by several major creditor na- civil war, Iraqis have failed to succumb tory towards Sistani. tions is under discussion. Unemploy- to these terrible provocations. The day Probably the most optimistic sign ment has dropped. before the bombing of the two Shi‘ite is the upturn in the economy, which may In sum there is reason for hope that mosques on the holiest day of the Shi‘ite help create a situation in which all can civil war will be avoided. calendar, Sunni clerics issued a fatwa be passably content. Oil production is against killing other Muslims, a very well-timed measure indeed. Incitement of strife by the U.S. mili- tary between Kurds and Shi‘ites, although it has yet to bear fruit in violence, defi- nitely shows more promise. Oblivious to the potential harm to Iraq’s stability, the military started right after the war with the re-routing of electricity north- wards causing outages in Baghdad and has been rewarding the Kurds for their support during the invasion and pun- ishing Turkey and Syria for their lack of it. Retaliatory ousting of Arabs from homes taken in years past from Kurds is another example, never justified by reference to a “right of return,” of course. One wonders whether Kissinger is missed at times like this. The most obvious sign so far of this tension has been near failure of the provisional constitution due to the Shi‘ites balking at provisions very fa- vorable to the Kurds. Incidentally, among the five out of 13 Shi‘ites on the governing council who held up the sign- ing for a day was the ever-versatile disinformation profiteer Chalabi! Fortu- nately for Iraq, the most influential Shi‘ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al- 1 Venezuela: The anti-neoliberal, democratic Bolivian revolution of Hugo Claiming Our Fair Trade Victory Chavez continues. New laws are aimed at redistribution of land, requiring banks to provide micro-credits to the poor, cre- by Paula Bronstein “… this strategy has significant ation of cooperatives, and restructur- limitations from the U.S. corporate per- ing the state oil industry. How long have we been struggling for spective. … The strategy requires too Brazil: The new leftist president of fair trade, fighting the injustices of the many negotiations with too many coun- Brazil has persuaded South Africa, In- World Trade Organization (WTO) and tries, and may leave the biggest mar- dia, and China to join the group of 22 Free Trade Area of the Americas kets out.” developing nations which weakened the (FTAA)? Yet our words and demonstra- Noting that Chile and Mexico al- WTO in Cancun, signed a commercial tions have been downplayed and dis- ready have free trade deals with the accord with China, urged Peru and Co- torted in the media. Now, our victories United States, Mark Weisbrot of the lumbia to help build Mercosur (south- have been silenced as well. The fact is Washington D.C.-based Center for Eco- ern common market), in competition with that the WTO conference in Cancun and nomic Policy Research points out that the proposed FTAA, given Venezuela a the FTAA conference in Miami pro- “70 percent of the remaining Latin billion dollar line of credit to buy Brazil- vided an exhilarating victory for Latin American market ... is attributable to ian exports, produced with Argentina’s America and a dismal failure for the U.S. Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela—coun- new president the “Buenos Aires Con- government and its greedy corporate tries with no interest in signing onto sensus” impressed the U.N. General As- empire. The impertinence of the U.S. has bilateral agreements with the U.S. with sembly with a proposal to eradicate hun- provided the impetus for the countries NAFTA style provisions.” ger worldwide and make the U.N. more of the south to form a united opposi- As a result of this victory, partner- democratic, and helped weaken the tion. And our organized nonviolent re- ships between countries as well as pro- FTAA in Miami. sistance has provided southern nations gressive electoral victories have been Argentina: Argentina’s new presi- with the solidarity they needed in order taking place all over Latin America: dent, Nestor Kirchner, apparently is to defend themselves. Let us loudly Uruguay: On December 6, 62 per- struggling between pressures from the proclaim this victory for Latin America cent of Uruguayans approved a national IMF and anti-neoliberal grassroots and for solidarity, too! referendum to overturn a law that would movements. On September 9, he refused Lori Wallach, director of Public have opened the countries oil market to make a $9 million debt payment and Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, speaking and state owned oil refinery ... to for- thereby forced the IMF to accept his on the FTAA conference in Miami, said, eign and private investment. proposal that Argentina pay only inter- “All that was agreed upon was to scale Bolivia: Last October workers and est on debts for the next three years. back the FTAA’s scope and punt the the indigenous protested free market The IMF also agreed that they didn’t hard decisions to an undefined future policies and the plans to further priva- have to compensate banks for losses venue so as to not make Miami the tize the state oil company. … Soldiers incurred in peso-dollar conversions, Waterloo of FTAA.” were attacked with firearms and rocks. and that private utility companies could “Powerful social movements in After overwhelming protests on Octo- not unilaterally raise their rates. Latin America against the FTAA have ber 17 of last year, the Bolivian presi- My personal victory is the deep made it impossible for those govern- dent fled. The new president Mesa has satisfaction I gain as I watch the coun- ments to agree to a full NAFTA expan- abandoned the drug war’s “zero coca” tries of Latin America gather wisdom, sion,” said Wallach. “Thus the United goal and will study “the legal use of strength, and solidarity as they dance States chose this week to make the uber coca.” in the shadow of the U.S. menace. concession—to move away from its ‘single undertaking’ vision of the FTAA to an a’ la carte approach to ensure that the FTAA lives to stagger on another day. It is hard to overstate what a huge shift this is in the U.S. position.” “But even as the U.S. was forced to retreat in the FTAA negotiations, it announced an intensified strategy of negotiating bilateral and mini-regional agreements containing exactly the same proposals—on intellectual property, in- vestments, and other areas—that it failed to ram through in the FTAA.” 2 Oh, Haiti!! by Ronald Coburn This could be a time to celebrate. It is the 200th anniversary of the Haitian slave revolt against their masters. Instead we are now mourning both the loss of the democratically elected Haitian president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was forced from his position, and the hope of the poor of Haiti. And it is even sadder that our country was involved in this coup d’état. I have memories of my first trip to Haiti just after the 1991 military coup Some 50 protesters gathered outside the Federal Building in that removed President Aristide from Philadelphia on March 15 to denounce U.S. complicity in the office and from Haiti. I was told that a overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. They called for the Haitian first exposure to life in Haiti would bring president's return. The Ad Hoc Coalition against the Coup in tears, and this was correct. During this Haiti organized the rally and encourages interested people to trip, Amnesty International people took learn more about Haitian solidarity efforts at haitireborn.org. depositions that revealed all the horrible things that people can do to other people. The poor live in indescribable poverty. If you don’t work one day, your There was trouble almost immedi- of the elite opposed President Aristide, family doesn’t eat the next day. The situ- ately after Aristide returned to Haiti. The and the current coup can be viewed as ation seems similar now. I can remember World Bank-International Monetary a chapter in their class war. President the hope of the Haitian people and those Fund demanded privatization of the air- Aristide, trained as a Catholic priest, interested in helping Haiti, when Presi- port and postal service; Aristide refused. adopted liberation theology and was dent Aristide returned to Haiti in 1994 When the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti, defrocked by the Catholic Church. So with some support of the U.S. govern- they seized thousands of pages of docu- the church in this most Christian of ment and the U.S. Marines. There were ments that incriminated Haitians in- countries did not support him. Finally promises of generous economic aid that volved in the 1991 military coup as well the U.S. government has not been sup- would help make governing and devel- as human rights violations.
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