International / Message of Iranian Premier to the people of America

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

O, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all
by You, and make us among his followers.

Noble Americans,

Were we not faced with the activities of the US administration in this part of the world and the negative ramifications of those activities on the daily lives of our peoples, coupled with the many wars and calamities caused by the US administration as well as the tragic consequences of US interference in other countries;

Were the American people not God-fearing, truth-loving, and justice-seeking, while the US administration actively conceals the truth and impedes any objective portrayal of current realities;

And if we did not share a common responsibility to promote and protect freedom and human dignity and integrity;

Then, there would have been little urgency to have a dialogue with you.

While Divine providence has placed Iran and the United States geographically far apart, we should be cognizant that human values and our common human spirit, which proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all human beings, have brought our two great nations of Iran and the United States closer together.

Both our nations are God-fearing, truth-loving and justice-seeking, and both seek dignity, respect and perfection.

Both greatly value and readily embrace the promotion of human ideals such as compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, securing justice and equity, and defending the innocent and the weak against oppressors and bullies.

We are all inclined towards the good, and towards extending a helping hand to one another, particularly to those in need.

We all deplore injustice, the trampling of peoples’ rights and the intimidation and humiliation of human beings.

We all detest darkness, deceit, lies and distortion, and seek and admire salvation, enlightenment, sincerity and honesty.

The pure human essence of the two great nations of Iran and the United States testify to the veracity of these statements.

Noble Americans,

Our nation has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world.

Hundreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots are living amongst you in friendship and peace, and are contributing positively to your society. Our people have been in contact with you over the past many years and have maintained these contacts despite the unnecessary restrictions of US authorities.

As mentioned, we have common concerns, face similar challenges, and are pained by the sufferings and afflictions in the world.

We, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people. Persistent aggressions by the Zionists are making life more and more difficult for the rightful owners of the land of Palestine. In broad daylight, in front of cameras and before the eyes of the world, they are bombarding innocent defenseless civilians, bulldozing houses, firing machine guns at students in the streets and alleys, and subjecting their families to endless grief.

No day goes by without a new crime.

Palestinian mothers, just like Iranian and American mothers, love their children, and are painfully bereaved by the imprisonment, wounding and murder of their children. What mother wouldn’t?

For 60 years, the Zionist regime has driven millions of the inhabitants of Palestine out of their homes. Many of these refugees have died in the Diaspora and in refugee camps. Their children have spent their youth in these camps and are aging while still in the hope of returning to homeland.

You know well that the US administration has persistently provided blind and blanket support to the Zionist regime, has emboldened it to continue its crimes, and has prevented the UN Security Council from condemning it.

Who can deny such broken promises and grave injustices towards humanity by the US administration?

Governments are there to serve their own people. No people wants to side with
or support any oppressors. But regrettably, the US administration disregards even its own public opinion and remains in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people.

Let’s take a look at Iraq. Since the commencement of the US military presence in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed, maimed or displaced. Terrorism in Iraq has grown exponentially. With the presence of the US military in Iraq, nothing has been done to rebuild the ruins, to restore the infrastructure or to alleviate poverty. The US Government used the pretext of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but later it became clear that that was just a lie and a deception.

Although Saddam was overthrown and people are happy about his departure, the pain and suffering of the Iraqi people has persisted and has even been aggravated.

In Iraq, about one hundred and fifty thousand American soldiers, separated from their families and loved ones, are operating under the command of the current US administration. A substantial number of them have been killed or wounded and their presence in Iraq has tarnished the image of the American people and government.

Their mothers and relatives have, on numerous occasions, displayed their discontent with the presence of their sons and daughters in a land thousands of miles away from US shores. American soldiers often wonder why they have been sent to Iraq.

I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure.

Noble Americans,

You have heard that the US administration is kidnapping its presumed opponents from across the globe and arbitrarily holding them without trial or any international supervision in horrendous prisons that it has established in various parts of the world. God knows who these detainees actually are, and what terrible fate awaits them.

You have certainly heard the sad stories of the Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib prisons. The US administration attempts to justify them through its proclaimed “war on terror.” But every one knows that such behavior, in fact, offends global public opinion, exacerbates resentment and thereby spreads terrorism, and tarnishes the US image and its credibility among nations.

The US administration’s illegal and immoral behavior is not even confined to outside its borders. You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of “the war on terror,” civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning. Judicial due process and fundamental rights are trampled upon. Private phones are tapped, suspects are arbitrarily arrested, sometimes beaten in the streets, or even shot to death.

I have no doubt that the American people do not approve of this behavior and indeed deplore it.

The US administration does not accept accountability before any organization, institution or council. The US administration has undermined the credibility of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and its Security Council. But, I do not intend to address all the challenges and calamities in this message.

The legitimacy, power and influence of a government do not emanate from its arsenals of tanks, fighter aircrafts, missiles or nuclear weapons. Legitimacy and influence reside in sound logic, quest for justice and compassion and empathy for all humanity. The global position of the United States is in all probability weakened because the administration has continued to resort to force, to conceal the truth, and to mislead the American people about its policies and practices.

Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections. I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people.

My questions are the following:

Is there not a better approach to governance?

Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?

We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.

But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?

The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.

What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people? It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world.

What have the Zionists done for the American people that the US administration considers itself obliged to blindly support these infamous aggressors? Is it not because they have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the banking, financial, cultural and media sectors?

I recommend that in a demonstration of respect for the American people and for humanity, the right of Palestinians to live in their own homeland should be recognized so that millions of Palestinian refugees can return to their homes and the future of all of Palestine and its form of government be determined in a referendum. This will benefit everyone.

Now that Iraq has a Constitution and an independent Assembly and Government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness.

I’d also like to say a word to the winners of the recent elections in the US:

The United States has had many administrations; some who have left a positive legacy, and others that are neither remembered fondly by the American people nor by other nations.

Now that you control an important branch of the US Government, you will also be held to account by the people and by history.

If the US Government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and Justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America. But if the approach remains the same, it would not be unexpected that the American people would similarly reject the new electoral winners, although the recent elections, rather than reflecting a victory, in reality point to the failure of the current administration’s policies. These issues had been extensively dealt with in my letter to President Bush earlier this year.

To sum up:

It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.

is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.

It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.

It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.

Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.

What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.

I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized, Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.

The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not
choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and
transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of
return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.

We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur’an:

“But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your
Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His
choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him.”
(28:67-68)

I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all
nations of the world with dignity and success.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006

International / Africa-South America summit in Abuja to enhance south-south dialogue

Amadou Ly

The first Africa-South America Summit begins in Abuja, Nigeria on 28th November. 12 South-American countries and 54 African countries are reported to have participated in the four day summit. 900 delegates and 66 Heads of States and Governments would grace the Summit.
The South American countries include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Professor Alpha Oumar Konare disclosed that the Summit would enable the two regions to increase their leverage and impact in the wider international arena and their respective abilities to deliver on promises of peace, security and development to their people.

Represented by Ambassador John Kayode Shinkaiye, the AU Commission Chairperson said, "The objective of the Summit in general is to strengthen cooperation between the nations and the peoples of the two regions and forge a stronger strategic partnership to enhance effective multilateralism on a south-south basis."

Sources at the meeting stated that the delegates considered the draft outcome documents, which will form the groundwork for the success of both the ministerial and summit meetings that will take place today and on Thursday respectively.

Formally established in 2004, the South American Community of Nations (SACN) has taken the lead in promoting dialogue with other developing regions, and last year it started this process by organizing the first South America-Arab League summit in Brasilia. Mechanisms are already in place to carry out follow-up strategies on an action plan developed by that forum.

Through the Abuja summit, the SACN is now advancing the process by expanding links with the African nations. Undoubtedly, the strengthening of cooperation between the SACN and the African Union (AU) on political, economic and developmental issues common to both continents has the potential to promote effective economic and political multilateralism. This partnership aims at mutually benefiting the citizens of both continents and, at the same time, to effectively address common political, social and economic challenges in the rapidly changing international political climate.

The antecedents of this major decision to hold a South America-Africa summit were the efforts undertaken to enhance South-South cooperation through joint events such as the First Conference of Intellectuals of Africa and the Diaspora which took place in Dakar, Senegal in October 2004 and the follow up Second Conference in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil during July this year.

In addition, leaders on both sides opened up a political dialogue through exchange visits and meetings at international forums over the past year. In their on-going discourse, both South America and Africa point to their historic and cultural links, with some countries – notably, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Guyana and Suriname – emphasizing that people of African ancestry form a relatively large section of their respective populations.

Political links also were developed from the 1950s when some South American countries played important roles in providing support to the heroic struggles waged by African peoples and countries for political independence, human dignity and economic emancipation. In this respect, Guyana played a leading role in offering solidarity, as did many African countries which, in turn, gave strong solidarity to the Guyanese people in their own independence struggle.

The fight against poverty is indeed high on the agenda. One of the ways to carry out this fight is to advance trade and investment, utilizing the vast natural resource base of these two huge land masses. But both continents also have to wage a determined struggle against communicable diseases, especially HIV/AIDS, and cooperation in developing and sharing medical expertise, resources and experience will certainly work to each other’s advantage.

The development of infrastructure to aid economic progress is also a necessity. Building such infrastructure needs heavy financing, but many of the countries, especially those of Africa (and Guyana and Bolivia in South America) are already heavily indebted. As a result, they are either wary of accumulating more debts or are restricted by the World Bank and IMF from acquiring new non-grant financing for such projects.

With this in mind, the South American countries have already begun analyzing the possibility of setting up a development “Bank of the South” for financing their infrastructure projects. No doubt this idea, originally promoted by Venezuela, may surface at the Abuja summit with the African countries invited to join in this enterprise.

Also at the meeting which was not opened to the press were senior government officials and ambassadors from the two regions including Dr. Hakeem Baba Ahmed, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Pedro Motta of the Community of South American Nations (CASA) and ambassadors of South American countries in Nigeria . At the end of the Summit , Heads of States and Governments are expected to emerge with three important practical documents tentatively tagged the 1st Africa-South America Summit, the Plan of Action and the Implementation Strategy.

Africa / Genocide in Darfur - How the Horror Began

By Eric Reeves
Sudan Tribune (www.sudantribune.com), Saturday 3 September 2005.

In one of the most remote places in Africa, an insurgency began unnoticed under the shadow of the war in Iraq in 2003, killing 350,000 to 400,000 people in 29 months by means of violence, malnutrition, and disease in the first genocidal rampage of the 21st century.

The insurgeny began virtually unnoticed in February 2003; it has, over the past two years, precipitated the first great episode of genocidal destruction in the 21st century. The victims are the non-Arab or African tribal groups of Darfur, primarily the Fur, the Massaleit, and the Zaghawa, but also the Tunjur, the Birgid, the Dajo, and others. These people have long been politically and economically marginalized, and in recent years the National Islamic Front regime, based in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum, has refused to control increasingly violent Arab militia raids of African villages in Darfur. Competition between Arab and African tribal groups over the scarce primary resources in Darfur-arable land and water-has been exacerbated by advancing desertification throughout the Sahel region.

But it was Khartoum’s failure to respond to the desperate economic needs of this huge region (it is the size of France), the decayed judiciary, the lack of political representation, and in particular the growing impunity on the part of Arab raiders that gave rise to the full-scale armed conflict.
Not directly related to the 21-year civil conflict that recently formally ended in southern Sudan-a historic agreement was signed in Nairobi on January 9, 2005-Darfur’s insurgency found early success against Khartoum’s regular military forces. But this success had a terrible consequence: The regime in Khartoum switched from a military strategy of direct confrontation to a policy of systematically destroying the African tribal groups perceived as the civilian base of support for the insurgents. The primary instrument in this new policy has been the Janjaweed, a loosely organized Arab militia force of perhaps 20,000 men, primarily on horse and camel.

This force is dramatically different in character, military strength, and purpose from previous militia raiders. Khartoum ensured that the Janjaweed were extremely heavily armed, well-supplied, and actively coordinating with the regime’s regular ground and air forces. Indeed, Human Rights Watch obtained in July 2004 confidential Sudanese government documents that directly implicate high-ranking government officials in a policy of support for the Janjaweed. "It’s absurd to distinguish between the Sudanese government forces and the militias-they are one," says Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Division. "These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it’s been specifically supported by Sudan government officials."

Evidence of genocide

The nature of the attacks on African villages in Darfur-as reported by numerous human rights groups-makes clear the Khartoum regime’s genocidal intent. Janjaweed assaults, typically conducted in concert with Khartoum’s regular military forces (including helicopter gunships and Antonov bombers), have been comprehensively destructive of both human life and livelihood: men and boys killed en masse, women and girls raped or abducted, and all means of agricultural production destroyed. Thriving villages have had buildings burned, water sources poisoned, irrigation systems torn up, food and seed stocks destroyed, and fruit trees cut down. Cattle have been looted on a massive scale, and most of those not looted have died from lack of water and food, as people flee into the inhospitable wastes of this arid region.

According to Article 2 of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide-to which the US and all current members of the UN Security Council are party-genocide encompasses not only the deliberate killing of members of a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such," but also "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The latter is what we have seen in Darfur.

As a result, agricultural production has largely come to a halt in Darfur, and the United Nations estimates that in the very near future 3.5 million people will be in urgent need of food assistance (the total population of Darfur is approximately 6.5 million). Moreover, there is no sign that the current planting season will yield a significant fall harvest. Huge civilian populations-well over two million people-will be dependent on food aid for the foreseeable future. Many of these people will die in what has become genocide by attrition.

The humanitarian crisis The current rainy season in Darfur is already creating immense logistical problems for humanitarian aid groups, as it did last summer. Darfur is one of the most remote places in Africa, and quite distant from navigable bodies of water. Both food and critical nonfood items (medical supplies, shelter, equipment for clean water) must be transported over land by truck or (much more expensively) flown into the regional capitals of the three Darfur states.

Though humanitarian organizations are performing heroically under extremely difficult conditions, it’s clear that there is a deadly mismatch between humanitarian capacity and human need. As the rains sever various transport corridors and insecurity closes others, many villages and communities are becoming inaccessible. This occurs against the backdrop of a traditional "hunger gap"-the period between spring planting and fall harvest.

Moreover, the overcrowded camps for displaced persons-now the only place of refuge for more than two million people-face serious shortages of sanitary facilities. The threat of waterborne disease is becoming acute, as many of the camps are little more than open sewers. Outbreaks of cholera or dysentery could quickly claim tens of thousands of lives in addition to those already claimed by violence, disease, and malnutrition. Extant data suggest that between 350,000 and 400,000 have perished during the past 29 months.

A recent UN mortality assessment indicates that more than 6,000 continue to die every month, and Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, has warned that the toll may climb to 100,000 per month if insecurity forces humanitarian organizations to withdraw from Darfur. Banditry, hijacking of humanitarian convoys, and attacks on humanitarian workers have grown relentlessly in recent months, even as there has been a decline in major conflict between Khartoum’s regular forces and the insurgency groups.

Peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria, have done nothing to rein in the Janjaweed militia, and a small African Union monitoring force on the ground has had only marginal effect in addressing civilian and humanitarian security needs. The death total in Darfur’s genocide may reach that of Rwanda’s by year’s end.

Racism and Islamism in Khartoum

The National Islamic Front (which has attempted to rename itself innocuously as the "National Congress Party") is essentially unchanged since it seized power from a democratically elected government in a 1989 military coup, deliberately aborting Sudan’s most promising peace process since independence in 1956. With the exception of Islamist ideologue Hassan El-Turabi-the mastermind of the 1989 coup who split with his former allies and is no longer part of the government-the same brutal men still control the NIF 16 years after it seized power. Field Marshal Omer El-Beshir retains the presidency, and Ali Osman Taha-arguably the most powerful man in Sudan-serves as vice president and controls the terrifyingly efficient security services. Nafie Ali Nafie, Gutbi Al-Mahdi, and other longtime members of the NIF serve in various advisory capacities. And Major General Saleh Abdallah Gosh, recently flown to Washington by the CIA, retains control of the Mukhabarat (Sudan’s intelligence and security service) even as he is among those members of the NIF indicted at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

These are the men who settled on a genocidal response to the insurgency movements that emerged in Darfur in early 2003. But the NIF’S history of genocide goes back much further than the current catastrophe in Darfur. Animated by a radical Islamism and sense of Arab racial superiority, the movement engaged in genocide almost from the time it seized power. A year ago, seasoned Sudan watcher Alex de Waal of the British group Justice Africa wrote for the London Review of Books what remains one of the best overviews of the Darfur crisis. In the piece, he observed that genocide in Darfur is not the genocidal campaign of a government at the height of its ideological hubris, as the 1992 jihad in the Nuba Mountains was, or coldly determined to secure natural resources, as when it sought to clear the oilfields of southern Sudan of their troublesome inhabitants. This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power; it is genocide by force of habit. As part of a ghastly jihad, the NIF conducted relentless military assaults on civilians and enforced a humanitarian aid embargo that lasted more than a decade.

The same men ordered the scorched-earth clearances of the oil regions in southern Sudan to provide security for the operations of international oil companies. The actions of oil companies from Canada, Sweden, Austria, China, Malaysia, and India-directly supporting the NIF regime-constitute one of the most shameful episodes in the long and terrible history of resource extraction in Africa.

The result of these policies was that between 1989 and 2002 many hundreds of thousands of Sudanese were either killed or displaced. In the Nuba Mountains and the oil regions of southern Sudan, as in Darfur, the NIF regime settled upon a deliberate policy of human destruction, targeting ethnically African populations that had rebelled against, or were victims of, decades of political and economic marginalization.

The July 9 inauguration of a new Sudanese "government of national unity" (GNU) has appropriately received a good deal of news coverage. (The GNU represents the culmination of an arduous peace process going back almost a decade and the formal end to war in southern Sudan. Perhaps the most destructive civil conflict since World War II and one of the longest wars in Africa’s history, it saw the Christian and animist South pitted against the Muslim, Arab-speaking North. As many as 2.5 million people have died since the second phase of the civil war began in 1983-and likely more than four million if we consider its earlier phase (1955-72). More than five million people were displaced by the war-Sudan has the world’s largest population of internally displaced persons-and southern Sudan was utterly devastated.)
John Garang, the 60-year-old guerilla leader of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, was killed in a helicopter crash on July 30, just three weeks after being inaugurated as "First Vice President" in the GNU. One of the few elder southern statesman who believed in a united Sudan, Garang was pivotal in securing the peace agreement that ended the civil war and was a symbol of hope for many in the south. It was assumed in many quarters that Garang-as someone long sympathetic to the cause of Sudan’s marginalized peoples-would use his new position to help end genocide in Darfur. His death has raised fears about the newly established peace, with some southerners claiming the Sudanese government, dominated by their northern opponents, might have played a role in it. A seven-member team is investigating the crash and is scheduled to present its findings by early September.

Who is dying

Darfur’s prewar population of approximately 6.5 million was perhaps 60 to 65 percent non-Arab-some four million "Africans." In fact, all Darfuris are African, and skin color is a wholly inadequate measure of ethnicity. But ethnic differences do exist-the use of Arabic as a first language, agricultural practices, and a variety of more subtle cultural differences-and identification by ethnicity comes easily to Darfuris, even in matters such as gait and attire. But of this population of roughly four million "Africans," UN figures for displacement, or even for those defined as "conflict-affected," cannot account for more than one million people. Some are in urban areas, but hundreds of thousands have died (more on exactly how many below), and hundreds of thousands more are at risk in inaccessible rural areas of Darfur.

Sometime in summer 2004-we’ll probably never know just when-human mortality in the Darfur genocide became more a function of malnutrition and disease than violent destruction. What we must not lose sight of is that deaths from malnutrition and disease are no less the product of genocidal ambitions than violent killings: Having so comprehensively and deliberately destroyed the villages and livelihoods of the African tribal populations of Darfur, Khartoum and its Janjaweed allies bear full responsibility for the ongoing deadly consequences of these assaults on civilian targets.

The consensus among Darfuris in exile, at least those who have access to sources on the ground in Darfur, is that approximately 90 percent of all African villages have now been destroyed. But as villagers have fled to camps for displaced persons and into eastern Chad, they have created extremely vulnerable populations in highly concentrated locations. The United Nations reports approximately two million people in camps for displaced persons to which it has access in Darfur and another 200,000 refugees inside Chad along the Darfur border. Many hundreds of thousands of people remain unaccounted for-dead, hiding, staying with host families in other locations, or simply unregistered by the United Nations.

Those inside the camps must contend not only with relentless insecurity but with overcrowding, inadequate sanitary facilities, shortcomings in shelter, and severe water shortages-in some locations people have been forced to survive on what humanitarian groups consider less than half the daily human requirement of water. Though the rainy season may alleviate this problem, the torrential rains also create severe risks for outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery. There were no major outbreaks of either disease in summer 2004; displaced Darfuris are very unlikely to again escape diseases that can claim tens of thousands of lives in a matter of weeks.

Food shortages, however, remain the greatest threat to human life in Darfur. Darfuris normally rely on foraging in times of desperation, but the insecurity that continues to be created by the Janjaweed makes this impossible. Many of the hundreds of thousands in inaccessible rural areas are slowly starving.

Children, as always, are most vulnerable.

Insecurity prevented a significant planting this spring and early summer (normally the major planting season in the agricultural calendar), so there will be no fall harvest-this after last fall’s severely attenuated harvest. Significant domestic food production in Darfur will not be in evidence until fall 2006-at the earliest. People already weakened by malnutrition have become increasingly vulnerable to disease and will only become weaker and more vulnerable in the months ahead. Genocidal mortality will continue for years.

Last December, Jan Egeland, the UN’s Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, estimated that if insecurity forces the withdrawal of humanitarian operations, as many as 100,000 may die every month. And as Kofi Annan recently noted in his report to the Security Council, threats against humanitarian workers are on the rise.

There is compelling data concerning violent mortality. Even with significant biases toward undercounting, the data assembled by the Coalition for International Justice (CIJ), the organization appointed by the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (US AID) to research human destruction, strongly suggests that more than 200,000 people have died violently in Darfur. Though not technically an epidemiological study, the CIJ report cannot be ignored, since there is no alternative source of data. The key finding was that 61 percent of those interviewed had witnessed the killing of a family member during an assault by Janjaweed or regular military forces.

This data, along with previous mortality data from the World Health Organization and other humanitarian organizations, and several key epidemiological studies, suggest that between 350,000 and 400,000 people have died from all causes-violence, malnutrition, and disease-in Darfur’s genocide. The impending spike upward in monthly mortality rates, and the great likelihood that genocide by attrition will continue for months and years, suggest, that total mortality may eventually exceed that of Rwanda in 1994. Unfortunately, news media have almost all failed to take account of the mortality data available, particularly data suggesting a total for violent mortality.

The future of Darfur

There is no sign that normal agricultural production will resume any time in the near future. There is no sign that the insecurity confining people to camps for the displaced or villages under siege will be alleviated, even with the currently planned deployment of additional African Union personnel. There is no sign that the international community intends to fund humanitarian efforts in Darfur at an appropriate level. There is no sign that Khartoum’s National Islamic Front, and the new government it dominates, has changed its genocidal ambitions, now best served by preserving the deadly status quo. There is no sign that peace negotiations in Abuja, Nigeria will yield more than the vaguely worded "declaration of principles" signed last month. And there is no sign of the international humanitarian intervention that might stop the genocide.
There are only signs that the dying will continue indefinitely.

The US response to Darfur must be understood in the context of Bush-administration efforts to end Sudan’s north-south war-as well as the administration’s attempt to secure intelligence from Khartoum on international terrorism. (The National Islamic Front hosted Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from 1991 to 1996, and retained strong connections even when bin Laden moved to Afghanistan.) These have been policy priorities despite the administration’s explicit conclusion, first announced by former Secretary of State Colin Powell last September, that genocide was taking place in Darfur and that the Khartoum government was playing a role.

The Bush administration invested heavily in negotiating an end to the north-south war, and the signing earlier this year of a formal peace agreement-however limited and flawed-must be recognized as a major foreign policy achievement. But precisely because of the administration’s investment in a north-south agreement, including the appointment of former Senator John Danforth as special envoy to Sudan, there was widespread reluctance within the State Department to hold Khartoum accountable for the genocide that was clearly unfolding in early 2004, when north-south peace negotiations had entered their final phase.

The thinking by US officials involved in the negotiations, and their British and Norwegian counterparts, was that pressing the National Islamic Front regime too hard on Darfur would undermine the chances of consummating the north-south agreement. But this diplomatic strategy was of course transparent to Khartoum and thus perversely provided an incentive for the regime to extend negotiations as long as possible-always promising a light at the end of the diplomatic tunnel.

The last issue of substance between Khartoum and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement was resolved in a protocol signed by all parties in late May 2004. Two weeks later, following months of terrifying reports from human rights groups, the State Department announced that it would begin an investigation to determine whether Khartoum was guilty of genocide in Darfur. The close sequence of dates was not a coincidence.

But a tremendous amount of the violent destruction in Darfur had already been accomplished by June 2004; indeed, this marks the approximate point in the conflict at which deaths from malnutrition and disease began to exceed those from violence. Moreover, Khartoum continued to use the north-south peace agreement as a threat, declaring with brazen confidence that if it were pushed too hard on Darfur, the negotiated agreement might be endangered. The agreement’s final signing ceremony occurred in Nairobi on January 9, 2005; the inauguration of a new government took place six months later, on July 9, 2005; the killing in Darfur, of course, continues.

US belatedness in responding with appropriate determination to genocide was mirrored in the flaccid responses of European countries, individually and through the European Union. Canada, Japan, the Arab League, and the African Union were no better. America has been the most generous nation in providing humanitarian assistance to Darfur, reflecting chiefly the determination of officials at US AID. Meanwhile, the commitments of other countries to relief efforts have been less than stellar. The financial responses of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and the oil-rich Arab countries have been scandalously laggard.

The African Union in Darfur

The AU began to deploy a small number of monitors to Darfur following a ceasefire signed in April 2004 in N’Djamena, Chad. A commitment in late summer 2004 to increase the monitoring force to approximately 3,500 went unfulfilled for over half a year, and during this time the AU was unable to secure from Khartoum a mandate for civilian protection-only a mandate to monitor the largely nonexistent ceasefire. Recently, the AU has said it will increase its force to 7,700 by September, and possibly 12,000 by spring 2006.

As many have recognized, the AU is quite unable to deploy to this force-level with its own resources and NATO, as a consequence, has very recently agreed to provide logistics and transport capacity. The bigger problem, however, is that even with NATO’s help, the nascent AU Peace and Security Commission is simply not up to this mission if the goal for Darfur is adequate protection for civilians and humanitarian operations. The AU does not have the troops, equipment, or essential interoperability of forces that are necessary given the scale of the crisis. Those paying the price for disingenuous suggestions to the contrary are vulnerable civilian populations and humanitarian aid workers.

Recently, Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio of Senegal refused to accept any longer what has become the mantra of "African solutions for African problems." Gadio declared, on the occasion of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, that his government was "totally dissatisfied" with the hollowness of AU claims to be able to stop genocide in Darfur. Calling the situation "totally unacceptable," he continued: "We don’t like the fact that the African Union has asked the international community to allow us to bring an African solution to an African problem and unfortunately the logistics from our own governments do not follow."

This honesty is remarkable, the more so since Nigeria-current chair of the African Union-has declared at various points that the situation is fully in hand and actually improving. Comments to this effect have come from both President Obasanjo and General Festus Okonkwo, the Nigerian commander of AU forces in Darfur. Nigeria has strong-armed into silence many African nations. The country, which wants to maintain good relations with the Muslim world even as it confronts militant Islam in northern Nigerian states, has yielded to pressure from the Arab League-especially Libya and Egypt-to define the Darfur genocide as an African problem rather than an international one.

Genocidal destruction in Darfur will continue for the foreseeable future. The resources to halt massive, ethnically targeted destruction-of lives and livelihoods-are nowhere in sight. The consequences of this destruction, now extending over almost two and a half years, will be evident for years-in villages that have been burned to the ground, in poisoned water sources, in the cruel impoverishment of people who have lost everything, in deaths that will continue to mount relentlessly.

There is currently no evidence that the international community is prepared to deploy adequate protection for either Darfur’s vulnerable civilian populations or endangered humanitarian operations. August, traditionally the month of heaviest rains, saw a further attenuation of relief efforts, as transport of food and other critical supplies became mired in flooded riverbeds and blocked by severed road arteries. At the same time, waterborne diseases, along with malaria and a wide range of communicable diseases, will take huge numbers of lives. These diseases will be particularly potent killers because so much of the civilian population of Darfur has been seriously weakened by malnutrition. Famine conditions have already been identified in parts of Darfur, and the UN’s World Food Program estimates that 3.5 million people will need food assistance in the near future.

Our moral choice

It is important that the stark moral choice confronting the international community be absolutely clear. History must not record this moment as one in which our decision was uninformed by either the scale of the human catastrophe or an understanding of what is required to stop genocidal destruction.

And so, despite the long odds against an intervention actually taking place, it is our obligation to say with conviction and understanding the most urgent truth: In the absence of humanitarian intervention, Darfur’s civilian population, as well as humanitarian workers, will be consigned to pervasive, deadly insecurity; displaced persons will remain trapped in camps that are hotbeds of disease; agricultural production will remain at a standstill, leaving millions of people dependent on international food assistance for the foreseeable future; aid workers will continue to fall prey to targeted and opportunistic violence.

In other words, the genocide in Darfur will continue. We can stop it. We are simply choosing not to.

Eric Reeves is a professor at Smith College and an expert on Darfur. For more information see Reeves’s website, www.sudanreeves.org.

Africa / Darfur : Chronology of events

Amadou Ly

1956 : Sudanese independence, old Anglo-Egyptian condominium. The non-arab tribal and Christian south revolts against the Islamic north.

1958: Army takes over the power.

1969-1985 : the dictatorship of marshal Djafar el-Nemeyri.

1972 : Addis-Ababa agreement puts an end to ten years de guerilla warfare, thereby the south would acquire “autonomy”.

1978 : natural oil (petroleum) discovered in southern Sudan.

1983 : The Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), founded by the dissident colonel John Garang, starts the rebellion. Seeking allies among muslim brothers of Hassan el Tourabi, marshal Nemeyri promulgates a new legislation based on Sharia (Islamic law).

1985 : since 1983, the devastating famine causes a big exodus and killed more than 200 000 people.

1986 : formation of a civil coalition government led by Sadeq el Mahdi.

1989 : coup d'Etat of General Hassan el-Bechir, supported by National Islamic Front, led by Hassan el-Tourabi.

1991 : new Penal Code, based on Sharia. A split inside SPLA weakens the rebellion, at a time when it controlled nearly 90% of the south.

1992-1994 : several southern rebel groups got entangled in infightings.

1994 : In Khartoum, the terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias «Carlos», accused to have committed triple murder in 1975 in Paris, arrested by the French secret service.

1995 : Egypte accuses Sudan of being involved in an assassination attempt on Hosni Moubarak.

1996 : UN accuses the country of supporting terrorism. Expulsion of the “Afghan” Islamist Osama Bin Laden.

1997 : US decides an embargo against Sudan.

1998 : US retorted anti-American attacks in Kenya and Tanzania by bombarding a pharmaceutical plant suspected of producing chemical arms.

1999 : Khartoum seeks to normalize its relations with Ethiopia who ceased to support SPLA.December 1999 : President Bechir dissolves the Parliament, presided by his ex-ally, the Islamist leader Hassan al-Tourabi.

Mai 2000: Hassan el-Tourabi is ousted from the party in power, the National Congress (NC).

February 2001 : Hassan el-Tourabi arrested.

2002

20 July : In Machakos, Kenya, signing of a protocol of agreement in order to end nearly 20 years of conflict in southern Sudan.
10 August : Ban lifted on political parties consisting of pre-1989 coup d'Etat members.

2003

February-March : first armed squad actions in Darfour, the Liberation Movement of Sudan (LMS), calls for a total overthrow of the Khartoum regime. The government enlists militiamen, the janjaweeds (men on horse or camel).

2004

7 January : The Government and the SPLA sign an agreement on the equal share of the petroleum revenue of the southern Sudan.
13 February: The LMS joins the ranks of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which regroups together the northern opposition and the southern rebellion.
2 April: A high rank UN official describes this war in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing”.
8 April: signing of a cease-fire between Khartoum and the rebels of Darfur.
May: a report by the UN High Commissioner for human rights recommends to examine the Khartoum regime’s responsibility in the crimes committed against the humanity in Darfur. UN urges the militia groups to put down weapons.
30 July: UN adopts a resolution threatening the Sudanese government of retaliation if they don’t abstain themselves from recruiting janjawids.August : A contingent of African Union (AU) arrives to look after the security of the observers of the cease-fire signed on 8 April.
18 September : The UN Security Council threatens Sudan of sanctions if they fail in their engagement to restore the security in Darfur.

2005

9 January : The government and the SPLA sign, in Nairobi, a final peace agreement to end 21 years of war in southern Sudan. John Garang became the first vice-president.March : The UN security council decides to send 10 000 men to support the peace agreement. An UN resolution demands for legal actions against the people responsible for genocide in Darfur in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
17 May : NATO announces logistical support to AU mission in Darfur.
1st June : ICC starts an enquery about the crimes committed in Darfur.
8 July : Return de John Garang to Khartoum after a 22 year absence.
30 July : John Garang is killed in a helicopter accident.
20 September : formation of a government of national unity (GNU) in Khartoum.

2006

3 February : The UN security council appeals for an elaboration plan in order to replace AU force by UN force.
17 February : George W. Bush strongly recommends to send a UN peace force supported by the NATO in Darfur in order to double the 7000 soldiers currently deployed by African Union.

Africa / Somamli Islamists threatened by Ethiopian military presence

Amadou Ly

The Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, said on Saturday 23 November that they had abandoned their military plans against Somalia, in order combat the Somali Islamist force. He proclaimed before the Parliament that the crisis would rather be better solved through dialogues. Although the Somali Islamist Courts that took over a part of the country, a real threat for Ethiopia at present, are reported to be ready to fight back in case of any military intervention from Ethiopia.

The Somali Islamic spokesman, Abdurahim Ali Muddey, however refuted any possibility of causing threat to the Ethiopians. Rather, on his turn, he made reference to the threatening presence of the Ethiopian troops on their territory.

Addis Abeba rejected the Somali accusation of Ethiopian military presence on Somali territory, admitting nonetheless that they have only sent a group of military advisers to help the transitional Somali government they openly support.

Somalia is going through a civil war since 1991. The history of Somalia and Ethiopia is littered with distrust, animosity and war. Suspicion of neighbouring expansionism and political extremism is deeply rooted in both states. However, Somalia's disappearance into a political abyss over the last 15 years opened a new chapter.

Meles Zenawi came to power with the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPDRF) in 1991, in the same year the Somali government collapsed. Initially, the events in the two countries seemed to break the mould. Meles knew Somalia very well, as he lived in Mogadishu when he was a liberation leader in the 1980s. He was, at that time, also handled by the National Security Service, provided with travel documents and Somali passports, trained and given a Tigrayan radio frequency.

Ethiopia got international commendation when it managed to bring the main Somali factions together for the first time in Addis Ababa in 1992 for peace talks. But the honeymoon was not to last for long. Ethiopia's pivotal role in Somali peace talks was over by 1993, with many of the faction leaders claiming it was forcibly pursuing its own agenda. The new Ethiopian government, moreover, was increasingly influenced by events in its own Somali region - which has a large ethnic Somali population and close economic and political links with neighbouring Somalia.

Somali irredentist movements in this part of Ethiopia, particularly the Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), which were seeking to establish a "Greater Somalia" to incorporate all territories containing Somali populations, led to the Ethiopian-Somali Ogaden war in 1977. There are few in the Ogaden who would want to join Somalia now, though they might want an independent Ogadenia.

The EPRDF found it difficult to establish itself in the Somali region, which remains one of the most unstable areas in the country. A strong military presence has remained in the Ethiopian Ogaden area, and has provoked accusations of repression and abuse, documented by international and local human rights organisations.

Having introduced a form of democracy based on ethnic regionalism, the Ethiopian central government found itself struggling to establish an "obedient" Somali party. In the areas contiguous with Somalia, the Ogadeni National Liberation Front (ONLF) agitated for regional independence, while armed opposition groups included cells of the Islamic extremist movement, Al-Ittihad. Ethiopia's population is generally believed to comprise about 50 percent Muslim and 50 percent Christian, but the ratio was roughly 60 percent Christian to 40 percent Muslim.

Ethiopian public foreign policy became increasingly defined by the threat of "Islamic fundamentalism". Meles Zenawi said in an interview in December 2000: "What concerns us first and last is what the government [of Somalia] and the different parties and organisations do inside Ethiopia. Some of the extremist organisations did not limit their activities inside Somalia and went to destabilise Ethiopia."

By the mid-1990s, Ethiopia, the US, and the UN had failed to facilitate effective peace talks in Somalia, and international intervention brought disastrous consequences, with the deaths of UN and US peacekeepers, as well as hundreds of Somalis. There was increasing bitterness in Somalia towards what was perceived as external opportunism and negligence. Somalia became a free-for-all. Any State and organisation could interfere in any way they liked.

It seemed that the distrustful relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia had changed very little. While in the past, Ethiopian governments had felt threatened by a strong, united Somalia, the absence of any state at all was just as bad. In the name of national defence, Ethiopia went ahead and pursued a policy of backing and creating "friendly forces" in Somalia.

The transitional ruling bodies that took over the country since 2004 are all found to have failed to bring the country back to the normalcy because of the spectacular rise of Islamist forces since 2006. Since then, a large part of the south of the country including its Capital Mogadiscio is under the siege of the Islamist groups.

Security experts and diplomats say roughly 5,000 Ethiopian troops crossed the border into Somalia earlier this month and another 20,000 have massed along the frontier so they can move in swiftly. Ethiopia and the Somali government deny any troops have entered Somalia, but Addis Ababa has said it will attack the Islamists if they advance on the government seat in aidoa.

Updates : December 10

Heavy clashes between Islamist militiamen and forces loyal to Somalia's government continued for a second day on December 9, as fears of an imminent war in the Horn of Africa mounted.

The fighting centred around Maddoy, 25 miles south of Baidoa, the temporary capital and the only town that the weak transitional federal government controls. Witnesses who reported heavy shelling said Ethiopian troops formed part of the government contingent.

While information remains sketchy - due to the dangers in Somalia even local correspondents for the international news agencies are reporting on the clashes from Mogadishu, 150 miles to the east - both sides suffered casualties, perhaps more than two dozen.

The fighting appear to be the fiercest yet between militiamen allied to the Somali Council of Islamic Courts (SCIC), which controls most of south-central Somalia, and Ethiopian-backed government troops. The SCIC has been steadily approaching Baidoa in recent weeks and has taken most of the surrounding towns and villages.

Salad Ali Jelle, the government's Deputy Defence Minister, told Reuters yesterday that 'war could start any minute because we are so close to each other'.

Many analysts and diplomats in Nairobi see a full-scale conflict in the coming weeks and months as inevitable. Though peace talks are scheduled to resume in Khartoum on Friday, a government spokesman said that they were 'a waste of time' and both sides have continued preparing for war.

With Ethiopia firmly backing the government - it has sent at least 6,000 troops into the country, analysts believe - and Eritrea taking the side of the Courts, the looming conflict could plunge the entire region into turmoil.

The latest clashes came two days after a controversial United Nations security council resolution authorising the deployment of African troops to protect the government. President Abdullahi Yusuf's regime remains fragile and fractured, and has been unable to win over the Somali population since its formation two years ago. Its position has been made increasingly tenuous by the rise in power of the Courts, which took control of the capital, Mogadishu, last June, ending 15 years of rule by warlords and bringing law and order.

Though they were set up to dispense justice and carry out social programmes, the Courts soon proved a strong political force. The SCIC contains moderate clerics seeking a stable Islamic state as well as hardliners whose goal is to reunite a 'greater Somalia' that includes parts of Kenya and Ethiopia.

The SCIC are also protecting terror suspects with links to al-Qaeda, although the number and provenance of the jihadists is unknown. For the US, however, their presence is a sign that the Courts are a threat to world peace that must be contained. Washington helped the Mogadishu warlords in their failed struggle against the SCIC earlier this year, a strategy that unwittingly helped the SCIC. In Somalia the warlords and the concept of foreign intervention arouse similar loathing.

The US strategy has attracted similar controversy. Despite warnings from analysts that the deployment of foreign peacekeepers would be viewed as taking sides and could trigger a war, America pushed strongly for last Wednesday's security council resolution. European Union countries, which are sceptical about whether deployment is wise, or even feasible, demanded that the peacekeeping force exclude front line states such as Ethiopia.

Even so the reaction from the Courts was immediate. Condemning the resolution, the SCIC vowed to fight any foreign troops and to remove the Ethiopians by force. While troops from Ethiopia have the clear advantage militarily - the Courts do not have an air force or tanks - analysts say any conflict is likely to be protracted because the Islamist militias will adopt guerrilla tactics.

United States / Neocons' open letter to George W. Bush

Shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, an influential, neo-conservative-led pressure group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a letter to the president calling for a dramatic reshaping of the Middle East as part of the "war on terror".

September 20, 2001
The Honorable George W. BushPresident of the United StatesWashington, DC

Dear Mr. President,

We write to endorse your admirable commitment to “lead the world to victory” in the war against terrorism. We fully support your call for “a broad and sustained campaign” against the “terrorist organizations and those who harbor and support them.” We agree with Secretary of State Powell that the United States must find and punish the perpetrators of the horrific attack of September 11, and we must, as he said, “go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world” and “get it by its branch and root.” We agree with the Secretary of State that U.S. policy must aim not only at finding the people responsible for this incident, but must also target those “other groups out there that mean us no good” and “that have conducted attacks previously against U.S. personnel, U.S. interests and our allies.”

In order to carry out this “first war of the 21st century” successfully, and in order, as you have said, to do future “generations a favor by coming together and whipping terrorism,” we believe the following steps are necessary parts of a comprehensive strategy.

Osama bin Laden

We agree that a key goal, but by no means the only goal, of the current war on terrorism should be to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, and to destroy his network of associates. To this end, we support the necessary military action in Afghanistan and the provision of substantial financial and military assistance to the anti-Taliban forces in that country.

Iraq

We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a “safe zone” in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.

Hezbollah

Hezbollah is one of the leading terrorist organizations in the world. It is suspected of having been involved in the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Africa, and implicated in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Hezbollah clearly falls in the category cited by Secretary Powell of groups “that mean us no good” and “that have conducted attacks previously against U.S. personnel, U.S. interests and our allies.” Therefore, any war against terrorism must target Hezbollah. We believe the administration should demand that Iran and Syria immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah and its operations. Should Iran and Syria refuse to comply, the administration should consider appropriate measures of retaliation against these known state sponsors of terrorism.

Israel and the Palestinian Authority

Israel has been and remains America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism, especially in the Middle East. The United States should fully support our fellow democracy in its fight against terrorism. We should insist that the Palestinian Authority put a stop to terrorism emanating from territories under its control and imprison those planning terrorist attacks against Israel. Until the Palestinian Authority moves against terror, the United States should provide it no further assistance.

U.S. Defense Budget

A serious and victorious war on terrorism will require a large increase in defense spending. Fighting this war may well require the United States to engage a well-armed foe, and will also require that we remain capable of defending our interests elsewhere in the world. We urge that there be no hesitation in requesting whatever funds for defense are needed to allow us to win this war.

There is, of course, much more that will have to be done. Diplomatic efforts will be required to enlist other nations’ aid in this war on terrorism. Economic and financial tools at our disposal will have to be used. There are other actions of a military nature that may well be needed. However, in our judgement the steps outlined above constitute the minimum necessary if this war is to be fought effectively and brought to a successful conclusion. Our purpose in writing is to assure you of our support as you do what must be done to lead the nation to victory in this fight.

Sincerely,

William Kristol
Richard V. Allen Gary Bauer Jeffrey Bell William J. Bennett
Rudy Boshwitz Jeffrey Bergner Eliot Cohen Seth Cropsey
Midge Decter Thomas Donnelly Nicholas Eberstadt Hillel Fradkin
Aaron Friedberg Francis Fukuyama Frank Gaffney Jeffrey Gedmin
Reuel Marc Gerecht Charles Hill Bruce P. Jackson Eli S. Jacobs
Michael Joyce Donald Kagan Robert Kagan Jeane Kirkpatrick
Charles Krauthammer John Lehman Clifford May Martin Peretz
Richard Perle Norman Podhoretz Stephen P. Rosen Randy Scheunemann
Gary Schmitt William Schneider, Jr. Richard H. Shultz Henry Sokolski Stephen J. Solarz Vin Weber Leon Wieseltier Marshall Wittmann

Ecuador / Chavez has found another close ally in his Latin American socialist project

Roberto Pinto

QUITO - Rafael Correa, a leftist nationalist and a close ally of Venezuela's anti-U.S. president Hugo Chavez, clearly defeated the banana tycoon who rubs shoulders with America's rich and powerful, in Sunday’s presidential runoff election in Ecuador, as per the results partially indicated.

With almost two-thirds of votes counted, Mr Correa had almost 63% of the vote while his conservative rival Alvaro Noboa polled about 38%.

This win by Correa would make him Ecuador's eighth leader in a decade and bolster Chavez's campaign to forge an alliance of left-wing governments to counter U.S. influence in the region with his own brand of socialist revolution. Thereby, Ecuador will join Venezuela and Bolivia as Andean countries who advocate state role in the economy.

Claiming victory before the official results, Correa called his win a defeat for a "political mafia" that he said had ruled the country for decades and implemented free-market, neo-liberal economic policies that the United States promoted in Latin America in the 1980s and '90s.

"This is a clear message that the people want change…We receive this very high honor that the Ecuadorian people have bestowed on us with profound serenity, with profound hope," Correa told a news conference.

His opponent, Alvaro Noboa, however, rejected poll results, with full results due on Tuesday, saying he would wait for the official count to be finished.

With about 21 percent of the ballot counted, Correa had 65 percent compared to 35 percent for Alvaro Noboa, according to Ecuador's Supreme Electoral Tribunal. The results were consistent with an unofficial quick count by the citizens election watchdog group and two exit polls.

The 43-year-old Correa, who is an outspoken admirer of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, has pledged a "citizens' revolution" to clean up the discredited political system of the country. Ecuadorians have driven the last three elected presidents from power and Correa appealed to voters as a fresh face in a field of established politicians.

In the first round, Correa called President Bush "dull-witted" and threatened to reduce payments on Ecuador's $16.1 billion foreign debt and use the money for social programs. He was favored to win the first round but came in second to Noboa in the field of 13. He also promises not to renew US rights to a military base premusably used for anti-drug operations.

Noboa, a 56-year-old billionaire who has touted his close relationships with the rich and powerful in the U.S., said he would not concede defeat until the official count is completed.

Noboa had run a corrupt populist campaign handing out computers, medicine and money to the people and giving speeches peppered with religious references. Before voting earlier Sunday in the coastal city of Guayaquil, he read a passage from the Bible in the midst of a mob of supporters pushing to touch him.

Imitating Jesus Christ, ‘he fell to his knees, asking God for his support and saying all he wanted was "to serve, to serve, to serve" the poor.

"Like Christ, all I want is to serve ... so that the poor can have housing, health care, education, jobs," he said.

The winner will face the tough task of ruling this poor, politically unstable Andean nation which has had eight presidents since 1996, including three who were driven from office by street protests.

Correa, who has a doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois, is new to politics. He served just 106 days last year as finance minister under interim President Alfredo Palacio, who replaced Lucio Gutierrez in the midst of street protests in April 2005.

Correa pledged to construct 100,000 low-cost homes and copied Noboa's promise to double to $36 a "poverty bonus" that 1.2 million poor Ecuadoreans receive each month. Ecuador is an oil-exporting country, but three-quarters of its 13.4 million inhabitants live in poverty.

"He's lost two elections. It's time he wins so that he can help the neediest as he has been doing up to now giving away so many things," he said.

Noboa had pledged to build 300,000 low-cost homes a year, financing them through government bonds, and to create jobs by persuading his rich foreign friends to invest in Ecuador. He counts the Kennedys and Rockefellers among his friends.

He also proudly pointed out he is Ecuador's biggest investor, the owner of 114 companies. He said he would use his business skills to bring Ecuador's poor into the middle class.

Ecuadorian people believe that, in order to respect the public support, the new President will have to put major emphasis on issues like poverty eradication through well-fare payments, increasing employment opportunities and mass-education in the country.

Rafael Correa will seek a bigger share of oil profits from foreign energy companies

El Financiero en línea

Mexico, November 29.- Ecuadorean President-elect Rafael Correa will seek a bigger share of oil profits from foreign energy companies when he takes office, a newspaper said.

Correa, who yesterday was declared the winner of Ecuador's presidential election, plans to renegotiate oil contracts with foreign producers, including Brazil's Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as soon as he is sworn into office on Jan. 15.

A law passed in April requires companies to split export profits equally with the government, though some older contracts allow companies such as Petrobras, as Brazil's state-controlled oil company is known, the keep 80 percent, the daily said.

Of the 500,000 barrels of oil exported from Ecuador daily, foreign companies produce about 200,000 barrels, or 40 percent, the newspaper said. Petrobras produces about 15,000 barrels a day in Ecuador. (Information provided by Finsat/MOB)

Return to the grassroots

Guest Column Tyler Walker Williams, HT

November 25, 2006

To many Americans, and to some Indians as well, the recent win of a radical Left group like AISA in the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) elections probably seemed like an anachronism: according to the logic of the current neo-liberal regimes in both countries, Marxist and Communist thought and political relevance died with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s.

The spokespersons of neo-liberalism and free market policies in the Bush government, as well as their counterparts (or agents) in the UPA government here in India, clearly agree that US military and economic hegemony — for they are two sides of the same coin — are unavoidable, and are close to being established in every last corner of the globe. (The Indian public has not forgotten the statements by not only the UPA but earlier the NDA that one must cater to the demands of a world-power like the US on everything from nuclear policy to domestic economic initiatives.)

Elite ideologues in both countries try to give support to this theory: Francis Fukuyama and company have declared the ‘end of history’ and that ‘the last man’ has been reached — i.e. capitalism has triumphed as a world system leaving no viable alternative. The cult of globalisation seems to have gripped every intellectual and policy-maker in every country: talking heads babble about some amorphous angel of globalisation that will open every market, flood it with knowledge and products, and liberate the stupefied masses of the developing world from their ignorance and backwardness.

Why then do we suddenly see a resurgence of Left thought and political action across every developed and developing nation from India to France to Venezuela? It would seem that the more blatant American imperialism becomes and the more exposed its relationship with the ruling classes of developing countries like India becomes, the more clearly the working masses of these countries understand the nature of their exploitation and who is responsible for it. The complicity of the ruling elite in India with the Bush government in implementing anti-worker, anti-people policies has at this point become so naked that no fig-leaf can hide it: the signing of nuclear agreements, creation of Special Economic Zones, and imposition of new patent laws in recent months have only reinforced the public’s conviction that India’s rulers are only looking out for their own.

In the US, decades of conservative rule have been slowly eating away at the rights of workers, minorities and women, rights that were won after long and hard battles culminating in the victories of the 1960s and 70s. The social welfare programmes that were created through their struggles have been gradually dismantled by the successive administrations of Reagan, Bush Sr, and now Bush Jr, with the Clinton administration allowing them to be further eroded during its tenure, dissolving any remaining doubts in the public mind that the ruling elites of both the Democratic and Republican parties could not care less about the working classes of the country.

Interestingly, however, the explicit imperialist designs of the current Bush administration and its anti-worker, anti-poor policies have provided conditions in which a united pro-people movement can take shape.

Abroad, the Bush government sends the young women and men of the working classes to their graves in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan so that corporate partners of the administration can profit from contracts to ‘rebuild’ these decimated countries, while at home it lets the poor of Louisiana drown under flood waters, tries to take basic reproduction rights away from women, and cuts spending on education and healthcare while giving tax cuts to the richest of the rich.

The more severe the anti-people, anti-democratic policies of the Bush administration become, the more aware the American people become of their repression and exploitation. The more tyrannical and fascist the Bush administration reveals itself to be, the more clearly the American people see who their real enemy is.

The cult-like discourse of pro-globalisation forces has also backfired in a certain sense: it has made the working poor of various countries more aware of their common exploitation and their common enemy. It has shown the working poor of countries like India and the US just how much they have in common. The standardisation of multinational corporations’ anti-human work culture across the globe gives us all a first-hand experience of how we’re all being equally exploited.

The workers in Costa Coffee outlets are not even allowed to choose the music playing in their restaurant, whether it’s in London or Delhi; call centre workers from the US who lost their jobs to outsourcing come to India to find their replacements are being subjected to the same long hours and inhuman working conditions that they endured in the US.

One thing has also become clear: we cannot rely upon the elite ideologues of any of our countries to lead us out of our poverty and exploitation; we will have to do it ourselves. The workers of all nations are realising that policy discussions between heads of state and their elite intellectuals in air-conditioned five-star boardrooms will not render any solutions to their problems. It is for this reason that people are beginning to re-discover the power of grassroots mobilisation.

Whether it be the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the protests in the North East against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, or the protests of adivasis and peasants in Kalinganagar and Singur against the government-brokered usurpation of their lands by corporations, we see a return to grassroots mobilisation, to the belief that the only thing that will stop the state or the private corporations it patronises from treading on our rights is a large-scale movement of common people.

Not only that, but these separate groups are beginning to see the necessity and benefit of joining together to pursue a larger pro-people agenda, as evidenced by cross-cooperation of pro-student, pro-worker, and pro-minority groups. In the US too, the anti-war movement has provided a space in which students, workers and minorities have united and begun to develop a broader agenda. For the first time in several decades, the workers, students, and minorities of America are talking about systematic inequalities in US democracy, and about how to pursue a common agenda of economic and social equality for all.

The recent election of Left parties, especially of a radical-Left party like AISA of which I am a part, is a sign of a shift in the consciousness of students and the student movement as a whole in India. It is a sign that students see their destiny as inter-linked with the destiny of workers, farmers, the poor and the marginalised. It is a sign that students are becoming aware of their responsibility as educated, privileged members of society to be the voice of those who have none in government. And it is a sign that across the world, students, workers, and the oppressed have awakened to their common bonds and their common programme of establishing true equality and democracy across the globe.

(The writer is the first foreign national to be elected vice-president of JNUSU.)

Perspectives / Free Trade TM

Free trade. So benign sounding a phrase. A concept whose principles no reasonable person would challenge. Trouble is, free trade as we know it – free trade as it is pushed by those who will mass at Cancun, Mexico, in September – is far from free. Think about it. If it truly was free, would they put sanctions on those who don’t want to participate and use police to violently put down protests by those who oppose it? Free trade is really just a euphemism, like ‘peacekeeping’ or ‘forest management’, that hides a far uglier, more brutal reality. Free trade is a brand – Free Trade™, which sells a repackaged product no one in their right minds would buy if they knew what it really was.

The Ecologist
Derrick Jensen, 6Nov, 2003

So what is that product? The Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz once wrote that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Similarly, free trade is the continuation of colonialism by other means. My dictionary defines colonialism as ‘(a) control by one power over a dependent area or people; (b) a policy advocating or based on such control’.

Whether we like it or not, the fact remains that the rich of the world still control the former colonies (although few are so impolite as to call them that anymore), because many of the colonial structures the rich nations built up were simply left in place after ‘independence’. Corporate access to land, resources and markets, debt peonage, tax structures favourable to the powerful, commodity pricing aimed at driving small producers off their land, the massive export of resources – these are all similar to procedures that existed hundreds of years ago. Only the names have changed. And in some countries, poverty is much worse than it was under direct colonial rule.

In the footsteps of the Nazis

It’s a story as old as civilisation, about which the anthropologist Stanley Diamond said: ‘Civilisation originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.’ This will not be news to the citizens of Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Palestine (and so on, ad nauseam), or the people ‘at home’ who’ve felt the pepper spray, batons and rubber bullets of cops whose job it is to protect those in power. These people understand that those at the centre of empire have always needed to import resources to maintain and expand their realm. That’s why the trade our leaders will talk about and promote at Cancun is not and can never be ‘free’; when the powerful need resources, trade that is purely voluntary for all concerned is never sufficiently reliable. That’s why anytime some community sits on a resource needed by those in power, and chooses not to sell that resource (at a price convenient for the powerful), the people are killed, the community destroyed, the resource stolen.

Far-fetched? The architects of empire have been killing people and stealing resources – that is, expanding their region of control and exploitation – for some 6,000 years. At every step of the way, these conquistadores have not encountered vacant land but functioning human communities living in dynamic equilibrium with their landbases.

Psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton is probably the world’s foremost authority on the psychology of genocide. In his extraordinary book The Nazi Doctors, Lifton showed that to commit a mass atrocity you first have to convince yourself that what you’re doing is not an atrocity but instead beneficial. Thus the Nazis weren’t committing genocide and murdering Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Russians, and so on, they were ‘purifying the Aryan race’ and gaining lebensraum they needed to fulfil their destiny. Thus the Americans weren’t committing genocide and murdering Indians, they were fulfilling their own ‘manifest destiny’ (gaining lebensraum for themselves). Similarly, those in power today aren’t destroying communities and committing ecocide, they are ‘growing the economy’, ‘developing natural resources’, ‘helping those in the Third World to develop their infrastructure’, ‘bringing to all the benefits of free-trade capitalism’, (even if it is at the point of a gun). No longer is the choice being offered to the exploited ‘Christianity or death?’. It has become free trade or death.

But wait a minute. How can I compare Free Trade™ to lebensraum? Isn’t trade a good thing? Isn’t free trade just the untrammelled exchange of items for the benefit of all? Isn’t that what happens when two kids trade baseball cards? ‘I’ll give you a Pedro Martinez for a Barry Bonds, straight up.’

Sure, free trade can be good – if all parties hold equal power. But negotiations aren’t possible when one side holds a gun and the other does not (the technical term for this sort of exchange is robbery). That is how the ‘civilised’ were able to get the American Indians to sign treaties through which the latter gave up their land for a pence. The Indians knew that if they didn’t sign they’d receive nothing but bullets and bayonets to their throats.

Privatising the air

The powerful have always recognised the impossibility of negotiations between parties of unequal power, and have done everything they can to magnify this disparity. Without access to land there can be no self-sufficiency. Land provides food, shelter, clothing. If you can force people to pay just so they can be alive on this earth (nowadays these payments are usually called rent or mortgage), you’ve forced them into the wage economy.

The same holds true for forcing people to pay for materials that the earth gives freely: the salmon, bison, huckleberries and willows, for example, that are central to the lives, cultures and communities not only of indigenous peoples but of all of us (even if we make believe this isn’t the case). To force people to pay for things they need for survival is an atrocity – a community- and nature-destroying atrocity. To convince them to pay willingly is a scam. It also, as we see around us (or would had we not been brainwashed), causes people to forget that communities are even possible.

Just as those in power must control access to land, the same logic dictates they must destroy all stocks of wild foodstuffs. Why would I go to Safeway if I could catch wild salmon in the stream outside my door? The same is true, obviously, for everything that is wild and free, for everything that can meet our needs without us having to pay those in power. The push to privatise the world’s water helps make sense of official apathy over the pollution of (free) water sources. You just watch: air will soon be privatised; I don’t know how they’ll do it, but they’ll certainly find a way.

But the destruction of wild foodstuffs doesn’t require some fiendishly clever plot on the part of the powerful. Far worse, it merely requires the reward and logic systems of civilisation to remain in place. And so long as the rest of us continue to buy into these systems, which value empire, Free Trade™, the centralisation of control and the production of things over life, so long will the world, which is our real and only home, continue to be destroyed, and so long will the noose that is empire continue to tighten around our throats.

Perspectives / Licensed to Loot

The East India Company was the first multinational corporation - until its abuse of power caused a public backlash. Nick Robins examines its legacy to reveal how it set the corporate blueprint for today's firms to operate unchecked.

The Ecologist
Nick Robins, Ist Nov

In August 1769, two Armenian merchants, Johannes Rafael and Gregore Cojamaul, arrived at London’s docks. The two were rich men and had made their fortunes in India’s most prosperous region, Bengal. But their purpose was not to trade. Instead they sought justice from the most powerful corporation in the world: the East India Company.

In March 1768, Rafael, Cojamaul and two others had been summarily arrested by the Company’s chief executive in Bengal, Harry Verelst, who then held them for more than five months under guard. When they were released, they found that the Company had pressured its puppet, the Nawab of Bengal, to ban all Armenians from the Bengal market.

Sailing around the world to where the Company was headquartered, Rafael and Cojamaul appealed to its board of directors, complaining of their “cruel and inhuman” treatment. When this was arrogantly brushed aside, the two went to court, suing Verelst for damages. An intense legal battle unfolded with claim and counter-claim, from 1770 until 1777, when the courts found Verlest guilty of “oppression, false imprisonment and singular depredations”. The Armenians won a total of £9,700 in compensation – more than £800,000 in today’s money. Thousands of miles from the scene of the crime, the principle of extraterritorial liability for corporate malpractice had been established in Georgian London.

Fast-forward more than 200 years, and Cojamaul and Rafael’s revenge still has a powerful resonance for communities seeking to plug the justice gap in 21st century globalisation. But this is not all that we can learn from the extraordinary corporate career of the Honourable Company (one of the names by which it was sometimes known).

Founded on a cold New Year’s Eve in 1600, the Governor and Company of Merchants in London Trading into the East Indies – its original full name – was the mother of the modern corporation. From its headquarters in the City of London, it managed a commercial empire that stretched across the Atlantic, around the Cape, past the Gulf and on to India and China. Starting as a marginal importer of Asian spices, the Company became the agent that changed the course of economic history, combining financial strength with military muscle to conquer India and break open China’s closed economy. Always with an eye to the share price and their own executive perks, its executives in India combined economic muscle with a small, but effective private army to establish a corporate state across large parts of the sub-continent.

A TREACHEROUS DEAL

The battle of Plassey (the anglicised version of Palashi) in June 1757 was the turning point, when the company’s forces defeated the last independent Nawab of Bengal, helped largely by strategic bribery of his military commander Mir Jafar, whom it then placed as its puppet on the throne. This is often regarded as the contest that founded the British Empire in India, but is perhaps better viewed as the Company’s most successful business deal, generating a windfall profit of £2.5 million for the Company and £234,000 for Robert Clive, the chief architect of the acquisition. Today, this would be equivalent to a £232 million corporate windfall and a cool £22 million success fee for Clive.

The Company’s new-found market power enabled it to drive down the prices it paid to Bengal’s weavers – to such an extent that rumours spread of weavers cutting off their own thumbs to escape the innumerable fines and floggings. Eight years later, Clive followed up his coup at Plassey with a lucrative acquisition: he convinced the Mughal emperor to out-source tax collection in Bengal to the Company. The Company’s share price soared on London’s financial markets, almost doubling in the next three years. But in the same month that Rafael and Cojamaul arrived in London, the rains failed in Bengal, marking the start of a ferocious drought. What turned this into a ravaging famine was the weakened state of Bengal and the Company’s negligence and callousness – even increasing the tax rate to ensure that the overall revenue remained level. Some estimates put the resulting deaths from starvation as high as 10 million, and it is certain that at least one million people died – more than the population of London at the time – with some regions losing between a third and a half of their inhabitants. Clive managed to escape parliamentary censure for his part in all this, but died – most probably by suicide – with Dr Johnson observing that he had “acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat”.

Nor did the Company’s footprint stop there. If India was the site of its first commercial triumphs, it was in China that it made its second fortune. Its ‘factory’ at Canton was the funnel through which millions of pounds of Bohea, Congou, Souchon and Pekoe teas flowed west to Britain, Europe and the Americas. In the other direction came first silver and later a flood of Indian-grown opium, smuggled in chests proudly bearing the Company chop (logo). Desperate to find a way of paying for the tea trade without exporting bullion, Warren Hastings (Britain’s governor-general of India from 1773 to 1786) first tried to smuggle opium into China in 1781, defying the Qing Empire’s trading ban. Initially unsuccessful, the Company grew increasingly brazen as its power grew, shipping ever-expanding quantities of contraband into China, turning the country’s centuries-long trade surplus with the outside world into deficit. When the Qing eventually tried to crack down on the import of ‘foreign mud’, Britain sent in its gunboats in the first of a series of ‘opium wars’.

But before the second opium war was over, the Company itself was no more, the victim of the public backlash in Britain in the wake of the 1857 Indian Mutiny – otherwise known as the ‘first war of Indian independence’. The Company’s most senior executive, the utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill, pleaded with Parliament, but effective nationalisation followed the Company’s failure. Always solicitous for the needs of its shareholders, the Company managed to continue paying dividends for another quarter century – financed by taxes from India – until on April 30, 1874, its stock was liquidated and the Company’s financial heart fi nally stopped beating.
At first sight, this extraordinary corporate biography might seem to be merely of antiquarian interest. There is clearly a world of difference between the Company’s operations in the 18th century and the business landscape of our own times. The Company’s establishment by royal charter, its monopoly of all trade between Britain and Asia, and its semi-sovereign privileges to rule territories and raise armies certainly mark it out as a corporate institution from another time. Yet in its financing, its structures of governance and its business dynamics, the Company was undeniably modern. It may have referred to its staff as servants rather than executives, and communicated by quill pen rather than email, but the key features of the shareholder-owned corporation are there for all to see.

THIS IMPERIOUS COMPANY

What is equally striking, looking back at the legacy of John Company (another name by which it was known, reflecting its ubiquity) is how it not only shaped the modern multinational, but also prefigured the same bundle of tensions exhibited by today’s global corporations.

In ways that are immediately familiar to us today, the East India Company lay at the centre of a web of commercial relationships. Internally, the interactions between owners, executives and employees defined the fundamental direction of the business. Externally, fiscal and regulatory interactions with states at home and abroad defined the Company’s scope for action, while in the marketplace, its standing with customers, competitors and suppliers determined its chances of success.

Ultimately, however, it was the Company’s ability to maintain a basis of trust with society at home and abroad that decided its fate – and once this trust was broken, protest, rebellion and its eventual downfall would follow. What makes the story so inspiring is how the Company’s bid for unbounded economic power was repeatedly met by individuals fighting to make it accountable.

From the beginning, the East India Company’s monopoly control over trade with Asia had been disputed by its competitors. But it was with the Company’s acquisition of unprecedented economic power following Plassey that it came to be seen as a more structural threat to political liberty back home. Poems, pamphlets and plays poured off the presses, accusing the Company of oppression and corruption. For the editor of London’s Gentleman’s Magazine, by April 1767 it had become the “imperious company of East India merchants”, with the issue at stake being whether “freedom or slavery” would result from the Company’s immense power.

A CRITIQUE OF CORPORATE DESIGN

Uniquely, Smith was emphatic in downplaying the actions of individuals as the root cause of the problems. “I mean not to throw any odious imputation upon the general character of the servants of the East India Company,” he wrote, stressing that “it is the system of government, the situation in which they are placed, that I mean to censure.” The problem was one of corporate design. Monopoly didn’t just create economic injustice; it was also “a great enemy to good management”.

Smith was equally critical of the Company’s joint stock model of corporate control, which separated managers from owners and was a licence for speculation, where “negligence and profusion must always prevail”. Adam Smith was certainly a believer in open markets. But freeing the world for exploitation by corporations formed no part of his vision.

Smith’s critique of the Company provided a powerful intellectual platform, but it was his friend, the statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, who sought to bring the Company to justice in the 1780s. Often known as the father of modern conservatism for his defence of the monarchy in the French Revolution, Burke himself believed that his greatest contribution was his battle against the East India Company. In Burke’s view, the Company had become financially and institutionally bankrupt, breaching the implicit terms of its Georgian “licence to operate”. Drawing from the rich tradition of legitimate resistance to tyrannical government, Burke argued that “every description of commercial privilege [is] all in the strictest sense a trust, and it is of the very essence of every trust to be rendered accountable”. Burke continued with a rhetorical flourish: “To whom then would I make the East India Company accountable?” he mused. “Why, to Parliament, to be sure.” When George III intervened to block Burke’s East India Bill – which would have replaced the Company’s board of directors with parliamentary commissioners – Burke turned to law, like the Armenians before him. In 1787, he impeached Warren Hastings for “high crimes and misdemeanours”. The trial, which began in 1788, lasted seven long years and gripped London society. Burke’s mission was clear. “I must do justice to the East,” he declared, “for I assert that their morality is equal to ours.” Eventually, Hastings was cleared by a grateful House of Lords, more interested in imperial acquisition than points of principle.
To the leading lights of its age, such as Smith and Burke, the East India Company’s rise and fall highlighted three fundamental flaws in the corporate metabolism: first, the unrelenting drive to market domination; second, the inherent speculative dynamic of shareholderowned businesses; and, third, the absence of effective mechanisms for bringing companies to account for overseas malpractice. Looking back, the parallels with today’s corporate leviathans became overpowering, with the Company outstripping Wal-Mart in terms of market power, Enron in corruption and Union Carbide in human devastation.

The Company’s example shows us that open markets and corporations do not necessarily mix – that economic diversity and enterprise often flourish best where corporations are kept in check. From Smith’s contemporary analysis of the rising commercial economy of 18th-century Britain, it emerges that the truly entrepreneurial company is likely to be locally rooted, limited in size and liable for the costs it imposes on others.

Indeed, for Burke, there was something fundamentally suspicious about the Company’s chartered rights. Speaking to Parliament in 1783, he made a clear distinction between human and corporate rights, arguing that “Magna Carta is a charter to restrain power and to destroy monopoly”, while “the East India charter is a charter to establish monopoly and create power”. It was this corporate tyranny that Burke tried – but failed – to break, urging Parliament to recognise that “this nation never did give a power without imposing a proportionabledegree of responsibility”.

TODAY, JUSTICE STILL GOES BEGGING

Drawing from Smith’s analysis of the corporation, it is clear that the privilege of limited liability needs to be balanced with a social “duty of care” to curb the speculative quest for excessive rates of return. The Company Bill currently going through Parliament is an ideal opportunity to impose a legal duty of care upon company directors, to ensure that their actions do not damage society or the environment. At the time of The Ecologist going to press, the Bill in its present draft does not introduce such a duty of care, but it is being pressed for by the Corporate Responsibility Coalition (CORE), which represents more than 130 charities and campaigning organisations pressing for new laws to make sure that companies do not profit at the expense of people and planet. Through this simple, yet profound alteration in the corporation’s genetic code, its inner dynamics would be reshaped to match its social obligations. Shareholders would also thus become aware of the wider implications of their investments, stimulating a search for companies that take a pro-active approach to reducing their harmful impacts on others. Not just corporations, but capital itself would start becoming accountable.

Although he is frequently cited as the theoretical inspiration for globalisation, Smith would be horrified at the way in which the unlimited corporation now dominates economic and political life. Corporate scale magnifies an underlying problem of behaviour. When it was small, the damage that the East India Company could inflict was relatively limited. When it grew in size to dominate whole markets and territories, its potential for harm grew correspondingly large.

While 21st-century corporations rarely enjoy the chartered monopolies that the East India Company fought so hard to sustain, global deregulation has meant that concentration in key markets has climbed to economically destructive and politically dangerous levels. At local, national and global levels, unrelenting action is needed to break up the corporate giants that currently hold the world to ransom. For this effort, Smith’s passionate critique of the East India Company holds out the promise of new and creative alliances between those seeking open markets and those wanting to tame corporate power, whether it be ‘big oil’ or ‘big retail’.

The example of the Armenian merchants winning their battle for reparations from the Company can also inspire us in today’s efforts to hold corporations to account. As we know from the unrelenting pain of incidents such as the Union Carbide disaster at Bhopal, instruments of justice need to be as international as business. Rafael and Cojamaul’s legal triumph can give us hope that we too can put in place effective legal mechanisms to enable those affected by corporations to bring action, either in the company’s place of registration or in an international court. The realistic prospect of judicial intervention to penalise malpractice, wherever it may occur, would be a powerful deterrent, further encouraging business to adopt responsible practices that prevent problems in the first place.

The Company’s legacy still haunts both Europe and Asia; and, knowing its story, the obligation is to remember and then to act. This was certainly the stance taken by Jawaharlal Nehru, who in 1944 was serving his ninth – and final – term of imprisonment for his campaign to achieve India’s independence from the British. From his prison cell in Ahmadnagar, Nehru wrote what became The Discovery Of India, presenting his vision of how India’s rich and complex past related to its freedon struggle. For him, the writing of history was not a remote, academic exercise, but intimately bound up with taking action to change the present. Running through the book was Nehru’s conviction that the two centuries of British rule had imposed a terrible burden on India that needed urgent removal. But it was when he describes the English East India Company and its plunder of Bengal following Clive’s victory at Palashi that this cool voice of humanist reason boiled over in anger. “The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence and greed of money of these early generations of British rule in India,” he thundered, “is something which passes comprehension.” To underline his distaste at the Company’s practices, Nehru added: “It is significant that one of the Hindustani words which has become part of the English language is ‘loot’.”