Murder in Chiapas: low-intensity conflict continues

By Kari Lydersen

Chiapas, Mexico, Oct. 11— In a concrete and wooden hut in the tiny K’an Akil community of the highlands of Chiapas, the sound of soft rain on a tin roof mixes with the pungent scent of incense made from tree resin and the chanting of Hail Marys and Our Fathers in the Mayan tongue of Tzeltzal.

Zapatista fighters undergo a training exercise, Zapatista communities are under increasing threat in Chiapas

The people gathered here are performing a mourning Mass for Antonio Mejia Vazquez, the town deacon and patriarch of the community. He acquired this small parcel of lush, rainy land about 30 years ago and, along with his brothers and their families, carved out a cornfield on a slope rising steeply above the huts, where chickens and hogs now meander, children play and women in brightly embroidered traditional blouses and wool skirts make tortillas out of corn on a smoky wood fire.

In 1999, the 50 or so members of K’an Akil decided to declare themselves an autonomous community aligned with the Zapatistas, the guerrilla movement that emerged on New Year’s Day 1994 by taking over the city of San Cristobal de las Casas and demanding the Mexican government recognize indigenous rights to autonomous government, land and education.

On August 26, Mejia was shot to death by several members of the Aguilares, a group variously described as “paramilitaries” or simply “thugs,” in the latest of several attacks by paramilitaries on Zapatista supporters in Chiapas. In the past two months, violence has escalated in the region. While government officials deny the conflict is political, local NGO leaders and activists note that the low-intensity war being waged against the autonomous communities has intensified in the past few months, with the reported incursion of hundreds of new army and paramilitary troops in the Lacondon jungle and surrounding areas over the summer.

This “low-intensity warfare,” a term coined by the government itself, consists of breaking down the resolve of communities through constant military presence, harassment and intimidation from paramilitary groups like the Aguilares. Zapatista supporters view the military and paramilitary presence as a key part of the government’s plan to take over collective lands for projects like the Plan Puebla Panama, a proposed series of transportation corridors in the region.

Mejia’s family couldn’t even get to his body for a day and a half, since members of the Aguilar group continued to stand guard over the corpse and fire shots into the air. When they were finally able to recover Mejia’s body, with the protection of a contingent of hundreds of Zapatista supporters from other communities, they found his ears had been sliced off and his left cheek cut away.

Community leaders say the Aguilares are trying to take over their land through a campaign of intimidation and terror. In December 2001, the Aguilares cut a water line that had connected K’an Akil to a spring in the mountains. They demanded 8,000 pesos (about $800) to reconnect the water supply, money the town didn’t have. Tensions escalated, and the Aguilares began to make death threats against Mejia and his family.

Mejia was one of four Zapatista supporters murdered in August. In all four cases, the murderers, whose identities are well-known, continue to enjoy almost complete immunity from prosecution. Mexican President Vicente Fox and Chiapas Gov. Pablo Salazar have both publicly stated recently that no armed paramilitary organizations exist in Chiapas. Locals say that, to the contrary, the paramilitaries are as strong as ever and receiving weapons and other clandestine support from the military.

Since Fox unseated Mexico’s long-time ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the president’s campaign promise to solve the Chiapas conflict in “15 minutes” has proved completely hollow. “The paramilitaries have lost some support since the PRI is no longer in power,” says Ruben Moreno of the Chiapas Community Defenders Network. “But even though the links aren’t as direct, it is evident that they are supported by the government through total impunity.”

Before Mejia, two Zapatista supporters were murdered August 25 in the community of Amaytik during a raid by the paramilitary group OPDIC, an organization with branches throughout Chiapas that claims to be an indigenous rights group and is vocal in its opposition to the Zapatistas. The Center for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research has done a study noting the presence of OPDIC chapters in areas key to government-sponsored development projects like the Plan Puebla Panama, a fact they say is no coincidence.

Zapatista supporter Jose Lopez Santiz was also shot to death in August. He was gunned down in his cornfield in front of his two sons, who identified his killers as friends of a wealthy local landowner. The Zapatista community had “recuperated” part of the landowner’s holdings to work as their own.

Thousands of Zapatista supporters held protests calling for justice in the case. In a public statement, Gov. Salazar himself urged protesters to have faith in the judicial system. Community leaders note that after Santiz’s wife and brother went to the police in Altamirano, they tried to prevent the body from being examined and declared his death was caused by a falling tree.

The Zapatistas have not issued a statement since April 2001, when the government failed to meet their demands for autonomy after the march of tens of thousands of Zapatistas and their supporters to Mexico City. They are expected to break their silence soon in response to the killings, as well as a September decision by the Mexican Supreme Court that dismissed challenges to the controversial Indigenous Rights Law passed last year, which critics say offers very few indigenous rights and undermines stronger existing laws.

The Zapatistas have also found some of their support bases, such as ARIC Independiente, the cattle ranchers’ union, and ORCAO, the coffee growers’ union, eroded by Salazar’s program offering incentives for collective landholders to privatize their land. The autonomous communities vehemently oppose this trend, saying it makes it easier for the government and corporations to buy up land for development and exploitation of natural resources.

Meanwhile, those who live in K’an Akil live with the immediate fear and grief caused by the paramilitary presence. “We are afraid of these groups,” a spokesman from the community told a group of human rights observers from the Mexico Solidarity Network in late September. “We can’t work because of the threats. The women are afraid to leave their homes at all, and children can’t go to school. The paramilitaries keep doing this to us night and day.”

Source: In These Times

South too far for northern NGOs

By Mark Waller

Helsinki, Finland, Oct. 10 (IPS)— The relationship of Northern aid agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the South is far from the “partnership” they like to project, says a study released this week.

The study “Voices from Southern Civil Societies” points to inequalities despite the shift from the imperious paternalism in development aid practices during the 1990s.

The study commissioned by the development department of the Finnish foreign ministry and coordinated by researchers at Helsinki University aims to bring a new tone to bilateral development work. It was conducted in seven sample countries with which Finland has development links — Kenya, Namibia, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico and Nicaragua.

The study seeks to give a Southern perspective on development aid relations with the North. “Strengthening civil society” has been the vogue phrase of development policies since the early 1990s and is usually equated with supporting Southern non-governmental organizations. But the study stresses that civil society in developing countries is massively diverse.

The Nepalese report compiled by staff at the Nepal South Asia Center defines civil society in Nepal as a conglomeration of NGOs, community organizations and emerging social movements. The report of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at Nairobi University says civil society in Kenya also includes social and cultural groups, and religious, professional and co-operative organizations.

The North often forgets that local organizing in the South is neither new nor a creation of development aid, the study says. The report on Kenya points out that the spirit of “harambee” — pooling of resources for mutual help — has in fact been weakened partly by foreign-funded NGOs.

Assistance from the North is clearly seen as a double-edged sword. On the plus side it has brought a welcome focus on democracy and good governance. The Thai report drawn up by the Project for Ecological Recovery notes the willingness of Northern NGOs to learn local culture and work at the grassroots level. But the majority of reports stress that relations between Northern and Southern organizations are fundamentally unequal.

“Whoever provides money, commands and controls,” says the report on Mexico prepared at the Chiapas-based Center for Research and Advanced Study in Social Anthropology (CIESAS). Southern civil society organizations (CSOs) resort to “dressing up information to create space for activities that are considered important” by Northerners, the report says. In Kenya “organizations cannot think about their policies without a donor in mind.”

According to Outi Hakkarainen, a researcher at Helsinki University’s Institute of Development Studies and one of the coordinators of the study, “it’s striking that the reports tend to refer to Northern organizations as ‘donors’.” Northerners, on the other hand, “like to see themselves and their Southern counterparts as ‘partners’.”

The influence of foreign money on CSOs in the South is “huge and not always healthy,” Hakkarainen said. “It tends to be blind to the effects on regional and state structures, for instance undermining pressure for social services. The countries we’ve heard from ultimately need to find their own national conditions for civil society that are not shaped from outside.”

Reports in the study are critical of the negative effects of donor funding on civil societies. In Nepal they have created the image of a “dollar-farming sector.”

Northern organizations expect openness and access to information from the South but are rarely open themselves, the reports say. The study points out that the stress on project funding by donors undercuts the ability of Southern civil societies to get resources for day-to-day activities.

“Much of the time of CSOs in Mexico is taken up with finding financial resources for their survival as organizations,” said Lourdes Angulo of CIESAS. “We don’t really understand the nature of the donor organizations we deal with from the North. We don’t understand their purpose because there is a lack of information coming to us from the North.”

At the same time, Angulo says that the pressures that increasingly shape the role of CSOs are a clear product of outside leverage. “Privatization and global economic determinants are the pressures that most define us,” he said.

“In Kenya there are CSOs that want to affect social transformation, and there are private enterprise ones that want to access donor funds,” said Karuti Kanyinga of the IDS. “The latter are real entrepreneurs, they carry briefcases filled with excellent proposals. In most cases they have no impact at all, but they are very vocal and influential.”

Montree Chantawong of the Thai Project for Ecological Recovery says Northern aid tends to empower mainstream development policy locked into structural adjustment, the global market and privatization. “Though aid may carry an excellent goal and is seen by the public as acceptable, it tends to work in such a way that it eventually helps the state authorities to preserve their power,” Chantawong said.

Officials at the Finnish foreign ministry hope to draw on the proposals in the reports to reshape approaches to development aid for civil society. “Civil society should be a channel for the poor to demand their rights,” said Christian Sundgren, head of information and NGO work at the development department. Civil society workers are waiting to see if such sentiment will eventually be reflected in official development policy.

Sweeping new police powers proposed in France

By Julio Godoy

Paris, France, Oct. 8 (IPS)— A bill to be presented to parliament Oct. 24 could give French police unprecedented powers, opposition leaders and human rights activists say.

The draft bill introduced Friday by minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy particularly targets minority groups.

A new proposed offense is group occupation of open spaces by gypsies. This offense would carry a sentence of up to six months imprisonment, a fine of $3,000, three-year suspension of the driving permit, and confiscation of a parked vehicle. Gypsies commonly park in open green spaces.

A threat to commit an offense against police officers or other security personnel would be made a crime. The police would be given access to genetic files for investigation of sexual offenses, terrorism and organized crime.

Lawyers would be denied access to imprisoned suspects during the first 36 hours of their detention. This measure would all but eliminate the current practice of “presumption of innocence” introduced by the former Socialist-led government.

The move in effect extends the period of remand in police custody. Records show that suspects have been beaten up and even died while in police custody.

The proposed law makes “abusive” meetings of youth in social housing estates a crime. And it seeks to make begging a crime.

The draft law is “a big step in transforming French society into a police state,” says Michel Tubiana, president of the Human Rights League. “This law wants to criminalize whole groups of the population which suffer already from discrimination due to their social status and their poverty.”

The proposed reform represents “a regression without precedent in the defense of civil liberties in France,” says Bruno Marcus, leader of the French Lawyers Union. “This reform to our crime code is formulated by police agents to be applied by police agents. The French ministry of justice has all but disappeared from such discussions, and is now, at best, the reception office at the ministry of the interior. Nicolas Sarkozy wants to put the whole French population under surveillance.”

Act Up, an association that supports the rights of homosexuals, calls the proposed law project “terrifying.” Sarkozy “dreams of a totalitarian state dominated by uncontrolled police agents,” Act Up declared in a statement.

Ulrich Schalchi, president of the French Union of Magistrates said: “As Nicolas Sarkozy wants it, the police will have the dominant role, and prosecutors, judges and lawyers will be marginalized. The whole population will be on files in the hands of the police.”

Sarkozy says the proposed law “represents the wish of the French population to get rid of crime.” During the presidential and parliamentary elections earlier this year, the majority of voters expressed “a feeling of deep dissatisfaction with the state of criminality and of contempt for law prevailing in France,” he says.

The Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) which won the elections had made internal security a central plank of its campaign. Promises of action on crime had also led to the surprising success of the neo-fascist presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who beat former prime minister and Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Officials say the proposed law could be modified before final presentation to the parliament. But it is consistent with the government’s promises to get tough on crime. Last week the government announced a 10 percent budget increase for internal security and the military for next year. The budget for culture, research and education was reduced substantially.

Bruno Marcus says France is getting “the policies of Le Pen put in practice by a so called democratic government.”

Lula victory would be ‘landmark’ for Brazil

By Judy Rebick

Oct. 8— Lula stopped just short of a first-round victory in Brazil’s presidential election yesterday, but the left-wing Workers Party (PT) candidate is almost certain to win the second-round vote on Oct. 27. His victory will mark a turning point for the left — in Brazil and far beyond its borders.

With 99 percent of polls reporting, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has secured 46.4 percent of the vote. His nearest rival, José Serra, took just 23.2 percent. And Ciro Gomes, a populist who ran fourth with 12 percent of the vote, has already thrown his support to Lula for the second round.

There will be run-off elections for president and for the governors of most states. While anything can happen in a second round, there likely will be a massive mobilization of Brazil’s people’s movements with victory so close at hand.

A Lula victory will be a landmark for the left, in Latin America but also throughout the world. The PT has developed a new direction for the left in government. Moreover, the PT is itself an alliance of left-wing parties ranging from social democratic to Trotskyist.

Visiting Toronto a few years ago, Lula explained that in face of the failure of social democracy and communism, they had to create a new road for the left.

“Where we are in power,” Lula told a packed audience at the OISE auditorium, “we turn neo-liberalism on its head. That’s our starting point. We start from the needs of the people, not the needs of capital.” The PT and other left-leaning groups now control more than one hundred municipalities — including most large urban areas, such as Sao Paulo, Recife, Belem and Porto Alegre.

Most important are the new forms of democracy that the PT has developed where it has held power at state and municipal levels. The Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre, a city in Southern Brazil, has become a model of citizen involvement studied by municipal politicians and academics around the world. All new spending in Porto Alegre and other cities governed by the PT is decided by citizens’ assemblies organized first by region and then city wide.

“It is not just a new municipal government that is being built here,” explains Edmilson Brito Rodrigues, Mayor of Belem (population 1 million). “It is a new way of governing.”

For the PT, the democratic participation of citizens forms the heart of a new left politics. Lula’s lead in the first round of the presidential election signals the popularity of this new politics. In other parts of Brazil where the PT holds power, it is experimenting with even broader forms of participatory democracy, like People’s Assemblies.

Conscious of pressures from capital and from the US, the PT has been organizing a base of international solidarity. The World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre for the last two years has involved tens of thousands of activists who have seen first-hand the world of possibilities created under PT governments. Even many anarchists, deeply suspicious of any government, were impressed by the popular participation in Porto Alegre’s budget process.

Lula himself is a powerful symbol. In a society deeply divided by class, Lula would be the first working class person to lead Brazil. His modest beginnings and charismatic connection to the Brazilian people mean that his election will provide a sense of empowerment to the poor and powerless that is difficult to overestimate.

It is true that Lula has leaned to the right to secure an electoral victory and to calm the forces of capital that could trigger economic catastrophe in Brazil. But João Pedro Stedile, national leader of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement, was not wholly critical when he spoke to Rabble last week: “The PT adopted an electoral tactic that is not left. It is a center tactic. It had its reasons. But I believe that Lula’s victory, more than the alliances, will represent a symbol for de-politicized people who will find they have come into their own and will rise up. Hence, a victory for Lula could stimulate a new rise of the mass movement in Brazil that has been in retreat for more than ten years.”

Source: Rabble.ca

Within hours of congressional mandate, plans surface for US military rule in Iraq

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Oct. 16 (AGR)— On Friday, senior White House officials revealed that the US has plans to install a US-led military government in Iraq, which could last for several years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The plans surfaced only hours after President George W. Bush won a resounding congressional mandate to use force in Iraq. The scheme would involve the biggest “nation-building” effort the US has undertaken since the end of World War II.

The occupation of the country would need an estimated 75,000 troops, at an annual cost of up to $16 billion, and may include British and other allied soldiers. It would be run by a senior US officer – perhaps General Tommy Franks, as it has been suggested -- who would lead the assault on Iraq.

“We’re working on the basic theory that if there’s military action, there’s going to have to be a military boss for some time,” one senior US official said.

The designs say the occupation regime would track down “war criminals”and remove members of Hussein’s Ba’ath party from power, comb the country for any hidden biological and chemical weapons, and secure Iraq’s territory. It would also administer the country’s huge oil deposits.

The Iraqi project, outlined by Bush’s senior adviser on the Middle East, Zalmay Khalilzad, would involve running the entire country until the US deemed a democratic Iraqi government was ready.

US officials said no final decision had been taken on the plan, but indicated that some form of direct US military rule was almost inevitable.

Khalilzad said: “First, there will be the political reconstruction. This will involve thorough reform of the government, de-Ba’athising Iraq, removing elements used by Saddam to enforce his tyranny. Officials guilty of crimes against humanity will be prosecuted.”

He conceded that “the costs will be significant,” but added: “We would have the commitment of resources necessary, and we would have the will to stay for as long as necessary to do the job.”

The plan also calls for war-crime trials of Iraqi leaders and a transition to an elected civilian government that could take years.

In contemplating an occupation, the administration is scaling back the initial role for Iraqi opposition forces in a post-Hussein government. Until now it had been assumed that Iraqi dissidents both inside and outside the country would form a government, but it was never clear when they would take full control.

This announcement marks the first time the administration has discussed what could be a lengthy occupation by coalition forces, led by the United States.

Bush’s aides said that in the scenario they are imagining, the US would want full control over Iraq.

Asked what would happen if US pressure prompted a coup against Hussein, one senior official said, “That would be nice.” But the official suggested that the US military might enter and secure the country anyway, not only to eliminate weapons of mass destruction but also to ensure against “anarchy.”

The revelation of the occupation plan also marks the first time the administration has described in detail how it would administer Iraq in the days and weeks after an invasion.

It would put a US officer in charge of Iraq for possibly years while the United States and its allies searched for weapons and maintained Iraq’s oil fields. For as long as the coalition partners administered Iraq, they would essentially control the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world, nearly 11 percent of the total.

Iraqis, perhaps through a consultative council, would assist a US-led military and, later, a civilian administration, a senior official said. Only after this transition would the US-led government hand power to Iraqis.

The official said that the Iraqi armed forces would be “downsized,” and that senior Ba’ath Party officials who control government ministries would be removed.

Some experts warned during Senate hearings last month that a prolonged US military occupation of Iraq could inflame tensions in the Middle East and the Muslim world.

“I am viscerally opposed to a prolonged occupation of a Muslim country at the heart of the Muslim world by Western nations who proclaim the right to re-educate that country,” said the former Secretary of State, Henry A. Kissinger, who as a young man served as a district administrator in the military government of occupied Germany.

As the plans were being revealed, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US should never allow the concerns of allies or worries of the public to dictate its military aims.

Rumsfeld said that the United States “must not dumb down what is needed by promising not to do things,” such as endangering civilians or bombing during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Iraqi dissidents dismayed

Iraqi dissidents and the Arab League on Friday expressed dismay at the plans.

“This is not what we were told,” said Hamid al-Bayati, a representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite-led opposition group.

“We were told by American officials that they want a broad-based Iraqi government ... with no direct American role,” al-Bayati said.

Al-Bayati was a member of an Iraqi opposition delegation that met with US officials in August under the umbrella of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of groups opposed to the Iraqi regime.

“They can’t do that. The Iraqi people will not accept it and nobody else in the region will,” he said. “This is not the 19th century ... this is an occupation,” he said of the US plans.

“We refuse Saddam’s dictatorship and any other dictatorship in the future,” he said.

Hazem el-Youssefi, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, said the idea of a foreign military presence was one of the scenarios discussed with US officials. But his group, he said, rejects the idea of a US invasion.

“The Iraqi opposition after all these years will not settle for a foreign occupation,” he said.

A spokesman for the 22-member Arab League said some of the latest plans and ideas coming out of Washington regarding Iraq were “very simplistic” and “to say the least, laughable,” including the idea of military occupation of postwar Iraq.

“This is ridiculous. This is not Afghanistan. Iraq is totally different,” Hisham Youssef said, adding the objective of US intervention is yet to be made clear.

A foreign military presence in Iraq will aggravate the Arab population already disheartened with US policy in the region, he said.

As a matter of principle, the Arab League is opposed to any talk of regime change and how to bring that about, Youssef said.

“Our efforts are focused ... on trying to avoid a war,” Youssef said. It is “a fight against all odds. But we have to continue to fight.”

Abdel-Moneim Said, director of Cairo’s Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies, said “The big one-million-dollar question is how the Iraqi people will feel about it, will they consider it a liberating force or an invasion?” He added that Iraqi resistance will be tough if US intervention is seen as an invasion.

The more challenging issues that need answers include what to do once Hussein is toppled and how to install a democratic government, he said. For instance, the Shiites are the majority, and a majority Shiite government in Iraq adjacent to Iran would be a challenge to the US.

The Kurds and their autonomous rule in northern Iraq also pose a big problem for the US and their close ally Turkey, Said said. Turkey rejects the idea of an independent Kurdistan.

An Arab diplomat in Washington said the occupation could have an “explosive” impact in the Middle East, where the US military presence has already proven a rallying cry for militants including Osama bin Laden.

“Every day in Iraq would raise the cost,” the diplomat warned.

Congress delivers broad mandate

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Friday morning to authorize Bush the use of force against Iraq, joining with the House in giving him a broad mandate.

The House voted 296 to 133 on Thursday afternoon to allow the president to use the military “against the continuing threat” posed by the Iraqi regime. The Senate followed with a vote of 77 to 23 for the measure.

Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader and Democrat, gave Bush his backing, saying, “I believe it is important for America to speak with one voice at this critical moment.”

A determined minority in Congress stood firm in opposition, despite facing ridicule and, for some members, the risk of electoral defeat in November. Among the dissenters, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) might have stood out the furthest.

McDermott, who recently visited a Baghdad children’s hospital and met with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, told ABC News that Bush might not tell the truth about Iraq so that he could wage war.

“It would not surprise me if they came up with some information that is not provable,” McDermott said. “I think the president would mislead the American people.

“What’s really troubling to me is how much people are unaware of what really is going on here, how much they are being led into believing there’s this imminent threat.”

McDermott said many members of Congress are following blindly behind Bush.

“The Congress is sending people to die. This is a declaration of war today. This is not just another day at the farm,” he said.

Sources: Associated Press, BBC News, Chicago Tribune, Guardian (UK), New York Times, Times (UK), Washington Post

Tussle between Pakistan military, politicians shape up in poll

By Muddassir Rizvi

Islamabad, Pakistan, Oct. 10 (IPS)— “[President] Musharraf keeps talking about the good work he has done for people. He should come to my home and see how we hardly get by with what we earn,” Lalarukh said after voting Thursday in Pakistan’s first general election since a military coup three years ago.

“If we pay for our children’s education, we don’t have money to pay for utility bills,” added Lalarukh, a first-time voter who goes by one name and who says life has been harder under President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

“Most people feel worse off economically over the past three years. Their primary grievance is the ever-rising cost of living. They say prices of electricity were raised eleven times since 1999, prices of fuel were pushed up umpteen times and wages are stagnant,” Umeed Khan said as he emerged from a polling booth in Said Pur, a village on the outskirts of the capital Islamabad.

But the cost of living is not the only driving force behind voters using the ballot to speak out against Musharraf and military rule.

Some object to his pro-US foreign policy, saying this is pushing the country to westernization they do not like. “I voted for Islam (is what) I stamped on the ‘book’,” said Sakina Khaoon, who lives in Karachi Company, an Islamabad neighborhood inhabited by rank-and-file government employees.

The book is the election symbol of Muttahida Majlis Amal (MMA) that had been mobilizing people to vote against Musharraf’s pro-US policies, his support for the US attacks against Afghanistan last year and what some here see as his soft stance on the country’s long-standing dispute with India over Kashmir.

“We are voting to regain our dignity and sovereignty that Musharraf has sold to the Americans and to the West,” said Hafiz Ahmed Hassan, another MMA supporter wearing a cap reading “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is Great).

So far, early exit poll results show a swing in favor of the anti-Musharraf parties. “The Pakistan People’s Party [of former premier Benazir Bhutto and fierce Musharraf critic] was leading in Sindh and Punjab, while MMA is leading in Balochistan [province],” said Raza Hamani of the Pattan Development Foundation, which is conducting the exit poll.

Counting in the elections for a new national parliament and four provincial assemblies has already begun, and final results are expected in a week’s time.

All eyes are now on what is expected to be a tussle for control of the new parliament between the Pakistan People’s Party of Bhutto, who was barred from taking part in the Oct. 10 polls, and the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) party.

This race might yet result in a hung parliament because of the tight race between these two political factions.

However, many people here fear that the generals will push for a federal government formed by the parties that back them, not least because it was the military government that was behind the creation of the new Pakistan Muslim League party.

“They [the government] invested in PML(QA) and projected them through the state-controlled electronic media, I cannot imagine that anybody else would be allowed to form a government,” said Abdul Rahman, a supporter of the party of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.

Thursday’s election, which Musharraf calls the fulfillment of his pledge to restore democracy after his October 1999 coup, is shaping up to be a test of his three years in power.

But whatever the results, critics say that the military will continue to cast its shadow over Pakistani politics. This is because Musharraf will retain considerable powers as president anyway, dominating civilian officials like the prime minister that will emerge after the poll. Others add that the general has virtually rigged the vote in his favor, by pressuring politicians to join parties supportive of the military.

Earlier, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan accused Musharraf of pressuring politicians to join the pro-military PML(QA) party and the six-party National Alliance.

The PML (QA) is a splinter group of the Pakistan Muslim League party headed by exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted three years ago. The National Alliance comprises mainly those groups that used to be part of Bhutto’s party.

During Thursday’s vote, balloting continued without major incidents, except for government reports that said at least four men were killed and seven others wounded when rival party supporters clashed at polling stations in separate incidents.

Voting day was also marked by a lack of public enthusiasm. Initial reports say that today’s turnout was below 40 percent. Nearly 72 million Pakistanis were eligible to vote Thursday.

When Pakistan first went to the polls in 1970, more than 63 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots. But six general elections later, all that has changed . In 1997, the last time general elections were held, only 35.5 percent of registered voters bothered to turn up.

Election analysts had predicted a low turnout Thursday due to what critics call the dullest campaign in Pakistan’s 55-year history. This they attributed to the tight restrictions imposed by Musharraf on campaigning and the absence from the arena of Bhutto and Sharif.

Still, politicians were impressed by the number of people who turned out to cheer and vote for their parties.

“We are impressed by the mobilization of people despite restrictions by the regime on political activities that practically limited any contacts of people with their parties for the last three years,” commented Nayyar Bokhari, a candidate of the Pakistan People’s Party in Islamabad.

“People are democratic at heart and they are tired of rules that do not represent them,” Bokhari said.

WORLD BRIEFS

Famine used to sell GM food

Greenpeace and Actionaid, stung by criticism from senior US officials that they have been playing with people’s lives by encouraging countries to resist GM food sent as aid, have accused the United States Government’s overseas aid body of offering only GM food when conventional foods were available.. They also accused the US of using the UN to distribute domestic food surpluses that could not find a market elsewhere.

The US, by far the largest donor to the hunger crisis now affecting more than 14 million people in six countries, has offered more than $485 million of GM corn to southern Africa through the UN World Food Program.

Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique have accepted the GM food, but Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe are reluctant to import it in seed form. They fear farmers may plant some of the seeds and that this may affect both their environment and future food exports.

Andrew Natsio, head of the US Agency for International Development, rejected the accusations and said that it was bound by Congress to offer food and not money.

“The food deficit in southern Africa is so big there’s no way people can buy it on the local market,” he said.

However, the latest UN figures on food availability in the region show there is a total of 1,160,000 tons of cereals available in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa.

“This shows the alternative to rejecting GM food aid is not starvation,” said Alice Wynne Wilson of Actionaid. (The Guardian (UK))

Six killed in India during Falwell protest

Six people were killed and more than 55 injured Oct. 12 in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, when a protest strike led to rioting.

The violence in the town of Solapur came amid a strike called by a Moslem organization to protest anti-Moslem remarks made by US Baptist Jerry Falwell.

Five people were killed Oct. 11 and one died Oct. 12 of injuries. Three of those killed died in police fire. (Qatar News Agency)

Chavez dismisses calls to step down

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, on Oct. 13, brushed aside opposition demands for his resignation and ruled out calls for early elections as he led a rally of hundreds of thousands of government supporters in Caracas. He challenged his political foes to prove they could organize a nationwide strike sufficiently disruptive to again force him out of office.

The country’s largest business federation, its biggest labor confederation and some opposition leaders have threatened a national stoppage for Oct. 21 if Mr. Chavez does not resign by Oct. 16 and bring forward a date for polls.

Chavez dismissed them as “desperate but privileged, coup-plotting elites” and refused to acknowledge their demands.

“Only three days left, I’m terrified!” he quipped. “Well, in that case, I resign… definitively, and forever, any demands to betray the popular will,” he informed cheering crowds. (Financial Times)

Algerians stage talk-in

On Oct. 11 about 25 Algerian women and children facing deportation visited Immigration Minister Denis Coderre’s Montreal North office, refusing to leave until an official would listen and speak to them. Michael Bento, a political attache to Coderre, agreed to talk with only two representatives, but the women insisted they all have an opportunity to speak saying they’d arrived as a group.

After 40 minutes of listening to each woman, terrified of the deportation papers she’s sure to receive, tell her story, staff members in the office were in tears. These women are known in Canada as non-status Algerians, people who fled their country after elections canceled to prevent the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front from taking office, which led to the murder or kidnapping of over 100,000 people. They went to Canada as refugees, were refused, but were allowed to stay anyway. Then Coderre lifted the moratorium on Apr. 5.

Mark Dunn, a spokesman in Coderre’s Ottawa office, said the moratorium won’t be reinstated.

“There seems to be a misconception out there that we’re rounding up Algerians and sending them back. We’re looking at them on a case by case basis,” insisted Dunn. Yet, so far, of the 1,000 affected, not one has been allowed to stay. (Montreal Gazette)

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart receives his just desserts Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, leader of Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD) and former chairman of Shell was both pied and ‘greenwashed’ by the Greenwash Guerrillas in a spectacular double whammy Oct 9.

Moody-Stuart was arriving at a panel discussion in St. James Church in Piccadilly, when two protestors accosted him, one wielding a cream pie and the other a tub of ‘greenwash.’ The protestors hastily dispatched their loads before running off into the night chuckling heartily. Greenwashing is the use of misleading information by corporations, that makes them appear to be socially and environmentally responsible in the face of alarming evidence to the contrary.

BASD is the business lobby group largely responsible for thwarting efforts to achieve binding regulation of corporations at the Earth Summit. (Greenwash Guerillas)

ANALYSIS

Detailed analysis of excerpts from Bush’s Oct. 7 Iraq speech

By the Institute for Public Accuracy

Bush:Thank you for that very gracious and warm Cincinnati welcome. I’m honored to be here tonight. I appreciate you all coming. Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace and America’s determination to lead the world in confronting that threat. The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime’s own actions, its history of aggression and its drive toward an arsenal of terror.

Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report: “This might indicate that Iraq is actively threatening the peace in the region. There is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq is doing so, or has any intention of doing so. Other powers are actively disrupting the peace in the region: Israel is trying to crush Palestinian resistance to occupation with brute force, and the US and Britain have bombed Iraq 46 times in 2002 when their aircraft are ‘targeted’ by Iraqi air defense systems in the bilaterally enforced no-fly zones. Most of our ‘friends’ in the region — Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan — have strongly urged us not to go to war, and to tone down the war rhetoric. Aren’t they better positioned than we are to judge what threatens their safety?”

The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons.

As’ad Abukhalil, author of Bin Laden, Islam, & America’s New ‘War on Terrorism’ and associate professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus: “The president fails to credit Reagan’s and his father’s administrations — prominent members of which included Rumsfeld and Cheney — for their help in the construction of Saddam’s arsenal, especially in the area of germ warfare.”

Toensing: “After being presented with evidence that Iraq had used chemical weapons to attack the Kurds in 1987-88, the Reagan administration blocked a Senate resolution imposing sanctions on Iraq, and continued to pursue good relations with the regime.”

It is seeking nuclear weapons.

Rahul Mahajan, author of The New Crusade: America’s War on Terrorism: “There’s no evidence that Iraq has gotten anywhere with seeking nuclear weapons. The pitiful status of evidence in this regards is shown by claims in Blair’s dossier that Iraq is seeking uranium from Africa, year and country unspecified. South Africa is, of course, the only country on the continent that potentially has the capacity for enrichment of uranium to bomb quality, and claims not to have supplied Iraq with uranium. Unenriched uranium does Iraq little good, since enrichment facilities are large, require huge investment, and cannot easily be hidden.”

First, some ask why Iraq is different from other countries or regimes that also have terrible weapons. While there are many dangers in the world, the threat from Iraq stands alone — because it gathers the most serious dangers of our age in one place.

Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are controlled by a murderous tyrant, who has already used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. This same tyrant has tried to dominate the Middle East, has invaded and brutally occupied a small neighbor, has struck other nations without warning, and holds an unrelenting hostility towards the United States.

Stephen Zunes, author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism and associate professor of politics at the University of San Francisco: “The hostility toward the United States is a direct consequence of US hostility toward Iraq. Iraq was quite unhostile to the United States when it was receiving support from the United States during the 1980s. The answer is certainly not to appease Iraq’s tyrannical regime, as was done in the past. However, to imply this hostility is unrelated to the US destruction of much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure and other actions during the Gulf War which went far beyond what was necessary to rid Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and the US-led sanctions andtheir impact upon the civilian population, is very misleading.”

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?

Zunes: “He was far more dangerous in the 1980s when the US was supporting him. It will take many years, assuming military sanctions continue in effect, before he comes close to the strength he was then. If UN inspectors are allowed to return, it would be impossible — even if they don’t find 100 percent of everything — to get much stronger than he is today.”

We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, and VX nerve gas. Saddam Hussein also has experience in using chemical weapons. He has ordered chemical attacks on Iran, and on more than forty villages in his own country. These actions killed or injured at least 20,000 people, more than six times the number of people who died in the attacks of September 11.

Mahajan: “All of this was done with the full support, approval, and connivance of the US government. US-supplied ‘agricultural credits’ helped fund the sustained counterinsurgency campaign in northern Iraq; the United States supplied military intelligence to Iraq for use against Iran even when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons in the war; and the United States ran diplomatic interference for Iraq at the UN”

Yet Saddam Hussein has chosen to build and keep these weapons, despite international sanctions, UN demands, and isolation from the civilized world.

Zunes: “Again, the US has yet to produce evidence that Iraq is building such weapons. Also, UN Security Council Resolution 687 calls for Iraqi disarmament as part of a region-wide disarmament effort which the United States has refused to enforce or even support.”

Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work.

Toensing: “This is a neat rhetorical trick. Bush knows that Turkey and Saudi Arabia themselves do not feel under threat from Iraq’s WMD, so he doesn’t claim that. Rather, it’s the threat to US servicemen and oil company employees based in those countries which should concern us. The questions left unasked are why Iraq would attack Americans, knowing the massive response that would incur, and of course why so many American troops ‘live and work’ in Turkey and Saudi Arabia. They’re partly there in forward deployment against Iraq.”

We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs for missions targeting the United States.

Toensing: “Other intelligence experts have disputed that UAVs are a threat, because the agents they released might disperse to basically harmless levels by the time they reached the ground if the UAV was trying to cover such a broad area.”

Mahajan: “The claim that these UAVs have ranges that would enable attacking the United States, and that they could reach it undetected, is a startlingly new one, and entirely untenable. No one has ever produced evidence of Iraqi capability or intent to target the United States directly.”

We know that Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaida have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al-Qaida leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq.

These include one very senior al-Qaida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We have learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in bomb making, poisons, and deadly gases.

James Jennings, president of Conscience International, a humanitarian aid organization that has worked in Iraq since 1991: “The claim that al-Qaida is in Iraq is disingenuous, if not an outright lie. Yes, the US has known for some time that up to 400 al-Qaida-type Muslim extremists, the Ansar al-Ialam, formerly ‘Jund al-Islam,’ a splinter of the Iranian-backed Islamic Unity Movement of Kurdistan, were operating inside the Kurdish security zone set up under US protection in the North of Iraq. For some reason this was kept quiet and has not been much reported in the mainstream media. Finally last Spring the Kurds themselves attacked and killed most of the terrorists in their territory, sending the rest fleeing for their lives across the border into Iran. Since this area was under US protection, and not under Saddam Hussein’s rule, it’s pretty hard to claim that al-Qaida operates in Iraq.”

Many people have asked how close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. We don’t know exactly, and that is the problem. Before the Gulf War, the best intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon; after the war, international inspectors learned that the regime had been much closer. The regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.

The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a workable nuclear weapon, and was pursuing several different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

Toensing: “Yes, inspectors learned all of this — the inspections worked.”

Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities, including three uranium-enrichment sites.

Robert Jensen, author of Writing Dissent and an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin: “Bush at least acknowledged that we know little about Saddam’s nuclear capability, but he lied about why. Bush claimed that Iraq barred the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1998. In fact, the inspectors, along with those from the UN Special Commission, were withdrawn by their agencies — not expelled by Iraq — in December 1998 when it became clear the Clinton administration was going to bomb Iraq (as it did) and the safety of the inspectors couldn’t be guaranteed. The inspectors also spied for the United States, in violation of their mandate.”

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.

Toensing: “Both the CIA report and the British dossier say that this is very unlikely as long as Iraq remains under sanctions.”

Some citizens wonder: After 11 years of living with this problem, why do we need to confront it now?

There is a reason. We have experienced the horror of September 11. We have seen that those who hate America are willing to crash airplanes into buildings full of innocent people.Our enemies would be no less willing — in fact they would be eager — to use a biological, or chemical, or a nuclear weapon.

Mahajan: “Invoking September 11 without showing any kind of link between the government of Iraq and those attacks is just transparent manipulation. What he really means is that after September 11 he thinks he can get away with such a policy.”

The UN inspections program was met with systematic deception. The Iraqi regime bugged hotel rooms and offices of inspectors to find where they were going next. They forged documents, destroyed evidence, and developed mobile weapons facilities to keep a step ahead of inspectors.

Eight so-called presidential palaces were declared off-limits to unfettered inspections. These sites actually encompass 12 square miles, with hundreds of structures, both above and below the ground, where sensitive materials could be hidden.

Zunes: “These are not off-limits. They are open to unfettered inspections as long as an Iraqi official is accompanying the inspectors. Such a proviso is quite legal under UN Security Council resolutions authorizing the creation of United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), resolutions that were supported by the United States.”

The world has also tried economic sanctions and watched Iraq use billions of dollars in illegal oil revenues to fund more weapons purchases, rather than providing for the needs of the Iraqi people.

Toensing: “Yes, and all the while, the USand Britain were undermining the logic of sanctions and inspections by speaking of regime change, giving the regime no incentive to cooperate.”

Mahajan: “The government-instituted food ration program in Iraq has been widely praised, characterized as ‘second to none’ by Tun Myat, current UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq. Money that comes in under the Oil for Food program cannot, despite constant allegations, be used for weapons purchases — all proceeds from such sales are deposited to an escrow account in New York which is controlled by the UN Sanctions Committee. The government of Iraq cannot touch any of this money.”

And inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions.

Susan Wright, co-author of Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives: “[The evidence] suggests that the United States and the United Kingdom intend to set such tough conditions for further arms inspections in Iraq that they would create a double bind. If Iraq rejects the conditions, then war with the United States will follow. If Iraq attempts to comply and an ambiguity triggers action by the security forces of one of the permanent members of the Security Council, which according to this draft, might accompany an inspection team, war could follow anyway. Other members of the Security Council should reject such traps. It is also essential to avoid a situation in which the inspection force is effectively hijacked by the United States and used for espionage, as was the case with the UN Special Commission in the 1990s.”

Those resolutions are very clear. In addition to declaring and destroying all of its weapons of mass destruction, Iraq must end its support for terrorism. It must cease the persecution of its civilian population. It must stop all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. And it must release or account for all Gulf War personnel, including an American pilot, whose fate is still unknown.

Zunes: “Most of these do not fall under Chapter VII, which allows for the UN Security Council to authorize the use of force.”

AbuKhalil: “And Bush’s sudden concern for UN resolutions should not lead one to believe that he will next move to implement all UN resolutions — including those against US allies”.

Failure to act would embolden other tyrants; allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources; and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events.

The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding, and prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear.

That is not the America I know. That is not the America I serve. We refuse to live in fear. This nation — in world war and in Cold War — has never permitted the brutal and lawless to set history’s course.

Zunes: “Then why did the United States support Indonesian dictator Suharto for over three decades, as he oversaw the massacre of over a half million of his own people, invaded the tiny nation or East Timor, resulting in the deaths of an additional 200,000? How about brutal and lawless governments in Turkey, Morocco, and Israel that have invaded neighboring countries at the cost of thousands of civilian lives? How about Pinochet and other Latin American tyrants supported by the US?”

Now, as before, we will secure our nation, protect our freedom, and help others to find freedom of their own. Some worry that a change of leadership in Iraq could create instability and make the situation worse. The situation could hardly get worse, for world security, and for the people of Iraq.

The lives of Iraqi citizens would improve dramatically if Saddam Hussein were no longer in power, just as the lives of Afghanistan’s citizens improved after the Taliban.

Toensing: “Given what is known about the return of warlordism and chaos to Afghanistan — not to mention the fiction that Afghan women have all thrown away their burqas — this is a debatable proposition, and indicative of the administration’s lack of interest in rebuilding Afghanistan.Why would Iraq be any different?”

Mahajan: “On every test of justice and of pragmatism, the war on Afghanistan fails. Worse, every one of these aspects, from an increased threat of terrorism to large numbers of civilian deaths to installation of a US-controlled puppet regime is due to play out again in the war on Iraq. In fact, though it has been little noted, the sanctions regime has made Iraqis dependent on centralized, government-distributed food to survive and relief agencies have already expressed their concerns about the potential for a humanitarian crisis once war starts.”

America is a friend to the people of Iraq.

Anthony Arnove, editor of the book Iraq Under Siege: “But the people of Iraq have good reason to feel otherwise. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times noted in his October 4 report from Baghdad, ‘US bombing of water treatment plants, difficulties importing purification chemicals like chlorine (which can be used for weapons), and shortages of medicines led to a more than doubling of infant mortality, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.’ Another war on Iraq — this time, a ‘pre-emptive’ attack aimed at ‘regime change’ — will lead to more civilian casualties and damage to Iraq’s infrastructure. And Iraqis are right to worry that the regime Washington installs, in violation of their right to self-determination, will be one that serves US interests, not their own.”

Later this week the United States Congress will vote on this matter. I have asked Congress to authorize the use of America’s military, if it proves necessary, to enforce UN Security Council demands.

John Berg, director of graduate studies of the government department at Suffolk University: “Our Constitution makes it clear that Congress, not the President, is to ‘declare war’ — that is, make the decision that war is necessary in a given situation. For Congress to delegate this determination to the President would be an abdication of its Constitutional responsibility.”

Zunes: “According to the articles 41 and 42 of the United Nations charter, this can only be done if the UN Security Council finds the violator in material breach of the resolution, determines all non-military means of enforcement have been exhausted, and specifically authorizes the use of force. Otherwise, it will be illegal. Members of Congress would therefore be obliged to vote against it since — according to Article VI of the US Constitution — international treaties such as the UN Charter are the supreme law of the land. Furthermore, if the United States can invade Iraq for its violations of UN Security Council resolutions, then Britain could invade Morocco, France could invade Turkey, Russia could invade Israel, etc.”

We did not ask for this present challenge, but we accept it. Like other generations of Americans, we will meet the responsibility of defending human liberty against violence and aggression. By our resolve, we will give strength to others. By our courage, we will give hope to others. By our actions, we will secure the peace, and lead the world to a better day.

Phyllis Bennis, author of the just-released book Before & After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis, and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies: “President Bush’s speech ignored Congress, and instead was aimed at US public opinion (where his support is dwindling) and international allies in the UN (where the US is significantly isolated). It was designed to divert attention from the real reasons for this coming war: oil and empire. It is a war designed to rewrite the political map of the Middle East, and is not dependent on the particular threat posed by a particular dictator. The crimes of the Iraqi regime are serious and longstanding — back to the days of massive US economic and military support, and US provision of the biological seed stock for the anthrax and other germs President Bush warned us about. But launching a massive bombing campaign against Baghdad, a city of more than 5 million inhabitants— grandmothers, kindergarten classes, teenagers — will not secure human rights for those living and dying under those bombs.”

Thank you, and good night.

UN Security Council resolutions currently being violated by countries other than Iraq

By Stephen Zunes

This list deals exclusively with resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, a fifteen-member body consisting of five permanent members (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) and ten non-permanent members elected for rotating two-year terms representing various regions of the world. The Security Council’s primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, is for the maintenance of international peace and security. For a resolution to pass, it must be approved by a majority of the total membership with no dissenting vote from any of the five permanent members. Since the early 1970s, the United States has used its veto power nearly fifty times, more than all other permanent members during that same period combined. In the vast majority of these cases, the U.S. was the only dissenting vote. The preceding list, therefore, includes only resolutions where the United States voted in the affirmative or abstained.

This list does not include resolutions that merely condemn a particular action, only those that specifically proscribe a particular ongoing activity or future activity and/or call upon a particular government to implement a particular action. Nor does this list include resolutions where the language is ambiguous enough to make assertions of noncompliance debatable, such as UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 on the Arab-Israeli conflict that put forward the formula of “land for peace,” to cite the most famous. Similarly, it does not include broad resolutions calling for universal compliance not in reference to a particular conflict, particularly if there is not a clear definition. For example, in a resolution that proscribes the harboring of terrorists, there is no clear definition for what constitutes a terrorist. This list does not include nonstate actors, such as secessionist governments, rebel groups or terrorists, only recognized nation-states.

Furthermore, this list does not include resolutions that were also violated for a number of years that are now moot (such as those dealing with Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, and Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon). If these were also included, the number of violations would double. In most of these cases, the United States played a key role in blocking enforcement of these resolutions as well.

#1319 (2000) Indonesia Insists that Indonesia “take immediate additional steps, in fulfillment of its responsibilities, to disarm and disband the militia immediately, restore law and order in the affected areas of West Timor, ensure safety and security in the refugee camps and for humanitarian workers, and prevent incursions into East Timor.” Stresses that those guilty of attacks on international personnel be brought to justice and reiterates the need to provide safe return for refugees who wish to repatriate and provide resettlement for those wishing to stay in Indonesia.

#1322 (2000) Israel Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying power.

#1359 (2001) Morocco Calls on the parties to “abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law to release without further delay all those held since the start of the conflict.”

#1402 (2002) Israel Calls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities.

#1403 (2002) Israel Demands that Israel go through with “the implementation of its resolution 1402, without delay.”

#1405 (2002) Israel Calls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.

#1416 (2002) Turkey/Cyprus Reiterates UNSC resolution 1251 and all relevant resolutions on Cyprus.

#1435 (2002) Israel Calls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure. Stephen Zunes is a professor at the University of San Francisco and the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.