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September
26, 2001
Seal It With a
Check
Cashbox Diplomacy
By Jeffrey
St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn
Bush is Wall Street's president. His
top advisers are all former CEO's, including Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, Don Evans and Paul O'Neill. Thus it's not surprising
that the administration has chosen to build its revenge coalition
through a combination of tough talk in the media and discreet
back room bribes totaling billions of dollars in direct aid and
eased trade sanctions.
In his speech to congress,
Bush, doing his best Gary Cooper imitation, issued a clipped
warning to the nations of the world: "you're either with
us or with the terrorist." What does this mean, exactly?
Ari Fleischer laid it all out a week after the 9/11 attacks.
"The approach of the government will involve a carrot and
a stick," Fleischer said. "And in different nations,
the carrot may be bigger, in other nations the stick may be bigger."
But rest assured everyone who plays along will get paid off.
Except, perhaps, Cuba and, of course, Iraq.
Of course, here Junior is only
operating from the same playbook that his father used to solidify
his coalition against Iraq in 1989: bribery. In aftermath of
the Gulf War, the US handed out billions in paybacks for participation
in the vaunted alliance. Indeed, the US's semi-permanent buy-out
of Saudi military bases is said to be one of the things that
fueled bin Laden's hatred of all things American.
The chief broker for these
trade pacts has been Robert Zoellick, the US Trade Rep, and an
old-line hawk, who worked at the State Department during Bush
I and also served a personal adviser to President GHW Bush. Zoellick,
a former Goldman Sachs exec, is a protégé of James
Baker and is following the Texan's precedent in handing out bribes
to ensure international acquiescence to American military campaigns.
"Now we have a clear enemy who is not only trying to do
us great damage, but is also trying to terrorize us . . . to
paralyze us by terrorizing us," said Zoellick. " The
terrorists deliberately chose the World Trade towers as their
target. While their blow toppled the towers, it cannot and will
not shake the foundation of world trade and freedom. Our response
has to counter fear and paniccounter it with free trade."
Zoellick's first major trade
pact was with Jordan, the Arab state that has always proved reliably
compliant to the demands of the US government. But that's not
all. Zoellick wants to use the 9/11 attacks as a pretext for
congress to grant Bush the so-called fast track authority, which
will allow him to freelance trade deals with little oversight
from legislators. " Congress needs to enact U.S. trade promotion
authority so America can negotiate agreements that advance the
causes of openness, development and growth, said Zoellick in
September 20 op-ed piece in the Washington Post. "It is
a sad irony that just as the old world of bipolar blocs faded
into history and the new world of globalization fast-forwarded,
the United States let its trade promotion authority lapse."
Of course, Zoellick is doing
quite a bit of business without the benefit of fast track. And
much of the money is going to regimes that have in the very recent
past been cast by the US State Department and human rights organizations
with records of brutality that are just as bracing as the Taliban's.
Pakistan, for instance, which looks to be a prime staging area
for any US incursion into Afghanistan was, only months ago, vilified
as a rogue nation, threatening its neighbors with nuclear weapons
and other forms of state sanction terror. Pakistan's secret police,
the ISI, takes a backseat to no one in terms of its disregard
for the most elemental human rights and served as the training
ground for the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
In addition to direct US aid,
Pakistan also discovered on September 25 that more than $850
million in loan payments to 13 countries had been miraculously
rescheduled to a date in the distant future. Meanwhile, the World
Bank said it is poised to give Pakistan further financial aid.
Apparently, all the Pakistani's have to do is ask.
Sanctions, which included bans
on weapons sales and high tech computers, were imposed on both
Pakistan and India following the two nation's nuclear saber-rattling
in 1998. India saw its sanctions dissolve after it pledged to
turn over to the Pentagon its intelligence dossiers on bin Laden
and the Taliban. There's no word whether the Indian government
also chose to hand over dossiers detailing the ties between bin
Laden and its rivals in the Pakistani government. India also
offered to lease to the US three air bases as well as unspecified
port facilities on the western seaboard. This prospect has not
sat well with Pakistan, which has said that under no circumstances
could India or Israel participate in the coming raids on Afghanistan.
Indonesia, the world's most
populous Islamic nation, also had its hand out and was rewarded
with billions in inducements to keep its burgeoning fundamentalist
movement under heal. Prime Minister Megawati Sukarnoputri traveled
to Washington a few days after the attack, stood by a tenuous-looking
Bush, as he struggled to pronounce her name correctly, and vowed
unflinching opposition to terrorism.
On the eve of Megawati's visit
Robert Zoellick had hinted that US aid was in the offing. "One
of the things that the President will be talking about is some
ways that we may be able to open up our markets to help her succeed
with growth." No mention was made of the Indonesian army's
rampages in East Timor, the ongoing bloody reprisals in Aceh
province against the Free Aceh Movement, and the general demeanor
of the Indonesia military which is one of the world's most ruthless
and undiscriminating. These abuses have not ended with the ouster
of Suharto. Indeed, the crackdown in Aceh is being carried out
with a particular ferocity with all the old techniques of repression,
torture and state-sanctioned murder, including extra-judicial
executions, disappearances, arrests of protesters, journalists
and human rights workers, and collective punishment.
Megawati took back to Jakarta
commitment for more US military aid and reduced duties on Indonesian
timber products, gold and copper. With US environmental groups
in a self-induced state of hibernation, this giveaway prompted
nary a bleat of protest. But indeed it is a remarkable turn of
events and a blow to the Indonesia environment. Indonesia's primary
rainforests, which once rivaled the diversity of the Amazon,
have been decimated. The duties were token measures to slow the
rapacious pace of the logging. Now nothing stands in the way.
"We're coming to the end of the line," says Lisa Curran,
a Yale University ecologist who has led a 15-year study of the
rainforests of Borneo. "It means the forest may not have
a future."
The deal with Indonesia has
the stench of Kissinger's handiwork. After all, Kissinger sits
on the board of Freeport McMoran, the New Orleans-based mining
giant that operates the Grasberg gold mine in Indonesia, one
of the world's ongoing acts of environmental crime and terrorism.
The Indonesian military has doubled as a security force for the
mining company, slaughtering hundreds of residents who have protested
the destruction of their community. When things got hot for Freeport
after the ouster of the dictator Suharto, Kissinger asserted
himself, has also served as an economic and political adviser
to the Indonesian government.
Even Iran, which may have been
promised goodies by Bush's father in exchange for delaying the
release of the hostages taken in the raid on the American embassy,
seems to have put in a bid at the auction. To revive a phrase
from the Iran/Contra days, the back channel to Iran has been
the British diplomat, Jack Straw, who went to Teheran this week
bearing gifts and promises of future indulgences should the Iranians
mute their anger at US raids across the border. Iran remains
still classified as a state that "harbors" terrorists.
But the regime in Teheran is no friend of the Taliban and the
cost of 500,000 famished and frightened refuges pouring across
the border is daunting and expensive.
Meanwhile, the Russians have
agreed to lease the decrepit Dushanbe air base in Tajikistan
airport for a nominal fee and promises by the Pentagon that it
will upgrade the facility, which has been in a state of advanced
deterioration since the end of the Soviet/Afghan war. In return,
Putin wants the US to quickly secure Russian's entry into the
WTO.
But this is just the beginning.
Russia is still smarting from its disastrous war in Afghanistan
in the 1980s and its bloody conflict in Chechnya that tarnished
both Yeltsin and Putin. Similar uprisings are taking place throughout
Central Asia. The US military build-up across the region, including
upgraded intelligence facilities, new airports and roads, will
make it easier for Putin to suppress these insurgencies after
the Americans leave.
Apparently, the Russians will
also serve as a cut-out for US-financed arm shipments to the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces.
But the Northern Alliance isn't
the only game in town. Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostam, leader
of anti-Taliban ethnic rebels in Uzbekistan, told the Germany
magazine Der Speigel, that he is willing to have his 15,000 men
serve as a proxy army in the hunt for bin Laden and his cadre.
Uzbekistan, the central Asian
republic with the largest standing army, is slated to be a major
launching paid for any US military strike on the Taliban, now
code-named Enduring Democracy. It has been fighting its own savage
war against Islamic separatists known as the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan, a group that Bush linked to bin Laden in his recent
speech to congress.
Of course, Uzbekistan is hardly
a model of an enlightened democracy. A recent report by Human
Rights Watch outlines the situation: "In the last decade,
the government has decimated Uzbekistan's secular political opposition,
arresting and harassing its leaders and prominent members and
forcing others into exile. The Uzbek government will not register
any political parties other than those aligned with the president,
and organized political opposition is not tolerated. The state
exercises tight control of the media, including through pre-publication
censorship. There are no independent news outlets. Journalists
critical of the government are routinely threatened by state
authorities and have been driven out of the country under threat
of arrest. There is no freedom of assembly in Uzbekistan."
Uzbek human rights groups estimate
that there are more than 7,000 Muslims in prison in Uzbekistan
today, most for "anti-state activity" or "attempted
subversion of the constitutional order." The sentences range
from fifteen to twenty years. A stint in an Uzbek prison is no
laughing matter. Conditions are abhorrent and torture is routine.
Political prisoners are inflicted with particularly brutal treatment,
including being hung from their feet, beaten with batons and
bottles of water, by their feet or wrists, beat them with batons,
electroshocked, and raped. Police torture of this sort has resulted
in the deaths of at least 15 people in the last two years.
Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan
have both auctioned off their countries' air corridors for US
military overflights, although Saparmurat Niyazov, president
of Turkmenistan, said that at this point he would only permit
the Pentagon to use Turkmeni air space for what he called "humanitarian
flights to Afghanistan." Kazakistan, another former Soviet
Republic, has also offered to lease its air space and military
bases to the US. But the human rights record in all of these
republics is little better than that of Uzbekistan. Political
dissent is not tolerated, secret police rove the countryside,
newspapers are censored and members of non-sanctioned religious
sects are persecuted.
The government of the Philippines,
which has been anxious to kick the US military out of the country,
has now done an about face and is willing to allow U.S. military
planes to use its air space and refuel on its territory. In return,
the Philippine government is expecting a new trade pact, an arms
package and financial aid from the World Bank and IMF.
Turkey is the only Muslim nation
in NATO, a big recipient of US aid and military largesse. A week
after the attacks, Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit said
that he would be happy to open Turkish military bases to the
Northern Alliance and to have the Turkish military train them
for a sustained war against the Taliban. Turkey's economic minister,
Kemal Dervis, was a little more upfront in his demand for generous
infusions of cash into the ailing Turkish economy. "Within
the framework of the developments, friendly countries will realize
Turkey's importance in a better way," Dervis said. "If
Turkey's importance is well realized, its integration process
with the European Union can accelerate."
Spain will also rent several
of its military bases as "support installations" for
US aircraft and troops. Under the framework of a bilateral defense
cooperation agreement, the Pentagon will reimburse the Spanish
government to the tune of several million dollars depending on
the duration of the retaliatory campaign.
Although New Zealand has remained
resolute in opposition to the invoking of the Anzus Treaty, the
defense security pact for the Pacific region, the same can't
be said for Australia, which was quick to enter the fray. On
Sept. 18 Prime Minister John Howard announced that Australia
would include troops in its support of U.S. military action in
Afghanistan. But Howard isn't an altruist. He wants payback,
too, in the form of US support for a new bi-lateral free-trade
pact.
Even Algeria has been promised
recompense for rounding up 350 militants supposedly linked to
bin Laden's al-Qaeda network at the request of the US government.
The arrests were made by the same security forces that are now
under international scrutiny for the violent suppression of protests
in the Kabylie region that have left more than 80 dead and hundreds
injured. Earlier this year Algerian secret police arrested one
of the country's most prominent human rights activists, Mohammed
Smain, after he accused the former mayor of Relizane of leading
a terror militia that was responsible for kidnappings, executions
and torture of political dissidents.
What about that big stick?
There will be bombs and missiles. There's no question about that.
There will be raids on bin Laden's camps led by the Delta Force.
The Taliban may be driven into the caves of the Hindu Kush. But
there are other ways to punish and kill. Ways that are silent,
discreet and quite lethal. Trade sanctions that stop the flow
of even the most basic humanitarian goods, including medical
supplies, food, and sanitation equipment. The sanctions will
be leveled not only on Afghanistan, but any country that refused
to comply with US demands. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
has indicated that there may be as many as 60 countries that
fit the description.
"If they don't want to
co-operate and don't want to be on our side, there are measures
we can take, sanctions and other kinds of barriers to our markets
here," warned Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans.
In the context of this you're
either with us or against us rhetoric, Bush has issued a kind
of American fatwa, condemning those who live in nations that
refuse to play along to the prospect of a kind of hidden genocide.
The precedent here is Iraq-- half a million dead children and
counting. CP
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