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March
5, 2002
Bill Christison
A
Former CIA Officer
Explains Why the War
on Terror Won't Work
March
4, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Dick
Cheney: A Dinosaur
in the Age of Mammals
Uri Avnery
How
Israel Will Torpedo
the Saudi Peace Plan
Southern
/ Kubrick
Stangelove
Scenario
for Shadow Govt. Bunker
David
Vest
Grammy's
of Constant Sorrow
March
3, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
War
on Terrorism for Dummies
Paul Cox
Boycott
Mel Gibson's
"We Were Soldiers"
Frederick
Hudson
Toward
a Nonviolent Africa:
Bill Sutherland's Quest
Eric Schaeffer
Dear
Christie Whitman:
Take This Job and Shove It
John Chuckman
Why
the Rest of Planet is Unnerved by America
March
2, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Sweat,
Sex, Feet and
the Working Class
March
1, 2002
Brendan
Sexton III
What's
Wrong With Black Hawk Down: an Actor Speaks Out
Terry
Diggs
Why
Twain's Pudd'nhead
Wilson Still Matters
David
Krieger
Nuclear
Terrorism
and US Nuclear Policy
February
28, 2002
James
T. Phillips
Baghdad,
Spring 1992
Gideon
Samet
Sharon
Must Go
Rep. Ron
Paul
Before
We Bomb Iraq
M. Shahid
Alam
Samuel
Huntington:
Peddling Civilizational Wars
St. Clair
/ Cockburn
Rumble
from the Jungle:
Ecuadorian Farmers Fight
DynCorp's ChemWar
February
27, 2002
Eric Hobsbawm
The
Future of War and Peace
John Troyer
About
that WTC Memorial
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Wired
for Democracy
or Business?
Alexander
Cockburn
Daniel
Pearl: Should His
Editors Have Sent Him There?
February
26, 2002
Jonathan
Steele
Kabul's
Loss
Vasily
Streltsov
The
Pentagon in
the Transcaucusas
CounterPunch
Wire
How
Corporations Use Shadowy "527" Groups to Influence
Politicians
Lt. Col.
Robert Bowman
ABM
Treaty: Alive or Dead?
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
A
Prayer for America
February
25, 2002
John Clarke
Interrogated
at US Border
Blankfort,
Poirier, Zeltzer
ADL
Blinks, Settles Spying Case
Alex Lynch
Naked
from Sin:
The Ordeal of Nahla
and Sami Al-Arian
John Chuckman
Ashcroft
Speaks in Tongues
February
24, 2002
David
Vest
Skate
Date
February
23, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Axis
of Evil and
Media Monopolies
Bahour/Dahan
Cracks
in the Occupation
February
22, 2002
Alexander
Cockburn
Axel
of Evil: Sex Crimes
and the Constitution
February
21, 2002
Gary Leupp
The
Philippines: Second Front in US's Global War
David
Vest
Reagan
Clone Project?
Mokhiber
and Weissman
Chicago
School and Corporate America: Rotten to the Core
February
20, 2002
Bernard
Weiner
The
Shallow Throat Document
Kay Lee
The
Prison Guard Who Never Owned Up to His Crimes
February
19, 2002
David
Orr
Waylon
Jennings, the Duke,
and the Navajo
John Chuckman
The
Devil and Georgie Bush
Prudence
Crowther
Giblet
Gravitas
Ramzi
Kysia
Caught
in the Iraq DMZ
February
18, 2002
Ron Jacobs
The
US and Iran
George
Lewandowski
Empire
in Declline
Lenni
Brenner
Life
and Death of a Folk Hero
February
17, 2002
Robert
Fisk
Lost
in a Pit of Desperation
February
16, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Colombia
in War Time
February
15, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
From
New York to Porto Alegre
Robert
O'Brien
The
View from Porto Alegre
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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March 5, 2002
Putin's Georgian Gambit
By Mariya Tsvekova
As became clear on March 4, a secret agreement
was reached in Alma-Ata between the Presidents of Russia and
Georgia . Eduard Shevardnadze will minimize the American military
presence in the republic, and for this Vladimir Putin will change
the mandate of the Russian paratroopers who are fullfilling a
peacekeeping function in Abkhazia.
The details of Putin and Shevardnadze's
agreement came to light only on Monday. In distinction from the
Russian President, who immediately stated that instead of 200
commandos from the US there will be only 20 in Georgia, Shevardnadze
put off telling about his diplomatic success until his return
to Tbilisi.
At today's briefing he reported that
Putin agreed to change the mandate of the Russian peacekeepers
in the zone of the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. This means that
the Georgian head of state was able to put into action his long
held plan for the gradual shift of the Georgian-Abkhaz border
deep into Abkhazia.
Recall that Russian paratroopers took
up positions along the border river of Inguri in the summer of
1994. From that time they have controlled the 24 kilometer security
zone which divides the Georgian partisans from the Abkhazian
separatists. Despite this, low intensity skirmishes have taken
place in the border regions of Zugdidi and Gali, and the Akbazis
always complain about the very indifferent attitude of the peacekeepers
to local ethnic contradictions. The Inguri river receives rapt
attention from both sides, since a hydroelectric station supplying
both Georgia and Abkhazia is located on it. The border lies directly
between the reservior and the station iself. The local residents
are sure that the Georgians will cut the water off to the Abkhazians
at the first opportunity, and if this happens, the latter will
turn off the switch to their neighbors.
The mandate of the Russian peacekeepers,
which in Sukhumi is considered, and not without basis, to be
their singular defense from Shevardnadze, ran out on December
31 of last year.
Several months before that, however,
the question of the extention of the mandate was raised in the
Georgian Parliament - on a wave of of anti-Georgian sentiment
in both Russia and Abkhazia, following the invasion of the Abkhazian
part of the Kodori gorge by armed detachments which were primarily
commanded by the Chechen field commander Ruslan Gelaev. The deputies
decided not to extend the peacekeepers' mandate, to which official
Sukhumi reacted with near hysterics, declaring that the Abkhazi
residents would not allow the Russians to withdraw their troops.
Incidentally, they are no less frightened by the nearly completed
evacuation of the Gudauti base.
Meanwhile, Shevardnadadze has been waiting
for the expiration of the mandate for a while now, intending
to immediately set about returning the Georgian refugees to Abkhazia,
which would give the possibility of a rapid regime change in
the unrecognized republic.
According to his plan, the peacekeepers
must free Abkhazia region by region for the Georgians. In this
connection, the first step is the plan to relocate them from
the Inguri river across the whole of the Gali region to its border
with the Ochamchiri region, which extends to the Galidzga river.
With Putin, Shevardnadze has agreed to an intermediate measure
for the withdrawal of the peacekeepers from the Inguri. Instead
of withdrawing, they will be distributed throughout the entire
Gali region, in order to guarantee the security of the returning
refugees. It is no secret that the only threat for the Georgians
in this region could be the Abkhazi authorities. The majority
of the local residents are ethnically close to the Migrelian
Georgians.
The new format for the peacekeeping mission
will be confirmed in the next two months.
In this, Moscow will not exclusively
control the peacekeeping units. On last Wednesday at the conference
of the Council of Ministers of the CIS, the head of the Russian
Ministry of Defense, Sergei Ivanov, agreed with his Georgian
colleage, David Tevzadze, to expand the national composition
of the peacekeepers to include servicemen from other countries
of the CIS.
Neither Moscow nor Tbilisi has been advertising
the new agreement, in order not to stir up the government in
Sukhumi, which always reacts sensitively to any announcement.
Nevertheless, the alarms are sounding in Sukhumi all the same.
On Monday the local security service
distributed an announcement to the information agencies about
certain "unconfirmed information" it had received on
the preparation of a "large-scale operation in Abkhazia,
in which American troops might be involved." "One of
the goals of the planned operation is the collapse of the Russian
peacekeeping mission and the creation of conditions for the introduction
into the autonomous republic of peacekeeping forces under the
aegis of the US or NATO," the announcement states. All of
this will be carried out under the cover of an anti-terrorist
operation in the Pankisi gorge. As proof, the Abkhazian authorities
report that on Saturday a Georgian air force helicoptor of American
manufacture was spotted over the Kodori gorge.
Recall that Georgia has received military
assitance from the US for a long time, and Shevardnadze uses
this to explain the arrival in Tbilisi of foreign military advisors.
At today's briefing he stated that "the four battalions
and one company of the Georgian Ministry of Defense that are
being prepared by the American specialists will, in the case
of necessity, carry out operations on their own on the territory
of the republic." Shevardnadze did not confirm the information
on the smaller number of arriving advisors that Putin stated
after the summit. He said that for the preparation of the "model
detachments" of the Georgian army there would be as many
specialists as necessary, although he promised that not a single
one of them would take part in military action.
(Translated by Timothy Blauvelt)
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