Replies to post #7205 on Foreign Correspondence

[Ace Hanlon]

SOS over Iraqi scientists
By Ahmed Janabi
Monday 10 April 2006, 15:41 Makka Time, 12:41 GMT  
Daguerre is a psychology professor and rights activist



Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, an alarming number of the country's leading academics have been killed. A human rights organisation puts the number at about a thousand and has a documented list of 105 cases. These professors, it says, were not random casualties - they were assassinated.

The first documented case is that of Muhamad al-Rawi, the president of Baghdad University, who was killed on  27 July, 2003, when two men entered his private clinic, one of them feigned severe stomach pain and was doubled over. Concealed against his stomach was a gun with which he shot al-Rawi dead. 
 
Assassination incidents continued after al-Rawi's shooting. Dr Majid Ali was assassinated in 2005, shot four times in the back. He had a PhD in physics and was one of the best nuclear energy experts in Iraq.
 
The Paris-based Arab Committee for Human Rights (ACHR), an international NGO which has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN, has issued an international appeal for help to protect Iraqi academics.
 
Al Jazeera.net spoke to ACHR's president, Dr Violette Daguerre, a human rights activist and psychology professor in France, and Dr Qais al-Azawi, director of the Committee for Protecting Iraqi University Professors.
 
Has ACHR taken action to prevent the assassination of Iraqi scholars?
 
Daguerre: We are actually moving within a well-organised network of firms involved in defending freedom and academics. The network is big and includes organisations in North America, Europe and other parts of the world.
 

Dr al-Rawi was assassinated
on 27 July 2003
I also think it is important to classify the assassinated scholars according to their specialisations so that their trade unions and syndicates can move accordingly. I would also like to stress here that journalists should put in more effort in this regard, as this crucial issue is not getting the proper attention in media.
Al-Azawi: Urgent contacts have been made with Iraqi and international organisations. We work closely with Iraqi trade unions that represent Iraqi professors.
We also met the Qatari ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) and we are discussing with them how can we protect Iraqi academics.
 
Since our campaign has found support among academic organisations in different parts of the world, a suggestion has been made that each interested university would host three Iraqi university professors for one year as visiting lecturers to keep them away from dangers in their own country.
 
The general perception is that scholars targeted are those who specialise in the sciences and who were, or might be, of use to weapons of mass destruction programmes. In your view, what is the explanation behind the assassination of scholars working in fields such as Arab literature and history?


 
Daguerre: I think the target is intellectuals in general, regardless of their field of specialisation - they are all important to their country's renaissance. Iraq is known for producing high-calibre people not only in the scientific field but also in the humanities. I can mention here Jawad Ali, who is regarded as an authority on pre-Islamic Arab history, and Abdul Aziz al-Douri, an expert in Arab economic history. But there are many others. I think the role of Iraqis in Arab poetry, literature and jurisprudence goes without saying.
 
Al-Azawi: All cases were dropped
for the lack of evidence Here I would like to notify you of another dangerous phenomenon growing in Iraq, the targeting of human rights activists and lawyers.
Al-Azawi: High-calibre academics in general are regarded as the backbone for the development in any country. 
 
Do you think the assassinations are politically motivated?
 
Daguerre: Assassinating chosen scholars would hit Iraqis' spirit and consequently deepen the rift among Iraqi factions, which is what Iraq's enemies want, although death can hit any Iraqi.
 
The assassination policy has been adopted by all ideological groups, who have convinced assassins that if what they do does not serve the country, it definitely serves their faction or group, which is not necessarily national.
 
The Lebanese civil war is a good example that assassins might be fellow countrymen of the victim but they are working within a network of foreign interests and implementing a plan put before the war.
Al-Azawi: Our information indicates that some assassinations are of a sectarian or political nature.
 
What is your evidence that the assassination campaign is directed by foreign parties?
 
Daguerre: Nationalists cannot work for the destruction of their own country, and the evidence is logic. Foreign parties do not reveal their agenda; as long as there is a party from inside the targeted country willing to do the dirty job, why would a foreign party involve itself in public?
 
What about sectarian motives?
 
Daguerre: It is obvious that there is a plan to provoke sectarian violence in this country. I think sectarian violence is one of the key elements of a plot aimed at destroying Iraq.
 
Iraqis from all religions, sects,
and ethnicities are being killed Sectarian tension and violence grow along with fear. When fear controls you, you tend to get terrified of others who are different from you. Fear would prevent you from analysing that difference, how important it is, How big it is. You just delude yourself with the notion that the other person is different - so he is the enemy.
 
When the culture of fear rules, the distance among different religious, political or sectarian groups becomes huge, and people tend to isolate themselves from the bigger society. They become attached to their closest bond which might be the sect, the tribe, or the political party.
 
Have you made contact with academics inside Iraq to find out if the government has taken action to protect  scientists and scholars?
 
Daguerre: The co-ordination is going on with the Iraqi committee for protecting Iraqi university professors, which has recently issued an SOS calling the international community to protect Iraqi scientists and scholars.
 
What we are trying to do in the Arab Committee for Human Rights is to be the bridge between Arab countries and the rest of the world.
 
Who do you think will benefit from targeting Iraqi scientists?  
 
Daguerre: The same parties that have been working for years to make this country fall to pieces, and prevent it from retaining its original key role in the area. Maybe it was Iraq's bad luck to have that huge oil wealth after all.
 
It was not comfortable for some that this country was investing its own wealth in its own way; they decided to deny Iraqis this legitimate right.
 
Successive US administrations have always fallen prey to Jewish lobbies. Their strategy is to launch a massive character assassination campaign followed by insulting and degrading actions that would destroy the target's will and morale before giving the final blow.
 
Al-Azawi: Based on our correspondents and meeting with dozens of Iraqi academics, all of them were convinced that they were targeted by "parties interested in preventing Iraq from moving forward".
 
Scenarios circulated among Iraqis point the finger at the US-led forces in Iraq, and at Iran and Israel. What do you think of that?
 
Daguerre: Examples prove that the involvement of those parties is a lot, especially the Israelis, as all those parties have interest in tearing Iraq apart in order to pass their geopolitical and economical plans.
 
Al-Azawi: Maybe both of them [Iran and Israel] are involved in this killing campaign, but to be objective we do not have solid evidence to prove that.
But we have many cases of Iraqi professors kidnapped and were not released before they made clear commitment to leave Iraq. Iraqis know very well who is interested in keeping them behind.
 
What is the impact of the "assassination campaign" on Iraq's educational system?  
 
Daguerre: Definitely the negative impact is huge, because that terror campaign is pushing many scientists and scholars to leave their country [Iraq].
This is a major blow to the process of conveying knowledge to the coming generations, which will need such quality people to plant the culture of civil and modern society and brush aside the culture of sectarianism, violence and hate.
 
Al-Azawi: I would like here to cite a statement made by the Iraqi minister of higher education in which he said: Nearly 160 Iraqi university professors have been killed, and nearly 2,000 have fled the country, which led to the closure of 152 post-graduate departments in Iraq.
 
How is the Iraqi government dealing with the assassination of scientists and scholars? Are there criminal investigations? Any results?
 
Daguerre: Let me answer this by raising a counter question; Do the current rulers of Iraq have any sort of genuine interest in launching such investigations?
 
I believe that as long as the violence and extremism continues in Iraq, its foreign enemies will continue to act like ticks, sucking the blood of the country and stripping it of its defence potential.
 
I would like to seize this opportunity to urge the world's biggest organisation for academics' rights, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, to intervene.
 
Two of ACHR staff got NAS's award for human rights  - Haytham Manna and Moncef Marzouki - and just as the Guantanamo issue gained international coverage after the efforts of NGOs, we hope that the case of the assassinations will be brought into the spotlight as well. 
 
Al-Azawi: All the cases were dropped for the lack of evidence.

[Amaunet]

Italy: Challenges Beyond the Elections

14 April 2006
On April 10, Romano Prodi, head of the center-left coalition, won the Italian general election with a slim majority. Current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi refuses to concede defeat and is calling for a complete revision of the ballots cast. At the same time, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi announced that he wants his successor (who will be elected in mid-May) to appoint Prodi as prime minister. These two factors have placed Italy in a political stalemate precisely at a time when the country needs political stability and needs to pass almost draconian economic reforms to help its struggling economy. [See: "Economic Brief: Italy's Weak Economy"]

On April 9-10, Italians went to the polls under a controversial new electoral law that was conceived by Berlusconi's government and was expected to favor him, yet instead the law assured the center-left coalition with victory. Because of the new law, Prodi's coalition will have 341 seats (against 277) in the lower chamber and 158 seats (against 156) in the upper chamber. Thus, unless revisions change the results, which is highly unlikely, the center-left will not need to form a "grand coalition" with its rivals. It will, however, have to govern in a delicate political framework.

However, since the election of a new president will be followed in June by a scheduled referendum on constitutional changes as well as administrative elections in various regions, the context appears particularly difficult.

What is most urgent for Italian and international decision-makers, however, is to successfully predict major political and economic issues that will mark the next 6-12 months.

Politically, the most urgent question is the viability of a center-left government that showed much less strength than was expected, notwithstanding its victory. Equally important, international political groups are trying to anticipate Rome's new political orientation in European politics and in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. From an economic point of view, global actors want to know how safe it is to conduct business in Italy whereas domestic forces try to figure out what measures will be taken to tackle unemployment, insufficient growth and the lack of productivity rate.

Center-Left Coalition's Expansion Has Limits

While Berlusconi's declining popularity -- in comparison with his 2001 election win -- was predictable, many center-left politicians and observers seem not to have realized how much Forza Italia (Berlusconi's party) is rooted in Italian society, and particularly in the northeastern regions of Lombardy and Veneto. As a consequence, the election's outcome was significantly different from what many respected analysts predicted since Forza Italia remains Italy's first party. Apparently, the center-left's allegedly state-oriented, less liberal tax policies have been punished by voters.

Berlusconi's strength within the center-right coalition remains sufficient to allow him to dominate the opposition, whereas the center-left hoped the Christian-Democrats (who actually doubled their votes from 2001) could assume a key role in the right-of-center political spectrum and guarantee a softer opposition.

What likely happened is that in the northeastern regions, where the majority of Italy's small to medium enterprises are based, voters showed more confidence in Berlusconi's economic strategy and fiscal promises.

Also, the center-left coalition still suffers from weaknesses within its structure since its many parts have different agendas, notwithstanding cooperative electoral rhetoric. Should major crises erupt in the international arena, more pro-U.S. factions, such as the centrists, may easily find themselves at odds with neo-communist forces.

In addition, the coalition risks being blocked by endless debate over the constitution of a Democratic Party. The latter is conceived as a natural heir of the D.S. (Left-Democrats) and Daisy (pro-Prodi centrists and Christian-Democrats) electoral alliance. While voters seem to appreciate the center-left's efforts to enhance its political unity and coherence, the Democratic Party's actual social rooting remains to be tested.

Hence, Prodi's first task will be that of enhancing his coalition's political strength and unity, while Berlusconi's right-of-center alliance will probably maintain considerable political influence, which may provide him opportunities to destabilize the ruling majority as the latter begins to implement economic policies.

Beyond the Elections: Economic and Foreign Policies

Italy's economic context is marked at present by a split between two kinds of influential players: on one side are the so-called "big capitalists" who gathered around Confindustria (the organization of Italy's industrial elite) and are predominantly pro-European, while at the same time enjoying support by many continental and U.S. financial powers.

On the other side are the small to medium enterprises -- particularly strong in northeastern regions -- whose perception is that big national groups successfully exploit statist policies and suffocate the "animal spirits" of Italian capitalism.

Such a split was adroitly used by Berlusconi during the electoral campaign, as he presented himself as the champion of the small to medium entrepreneurs' interests, and will likely remain impossible to eliminate in the next couple of years. Thus, another big challenge for Prodi's coalition will be to regain as much confidence as possible from so-called "autonomous workers."

The latter are wrongly assumed to be massively pro-Berlusconi. In fact, they are also inwardly split as many voted for change. Normally, they tend to perceive Italy's state employees as being unduly protected, and demand that market-oriented reforms be quickly introduced

However, Italy's mainstream economic thinking is still divided between neo-liberals and neo-Keynesians, whose proposals concentrate mainly on re-launching the demand for consumption. Italy, though, appears also in need of re-structuring its industrial production and offerings. As a recent O.E.C.D. study shows, the country lacks good performance in basic scientific research, high-tech, education, and productivity rates, as well as in job creation capability. Additionally, Italy seems to suffer from international competition precisely because of these flaws. [See: "Economic Brief: Italy's Weak Economy"]

Although re-launching research and development and education, as well as freeing the animal spirits of Italian capitalism, is a shared goal among decision-makers, the effective implementation of reformist strategies carries substantial tactical challenges. Presumably, proposals to change labor laws will split the new government as the more leftist factions oppose liberal-oriented reforms and prefer deficit-spending and neo-Keynesian policies to tackle joblessness. The main danger for the new government will be the inability to choose a consistent political strategy; this failure will perpetuate Italy's economic decline. A possible, pragmatic solution to this puzzle, as suggested by center-left politicians, may be to successfully harmonize labor flexibility and security following the pattern set in Denmark.

Obviously, such a strategy demands political unity and an excellent diplomatic capability in managing relations with trade unions and social actors -- political qualities that remain to be tested.

As far as foreign policy is concerned, Prodi will likely prove more Europeanist than Berlusconi, and henceforth a rapprochement with Berlin, Madrid and Paris is predictable. However, the center-left's vision of Europe (a closer union and continental federalism) risks becoming outdated as France, Germany, the U.K., and Spain are undergoing political changes.

Prodi's government will be presumably much more E.U. Commission-friendly than the previous one, but this fact won't help Brussels re-launch the idea of a European super-state if neo-protectionist orientations consolidate in Paris and Madrid and if London's next majority will be a conservative -- and less Europeanist -- one.

Also, if Prodi's recent words are followed by concrete measures, expect Italy's new government to try making Rome a key hub for Asian commercial flux, thus challenging those who want to put custom duties against Chinese and South Asian goods. In this respect, the E.U. Commission may find an ally in its anti-nationalist strategy; at the same time, however, many small to medium enterprises may be scared, thus radicalizing the right-wing factions' anti-Chinese and pro-duties rhetoric.

With regard to Prodi's claim to quickly withdraw troops from Iraq, it may cause friction with Washington, but Rome's commitment to the Afghan and Balkan missions will continue. Moreover, the withdrawal is likely to be carried out in an orderly manner and in accordance with Washington. In the end, a serious crisis in U.S.-Italy relations seems unlikely.

Conclusion

Prodi's start will be difficult and slow. The country's basic problems risk growing even larger before the new executive can begin to topple them, thus prospects don't look promising in the near term. The search for enhanced internal cohesion is critical for the new majority if it wants to avoid being destabilized by opposition forces. Since financial markets are likely to react negatively to any sign of weakness and instability, such a quest for stronger unity will occupy much of Prodi's time during the rest of 2006. Should he succeed, the coalition's political program will have good chances of being implemented from 2007 onward.

Report Drafted By:
Dr. Federico Bordonaro



The Power and Interest News Report (PINR) is an independent organization that utilizes open source intelligence to provide conflict analysis services in the context of international relations. PINR approaches a subject based upon the powers and interests involved, leaving the moral judgments to the reader. This report may not be reproduced, reprinted or broadcast without the written permission of [e-mail]. All comments should be directed to [e-mail].