Replies to post #68435 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[Ace Hanlon]

Bush, Iraq, and Demonstration Elections

by Rahul Mahajan

Last October, when Vladimir Putin engineered the election of his
hand-picked subordinate Ahmad Kadyrov as president of Chechnya through
tactics such as pressuring the leading candidate, Malik Saidullayev, to
withdraw (and then forcing him out with a court injunction) and hiring
another candidate to be on his staff, Western punditry was not slow to
condemn the election as a farce and a sham. It did so again when he
interfered as blatantly in the recent August elections in Chechnya.

Ever since 9/11, however, the Bush administration has been treating us to a
series of equally farcical „elections‰ with minimal or no comment from the
same sources. The matter has now come to what should be a crisis point over
plans to engineer the upcoming U.N. Security Council-mandated elections in
Iraq.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was once again in the news regarding his
concerns that the main U.S.-affiliated political parties (the ones that
formed the Governing Council and that now dominate the transitional
assembly) are negotiating on a „consensus slate‰ of candidates for the
elections. While his main reported concern is that the Shi‚a majority of
Iraq will be underrepresented, based on an estimate from the early 90‚s
that 55% of the Iraqi population is Shi‚a Arab compared to his estimate of
65% today, there is a much more serious question at stake ˆ the legitimacy
of the elections.

In some countries, with a well-established parliamentary system and a
history of active political parties and an inclusive public discourse,
slates like this are not necessarily a problem. In systems like India‚s,
with numerous parties and a first-past-the-post voting system (no matter
how many candidates there are, the candidate with the most votes wins, with
no runoffs), such electoral alliances may be necessary to get smaller
parties some degree of parliamentary representation.

In Iraq, however, this is simply a setup for a sham election. Let‚s look at
the history of recent U.S. demonstration elections.

In the June 2002 Afghan loya jirga, roughly 1500 delegates assembled to
pick the interim president of the country. Although all delegates were
under a great degree of pressure by U.S.-backed warlords (who did
everything from killing delegates before the assembly to controlling the
floor at the assembly), over 800 signed a statement in support of Zahir
Shah, the exiled monarch. According to Omar Zakhilwal and Adeena Niazi,
delegates to the loya jirga, the United States then stepped in and „the
entire loya jirga was postponed for almost two days while the former king
was strong-armed into renouncing any meaningful role in the government.‰
(NYT, 6/21/02) When the assembly resumed, delegates were given a choice
between Hamid Karzai and two unknown candidates running for symbolic value
(one of them was a woman) ˆ essentially, as in the Chechnya elections, they
were presented with a fait accompli.

More recently, the Bush administration pushed to have Afghan elections
before the U.S. elections, then switched around and pressured the Afghan
Electoral Commission to delay the parliamentary elections until next April
(CSM, 7/13/04) while going ahead with presidential elections in October.
There has been no time for anyone in the country to emerge as a national
rival to Karzai, so this will effectively be a one-candidate election with
a veneer of democratic choice; the results of the parliamentary elections
would not be nearly so predictable or controllable by the United States,
and serendipitously they have been put off.

In Iraq, the U.S. record is worse. Much propaganda has been made of the
local „elections‰ instituted by U.S. forces, but to believe it calls for a
willing disjunction from reality. In some places, the „election‰ was an
appointment of mayor and/or city council members by the local U.S.
commander, sometimes disastrously, as when U.S. forces appointed a Sunni
from Baghdad to be mayor of the mostly Shi‚a Najaf, cancelled an election
he would surely have lost, and later had to remove him anyway because of
charges of corruption and Ba‚athist links (WP, 6/28/03, and others). In
Basra, British and U.S. forces appointed local officials and then removed
them and decided explicitly that Iraqis would only serve in a technocratic
capacity, not a political one (WP, 5/29/03). In other places, like Kirkuk,
the „election‰ was one conducted by 300 delegates all hand-picked and
vetted by U.S. forces, not by the people of Kirkuk.

In late June, U.S. commanders had ordered a halt to all local elections,
because they had determined that in many places people and groups they
didn‚t like were too popular and might win (WP, 6/28/03). That is
unfortunately one of the problems with democracy. A few days later, Paul
Bremer approved resumption of elections (WP, 7/1/03), but allowed local
commanders to choose between appointment, election by specially vetted
caucuses, and actual elections; unstated was the conclusion that U.S.
commanders should choose the form of „election‰ based on the likelihood of
getting the result they wanted.

All of these experiments in „democracy‰ were, of course, in a context where
U.S. commanders could countermand any city council decision and dissolve
any council as they so chose.

At the national level, things have been worse. Of course, elections have
been postponed repeatedly, even though the difficulties that exist in
Afghanistan did not exist in Iraq (for example, the ubiquitous ration cards
could have been used as a basis for voter identification and registration);
even the January elections are mandated only because other countries on the
Security Council insisted on the setting of a date as a condition for
approving Resolution 1546, on the so-called „transfer of sovereignty.‰

But numerous other ostensibly national political processes have been
cancelled or manipulated as well. An assembly planned for June 2003, that
would have involved mostly the U.S.-designated exile-dominated „Iraqi
opposition‰ was cancelled by Paul Bremer. He said it was because the
„opposition‰ was not representative of the country; then, a month later he
chose, entirely on his own authority, 25 people, 16 of them exiles, to form
the Governing Council.

In August, as the center of Najaf was ceaselessly bombarded, a national
assembly of roughly 1300 delegates met to select the transitional national
assembly, a body of 100 people whose formation was mandated by the
„transfer of sovereignty‰ process (actually, 81 delegates were to be
selected, the other 19 coming from the old Governing Council). Ostensibly
picked by democratic processes in their locality, the delegates certainly
did represent a wide variety of parties and views, although major groups
opposed to the occupation were under-represented (Moqtada al-Sadr, whose
organization was under military assault at the time, boycotted the conference).

Imagine the surprise of the delegates when they came to the conference and
found out that there would be no nomination of candidates, campaigning, or
elections. Instead, they were confronted with a pre-selected slate of 81
candidates, picked by back-room negotiations between the major
U.S.-affiliated (former Governing Council) parties, and expected to
rubber-stamp it. Smaller parties made an attempt to come up with an
opposition slate, but were unable to, and at the end the U.S.-backed slate
was not even presented to the delegates for formal approval (AP, 8/18/04).

This last sham would likely embarrass even Vladimir Putin. Apparently, the
Bush administration is happy with elections in places it controls, like
Afghanistan or Iraq, as long as there are no choices (when there are, as in
Florida, strange things can happen). There is not a shred of a reason to
doubt that this is precisely what is planned for the January elections in
Iraq ˆ collusion by the U.S.-backed political parties to pick Iraqi figures
who will continue to collaborate with the occupation and to shut out all
other Iraqi voices.

There is a deplorable tendency in this country to use words like „freedom‰
and „democracy‰ in a purely talismanic manner, without attaching any actual
meaning to them ˆ only thus could the coups in Guatemala in 1954 or in
Haiti in 2004 be hailed as advances for democracy. But the current
administration, the Republican Party, and George W. Bush take this to
heretofore undreamed of extremes, as could be seen clearly at the
Republican National Convention this year. For Bush, apparently, democracy
means any kind of election at all ˆ a definition that would make Saddam
Hussein perfectly happy (he won an „election‰ with an unprecedented 100% of
the vote in October 2002).

Or, more pointedly, to Bush, democracy and freedom mean „anything the
United States does‰ and, even worse, „anything I do.‰ The implications for
the United States and its internal affairs ought to be as clear as the
implications for Iraq. If you mobilize to ensure that the elections in Iraq
in January are real elections, the freedom you save may be your own.



Rahul Mahajan is publisher of the blog Empire Notes
(<http://www.empirenotes.org)" target="_blank">http://www.empirenotes.org/>http://www.empirenotes.org) and teaches at
New York University. He has been to Iraq twice and reported from Fallujah
during the siege in April. His latest book is „Full Spectrum Dominance:
U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond.‰
(<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583225781/empirenotes-20)" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583225781/empirenotes-20>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obido...
He can be reached at <mailto:[e-mail]>[e-mail]

[harrypothead]

Terrorist base south of border
Paraguay sees major influx of Arabic-speaking 'Europeans'

Posted: December 1, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

International law-enforcement authorities combating terrorism have growing concerns about a major influx into the Latin American nation of Paraguay of Arabic-speaking visitors carrying European passports.

Some of these "Europeans" could not even speak the language of their so-called mother land, according to a report in the latest issue of Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, an online premium intelligence newsletter published by WND.

Many of the visitors and emigres travel to the triple border region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. This region, often described as a lawless area, is nicknamed by some intelligence station agents as "The Muslim Triangle meeting zone."

Intelligence experts have been warning since the late 1990s they had noticed a tendency among Islamic terrorists to operate from Paraguay, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, with a territory slightly smaller than California, and with geographic extremes perfect for hiding illegal activities. Information surrounding such activities arrived in the U.S. before Sept. 11, 2001, but failed to sound any alarms.

Even today, reports G2 Bulletin, dealing seriously with Islamic terrorism in Latin America is not considered to be of high importance.

Muslims have also found their way into Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil and other neighboring countries, and authorities claim most Muslims crystallize into small community clusters, centering mainly in large cities, close to mosques, prayer locations or religious Quran schools known as madrassas. One of the best examples to this trend is the Maicao district, where some 70 percent of all small- and medium-sized businesses belong to Muslims mainly of Syrian, Lebanese and Egyptian origin.

A Colombian official told G2 Bulletin: "A fair part of our Muslim community are second- and third-generation immigrants, but the problems arise from recent immigrants who import new jihadi philosophies. These people are also active in Islamic missionary work converting the poor and destitute with promises of a better life under Islam."

Miguel Angel Toma of the Argentinean intelligence service SIDE last year, and again early this year, visited a number of regional capitals and then traveled also to Washington, Berlin, London and Paris. The purpose of his meetings was to discuss with his counterparts the growing danger, and the urgent need to be aware of, Islamic terrorism known as "Terrorists Muselmanus."

Toma voiced his warning the difficult economic situation in the continent, galloping inflation, and an increase of corruption and organized crime, are creating "a dangerous greenhouse where poisonous roots are developing."

The Argentineans expressed their caution by emphasizing the danger is not only local. They reflected on the anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli deadly terror attacks in 1992 and 1994 in Buenos Aires, warning similar events are imminent elsewhere. The Argentineans now claim the attacks against the Jewish Community Center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires are linked to the Iranian intelligence and their Hezbollah proxy.

These terrorists are organized in active cells around the country with safe houses in neighboring Paraguay. An Argentinean document seen by G2 Bulletin describes part of the drug-smuggling trail, as well as that of weapons and people. These elaborate trails run through a web of border crossings pointing also to the complex cooperation between various "smuggling experts." These belong to jihadi organizations such as al-Qaida, joining forces with local drug lords, developing and oiling their smuggling mechanism all the way to Mexico aiming ultimately to hit the U.S.

The Argentinean intelligence service assessment, privy among others, to European and Middle Eastern agencies, has reached a significant and grave conclusion: They claim that since 9/11, and the partial success in the war against terrorism, mainly in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Central Asia, the jihadi pendulum is tilting more and more toward South America. The reason terrorist cells in Paraguay, whether active or dormant, can continue to grow and flourish, is the fact this nation is considered to be the most corrupt in South America.

The nature of law and order, or rather lawlessness and disorder in Paraguay, enabled operatives of such terrorist groups as al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas to feel safe, even in the heart of Asuncion. These organizations, and probably more, turned Paraguay into a logistical base.

As one local journalist told G2 Bulletin: "It's easy. At this stage our country is not engulfed in a civil war or guerrilla campaign and, therefore, security forces are more prone to financial kickbacks."

A Mossad operative talking to G2 Bulletin under the condition of anonymity said his agency is aware of numerous cases in which nothing was done to interfere with jihadi activity, mainly due to lucrative businesses between them and the police, accompanied with the motto, "Now you see me now you don't."

A German agent of the Bundes Nachrichten Dienst - Federal Information Service who recently visited a number of Latin American capitals has evaluated the situation in the triple border area as "a ticking time bomb." He believes the growing pressure exercised on terrorists in Europe, Asia and North America will bring many of them to move their organizational apparatus to countries such as Paraguay.

A source from the Arab community in Asuncion was quoted by a Middle Eastern diplomat as saying: "On the Brazilian border you can buy everything, from a passport to an army general. Most of all you don't have to be over concerned with Mossad presence."

The same source described two meetings in Asuncion, which took place between local businessmen, mainly of Arab descent, with visitors from Europe and Asia, including Pakistan and Malaysia. The meetings took place in Hotel Westphalia, some eight kilometers from the Pettirossi Silvio Airport and in the apartment hotel Zapihir, close to the capital's downtown. Those attending the meeting in the downtown area included visitors from Argentina and at least one Dutch citizen suspected to be a Muslim convert and an al-Qaida operative.

CIA and MI5 agents, who according to the Asuncion police were "hovering over the hotel districts," were surprised to discover Muslim Paraguayans and some of their guests visiting the large Cathedral Blas San de Dia.

Apparently the alleged terrorists discussed organizational matters while inside the cathedral, hoping to appear as regular worshippers, undisturbed by intelligence agents. A similar practice was reported from other Latin American cities where many suspects of jihad ideologies meet in churches and cathedrals presenting themselves as members of the Christian community. The Israeli experience shows that in the past Arab intelligence services used the disguise of religious Jews to penetrate the Jewish community in Argentina and from there arriving in Israel as "bona fide" immigrants.

At this stage the growing danger is that of militant Islam penetrating Mexico, a country with an increasing Muslim community, including Muslim converts. Some of them have ties to the Mexican community and to illegal immigrants' smugglers operating in American states bordering Mexico, especially those with connections in the greater Los Angeles area and other major cities.

Intelligence experts now assume the so-called jihadi spider web is moving north fast from Paraguay. It is just a question of time before terrorists use, and quite possibly already have used, the loosely guarded American-Mexican border. It should come as no surprise when, sometime in the not-too-far future, the U.S. will be attacked in a deadly way. Presently this danger, due to the porous southern border, enables easy penetration of the country described by one official as "the largest Swiss cheese in the world."

Experienced anti-terror experts told G2 Bulletin the Mexican border is the Achilles heel of the Department of Homeland Security.

Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
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