Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 2007, pages 7-9

Special Report

Sowing Disunity: How Bush’s Middle East Policy Leads to More Iraqs

By Rachelle Marshall

Let’s stop mourning the old Middle East. It was not so great, and it was not going to survive anyway.—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to reporters, Dec. 19, 2006.

SUPPOSE THAT in January 2001 newly elected President George W. Bush had said to the Israelis: “The United States has helped you establish a strong and flourishing state on 78 percent of original Palestine. We strong-armed the U.N. General Assembly into accepting the 1947 partition plan, we ignored your seizure of additional Palestinian territory, we defended your refusal to allow the half-million Palestinians you expelled to return, and we armed and subsidized your military as it seized more land from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and invaded southern Lebanon. The United States helped you become the most powerful country in the Middle East, but from now on you’re on your own—no more billions in aid, no more vetoes of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

Suppose the president then proceeded to restore normal trade relations with Iran and Syria, joined with the rest of the world to demand that Israel withdraw to its 1967 borders, and supported the calls by Iran and the Arab nations for a nuclear-free Middle East. As tensions relaxed between these nations and Washington, there no longer would be a need for U.S. military forces to remain in the Gulf region and our bases in the region could be dismantled.

Had Bush taken such actions, much of the hostility to America would have been dissipated and the 9/11 attacks might never have taken place. On the other hand, if the al-Qaeda terrorists were so driven by malice that they carried out the senseless killings anyway, Bush might have sought help from the international community in tracking down those who were responsible and bringing them to justice.

Unfortunately Bush took a different course. Instead of listening to the advice of Middle East experts and former government officials, he launched wars that fractured the societies of two countries, and allied the United States with Israel in its efforts to subdue the Palestinians. There is now danger that these conflicts, intensified by the collapse of civil institutions, will undermine stability throughout the Middle East.

The calamities taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan did not deter Bush from instigating a new round of violence in late December that has returned Somalia to near anarchy. Islamic elders and religious leaders banded together last summer and ousted from the city of Mogadishu the notorious warlords who were armed and financed by the CIA. Because the Islamists succeeded in restoring order and security they achieved widspread popularity and gradually extended their authority until they threatened Somalia’s weak and ineffectual transitional government in Baidoa.

Washington accused the Islamists of harboring al-Qaeda terrorists, and in late December Ethiopian troops trained and armed by the Pentagon invaded Somalia accompanied by jet fighters, helicopter gunships, and tanks. A State Department spokeswoman said the Ethiopian offensive was a response to “aggression” by the Islamists (who were presumably invading their own country), and an internal memo instructed State Department officials to play down the invasion in public statements. “The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia,” the memo said.

The Islamists were no match for the most powerful military in East Africa, and retreated from Mogadishu, leaving the city once more a place of fear and suffering. where food, fuel, and medicine quickly became short and prices skyrocketed. Overnight the banditry and clan violence the Islamists had eliminated returned, and it was doubtful the transitional government could restore order. The same scenario took place a week later when Ethiopian troops drove the Islamists out of the port city of Kismayo. Again chaos resulted. “Everything is out of control,” a local businessman said. “Gangs are looting everything the Islamists have left.”

The Ethiopian people are also victims of the proxy war in Somalia. While the military receives millions of dollars worth of sophisticated weapons from the United States, half of all Ethiopian children remain seriously malnourished, and nearly two-thirds of the population is illiterate. Now the country may be trapped in a protracted war it can ill afford. Shortly after Ethiopian troops captured Mogadishu, masked gunmen appeared on the streets declaring themselves to be an underground resistance movement. One of them declared, “We’re going to turn this place into another Iraq.”

His warning gained credibility on Jan. 7, when U.S. warplanes carried out sustained air strikes on southern Somalia aimed at suspected al-Qaeda members. The attack reportedly caused more than 30 civilian casualties and aroused waves of anti-American anger in Mogadishu.

Promoting Discord in Palestine

Actions by the Bush administration to promote discord have nowhere been as flagrant or deliberate than in Palestine, where the United States has joined Israel in fomenting a civil war aimed at overthrowing a democratically elected Palestinian government. The first stage began last January, when Palestinians held free and fair elections and voted in a Hamas-led government. Israel, the United States and the Europeans immediately cut off all aid funds to the Palestinian Authority and Israel began withholding the $50 million a month it collected in Palestinian tax revenues.

The message to Palestinians from the West was: Renounce Hamas or starve. Palestinian families were reduced to destitution as 160,000 service employees received no pay. Because Israel shut down the crossings in and out of Gaza, severe shortages of food and fuel developed. After Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier last summer the Israeli army responded with a devastating and disproportionate escalation of its ongoing war on Gaza in response to Palestinian rocket attacks that did little damage.

Chris Hedges, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times, described what he saw when he visited Gaza in late December. “The concerted Israeli attempt to orchestrate a breakdown in law and order, to foster chaos and rampant deprivation are on public display in the streets of Gaza City,” he wrote. “The Israel Defense Forces have been rampaging through Gaza—killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately… Palestinians walk past the rubble of the Palestinian Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Economy, and the main electric generator plant. Israel and Washington have turned Gaza into a miniature version of Iraq.”

Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert are laying the groundwork for armed conflict in the occupied territories. When Prime Minister Ismail Haniya returned from a trip to other Middle East countries with funds he had collected to pay government salaries, the Israelis held him up at Gaza’s border with Egypt until he agreed to leave the money in Egypt. While Haniya was away, Abbas’ Fatah forces gunned down a Hamas judge, and in what was seen as retaliation, attackers shot to death three young sons of a Fatah official. Hamas denied involvement in the boys’ killing but Abbas promptly sent additional troops into Gaza.

As Abbas and Haniya clashed over Abbas’ demand for new elections and Haniya’s call for a government of national unity, their armed followers were engaging in repeated fire fights. On Dec. 18, Fatah militants fired on Hamas marchers celebrating the aniversary of the party’s founding, and a few days later ambushed a car carrying Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar. As tensions grew, Haniya’s political adviser Ahmed Yousef reminded Palestinians of the need for unity. “We want to be in one camp, stronger in the eyes of the United States and the world,” he said. “If we can show Abu Mazen [Abbas] and Ismail Haniya hand in hand, I think the Americans would have to have a more even-handed policy instead of trying to divide us.”

The forces operating against Palestinian unity are formidable, however. Egypt in coordination with Israel and the United States has sent truckloads of guns and ammunition to Abbas’ forces through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom gate in Gaza. Bush plans to ask Congress for $100 million in aid for Abbas’ security forces, and Olmert has said he will turn over to Abbas $100 million of the $500 million in Palestinian tax revenues that Israel is withholding. Abbas aides said the money would be used to strengthen Fatah and pay salaries of Fatah members. None will go to Hamas or to pay government salaries.

The San Francisco Chronicle revealed on Dec. 14 that for several months U.S. experts have been training Abbas’ security forces and Fatah loyalists in “anti-terrorist techniques.” Abbas’ Presidential Guard has grown to 1,000 members, and a new black-uniformed rapid deployment force was recently created. Last winter a U.S. Secret Service officer taught a course to officers of the Presidential Guard using a manual entitled Advanced Protective Operations Seminar that included such tactics as the use of “protective intelligence,” “counter snipers,” and “a counter-assault team.” The manual’s cover bears the seal of the United States.

This is not the first time Americans have trained Palestinian security forces to act as surrogate policemen for Israel. A top Fatah security officer, Mohammad Dahlan, was trained by the CIA after Oslo and as head of the Preventive Security Forces became notorious for jailing and torturing militants and opponents of Fatah. Dahlan is also suspected of orchestrating recent assassination attempts on Haniya and other Hamas officials. The United States is urging Abbas to appoint Dahlan head of all security forces in Gaza, a move certain to provoke angry resistance from Hamas.

Palestinian moderates worry that U.S. and Israeli support for Abbas could lead to anarchy. In a recent article for the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh wrote: “U.S. involvement in attempts to bring down the Hamas government have only made things worse for Abbas and Fatah. The U.S. believes that by giving Abbas more rifles and cash, it would be able to bring about change. But in the West Bank there is no shortage of weapons...What the Palestinians need is not more rifles...but good governance and credible leaders.”

American intervention is actually helping Hamas, Toameh believes, “because many Palestinians are beginning to look at Abbas and Fatah as pawns in the hands of the U.S. and Israel.” Mouin Rabbani, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, agrees, saying that “This practice of trying to make progress on the basis of divisions in the Palestinian national movement has backfired spectacularly.” Rabbani maintains that progress toward peace must be based on a political consensus among Palestinians that includes both Fatah and Hamas.

In any case, after two years in office Abbas has failed to convince the Israelis to accept a peace plan acceptable to most Palestinians, and has been unable to obtain even minimal concessions from Israel. Olmert has proved as unyielding as his predecessor, Ariel Sharon. While Olmert was meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Jan. 4 to discuss how to revive peace negotiations, the Israeli army raided Ramallah, using tanks, bulldozers and helicopters, in an effort to rescue an undercover team. The assault killed four Palestinians and destroyed the center of the city.

At a meeting with Abbas in late December, Olmert declared that he and the Palestinian president were “real partners,” and promised to lift 27 of the more than 600 West Bank checkpoints. Just three days later, however, the government announced plans for a new West Bank settlement in the Jordan Valley.

Theoretically the new settlement is in violation of Bush’s road map to peace, but that was long ago shredded by the Israelis, and Bush is unlikely to call them to account. Olmert is the one major national leader aside from Tony Blair whom Bush can rely on for support of his policy in Iraq. Olmert in turn is so politically weak at home that White House support is essential. Consequently when Bush rebuffed a report by the Iraq Study Group aimed at extricating the United States from what the writers called “a grave and deteriorating situation,” he had Olmert’s full backing.

The bipartisan panel headed by co-chairmen James A. Baker and Lee H. Hamilton warned in their introduction that “No one can guarantee that any course of action in Iraq at this point will stop sectarian warfare, growing violence, or a slide toward chaos,” but they made it clear that Bush’s policy of staying the course was doomed to fail. They called on the administration to begin withdrawing U.S. combat troops and seek help from Syria and Iran in stabilizing Iraq. A major recommendation was that Israel enter serious negotiations to return the Golan Heights to Syria.

Such advice was highly unwelcomed at the White House and in Jerusalem. Bush repeated his accusation that Syria was supporting insurgents in Iraq and vowed to shun Syria and Iran “until they changed their behavior.” Olmert agreed, charging Syria with carrying out ”subversive operations” and preventing “real” negotiations with the Palestinians. According to Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has made repeated pleas to Israel for unconditional negotiations, only to be turned down by Olmert under pressure from Bush. In a Jan. 3 column for the San Francisco Chronicle Nir wrote: “For the first time in recent memory, Israel seems to be under American pressure NOT to enter peace talks with an Arab neighbor.” He quoted Israeli Vice President Shimon Peres as saying, “The worst thing we could do is contradict the United States, which opposes negotiating with Syria.”

Enlisting Iran’s cooperation is even further out of the question where Bush is concerned. Shortly after the report was released, U.S. soldiers in Baghdad seized four Iranian officials, including two diplomats, and held them for nine days before releasing them. On Jan. 11, U.S. troops ransacked the Iranian consulate in Kurdistan, took away documents and detained six Iranians. The action infuriated Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, according to his aide.

Bush dismissed the Iraq Study Group’s basic message that Iraq was a lost cause, and on Jan. 10 announced a “new strategy.” The new strategy sounded very much like the old one. An additional 21,000 troops will be sent to Iraq, and the United States will spend another $1 billion on rebuilding and privatizing Iraqi industries. Bush also threatened to extend the war to Iraq’s neighbors. After promising “to interrupt the flow of support [to terrorist groups] from Iran and Syria,” he said an additional carrier strike force was being sent to the region, along with Patriot air defense systems.

As usual, Bush’s words were detached from reality. Far from being a struggle between “those who believe in freedom and moderation” and extremists who seek “to destroy our way of life,” the fighting in Iraq is a civil war, involving a Shi’i majority seeking to maintain its dominance and a government dependent on support from sectarian militia leaders. A majority of Iraqis believe the presence of U.S. troops provokes more violence. It is not even clear who our soldiers are supposed to be fighting, much less why. What is clear is that Bush’s ill-advised war in Iraq and his divisive actions elsewhere in the region are causing fragile societies to explode into deadly violence. The new Congress should fulfill its mandate and insist on a more rational Middle East policy before more lives are wasted.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the Jewish International Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

SIDEBAR

Casualties of War

On Sept. 11, 200l, a group of fanatics murdered nearly 3,000 Americans in a shocking act of terror. President Bush responded with a “war on terror” he said was aimed at eliminating terrorist groups and protecting Americans from future attacks. As of Jan. 1, 2007, the results of that war were as follows: 3,000 American servicemen dead; 22,000 Americans permanently maimed; 654,000 Iraqi civilians dead, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health; and “too many” civilian casualties in Afghanistan, according to NATO commanders.

The dead and wounded have not been the only casualties of the war on terrorism. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis—7 percent of the population—have fled their homes to seek safety in neighboring countries, where their presence is an increasingly unwelcome burden. Only a few have been admitted to the United States. Refugees International called their flight “the fastest- growing humanitarian crisis in the world.”

United Nations health-care workers say the Iraq war has created “a lost generation” of traumatized children. Muhammad al-Sayed, a Jordanian child development specialist, says,  “We have refugee kids coming in who have seen things no one should ever have to see.” Once in Jordan, the Iraqi children suffer the additional hardship and uncertainty of living as refugees. “For the Iraqis here it’s relentless,” said Dr. Samir, a psychiatrist. “They have bad living conditions, they can’t work so they run out of money, they are always scared of being deported.”

UNICEF officials estimate that some 840,000 children in Gaza bear the consequences of Israeli shelling and other attacks. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as from severe malnutrition and disease. The destruction of Gaza’s only power station makes it impossible for hospitals to provide adequate care for sick and wounded children, and water contamination causes the spread of diseases that mainly affect children. Because of border closings and Israel’s destruction of agricultural land, 70 percent of Gazans don’t have enough to eat.

Saddam Hussain was found guilty of mass murder and hanged on Dec. 30. One may oppose capital punishment as retaliatory brutality but still wonder if the Bush administration and its Israeli allies will also be held accountable for their crimes.—R.M.

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