Oil giant liable for overseas abuses by ‘agents’

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Sept. 19 (IPS)— In a landmark decision hailed by human rights and corporate accountability activists, a United States federal appeals court has ruled that oil giant Unocal can be sued for forced labor, rape, and murder committed by Burmese soldiers guarding a major gas pipeline project completed three years ago.

Wednesday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, overturned a ruling by a federal judge two years ago that the victims of abuses committed by the military regime in Burma could not sue the California-based company although they produced evidence showing that Unocal knew about and benefited directly from the troops’ conduct.

District Court Judge Stanley Lew issued a summary judgment against the plaintiffs, insisting that in order for the trial to proceed, they would have to provide evidence that Unocal either directly participated in the abuses or exerted control over the army when the abuses occurred.

But the three-judge appeals court ruled that Lew had applied too strict a legal standard in the case. “Because Unocal knew the acts of violence would probably be committed, it became liable as an aider and abettor when such acts of violence -- specifically, murder, and rape -- were in fact committed,” said the court.

It then sent the case back to the district court with instructions to let the matter proceed to trial.

Human rights lawyers who brought the case said the court’s ruling marks a major milestone in making corporations accountable for human rights abuses tied to their operations or activities abroad.

“In recognizing that corporations that aid and abet egregious human rights abuses can be held accountable,” said Richard Herz, an attorney with EarthRights International and co-counsel in the suit, “the Ninth Circuit has affirmed that US corporations cannot violate international human rights with impunity.”

The lawyers also pointed out that two of the judges explicitly cited recent rulings by the international war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda regarding the liability of individuals who may not directly participate in commission of the abuses.

Aiding and abetting liability may be imposed for “knowing practical assistance or encouragement, which has a substantial effect on perpetration of the crime,” they wrote.

Given the stature of the San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit, the ruling is certain to influence the views of other courts that currently are hearing similar cases against US corporations. The court, whose jurisdiction covers much of the western part of the United States, can be overruled only by the US Supreme Court.

Cases are pending, for example, against Royal Dutch Shell for alleged abuses committed by the Nigerian Army against the Ogoni people in the oil-rich Niger Delta, against Texaco by indigenous people in Ecuador whose lands have been largely destroyed by oil leaks and toxic waste, and against ExxonMobil by victims of abuses committed by Indonesian security forces in Aceh province.

The Unocal case was originally filed by EarthRights and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in 1996 on behalf of 15 unnamed Burmese plaintiffs, mostly members of the Karen and Mon ethnic minorities living in or near the route of the $1.2 billion Yadana pipeline that carries gas from off-shore fields in the Andaman Sea through Burma (also known as Myanmar) to Thailand.

Construction by a consortium consisting of Unocal, France’s Total, and the Burmese state oil company began in 1992 and was completed in 1999.

Burma’s military regime forcibly relocated villages, drafted villagers into forced labor, and committed a range of other abuses, including murder, torture and rape, during the construction phase of the project, according to international human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The military junta achieved notoriety for a brutal crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in the late 1980s and then for ignoring the results of an election swept by the opposition in 1990.

The plaintiffs sued under a 213-year-old US law, the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), that permits non-citizens to sue foreign and domestic individuals or companies in the United States for abuses committed abroad.

The law, which was enacted primarily against pirates on the high seas, underwent a renaissance in the 1980s when it was used successfully by victims of abuses committed by foreign governments and militaries overseas against individual defendants served with notice while living or visiting in the United States.

Last month, two former senior military officials in the Salvadoran army, who had retired to the United States in the early 1990s, were successfully sued by three alleged victims for a total of more than $50 million.

The Unocal case was the first to use ATCA to go after a corporation for alleged abuses committed abroad.

Lawyers argued that Unocal should be held liable for abuses committed by the army, which, according to their legal theory, acted as paid agents of the company. They contended that, because Unocal hired military units to provide security for the project and was generally aware of its abusive tactics, the company should be made to pay for the harm done.

In presenting their case, the lawyers offered internal Unocal memoranda and depositions as evidence to show that the company was aware of the abuses but never tried to sever its relationship with the army.

For its part, Unocal has strongly denied that it knew about or sanctioned abuses committed by the military in carrying out the project. When it did find out, it took remedial action, according to officials.

“We’ve never ‘aided or abetted’ anyone in the commission of human rights violations,” Unocal spokesman Barry Lane told IPS on Thursday. “If this case goes to trial, we will defend our reputation vigorously and expect to be fully vindicated,” he added.

Lane stressed that the appeals court’s 82-page opinion dealt only with the question of whether the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to permit the case to go forward.

The court also rejected any possible claim by Unocal that the lawsuit should be barred because it would interfere with US foreign policy toward Burma.

The State Department last month asked a federal judge to dismiss the ExxonMobil case brought by the Acehnese plaintiffs on the grounds that trying the case could set back Washington’s “war on terrorism” by risking the co-operation of the Indonesian military and discouraging US corporate investment in the country’s battered economy.

The judge in that case has yet to rule on the State Department’s request, which caused outrage among human rights groups here.

Zapatista communities live in fear of new military base

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett

Mexico, Sept. 19— The construction of a new military camp close to Zapatista communities this month has added to fear and tension in the nation’s most conflict-ridden state, according to a report in La Jornada daily on Wednesday.

The new “Mixed Operations Base” recently set up along the road leading to the autonomous municipality of La Paz, houses around 40 soldiers and comes in addition to an existing military base in the municipal capital of Tumbala, in the state’s north.

Residents filing a complaint through the Network of Community Human Rights Defenders claim camp soldiers have been harassing neighboring villages and built on communal land without the permission of local farmers. According to the complaint, army soldiers intimidate the indigenous inhabitants and limit their movement around their towns as they go about daily work. Residents claim women have even been forced to do chores for soldiers.

“They [the troops] prevent us form working freely and in peace, and children can’t go to school because they feel threatened,” La Paz residents told the human rights network. “We demand the immediate withdrawal of the army from this area.”

The new base has blocked access to a community well and contaminated the water, complain residents, who are also angry that soldiers felled trees and built houses on their land without consulting them. They say the army has no reason to be there and they can protect themselves. Locals fear increasing problems such as prostitution, military ground and air patrols, and paramilitary activity will increase because those effects have been observed in other areas occupied by the army.

One village has already reported threats by the paramilitary group Peace and Justice -- an organization they say receives support from the army and state police. Mobilization of army forces in the area comes a month after reports of increased troop movements in the Lacandon jungle and around the Montes Azules biosphere reserve, near the Guatemalan border.

Source: TheNewsMexico.com

Bush declaration: global military domination

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Sept. 25 (AGR)— No state will be allowed to challenge the military supremacy of the United States under a national security strategy for the 21st century revealed by President George W. Bush last Friday.

The 33-page document, titled “The National Security Strategy of the United States,” and submitted to Congress, also reveals the previously unstated determination of the US to do everything possible to maintain its status as the world’s sole superpower. The document envisions a world in which the United States will enjoy permanent military dominance over all countries, allies and potential foes alike.

It discards most nonproliferation treaties in favor of a new doctrine of “counterproliferation.” It declares that the strategies of containment and deterrence—staples of US foreign policy since the 1940s—are all but dead. There is no way in this changed world, the document states, to deter those who “hate the United States and everything for which it stands.”

“We cannot let our enemies strike first,” Bush wrote. “As a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”

The document, which is one that every president is required to submit to Congress, is the first comprehensive explanation of the administration’s foreign policy, from defense strategy to global warming.

“America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones,” it states, sounding what amounts to a death knell for many of the key strategies of the Cold War.

One of the most striking elements of the new strategy outlined is its insistence “that the president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago.” For Bush, the essential role of US military strength is to “build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge.”

“Our forces will be strong enough,” the document states, “to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”

In particular, it cautioned China against a military expansion. “In pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path that, in the end, will hamper its own pursuit of national greatness,” it said.

Much of the document focuses on how public diplomacy, the use of foreign aid and changes in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank can be used to win what it describes as a battle of competing values and ideas — including “a battle for the future of the Muslim world.”

“The war on terrorism is not a clash of civilizations. It does, however, reveal the clash inside a civilization, a battle for the future of the Muslim world. This is a struggle of ideas and this is an area where America must excel,” the document said.

In the document, Bush insists that the United States will exploit its military and economic power to encourage “free and open societies, “ rather than seek “unilateral advantage.” The document calls this “a distinctly American internationalism.”

But at several points, the document is blunt, stating clearly that when important US interests are at stake, there will be no compromise. It argues that while the US will seek allies in the battle against terrorism, “we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting preemptively.”

Since the end of the Cold War deprived Moscow of its superpower status a decade ago, the US has had no rival in terms of military strength.

But instead of easing its spending on defense, like many NATO countries, the Pentagon is increasing it. The US defense budget for 2003 is $400 billion, an increase of 6 percent. Washington spends as much on defense as the next eight largest military powers combined.

The new strategy departs significantly from the last one published by President Bill Clinton, at the end of 1999. Clinton’s strategy dealt at length with tactics to prevent the kind of financial meltdowns that threatened economies in Asia and Russia. While Clinton’s strategy relied heavily on enforcing or amending a series of international treaties, from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to Kyoto protocols on the environment, Bush’s strategy dismisses most of those efforts.

In fact, the new document—which Bush told his staff had to be written in plain English because “the boys in Lubbock [TX] ought to be able to read it”—celebrates his decision last year to abandon the ABM treaty because it impeded US efforts to build a missile defense system. It also says that the US will never subject its citizens to the newly created International Criminal Court, “whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans.”

A senior White House official said Bush had edited the document heavily “because he thought there were sections where we sounded overbearing or arrogant.”

“Americans may live to rue Sept. 20, 2002, the day they turned in the old republic for a new global empire,” comments James Laxer, professor of political science at York University.

For the first time in a formal statement of US policy, the United States has portrayed itself as standing above all other states. Its role, as guardian of a global system in which the US is at the center, is conceptualized as being of a higher order than the roles played by all other states.

“It is this feature of the doctrine that makes it explicitly imperialist,” Laxer says. “The 95 percent of humanity that is non-American is to be lulled into accepting the benefits of ‘a distinctly American internationalism.’”

Some Senators expressed initial concern at the tone of the new policy. “It’s much too broad, there’s no limit at all on presidential powers,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It’s not even limited to Iraq.”

Looking beyond a war with Iraq, Ivan Eland, the director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, said the document’s prescription for military primacy and preemptive attacks on potential threats is not in line with “what a republic’s foreign policy should be.” The statement, he said, “leads to a perpetual state of war.”

Congressional formalities for Iraq

The previous day, Bush had asked Congress to authorize the use of military force to disarm and topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without United Nations support.

“If you want to keep the peace, you’ve got to have the authorization to use force,” Bush told reporters after a meeting with his war council in the Oval Office.

Congress is promising a quick vote on Bush’s request. Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, (R-Miss.), said both the House and Senate could vote on the resolution as early as the first week in October before lawmakers go home to campaign for the Nov. 5 election. He said lawmakers would review the president’s proposal over the weekend, but he is “perfectly happy with the language.”

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, (D-S.D.), agreed, saying Democrats wanted some changes in the wording of the proposal, but were confident a broad consensus could be reached.

White House officials said that while they will negotiate the final language, Bush will insist that the resolution not require future approval by Congress.

In a break with past resolutions authorizing military force, the draft does not cite any imminent and tangible threat or specific act of aggression against the United States as a justification for military action. Rather, its rationale is that hypothetical and highly uncertain risks must be preempted.

Both the sweeping nature of the request and its reliance on the very controversial strategic doctrine of preemption have already provoked alarms in some quarters.

Others compare it to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that authorized US military action in Indochina to “prevent further aggression” in Southeast Asia. Passed on Aug. 7, 1964, that resolution handed President Lyndon Johnson broad powers to escalate the war in Vietnam, a conflict that cost 58,202 American lives and millions of Asian lives. It was later revealed that the incident prompting the action had been fabricated.

“Congress needs to claim its leadership role in American war-making to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring,” noted Timothy Edgar of the American Civil Liberties Union. Like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, he said, Bush’s request specifies neither whom Washington is fighting nor any clear military objectives.

Several others also noted that, just as former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon used the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to expand the war into countries like Cambodia, so could the reference to “restoring international peace and security in the region” in Bush’s draft be used to carry the “war on terrorism” to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.

Unlike the resolution his father submitted to Congress before the Gulf War, says Edgar, Bush’s request fails to cite the War Powers Act, passed by Congress toward the end of the Vietnam War to ensure that presidents could not fight wars indefinitely without Congressional backing.

Wider strategic aims

There is no way that the US will not go to war with Iraq - with or without an enabling resolution from the UN - and the motives behind the coming attack go far beyond simply toppling Saddam Hussein or stripping Iraq of any weapons of mass destruction that it may or may not possess.

The impending war has much wider strategic aims such as the cementing of US global supremacy by removing any future threat to US oil supplies, encircling China, and installing US-friendly regimes across the Middle East.

This is no scenario posited by the over-active imagination of anti-American lobbies, but rather the sober consensus arrived at by eminent academics, historians, economists, global strategists and other experts during an international conference at Oxford University last week.

The Oxford consensus rejected any comfortable view that war might even yet be averted by Saddam Hussein’s decision to re-admit UN arms inspectors and it also avoided taking consolation in any thought that the impact might be short-lived and limited only to Iraq. At the very least, violent, anti-American street demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria, and other Egyptian cities could be expected - perhaps erupting also in Saudi Arabia and maybe Jordan.

These would be forcibly suppressed, but if they should threaten a number of Middle East regimes, this might not necessarily be outside of the US game plan, some experts suggested. To clean out such regimes and install others that are not just friendly to the US in foreign policy terms but which also subscribe to American mores would further the cause of the Bush administration’s neo-imperialism and also secure the future integrity of energy supplies for the US. Some at the Oxford conference noted with incredulity the fact that the new National Security Strategy also envisages the use of the IMF and the World Bank as instruments of this policy. Nothing, it seems, they noted, is now excluded in the campaign of the Bush administration to wage war by one means or another on ‘un-American’ activities or beliefs.

When it’s over, who gets the oil?

A US-led ouster of President Saddam Hussein could open a bonanza for US oil companies long banished from Iraq, scuttling oil deals between Baghdad and Russia, France and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets, according to industry officials and Iraqi opposition leaders.

US and foreign oil companies have already begun maneuvering for a stake in the country’s huge proven reserves of 112 billion barrels of crude oil.

Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization of opposition groups that is backed by the United States, said he favored the creation of a US-led consortium to develop Iraq’s oil fields.

“American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil,” Chalabi said.

Plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein have little to do with the fight against terrorism, says Francois Lafargue, professor of geopolitics at the University of Saint-Quentin in Paris, and an expert on Iraq. Control of oil reserves are the main strategic objective, he says.

The Middle East produces 65 percent of the world’s oil, and Iraq is known to have the second largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Experts believe that Iraq, which has not been intensively explored, could produce far more. Iraqi oil is also cheaper to produce. A barrel of oil costs 70 cents in Iraq, and up to eight dollars in Central Asia, Lafargue says.

“By controlling the oil fields in the Middle East, the US would obtain a huge leverage on countries dependent on foreign oil, especially the People’s Republic of China,” Lafargue says. “By the year 2020, China will have to get half its oil imports from the Middle East.” The US wants to curb China’s military and political ambitions, he says.

‘Fight terror’ or wither, Rumsfeld tells NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) must now adapt to “fighting terrorism” and “rogue states” or accept that it is irrelevant, US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told his European allies on Tuesday.

The US remained fully committed to the Atlantic alliance, he said, but it had to modernize rapidly and improve its military capacity.

“If NATO does not have a force that is quick and agile, which can deploy in days or weeks instead of months or years, then it will not have much to offer the world in the 21st century,” he told NATO ministers’ meeting in Warsaw.

The US plan is for a new rapid response force, which can be deployed anywhere in the world, not just in NATO’s normal European zone of operations.

If authorized when Bush, Tony Blair and other NATO leaders meet in Prague in November, it will have rotating brigades of 5,000 soldiers drawn from US and European forces, armed with hi-tech weapons.

Opening the two-day meeting, NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson agreed, urging the alliance to refocus its military capabilities so it could “root out and destroy” terrorist threats.

“We must now transform,” Robertson said.

Sources: Associated Press, Business Times, Cox News Service, Financial Times (UK), Guardian (UK), Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC.com, New York Times, Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle, Times (UK), Toronto Globe & Mail, Washington Post

IMF and World Bank, a year in review

Analysis by Shawn Gaynor

Asheville, NC, Sept. 25 (AGR)— Last fall, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank canceled their annual fall meetings in Washington, DC. The world’s largest lending institutions, with a combined portfolio of over $300 billion, had been embattled in the “developed” world for three years, after a upswing in the anti-corporate globalization movement in the wake of the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. Their meeting, scheduled to take place in Barcelona, Spain in June 2001, had been canceled for fear of massive protests and unrest.

No one can know what would have taken place if the meetings had not been canceled, but it was clear the Bank’s opponents had geared up for a massive demonstration, that may well have eclipsed, in both scale and outrage, the previous anti-corporate globalization protests in North America.

The IMF and World Bank were created in 1946 during the post-World War II era. Though they where conceived as institutions for the rebuilding of post-war Europe, the massive Marshal Plan filled this financial niche, and the newly-created Bretton Woods institutions looked to the poor nations of the world to promote the new Truman “development model,” and to act as a project to soften the harsh effects of industrial capitalism on these nations in order to counter the Soviet model of economics.

This new development model held that, through loans and aid, underdeveloped nations could overcome the trappings of colonial economics and industrialize. Furthermore, it sought through this industrialization a general rise in the standard of living throughout the impoverished areas of the world.

This model produced modest success in some of the countries receiving loan and aid, especially in cases where a developing nation combined foreign help with market protections through tariffs. However, by the early 1980s a new model of global economics was emerging — Neo-Liberalism.This model held that rather then foreign aid, the future profits of exports alone would lift the Third World from poverty. This would be accomplished with a worldwide reduction of tariffs, which would encourage product export around the world.

It is unclear whether this shift in economic policy was due to an honest belief in its ability to succeed, or was a way to ratchet up profits and cut foreign aid now that the Soviet model threat to capitalism had passed.

What is clear, though, is that many World Bank-funded projects, through scale, mismanagement, or corruption, have failed to generate the future projected profits on which the credit was extended. This caused a deep crisis in the nations with large loan payments, and created a dilemma: default on loan payments and face the abandonment of First World investors, or raise more funds toward the debt payments. With budgets already tight in these impoverished nations, funds could only be raised in two primary ways; cut social spending in health, education and welfare, and/or sell (privatize) state-owned ventures like schools, water, rail lines, and power.

As these waves of financial crises spread, the IMF stepped in to make the choice for the Third World debtor nations. In order to receive the capital with which to ease the financial crisis — and make loan payments — the IMF demanded as a stipulation of emergency loans (to be used for interest payments on World Bank development loans), that programs of “structural adjustment” be enacted. The structural adjustments favor privatization, and prohibit or reduce spending on domestic social programs.

While the Bank’s opponents in the US have spent a year trying to integrate anti-globalization and anti-war messages, without shattering the coalitions that made the anti-globalization movement possible, the IMF and World Bank have continued unimpeded in their domination of Third World economics.

What follows is a summary of some examples of World Bank and IMF actions since their missed meeting last year, and international reaction to these policies.

Oil

The main investor in, and therefore influence upon, the World Bank and IMF is the US. With the current ruling party deeply dependent on the energy lobby, oil exploration and pipelines have been at the forefront of some large World Bank programs this year.

In Ecuador, the OCP pipeline which will carry heavy crude from the Amazon region to the coast has been the cause of much friction between the people of Ecuador, their government, and the IMF. IMF negotiators, who will fund the project, have demanded that all revenues from the new pipeline go toward servicing that nation’s foreign debt. However, the Ecuadorian Congress has stipulated that 10 percent of revenues must go toward social spending. This small demand has held up funding of the project, which is reportedly between $240 and $900 million. Bank officials, who this spring stated that the 10 percent social spending was the major obstacle of the project, have now turned down the project over “environmental and social concerns.”

Oil has also been on the top of the World Bank’s agenda in the Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria, where tensions between poor populations and wealthy investment banks have run high. In Sudan, a vast de-population campaign has been underway to forcibly remove residents from oil exploration areas to clear the way for development.

Water

Increasing pressures on the world’s supply of fresh and unpolluted water have caused massive competition for the dwindling resource. The IMF, through it’s structural adjustment programs, has encouraged and in some cases forced privatization of water. According to Vandana Shiva’s book Water Wars, “out of 40 IMF loans… in 2000, 12 had requirements for partial or full privatization of water supplies.”

Multinationals such as the US-based Bechtel and Monsanto have invested heavily in the privatization of water, seeing it as a vast new area of revenue. As water rights have fallen out of municipal and national hands, and into the hands of large multinationals, water prices in these countries have soared.

In Bolivia, which was forced by the IMF to privatize its water in 2000, water was re-nationalized this year. Massive unrest had followed the privatization, as water costs had increased to 1/5 of a person’s average earnings, and a general strike followed. The International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a branch of the World Bank, has ruled that Bolivia (one of the world’s poorest countries) must pay $25 million in damages for breaching its 40 year water contract.

In Ghana, water privatization plans under the World Bank are being developed. The plan calls for the country to be divided into two water regions, with the water rights to be sold to the highest bidder. This would eliminate the current government process of charging wealthy families more for water, in order to subsidize water to poor districts. The plan also calls for the Ghanaian government to take responsibility for subsidizing the water companies if they raise prices beyond what poor customers can afford, jeopardizing any financial gains in selling the rights. It is estimated that water prices could climb 300 percent due to the deal. International consulting firms that have endorsed the deal are all being paid by the World Bank, with the poor nation of Ghana unable to hire their own consultants.

Africa

For several years activists in Africa and in the First World have been calling for debt relief, mainly the cancellation of World Bank loan repayment, for the nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Though the principals of the loans to these nations have largely been repaid, interest payments on the loans continue to cripple Africa’s ability to deal with massive issues of poverty and hunger. The annual interest payments on foreign debt in sub-Saharan Africa is currently estimated at just under $15 billion per year. While in the first world this is not viewed as very much money (the 2003 US defense budget increases spending by $24 billion), in these countries payment of the debts has had a crippling effect on agriculture and health.

The main crisis faced in sub-Saharan Africa is AIDS. Many countries in that region now have adult AIDS rates at over 1/3 of the adult population. Maintenance on their World Bank debts has prevented these countries from addressing the epidemic, because Structural Adjustment Programs have gutted national health care budgets thoughout the region.

Many of these countries have seen agricultural exports of cash crops as a major method in meeting dept payments over the years. Instead of competing with First World (particularly US) subsidized grains and staple foods, these nations have encouraged the planting of coffee, chocolate, cotton and other cash crops, in their most fertile land. Two major problems have ensued from this choice. The first is that the projected profits of these crops have not been realized, due largely to overproduction and falling worldwide prices. The second impact has been a reduction in these nations’ abilities to feed their populations. In the 1980s, during the great famine that took place in Ethiopia, land that had traditionally been planted for food was instead growing cash crops. Much more than drought, these choices starved the Ethiopian people, as cotton exports continued to expand even throughout the worst of the famine. This year has seen a return of these problems, as worldwide coffee prices plummeted, leaving Africa both hungry and poor.

This year a startling new proposal has emerged — even among some of the world’s most conservative economists — that African nations unilaterally default on their debt. Economist Jeffrey D. Sachs has said, “If you try to collect the debt, you are killing millions of people. If the countries pay their debt, they can’t meet their development needs … If there is not international understanding, many countries in duress in history have taken a unilateral action. That is important for African leaders to understand.” The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based economic think tank, has also recommended that African leaders default.

Many African nations remain unwilling to do so, however, out of fear that this will leave them completely abandoned by international investors.

Public pressure

Massive public pressure has continued to be expressed against the institutions of the IMF and World Bank in the last year. In April of this year over 100,000 protesters converged on Washington, DC during the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank.

World Bank Bonds, a favored investment worldwide, are the driving economic force behind the Bank’s portfolio. Campaigns for divestment in the World Bank through bond boycotts have grown in popularity in the last year, as a way to pressure the Bank to reform. This year the city of Milwaukee, WI, along with the city of Cambridge, MA, and five other US cities joined in boycotting World Bank bonds. Several unions, including the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, the SEIU, Steel Workers local 1304, and Teamsters local 85 have also joined the boycott this year.

Though they represent a small percentage of total World Bank bond buyers, these campaigns hold the possibility of forcing concessions from the Bank by starving it of new funds.

In addition, protests in the Third World have remained consistently strong. In Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Equador, and Nigeria, it appears that governments are on the verge of relenting to citizens’ demands that these institutions, and the others that represent the neo-liberal model, be abandoned. The outstanding question in these areas, however, is: “Abandoned in favor of what?” Though Venezuela and Nigeria may have the natural resources (mainly oil) to weather the international investor fallout over unilateral debt default, many nations that desire to abandon the Bank loan interest cycle have been unable to find a realistic economic alternative that can alleviate poverty.

It is impossible to calculate with accuracy the human toll that these economic policies have had. Clearly, 5,000 avertable deaths each day from hunger, lack of health care, and lack of potable water is a very conservative estimate. Resistance has had its price also. According to the report “States of Unrest II,” release in April of this year, 76 IMF/World Bank protesters have been documented as having died due to state repression, with injuries and arrests running into the thousands. Yet people worldwide continue to risk resistance and voice their opposition to economic reductionism.

Police, soldiers, paramilitaries disperse protests in Colombia

By Yadira Ferrer

Colombia's National Peasant Council said that security forces and paramilitaries on Tuesday, Sept. 17 forcefully obstructed protests over social spending and a halt to food imports.

Bogota, Colombia, Sept. 17 (IPS)— The military, police and paramilitaries in Colombia used force in their attempt to block demonstrations and marches Tuesday by associations of peasant farmers protesting the new right-wing government’s economic and social policies, said organizers.

The National Peasant Council (CNC), which links 10 organizations of small farmers, said in a communique that in at least five of Colombia’s departments or states, the security forces and paramilitaries — acting separately — obstructed the start of a nationwide protest declared Monday to demand social spending in rural areas and a halt to food imports.

Supposed members of paramilitary groups tried to keep farmers from participating in protest marches in the localities of Argelia, Balboa, Chalán, Colosó, Corinto, El Tambo, La Vega, and Piendamó, according to the CNC statement.

Those towns are located in the southern department of Cauca and the northern department of Sucre.

The CNC also said the army was prohibiting vehicles from leaving most municipalities in the central department of Tolima, while it had confiscated food belonging to groups that planned to participate in the marches.

In the central department of Caldas, soldiers detained around 90 indigenous families Monday “simply for having joined the mobilization,’’ and paramilitaries threatened to kill anyone who took part in the protests, the communique added.

In the central departments of Boyacá and Cundinamarca, “peasant farmers and students, who intended to march from Tunja to Bogota to take part in the protests called by the workers’ central trade unions, were not allowed to depart,’’ reported the CNC.

Roads in Boyacá and Cundinamarca have been put under close military surveillance, which included “provocative overflights by gun-ship helicopters,’’ the statement said.

The farmers are demanding a suspension of food imports, participation in government decisions that affect them, and social investment programs for rural areas.

Among the protesters arrested Monday were Spanish activists Ana Andrés and Daniel Bustos with the non-governmental organization Solidaridad con Colombia, who were accompanying peasant farmers in the northern locality of Chalán, as well as the head of the Federación Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria farmers’ union, Nelson Reina.

Military and police authorities said some of the protests were dispersed “for security reasons,’’ due to suspicions that the participants were acting under the pressure of left-wing guerrillas.

In other cases, the police and soldiers acted on the orders of provincial officials.

The president of another farmers’ union, the Federación Nacional Sindical Agraria, Eberto Díaz, told IPS that some provincial governors had invoked the “state of interior commotion’’ declared by the government of Alvaro Uribe shortly after it took office in August, “to repress the peasants.’’

The state of interior commotion enables authorities to suspend certain constitutional guarantees, justified by the need to crack down on the escalation of the four-decades-old armed conflict between leftist guerillas, the army, and rightwing paramilitaries with ties to the Colombian military.

The decision to declare a state of interior commotion was backed by broad sectors of society, which complain of the intensification of the activity by the irregular armed groups.

But non-governmental organizations say the emergency measures constitute a threat to individual freedoms.

The most heavily criticized measure adopted by Uribe in the context of the state of emergency is the one that authorizes the armed forces to arrest suspects and search homes and vehicles without a warrant.

The movements of individuals were also restricted in so-called “zones of rehabilitation and consolidation’’ created in 14 departments.

Díaz said the government’s “real intention’’ was to convert those areas into “theaters of war.’’

The vulnerability of human rights activists increases when the armed forces are given the authority to carry out arrests, which can lead to an increase in impunity for rights abuses, said the secretary-general of the Canadian chapter of the London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International, Alex Neve.

On a visit last week to Bogota, Neve said that he was not opposed to governments taking measures to protect their citizens, but warned that the impunity prevailing in Colombia would not be counteracted by giving the military greater powers to carry out arrests without due process.

The CNC said the farmers’ protests, which coincided with the first strike organized by the unions of civil servants under the Uribe administration, would only be called off when the government responded to the farmers’ grievances.

The peasant farmers are opposed to the projected merging of the National Institute for Agrarian Reform, the Integrated Rural Development Institute, the National Institute of Hydrology and Meteorology, and the International Fisheries Institute into one single institution.

The CNC also complains that food imports have further impoverished laborers and small farmers in the countryside, who already bear the brunt of the armed conflict.

Ivory Coast shaken by military uprising

Compiled by Willy Rosencrans

Sept. 25 (AGR)— Widespread violence erupted last Thursday in several cities in Ivory Coast after the government announced plans to forcibly retire 750 troops. Military sources said 270 people were killed and 300 more injured during fighting between insurgents and troops loyal to the government. State television has made an appeal for blood donors, suggesting that there are large numbers of seriously injured people. Interior Minister Emile Boga Doudou and several senior military officers died during the fighting.

Loyalist forces took back control of Abidjan, the nation’s commercial capital, on the day the uprising began, but government opponents were still in control in the northern city of Korhogo, as well as the central town of Bouake, on Saturday.

“The people of Bouake have rallied to us and we are now passing to the phase of a rebellion,” said a dissident commander on Friday. In Korhogo, the heartland of northern opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, people said some local youths appeared to have rallied to the rebel cause. The towns of Daloa and Fereke have also seen fighting.

Ivorian government troops were dispatched north to confront the dissident troops in Bouake and Korhogo.

President vows all-out war

The uprising began with bursts of automatic-weapons fire outside a paramilitary police base in Abidjan. Diplomats said early in the uprising that as many as 800 soldiers revolted.

Vowing that his army would wage an all-out war on his enemies, President Laurent Gbagbo said: “This is not some display of anger by a few soldiers; this is an attempted coup d’etat.”

There are growing fears that the current turmoil in Ivory Coast could be a prelude to a wider conflict in this country of 16 million people, which has so far managed to stay relatively free of the civil conflicts that have plagued some of its neighbors.

Tensions have pitted opposition leader Ouattara, a northerner, against the Gbagbo government, which draws much of its support from the south and west.

Three years of unrest

The government claims that General Robert Guei, who led a sucessful coup in 1999 but was forced out during elections the next year amid allegations he was trying to steal the vote, was behind the coup. Guei was killed when his car refused to stop for a roadblock in Abidjan during Thursday’s violence.

Ivory Coast’s standing as one of West Africa’s most stable and prosperous nations was shattered with Guei’s coup, which ushered in three years of military uprisings and political and ethnic violence, killing hundreds. The government has heavily armed the police and military in a bid to enforce order.

After national reconciliation talks earlier this year, the country created a coalition government including ministers from opposition parties. But Guei last week ended his party’s two-year alliance with the ruling party. And in an outspoken attack, he slammed the President’s attempts at reconciliation as a charade and accused him of assassinating political opponents.

The dissident soldiers behind Thursday’s violence allegedly were enlisted during Guei’s leadership; this, apparently, is the basis of the government’s claim that Guei orchestrated the uprising.

Tensions with neighbors escalate

Gbago has implied that neighboring Burkina Faso played a role in the military uprising. Other officials have blamed Liberia and Mali.

There is already bad blood between the Burkinabe and Ivorian governments. Burkina Faso has accused Ivory Coast of harassing its citizens across the border, while Gbagbo’s government says Burkina Faso is harboring dissident Ivorian soldiers, allowing them to train and prepare to destabilize Ivory Coast.

On Friday, the Ivorian Defense Minister, Moise Lida Kouassi, claimed that a foreign military column of reinforcements had crossed into Ivory Coast from a neighboring state to join and support dissident soldiers. He did not say which, but there were similar claims of a column coming from Burkina Faso after a failed coup in January 2001.

Burkina Faso is reported to have tightened security inside the country and at the border.

Harassment of immigrant workers

On Saturday, the authorities called on the security forces not to target foreigners, but the allegations against Burkina Faso have aggravated anti-immigrant feeling. Security forces have attacked the shanty town homes of workers from Burkina Faso and other neighboring countries, sending immigrants pouring onto the streets of the capital Abidjan. Immigrants’ homes have been torched and their valuables stolen.

Reports said the raids on foreign households, purportedly to flush out ‘rebels,’ were led by the paramilitary gendarmerie, fiercely loyal to Gbagbo.

Immigrant workers were instrumental in building Ivory Coast into the regional economic cocoa-producing ‘El Dorado’ it used to be. But they are regularly blamed for the country’s problems, including coup-plots, and are believed to be monopolizing jobs and small enterprises and enriching themselves on the backs of local people.

Sources: AllAfrica.com, Associated Press, Reuters

WORLD BRIEFS

US commandos seen preparing for strikes in Yemen, Somalia

Several hundred US Special Forces troops are ready in east Africa to make commando raids on al-Qaida and other targets as the Central Intelligence Agency prepares a vast anti-terrorism operation, according to media reports.

Between 200 and 500 Special Forces troops are among 800 US soldiers moved secretly in recent weeks to a French military base at Djibouti, according to intelligence sources quoted by the US media. The force also has several dozen attack helicopters. Also in the region are the USS Bellau amphibious assault group with vertical takeoff Harrier fighters; the elite Delta Force commandos; and army Green Berets. US military officials have confirmed that there is a presence but have not said how large it is.

Djibouti is strategically placed on the Horn of Africa at the meeting point of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, within striking distance of Yemen and Somalia, two hot spots for followers of Osama bin Laden.

Yemen has denied that US forces will be allowed to stage operations in the country, saying there was only cooperation between the two countries in the security and intelligence domains. (AFP)

Farm bill hurts poor farmers, boosts business

New US agricultural subsidies benefit big business while impoverishing poor Third World farmers, and they contradict advice from global institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says a development group.

The new report by US-based Food First / Institute for Food and Development Policy details the 2002 Farm Bill’s impact on small family farmers, trade, and agricultural sustainability and accuses international trade institutions of hypocrisy on the issue of subsidies.

The bill provides two-thirds of 190 billion dollars in new money over the next 10 years to the largest US agribusiness farms that grow export crops such as cotton, rice, soybeans, and wheat.

The report comes only days ahead of annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF in Washington, which will discuss a review of debt relief efforts, global trade issues, ways to improve aid delivery, and the trade subsidies of industrial nations. The report also coincides with growing demands from the two international organizations that the world’s rich countries dump their subsidies and that poor countries liberalize trade.

On Sept 19, IMF Managing Director Horst Kiehler told the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think-tank, that it was near impossible for poor countries to escape poverty while wealthy nations maintain their massive agriculture exports subsidies. (IPS)

UK “sells” nuclear bomb material to Iran

British officials have approved the export of key components needed to make nuclear weapons to Iran and other countries known to be developing such weapons.

An investigation by BBC Radio 4 program File on Four will disclose that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) allowed a quantity of the metal beryllium to be sold to Iran last year. Beryllium is a necessary ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.

Britain has had an arms embargo to Iran since 1993 and has signed an international protocol which bans the sale of beryllium to named countries, including Iran.

The program has interviewed a leading nuclear weapons expert in the UK who says that the beryllium and other items which the DTI has licensed to Iran add up to a shopping list for a nuclear weapons program.

The program highlights the weaknesses in the UK’s new export control system, which was set up to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It will reveal that Iranian procurement agents have been working in the UK to get sensitive material back to Iran, and that Pakistan has also been successful in procuring material for its nuclear program from the UK. (BBC)