By Farhang Jahanpour
OXFORD, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

When, all of a sudden, ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) emerged on the scene and in a matter of days occupied large swathes of mainly Sunni-inhabited parts of Iraq and Syria, including Iraq’s second city Mosul and Tikrit, birthplace of Saddam Hussein, and called itself the Islamic State, many people, not least Western politicians and intelligence services, were taken by surprise.

Farhang Jahanpour

Unlike in the Western world, religion still plays a dominant role in people’s lives in the Middle East region. When talking about Sunni and Shia divisions we should not be thinking of the differences between Catholics and Protestants in the contemporary West, but should throw our mind back to Europe’s wars of religion (1524-1648) that proved to be among the most vicious and deadly wars in history.

Just as the Hundred Years’ War in Europe was not based only on religion, the Sunni-Shia conflicts in the Middle East too have diverse causes, but are often intensified by religious differences. At least, various groups use religion as an excuse and as a rallying call to mobilise their forces against their opponents.

Ever since U.S. encouragement of Saudi and Pakistani authorities to organise and use jihadi fighters following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, to the rise of Al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks on Sep. 11, 2001, followed by the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, and military involvement in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, it seems that the United States has had the reverse effect of the Midas touch, in the sense that whichever crisis the United States has touched has turned to dust.“Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants”

Now, with the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organisations, the entire Middle East is on fire. It would be the height of folly to dismiss or underestimate this movement as a local uprising that will disappear by itself, and to ignore its appeal to a large number of marginalised and disillusioned Sunni militants.

In view of its ideology, fanaticism, ruthlessness, the territories that it has already occupied, and its regional and perhaps even global ambitions, ISIS can be regarded as the greatest threat since the Second World War and one that could change the map of the Middle East and the post-First World War geography of the entire region, and challenge Western interests in the Persian Gulf and beyond.

When Islam appeared in the deserts of Arabia some 1400 years ago, with an uncompromising message of monotheism and the slogan “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God”, it changed the plight of the Arabs in the Arabian Peninsula and formed a religion and a civilisation that even now claims upward of 1.5 billion adherents in all parts of the world, and forms the majority faith in 57 countries that are members of the Islamic Cooperation Organization.

Contrary to many previous prophets who did not see the success of their mission during their own lifetime, in the case of Islam not only did Muhammad manage to unite the Arabs in the name of Islam in the entire Arabian Peninsula, but he even managed to form a state and ruled over the converted Muslims both as their prophet and ruler. The creation of the Islamic umma or community during Muhammad’s lifetime in Medina and later on in the whole of Arabia is a unique occurrence in the history of religion.

Consequently, while most religions look forward to an ideal state or to the “Kingdom of God” as a future aspiration, Muslims look back at the period of Muhammad’s rule in Arabia as the ideal state. Therefore, what a pious Muslim wishes to do is to look back at the life and teachings of the Prophet, and especially his rule in Arabia, and take it as the highest standard of an ideal religious government.

This is why the Salafis, namely those who turn to salaf or the early fathers and ancestors, have always proved so attractive to many fundamentalist Muslims. Being a Salafi is a call to Muslims to reject the modern world and to follow the example of the Prophet and the early caliphs.

When, in 1516-17, the armies of Ottoman Sultan Selim I captured Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Muslim holy places in Arabia, the sultan assumed the title of caliph, and therefore the Ottoman Empire was also regarded a Sunni caliphate.

Although not all Muslims, especially many Arabs, recognise Ottoman rule as a caliphate, the caliphate nevertheless continued in name until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War when the caliphate was officially abolished in 1922.

The fall of the last powerful Islamic empire was not only traumatic from a political and military point of view but, with the end of the caliphate, the Sunnis lost a unifying religious authority as well.

It is very difficult for many Westerners to understand the feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Sunni Muslims feel as the result of what they have suffered in the past century. To have an idea, they should imagine that a mighty Christian empire that had lasted for many centuries had fallen as the result of Muslim conquest and that, in addition to the loss of the empire, the papacy had also been abolished at the same time.

With the end of the caliphate, Sunni countries were left rudderless, to be divided among various foreign powers which imposed their economic, military and cultural domination, as well as their beliefs and their way of life, on them. The feeling of hurt and humiliation that many Muslims have felt since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and the strong longing for its reinstatement, still continues.

To add insult to injury, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Western powers, especially Great Britain, had promised the Arabs that if they would rise up against the Ottomans, after the war they would be allowed to form an Islamic caliphate in the area comprising all the Arab lands ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

Not only were these promises not fulfilled, but as part of the Sykes-Picot_Agreement on 16 May 1916, Britain and France secretly plotted to divide the Arab lands between them and they even promised Istanbul to Russia. Not only was a unified Arab caliphate not formed, but the Balfour_Declaration generously offered a part of Arab territory that Britain did not possess to the Zionists, to form a “national home for the Jewish people”.

In Winston Churchill’s words, Britain sold one piece of real estate (to which it had no claim in the first place) to two people at the same time.

The age of colonialism came to an end almost uniformly through military coups involving officers who had the ability to fight against foreign occupation. From the campaigns of Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, to the rise of Reza Khan in Iran, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, the military coups in Iraq and Syria that later led to the establishment of the Baâthist governments of Hafiz al-Assad in Syria and Abd al-Karim Qasim, Abdul Salam Arif and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and so on, practically all Middle Eastern countries achieved their independence as the result of military coups.

While the new military leaders managed to establish some order through the barrel of the gun, they were completely ignorant of the historical, religious and cultural backgrounds of their nations and totally alien to any concept of democracy and human rights.

In the absence of any civil society, democratic traditions and social freedom, the only path that was open to the masses that wished to mobilise against the rule of their military dictators was to turn to religion and use the mosques as their headquarters.

The rise of religious movements, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Ennahda Movement in Tunisia, FIS in Algeria and Al-Dawah in Iraq, were seen as a major threat by the military rulers and were ruthlessly suppressed.

The main tragedy of modern Middle Eastern regimes has been that they have been unable not only to involve the Islamist movements in government, but they have even failed to involve them in the society in any meaningful way.

This is why after repeated defeats, divisions and humiliation, there has always been a longing among militant Sunni Muslims, especially Arabs whose countries were artificially divided and dominated by Western colonialism and later by military dictators, for the revival of the caliphate. Even mere utterance of ‘Islamic caliphate’ brings a burst of adrenaline to many secular Sunnis.

The failure of military dictatorships and the marginalisation and even the elimination of religiously-oriented groups have led to the rise of vicious extremism and terrorism. The terrorist group ISIS is making use of this situation and is basing its appeal on the reinstatement of the caliphate. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Aug 14 2008 (IPS)

As a new report forecasts that the 190,000 private contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries will cost U.S. taxpayers more than 100 billion dollars by the end of 2008, an under-the-radar Florida court case suggests that U.S. President George W. Bush – a staunch contractor supporter – is preparing to throw security contractors such as Blackwater under the political bus.

In the Florida case, relatives of three American servicemen killed in the 2004 crash of an aircraft owned by Blackwater Aviation in Afghanistan are suing the company for damages, based in part on U.S. government reviews that concluded that errors committed by Blackwater staff were responsible for the deaths. This week, despite Bush’s support for what he has called the critical roles played by overseas contractors, his administration failed to meet a deadline for presenting the court with any defence of Blackwater.

The administration’s silence has caused consternation for Blackwater and its supporters. Erik Prince, Blackwater’s chairman, told TIME magazine, "After the president has said that, as commander-in-chief, he is ultimately responsible for contractors on the battlefield it is disappointing that his administration has been unwilling to make that interest clear before the courts."

Some observers have speculated that the Administration’s silence can be attributed to the controversial nature of the contractor issue and a reluctance to address it during a hotly contested presidential election year.

The Florida battle, which could eventually find its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, turns on the question of whether Blackwater and other overseas contractors are subject to U.S. law. That question arises because of a decree issued in 2005 by the then U.S. Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer, granting contractors legal immunity.

The Iraqi government claims that Blackwater and other contractors have been responsible for the deaths of Iraqi civilians and wants to make them subject to Iraqi law. The U.S. has resisted this move, which is thought to be part of the ongoing stalemate in negotiations with Iraq over the future status of U.S. forces in that country.

The White House has also attacked a bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that would place combat-zone contractors under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. It called the measure an unacceptable extension of federal jurisdiction overseas, and said it would place additional burdens on the military.

Blackwater’s argument is that the company should be covered by the same "sovereign immunity" that protects the U.S. military from lawsuits because the downed flight in question in the Florida case was under the command and control of the U.S. military.

Last month, this argument was rejected by three federal judges, who cited the U.S. government’s failure to take a position in defence of Blackwater as one of their reasons. In their decision to allow the lawsuit to proceed, the judges ruled, "The apparent lack of interest from the United States… fortifies our conclusion that the case does not yet present a political question."

Lawyers for many major contractors including DynCorp, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), Blackwater and others, say a dangerous precedent would be established if this and similar cases are allowed to go forward. Such a decision, they say, would open contractors to large money damages and greatly higher risk insurance costs that could adversely affect their ability to carry out the jobs the U.S. government has hired them to do.

As the Florida case made its way through the U.S. legal system, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contends that the cost of having military personnel provide security services in Iraq might be little different from the prices charged by private security contactors.

The report said that 6-10 billion dollars has been spent on security contactors thus far in 2008 and estimated that about 25,000-30,000 employees of security firms were in Iraq as of early this year. It estimates that, if spending for contractors continues at about the current rate, 100 billion dollars will have been paid to military contractors for operations in Iraq.

The CBO report revealed that about 20 percent of funding for operations in Iraq has gone to contractors. Currently, it said, there are at least 190,000 contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries – a ratio of about one contractor per U.S. service member. It noted that the U.S. has relied more heavily on contractors in Iraq than in any other war for functions ranging from food service to guarding diplomats.

The report also noted that the legal status of contractor personnel is a grey area of U.S. law, particularly for those who are armed. It said that military commanders have less direct authority over contractors because a government contracting officer rather than a military commander manages their contracts.

The CBO review was requested by Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. In a statement, Conrad said the Bush administration’s reliance on military contractors has set a dangerous precedent. The use of contractors "restricts accountability and oversight; opens the door to corruption and abuse; and, in some instances, may significantly increase the cost to American taxpayers," he said.

The report comes at a time when the actions of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are coming under increased scrutiny. Contractors – including Blackwater and KBR – have been investigated in connection with shooting deaths of Iraqis and the accidental electrocutions of U.S. troops. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee heard testimony a few weeks ago from a former Defence Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) contract overseer who was effectively fired because he refused to authorise 1 billion dollars in unsubstantiated charges from KBR. The Government Accountability Office released a report that confirmed whistleblower complaints of DCAA supervisors issuing unsupported findings that were favourable to contractors. And last week, Government Executive magazine reported that nearly a dozen former DCAA employees see DCAA as a very troubled agency that is more concerned with performance goals than actually overseeing contracts.

The death of a U.S. soldier, who was electrocuted in January while showering in Iraq, prompted a House committee oversight hearing last month into whether KBR has properly handled the electrical work at bases it maintains. The military has also said that five other deaths were due to improperly installed or maintained electrical devices, according to a congressional report.

Contractors’ activities have drawn sharp criticism from private non- governmental watchdog groups, such as OMB Watch. OMB stands for the Office of Management and Budget, which prepares and presents the president’s budget to congress.

Craig Jennings, OMB’s Federal Fiscal Policy Analyst, told IPS, "100 billion dollars is a very large amount of money – in fact, Iraq’s GDP was just over 100 billion dollars in 2007. But what staggers my imagination is how sober adults would be willing to divert such vast sums of America’s financial resources to the bank accounts of private firms whose dealings are opaque to taxpayers and, for the most part, held unaccountable."

Jennings added, "I think advocates of unaccountable privatisation are beginning to reap what they have sown: defending privatisation of war- making on such an enormous scale is becoming tenuous. It’s hard to paint a picture of contractors providing taxpayers value when so many instances of contractor misconduct have found their way into the public’s consciousness."

Jennings also called attention to the shortcomings of the military auditing process. He told IPS, "This magnitude of expenditures on private contractors is especially striking in light of recent government and media reports of dysfunction in the DCAA. The protection of the interests of American taxpayers is apparently suffering a number of impediments."

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jul 2 2008 (IPS)

As politically motivated restrictions on investments by oil-rich countries intensify in the West, the sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) of the Gulf countries could opt to invest in Asia and other emerging markets despite attractive valuations in the slowing U.S and European markets.

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, the United Arab Emirates and a few other countries sought to allay Western fears by stressing that the funds were strictly commercial and not political threats.

Sultan Ahmad bin Sulayem, Chairman of the Dubai World holding company, warned that Gulf funds could stop investing in developed markets if their motives were continuously questioned. "There is the policy of these government fund managers to go where they are welcome. If [rich nations] say ‘we don’t want your money’, fine. We will invest in China and India. They all want investment."

Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Governor Omar bin Sulaiman also voiced a similar opinion in November. "If you need foreign direct investment [FDI], you need to be welcoming, not scaring investors off. Talk about the SWFs is creating a lot of sensitivity, even for private investors. They are already looking elsewhere to hedge their positions,'' Sulaiman was quoted as saying by Economist Intelligence Unit and the Financial Times (FT) in the news channel ViewsWire.com.

Sulaiman also told the London-based FT in the November interview that Borse Dubai, a government unit partly owned by the DIFC, was likely to invest in an Asian exchange. "It’s only logical… It’s a matter of when rather than whether we will."

Reflecting this sentiment – which also indicates the economic, not political, leanings of Gulf SWFs – Dubai International Capital (DIC) purchased a "substantial" stake in Sony in November, which reports estimate to be worth between 500 million and one billion US dollars.

In fact, when DIC was launched in 2004, its strategy was to channel a third of its overseas investments to Asia. So far, the DIC is estimated to have invested about two billion US dollars in Asia.

Explaining Western governments’ concerns that major shifts in international finance could involve power politics, Eckart Woertz of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai told IPS, "They are particularly worried about the possibility of the SWFs buying up Western assets, putting them at the disposal of potentially ‘unfriendly’ regimes."

The SWFs have existed for a long time, but attracted attention recently because they have grown bigger than the world of hedge funds and other private institutional investors. They are owned by governments of countries that have substantial current account surpluses – mainly industrialising countries in Asia and oil exporters – and are used to acquire assets abroad that have potential for better returns than shares and bonds.

Currently, more than 20 countries have these funds. While funds from the Gulf countries are estimated at 1.6 trillion US dollars, the leader is the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) with about 900 billion US dollars. Singapore’s Temasek and the official reserves of China and Russia, which are being moved from central banks to the SWFs, are big players too.

The U.S., in particular, feels that large amounts of its securities in the hands of those who are not necessarily allies is "financially imprudent," as a sell-off by such nations could lead to falling bond prices and rising interest rates, thus hurting its economy.

Such attitudes have encouraged South-South economic cooperation through mechanisms aimed at diversifying trade and investment. According to a report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), trade volume fuelled by cooperation among developing countries tripled to reach 2 trillion US dollars between 1996 and 2006.

Further, partly as a result of the fallout of the Sep. 11 attacks in the U.S. in 2001 and partly due to the surge in Asian economies, the East is now the Gulf’s market of choice.

The Gulf countries export about two-thirds of their oil to Asia, which could double during the next two decades. Half of Gulf exports go to Asia and a third of Gulf imports are from Asia. Gulf-Asia trade currently exceeds 300 billion US dollars, this has tripled since 2000.

Amid mounting U.S. Congressional scrutiny of foreign government funds, the U.S. Treasury signed in March a series of agreements with the Abu Dhabi and Singapore SWFs covering investments in U.S. markets.

The agreement states that SWFs investment decisions should be based on commercial grounds, rather than geopolitical strategies of a controlling government; second, funds should be more open about their finances and investment aims, should run strong risk management programmes and respect other governments’ laws; and finally, countries receiving investment flows should not erect protectionist barriers against foreign investment and should not discriminate.

Yet, a Congressional hearing in May debated how investments by the funds of Middle Eastern countries "have raised questions about the power they may have over U.S. national security interests," especially since some of these funds are controlled by governments that are "sometimes unfriendly, sometimes untrustworthy".

Elsewhere, Germany is discussing a special law to ward off unwanted foreign buyers of strategic national companies. In 2006, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck asked, "What would happen if they [SWFs] invest 10-20 percent of their foreign reserves instead of just 0.3 percent?"

Even Libya’s 100 billion US dollar fund is considering buying stocks, bonds, real estate and banks in Asia and South America. "The only market which is unfortunately not a pleasant market is the United States… It’s a very active market, but it is full of politics and unpleasant actions," Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corporation said in February, according to media reports.

Reacting to Western concerns, economist Woertz said, "The politically weak and less ambitious Gulf countries have no political axe to grind. Yet, they are part of an instable region and its power politics and major foreign holdings in strategic companies raise concern."

One controversial unrealised deal involved Dubai Ports World – which took over British-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company in 2006 – but was blocked from the American segment of the deal after U.S. politicians opposed it on security grounds.

Part of the Western worries stem from the future enormity of the funds. The SWFs – which held about 500 billion US dollars worth of assets in 1990, and manage about 2.5 trillion US dollars currently – are likely to grow annually by 1.2 trillion US dollars over the next five years, and are expected to reach about 27 trillion US dollars by 2022.

Given that increasing oil prices will help Gulf SWFs make more acquisitions abroad in the future, Woertz advises that they "should remind Western governments that access to markets is not a one-way street." If the West fails to heed such advice, the East has more gains to look forward to in the future.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 18 2008 (IPS)

Recent attempts by Gulf countries to invest in farmlands abroad to counter soaring inflation and guarantee long-term food security could prove to be a win-win situation in the short-term for both the oil-rich region and its investment-hungry neighbours, but continued high oil prices may neutralise the gains in the long-run, feel experts.

With Gulf countries importing 60 percent of their food on average, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are taking the lead in investing in Asia and Africa to secure supplies of cereals, meat and vegetables.

The move reverses a recent Gulf trend of acquiring plush assets in the West in favour of acquiring agriculture lands in developing countries, who are themselves facing a crisis amid high oil price-induced inflation and even food shortage.

Calling for transforming the buyer-seller relationship in the energy sector between India and the Gulf countries into a more substantial and enduring relationship, Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee told the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research last month, “I see India’s requirement for energy security and that of the Gulf countries for food security as opportunities that can be leveraged to mutual advantage.”

Similarly, during Prime Minister Yousaf Gillani’s visit to Saudi Arabia in early June, Pakistan sought 6 billion dollars in financial and oil aid in return for “hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land, which could be tilled by the Saudis.”

Such arrangements are likely to become increasingly common since inflation and food shortage are likely to worsen worldwide in future, said Shoaib Ismail, a halophyte agronomist who studies utilising plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber.

Worried about inflation fuelling social unrest, major food exporters to the Gulf countries resorted to export curbs. For example, India – the world’s second-largest rice exporter in 2007 – banned all non-basmati rice shipments in March. Simultaneous moves elsewhere triggered a wave of panic buying, causing benchmark Thai prices to triple.

“The Gulf region is not conducive for sustainable agriculture and has been dependant on imported food, which it has been able to buy at the prevailing international price without difficulty. However, when oil and other natural resources diminish in future, the region cannot maintain the same level of dependence on external food supplies,” Ismail told IPS.

Just one percent of land in the UAE is arable, while in Saudi Arabia it is marginally better at three percent. In comparison, 24 and 40 percent of land in Britain and Poland respectively is arable.

As a result, Saudi Arabia plans to stop purchases of wheat from local farmers by 2016, abandoning a three-decade programme aimed at self-sufficiency that has depleted the country’s scarce water supplies. Reeling under shortages of rice, Saudi Arabia has approached India, which annually exports 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes of rice to the kingdom.

“Given that global political scenarios vary constantly, the Gulf countries could come under pressure in future food negotiations,” added Ismail of the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai.

Explaining the willingness to invest over the long term, Ismail said the Gulf countries are cooperating with developing countries that have similar cultural, religious and political backgrounds, and with whom they have had longstanding ties. “They could get basic commodities at relatively low prices, thereby reducing their dependency on Western countries; and food-exporting counterparts get investments that could offset hardships related to increasing cost of land, water and fertilisers.”

The Gulf countries unsuccessfully attempted to convert Sudan into their breadbasket in the 1970s after the U.S. threatened to cut food supplies following the oil boycott.

This time, however, media reports indicate that the UAE government and private entities like Abraaj Capital have already acquired about 800,000 acres of farmland in Pakistan. As incentive, Islamabad is offering legal and tax concessions to foreign investors in specialised agriculture and livestock ‘free zones’, and may also introduce legislation to exempt such investors from government-imposed export bans.

The Gulf countries are increasingly receptive to such arrangements because they view this as an opportunity to import food at 20 to 25 percent less cost, thereby addressing domestic inflationary pressure, which was officially about 12 percent in the UAE last year, and perhaps double unofficially.

Since self-sufficiency is not an option, apart from dialogue with exporter countries and investments in agricultural projects abroad, “buffer stocks of basic food items should be contemplated to reduce exposure to market volatility,” the Dubai-based Gulf Research Centre’s Food Inflation Report recommended in May.

With oil prices likely to remain well over 100 U.S. dollars a barrel, the Gulf countries are estimated to reap a cumulative windfall of about nine trillion U.S. dollars by 2020, allowing them to intervene in the market through various measures ranging from price caps to subsidies.

But, one of the chief reasons grain prices have increased is due to a rise in production costs – particularly from higher energy expenditure – estimated at about 40 percent. Thus, “what makes the UAE’s export earnings increase is also what causes its imported food to increase apace,” Dalton Garis, of The Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, explained in the UAE’s ‘Gulf News’ last week.

Commenting on the viability factor of the new initiative, Ismail explained, “India, Pakistan and Sudan have closer ties with the Gulf compared to Thailand. While political stability would be a factor in Sudan and Thailand, India and Pakistan are likely to be attractive destinations because of their relations with the Gulf countries, which pre-dates oil.”

Encouraging the new public-private partnerships, Ismail said he preferred a proactive private sector role because “it can bring about significant results” quickly. The government, he added, should “serve as facilitator and oversee policies and regulations.”

But questions remain about how such direct arrangements would work or how domestic shortages, inflationary pressures and politics in the food exporting countries would pan out in the long run.

Anticipating a second wave of trouble as the region’s population booms in the years ahead, Ismail stressed that “with all limitations to make agriculture sustainable in this region, efforts should also be made to produce vegetables [in greenhouses], fruits and other crops. There should be clear prioritisation for primary agricultural products [grains and pulses] and secondary products [fruits and fodder]. It is possible to make the latter sustainable with relatively marginal land and water resources.”

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2007 (IPS)

Although the image of the United States appears to have improved in Saudi Arabia over the past year, the Saudi public’s view of Washington remains largely negative, according to major new poll released here this week by Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), a Washington, D.C.-based bipartisan group.

Indeed, less than 40 percent of some 1,000 Saudi respondents interviewed by telephone during the first week of December, said they have either a “very” or “somewhat favourable” opinion of the U.S., while nearly 52 percent said their view was either very or somewhat unfavourable, according to the survey results.

By contrast, Iran – which Saudi leaders reportedly consider a dangerous rival for influence in the oil-rich Gulf region – is seen more positively by the Saudi public in general, the poll found.

A plurality of 47 percent said they regarded Tehran either very or somewhat favourably, compared to 44 percent who expressed unfavourable views.

Strong majorities of Saudi respondents, on the other hand, said they held favourable views of Turkey (71 percent) – whose secular traditions would appear to be at odds with Saudi Arabia’s staunchly Islamist orientation – and China (61 percent). Somewhat weaker majorities said they had positive views of France and Britain.

The TFT survey, the latest in a series by the organisation of key countries in the Islamic world – including Iran and Pakistan – suggests that Saudi public opinion, especially toward the outside world, is considerably more complex than depicted by the western mass media which has portrayed it as a stronghold of “Wahabi” fanaticism.

Fewer than one in ten Saudis said they had a favourable opinion of al Qaeda. Eighty-eight percent said they approved of their government’s crackdown against the group and 15 percent said they had a positive impression of the group’s chief and fellow-Saudi, Osama bin Laden.

But strong majorities of those who expressed a favourable opinion of bin Laden and al Qaeda also said they favoured closer ties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and insisted that their views of the U.S. would change for the better if Washington changed a number of its policies in the region.

More than two thirds (69 percent) of respondents said they favoured better relations with the U.S.

Asked what policy changes would improve their opinion of the U.S., 85 percent cited the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Iraq. Seventy-four percent cited increasing student and work visas for Saudis in the U.S. and 71 percent suggested striking a free trade deal between the two countries.

Fifty-two percent of respondents said their view of Washington would improve if it brokered a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Palestinians, while only 36 percent cited Washington’s efforts at promoting democracy in the Middle East.

Nearly two thirds (63 percent) said their view would improve if Washington provided more military assistance to Saudi Arabia, although only 49 percent said they favoured the pending sale of billions of dollars in advanced U.S. weaponry to the kingdom, while 32 percent said they opposed it.

While 52 percent of Saudi respondents said they retained a negative opinion of the U.S., that marked a considerable improvement over the results of a smaller TFT poll taken in May 2006 when 89 percent of Saudi respondents said they held an unfavourable view.

Still, TFT’s director, Ken Ballen, said the 40 percent favourable view suggested that the Saudi public was one of the most pro-U.S. countries in the region. He noted that only around 20 percent of respondents in surveys taken over the past year in Pakistan and Egypt said they had favourable views, while only nine percent of Turks shared that opinion in a May 2007 poll sponsored by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

“From our surveys and others,” he wrote in a summary analysis of the Saudi poll, “there are only two major Muslim majority countries with a higher favourable opinion of the United States: Bangladesh and Iran.”

As heartening as that conclusion appeared to be, the U.S. and Americans ranked were still seen least favourably among seven nations and their citizens on whom respondents were asked to give their opinions.

Only four in ten Saudis said they felt positively about Americans. Favourable opinions of the British were voiced by 48 percent of respondents. Fifty-two percent said they had favourable views of Iranians, while the French, at 57 percent, were viewed somewhat more favourably. Nearly three out of four respondents said they had a positive view of Turks.

“It’s not like they’re locked into an anti-western framework,” noted Steve Kull, director of the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), citing the statistics for Britain and France.

Kull, whose organisation has done extensive polling in the Middle East, also noted that the relatively favourable views towards Iran suggested that the Saudi public does not share the same fears about Tehran as the royal family.

Nearly one third of Saudi respondents said they had a favourable opinion of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – nearly three times the percentage of those who had positive views of Bush.

Still, 57 percent of respondents said they opposed the development by Iran of nuclear weapons. Thirty-eight percent said they would favour the U.S. and other countries taking military action to prevent the Iranians from obtaining such a weapon, compared to 27 percent who said the U.S. should accept a nuclear-armed Iran.

Saudis were particularly sympathetic toward Iraqis for whom more than four in five respondents expressed favourable views. Iraq also appeared to be the dominant source of unhappiness with the U.S.

Despite their strong antipathy toward al Qaeda, 36 percent of respondents said they supported Saudi citizens going to Iraq to fight U.S. forces there. Only 17 percent said they supported Saudis fighting Shia militias in Iraq.

Saudi respondents expressed an almost uniform antipathy toward Jews. Only six percent said they held favourable views of Jews. Nearly nine of ten said their views were unfavourable (81 percent “very unfavourable”).

A slight majority of 51 percent said they would oppose any peace treaty recognising Israel, while 30 percent said they would favour such a treaty on the condition that Palestinians establish a state of their own.

Attitudes towards Christians were more divided. Forty-four percent expressed favourable views, while 54 percent said they had unfavourable opinions (40 percent “very unfavourable”).

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BAGHDAD, Nov 22 2007 (IPS)

The executions of former regime officials are creating greater division, rather than reconciliation, among Iraqis.

Special courts formed by the American occupation authorities in Iraq are issuing death sentences – like that carried out on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, on 30 December 2006 – on what many Iraqis are interpreting as a political basis.

“Executing Saddam cost Iraqis a lot of hatred and more division between the sects, ” Walid Al-Ubaidi, post-graduate law student at Baghdad University told IPS.

“Now they [U.S.-backed Iraqi Government] are executing the Ex-Minister of Defense, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, who was very well known for being a professional general who led the Iraqi army against Iran,” Al-Ubaidi said, stressing that, “This man represents a symbol for the Iraqi army that defended Iraq.”

On 24 June 2007 the Iraqi High Tribunal found Ahmed guilty of presiding over the killing of thousands of Kurds during the Anfal campaign in the 1980s.

Several legal delays, and more recently a delay for a religious holiday, have postponed the execution.

A clerk in the court where Ahmed and a number of his generals were sentenced spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. He asked to be referred to as Hassan.

“We were surprised by the sentence,” Hassan told IPS in Baghdad, “This general was no more than a government official who carried out orders with notable skill and proficiency.”

“What makes us better than any of those we called dictators and war criminals?” Hassan asked.

“These generals were the ones who defeated Iran in the war and so [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] Al-Maliki and his American masters want to punish them in order to please the Iranian Ayatollahs,” former Iraqi army colonel Saad Abbas told IPS in Baghdad.

Anger against the U.S. occupation for the sentences has also been aroused because of the promise for asylum the general was given before he surrendered to U.S. military forces.

“They promised him asylum and that was why he surrendered to them in peace,” a relative of the general, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

“They even asked him to take a post in the new system, but he refused, and maybe that is why they sold him to his enemies,” the relative said.

An Iraqi resistance fighter spoke with IPS on condition of strict anonymity.

“We are not happy for this man’s execution, but we believe it was his fault to trust the Americans,” he said. “He should have known, as a general who negotiated with them more than once, how bad they were. Moreover, he should have joined the resistance against occupation rather than surrender to his dirty enemies.”

“This man and his colleagues represent the army that terrified those Arab tyrants in an Arab neighboring country,” Thuraya Shamil, an engineer from Baghdad Municipality told IPS.

“They cannot forget the day that they ran out of their palaces like rats,” Shamil emphasised.

Others view the situation differently, but still agree that the generals do not deserve to be sentenced to death.

“At the moment we are looking for solutions to the dilemma of internal divisions, comes these sentences to widen the gaps between sects and groups,” Malik Nazar, a member of the Iraqi Dialogue Front that has nine MPs in the Iraqi Parliament, told IPS.

“We must stop sacrificing our men for the sake of sending messages of compassion to Iran and others who have feuds with our heroic army men,” Nazar stressed.

“They are killing any Sunni Arab who might one day lead Iraqis, or at least a group of Iraqis, when this dirty occupation leaves the country,” Ali Salman, a teacher in Baghdad, told IPS, “As long as Iranians and Kurds are our real rulers, all our good men will always be targeted.”

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
BAGHDAD, Nov 21 2007 (IPS)

Increasing conflict and finger pointing between leading Shi&#39ite political blocs are heightening instability in war-torn Iraq.

"It is said in the Arab world that if thieves were not seen while stealing, they would be seen while dividing the loot," Wayil Hikmet, an Iraqi historian in Baghdad told IPS.

"That is what goes for the accelerating collapse of the Iraqi political system that was made in the USA. The thieves of the Green Zone are now giving me and my colleagues good material to write down for the coming generations," Hikmet said, referring to new scandals floating to the surface of the political scene in recent days.

The Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq (SICI) led by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, and The Sadr Movement led by anti-occupation cleric Muqtada Al- Sadr are accusing each other of committing serious crimes against humanity in the southern parts of Iraq.

In early September, clashes between Sadr&#39s Mehdi Army militia and the Badr Organisation militia of SIIC erupted in the holy city of Kerbala, 100 kilometres southwest of Baghdad.

Kerbala, with a population of about half a million, is a holy city, particularly for the Shias, as it is home to the tomb of Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

The shrine of Imam Hussein is a place of pilgrimage for many Shia Muslims.

The clashes between the two powerful militias left at least 52 people dead and over 200 wounded.

"Hakim and Muqtada were brought to the scene by the Americans who employed the two ambitious clerics in order to fight side by side against any Iraqi resistance," Lukman Jassim, a former Baath Party member, told IPS in Baghdad.

"But it is well known in Iraq that the two groups cannot put up with each other because of the historic disputes between their fathers and grandfathers and the conflict between them over power in Iraq. It was another American mistake," Jassim explained.

Jassim overlooks the fact that there have thus far been two anti-occupation uprisings led by al-Sadr, but his comments nevertheless underscore the rising tensions between the two groups.

Bahaa Al-A&#39raji, an MP with the Sadr movement, told journalists in Baghdad this week that his movement is being targeted by the SICI that dominates the Ministry of Interior. Many Sadr followers have been arrested and tortured by police loyal to the SICI in different parts of Iraq, Al-A&#39raji said.

SICI operates militarily via the Badr Organization militia, which was created in Tehran in 1982 and has been armed, trained and advised by Iranian intelligence since then.

Recently in Baghdad, footage was displayed on many local TV stations showing a woman with cut lips accusing police of having tortured her and her two baby girls in Kerbala.

"It is a crime against humanity committed by police for political reasons," Liwa&#39 Smaissim, the spokesman for the Sadr Movement in Kerbala, told IPS via telephone.

"The SICI is trying to eliminate our movement so that it controls the scene on its own," Smaissim said.

Accusations regarding the woman and her babies were aimed at a Major Ali of the Iraqi Police third Battalion in Kerbala.

"This man and his battalion have committed hundreds of crimes under the flag of maintaining peace in the city," Smaissim told IPS, "our followers and other citizens were exposed to torture and many others were assassinated."

Al-A&#39raji told IPS that he contacted the Ministers of Interior and Defense to complain, but the two ministers told him that the third Battalion does not take orders from them.

"We are an official unit of the Iraqi police and naturally we take orders from the Minister of Interior," Major Ali, who was accused of the torture and other crimes against civilians, told IPS via telephone.

"The CD distributed of a woman and her babies been tortured is a fake and was made up by a &#39certain group&#39 for political reasons. I was off sick during the period of the presumed arrest of that family," Major Ali claimed.

"The third battalion is an official force of the Ministry of the Interior and Major Ali is targeted by a &#39certain group&#39 because he risked his life in order to reveal the hundreds of crimes they committed here and else where," an Iraqi police general, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS, stressing that, "This particular group has committed the ugliest crimes in the Iraqi history and we are determined to put them all to court."

Iraqi police general&#39s references to the Sadr movement show the now deep divisions between those who were allies not long ago.

"I believe what is being said by both sides," a general at the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad, speaking under terms of anonymity, told IPS.

"It is true that the Badr militia and the Mehdi Army have committed thousands of political crimes against civilians as well as looting the economy of the country all along the years of the U.S. occupation to Iraq," he said.

The general added, "Evidence at the ministry show how terrible their behaviour was, but it was a political will of all the Iraqi prime ministers, from Iyad Allawi, to Ibrahim Jaafari, to the current Prime Minister [Nouri al-] Maliki to conceal the facts for personal and political reasons. The Americans definitely knew what was going on, but they had their reasons to keep quiet about them too. It is the Iraqis who will pay their blood at the end of the day."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 3 2006 (IPS)

As part of the drive to open up its markets and become a leading player in the Middle East and beyond, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has decided to institute a Friday-Saturday weekend.

According to a cabinet decision, federal ministries and institutions, local government departments and public and private schools will close on Fridays and Saturdays instead of the current Thursdays and Fridays.

“The move will help the ministries to deal effectively with the external world, mainly Europe and the United States. The UAE is signatory to thousands of international agreements which should be followed up by continuous work with the advanced world,” said Minister of Justice Mohammed Bin Nakhira Al Dhahiri in a press statement.

“We need to lessen the days which are eaten up by the holiday on Thursday as this affects communication with other parts of the world for the purpose of enforcement of these agreements,” he added.

A study conducted by the National Human Resources Development and Employment Authority (Tanmia) showed that the move would boost stock markets, banks, insurance companies and the UAE’s foreign trade. It would also help to increase private sector business dealings and reduce losses resulting from the difference between the UAE’s weekend and that in most other countries.

While the business community and economists welcomed the move, there was mixed reaction from other sections of society.

Mohammad Haider, an economist working for a market research firm in Dubai, explained the implications: “We have faced difficulties while conducting overseas transactions as we used to lose four working days – we are off on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday and Sunday the majority of European countries and the US are closed. This means we had no contact with global financial and investment centres for four full days.”

“This cabinet move would give a big boost …especially in tourism and communications, in light of the major expansion of development plans and negotiations for free trade agreements, which are currently underway with several countries,” he added.

“The timing is perfect,” according to Abdullah Al Hajeri, a UAE businessman based in Sharjah. “Coming at a time when our country is aiming to attract foreign investment and has ambitious economic plans, this announcement will further boost opportunities and the UAE’s relations with international markets.”

Office-goers and school authorities offered varying opinions.

“Earlier, my wife was off on Saturdays and I was off on Thursdays so the only time we were together was on Fridays which seemed to fly by like a flash,” said Vivek Menon, an Indian bank employee based in Ajman. “Now we will be able to spend more time with each other and our children will get the attention of both parents simultaneously.”

Said Pakistani schoolteacher Anwar Ali, “For us, the change will not be too difficult. Of course, it will give us more time to communicate better with our counterparts in other countries, but as far as our private schedules go, either Thursday or Saturday is fine.”

But Haifa Halabi, a Lebanese communications manager, was not happy. “Thursday was a good day to relax before getting ready for Friday prayers. It is difficult to get used to the fact that Saturday is the last day of the week and Sunday is the first day of work.”

In an interview with the Saudi daily, ‘Arab News’, a member of that country’s Shoura Council, Naif Al-Mutairy, also emphasised the religious angle. “People will misunderstand. Friday is the day of Muslims and Saturday is the day that Jewish people do not work. Taking a day off on Saturday will be interpreted wrongly because people would think that we are celebrating a Jewish day.”

Elsewhere in the region, Qatar already has a Friday-Saturday weekend and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are actively considering the change, though the move elicits mixed verdicts from the public at large.

In 2003 Qatar’s Civil Aviation Authority asked airlines and local travel agents to amend the validity of their weekend fares to destinations in the Gulf region in view of the Friday-Saturday weekend that several public and private sector firms had begun adopting. Weekend fares are extremely popular among residents of Qatar, who visit destinations such as Dubai and Bahrain for brief holidays or business-cum-pleasure trips.

The chairman of Bahrain’s Economic Development Board urged Bahrain to follow the UAE’s example. “It is highly important that we make the move now so we do not fall behind other countries in the region, especially as we want Bahrain to be a global hub,” said Sheikh Mohammad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa.

“Large international companies planning to open branches in the region invariably enquire about the weekend to assess their opportunities,” he added in the press statement.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 22 2005 (IPS)

Reacting to fears that the number of jobless nationals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could hit 40,000 and to complaints that national job seekers face discrimination, authorities have intensified the drive to promote “emiratisation”.

Nationals constitute just 9.3 percent of the labour market here – a rise of just 0.2 percent from 1995, according to a 2004 report by the National Human Resource Development and Employment Authority (Tanmia). Statistics also indicate that of the UAE’s total population of 4.3 million last year, only about 900,000 were nationals.

“Although only 11,000 nationals registered with Tanmia in 2004, most of them women, actual unemployment numbers are estimated to be between 37,000 and 40,000,” said Tanmia Head of Labour Market Studies Dr Abdul Razaq Al Faris, in a statement to the media.

“We are stepping up our efforts to ensure that this number (of registrations) increases sharply in the coming years. We are in the process of identifying the main obstacles and will be instituting several measures to overcome them,” added another official.

The renewed emphasis comes amid growing complaints of discrimination against nationals who try to find work in the private sector. Expatriates constitute 99 per cent of the UAE’s private-sector jobholders.

“The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has issued a stern warning that work permits will be withheld to private sector companies, which are not committed to ’emiratisation’, particularly in job sectors that suit the skills and aspirations of national graduates,” according to the official.

The oil boom in the Gulf countries in the last century exposed the region’s lack of human resources, both in terms of quality and quantity, and sparked the hiring of expatriates.

Over the years, there has been a steady increase in indigenous populations and a concerted effort to absorb locals into the labour force as part of the social and economic development process. It has been difficult, but evolving nevertheless.

The World Bank has said that close to 100 million new jobs will be needed in the Middle East over the next 20 years to absorb new entrants into the labour force.

The establishment of a training council to help UAE nationals acquire the specific skills needed for private sector jobs; the setting up of vocational training institutes; and the matching of qualified nationals to compatible institutions are some of the measures proposed by the government.

“Tanmia is also entering into agreements with several private sector institutions to implement reservation of jobs for nationals. The banking sector has already implemented this step and we hope the other sectors will follow suit,” said the official.

Typically, private sector firms in Gulf countries use three pay grades: one for westerners, the second for Arabs and the third for Asians, the first being the best paid.

If UAE companies employ nationals at all it is either because there is a new breed of talent emerging and/or because there is a law that states that all organisations with more than 100 employees must reserve a certain percentage of jobs for nationals.

“Emiratisation in the private sector is a pressing and complicated national issue. It mixes facts with illusions, success with failure, limitless expectations with crippling circumstances on the ground,” writes Dr Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, a leading academic, in the ‘Gulf News’, an English language daily.

“The minimum starting point would be attaining five per cent ’emiratisation’ within the next five years. Should this happen, it will constitute a huge national victory,” he added.

“But even this humble figure will not be realised because of the imbalanced job market, which is monopolised by foreign workers. Without interference by the government and pressure from society, the percentage of the national workforce in the private sector will not cross the current 0.5-1 per cent average, if not fall further in the near future,” he warned.

Tanmia says it is also working to highlight how private sector companies can benefit from its job-oriented training programmes like Maharat, which is designed to help national job seekers adjust to a competitive and multiracial market place.

At the same time, organisations are being encouraged to institute measures like providing college scholarships for deserving national students. And the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) has developed a new database of job seekers that will be available, free, for companies seeking to recruit nationals and for locals who want to register their availability.

Every year, the government also organises a Careers UAE fair, where its departments and other public and private sector bodies interact with nationals seeking jobs. The number of participating companies in 2005 rose 28 per cent, while job seekers reached 20,000, double the number of 2004.

“We are really happy that the government is doing so much to increase our career opportunities. We have heard about the reluctance of the private sector to employ nationals. Under the UAE labour law, work shall be an inherent right of nationals,” said Ali Al Muhairi, a university student attending the career fair.

“I will definitely grab all the opportunities that I get to hone my skills and increase my talents. When the authorities are doing so much to help us, it is only right that we don’t let them down,” said Ali.

According to Abdulkhaleq, “the theme of (Careers UAE) is important, but the more important aspect is that it is the only career event exclusively for nationals”.

Authorities, however, admit that nationals too have a role to play if they want to get into the right jobs and rise to high levels.

“The low figures are because not all job seekers apply to Tanmia for assistance, and not everybody who applies is unemployed. Moreover, our statistics also show that 44 percent of job seekers had only finished secondary studies, and another 22 percent had only a BA degree,” said Tanmia’s Abdul.

“It’s not shameful to talk about unemployment. What is shameful is for us to bury our heads in the ground and pretend it doesn’t exist.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Dec 22 2004 (IPS)

A free trade deal between the United States and the tiny Persian Gulf Kingdom of Bahrain is causing friction with other Arab states, which say the pact could weaken their economic bloc ahead of future trade talks with Washington.

A meeting of the heads of states of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), made up of the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) fell apart after Saudi Arabia, the largest and most influential member, said Bahrain’s deal would open a backdoor for U.S. goods to enter the region.

The GCC is an economic bloc established in 1981, modelled after the European Union (EU) and Mercosur, or the Southern Cone Common Market, in Latin America. The Arab grouping is scheduled to establish a single market and currency by 2010.

The leaders ended their summit Tuesday without solving the bitter dispute, which led Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to skip the gathering in protest.

After delaying their final session for three hours over the disagreement, the leaders finally released a statement that avoided the issue of trade altogether to maintain a solid public front, according to several Arabic language press reports, which added that the atmosphere at the gathering was visibly tense.

"We discussed bilateral agreements and decided to postpone a decision for a future meeting," Bahraini Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Mubarak al-Khalifa said in the statement.

"We don’t have to deal with this issue immediately and I am happy we have finalised this meeting as we have. There are always differences in opinions," he added.

Washington and Bahrain signed the trade deal in September. When the agreement, which will be ratified in 2005, goes into effect, 100 percent of consumer and industrial products and 81 percent of agricultural exports from the United States will enter the Gulf nation duty-free.

Under the deal Bahrain will open its services market wider than any other U.S. trading partner, adopt Washington’s preferred intellectual property rules and open government procurement to U.S. companies.

Saudi Arabia is worried that Bahrain signed the deal independent of its regional partners and that the new rules will see the region flooded with U.S. goods. The GCC governments have already dropped all trade tariffs among themselves, meaning that once in the region, U.S. goods could potentially move freely across borders.

Riyadh has reportedly said it may consider rolling back the tariff reductions and blocking trade from neighbouring countries to protect its economy.

That would be a setback for the long-term strategy devised by Washington to press larger countries to open up for U.S. trade.

After facing stiff opposition from big countries like Brazil in Latin America and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East over his ambitious trade plans, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick developed a strategy to strike deals with small countries in the same region in order to sway those larger nations.

Tiny nations stand to gain little economically from the pacts, but they do receive some political clout and status as U.S. trading partners.

Bahrain, an archipelago of some 30 islands, is a case in point. The tiny nation, with a population of only 730,000 people, has always tried to break free from the shadow of its larger neighbour, Saudi Arabia, a nation of 25 million people and the dominant player in global oil markets.

For example, Bahrain chose to give the United States its largest military bases in the Arab world, and it hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, earning it Washington’s designation as a "major non-NATO ally."

Its ruler, Sheikh Hamad Bin-Isa Al-Khalifah, designated himself king in February 2002 after he succeeded his father and changed Bahrain’s status from an emirate to a monarchy, in a move that was seen triggered by envy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In May 2003, and as part of its response to the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks – carried out by hijackers most of whom were Mideast nationals – U.S. President George W Bush announced an initiative to create a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) by 2013.

Since then, Washington has concluded FTAs with Morocco and Bahrain, and has said it will start talks with the UAE and Oman.

The United States already has FTAs with Jordan, a country of nearly five million people and Israel, whose population is six million people.

Washington believes those agreements will pressure larger nations to sign on to deals like the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and MEFTA, and to resume global negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Zoellick’s approach of cutting deals with small markets like Bahrain, known as "competitive liberalisation," has been assailed by some U.S. congressmen, who argue that negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with small countries wastes precious and limited U.S. negotiating resources.

Congress’ watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office, has also questioned the economic payoff of the accords. It estimated that all existing FTAs, plus those in progress, accounted for only about eight percent of total U.S. trade.

Bahrain is hardly a big fish for U.S. companies. Total two-way trade between the nations was only 900 million dollars in 2003, with the United States exporting more than half a billon dollars worth of goods and services. Bahraini exports included oil, gas and aluminium.

The Bush administration has completed FTAs with 10 other countries: Chile, Singapore, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Australia, Morocco and the Dominican Republic.

It is currently negotiating deals with ten other relatively small markets as part of its strategy: Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Thailand, and with the five nations of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) – Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 2004 (IPS)

High-level officials from Egypt, Israel and the United States signed a three-way trade deal Tuesday that would allow Israeli-Egyptian products duty-free access to the U.S. market, a further step toward launching a broader free trade pact in the Middle East.

The agreement creates “qualified industrial zones (QIZs)” in and around the cities of Cairo and Alexandria and the Suez Canal. Goods produced there would have duty-free access to the U.S. market as long as they contain at least eight percent of materials from Israel.

The QIZs are modelled after an earlier programme Washington established with Jordan and Israel in 1998.

The aim of the QIZs, authorised by Congress in 1996, is to encourage Israel’s economic integration into the Arab world. But many critics there say their real purpose is to force business with Israel on reluctant Arab populations, angered by Israel’s occupation of Arab land and by Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

Critics of the agreement signed Tuesday accused the United States of using trade for political ends and warned that, based on the Jordanian experience, the accord will not have the promised benefits for Egyptian industry.

“This is the most important economic agreement between Egypt and Israel in two decades,” said U.S. Trade Representative Robert B Zoellick in a statement announcing the deal last week.

“It is a concrete, practical result of President Bush’s plan to promote closer U.S. trade ties with the Middle East.”

In Cairo on Tuesday, Zoellick said Washington is preparing Egypt, with 73 million people the most populous nation in the Arab world, for the region’s broader trade deal.

“President Bush has outlined this plan to try to move towards a Middle East free trade agreement, and, as you know … this is not only with Egypt, but with all the countries in the region,” Zoellick said, according to the transcript of a brief press conference.

The deal was signed by Egyptian Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry Rachid Mohamed Rachid and Israeli Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a ceremony attended by Zoellick.

According to Washington, the QIZ model it created with the Jordan-Israel trade deal has been a success, because more than 35,000 jobs have been created within Jordan’s QIZs in the past few years.

But in a September 2004 review of that country, the World Bank says, “the recent economic growth has not translated into a commensurate increase in job creation or poverty reduction.”

“Unemployment (at 15 percent) and underemployment remain high, and deep pockets of poverty persist,” it adds.

Many local analysts and development groups agree that while the U.S. pact with Jordan and Israel gave the latter nation access to cheap Arab labour, it failed to reduce unemployment. They argue the agreement also caused widespread labour abuses while strengthening businessmen and the local elite.

Washington, a champion of Israel in the Middle East, has been trying to entice Arab governments to deal with the Jewish state via various diplomatic and economic measures. It negotiated the Israel-Jordan QIZ in 1998 before it signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Jordan in 2000.

Egypt balked at a possible trade deal with Washington in 2003 after protests from some small local industries, drawing public censure from Zoellick.

The Egyptian about-face came after the Washington-backed regime of President Hosni Mubarak appointed a new cabinet earlier this year, composed mostly of young western-educated businessmen with strong ties to western corporations and to the president’s son, Gamal.

Tuesday’s signing saw small but unprecedented protests by anti-corporate globalisation groups.

The Anti-Globalisation Egyptian Group (AGEG) organised a rally against what it called the sale of Egyptian workers for Israeli companies.

“Egyptian workers are not for sale,” chanted scores of protesters, according to reports from the Egyptian press.

Many other people protested across the country, slamming the deal as a form of “modern-day colonialism.”

Demonstrations were reported in the delta region of Mahala and Ismailiya, northeast of Cairo, involving mostly textile factory workers, who are likely to be affected by the deal.

In a statement on its website AGEG reiterated popular fears the deal will only benefit Egypt’s businessmen, who already control the government.

“This is an agreement marketed in Egypt’s name and under the pretext of reforming the national economy … but this is an evidence that businessmen have the upper hand in this regime,” it said.

Mubarak’s two sons, Gamal – who the president is grooming as his successor – and Alaa, are businessmen. The ailing leader has installed many of their friends from the business community in positions in and around the government.

In the latest cabinet reshuffle earlier this summer, several businessmen were appointed to ministerial positions including trade and finance minister Rachid, a wealthy former banker who was also chairman of household goods giant Unilever in North Africa.

Another local group, Kate3, which means “boycott” in Arabic, said it will publish blacklists including the names of the factories and the products made in the new QIZs, to warn workers to avoid them and to urge consumers worldwide to stop buying them.

The group says the Jordanian model is a failure because more than 20 percent of the labour used in that country’s QIZs come from Asian countries, like China, putting downward pressure on wages for locals.

Ali Hatter, an analyst with the group, wrote that while elites in the countries involved justify the deal by quoting meaningless numbers, local industries and factories that did not join the QIZs in Jordan were devastated because Washington restricts imports to those factories in the zones.

But in Cairo, Egyptians officials, some of who visited Washington two weeks ago, argue the QIZs will boost Egyptian textile exports. Because of new U.S. regulations that will take force early in 2005, textile exports from Egypt to the United States are due to drop.

U.S. President George W Bush proposed creating a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) soon after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, with a completion date of 2013.

In the region Washington now has FTAs with Israel, Jordan and Morocco; a deal with Bahrain is pending congressional approval; and U.S. officials will begin FTA talks with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman early next year.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Dec 6 2004 (IPS)

Somewhere between Halliburton and CARE, there is a cadre of contractors trying to help Iraq establish a working, private-sector economy. But the cost of securing their safety is frustrating many, as some firms report spending 25-30 percent of their contract revenues on armoured cars and small private armies.

These consultants have been hired for such tasks as: helping Iraqis create jobs by promoting entrepreneurism, improving agricultural and manufacturing efficiency, privatising loss-making state-owned firms, stimulating investment, developing information technology skills, and encouraging an independent judiciary and greater transparency in business and government.

Those efforts follow a blueprint established by the previous governing authority, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), set up by Washington soon after it led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The CPA passed laws to transform the nation’s socialist economy into a free-market system, in the process, critics say, making the country ripe for the picking by western economic interests.

One of those profiting is Texas-based Halliburton Inc, formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, which pulled in billions of dollars in no-bid contracts to help rebuild Iraq soon after the invasion.

The U.S. government, principally the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is spending some 3.3 billion dollars annually on contracts with firms hired to guide the transformation. But the companies are finding it increasingly frustrating to get anything done.

Based on email interviews with people whose companies are working in agriculture, economic development, governance and programme evaluation, IPS has learned that the major problem they face is security.

Although spending nearly one-third of their contract revenues on armoured cars, bodyguards and other safety measures, some contractors are constantly at risk, often unable to move around the country to work with the people they have been hired to help, and frequently forced to leave Iraq for certain periods for the relative safety of Jordan or Kuwait.

“I think it is almost impossible to do good work there right now, but the optimist in me hopes that will change,” said a senior executive for one contracting firm involved in municipal governance programmes. Said another: “There is really very little getting done in Iraq these days, for obvious reasons.”

Like almost all the people contacted for this article, they spoke on condition on anonymity.

One contractor described her company’s elaborate security set-up. “We had to hire a militia – 80 Kurdish ‘pesh merghas’ – to protect us. These are mountain fighters from the north of Iraq who were trained by U.S. and British paramilitary during the time of the (United Nations economic) sanctions” during the regime of former President Saddam Hussein.

“Each fighter has an AK-47, many of them have pistols, grenades and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and none of them would hesitate to use their weapons,” she added.

But the “rules of engagement” have changed as the resistance became more intense. Says the head of one programme, “In April, when the Mehdi Brigade revolted in the south and overran some compounds of American contractors, we told our fighters that if a mob threatened the compound they should shoot to maim – wound people as necessary, but do not kill.”

“Now, the situation is quite different, and our fighters will shoot to kill.”

Travelling has also become a far more serious problem – limiting consultants’ opportunities to work with their Iraqi clients.

“When I go outside the compound in Baghdad,” says one agricultural consultant, “I have two cars and eight guards, all heavily armed. The cars are low profile. I sit in the back in the middle, squeezed in between two guards, and in the front seat are a driver and guard.”

“The second car, filled with guards, follows directly behind my car. This is what Mrs Hassan of CARE did not have. Her lightly or unarmed guard and driver could not overpower the people who abducted her. We have known for some time that women are considered high-value targets for kidnapping, and it is a shame she did not assume that she was a potential target.”

Margaret Hassan, a British-Iraqi who had worked in Iraq for 30 years, was kidnapped by insurgents in October and presumed murdered in November after a video was released showing a woman being shot in the head.

Finding skilled consultants presents a mixed picture in a nation where U.S.-led forces have intensified their assaults in cities such as Fallujah and Ramadi in response to a growing number of suicide bombings and other attacks from insurgents trying to delay elections scheduled for January.

Despite the considerable risks, some contractors are finding no shortage of Americans eager to work in Iraq, as well as many local experts. Most of them appear to like their work and many non-Iraqis return for additional assignments.

But other consulting firms have a different experience. “It has become very difficult to recruit skilled American consultants during these last few months,” says one representative. “This does not negate the statement that there are many highly skilled consultants there, and that many of them return. But there is a greatly diminished number willing to go under current conditions.”

However, probably because of their relatively low profiles, these kinds of firms do not appear to have difficulty finding Iraqi subcontractors or staff members, while many Iraqi employees of companies involved in visible reconstruction work have been threatened, kidnapped and murdered.

Asks one consultant rhetorically: “How I can possibly like my job? There are days when I love it, and days when I am frustrated. It is compelling and the people are great.”

“Every consultant I have had wants to return to Baghdad. Today, one of my good consultants returned with great delight for his fourth trip to Baghdad. And there are plenty of others like him, just as crazy as I am.”

But some firms with experience in Iraq have declined to bid a second time as prime contractors, since those companies are responsible for costly security arrangements.

According to one major consulting firm: “We have taken the position that in the long run we want to work in Iraq. But last May, as conditions started to deteriorate, we predicted they would continue to worsen. We were correct.”

“Until security and operating conditions improve we will not be a prime bidder on any contract. And we will only bid as a subcontractor if we are relatively confident that the prime contractor has an effective security apparatus.”

Unlike these consulting firms, many not-for-profit humanitarian aid groups have left Iraq. “Of the dozens of international (aid) organizations that entered Iraq in 2003, fewer than 10 remain,” wrote Tiziana Dearing, executive director of the Hauser Centre for Non-profit Organizations at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, in the ‘Boston Globe’ on Nov. 27.

“CARE withdrew its operations from Iraq earlier this month. The perception is fading that relief is independent, neutral and exclusively for humanitarian ends,” she added.

Few consulting firms have left Iraq for good. Most say they are managing to get their work done, though usually far more slowly than they planned.

Says one agricultural consultant: “For the first time in a year we closed our Baghdad office last week, just before the Fallujah assault, and placed our local staff on administrative leave. We work through email with staff from their homes, and even with the conflict going on now they are able to conduct a reduced level of business.”

Typical of the major projects being carried out by consulting firms is USAID’s 20-million-dollar Economic Governance contract with Bearing Point, Inc, a giant consulting firm headquartered in McLean, in the state of Virginia.

The three-year contract is designed to assist in reforming tax, fiscal and customs policies as well as developing a monetary policy acceptable to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by building the capacity of Iraq’s Central Bank.

USAID is aware of the difficulties of working in Iraq’s hostile environment, USAID Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East Jim Kunder told a press briefing in Washington last week.

“There is insecurity, indisputably, in the central part of the country, in what is called the Sunni Triangle … in the Shia areas and in the Kurdish areas, which is 80 percent of the country, there is relative stability … sometimes you have … an incident one month, and then for six months everything will be fine.”

“So you just make adjustments and you’re flexible in terms of timing; you withdraw for a week and then you come back the next week if things calm down,” added Kunder.

Despite these difficulties, USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios points to solid achievements. He told the same briefing, “There are 400 to 500 expatriates working through the contractors and grantees that we are providing money to who are working across the country. And there are thousands and thousands of Iraqis working for these companies.”

One major contractor acknowledges, “there indeed is a lot of good going on in Iraq, but the fact that I cannot go to Baghdad because I might get my head cut off by a Zarqawi terrorist is not made better because Texas A&M brought in 1,000 pounds of wheat seed.”

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Nov 16 2004 (IPS)

A pending trade deal between the United States and Central American countries could force the collapse of rice production in those six developing nations and put thousands of farmers out of business, a leading development agency warned Tuesday.

The Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) is expected to pass a vote in the U.S. Congress in coming months. The deal ties the Dominican Republic and five Central American nations – Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua – to the United States.

Oxfam America said in its report the deal, which will force an end to import tariffs erected by the Central American countries while allowing the United States to maintain hefty financing of its system of internal supports and export credits, will open the doors to a flood of lavishly-subsidised U.S. rice exports.

In the 60 page document, Oxfam points to the trade liberalisation experience of Honduras in the 1990s, when the country opted to rapidly reduce protections for its rice producers, only to be snowed under by cheap U.S. imports, eventually leading to the near collapse of the country’s rice production.

The Honduran government made the move to compensate for shortages caused by a drought. In just a few months it imported a quantity of rice equal to the nation’s annual consumption, leaving producers without a market at harvest time.

Within 10 years, national rice production dropped by 86 per cent, and the number of producers fell from 25,000 to fewer than 2,000, according to Oxfam.

The group says it fears a repetition in the CAFTA countries as well as the Dominican Republic (DR).

The report, ‘A Raw Deal For Rice Under DR-CAFTA’, quotes farmers in Honduras complaining about the effects of U.S. exports on their production.

"Sinking rice prices (paid to farmers) due to massive imports from the United States had a terrible impact on us: it was like Hurricane Mitch," said Maria Angeles Amaya, a farmer from Santa Cruz de Yojoa. "My husband had to go to the United States for years (to work), and we survived with the money he sent."

Oxfam estimates that the U.S. rice industry receives more than one billion dollars in government subsidies annually, an amount greater than Nicaragua’s entire national budget.

In 2003, it says, U.S. rice producers enjoyed subsidies and supports worth 1.3 billion dollars, far more than the U.S. crop’s total value, which in 2002 was estimated at 844 million dollars, according to the group.

"These excessive levels of support allow large U.S. companies to dump rice on international markets," says the report.

"Under these conditions, the claim that DR-CAFTA will establish fair and equitable rules for all rice producers is very far from reality. Instead, it will open borders to the dumping of U.S. rice."

According to a fact sheet from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) website, CAFTA promises and demands more "economic reform in Central America."

The USTR paper claims that reform has already helped to raise incomes and fight poverty. For example, per capita income in El Salvador grew 10 times faster in the 1990s than in the 1980s because the country worked to tackle inflation, cut spending, crack down on corruption, privatise inefficient state-run businesses, and open the country to trade, according to the office.

No one from the USTR was available for an interview with IPS on Tuesday.

The DR-CAFTA nations are already a key export market for important U.S. manufactured goods, such as information technology products, agricultural and construction equipment, paper products, chemicals and medical and scientific equipment.

Under CAFTA one-half of current U.S. farm exports to the area will become duty-free, including some beef, cotton, wheat, soybeans, key fruits and vegetables, processed food products and wine.

"Small-scale bean, milk and meat producers face an uncertain future in light of the imminent flood of unfair imports," says the report.

Oxfam points out that six U.S. states produce nearly all rice grown in the United States: Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.

"What we are saying is that the U.S. support programme, the U.S. subsidies, need to be reformed and that until that happens, there will continue to be export dumping from the U.S.," Stephanie Weinberg, trade policy advisor at Oxfam, told IPS.

"As long as this situation continues, the Central American countries cannot trade with the U.S. on a level playing field."

Weinberg, who says trade has the potential to cut poverty in developing countries, added that DR-CAFTA would be a serious blow to Central America’s small agricultural producers, especially in rural areas where 60 percent of poor people are concentrated.

"DR-CAFTA is a bad deal for countries in the region as long as it exposes farmers to unfair competition from subsidised U.S. exports and denies them the right to protect themselves from such export dumping," she said.

Oxfam, an international anti-poverty organisation, forecasts that CAFTA will ruin the region’s rice industry, putting some 1.5 million jobs at risk, including those of an estimated 80,000 rice producers in Central America and the Dominican Republic.

In those countries, approximately 75 per cent of rice producers are small-scale farmers.

Sentiment against U.S. farm subsides has been on the rise, especially in Latin American nations. In Cancun, Mexico last year, some 22 developing nations banded together to stop multilateral trade talks to protest the failure of rich nations, especially the United States, to knock down their hefty subsidies to their farmers.

Brazilian rice farmers are reportedly gearing up to challenge U.S. subsidies before the World Trade Organisation (WTO), in the wake of recent success the country’s cotton producers had in challenging U.S. farm subsidies.

Countries in Latin America have complained that between 1999 and 2002, Washington paid subsidies totalling 5.8 billion dollars to rice producers. More than 40 percent of U.S. rice is routinely exported.

Opposition to U.S. moves is growing as Washington has embarked on an ambitious trade agenda throughout the world. For example, it is negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with the Southern African Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland).

U.S. officials are also trying to set up a Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA) to compliment bilateral trade deals with Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Bahrain. On Monday, the USTR said Washington will begin talks with the United Arab Emirates and Oman on free trade agreements.

Washington has also announced it intends to begin discussions with Thailand, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama.

Talks on a hemispheric-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) stalled after the latest meeting November 2003 in Miami, particularly over U.S. refusal to end support to its farmers.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2004 (IPS)

With Monday’s launch of ‘Operation Phantom Fury’ to regain control of the key insurgent-dominated Sunni city of Fallujah, the administration of U.S. President George W Bush appears to be moving toward another ”phantom victory” in its broader quest to achieve a stable, pro-western Iraq.

While experts here are united in the conviction that the 10,000 – 15,000 U.S. troops and a reportedly diminishing number of Iraqi auxiliaries will militarily crush the estimated 1,000 – 4,000 insurgents who remain in the city, they also believe the eventual outcome will mark yet another political setback to stabilising the country.

In particular, the operation, especially if bloody and protracted, will almost certainly further alienate the Sunni population, who constitute about 20 percent of Iraq’s 25 million people, not to mention the much larger Sunni communities in neighbouring countries, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

”The entire Arab public opinion, which had hoped for Bush’s (electoral) defeat, has been watching developments carefully”, noted As’ad Abukhalil, an Iraq specialist at the University of California at Berkeley. ”But now they will see the scenes of carnage on live TV contrasted with the celebratory ambiance in Washington, DC.”

The campaign also threatens to split the interim Iraqi government whose president, Ghazi al-Yawer, has opposed a major offensive and last April threatened to resign after hundreds of civilians were reported killed when U.S. Marines last tried to take Fallujah.

”There was already a struggle within the (Iraqi) Sunni community between those open to participation in January’s elections and those who favour a boycott," noted Juan Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan. ”An ‘iron fist’ policy is likely to shift the balance of power in the community toward the rejectionists”.

”So, in going forward with the campaign, U.S. forces are really shooting themselves in the foot”, Cole added, noting that while U.S. forces clearly defeated the ragtag Mehdist militia of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf in August, it also succeeded in boosting the young cleric’s political standing within and even beyond the majority Shiite community to unprecedented heights, according to surveys taken the following month.

That, of course, is not the way the Bush administration sees either Operation Phantom Fury (soon to be renamed ”New Dawn”) or last August’s Najaf campaign, which it has depicted as both a military and a political victory because of Sadr’s tentative decision to take part in January’s vote and the militia’s partial disarmament in Baghdad’s Sadr City.

In its view, the persistence of insurgent control of one of the ”Sunni Triangle’s” largest towns, its status as a ”no-go” area and its use as a base for attacks all over the country could not be tolerated given the overriding short-term objective of pulling off the national elections.

”One part of the country cannot remain under the rule of assassins … and the remnants of (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein”, declared Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference Monday.

”You can’t have a country if you have a safe haven for people who chop people’s heads off. These folks are determined. They’re killers. They chop people’s heads off. They’re getting money from around the world. They’re getting recruits”.

Rumsfeld was careful to stress that victory in the battle of Fallujah would not end the insurgency. But he argued that if successful elections are held in January as a result of defeating the insurgents there, a ”tipping point” in securing Iraq could be reached, similar to one he said had been reached in Afghanistan, where unexpectedly smooth polls were carried out last month.

Hawks within and outside the Bush administration have been calling for a major offensive against the Fallujah-based insurgency virtually since April, when White House policymakers, fearful of the political costs of what had become a bloodbath, called off a three-week Marine offensive to retake the city and punish those responsible for the lynching and mutilation of four U.S. security contractors.

The Marines handed over control to a group of military and security officers from the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, many of who were apparently fighting with the insurgency. Since then, the city has reportedly been run by a coalition of former Baathists, other nationalists, fundamentalist Iraqi Sunnis and some foreign fighters who, according to Washington, answer to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who U.S. officials say is linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist movement.

As the U.S. election drew to a close last week, the neo-conservative commentators, in particular, began baying for a no-holds-barred campaign as a way of ”setting an example” to insurgents elsewhere in Iraq, and indeed in the Arab world as a whole.

”Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it”, wrote one neo-conservative former military officer, Ralph Peters, in the ‘New York Post’, while the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page declared the insurgents ”have to be killed if Iraq is ever going to be able to hold free elections”.

The same editorial railed against United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for sending a letter to Bush, Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week cautioning against an offensive.

Annan warned, ”the threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities (in Iraq), but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation”. The Journal called the letter a ”hostile act”.

Yet most experts here agreed with Annan’s analysis, which they said has been bolstered by a number of developments, including the reported desertion over the weekend of more than one-half of a 500-man battalion of Iraqi National Guard that was supposed to fight alongside the Marines.

Both the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), one of the main Sunni clerical groups, and Sadr’s aides have urged their co-religionists not to take part in the assault.

More desertions will make it far more difficult for the Marines to turn over control of Fallujah, once it is re-taken, to local forces, a conclusion that was also reinforced this weekend when insurgents – who supposedly had been routed from Samarra in a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation – set off multiple co-ordinated attacks in that city, killing at least a dozen National Guard and local police.

Underlining the tenuousness of the security situation, the attacks prompted Allawi to declare martial law over the entire country, except Kurdistan, for the next 60 days, a step that, as pointed out by the ‘Los Angeles Times’ Monday, was starkly at odds with his declaration on a visit here in late September that of Iraq’s 18 provinces, "14 to 15 are completely safe”.

The weekend’s desertions reportedly left only one fully intact Iraqi unit deployed with the Marines on the outskirts of Fallujah – the 36th Battalion, whose troops were recruited mostly from Kurdish and Shi’a militia. ”If the 36th turns out to be the ‘Iraqi face’ of the new government in Fallujah”, noted one worried administration official, ”it’ll be seen as another occupation force”.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 3 2004 (IPS)

Crucial evidence of alleged human rights abuses that could be used in upcoming trials of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his top aides has apparently been lost or damaged due to U.S. neglect, says a report released Thursday.

While charges continue to fly that U.S.-led coalition forces failed to secure stockpiles of arms and explosives after invading Iraq, weapons now turned against them in the violence-ridden occupied nation, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Pentagon planners also did not protect potential evidence of massive rights abuses.

In a 41-page report, ‘Iraq: The State of the Evidence’, the group charged that the failure to secure the evidence, particularly mass burial sites, has frustrated the efforts of families of thousands of relatives who were “disappeared” during Hussein’s rule to recover records or remains.

“Given what’s at stake here, the extent of this negligence is alarming,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division.

“The U.S. and Iraqi authorities were aware that these documents and remains would be crucial to the prosecution of Saddam Hussein and other former officials, but they did little to safeguard them,” she added in a statement.

The report comes at a time of some uncertainty about the fate of the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST), the body created in December 2003 by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to take up a range of crimes allegedly committed by the Iraqi ex-dictator, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The IST’s administrator, Salem Chalabi, was summarily fired by Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi earlier this summer, apparently for political reasons. Allawi has called for expediting the planned trials of Hussein, who was captured last December, and some two dozen of his top aides.

In a second blow to the IST, the United Nations last month refused a request by Allawi and the administration of U.S. President George W Bush to assist the tribunal in its work.

The world body declined because defendants who are convicted by the IST could face the death penalty and because, in the view of U.N. experts who have worked on war-crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, its procedures do not meet minimum international standards of justice.

The tribunal’s founding statute, for example, allows for defendants’ attorneys to be excluded from interrogations and even court appearances and also permits the admission of testimony obtained under coercion. HRW, as well as other independent human rights groups, have also called the tribunal ”fundamentally flawed.”

That Hussein and his henchmen ruled with exceptional brutality is widely accepted, although many of his victims fell in wartime – probably about one million Iraqis and Iranians during the bloody war the two Gulf powers waged between 1980 and 1988.

As many as 100,000 more – mostly Iraqi soldiers – are believed to have been killed during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.

But the former leader’s killing of real or suspected dissidents, including the murder of as many as 70,000 Kurds during the notorious Operation Anfal during the Iraq-Iran war and another 30,000 to 60,000 Shiites in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, are also notorious.

Altogether, Hussein is believed to be responsible for the executions of as many as 250,000 civilians since his Ba’ath Party took power in 1968.

The documentary records of these abuses were left largely intact by Iraqi officials as U.S. and coalition forces made their way to Baghdad in March and April 2003. Since the invasion, more than 250 mass graves, a number that hold the remains of thousands of victims, have been identified throughout the country.

But HRW noted that in the weeks and months that followed the invasion, U.S. and coalition forces failed to prevent people from looting thousands of documents or to keep relatives of “disappeared” persons from digging up remains found in many of the gravesites.

Moreover, once seized with the problem of disappearing evidence, the coalition proved slow to secure the offices and deploy forensic experts to the graves in order to excavate, exhume and classify the remains, both to ensure that families could know the fate of their relatives and that the evidence obtained could be used in a court of law.

The situation has not much improved since Allawi’s government took over last June, adds the report, which called on him to set up a joint Iraqi and international Commission for Missing Persons to establish effective procedures for securing what documentary and forensic evidence remains.

“The extent of the negligence with which key documentary and forensic evidence has been treated to date is surprising, given that the U.S.-led coalition and Iraqi authorities alike knew that trials of Hussein and key Ba’ath government officials would be important landmarks in Iraq’s political recovery, that successful trials require solid evidence and that, as international experience has shown, preserving trial-ready evidence is a difficult task,” the report said.

Still, it continued, ”it is not too late to assume custody of millions of additional pieces of evidence (that) may prove critical in the proceedings of the upcoming trials.”

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 27 2004 (IPS)

The United States has failed to meaningfully change its policies on the treatment of prisoners, opening the door to repeats of abuses like those at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and making an independent probe into torture by the U.S. military essential, says a leading human rights group.

In a 200-page report released Wednesday, London-based Amnesty International (AI) stressed that without such an investigation and the clear, unequivocal rejection of torture and ill-treatment by top U.S. officials, “the conditions remain for further abuses to occur.”

Six months after CBS-TV’s ’60 Minutes’ broadcast photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, AI welcomed a number of Pentagon-sponsored probes into the torture and other abuse there but warned they alone are not sufficient.

“Many questions remain unanswered, responsible individuals are beyond the scope of investigation, policies that facilitate torture remain in place, and prisoners continue to be held in secret detention,” said William Schulz, executive director of the U.S. section of Amnesty (AIUSA).

“The failure to substantially change policy and practice after the scandal of Abu Ghraib leaves the U.S. government completely lacking in credibility when it asserts its opposition to torture,” he added in a statement.

The report also calls on U.S. President George W Bush to make public and rescind any measures or directives authorised by him or any other official that could be interpreted as authorising “disappearances,” torture, or other inhuman treatment.

It was released amid almost daily revelations about how decades-old U.S. policies regarding the treatment of prisoners-of-war were either circumvented or ignored by small groups of political appointees in the Bush administration, who argued that those policies were obsolete in waging what one White House memorandum called a “new kind of war.”

Investigative articles appearing over the past three days in the ‘New York Times’ have described how top lawyers in the Pentagon, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, the Justice Department and the White House kept Bush’s own national security adviser, the State Department and career military attorneys in the dark about their plans for “military commissions” that deprived suspects in the “war on terrorism” of basic rights under domestic and international law.

At the same time, the ‘Washington Post’ reported that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with the Pentagon’s cooperation, had secretly transferred dozens of non-Iraqi prisoners out of Iraq since the March 2003 invasion, under an opinion by political appointees in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in direct defiance of the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

The revelations come on top of disclosures after the Abu Ghraib scandal last April of legal memoranda prepared by political appointees that appeared to justify the use of torture and ill-treatment against detainees, practices that were explicitly prohibited by U.S. Armed Forces field manuals over the past several decades.

All of these disclosures have contributed to calls by AI and other groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Human Rights First, dating back to last April and May, for a comprehensive independent probe of torture and abuses. In a resolution passed last summer, the American Bar Association (ABA) also urged such a move.

Until now, the Bush administration ignored these calls, arguing that the Pentagon’s own efforts to investigate and prosecute abuses were adequate for dealing with the issue.

Earlier this month, for example, the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division recommended that 28 soldiers be charged in connection with the beating deaths of two prisoners at a detention facility in Afghanistan in December 2002, while some seven military police are being prosecuted or have plead guilty to charges arising from the Abu Ghraib abuses.

Last Thursday one Army reservist, the highest-ranking soldier charged after the Abu Ghraib scandal exploded in the international media, was sentenced to eight years in prison for abuse.

Amnesty’s new report, ”Human Dignity Denied: Torture and Accountability in the ‘War on Terror’,” documents what it calls a pattern of human rights violations running from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib via Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (where prisoners in the “war on terror” were taken to a specially-constructed detention facility that the Bush administration maintained was outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law) and “secret” overseas detention facilities about which the administration has said virtually nothing.

The report stressed that no senior U.S. officials has yet been held accountable.

Noting the administration’s claims that prosecuting the “war on terror” after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon required “new thinking,” the report finds the administration’s ideas about how to fight the war fit a “historically familiar pattern of violating human rights in the name of national security.”

It argues that decisions linked to torture start at the very top. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, for example, explicitly authorised a number of abuses – including stripping, isolation, hooding, stress positions, sensory deprivation, the use of dogs in interrogations and secret detentions, which amount to serious human rights violations and, in some cases, torture.

“The denial of habeas corpus, the use of incommunicado and secret detention – in some cases amounting to ‘disappearance’ – and the sanctioning of harsh interrogation techniques are classic but flawed responses,” Amnesty said.

“By lowering safeguards, demonising detainees, and displaying a disregard for its international legal obligations, the administration at best sowed confusion among interrogators and at worst gave the green light to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

It said the sheer number of abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq that have come to light through media leaks or official Pentagon investigations has “punctured the administration’s assertions that torture and ill-treatment were restricted to Abu Ghraib and a few aberrant soldiers.”

An independent commission of credible experts should be formed, and call on the advice of international groups and agencies that specialise in such investigations, including the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, the report recommends.

It should be empowered to investigate all levels and agencies of the U.S. government, including the CIA, whose operations – including secret transfers of detainees to other countries – have so far largely escaped scrutiny.

Any commission should also include within its scope recommendations for preventing future torture and ill treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, beginning with a clear requirement that the highest administration officials must make clear their absolute and unequivocal opposition to torture and abuse under any circumstances.

Such a move is indispensable in light of the memoranda prepared by the administration to justify abuses. “What these documents show is a two-faced strategy to torture,” according to AI. “It has been a case of proclaim your opposition to torture in public, while in private discuss how your president can order torture and how government agents can escape criminal liability for torture.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
NEW YORK, Oct 19 2004 (IPS)

A landmark reform plan prepared by 40 civil society groups from 15 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries for a recent G8 meeting in New York is at risk of “a false start,” according to one of its signatories.

The meeting to discuss the seven-point plan, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, “was quickly hijacked by ‘officialdom’, in the shape of a duo between the U.S. secretary of state and the minister of foreign affairs of Morocco,” according to Chibli Mallat, Jean Monnet Professor in Law and director of the Centre for the Study of the European Union in Beirut.

“The more challenging avenues forced open by the report were not responded to,” he told IPS, adding, “Follow up is key. It must happen both in the Arab-Middle East movement, and there are efforts now, also being discussed with World Bank leaders, for a more cohesive structure of free Arab voices.”

“It must also happen internationally, where the false start in New York develops into an assertive banging on the table in Morocco by Arab democrats. Otherwise the New York meeting will remain a simple, soon forgotten blip while the Middle East continues descending in self-destructive immobility where violence is the only force,” Mallat added in an email interview.

Another spokesman for one of the participating groups, Moataz El Fegiery, programme officer at the Cairo Institute For Human Rights Studies, told IPS his organisation “is in consultation now with Arab and international human rights organisations tohold parallel meetings” for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the G8 Forum for the Future in Morocco.

“Our target is to enable civil society to have an effective impact on the forum,” added El Fegiery.

The MENA NGOs called on the G8 (group of eight most industrialised) nations to make “a more solid commitment” to “three imperatives – freedom, democracy and justice.” The group said it wants “ballot-based, non-violent change at all levels of our societies and states, starting from the top.”

Its document urged MENA governments not to delay reforms until all major regional problems have been solved, declaring: “We shall not simply demand a peaceful, fair and comprehensive solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, nor simply demand peace, democracy and territorial integrity in Iraq or a peaceful and fair solution to the Kashmir conflict and the establishment of democracy in Afghanistan.”

“Governments in the region have often used these regional security issues to delay political, economic and social reform, as if solving these issues can only come at the cost of suppression and oppression,” added the reformers. Instead, they asserted, “internal reform is urgent, with no buts or ifs related to regional security and peace.”

“While the participation of concerned governments in the region would be welcome, we cannot wait,” the organisations told the G8. “Most governments turn a deaf ear to internal calls for reforms.”

The plan grew out of a meeting in Beirut in early September attended by 40 leading MENA civil society groups. It was presented to foreign ministers from the G8 and Arab countries in New York and is intended to feed into the Forum for the Future set up at the G8 summit in the United States in June.

The group’s seven-point plan includes:

1. Protecting citizenship equality and participation, especially gender equality, with special attention to the victimisation of women;

2. Strengthening the rule of law by enhancing the independence and role of the judiciary, and monitoring and removing laws that violate human rights and international standards. Emergency laws, special and military courts, undue police detentions and regular reliance on torture must be abolished;

3. Protecting and enlarging freedom of expression, freedom of the press and freedom of organisation;

4. Encouraging critical inquisitive thinking in education generally, and in religious education, where intolerance is actively advocated in its name;

5. Creating jobs for the five-seven million entrants into the region’s job market, especially the poor and those left behind, by promoting investment in quality services and value-added products, small and micro enterprises, competitiveness and quality, innovation, environmental sustainability and social services.

6. Combating corruption at all levels to ensure the accountability of bureaucracies and the transparency of organisations, both private and public, and financial institutions.

7. Promoting creative arts and culture, and the qualitative enlargement of public space.

The Beirut event was organised by the Lebanese Transparency Association, the U.N. Development Programme, the Programme on Governance in the Arab Region, the Economic Research Forum and the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies.

It included representatives of universities, human rights organisations, think tanks, newspapers and women’s groups, from Lebanon, Morocco, Bahrain, the Palestinian Territories, Yemen, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Qatar, the UAE, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and Oman.

The reform plan urged industrialised nations to create a “multilateral organisation or a special G8 agency and an emergency fund” committed to “releasing prisoners of conscience, supporting their families and rehabilitating them once freed.” It called this action “the freedom imperative.”

Governments in the region, it added, “have failed to achieve development and to absorb pressures from their local public opinion for reform.”

It called for help in what it termed “the democratic imperative,” noting, “While most of our countries have parliaments, and occasionally courageous and outspoken members within them, their power is curtailed by executive power, as indeed is the power of our judges, which is constantly undermined by executive interference.”

Groups participating in the plan included the Arab NGO Network for Development, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, the University of Bahrain, Yemen’s Human Rights Information and Training Centre, Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, the Iraqi Foundation for Development and Democracy, the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, the Centre for Arab Women Research and Training and the University of Algiers.

When Washington first proposed its “greater Middle East initiative” last year, the idea was greeted with hostility by many Arab governments who felt that the West, particularly the United States, was trying to “impose democratic reforms from outside.”

But, as reported by IPS in June, the revised U.S. plan emphasises increased trade and investment as well as political, legal and social reforms.

It has become an economic blueprint for the region, with the World Bank and other financial institutions slated to play a central role. The U.S. initiative also proposes an alliance between business leaders from the G8 and their counterparts in the Arab Business Council.

Excerpt:

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Oct 18 2004 (IPS)

Now that President George W. Bush’s allegations about former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda and ambitious weapons programmes have been thoroughly discredited, another outstanding charge remains to be resolved.

During a campaign speech in September 2002, Bush cited a number of reasons – in addition to alleged terrorist links and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) about why Saddam was so dangerous to the U.S., noting, in particular that, ”After all, this is the guy who tired to kill my dad.”

He was referring, of course, to an alleged plot by Iraqi intelligence to assassinate Bush’s father, former president George H.W. Bush, during his triumphal visit to Kuwait in April, 1993, 25 months after U.S.-led forces chased Iraqi troops out of Kuwait in the first Gulf War and three months after Bush Sr. surrendered the White House to Bill Clinton.

Although he did not name his father, Bush Jr. also cited the assassination attempt in his September 2002 address at the United Nations General Assembly where he called on the U.N. Security Council to approve a tough resolution demanding that Saddam fully give up his (non-existent) WMD weapons and programmes.

While the alleged plot was never cited officially as a cause for going to war, some pundits – including Maureen Dowd of the ‘New York Times’- have speculated that revenge or some oedipal desire to show up his father may indeed have been one of the factors that drove him to Baghdad – as the sign of one demonstrator suggested in a big anti-war march here just before the war: ”I love my dad, too, but come on!”

The circumstances of the alleged plot, which ended in a trial and conviction of 11 Iraqis and three Kuwaitis, have always evoked scepticism, although Clinton himself was apparently sufficiently convinced after receiving reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to order a missile strike on the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad that killed six civilians in June, 1993.

But a closer look at the 11-year-old plot, particularly in light of the findings by the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the special team of experts that spent 15 months investigating Baghdad’s WMD programmes, that they were all dismantled in 1991, shortly after the end of the Gulf War, may now be warranted, especially if Bush is still labouring under the impression that Saddam ”tried to kill (his) dad”.

While the ISG’s 960-page report, known as the Duelfer Report, does not address the assassination attempt, its chronology and depiction of Hussein’s worldview – adduced through lengthy interviews by one Arabic-speaking FBI investigator and other interviews of Saddam’s closest advisers – make the notion that the Iraqi dictator tried to kill Bush all the more implausible.

For one thing, Saddam, according to the report, was convinced that the CIA had thoroughly penetrated his regime and thus would know not only that he had dismantled his WMD (which the CIA apparently did not), but also would know about his plans for important intelligence operations. Under those circumstances, it is hard to understand why he would then order an assassination attempt on the former U.S. president.

Even more interesting, according to the report, was Saddam’s ”complicated” view of the U.S. While he derived ”prestige” from being an enemy of the U.S., he also considered it to be ”equally prestigious for him to be an ally of the United States – and regular entreaties were made during the last decade to explore this alternative”.

Indeed, beginning already in 1991, according to the report, ”very senior Iraqis close to the President made proposals through intermediaries for dialogue with Washington.”

”Baghdad offered flexibility on many issues, including offers to assist in the Israel- Palestine conflict. Moreover, in informal discussions, senior officials allowed that, if Iraq had a security relationship with the United States, it might be inclined to dispense with WMD programmes and/or ambitions,” it added.

The report even concluded that Iraq was willing to be Washington’s ”best friend in the region bar none”.

The fact that the U.S., under Bush Sr. and Clinton, did not show interest was apparently a source of bewilderment to the Iraqi leader, according to the Duelfer report.

If Saddam had tried to kill the ex-president, he probably would not have been bewildered by Washington’s lack of interest, but, by all accounts, he was.

”From the report, Saddam seems to be not a madman, but someone who would understand very well the consequences of an assassination”, notes Gregory Thielmann, a former senior State Department analyst who specialised in Iraq’s WMD programmes.

”If his top priority was getting the (UN economic) sanctions lifted (as indicated by the report), then it doesn’t follow that he would try to kill the president of the United States,” added Thielmann.

As portrayed by both the alleged assassins and the Kuwaitis who grabbed them, the plot was itself deeply amateurish, dependent on the leadership of Wali Abdelhadi Ghazali, a 36-year-old male nurse, Raad Abdel-Amir al-Assadi, from Najaf, and a dozen Iraqi whiskey smugglers led by a 33-year-old owner of a coffee shop in Basra that was meeting-place for cross-border smugglers. Despite his age, al-Assadi confessed to being a colonel in the Iraqi intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, according to the Kuwait authorities.

Ghazali, who initially said he was approached and supplied with explosives and cars by the Mukhabarat was the only person in the group who knew that Bush was the target. Other defendants confessed to transporting explosives across the border from Iraq but insisted they had no idea what they were for.

Both Ghazali and Assadi retracted their confessions during the trial, claiming that they were extracted by repeated beatings. At the time, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International expressed strong doubts that the trials could be fair, noting that it had received credible reports of severe beatings meted out to defendants accused of capital crimes in Kuwait. Assadi insisted that he was asked by the Mukhabarat to plant bombs around shopping centres in Kuwait City.

U.S. investigators, however, reported that they believed the confessions were not coerced and noted the similarity in the construction of the bombs found with the Iraqis with one known to have been built in Iraq in 1991.

In October, 1993, however, New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh assailed the government’s case as ”seriously flawed”, noting among other problems that seven bomb experts had told him that the devices were mass-produced and probably not even manufactured in Iraq.

Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who met with Saddam when he served as U.S. charge d’affaires in Baghdad during the Gulf War, said he found the plot ”odd”.

”(Saddam) had to have had some idea that his ability to run operations outside Iraq was not very good, because we had foiled so many things before the war. So you have to ask why someone who was a risk-taker but clearly not suicidal would undertake to assassinate a former president of the United States,” pointed out Wilson.

Larry Johnson, a top counter-terrorist official at the State Department, said he still has ”no doubts” about the plot, recalling Saddam’s ”gangster” ethic. ”Personal honour was involved,” he said.

Excerpt:

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 2004 (IPS)

When the League of Arab States was created in 1945, it was perceived as the ultimate symbol of Arab nationalism in a politically and militarily de-moralised Middle East.

But in recent years, the 22 members of the pan-Arab organisation have been struggling to find common cause and their meetings have been characterised mostly by political brawls and near-fisticuffs.

At one of its summits in March last year, the cameras stopped rolling to prevent the recording of insults and name-calling by two Arab leaders.

”You see the Arab League get together, and certain members can’t even have a conversation,” says Jehane Noujaim, the Lebanese-American filmmaker who produced ‘Control Room’, a widely acclaimed documentary on the Arab television network Al-Jazeera.

”They’re all standing on tables fighting with one another. Al- Jazeera is one entity that everyone across the Arab world watches. They may be the only remaining base of Arab nationalism that exists. Arabs are proud of that,” says Noujaim.

Based in the Qatari capital of Doha and launched in November 1996, Al-Jazeera is not merely ”an Arab phenomenon” but also a remarkably popular television network that now rivals giants such as Cable News Network (CNN) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), particularly in the Arab world.

But the eight-year-old network has failed to win plaudits from the administration of U.S. president George W Bush, which has denounced it as ”inflammatory” – specifically for its aggressive reporting on civilian casualties in Iraq and for being ”a mouthpiece” for Iraqi insurgents and for the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, Osama bin Laden. The network denies the charges.

”We have very deep concerns about Al-Jazeera’s broadcasts because, again and again, we find inaccurate, false, wrong reports that are, we think, designed to be inflammatory,” U.S. State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in April.

In U.S.-occupied Iraq, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib says Al-Jazeera has been showing ”a lot of crimes and criminals on TV, and they transfer a bad picture about Iraq and about Iraqis and encourage criminals to increase their activities.”

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a formal protest against the network when he met Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabir al-Thani in Washington last April.

And the ‘New York Times’ reported that the Bush administration refused to invite Qatar as an ”observer” to the summit meeting of eight world leaders (the G8) in the state of Georgia last June because the Qatari government had failed to curb the ”excesses” of Al-Jazeera.

”For many years, top officials in Washington have bemoaned the lack of a free press and other democratic freedoms in Arab countries,” says Norman Solomon, executive director of the Washington-based Institute for Public Accuracy.

Yet since 2001, the Bush administration has increasingly pressured the Government of Qatar to clamp down on Al-Jazeera, he adds.

”In recent months the U.S. State Department has escalated its campaign to persuade Qatar to turn the screws on Al-Jazeera. This effort cuts the legs out from under Washington’s claims that it supports democratisation in the Middle East,” Solomon told IPS.

In the case of Al-Jazeera, on the contrary, the White House has made clear that the U.S. government fervently desires outright censorship and repression, he added.

The United States, which relocated its Central Command (CENTCOM) from Saudi Arabia to Qatar early this year, has its biggest single Middle East military base in Doha, about 15 miles from the offices of Al-Jazeera.

Asked if the new political and military relationship between Qatar and Washington would impinge on Al-Jazeera, one of its London-based programme presenters, Malek Triki, says the network will continue to maintain its editorial independence.

He says that on certain controversial issues, Al-Jazeera ”has agreed to disagree” with the Qatari government, which has not put any pressure on the network despite U.S. demands.

Speaking at a seminar, ‘The role of the media in the development of the Arab world’, held in the Finnish capital of Helsinki last month, Triki said the Arab ruling elites who control the bulk of the region’s economic and political resources, have imported a development model based on economic growth, but have taken care to empty it of its progressive substance.

The participants in the seminar, which was co-sponsored by Inter Press Service (IPS) and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, included representatives from the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television network, the U.S.-backed Al-Hurra network in Washington DC and the School of Mass Communications in Cairo University, the Arab world’s largest university.

”Transposed to any western context, nothing of what Al-Jazeera has done and is doing is out of the ordinary,” Triki told the seminar. ”Had it been launched in a region used to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, such as northern Europe or Canada, Al-Jazeera would hardly have made any ripple; it would have been just another TV channel.”

“But in the autocratic, authoritarian, censorship-ridden, taboo-obsessed Arab world, Al-Jazeera was an innovation,” he added.

Al-Jazeera has played ”a leading role” in furthering the cause of Arab political development and in liberalising Arab political culture, according to Triki.

Asked to explain the reasons for the network’s phenomenal success in the Arab world, Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor to the Washington-based ‘Middle East Report’, says: ”The success of Al-Jazeera is, in my view, primarily explained by a very simple reality: it has broken the monopoly of the state-owned, government-controlled broadcasting organisations that dominated the Arab world since the advent of mass communication technologies, by rejecting their formula for providing news.”

Conventional state broadcasters were designed not to provide news but rather to legitimise their regimes and, more often than not, glorify their leaders, he added. ”Consequently, they lost their legitimacy and credibility – being correctly seen as third-rate propaganda outfits,” Rabbani told IPS.

“Their headlines were never about what actually happened that day, but rather about how the leader responded to them.”

If you go back through the record, he said, you will find that the news was not ‘Nelson Mandela released from prison’ or ‘hundreds of thousands dead in Rwanda’ but rather ‘King/President X congratulates Mandela on his release from prison’ or ‘expresses alarm at the situation in central Africa’.

”Al-Jazeera is altogether different: it is based in Qatar and funded by the Qatari royal family, but the number of times Qatari news led the bulletin can be counted on one hand, and even then was usually for legitimate reasons,” Rabbani added.

In other words, he said, the network’s main success is that compared to state broadcasters it provides news rather than regime propaganda. And by not emphasising the comings and goings of a single leadership, it garnered pan-Arab appeal.

Another factor has been Al-Jazeera’s willingness to confront controversial issues and provide a diversity of viewpoints – certainly more diversified than is available on any of the leading U.S. broadcasters.

”I would also add that this formula has been put to good use by a host of other Arab channels, such as Al-Arabiyya, Abu Dhabi and Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) to name just a few, so would not single out Jazeera in this respect, though it certainly was the pioneer,” Rabbani said.

Al-Jazeera is an enigma, says Naseer H Aruri, chancellor professor (emeritus) of the University of Massachusetts.

Owned by the Amir of Qatar, one of the most pro-western sheikhdoms in the Arabian Peninsula, it is hardly a bastion of Arab nationalism and steadfastness against ongoing U.S. penetration, yet the network is an indispensable source of news about the daily atrocities committed against Arab civilians by occupying armies in Palestine and Iraq.

”The coverage of Al-Jazeera has been a thorn in the side of the neo-conservatives who rule America today and whose distortion of political realities relating to the U.S. debacle in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ‘war on terror’ eluded the mainstream U.S. media, which acts more as a government appendage than an independent source of news and analysis in a democratic society,” Aruri told IPS.

The Bush administration, which claims to be exporting democracy to Arabs and Muslims, has exerted strenuous pressure on Al-Jazeera and the government of Qatar to tone down its critical coverage, he added.

Moreover, the U.S. military has targeted buildings that housed the network’s stations in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing and wounding its employees.

”Since the U.S. Central Command has relocated from Saudi Arabia to Qatar, and the U.S. is increasing its political and military links, Al-Jazeera and the Qatar government should expect increased U.S. pressure intended to silence a voice which has become identified with indigenous opposition to foreign intrusion and local surrogates,” predicted Aruri.

Should the punishment succeed, the network will have a hard time finding an alternative location, given the tendency of Arab leaders to comply with U.S. ultimatums, outside international law. But it is doubtful that even such punishment would suppress voices in the region that would like to see an end to foreign occupations, and aspire to a dignified existence and a stable political order, Aruri said.

Rabbani pointed out that the Palestinian uprising and the Iraq crisis have most certainly contributed to Al-Jazeera’s success – for several reasons.

”An important reason is purely technological – it was able to beam the conflict straight into people’s living rooms, much like CNN did with the 1991 Gulf War, and do so in Arabic. It was there. And given that it does not operate under the same constraints as the conventional state broadcasters it was able to reflect the views of its viewers – a key factor.”

”In sum, I would tend to agree that it represents an important facet of contemporary pan-Arabism,” Rabbani added.

Excerpt:

By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 2004 (IPS)

Major U.S. corporations are joining forces to lobby for a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Agreement (MEFTA) that President George W Bush proposed in 2003.

The group includes Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, ChevronTexaco, Dow, ExxonMobil, Intel, JR McDermott, Motorola and PhRMA, among others.

The companies launched the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Coalition on Thursday, to be managed jointly by two powerful lobby groups: the 400-member National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) and the Business Council for International Understanding (BCIU).

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert B Zoellick told the groups MEFTA could help fight terrorism and ease anger simmering over U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Many Arabs say they are disgruntled at the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq and Washington’s unwavering military and economic support for Israel.

Last May, Bush announced his strategy to create a free trade area in the Middle East by 2013, as part of Washington’s long-term policy shift in the wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, by attackers who came from the region.

“With the hand of U.S. economic partnership, the United States will embrace and encourage reformers across the region,” Zoellick said in his speech. “The MEFTA is a strategy for engagement that will help nations build free, dynamic economies.”

The 9/11 Commission that investigated the terrorist attacks urged Washington to expand trade with the Middle East as a way to advance U.S. interests there.

“This is a bold initiative that will significantly boost the economic interests of the United States,” said Bill Reinsch, president of the NFTC.

“The American business community has a vital stake in strengthening economic ties with the countries in the Middle East … it’s a worthy goal and one the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Coalition pledges to aggressively support.”

The new body says it will act as an umbrella group to focus on the key components of MEFTA, and employ a range of educational, advocacy and outreach activities on behalf of trade. It will also provide a mechanism to allow businessmen to lead bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs).

Business people acknowledge the MEFTA plan has a security angle, and that “it will provide the United States with a great opportunity to forge better relations in an increasingly volatile part of the world,” said BCIU Vice President Jeffrey Donald.

According to Zoellick, similar business coalitions have helped Washington build trade deals and produced “important results for American workers and farmers and ranchers and businesses.”

In the Middle East, the United States has free trade agreements with Morocco, Israel and Jordan, while regional heavyweights like Egypt and Saudi Arabia continue to balk at U.S. demands to open their vast markets.

But Zoellick said Thursday the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the small Gulf country of Oman were next in line for free trade talks, and that he will visit the two Arab countries next week to initiate discussions.

In U.S.-occupied Iraq, the interim government has pledged to open up the country’s economy to foreign trade and to implement other neo-liberal economic reforms. For example, under a new policy, foreigners can now own 100 percent of a local business.

Washington now has advisers in all Iraqi government departments, including the finance and economy ministries.

Under MEFTA, Washington would engage country by country and then later link the nations in a major agreement that would include many Arab countries’ arch-foe, Israel, a nation that still has no relations with many of its neighbours because of its occupation of Arab territories.

According to the USTR, the United States has also signed trade and investment framework agreements – a lighter version of free trade deals – with nine other countries, from Algeria to Yemen, as a preliminary step toward free trade. It also launched negotiations with the small Kingdom of Bahrain.

Washington is also pushing Saudi Arabia and other countries to join the global trade arbiter, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and to accept its rules and regulations.

The deal with Morocco is the latest in a string of U.S. trade pacts with smaller countries around the world. Australia and four Central American governments have also completed negotiations with the United States in recent months.

Washington is also discussing FTAs with the Southern African Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland) and is working to bring the Dominican Republic into the recent Central American pact.

U.S. officials have also announced they intend to begin talks with Thailand, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Panama.

But other developing countries considering trade deals either with Washington alone or within the multilateral setting of the WTO complain the United States and other industrialised nations push them to open up their markets without giving them equal access to the economies of rich nations.

A proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which would encompass all countries in the western hemisphere except Cuba, has stalled over the resistance of some nations, led by Brazil, to open their markets to U.S. companies.

Among their other complaints, the governments argue Washington should modify its huge agriculture subsidies system, which places their own farmers at a disadvantage when they compete with U.S. agriculture.

But the USTR appears to be paying little attention to other countries’ demands and interests. His job is to open regions and nations for U.S. business. The Middle East is no exception.

“Opportunity abounds in the Middle East,” Zoellick said Thursday. “The region is already an important market for America’s manufacturers, our service firms, ranchers and farmers. As we build the Middle East Free Trade Area, these opportunities will only multiply.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
KARACHI, Aug 7 2004 (IPS)

Placing her cell phone on the table, Zulekha runs her fingers through her long, streaked hair and smiles uncertainly. Next to her, Mariam, stifles a yawn and apologises. ”I had a late night,” she adds, reading the text message on her phone.

Then there is Bakhtawar who chews on the ‘ghutka’ (a tobacco and betel-nut concoction) – her stained teeth bearing testimony to it.

Looking up and down suspiciously, she sizes this correspondent up and asks bluntly if she’s from a newspaper.

Janat is the most welcoming, also the most advanced in age. She beams and says she has finally learnt to write her name through the female literacy programme that is currently being run in the neighbourhood.

The other two in the room, remain silent throughout the discussion and their input is just limited to smiling and acknowledging what others had to say.

These six female sex workers (FSWs), belonging to a community, especially vulnerable to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, have mobilised themselves and taken up social marketing of condom as one of their tasks.

They have not only begun to use them for prevention, but have convinced the women in their community that its use is not just for ”preventing pregnancies” but helps protect them from sexually transmitted infections (STIs). And best of all, they have started stocking them up in their homes for easy access for the rest of the community and for free too.

”It was embarrassing to go to the corner shop or a pharmacy and ask for a condom. Then there was always the fear factor of harassment by the police. This is far more convenient. We can just send a message through someone and in a couple of minutes, it is in our hands,” says Zulekha.

This group was formed as part of the pilot project under the aegis of Greenstar Social Marketing, in 2003, in Serey Ghat, the red light district in Hyderabad.

The only one of its kind with the aim of imparting awareness about STIs and HIV/AIDS among sex workers, without stigmatising or demoralising them. The project is funded by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS )and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)with Greenstar as the implementing partner in close coordination with the National and Sindh AIDS Control Programme.

Serey Ghat is the fourth largest red light area in Pakistan (others located in Karachi, Lahore and Multan). According to a KAP (Knowledge, Attitude and Practices) survey carried out by Greenstar the there are about 101 households, 70 active brothels and about 100 sex workers in this area.

Informants revealed that many of the FSWs had migrated to cities like Karachi and Lahore when a ban was imposed on their activities during Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime in the 1980s.

What makes it all the more befuddling is that the NGO decided to launch a pilot project in a place where all activities have been banned for sometime by the government.

Even more mystifying is that the government is one of the project’s partners. In fact, the National AIDS Control Programmes (NACP) sets the guidelines for all HIV/AIDS interventions, including those with sex workers.

For the public, Serey Ghat is out of bounds as far as prostitution is concerned, yet these activities are carried out on the sly.

“The government invited bids for this project. They have declared sex work as illegal, but are cognizant that this practice exists,” explains Alya Mian, Greenstar’s senior communications manager.

”Our task has become all the more complicated due to this policy of the government as the target population migrates to other cities and within residential areas where we cannot reach out to them or help them in a concerted and more organised manner,” explains Mian.

Zulekha, for instance, comes to Karachi for ‘private performances’ nearly every Friday, and leaves on Sunday. Her ‘private performances’ are in some of Karachi’s leading hotels where she meets up with individual clients and has ‘programmes’ of singing and dancing for mostly overseas clients – mainly from Dubai.

But these six FSWs have probably no idea of the huge role they have played in their neighbourhood, of breaking the silence surrounding HIV/AIDS.

Out of 168 FSWs, 158 decided to come to the primary health clinic, run by Greenstar, for voluntary testing for HIV/AIDS. And that is not all. The Sindh Aids Control Programme has given each 158 of them a clean bill for HIV – at least for now.

Since 1987, after the first case of HIV/AIDS was reported in Pakistan, the number of reported cases has gradually increased and if not nipped now, the disease will jump from the vulnerable group and spill over into the general population.

It is estimated that between 70,000 and 80,000 of Pakistan’s population of 140 million is HIV positive. Official figures are much lower. Towards the end of last year 1,942 cases of HIV and 231 of AIDS cases were reported to the NACP.

”Of course we had heard of HIV/AIDS (through television mostly) before these people came and told us,” says Janat.

But she says the early messages were not clear.

”For instance, we didn’t know we could get it, we perceived it to be a ‘western’ disease. We had no idea it could be transmitted through used syringes or that it can be transmitted to unborn and suckling babies,” adds Janat.

All the six FSWs who now work as peer outreach workers – as they are known in the development jargon – find their job of visiting house-to-house ”difficult and at times embarrassing.”

”It’s not easy to visit your relatives and talk about condoms, teaching them the art of negotiating about the use of condom with their clients or convincing them that it is alright to go to the doctor and get treated for STIs,” says Janat.

”But it gets easier with time,” adds Mariam, who has acquired a new-found confidence in herself.

”My friends and relatives tease me and call me Dr. Mariam. I feel good that I’m doing something positive for my community,” she beams.

Excerpt:

By Dahr Jamail
BAGHDAD, Aug 4 2004 (IPS)

The appointed Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi faces vehement opposition to his move to deploy troops from other Muslim countries.

Allawai’s push follows a rash of suicide attacks that have rocked an increasingly unstable Iraq. He called on Arab military assistance in Iraq after he met with the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia last week.

“The participation of Arab and Muslim states is important not only to support Iraq – Iraq will be able to overcome its difficulties – but it is important for the region to have a decisive position and decisive role against these groups that threaten the stability of the countries in the region,” he said.

Allawi told reporters that Arab states considering deploying troops to Iraq should not be deterred by the ongoing kidnappings. His remarks did little to change policies or perceptions.

Egypt has turned down the idea. Its foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said after a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak that Egypt will “not send forces under any circumstances” to Iraq.

Arab countries have become increasingly concerned that violence and instability in Iraq could spread across their borders, and most leaders have repeatedly rebuffed Allawi’s pleas for troops.

Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gadhafi recently urged Arab and Muslim nations again not to send troops into Iraq. Several Arab and Muslim leaders have indicated that they would enter Iraq only under a United Nations umbrella.

Arab governments also face a growing domestic perception of resistance within Iraq as a freedom struggle against the U.S.-backed government of Allawi.

Arab League spokesman Hossam Zaki said following recent discussions at the ministerial committee of the League in Tunisia that no agreement had been reached on a Saudi proposal.

The Saudis have not offered their own troops. They say they would look for Arab and Muslim troops from countries not bordering Iraq to supplement coalition troops in Iraq, but not replace them. Under the proposed plan, these troops would be under U.S. control.

Powell acknowledged that “these are preliminary ideas” and that questions remain who would command the Arab troops. The United States is highly unlikely to give up control of the multinational force in Iraq before its troops exit the country. At least 913 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq during the invasion and subsequent occupation.

The governments of Pakistan, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria and Tunisia are few among those who have said they want to help restore calm in Iraq.

They have had their warnings. Al-Jazeera reports that two Pakistani men were abducted and killed by a group calling itself The Islamic Army. The men were working for a Kuwaiti company.

A message posted on the website of a group called Islamic Unification has warned Arab and Islamic countries against sending troops to Iraq. It says it would “hit with an iron fist all the traitors who cooperate with the Zionists.” The ‘Death Group’ kidnapped four Jordanian workers and told Dubai TV that Jordanian interests in Iraq will be targeted.

“I think the Arab troops would be like the goalkeeper in football,” said Salam Talib, a Shia Iraqi computer engineer. “They will get all the hard shots instead of U.S. troops. Iraqis will never accept foreign troops here.”

Many Iraqis oppose troops from Arab or Muslim countries because they would be viewed as collaborators with U.S. occupiers.

“I think it will not help because it is too late,” says Rana Alaiouby, a Sunni woman from Baghdad. “It will be perceived as an order from the Americans, so that will mean more trouble and violence here. If they (Arab countries) send troops here, they will be sending them to their death.”

Many Sunni Iraqis hold similar views. “Why would Arab governments send troops here against the wishes of their people?” asked Abu Talat, a retired Iraqi army officer. “It is shameful to send Arabs and Muslims to fight instead of the Americans. If any of them are killed, it doesn’t matter to the Americans. I think this is an attempt by Israel to divide the Arab unity. I want the Americans to look further than their noses.”

Sunni, Shia or Kurdish, Iraqis appear opposed to more troops being sent to their country, even if they are from Middle East countries.

“How can bringing more military personnel here from foreign countries help anything,” said Hussein Ismail, a Kurdish trader in Baghdad. “Besides, if the Americans haven’t been able to solve the problem, how could troops from smaller countries do the job?”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Aug 3 2004 (IPS)

Located in one of the most arid regions of the world, Gulf countries depend heavily on seawater desalination for their drinking water. But experts warn that unabated pollution of the Gulf waters could soon make it impossible to treat seawater for human consumption.

”Offshore oil extraction, exports, and leaking old ships that pass through these waters, are all causes of marine pollution. Increasing urbanisation has also led to the dumping of sewage, hazardous wastes and toxic chemicals into the sea,” Ram Prasad, a Dubai-based oil and gas expert, told IPS.

”These are serious environmental threats and we need to seek solutions soon,” Prasad warned.

Oil slicks are one of the greatest pollutants.

Around 100 oil tankers sail through the Gulf waters daily, discharging around eight million tonnes of oil sediments, in their path, yearly. Apart from discharging water mixed with oil, a number of these carriers also wash their tankers and dispose the dirty water into the sea or on the beaches.

Every tonne of oil (about seven barrels) spilt costs about 1,400 U.S. dollars to clean up, according to experts.

”Oil spills also result from damaged and sunken vessels,” said Prasad.

The oil and gas expert also blamed the Gulf Wars for wrecking havoc on the marine environment.

”During the Second Gulf War, the Iraqi army set Kuwaiti oil wells on fire as a cover for its retreat. The fires cost Kuwait three per cent of its oil reserves, and caused immense damage to the ecological system,” Prasad said.

”Around eight million barrels of crude were discharged into the waters by the end of the war,” he pointed out.

Other environmental effects of the 1991 war included destruction of sewage treatment plants, resulting in the discharge of over 50,000 cubic meters of raw sewage every day into Kuwait Bay. The total cost of all environmental damages after 1991 war was estimated at 40 billion U.S dollars.

”Oil slicks have deeply damaged marine life, including sea creatures and mangrove forests,” said a Dubai Municipality official, who did not want to be named.

He said the marine pollution has drastically affected the lucrative fishing industry in Saudi Arabia and decimated several species of birds in the kingdom’s Abu Ali Island.

”This is alarming because there is medical evidence to prove that consuming fish from oil-polluted waters can cause cancer and other lethal diseases in human beings,” said the official.

The U.S. National Ocean Service has identified the Arabian Gulf as the fourth ‘hot spot’ where 108 spills from vessels have been recorded since 1960.

Topping the list is the Gulf of Mexico with 267 spills; north- eastern United States with 140 spills and the Mediterranean Sea with 127 spills.

The vulnerability of the Gulf waters stems from the fact that they are part of a semi-closed, highly saline and shallow sea marine ecosystem. In some parts of the Gulf, the water is only 35 meters deep. Also the rate of evaporation of water here is higher than in other seas.

Another complicating factor is that there is very little flow of fresh water into the Gulf seas because of the lack of rain in the region and the absence of surface water bodies like rivers, ponds and lakes. In most cases, the water cycle tends to preserve environmental balance but that too is a very slow process.

It takes almost five years, at least, for an ecological balance to be achieved by the water cycle in these waters.

Essam Al Muhairi, a researcher at a Dubai-based desalination company elaborates.

”Gulf countries depend largely on desalinised water for drinking purposes. Desalinated water is even used in agriculture and various industries. More than 60 per cent of desalinisation equipment in the world is found in this region – Saudi Arabia alone desalinises about three million tonnes of seawater daily,” he said in an interview.

According to Al Muhairi, the lack of fresh water flowing in the Gulf seas to balance the build up saline water and partially offset water pollution levels poses a problem for desalinisation.

”This water (from the Gulf seas) could soon become unsuitable for desalinisation. Since desalinisation stations treat both saline and polluted water, increasing levels of both may render seawater untreatable seven years from now,” he warned.

”And the desalination process also increases the level of salinity,” added Al Muhairi.

Seeing the alarming trends in marine pollution, authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have called for stern action.

At a recent session, members of the UAE Federal National Council called attention to the fact that oil discharged by visiting and passing vessels was polluting beaches in the northern emirates.

Stating that environmental protection needed more attention, they urged the Federal Environmental Agency to devise a mechanism to implement the federal environmental law more effectively.

One organisation that is working towards reducing marine pollution in the Gulf waters is the Regional Clean Sea Organisation (Recso), which groups 12 major oil companies operating in the Gulf as well as oil tanker owners.

Recso functions under the concept of ”mutual aid” at times of marine oil spills and is a voluntary, non-commercial association with the objective of accomplishing a ‘clean sea’ vision. The main aim of the organisation is preventing oil spills even before they occur.

”We need more such coordinated efforts in this field. Marine pollution is a bane to both humans and marine life and all-out efforts must be made to prevent it at its roots,” said Prasad.

”This can be achieved only if all the concerned parties work together with the authorities to create a strategy that can plug every loophole and take the offenders to task,” he stressed.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jul 22 2004 (IPS)

The ordeal of a Filipino truck driver freed by militants after his country withdrew its troops from Iraq has not deterred Philippine migrant workers from making their way to the occupied Middle Eastern country through the United Arab Emirates, despite an official ban by Manila.

The Philippines banned its citizens from going to work in Iraq after Angelo de la Cruz, a father of eight working as a truck driver in Baghdad, was kidnapped by Islamic militants on Jul. 7 and threatened with decapitation unless Manila withdrew all its 51 troops from the United States-led coalition in the country.

About 120 workers due to leave for Iraq via Dubai on Jul. 8, were stopped by immigration officials from boarding their flight after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued the order to halt new deployments.

”This is not fair,” said Joseph (not his real name), a Filipino construction worker, who was already in Dubai on a visitor’s visa and making plans to leave for Iraq.

”The conditions and the kidnappings do worry me. But I would rather go there (Iraq) and work than return to my country and my dependants without any job in hand,” he told IPS.

”It should be left to us to decide whether we want to go there or not,” added Joseph.

Joseph is one of many Filipinos who transit through Dubai and often end up in Iraq undertaking risky construction work. About eight million Filipinos work abroad supporting their families back home. The total remittances of Filipino migrant workers are more than seven billion U.S. dollars a year and for them, Iraq is just another means another means to escape the poverty and unemployment in the Philippines.

According to available statistics, at least 4,000 Filipinos are working in Iraq, mostly as contractors with the U.S. military and private companies. Government sources say Filipinos are likely the largest single group of foreign workers in Iraq, with many more unregistered.

”We are sending carpenters, cooks, administrative assistants, warehouse workers, laundry machine operators and drivers to Iraq regularly and many of them are Filipinos,” said an employee of a recruiting agency in Dubai who did not want to be named.

”The 500 to 1,000 U.S. dollars a month they earn in Iraq might not be a fortune, but bit’s far better than the pre-tax minimum wage of around 140 U.S. dollars they get in their country,” the employee revealed.

The recruiting agency employee said the ban by the Philippine government would have little effect on Filipino workers who want to make their way to Iraq.

”Around 100 to 150 Filipino workers still leave for Iraq every day (from Dubai),” he said.

”They know about the ban and realise that their lives could be in danger there. But higher wages and burdensome responsibilities make them turn a blind eye to such things,” he added.

While Filipino workers can be stopped if they try to make their way to Iraq directly from Manila, they can, however, circumvent the ban by travelling to Baghdad from other Middle Eastern countries.

Of all the Middle Eastern countries, that employ foreign workers, the pay in Iraq is still the best, said the employee of the Dubai recruiting agency.

”It is so obvious that I can getter better pay in Iraq,” said Joseph. ”I don’t want to settle for less and am willing to take the risk to do so.”

Joseph’s friend, a driver who only wanted to be known as Ramon, agreed with him.

”I can get 300 U.S. dollars a month if I work in Iraq compared to back home where I won’t even get half of that,” he told IPS.

”It’s hard to find jobs in the Philippines. I won’t allow fear or risks to come in my way of earning money and providing my family with a decent meal everyday,” said Ramon.

Ramon said he knew there is a great demand for workers in Iraq.

”One company is hiring around 25,000 people, including construction workers, secretaries, cooks, engineers and designers, for Iraq. My friends and I will definitely apply,” he said.

Some 4,000 undocumented Filipinos are reportedly employed in American and British construction projects in Iraq.

Reports said the Filipinos were hired and sneaked into the war- torn country by American and British companies without informing the Philippine government.

Amid the reports, President Arroyo asked Filipinos in Iraq, especially those without documents, to get in touch with the Philippine embassy in Baghdad.

”We are determined to ensure their safety and keep them out of harm’s way in the event of any crisis or emergency,” she said in a statement.

But Deputy Presidential Spokesman Ricardo Saludo told reporters in Manila recently that the government could not monitor the movement of all Filipinos abroad, especially if they travel without proper documents.

”The same thing can be said of other countries in Asia, particularly those whose nationals are in Iraq, but are not accounted for by their documents,” he said. ”And this is just because of porous borders which allow people to travel around sometimes with no proper documentation.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jul 19 2004 (IPS)

In a country where oil and natural gas resources are abundant and appear limitless, it would seem that environmental consciousness would take a backseat. But in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the ‘green’ bug has wormed its way into most sectors, and the latest to join the bandwagon is the construction sector.

Experts and authorities in the UAE are actively considering and promoting the concept of ‘green buildings’ and soon that may become the buzzword for the future.

”Green buildings ensure the creation of environmentally sound and resource-efficient spaces by using an integrated approach to design. The end result is a healthy and comfortable environment that reduces operation and maintenance costs,” Kavitha Daniels, a Dubai-based architect told IPS.

”The concept is slowly gaining ground in the U.A.E and I am sure we will soon see many of these ‘green’ features getting slowly assimilated into future designs here,” she added.

According to experts, a green building imposes minimal impacts on the environment while enhancing user comfort and productivity. The main features of these environmentally friendly structures include the use of energy-efficient materials and construction practices, efficient equipment for lighting, renewable energy sources and efficient waste management systems.

The benefits include minimised destruction of natural areas, reduced air and water pollution, limited waste generation and increased user productivity.

In the light of fast depleting energy resources and environmental pollution, incorporation of green architectural practices is becoming extremely essential.

Studies conducted by the Geneva-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate that in 1990, residential, commercial and institutional building sectors consumed 31 percent of global energy and emitted 1.9 giga tonnes of carbon and by 2050, this share may rise to 38 percent and 3.8 giga tonnes, respectively.

”By the way we live, we can minimise our impact on the environment so that we do not impinge on the safety and sustainability of our future generations,” said Habiba Al Marashi, chairperson of the Dubai-based Emirates Environmental Group, in an interview with IPS.

”Sustainable architecture is one of the many ways by which we can measurably minimise the impact of our growth on the ecosystem. I would like to urge our designers and builders to look inwards towards our architectural traditions and heritage to seek solutions to make a truly greener and progressive UAE,” she added.

Al Marashi stressed the importance of green buildings and said they are an essential part of sustainable development in not just the construction industry but also in overall regional development.

”By taking into account factors such as energy-efficient devices and recycled and recyclable construction material, environment- friendly architecture ensures that the limited physical resources available to us are used to satisfy our needs,” she pointed out.

Added Al Marashi: ”This does not create a scenario of permanent depletion, which deprives future generations of their rightful share.”

While leading experts in the UAE’s architecture and design community have called for the creation of an urban design review board to usher in more eco-friendly buildings, the financial costs, however, can be a stumbling block.

But in the long-run, said Sougata Nandi – a Dubai-based energy conservation and management expert – the investment would be worthwhile.

”Though green buildings cost at least over six percent more than conventional ones, the benefits far outstrip the investment. The pay- off is that a green building could consume up to 50 percent less energy,” Nandi, a manager in the Union Properties Group, told IPS.

Translating that amount into monetary terms, Nandi said residents and commercial establishments in Dubai could save around 388 million dirhams (105 million U.S. dollars) annually in energy costs – equivalent to one-fifth of the current 1.94 billion dirhams (530 million U.S. dollars) spent yearly by commercial and residential sectors in the emirate.

In spite of being an oil-rich country, UAE authorities are seriously pursuing the use of renewable energy sources. And, as demands for property construction spiral skywards, the time for the ‘green’ concept to take root seems ripe.

”It is a process that will take some time, but we are slowly gaining ground,” said Mario Seneviratne, director of the Dubai-based Green Technologies Company.

”Most architects and engineers in the UAE are either advertently or inadvertently incorporating one or more of the five prerequisites for a green building – sustainable sites, energy efficiency, water-use efficiency, environment-friendly materials and indoor environmental quality,” Seneviratne told IPS.

”It is now our task to get them to incorporate all five aspects into one building and develop a holistic approach,” he added. ”There is some initial reluctance, of course, but that will soon be overcome when they realise the benefits.”

The green options in the holistic integration with buildings are just unlimited in this region, where sunshine and wind are abundant.

Solar energy could be used for electricity generation in heating and cooling. Locations with high winds could have rooftop generators for the generation of electricity. And technologies could be employed to convert liquid and solid waste generated in a building into bio-gas and bio-fertilisers.

”Water, a costly commodity here, can be conserved as well. Holistically, the UAE stands to benefit all-round through the adoption of these green standards,” said Emirates Environmental Group’s Al Marashi.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jul 9 2004 (IPS)

The picture of an Arab warrior dressed in flowing white robes, seated astride his stallion with a falcon seated on his outstretched arm is an awe-inspiring one. Arabs and falcons have an age-old relationship and it is difficult to imagine one without the other.

But today, the traditional Arab sport of falconry faces a bleak future due to over-hunting, poaching and illegal trade in falcons and in its natural and favourite prey, the houbara bustard.

In a recent editorial of the Emirates Falconers’ Club’s ‘Al Saker’ magazine, Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the deputy prime minister and minister of state for foreign affairs of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who is also the club chairman, issued a warning.

He said that in spite of the organisation’s efforts, illegal trade in falcons and houbara bustards remains a very disturbing matter and the situation could further deteriorate if no efforts are made to control it.

”Studies show that at the current rate of decline in the houbara population, we are going to lose 50 percent of birds between 2006 and 2007, and practising falconry could become impossible or extremely difficult by 2010,” wrote Sheikh Hamdan in the editorial.

The Middle East is one of the few places where falconry is still a significant sporting activity. There is evidence of the sport being practised here from the eighth century.

In the UAE, it has been a hobby for nationals over the centuries and they have managed to preserve the traditional aspects of the sport and pass it on to the younger generations as well.

”Two kinds of falcon species are used in the sport – ‘al hurr’ or ‘saqr’ (‘falco cherrug’), and ‘shaheen’ (‘falco peregrinus’),” Amer Tayabi, a wildlife enthusiast who works for a Dubai-based research center, told IPS.

”Both of these species are almost similar in size, but the ‘al hurr’ is more heavily built. More often than not, the female of the species is preferred for the sport as it is bigger in build,” explained Amer.

Mohammed Al Kindi, a Dubai national has been an avid falconer for the last 20 years.

”I have been a falconer for ages and love the excitement of the sport. I have also been involved in breeding them and hunting with them since I was 10 years old. My father was also a falconer,” he told IPS.

”But now it is increasingly difficult and more expensive to practice this sport,” he lamented.

Mohammed said previously they had to trap wild falcons during their autumn migration and train them for the hunting season beginning in late November each year.

Sometimes, he said, they had to travel to Pakistan and Iran to purchase the falcons.

”Now falcons can be easily bought although the price can be quite steep – with a falcon costing anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 U.S. dollars,” added the falconer.

The Gulf Cooperation Council countries import at least 6,400 hunted falcons every year and most of them are females as they are preferred in falconry because of their bigger size.

Statistics showed that 4,000 birds are exported to Saudi Arabia while they were estimated at 1,000 in Qatar and between 500 to 1,000 each to the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The main falcon suppliers are Pakistan, Iran, China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and Libya.

”Falconry is a sport that requires finesse, subtlety and skill acquired through long hours of training. The falconer must train a bird of prey to fly free, hunt and return the prey to captivity,” said Mohammad.

He added: ”A falcon can pursue its prey from a great distance and with great speed and accuracy.”

Today, however, falcons have become endangered because of excessive hunting and poaching.

”For many years there has been concern about illegal and unsustainable trade in falcons for falconry,” said Jonathan Barzoa of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The UAE has joined the CITES programme so as to organise the trade in creatures on the verge of extinction and ensure better protection for them.

Barzoa stressed that there was a need to address a number of problems in controlling international trade in falcons for falconry.

”The main problem is that there is a continuing large trade, including illegal ones, from a number of states resulting in a decrease in some populations of certain species used for falconry,” he told a conference in Abu Dhabi

There are also large numbers of falconers who take their birds across international borders to practise their sport and they would like to find ways to facilitate these movements within a legal framework.

Some of the states into whose territory falconers enter in order to hunt are concerned that the controls on the trade are not adequate and are worried about the potential effects on some of the species being sought after.

The UAE is pushing ahead with projects to protect the dwindling falcon and houbara population within an overall programme to rebuild its dwindling wildlife. The plan is to produce falcons locally and breed more than 10,000 houbara bustards in captivity.

An intensive houbara breeding scheme has been launched at the Environmental Research and Wildlife Development Agency’s (ERWDA) National Avian Research Centre and production will be in full swing within three years.

”Houbaras are the favoured target species for Arabian falconry but wild houbara populations are crashing as a result of over- hunting and poaching. The goal of this project is to breed houbaras in captivity as a contribution to the global strategy for houbara conservation,” wildlife enthusiast Amer explained.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 17 2004 (IPS)

A series of escalating spats in the Gulf waters between Iran, on one hand, and the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman, on the other, has cast a large shadow over relations between these countries.

Officials from the three Gulf countries and many foreign diplomats are also perplexed over the recent hostile actions and are seeking ways to diffuse the tension.

The latest round of hostilities occurred last week in two separate incidents.

The first was when Iran announced it had seized a UAE fishing boat and its five crew members near Siri, an Iranian island between Iran and the UAE.

A few days earlier, six fishing boats from the UAE and their 23 crew were seized by Tehran while they were fishing near the Iranian island of Qeshm, situated just a few kilometres off the Iranian mainland and near the Strait of Hormuz.

These tit for tat incidents started nearly a month ago when Iran said that one of its fishing boats together with its crew were seized and detained by a UAE naval vessel in Gulf waters, prompting the Iranian foreign ministry to accuse the UAE of ”unacceptable behavior.”

Iran and the United Arab Emirates have been locked in a dispute, since 1971, over three uninhabited atolls in the Abu Mussa and Tunb island chain. These atolls are roughly half way between their two shores.

While the Iranian media played up the arrests, UAE officials, however, remained mum – saying they wanted to settle the matter peacefully.

“We were talking to them (Iranians) before they made it public and there were hopes that the issue could have been resolved and resulted in the release of the jailed sailors,” a ranking official in the United Arab Emirates told IPS.

But the spats just did not end there.

On Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned Qatar’s ambassador to protest at the killing of an Iranian fisherman by the Qatar navy.

Iran asked the envoy to explain the shooting in the early hours of Friday morning.

Two other fishermen were hurt and the Islamic Republic demanded the return of two confiscated Iranian fishing boats along with their detained crews.

Iranian Deputy Interior Minister Ali Asghar Ahmadi told state television the boats received a warning that they had strayed into Qatari waters.

”After negotiations, the boats were about to leave the area when the Qatari navy shot at them thinking they were escaping, killing one sailor and injuring two,” he said.

Qatar, on the other hand, made no public statements over the incident.

Iran and Qatar share the world’s biggest natural gas reservoir under the Gulf that has sparked disputes.

Tehran last month warned Qatar not to tap more than its share from the pool that contains seven percent of world’s natural gas reserves.

But Western diplomats and Arab officials in the United Arab Emirates, revealed to IPS, that there were other incidents that have not been reported – thus putting the beginning of the clashes to an earlier date than the one announced by Tehran.

They say in addition to Qatar, Omani coast guards had also shot and killed at least one Iranian crew member and that Tehran had confiscated another UAE boat. But neither Iran or UAE have commented about it.

”The problem is that the Iranians are upping the ante for some reason,” a western diplomat in the United Arab Emirates told IPS.

”They are either provocatively sending their ships into the territorial waters of the neighboring countries or confiscating UAE boats in the disputed waters,” he said.

”The question is why,” the diplomat asked perplexingly.

Though no one seems to be sure about Iran’s motives, there are some speculations.

They mostly relate to internal politics of the Islamic republic rather than diplomatic problems with any of the Gulf countries, imply officials.

”We have tried to negotiate behind the scenes with the Iranian government and every time we are close to reaching a solution, certain hard-line factions make sure it fails,” said the ranking United Arab Emirates offical.

While Iranian President Mohammed Khatami and his Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi are considered ”moderate” and would like better relations with the outside world, more dogmatic elements within the Iranian regime oppose such a policy.

Many of those elements have traditionally been part of the Iranian military and security apparatus, including the Revolutionary Guards and components of the navy.

“The hard-liners did well in the past parliamentary elections. They believe they have Khatami caged in domestically. Now it is the time to spread their wings more freely in foreign policy issues,” said a Western diplomat in the Gulf.

The sources say one reason Iran maybe trying to provoke Qatar and Oman is because both countries have lately shown more openness towards U.S. policies in the region.

”I don’t believe the Iranians are intensifying the situation with the Gulf countries because of any serious problems with either of the countries,” said a Gulf security analyst, who did not want to be named. ”But I think with U.S. forces so close to Iran’s borders in Iraq and Afghanistan and Washington pushing Iran to give up nuclear plans, Tehran is getting nervous,” the analyst said. ”Iran is sending a message to Washington through recent events (in the Gulf waters) that the United States should not tighten the noose on it too tightly.”

Escalating its war of words with Washington, Iran threatened Wednesday to resume its uranium enrichment program if the International Atomic Energy Agency passes a toughly worded resolution condemning Tehran for lackluster cooperation with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog.

The United States said in response that such tactics increase widespread suspicions that Iran is using its civilian nuclear power program as a cover to clandestinely acquire atomic weapons.

Iran’s current hostility with the UAE could also be attributed to the Emirates’ relationship with the United States.

But the security analyst said the likelihood was stronger that Iranian hardliners were trying to muscle the UAE over the three disputed islands.

In May, it was reported the UAE had sought European Union mediation over the territorial conflict. But the EU later denied it was getting involved issuing a statement saying: ”There has been no request for mediation. There is no interference.”

”If you add all of these factors together, you see two things: Iranian hard-liners trying to elbow in their way, and Iran sending a message to the United States saying, ‘Don’t push us harder’,” added the security analyst.

But a Gulf-based diplomat said Iran’s actions with the UAE, Qatar and Oman are just mere spats and would not amount to anything more.

”Iran does not want to alienate these countries because it has good economic ties with them – especially with the UAE,” he told IPS.

”Picking quarrels with them would just isolate Iran further. This is something Tehran does not need, especially if it is trying to settle scores with the United States indirectly through these countries.”

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 15 2004 (IPS)

Foreign domestic workers in the United Arab Emirates do not often get to speak up for themselves, but a new system that authorities are putting in place might just give them that room – as well as a legal weapon against abusive bosses.

These days, UAE authorities are preparing to implement a new prerequisite for immigration and employment – by requiring legal contracts between employers and agencies on one hand and domestic workers on the other.

Most of the foreign domestic workers in the UAE are women from countries like the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

There are about 450,000 families in the UAE – of these, around 150,000 local families employ around 250,000 to 350,000 domestic workers. About half of the estimated 300,000 expatriate families have domestic help.

It is not unusual to find domestic workers that do not have contracts, so this change, implementation of which is being awaited after its announcement in April, is welcome, said an official at the Indian embassy.

”The domestic worker segment – especially housemaids – are the most abused as they are uneducated and are willing to work under any circumstances because of obligations and commitments. They are also afraid to raise their voices as they worry about the consequences,” the official told IPS.

Take the case of Arlyn, an Indonesian who worked for an Arab family in Fujairah, one of the seven emirates in the UAE. She is in Dubai, seeking help from her association, to get back her passport from her sponsor and go home. ”I just ran away,” she said, ”I could not take it any more.”

Hardly 19, a frail-looking Arlyn said she was forced to work nearly 16 to 18 hours a day – washing, ironing, cooking and taking the six children to school with her back bent under their bags as they walked ahead, hands swinging.

”I was willing to put up with anything as I had to send money home to my ailing parents, but one day the lady beat me up for daring to reprimand one of the children for unruly behaviour. The next day, she hit me again for another insignificant reason. I then decided I had enough,” Arlyn added.

”I was happy to read in the paper that soon rules will be in place to help abused housemaids like me. It is very essential,” she said in an interview.

Nearly 20 percent of migrant domestic workers in the UAE suffer from abuse at their employers’ hands, according to academics at an April seminar on ‘Migrant Domestic Workers and Media Discourse: Presence in Absenteeism’, here.

Brig Hadher Khalaf Al Muhairi, head of the general directorate of naturalisation and residency, has said that the legal contract system would now regulate the relationship between domestic workers, their recruitment agencies and employers.

He said there would be two contracts, one between the recruitment agency and the employer and another between the employer and the domestic worker. ”These will streamline the relationship between housemaids and their employers as well as the relationship between employers and the recruitment agencies,” his statement said.

“Previously, employers or recruitment agencies have abused some housemaids and vice versa. Now there is a clear contract that will outline the responsibilities of each party,” it added.

But how far contracts can go in plugging other loopholes that officials see in the migration system remain unclear.

For instance, officials are looking to clamp down on situations like that of Leela, a domestic worker from Sri Lanka who resorted to finding a sponsor to bring her back to the UAE – but who she then pays to keep renewing her visa.

Leela, who first came to the UAE a decade ago, used this way of returning to the country so that she could earn better money and work for different households. ”Today I pay my sponsor 5,000 dirhams (about 1,400 U.S. dollars) every two years to keep renewing my visa. He then sends me to different houses to work and earn that money. This is a private arrangement.”

For her, this is better than her previous work with a Saudi national in Sharjah.

”He had 14 children and I was the only domestic worker in the house. My day would start at 5 a.m. and end at 1 p.m,” she said in an interview. ”All day I would be cleaning the massive villa, watering the garden, washing clothes and cooking utensils and looking after the needs of all the children.”

“I would hardly get any time for rest or even food,” she recalled.

Now, officials are looking to impose fines to stop this system. Nationals and expatriates caught lending or ‘borrowing’ domestic workers will be fined 50,000 dirhams (about 14,000 dollars). In addition, violators will not be allowed to sponsor any domestic worker to come here again.

This measure seeks to discourage expatriates who in the past ‘borrowed’ domestic workers from UAE nationals in order to avoid paying hefty fees to the government for bringing in foreign domestic workers.

Expatriates have to pay a non-refundable deposit of about 5,000 dirhams (1,400 dollars) per year to the Naturalisation and Residency Department to bring in foreign domestic help.

But experts say the best protection is a system that allows foreign domestic workers to assert their rights – and that brings into question issues that go beyond local contracts to the legal status of these workers in the first place.

It does not help, according to the experts that met in the April seminar, that the legal status of domestic workers in the UAE is considered different from that of usual labourers.

“Legally, domestic work in the Gulf region falls under the private servant concept, in which a worker is considered under the full private realm of the family,” said Dr Rima Sabban, a UAE- based sociologist.

”Under such a regulation, the sponsor becomes the person responsible for the servant for every single detail of life and the servant is considered as an essential member of the family,” Sabban added. But often, such is not the case. ”When my seven-year-old daughter thanked a Sri Lankan worker for the services he had rendered her, the worker was taken aback. When I asked him the reason, he said in that in his 16 years’ service in the Middle East, no one had ever thanked him before,” an Arab journalist from Saudi Arabia told IPS.

Excerpt:

By IPS Correspondents
KABUL, Jun 14 2004 (IPS)

On the flight out of Dubai, an item in the pockets of the passenger seats removes all doubt about the airplane’s destination: along with the laminated sheet detailing aircraft safety procedures is a brochure from the United Nations Landmine Action Service explaining how to avoid death or injury from the explosive devices in Afghanistan.

The airplane lands at Kabul, a city built – and destroyed – in a valley 1,800 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains reaching 4,000 metres high, reminiscent of a scene from the South American Andes.

Along the landing strip are the carcasses of aircraft that were disembowelled in October 2001, when U.S. forces bombarded the airport to make it useless to the fundamentalist Islamic regime, the Taliban, that controlled most of the country at the time.

”We stopped trying to estimate the number of landmines,” Dan Kelly, director of the Action Centre Against Mines in Afghanistan, told IPS. What is certain, he added, is that they are planted throughout the entire country, even in farmland, and each month they kill more than 100 people.

Kelly directs 8,000 Afghans involved in a widespread, ongoing effort to deactivate these fatal devices.

Kabul is an intense, vibrant city. Trucks, buses, cars, bicycles, street vendors, people pulling carts, and donkeys, sheep and even camels have to navigate around each other and soldiers and guards carrying kalashnikov rifles in an ongoing series of traffic jams.

They kick up an ever-present, lung-clogging dust cloud.

Reconstruction efforts are evident, although Kabul continues to be a showcase of bombed-out buildings and missile-destroyed houses.

According to the insurance companies, this is a country at war, despite the fact that talk is of peace, and, in September, the country is to hold its first presidential elections in 25 years.

The elections are to take place a couple months before the U.S. vote that will either re-elect President George W. Bush or put his likely rival from the Democratic Party, John Kerry, in the White House.

It is the U.S. elections in November that make the Afghan vote credible, because it is believed that Bush will want to announce in his campaign effort that he ”pacified and democratised” the Central Asian nation, invaded by U.S. forces shortly after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

The United States was looking in Afghanistan for the man thought to be the mastermind behind the attacks, Saudi national Osama bin Laden, and, on the way, sought to liquidate the Taliban regime and capture its leader, mullah Omar. Both men remain at large..

And now the war is intensifying. One clue: there are 20,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan today. Two months ago there were 13,500.

Another sign is that the U.S. television networks have also returned. They left practically as soon as the B-52s had done their job, the Taliban government was overthrown, and Hamid Karzai was brought back from his exile in the United States to serve as interim president.

Karzai, widely seen as lacking political power, wants to extend his mandate – and he has Bush’s support for that aim.

“If the elections are in September, (Karzai) will achieve his goal, because there will be no mature alternatives capable of negotiating with the United States,” says Shahir Zahine, a former mujahideen who fought the 1979 Soviet invasion. He is now head of a non-governmental organisation that publishes three weekly magazines, two of which are leaders in national circulation.

What could postpone the elections? “If insecurity increases and the United Nations fails to complete the voter lists,” Zahine, who also directs one of Kabul’s top radio stations, said in an IPS interview.

In May, three workers carrying out an electoral census were murdered. The voter rolls do not include even half of the potential electorate, estimated at 10 million.

The increase in troop presence serves to prevent a civil war and to fight the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, where they remain a strong presence.

Furthermore, the International Security Assistance Force under NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) command, has Kabul under control but is incapable of ensuring law and order in the rest of the country, where warlords prevail.

Why have the U.S. media returned to Afghanistan? “I don’t know why, but they think Osama bin Laden is about to be captured,” says U.N. spokesman, Manoel de Almeyda, a Brazilian national.

That is another thing keeping Bush awake at night: he wants Bin Laden captured before the November elections in the United States.

A third “Western” dream is to allow Afghan women to be free of the burqa, the head-to-toe shroud, with its embroidered mesh that hides their eyes. Thousands of burqas are seen on the streets of the capital. Most are light blue.

Crossing the city by car, one sees many women dressed in this attire. It can be disturbing to see so many faceless humans moving about.

When asked why she wears the burqa, on woman responded: “It is my Islamic clothing. I’ve worn it since I was young, and continue to use it now that I am old.”

“The people from the United States are in a hurry,” says Homa Sabri, of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

“They want (the Afghan women) to quit using the burqa immediately so that they can announce that they have given us back our dignity and freedom. But this cannot be imposed. It is a slow road until women feel secure and lose their fear,” she said.

Sayed Raheen, minister of information and culture, has a similar response in a conversation with IPS: “The international community turns out to be fundamentalist when it seeks to hurry a country that is just taking its first steps.”

Comments that are a bit more radical come from a European consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“We are here to promote U.S. interests, not Afghanistan’s,” says the consultant bitterly, having resigned as an adviser to the Afghan Central Bank, where Washington has some 40 people working to set up a new banking system for the country.

“The invaders impose their capitalist economic style on a country with nearly 2,000 years of Islamic culture, one that rejects the concept of monetary interest,” explained the source.

As they await Bin Laden’s capture, the U.S. TV networks keep busy competing for the latest news on the torture inflicted by the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) and the Marines on Afghan detainees at the southern military base of Bagram.

Reports of torture and abuse had been circulating since early 2002, but nothing was done until recently, when denunciations emerged regarding similar actions against Iraqis committed by the occupying forces in that country.

In Bagram, a strategic location at the foot of the Hindu Kush, forts were built by Persia’s Cyrus the Great 500 years b.c., with the name Kapish-Kanish, by Alexander the Great, who dubbed it Alexandria of the Caucasus, and the Soviets, who built their main base there in the 1980s, withdrawing in 1989.

Now the presence is U.S. and NATO troops, keeping watch over a crucial zone for controlling the extraction and transport of petroleum in the Caspian Sea region, also of great interest to Russia and China.

The Afghan population is included on the list of the world’s poorest. Illiteracy surpasses 80 percent, reaching 92 percent amongst women. But these are just estimates because it is not known exactly how many Afghans there are – maybe between 20 and 28 million.

At Bagram, as at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraib, prisoners were photographed in the nude and humiliated, according to the testimonies of some victims. Sooner or later, someone will put those photos in the hands of the media.

Meanwhile, growing apace is the expansion of the illicit poppy crops used to produce opium and heroin – brought to a halt during the Taliban regime – and the uncertainty over whether the Afghans will be able to build a strong, single state.

Afghanistan is responsible for 70 to 75 percent of the global production of heroin, a business worth 30 billion dollars a year.

(*ATT. EDITORS: Not for publication in Chile.)

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By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 3 2004 (IPS)

Arab states seem to be adopting a wait-and- see attitude, and reserving their kudos, after Iraqi leaders cut a deal Tuesday with the United States and United Nations on a new interim government that will lead the country towards its first elections, next year, in a post-Saddam Hussein era.

While reservations were expressed over whether the interim Iraqi government could lead the occupied country to political independence, Arab leaders, however, were careful to congratulate only the appointed interim president.

Sheikh Ghazi Ojeil Yawar, an influential tribal chief appointed as president in defiance of the United States, called for the United Nations to give Iraq full sovereignty when the U.S.-led occupation authority is wound up on Jun. 30.

But the sticking point is still Washington’s insistence that 150,000 foreign troops, most of them from the United States, remain in Iraq for the foreseeable future to provide security.

After two days of bitter confrontation, the U.S. government and U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi finally accepted Yawar in the largely ceremonial role of head of state after their preferred candidate, elder statesman Adnan Pachachi, turned down the job.

In return, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council agreed to dissolve itself with immediate effect and accepted a cabinet line- up under Iyad Allawi, who was appointed prime minister.

At the swearing-in ceremony, Yawer said his goal was to make Iraq one nation, ”without murderers and criminals.”

The first cautious reactions to the new Iraqi interim government came from Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, whose organisation is meant to embody the 22 Arab states.

Referring to the selection of Yawar as the interim president, Moussa said: ”As long as there was consensus of opinion between all those connected with the subject, then Mr Yawar represents the joint will of the Governing Council.”

Moussa stopped short of making any comments about the new interim government.

When the Iraqi Governing Council was first appointed last July by the U.S. civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, the Arab League refused to grant it recognition.

But after interventions from the United States and its allies in the league, Iraq’s membership was provisionally renewed for a year.

Like the Arab League chief, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was equally circumspect.

According to the official Middle East News Agency, the Egyptian leader affirmed ”Egypt’s complete support for his (Yawar’s) future plans to underpin the pillars of sovereignty, independence and authentic national governance.”

Prime Minister Allawi and his cabinet did not even receive a mention in Mubarak’s statement.

Similar statements were made in neighbouring Jordan by Foreign Minister Marwan Moashar.

Without naming names, Moashar said: ”Jordan will accept whomever the Iraqi people choose to guide them in the right direction to take back their sovereignty.”

The Jordanian head of state, King Abdullah, who was on his way overseas, did not make any remarks.

But the only welcoming voice came from Iran.

”This government may not fulfil all of our expectations, but it is a step forward. We are happy that this government has begun its work,” Hassan Rowhani, a cleric who heads the Islamic republic’s Supreme National Security Council, told IPS.

The reluctance of many Arab states to openly welcome the new interim Iraqi government stems from the fact that they are unsure of the future role of the United States in the occupied country.

Many Arab leaders are wary the interim government will have limited authority to steer the country towards National Assembly elections, scheduled at the end of January 2005, given the interference of the United States in every aspect of post-Saddam Iraq – from security to politics.

”The reality here is that Iraq is still under U.S. occupation. Washington still calls the shots and continues to push to have its way,” said an Arab League official in Cairo who asked not be named.

”At the end of the day this poses a serious problem for many Arab officials,” he told IPS.

Explained the official: ”On the one hand, they recognise that Iraq is on its way towards sovereignty. But, on the other hand, Iraq is just not quite there for us to come out and fully support its government.”

Iraqi officials are fully aware that unless the new government shows it is moving towards full sovereignty, it might not achieve the degree of international recognition it needs to convince other nations to send troops to replace the U.S.-led occupation force.

A new U.N. Security Council resolution, currently being debated in New York, sets a timeframe for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from Iraq and stresses the new government will have full control over Iraqi security forces.

To that end interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has been sent by Baghdad to the U.N. headquarters to lobby Security Council members.

White House officials, too, are cognisant of the importance of the new Iraqi government having powers independent of the U.S. occupying forces.

Washington’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice reiterated Wednesday that Washington does not consider the new Iraqi government ”a puppet” and said the White House would deal with it as a sovereign body.

One reason why Washington understands the need for giving the new Iraqi government more leeway is because it also needs the help of other Arab states to bring stability to Iraq.

The United States currently has over 130,000 soldiers in Iraq but has indicated it can use help from a multi-nation peacekeeping force preferably from Arab and Muslim countries to relieve the stress of some of its troops. Many of the U.S. troops have been serving in Iraq for more than a year and are long overdue for a break

“We have been approached more than once and through more than one channel to send Arab forces to help the coalition forces, and we have said repeatedly we will not do us as long as there is no sovereign Iraqi government,” said the Arab League official in Cairo.

The Arab League, the White House, and many Iraqis hope the new U.N. Security Council resolution will explicitly recognise the new Iraqi government as the country’s sovereign representative – an action the previous resolution did not take with regard to the now-dissolved Iraq Governing Council.

The United Nations ended a first round of consultations over the resolution on Tuesday, but more talks are expected before the Security Council reaches a decision.

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By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, Jun 1 2004 (IPS)

A bloody hostage crisis in Saudi Arabia’s petroleum-producing hinterland, just weeks after an attack on foreign oil workers, has stoked fears of further destabilisation of the world’s largest oil producer.

With oil prices above 40 U.S. dollars a barrel, any further upsurge, because of worries that petroleum production could be disrupted, would have a devastating effect on world markets, say analysts.

On May 30, Saudi commandos stormed a residential complex in Khobar, north-east of the capital Riyadh, to rescue dozens of foreigners held hostage by suspected al-Qaeda militants who also killed as many as 17 people in an assault on the country’s vital oil industry.

In the rescue attempt, 22 western and Arab residents lost their lives, but the commandos freed some 50 hostages and evacuated about 200 others to safety.

The Khobar attack was the second in a month on foreign oil workers.

On May 1, six Westerners and a Saudi national were killed at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast.

That attack prompted a number of foreigners working in the Saudi oil sector to make plans to leave, though there has not been a mass exodus yet.

”The question is not how safe they (the oil facilities) are now. The question is whether this is the beginning of a trend,” Youssef Ibrahim, a respected oil and energy analyst, told IPS.

”Are we going to see more of these attacks?” he asked.

Added Ibrahim: ”Their purpose really is to shake off confidence in Saudi Arabia’s ability to supply oil and that purpose has clearly been accomplished.”

Increasing fears of terrorist activity in the world’s most important oil producer will not help calm current world jitters about petroleum supplies.

The hostage crisis comes at an awkward moment for the international oil market, with the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) due to meet in Beirut Thursday to raise production quotas in an effort to push down prices.

But in a sign of a nervous market, U.S. light crude was at 39.88 U.S. dollars early Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, which accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s oil reserves, could be in trouble of meeting its production quotas if it loses its foreign workers, according to Ibrahim.

”Much of Saudi’s oil installations and facilities are either old or, by the nature of the business, need constant upgrade or maintenance, and tens of thousands of western workers have for decades been involved in the country’s oil projects,” explained the oil analyst.

”They (Saudis) can continue to pump oil but there is more to it (running the installations) than pumping oil. There is the refining industry; there is the petrochemical industry; there is the kind of upkeep that must be going on all the time,” added Ibrahim. ”If everybody left, it would be a very serious problem.”

While the jury is still out on the question of the safety of Saudi oil installations, the kingdom, however, is not taking any chances.

Various Saudi officials in Washington and Riyadh have been on hand to give interviews to international journalists.

”The intent (of this attack) was to cripple the world economy by sending the message that foreigners are not safe in Saudi Arabia,” said Nail al-Jubeir, the Saudi embassy spokesman in Washington.

”It does not take much to come into a building with a rifle and shoot innocent people,” he added.

The state-run Saudi Aramco oil giant, too, issued an immediate statement after the Khobar mayhem.

”No Saudi Aramco facilities or personnel were affected by the incident and normal operations continue at all of the company’s installations ,” the company said in a press release sent to IPS.

”The company is committed to carrying out the Saudi Arabian government’s policy of providing a reliable supply of oil to meet world energy demand,” added the statement.

In damage-control mode, Saudi officials said too much had been made of the potential danger to the country’s oil installations.

”Oil facilities in the kingdom are extremely safe. They have been safe since the 1970s when the country faced terrorism from the Palestinians coming here from Lebanon,” a ranking Saudi official in Riyadh told IPS.

”People forget that we have had terrorism in this country for decades but never has an oil facility been successfully targeted,” said the official.

But he admitted the Saudi government had been slow in combating religious fundamentalism in the country and perceiving terror threats.

”When it comes to obvious targets, the leadership has always been good. It is the unexpected that they have missed,” said the Saudi official.

Oil analyst Youssef Ibrahim cautioned that Saudi officials needed to look into the possibility of penetration within their security apparatus.

”You have to look at the whole security structure up and down. In at least one case, in Yanbu – although we don’t know all the facts yet – those who launched the attack may have been working in the complex,” he said.

”And in both Yanbu and Khobar, these people seem to know the oil facilities well enough to find their way around,” Ibrahim pointed out.

Both the United States and Britain repeated warnings to their nationals to leave Saudi Arabia. Some 30,000 U.S. citizens are believed to be resident in Saudi Arabia, mostly connected with the oil sector.

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By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, May 18 2004 (IPS)

Standing at her hotel’s exhibition booth at the Arabian Travel Market earlier this month, Anne Bleeker was all smiles. She thinks business is brisk and can only get better.

“Demand in Dubai is very high. The market is booming and there is a lot of growth,” says the Dutch public relations manager of the Jumeira International LLC, a chain of nine five-star hotels in Dubai and two in London.

The chain includes Burj al-Arab (Arab Tower), a trendy fit-for-royalty hotel whose 202 all-duplex suites rent for a minimum of about one thousand U.S. dollars a night. The hotel is known as one of the most luxurious hotels in the world, equipped with a helicopter pad to facilitate the arrival of high-class guests and chauffeured Rolls Royce cars to accommodate tenants’ movements.

With a total of about 25,000 hotel rooms in Dubai, Bleeker’s chain counts for about 10 percent of the city’s available rooms, and the company has further expansion plans in the future.

According to Dubai Tourism Development Co, 8,500 of the total rooms are in five-star hotels and the overall occupancy rate in Dubai last year was an unprecedented 72.5 percent.

But Bleeker is not the only one who is beaming. Hotel and tourism executives in the United Arab Emirates say Dubai is basking in unrivaled success, but add that the tourism outlook is equally bright for many other destinations in the Middle East.

Qatar has announced it will spend 20 billion dollars in the next six to 10 years on the tourism industry, hoping to attract an additional 600,000 tourists annually for a total of one million visitors.

Saudi Arabia, which receives millions of religious tourists, plans to ease visa restrictions to accommodate more pilgrims.

According to statistics published by the World Tourism Organisation, while worldwide tourism declined 1.2 percent in 2003, the Middle East showed a 9.5 percent increase, on top of 10.5 percent growth the previous year.

The organisation said tourism in the region showed a 27 percent aggregate growth between 2000 and 2003, despite the Iraq war, the backlash of the Sep. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, and negative effect of diseases such as SARS.

At the same time, experts caution that growth in one part of the world would not necessarily have a negative impact on tourism industries in other parts of the globe.

“If you are talking about leisure tourism, people who want to go to Asia, will continue to go to Asia, and people who want to visit the Middle East or the Mediterranean, will continue to go to those places,” says Denis Johnson, InterContinental Hotel’s Middle East and Africa vice president for sales and marketing.

Out of the 5.5 trillion dollar worldwide hotel and tourism industry, South-east Asia counts for 145 billion dollars in revenue, while the Middle East lags behind with 108 billion dollars in revenue, according to World Tourism Organisation figures.

Experts and officials also say there are several reasons why the Middle East tourism and hotel industries are growing with the current intensity.

“There are two different types of ‘tourists’ that we are talking about, and it just so happens that Dubai has worked hard to show growth in both,” says InterContinental’s Johnson.

Of the total 4.9 million tourists who visited Dubai last year, the UAE government and hotels officials say about 50 percent were business men and women and the rest were leisure tourists. That is a more balanced ratio than seen by many other popular Asian and Middle Eastern tourist destinations, they say.

Much of the “business tourism” can be attributed to the economic growth and increased business activities in the Middle East, especially in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council nations of United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman.

Whereas the average economic growth rate for Europe and the United States was 2.8 percent in 2003, the GCC countries recorded an average of 4.5 percent.

“Much of what we call ‘corporate business’ hotel occupancy in Dubai is caused by intra-regional travels. It has become much more common to hold region-wide business meetings in Dubai, as opposed to elsewhere,” says Jirayr Kececian, Middle East and Africa director of sales and marketing for Starwood hotels and resorts which includes the Sheraton chain.

Another reason is political.

“It used to be that many international corporations that are based in the United States used to hold their annual meetings or conferences there. Now either many Arab businessmen don’t feel welcome in the United States anymore, or simply have problems getting quick visas, or visas at all,” says one U.S. businessman in Dubai who is the Middle East and North Africa chairman of his U.S.-based company.

“So now, instead of everyone going to the States, everyone is coming here,” he adds.

Dubai officials, with help from the UAE’s national flagship, Emirates Airline, are also targeting more leisure tourists, and hoteliers say there is close coordination between officials of various sectors of the tourism industry to make sure there are direct flights to Dubai from the cities targeted. They say favourite target countries are European – France, Switzerland, Germany, and Britain. Eastern countries such as former Soviet republics are also in demand.

UAE officials and hoteliers acknowledge that two problems have hampered Dubai’s faster progress.

One, they say, is that in the past Dubai has put much emphasis on marketing itself as a “luxury destination” and in the process missed out on attracting lower-budget visitors.

That is about to change, says InterContinental’s Johnson. The chain plans to spend 100 million dollars in the coming years to open a number of Express by Holiday Inn hotels in Dubai and other countries to attract budget-conscious travelers. Other hotel chain and management companies have similar plans.

Another issue hampering further growth has been the association by many of the Middle East as a region seething with terrorism and religious fundamentalism.

“I was on the phone the other day with some Korean and Japanese companies trying to convince them to come to Dubai for their conferences. They said it is too risky. As far as some people are concerned, the whole Middle East is dangerous,” says an official with a company that organises international conferences.

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By IPS Correspondents
DUBAI, May 11 2004 (IPS)

It closely resembles the guitar, yet the oud’s distinct musical notes give it a unique identity of its own.

An integral part of the haunting notes that characterise Arabic music, the ‘oud’ (from the Arabic word meaning ‘wood’ or ‘flexible stick’) is the leading musical instrument in any Arab ‘takhet’ (orchestra).

However, the gentle notes of this elegant instrument are losing their place in modern Arab society, whose youth are increasingly turning to Arabic pop and MTV beats for entertainment.

Through generations, Arabs have been lovers of music in its various forms and music is an integral part of daily life in the Arab world. The sounds and tones of various instruments are deeply rooted in the Arab personality.

The musical tradition in the Arab world dates back to the simple singsong recitations of tribal bards in pre-Islamic days, usually accompanied by the ”rababa”, a primitive two-string fiddle.

But it was the ‘oud’ that captured the hearts and minds of the simple tribesmen. More than any other instrument, the ‘oud’ represents Arabic music and is often used as an accompaniment for popular singers.

”We used to gather around a roaring fire after a hard day’s travel across the desert. After dinner, the ouds would be brought out and we would listen to its evocative notes late into the night,” recalls Abdulla Al Abed, an elderly national from Dubai, one of the seven emirates, who spends his evenings by the beach everyday.

”I still attend any oud concert that we have in the emirate or elsewhere, but they have become very rare. Today’s generation seems to prefer other kinds of music. Sadly traditional music has very few followers nowadays,” Abdulla adds.

The ‘oud’ has a half pear-shaped body with stripes on its shell and a right angle keyboard. It has twelve strings (six pairs) and is played with a plectrum, often the sharpened quill of an eagle.

”Pictures of oud-like instruments have been discovered on stone carvings in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Persians and Indians played it in ancient days. It was the Arabs, however, who perfected the oud, gave it its name, and passed it on to the western world,” says Mansour Al Awad, a visitor to the Dubai Heritage Village, who frequents places of cultural and historical interest.

Making ‘ouds’ is considered an art and requires great patience and skill. The type of wood used is important. It must be non-porous, hard but flexible. Rosewood and mahogany meet these requirements.

The wood is cut into 1/32-inch thick strips. These strips are fit, one at a time, over a wooden model and then carefully glued and allowed to dry. A sounding board of thin spruce wood is affixed and supported by inner cross ridges; an ebony or mahogany neck along with other artistic embellishments can be added to one’s taste.

Originally, ‘ouds’ were strung with gut strings, but today 10 to 12 high-quality nylon strings are used.

”Unfortunately, we hear very little of the oud nowadays. One of my friends wanted to learn how to play the oud. Ironically, there are very few places where he can learn to play this traditional Arab instrument,” says Mansour.

”There are numerous schools that teach the guitar, the piano and many such Western instruments. But as for the oud, we really had a tough time finding a teacher,” he adds.

History has it that the ‘oud’ reached Europe during the Middle Ages to replace a plucked instrument, the giltern.

As music became more complex with the introduction of chord patterns in the 13th century, alterations in the technique of playing the ‘oud’ as well as modifications in its construction were applied. These changes brought its sound close to that of the ‘vihula’, a form of Spanish guitar.

”In the 16th and 17th centuries, the oud was very popular in Europe as a solo instrument and as a part of orchestra ensembles. By the mid-18th century, the lute’s rival, the guitar, which was simpler in construction and less cumbersome to hold and to play, finally won the battle for popular favour,” says an official at the Dubai museum.

Other instruments that developed from the ‘oud’ are the mandolin, the mandora, and the mandolino, he adds.

During a concert at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, UAE national Hameed Mohammed recounted to the press the difficulties he faced when he decided to learn to play the ‘oud’.

There were no schools in the country for him to pursue it professionally. He finally learnt the ‘oud’ on his own, playing old tunes and melodies over and over again. He even went to Cairo, Egypt, to learn the art but was unhappy with the system of teaching there and could not afford the fees as well.

”But today my dedication has paid off. I found my mentor in Abu Dhabi (the capital of U.A.E.) itself and he encouraged me to come up with tunes of my own,” says Hameed. ”I experimented with playing western classical music notes on this Arabic instrument using several offbeat techniques. These tunes have now become very popular. But I was lucky to have found my mentor.”

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