New York Times Fiction: On Obama’s Letter to Rouhani

Mark Landler is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Under the title "Through Diplomacy, Obama Finds a Pen Pal in Iran", Landler wrote of President Barack Obama’s deep "belief in the power of the written word," and of his "frustrating private correspondence with the leaders of Iran." (NYT, Sep. 19)

What is also frustrating is the unabashed snobbery of Landler’s and the NYT’s narrative regarding Iran: that of successive US administrations trying their best and obstinate Iranian leaders – stereotyped and derided – who always fail to reciprocate. This is all supposedly changing though since the new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani, who they present as different and approachable, decided to break ranks with his predecessors.

This is of course hardly an appropriate framing of the story. While a friendly exchange of letters between Rouhani and Obama is a welcomed development in a region that is torn between failed revolutions, civil wars and the potential of an all-out regional conflict, it is not true that it is Rouhani’s personality that is setting him apart from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Rouhani’s ‘charm offensive’ as described by the times is a ‘process’ that ‘has included the release of 11 prominent political prisoners and a series of conciliatory statements by top Iranian officials.’ It is natural then, we are meant to believe, that Obama would make his move and apply his writing skills in earnest. Israel was not mentioned in the story even once, as if the fact that Israel’s decade-long advocacy of sanctioning and bombing Iran has not been the single greatest motive behind the deteriorating relations between Washington and Tehran, long before Ahmadinejad was painted by US media, the NTY included, as the devil incarnate.

Dominant US media is unlikely to adjust its attitude towards Iran and the rest of the Middle East anytime soon: the perceived enemies will remain enemies and the historic allies – as in Israel only – will always be that. While that choosy discourse has been the bread and butter of US media – from elitist publications like NYT to demagogues like Fox News – that one-sidedness will no longer suffice as the Middle East region is vastly changing in terms of alliances and power plays.

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Is Al-Shabab Trying to Pull the US Into A Military Quagmire in Africa?

U.S. Army Spc. Tyler Meehan observes Kenyan trainees
U.S. Army Spc. Tyler Meehan observes Kenyan trainees

In a discussion on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday, host Steve Inskeep asked Bronwyn Bruton, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, an important question regarding the massacre in Kenya by the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab:

INSKEEP: Is there a danger here for the United States, because perhaps one of the reasons – if you’re a terror group – that you would mount an attack like this in the shopping mall, is to suck in the United States in some way.

BRUTON: Absolutely, that was their goal in Somalia. Certainly it was al-Qaida’s goal in Somalia to attempt to draw the U.S. into yet another quagmire, it didn’t succeed. But they will certainly attempt to draw the U.S. into Nairobi. The United States will certainly feel pressure to assist and respond.

Victims are still being pulled from the rubble in Nairobi, Kenya, but a more involved U.S. response is already becoming apparent. Over at The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead writes that “last weekend’s terror attack in Kenya appears to be boosting chances that U.S. engagement in Africa will grow.” Mead cites a Wall Street Journal report that the terrorist attacks in Kenya, and in Nigeria before that, “could speed up U.S. engagement in the continent’s terrorism problems.”

Before considering the potential for the U.S. to get sucked into a quagmire in East Africa, it’s important to know just how involved the U.S. has been up to this point. About a year ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. was “heavily engaged” in Somalia, “[o]nly this time, African troops are doing the fighting and dying. The United States is doing almost everything else.”

The U.S. has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has imposed a harsh form of Islamic rule on southern Somalia and sparked alarm in Washington as foreign militants join its ranks.

Officially, the troops are under the auspices of the African Union. But in truth, according to interviews by U.S. and African officials and senior military officers and budget documents, the 15,000-strong force pulled from five African countries is largely a creation of the State Department and Pentagon, trained and supplied by the U.S. government and guided by dozens of retired foreign military personnel hired through private contractors.

This strategy of encouraging regional African nations to conduct war on Somalia isn’t new. Close observers will remember the Bush administration backed Ethiopia’s 2006 invasion of Somalia to depose the Islamic Courts Union, with unflattering consequences.

And keep in mind, these African governments the U.S. is bankrolling to fight a proxy war in Somalia are no peacekeepers.

Kenya, for example, “has been one of the largest recipients of U.S. State Department Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) in the world,” writes Jonathan Horowitz at Foreign Policy, despite the fact that this assistance has been “aiding and abetting human rights violations,” like “detainee abuse, denial of fair trial guarantees, extrajudicial killings, or unlawful extraditions.”

“Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta faces a trial in the International Criminal Court for backing ethnic violence that left hundreds dead in late 2007,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “The charges, which he denies, have added an awkwardness to the U.S. relationship.”

There is a similar story for Uganda. In 2011, President Obama sent more than 100 combat troops to Uganda to help Ugandan security forces with domestic security, essentially as a bribe to keep Ugandan military forces in the proxy war in Somalia. Since the troop deployment and the increases in aid and military assistance, the Ugandan regime has been “increasingly placing illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly to silence critical voices,” according to Amnesty International.

So one part of the U.S.’s involvement in Somalia has been to send money, weapons, and training to accused war criminals so they can attack Somalia on Washington’s behalf. The other part is a more direct, covert war.

In a number of articles in 2011, The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill uncovered Obama’s covert war in Somalia, which included secret prisons run by CIA proxies, harsh interrogations, and the funding and training of unscrupulous militants many of whom were former (and current?) warlords. The “counter-terrorism” effort in Somalia also included “targeted strikes by U.S. Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations.”

Scahill noted “U.S. policy on Somalia [since “Black Hawk Down”] has been marked by neglect, miscalculation and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically.”

It was important that these interventions were secret, kept from Congress, the American people, and the international community. One of the reasons for that was revealed when, in 2012, the UN Security Council Committee Chairman issued a letter warning against the increased use of drones over the skies of Somalia, saying such actions may violate international law.

So the U.S. has been deeply involved in destabilizing Somalia for decades and such policies have intensified in the past few years under Obama. Given the rather obvious failure of these policies (Scahill argues “U.S. policy has strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab”), will Washington cut its losses or double down?

It’s hard to say. For all Obama’s faults, he has been acutely cautious of getting into another boots-on-the-ground quagmire in yet another Muslim country. But al-Qaeda, which is formally linked with al-Shabab, has been quite successful in their attempts to draw superpowers into bloody, expensive and seemingly endless wars. They did it to us in Afghanistan…and we’re still there 12 years later.

No, Sanctions Did Not Prompt Iran’s New Diplomacy

Official_Photo_of_Hassan_Rouhani,_7th_President_of_Iran,_August_2013

The U.S. and Iranian presidents are probably going to meet face to face at the U.N. today. “They may even shake hands, ” CNN reports. This would be pretty significant given the history of enmity between these two nations and it would follow several weeks of what cable news annoyingly refers to as a “charm offensive” by Iran’s new reformist president Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani has been aggressively getting America’s attention, writing in the Washington Post about the need for a constructive diplomatic relationship.

Why this sudden change in Iranian engagement with the U.S.? If you ask the Obama administration or most anyone in Congress: the sanctions did it!

Trita Parsi, president and founder of the National Iranian American Council, has a piece up in Reuters refuting the claim that the U.S.-led sanctions regime is what brought about Iran turn to diplomacy.

Washington’s “narrative,” writes Parsi, that Iran’s latest attempt for rapprochement with America is due to “the inevitable pain of sanctions finally changing Tehran’s nuclear calculus,” doesn’t pass muster. Some history is in order to get closer to the truth:

Rouhani and the new esteemed foreign minister, Javad Zarif, played crucial roles in past Iranian efforts to engineer an opening to Washington — almost a decade before the strangulating sanctions.

Zarif led the collaboration with the United States in Afghanistan in 2001, where the two countries closely cooperated to oust the Taliban and establish a new constitutional government in that country. The Iranians were hoping Washington would appreciate their strategic help and improve relations. Instead, President George W. Bush listed Iran in the “Axis of Evil.” The Iranian plan for rapprochement fell apart.

Two years later, this same team of Iranian officials offered the Bush administration a “grand bargain” proposal, addressing all major areas of conflict between the two countries. Among other things, the Iranians offered to open up their nuclear program for transparency, collaborate with the U.S. in Iraq, restrain Hamas and Islamic jihad and even indirectly recognize Israel.

The Bush White House rejected the offer out of hand.

Before the Ahmadinejad government took over, Zarif and Rouhani — who was then national security adviser and nuclear negotiator — reached out to the European Union. They offered to cap Iran’s nuclear program at 3,000 centrifuges. The EU, however, did not take the offer.

These efforts preceded the sanctions that have devastated the Iranian economy. And they were made with the approval of Iran’s Supreme Leader, though he maintains he believed they would fail.

Americans are notoriously bad at history. And that’s why most people seem to be buying into this narrative about the effectiveness of economic sanctions: you need to disregard even the recent history in order to believe it.

It’s more likely the new push for detente is happening in spite of the sanctions, since economic warfare typically hardens the positions of geo-political rivals. Back in February, the International Crisis Group (ICG) published a paper assessing the efficacy of the sanctions on their own terms. “Without doubt, they are crippling Iran’s economy,” the paper finds. “But are they succeeding” in pressuring Iran to concede to U.S. demands on its nuclear program? “[P]lainly they are not.”

Robert Pape, a political scientist at Chicago University, years ago examined 115 cases of economic sanctions over almost 80 years and found only 5 that could be considered a success (that is, the recipient nation changed policy in the desired direction of the imposer nation). That is a horrible track record.

As I discussed in my latest interview with Scott Horton, detente between the U.S. and Iran makes a lot of sense in a realpolitik sort of way. That may have something to do with the decision to reach out.

As an addendum, we shouldn’t forget what the sanctions are really about at their core: deliberately impoverishing millions of Iranians, crippling the economy, inducing high inflation and unemployment, and blocking the import of critically needed medicines. Such an approach should never be praised as a wonderfully effective tool of foreign policy. It’s using state coercion to starve innocent people of their livelihood.

Really? Anticipated Study Finds No Evidence of Iraqi Birth Defects

Baby Seif in Fallujah, born with spina bifida. Credit: Donna Mulhearn
Baby Seif in Fallujah, born with spina bifida. Credit: Donna Mulhearn

Human rights and health observers have been waiting a year for the results of a World Health Organization/Iraqi Health Ministry study that would, at last, shed some “official” light on a problem that local doctors and journalists have been reporting for years: that a disproportionate number of babies in areas that saw heavy western bombardment during the war are being born with horrifying birth defects.

Well, after a summer of anticipation, a “summary” of the report was quietly released on Sept. 11 and it says the complete opposite of what health officials — even the Iraqi ministry officials in charge of the study! — have been saying:

The rates for spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects found in the study are consistent with or even lower than international estimates. The study provides no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq.

The full summary report can be found in .pdf form, here.

Using 72 local teams, the ministry last year conducted a survey of Iraqi women of child-bearing age and their households in 18 districts across Iraq (two districts in each governorate). The districts represented those that “had or had not been exposed to bombardment or heavy fighting” during the war. Out of the 10,800 households visited, 95 percent or 10,355 had responded, according to the summary. The questionnaire was chiefly concerned with determining the number of stillborns, spontaneous abortions and birth defects among live births, the presence, magnitude and trends of birth defects and “limited risk factors” involved. On all counts, the summary report seems to find no evidence of a high incidences of birth defects or of babies born dead.

Antiwar has been covering this story for years now. Where the WHO/Ministry of Health report laughingly refers to the lack of study on this issue, we know that prominent doctors like US-based Dr Mozhgan Savabieasfahani have been working on this and have done several studies indicating a “epidemic of birth defects,” demanding more study on the link to war pollutants, like heavy metals, radiation from depleted uranium (DU) and other contaminants left over from the war. Savabieasfahani has already found higher levels of lead and mercury in children in Basra, which could account for the reported higher rates of cancer there.

There is the testimony from activist Donna Mulhearn who has been there. Even the ministry officials who went on record with BBC last spring said the study would confirm the worst and blamed it on the war. Why are they changing their stories now?

There are many questions to be asked. Why does WHO suddenly take a tiny role in this study, resigned to providing “technical assistance” to the MOI when it was originally billed as a “collaboration,” “co-financed” by both organizations?

Dr. Savabieasfahani published a response to the summary on Sept. 16 raising a number of questions about the methodology, the preliminary results, and wondering, too, about the “reviewers” — all British and American researchers — as well as the apparent anonymity of the report’s authors:

Another unusual and outrageous feature of this report is its anonymity. No author(s) are listed or identified. An anonymous report is rarely seen in epidemiological reporting given the multiple questions that often arise when interested readers examine complicated study designs, large data sets, and multiple analysis. Identification of corresponding authors is critical for the transparency and clarity of any report. Without author names and affiliations, without identified offices in the MoH, the reader must ask, who is responsible to answer for this report? To whom must the public direct their questions and concerns about this report?

Media Lens has also published a lengthy article on the subject, interviewing a number of interested parties, including former WHO advisors who are obviously disgusted with the way things have gone so far.

Dr Keith Baverstock, the former WHO adviser on radiation and public health mentioned earlier, told (Media Lens):

‘I have not had time to study this report in detail so I will not comment on the scientific aspects. However, there are aspects which cause me very considerable concern. Firstly, this is not the independent academic analysis that is required – it certainly would not find a place in a reputable scientific journal. So it is strange to my mind that apparently reputable scientists have, through what is purported to be a peer review process, endorsed this study. I would have several questions for these people, none of whom I know. For example, how did they ensure that there was no selection bias: why was such a simplistic approach taken to the statistical analysis of the results. The implication is that these people were appointed by WHO although WHO does not appear to be a co-author, or in other ways connected with the report. If this peer review group have had access to information not in the report where and when will this information be made public?’

The summary is a big disappointment and and even greater mystery, considering those WHO officials who reportedly spoke to BBC last March with assurances that the report would find obvious rates of increased birth defects in Fallujah and Basra. There have been reports of government/western pressure on local physicians, but this is too much. Seeing the full report now is even more essential, but can we trust what it says?

Sino-Japanese Territorial Disputes Could Pull the US into War in Asia

The crux of why the Obama administration’s Asia-Pivot strategy is reckless and stupid is contained in the first question and answer of Foreign Policy’s interview with Japan’s Defense Minister, Itsunori Onodera.

Foreign Policy: What kind of commitment has the United States given to you in terms of defending the Senkakus if China attacks? And what kind of commitment would you like?

Itsunori Onodera: We don’t have any assumptions that specific incidents will occur. But the area in and around the Senkakus is controlled by Japan, and the lands controlled by Japan are subject to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty Article V [which states that “an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety”]. The United States and Japan have agreed in talks that the United States is obligated to fulfill Article 5 in case anything happens.

Sino-Japanese territorial disputes over a set of island chains that China calls Diaoyu and Japan calls Senkaku were long dormant. China claims the islands belonged to mainland China going back to the Qing dynasty. At the end of the Sino-Japanese war in 1895, Japan annexed the islands. After WWII, when Japan was forced to adopt a pacifist government and the U.S. occupied several Japanese islands, the maritime territorial claims between China and Japan were not a hot issue.

About a year ago, the Japanese government bought the Senkakus from a private Japanese owner, pissing off China. And ever since, China and Japan have been engaging in brinkmanship to stake their claims on the disputed territory. It’s important to note that the islands became ever more important to each party after they were discovered to be rich in oil, gas, and mineral deposits, as well as being valuable fisheries.

According to many sources in both China and the U.S., Washington’s promise to go to war for the sake of Japan’s territorial integrity has emboldened right wing nationalists in Japan. China wields much more military and economic power than Japan, but Japan ain’t scared because America has her back.

A similar dynamic is taking place with Vietnam and the Philippines, who have comparable territorial disputes with China. As the Washington Post reported in July:

China’s most daring adversary in Southeast Asia is, by many measurements, ill-suited for a fight. The Philippines has a military budget one-fortieth the size of Beijing’s, and its navy cruises through contested waters in 1970s hand-me-downs from the South Vietnamese.

From that short-handed position, the Philippines has set off on a risky mission to do what no nation in the region has managed to do: thwart China in its drive to control the vast waters around it.

The Philippines ain’t scared, though, because the U.S. has a mutual defense treaty with them as well.

While it may be exciting hardliners in Japan and the Philippines, America’s meddling in Asian territorial disputes that have nothing to do with us isn’t perceived favorably in China. Last year, according to the New York Times, “a longtime Chinese diplomat warned…that the United States is using Japan as a strategic tool in its effort to mount a comeback in Asia, a policy that he said is serving to heighten tensions between China and Japan.”

“My biggest fear is that a small mishap is going to blow up into something much bigger,” says Elizabeth C. Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“If there is a use of force between Japan and China,” warns Sheila A. Smith, also of CFR, “this could be all-out conflict between these two Asian giants. And as a treaty ally of Japan, it will automatically involve the United States.”

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera is cocky and prepared for a military skirmish with China over these uninhabited islands, potentially pulling the U.S. into a destructive bout in Asia-Pacific.

Alternatively, we could stay the hell out of it.

A Retrial for US-Backed Guatemalan War Criminal?

Rios Montt with Ronald Reagan

Back in May, former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Ríos Montt was convicted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in an historic case, the first time a former head of state had been prosecuted for genocide by his own country. Ten days after his conviction, the Constitutional Court annulled the verdict and wiped Rios Montt’s slate clean again.

“The abrupt annulment of the verdict raised questions of outside interference, particularly from powerful economic and political interests,” a new report from the International Crisis Group concludes. “Judicial authorities must now expedite a new trial and continue to prosecute others responsible for massive human rights violations during the armed conflict.”

A new trial may be in the works, but it will undoubtedly be an uphill battle. Maybe the United States should have something to say about that.

Ríos Montt received training from the U.S. at the infamous School of the Americas. He came to power in a military coup in 1982 and continued to receive enthusiastic support from Washington, even as his regime carried out mass atrocities. The Reagan administration aided, abetted, and covered up Montt’s crimes.

Montt’s forces, with the help of his chief of staff Fuentes, slit the throats of women and children, tortured and mutilated thousands of innocent indigenous peasants, and beat innocent civilians and doused them in gasoline to be burned alive. The UN commission investigating the atrocities has already concluded it constituted acts of genocide. Through it all, Reagan was calling Montt “a man of great integrity” and “totally dedicated to democracy.”

The United States had a history in Guatemala going back to the Eisenhower administration, when in 1954 the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA. The 1960-96 conflict in Guatemala, with consistent U.S. intervention on the side of the government and paramilitary groups, saw some 200,000 people murdered or disappeared. The height of the bloodshed occurred under Ríos Montt, during which the number of killings and disappearances reached more than 3,000 per month.

Given the power of the United States in world affairs, even words from Washington can have an incredible impact. I’m thinking it’d be appropriate for the Obama administration to publicly apologize for Washington’s complicity in Montt’s genocide and urge a retrial. That’s the least it could do so long as prosecuting Reagan-era officials remains out of the question.