Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt, was asked at a mini-summit of Arab governments (Syria, Libya, Egypt and the head of the Muslim League) whether their deliberations could avert the looming war in Iraq. "We would make ourselves a laughing stock if we thought we could postpone a war . . . "There is the (US) Congress and administration, a (UN) Security Council, a British parliament, they are the ones that can bring forward a war, wage war or postpone it . . ." He also admitted that Saddam Hussein could avert it by cooperating with weapons inspectors.



For the heir of the Young Officers' coup of 1952 to admit the complete powerlessness of Arab governments in relation to a war in the Arab world must have been humiliating and tragic for Mubarak.

*Dawn (Karachi) reported that the Council of Saudi Ulema (clergy) issued a fatwa that prohibits attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims. The ruling says that one could not just arbitrarily term persons "infidels" and then make them targets. It specifically referred to the bombing of buildings, ships, and public and private facilities in such a way as to kill innocents. Tthis stance is a traditional one for the Saudi ulema, but the timing of the fatwa just before the second Gulf war is significant. I have not seen it reported at Arab News or Asharq al-Awsat or other likely venues, and it certainly wasn't noticed in the Western press.



* Dina Wadi reports in Asharq al-Awsat from Cairo that journalist Ibrahim as-Sahari of al-`Alam al-Yawm has been jailed by the security forces. He has been active in criticizing the looming American war in Iraq and the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis. The Union of Newspaper Writers has protested the incarceration to the Egyptian government, saying it should have been informed before the arrest and that he should not be questioned without one of their representatives being present.

The Center for Socialist Studies also condemned the jailing and reiterated its protest of the arrest of 8 socialist party members at a demonstration in Sayyida Zaynab in the middle of last month. These arrests were made under the Emergency Law used for the last 22 years, which the Center urged be abolished. I would just note that there has been friction between the US and the Mubarak government over human rights issues, and President Bush himself complained about the jailing of human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. But is this honeymoon with human rights in Washington now at an end?

According to Ali Nurizadeh in Asharq al-Awsat, the British government has given Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi an undertaking that in the aftermath of the Anglo-American attack on Iraq, Iran would not be subject to any military action. Iran has been nervous about British intentions since a recent invitation was issued to Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, to speak at the Royal Institute for International Affairs recently. The UK has tried to allay those fears.



The Iranians are also very worried about whether they will have any influence in post-Saddam Iraq. Nurizadeh argues that the Iranians had their hands burned in Afghanistan because they had expected `Abdu'l-Karim Khalili, head of the Shi`ite Hizb-i Vahdat, to be a useful tool for them against the Americans and President Karzai. Khalili, who is one of Karzai's vice presidents, however, has refused to play that role, saying he is an Afghan first and a Shi`ite second. Since they had put all their eggs in the Hizb-i Vahdat basket, they were stuck. They also received hostility from US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad, who accused them of using warlord Ismail Khan of Herat to establish hegemony over western Afghanistan.



The Iranians had invested similar hopes in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim. But al-Hakim, Nurizadeh alleges, was mainly backed by the US State Department. At the insistence of Khalilzad and Condaleeza Rice, the Iraqi dissident committee has been enlarged from 65 to 100 so as to dilute the influence of SCIRI, and seats have been given to other Shi`ite Iraqi voices such as the al-Da`wa Party, and to independent political tendencies such as those of `Abd al-Majid al-Khu'i, Shirazi, and the Organization of Islamic Action. Iran has, in tandem, attempted to broaden its relations with the dissidents likely to replace Saddam, as with its meeting in Tehran with Ahmad Chalabi.

*Colin Powell did a good job at the UN Security Council in making the case that Iraq has tried to thwart the weapons inspectors and is actively not cooperating with Resolution 1441. The Bush administration has all along known that this would be the case, and crafted 1441 as a trap for Saddam, into which they knew he would fall. The difference between the US and most other Security Council members is that the US views this non-cooperation as a casus belli or justification for war, whereas most other countries do not. The US government decided to launch this war shortly after September 11 (some administration figures had wanted to do so for many years before), and the war is going to happen. I suspect the Security Council in the end will go along with it reluctantly or at least not formally object.



I was sorry to see Powell try to link Saddam to al-Qaida. That is just propaganda. Terrorists are shadowy and pop up various places. That Abu Musab Zarqawi managed to get treated at a Baghdad hospital is no proof of active cooperation between the Baath and Usama Bin Laden (which anyway makes no sense since they hate each other). The US case is weakened rather than strengthened in this disregard for all evidence to the contrary on this issue.



*Fighting broke out in Kardway about 80 miles north of Qandahar between the forces of Gul Agha Shirzai and remnants of the Taliban, one of whom was wounded and captured. The rebels just had machine guns and the government expects to mop up the opposition shortly. A fuel truck exploded in Kabul suspiciously near a UN fuel supply depot. It is not known if this was terrorism or just an accident.



*Baghdad residents are storing water containers in their yards in expectation that US bombing will cut off water supplies in a few weeks.



*Former UN weapons inspector and Gulf War veteran Scott Ritter said in Tokyo that he expects the air war to begin soon and to go on until the end of February, with a land invasion at the beginning of March. He said he expects the war to be long and bloody.



*A Kuwaiti soldier accused of opening fire on two American GIs in December is claiming to be mentally ill and says he has nothing against Americans. Most of the al-Qaida members picked up lately appear to be mentally ill or marginal personalities. Richard Reid is an example and Moussaoui is another. One begins to wonder if Atta and Jarrah, German-trained engineers, were the best al-Qaida ever recruited, and whether what is left is really that formidable.

History News Network

2-04-03: Fact & Fiction

Did Saddam Gas the Kurds?

In a recent New York Times op-ed, Stephen Pelletiere argued that the March, 1988, gassing of Kurds during the waning months of the Iran-Iraq war may have been perpetrated by Iran, not Iraq. This issue has taken on importance because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's gassing of the Kurds is often given as one ground for the U.S. to go to war to effect regime change. As it happens, Pelletiere, a former CIA analyst, is just plain wrong and appears not to have kept up with documentation made available during the past decade.



As a result of the successful bid for autonomy of Kurds in northern Iraq under the U.S. no-fly zone, tens of thousands of documents from the Iraqi secret police and military were captured by Kurdish rebels from 1991 forward. These were turned over to the U.S. government. Some ten thousand of them have been posted to the World Wide Web at the Iraq Research and Documentation Program at the Center for Middle East Studies of Harvard University: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~irdp/.



The captured documents explicitly refer to Iraqi use of chemical weapons against Kurds, called "Anfal" (spoils) operations. Some documents were reviewed by Human Rights Watch in the early 1990s, which issued a report, entitled "Genocide in Iraq." Robert Rabil, a researcher with the IRD Program, has also published an analysis of the documents, in the Middle East Review of International Affairs.



The documents under review never mention Iraqi authorities taking precautions against Iranian uses of chemical weapons, and there is no good evidence that Iran did so. Since Iran and the Kurds were allies, Iran in any case had no motive to gas thousands of Kurds. The Baath documents do frequently mention the Anfal campaign of February-September 1988, when high Baath officials in the north were authorized to gas the Kurds.



The Kurdish minority of northern Iraq speaks an Indo-European language very different from the Semitic language of Arabic, and has long sought greater autonomy from Baghdad. Largely farmers and pastoralists, they practice a mystical, Sufi form of Islam that is distinctive in modern Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, which Saddam Hussein launched against his neighbor, the Kurds sought Iranian support for their insurgency. The Baath regime, threatened, responded by destroying Kurdish villages in strategic zones, resorting to ethnic cleansing.



These brutal conventional measures failed to achieve their objective, and for that reason the Baath regime initiated its chemical warfare on the Kurds in 1988. The operation was headed up by Saddam's cousin, Ali Hasan al-Majid, the Secretary-General of the Northern Bureau of the Ba'th Organization. For this reason, Iraqis call him "Chemical Ali."



The Baath regime launched 39 separate gas attacks against the Kurds, many of them targeting villages far from the Iran-Iraq border. Beginning at night on Thursday, March 16, and extending into Friday, March 17, 1988, the city of Halabja (population 70,000), was bombarded with twenty chemical and cluster bombs. Photographs show dead children in the street with lunch pails. An estimated 5,000 persons died. Although some analysts say the gas used was hydrogen cyanide (not in Iraq's arsenal), others have suggested it might have been sarin, VX, and tabun. Iraq is known to have these agents. (Iran is not known to have hydrogen cyanide, in any case).



High Iraqi officials, including Vice-Premier Tariq Aziz, have since admitted using chemical weapons against the Kurds. Last year, Radio Free Iraq broadcast the allegation by a former brigadier general in Saddam's air force that the command to use "extraordinary" weapons against Halabjah came from the president himself.



The Anfal campaign deeply traumatized the Kurdish people, and its psychological effects are felt powerfully to this day. Kurds of Halabja recently protested against Western skeptics who questioned whether Saddam had and would use chemical weapons. They said they were living proof that he did and would.



There is no doubt that Saddam launched this chemical weapons campaign (which was also waged on the battlefield against Iranian troops, with devastating results). Persons may argue in good faith about whether his resort to weapons of mass destruction in 1988 justifies forcible regime change now. My own knowledge of the horrors Saddam has perpetrated makes it impossible for me to stand against the coming war, however worried I am about its aftermath. World order is not served by unilateral military action, to which I do object. But world order, human rights and international law are likewise not served by allowing a genocidal monster to remain in power.

*The Iranian courts--get this--have according to some sources sentenced two pollsters to 7-8 years in prison because their poll showed that a majority of Iranians favors a dialogue with the United States. This news could not be absolutely verified at time of writing. Abbas Abdi and Husayn Ghaziyan are apparently being used as object lessons. Abdi has been active in the reformist faction, which the clerical hardliners in charge of the courts wish to crush. Someone should get those mullahs up to speed; we are living in the 21st century, and you don't imprison people for thought crimes.



*Iraq has been moving oil supplies and equipment down to Baghdad from the Kirkuk fields in the north, in preparation for the coming war.



*Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh called on political leaders and parties in Yemen to work within the constitution and democratically for change rather than resorting to violence. Yemen is among a very few Arab countries that has moved toward more openness and parliamentary elections in recent years. But some elements in the Islamist Islah Party appear to have ties to al-Qaida, and to have taken advantage of the greater openness. There has been violence in Yemen, including tribal elements fighting government troops trying to capture al-Qaida suspects, and some rocket fire and bombings.



*See the article at Plain Dealer (someone forgot to tell them to bury this in the back pages; the advantage of being in Cleveland rather than in a big city).



The mainstream US media continue a virtual news blackout over the Sharon government's egregious violation of The Fourth Geneva Conventions. In the past week the Israeli army has devastated commercial districts in two Palestinian towns, tearing down 28 shops in Nazlat Isa and destroying dozens of shops in Gaza City in a fire started by indiscriminate Israeli rocket fire. Presumably the goal of these actions is to throw the Palestinians into such penury that they will have no choice but to emigrate. It is absolutely outrageous that these actions are being taken by a government that is signatory to the Geneva Conventions. One would have thought that a country of the descendants of Holocaust survivors would be a little more interested in international legality. The Geneva Conventions, after all, were designed to forestall the kinds of abuses and war crimes we saw in WW II. I suppose these massive demolitions do not show up on television because the Israeli forces are clever about keeping camcorders away, and so there is no good footage. But sometimes you wonder if the American news channels would bother to show it if there were footage. The poverty, misery, and hunger of the Palestinian children continues to grow daily. UN workers say they have never seen it so bad. The destruction of so many shops can only contribute to the misery. The days of collective punishment should be over. The only good news is that Amram Mitznah, the labor party head, is laying down some firm conditions for joining a national unity government, including Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza and a return to direct talks with the Palestinian Authority.



I know, I know. Partisans of Sharon will say that Palestinian terrorism justifies this action. That is such a pitiful, morally bankrupt stance. Punish terrorists by all means. Don't tear down (or burn down) shops just because the proprietors are of the same ethnicity. All you have to do is reverse the situation, so that some government was collectively punishing Jews for the actions of a few hotheads, to see what is really going on here.

Saudi astronaut Sultan b. Salman b. Abdul-Aziz, the first Arab Muslim in space, said that the accident in which the shuttle Columbia was destroyed was regrettable, as is any incident in which human life is lost. He expressed confidence that NASA's safety procedures are impeccable, and he did not think that is where the blame lay. Asked if the accident would deter him from ever going up again, he said "no." He said he believed in God and pointed out that people don't stop driving because there are auto accidents.



Sultan b. Salman's expression of grief over the loss of any bashar or human being was a great universalist sentiment.



The Columbia crew included an Israeli, former figher pilot Ilan Ramon, as well as an Indian-born astronaut, Kalpana Chawla. Indian External Affairs minister Yashwant Sinha expressed deep shock and grief at the tragic loss of lives.



Space travel is far more multicultural now than it was in the days of Gus Grissom. But it still isn't safer. The miracle is that we have lost as few astronauts as we have. The Arabic for astronaut is probably more accurate than the English word, which literally means star-traveller. In contrast, Ra'id al-Fada' literally means trailblazer in space; it gives the sense of someone trekking into an unknown frontier, and doing something dangerous.



Those brave souls on Columbia were trailblazers for us all:



STS-107 Flight: January 16-February 1, 2003

Crew:



Commander Rick D. Husband (second flight),

Pilot William C. McCool (first flight),

Payload Specialist Michael P. Anderson (second flight),

Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla (second flight),

Mission Specialist David M. Brown (first flight),

Mission Specialist Laurel B. Clark (first flight),

Payload Specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel (first flight)



Since it is dangerous for a species to exist only on one planet, they were engaged in an endeavor that might help assure the longevity of humanity. They were brave human beings.