House Oversight and Government Reform Committee leaders on Tuesday evening sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking why requests for more protection were denied to the U.S. mission in Libya by Washington officials prior to the violent and deadly terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The denials came after repeated attacks and security threats to U.S. personnel, according to Congressmen Darrell Issa (R-CA), the committee chairman, and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) the subcommittee chairman.

“While the written requests were unemotional and respectful, verbal requests were pleas from American foreign service personnel who were terrified of their surroundings and their vulnerability in a turbulent environment,” said the Law Enforcement Examiner source.

“Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, As Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest,” wrote Issa and Chaffetz.

“In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the [Oversight] Committee that, prior to the attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington,” the congressmen alleged.

The letter to Secretary Clinton outlined 13 security threats during the six months prior to the attack that claimed the lives of Stevens, two Navy SEALs and a consulate staff member.

For example, on June 6, 2012, in Benghazi, under cover of darkness, assailants placed an IED on the north gate of Consulate Benghazi, blowing a hole in the security perimeter that was described by one individual as, “big enough for forty men to go through.”

Also in Benghazi, on June 10, a two-car convoy carrying the British Ambassador to Libya from a conference on reforming Libyan military law was attacked in broad daylight by a militant with an RPG. This attack was an important escalation in the violence against Western targets in Benghazi, as prior attacks had been at night and were often preceded by warnings from the attackers.

“Put together, these events indicated a clear pattern of security threats that could only be reasonably interpreted to justify increased security for U.S. personnel and facilities in Benghazi,” the chairmen wrote.

The Committee indicated it intends to convene a hearing in Washington on Wednesday Oct. 10, 2012, on the security failures that preceded the attack.

AUTHOR: Jim Kouri
URL: http://www.renewamerica.com/
E-MAIL: COPmagazine [at] aol.com

Masoud Rajavi

The U.S. State Department on Friday formally removed the Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e Khalq from its official list of terrorist organizations in a move which, according to political analysts is bound to deteriorate the relations with Iran even further. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the decision, as the State Department stated, in view of the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of their paramilitary base in Iraq, where several thousand members of the MEK got stranded in 2003 after their former mentor, Saddam Hussein, disappeared from the political stage. It seems the remaining MEK-members have agreed to be move to Camp Liberty, a former U.S. military base under UN-supervision in Baghdad, from where they are expected to be resettled overseas.

Clinton’s decision, which was expected for some time, was sharply criticized. “For my money, the chances of war with Iran only get a boost insofar as Iranians didn’t already assume the worst of U.S. intentions,” wrote Ali Gharib at the Daily Beast already before the Sate Department made its announcement. Others pointed out that the decision to take the MEK from the list of terrorist groups could be used by the Iranian regime as a pretext to renew its crackdown on the opposition in general in Iran, by accusing them of having ties with the MEK. This the more so, since the group was reported to have been involved – in cooperation with Israel – in a recent string of sabotage acts against military objects and assassinations of nuclear scientists in Iran.

The group, which was founded in 1963 as an armed Marxist-Leninist opposition group to the shah, was already terrorist in the 70-ties, with assassinations of American diplomats and personnel, among other things. After the 1979 revolution in which it took an active part, it fell out with the Khomeini-regime and thereafter it became extremely violent. It committed bomb attacks against the Islamic leadership in which hundreds were killed. According to IPS in a thoroughly written profile of the group, this went on in the eighties at a rate of three killings per day. The leaders, the couple Massoud and Maryam Rajavi,  moved to Paris in 1981, but after France recognized the Islamic Republic, they went to Iraq, where the movement got tanks and heavy weapons from Saddam Hussein with which it made frequent incursions into the eastern Kurdish areas of Iran and caused havoc and destruction. Since that time the group is generally perceived by Iranians as a bunch of traitors and quislings.

The internal relations within the group deserve a special mention. I myself interviewed Massoud Rajavi in 1984 in Paris for the Dutch daily ‘de Volkskrant’ and was struck by the cult like way his followers talked  about the fact that his wife Maryam, shortly beforehand, had left her husband in order to marry Rajavi ‘for the sake of the movement’. In later years I heard many stories about the way people were deceived or even duped in becoming members of the MEK. In the 7 June issue of the London Review of Books, Owen Bennet-Jones painted a detailed picture of the movement, including the incredible ways in which it deals with its members.

The lifting of the terrorist status by Hillary Clinton came after several years of lobbying by the MEK itself and a number of influential supporters. Among them, are according to the IPS, which published a profile of the MEK, two former CIA. directors, R. Jame Woolsey and Porter J. Goss; a former F.B.I. director, Louis J. Freeh; a former attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey; President George W. Bush’s first homeland security chief, Tom Ridge; President Obama’s first national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; big-name Republicans like the former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Democrats like the former Vermont governor Howard Dean; and even the former top counterterrorism official of the State Department, Dell L. Dailey.” Mitchell Reiss, a top foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential campaign, also spoke on behalf of the group.

IPS notes: One potential explanation for this diverse list of supporters are the large speaking fees the MEK network has offered to big-name public figures. “Your speech agent calls, and says you get $20,000 to speak for 20 minutes,” said a State Department official quoted by the Christian Science Monitor. “They will send a private jet, you get $25,000 more when you are done, and they will send a team to brief you on what to say.”[16] Pro-MEK individuals and organizations also reportedly donated thousands of dollars to the campaigns of several sitting members of Congress, including Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Bob Filner, Ted Poe, Mike Rogers, and Dana Rohrabacher.[17]

The American State Department did keep some distance from the MEK when it took the group from the terrorism list. For instance it commented that  “with today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992.” Also it implicitly recognized the sectarian traits of the MEK and the internal terror it exercizes in order to keep the group together when it said that ”the Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.” 

Also a State department official stated in a briefing that “We have no evidence and we have no confidence that the MEK is an organization that can promote democratic values that we would like to see in Iran.They are not part of our picture in terms of the future of Iran.” This, however, does not neutralize the fact that the rehabilitation of the MEK is a new dangerous step in the ongoing confrontation between the West ad Iran.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Mr. Raja Pervez Ashraf, Prime Minister of Pakistan, secretary@cabinet.gov.pk or pspm@pmsectt.gov.pk

Re: INDIA/PAKISTAN: Remove the abnormal visa restrictions to ensure right to travel and trade

Dear respectful Prime Ministers,

I am William Nicholas Gomes, Human Rights Ambassador for Salem-News.com.

I am writing to express concern regarding the issue raised by Aman ki Asha , a campaign for peace between India and Pakistan, jointly initiated by the Jang Group of Pakistan and The Times of India Group on January 1, 2010.

They have lunched an online petition in www.change.org.

As you know the people of Indian and Pakistani descent living in other countries, demand the right to visit our families across the border in ‘the other country’ – to see our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and, in some cases, our children. I demand the right to travel in the countries of our ancestors, to walk along coastlines and roads that represent our collective past, to seek and spread harmony across a subcontinent not divided by politics and propaganda. In this modern age of interdependence, it is a tragedy that the citizens of India and Pakistan are left peering over a border made indomitable and intimidating. There is little space for the hand of friendship to be extended across this border. We demand that this be changed.

I urge the governments of India and Pakistan to:

• Allow long-term visas, especially to people with families and spouses across the border and to applicants who meet the visa criteria;
• Allow visa on arrival to senior citizens and families, particularly children;
• Allow tourist visas between India and Pakistan;
• Make police reporting on arrival and departure the exception rather than the rule;
• Do away with the requirement of entry and exit from the same point, using the same mode of transport;
• Allow visas to be valid for the entire country (subject to reasonable restrictions) rather than one or two cities;
• Immediately reopen the Mumbai and Karachi consulates, and consider opening more consulates in major cities;
• Make student visas freely available;
• Curtail unnecessary paperwork;
• Ease visa restrictions for citizens of other countries who are of Indian or Pakistani descent, dual nationals, or expatriates from each other’s countries.

In addition, we urge the governments to do away with restrictions that are completely outdated in today’s cyber world, and to:

• Allow more than two journalists each to be based in each other’s countries;
• Undo the ban on cell-phone roaming;
• Undo the ban on cross-border media, television and publications.

The authorities must refrain from trying to control the movements of their people, when their minds are free. It is mutual trust and genuine collaboration that will enable us to break from the past and repudiate the legacy of hatred and animosity. I can truly progress when ideas and art, business and tourism, and collaboration in the fields of health, sustainability and poverty alleviation are allowed to flourish and flow. Only then can our people and countries reach their full potential.

AUTHOR: William Nicholas Gomes
URL: www.williamgomes.org
E-MAIL: williamgomes.org [at] gmail.com

When the Soviet Union was about to collapse, Georgy Arbatov, intermediary of the KGB and Politburo and an adviser to Gorbachev stated that Moscow was about to do something extremely horrible to the US, namely deprive it of a long-standing enemy. Having recognized that the USSR had lost the Cold, Arbatov asked what would the US do without an enemy to justify its quest toward a global integrative policy, a very question given the domestic institutional structure was inexorably linked to the expansionist integrative policy. Well, we now know what the US did; it found a new enemy in “Islamist terrorism”, broadening the definition to include any Islamic organization or regime that dares to reject the US integrative policy, and dares to declare a multidimensional foreign policy, especially one that condemns Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. This too would be fine, except that the US has found ground for convergence with al-Qaeda in a number of countries where there have been popular uprisings, including Libya and Syria.

Has transformation policy reached its limits, especially now that China and Russia are part of the global market economy, and does this mean that the US must resort to military solutions to impose transformation policy? There are those who advocate that ‘war means peace’ and that the US must support war against Iran, or at least permit Israel to hit Iranian targets. War advocates pushing an agenda of hegemony and destruction I can understand if their position is rooted in tangible interests of weapons manufacturers waiting to profit, security/intelligence for hire, politicians who see tangible political benefits from advocating war, and from all ‘for-hire’ analysts whose job is to push war in return for a paycheck.

In all honesty, I cannot understand advocates of war on ideological grounds, so I have concluded that they are:
1. delusional, refusing to see all of the bad consequences for all parties concerned;
2. suffer from some form of psychosis, owing to bad experiences in childhood or as adults as a result of detrimental personal experiences, in which case a visit to a doctor may go a long way in improving the psyche;
3. suffer from lack of knowledge about the many complex issues surrounding consequences of war;
4. suffer from an absence of morality rooted in humane and humanist values;
5. enjoy playing the devil’s advocate
6. any combination from the above.

Transformation policy is finished because it has run its course and it is now bankrupting the US owing to immense defense spending that comes from selling bonds to the Chinese, Japanese and Arabs. Enlightened policies abound, but they are waiting for enlightened politicians to implement them. Neither Obama nor Romney measure up, for they are both committed to the anachronistic Cold War transformation policy.

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Council on Foreign Relations.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Noam Chomsky.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Paulo Freire.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Between 2 July – 18 July, NL-Aid is enjoying a summer recess. From 19th July, you can read articles of our authors again. Untill that time, we have selected Youtube videos in which development thinkers are centered. In this episode: Nyerere.

AUTHOR: Hans Sluijter
URL: www.NL-Aid.org
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

Syria’s history and geography has determined to a large degree its alliances. As a former colony subjected to French imperialism, and a country lacking rich energy resources of its Middle East neighbors, Syria always needed to use whatever diplomatic leverage it had at its disposal to retain as much of its national sovereignty as possible. The question has always been what political system best expresses its national interests and retains its national sovereignty. The situation today is that the US and EU are interested in using Syria as a satellite to counterbalance Iran and gain immense foothold in the Middle East. This explains the reason for the Western-backed uprising that started in spring 2011 and it continues with more than 16,000 casualties, countless refugees, and a broader geopolitical instability that stretches from Turkey and Iran to Lebanon and Israel.

One the one side, there is Iran that has a stake in Syrian stability under Bashar al-Assad, with Russia and China having a long-term close relationship with Damascus. While it is clear that Russia makes billions of dollars in supplying Syria with weapons, the real goal of Moscow, along with Iran and China, is to prevent the US and EU from upsetting the balance of power in the Middle East by gaining a foothold in Syria. The question of what is in the best interests of the Syrian people is not one that either East or West are considering. No matter the inane US and EU rhetoric about freedom and democracy for Syria, something that Western institutions often deny to their own citizens, let alone remain silent about when it comes to allies like Saudi Arabia, the interest in Syria is geopolitical.

Geopolitical leverage is the only thing that Syria has and the current regime under Assad uses that leverage to retain the support of China, Russia and Iran. From 1958 to 1961, Nasser attempted a united Arab states project, but failed as nationalism was a dynamic force precluding alliances even among nations that had common interests and common enemies. Given that Syria was vulnerable after it broke with Nasser’s Egypt, given that its neighbors were pro-West, it needed allies to counterbalance its enemies, while retaining the country’s unity by satisfying the disparate socioeconomic groups. Syria’s alliance with the USSR during the Cold War made geopolitical sense, given the alliances of Syria’s neighbors, and given the ideology and political program of the ruling Ba’athist party that was closer to Socialism (heavily statist) than it was to Western-style market capitalism.

That Syria has been one-party state, essentially a dynasty catering to narrow interests at home and abroad is not something that the ruling party can deny, any more than it can hide from its record of favoring certain tribal, sectarian and ethnic groups over others. This is not to say that pro-West Arab regimes manage sectarian, tribal, and ethnic divisions any better than the Assad regime currently under fire from a mass popular uprising. That Syria has enjoyed China’s and Russia’s backing at the UN, which the US has tried to use to topple the Assad regime, is troubling to relations between East and West. China and Russia seem to dig in their heels on this issue, and will not permit another Western-backed uprising to overthrow a regime they support and see as key to the regional balance of power and stability.

When the US and EU condemned Syria for shooting down a Turkish plane that violated Syria’s air space in June 2012, neither Ankara nor Beijing were willing to permit NATO to use the staged incident as a pretext for operations to support Syrian rebels. Turkey has a long-standing record of violating the airspace of neighboring nations. The government in Tehran has sent stern warnings that it will not permit Turkey and NATO to undermine the national sovereignty of Iran. That Turkey wants to become the great power of the Middle East is not a secret, any more than it is a secret that it will do just about anything to undermine its Arab neighbors to secure that preeminent role. As long as there is convergence of US-EU foreign policy goals, Ankara will be permitted to go all out in undermining its former close ally Syria.

It is true that the Assad regime is a dictatorship and it must assume responsibility for failing to find a solution to the civil war of the past 16 months. It is just as true that Western nations have had a very large role in Syria’s political opposition, aiding with weapons, money, intelligence, and massive propaganda – all for the good of democracy and freedom, they claim. Russia is correct to blame the US and its partners for supplying weapons to Syria, just as it is correct to worry about Syria lapsing into some type of an Islamic regime that would be hostile to Russia, which has had its own problems with Islamic rebels. Vladimir Putin wants greater not lesser influence in the Middle East, and Moscow seems determined to carry the contest of wills with Washington as far as it can, short of an open conflict.

The larger question is how far should the reach of the NATO powers extend, and to what extent should the West be permitted to destabilize the Middle East in order to exert hegemonic influence, assuming that would be possible under radical Islamic regimes in the future. Is Syria worth an all-out war between the US and EU on one side, and Russia, China and Iran on the other? Such a scenario is unthinkable and not realistic to contemplate. But where do Russia and China draw the line on Western encroachment in Muslim countries? Besides, what have the US and its partners really achieved that is to the benefit of the occupied nations or the region by military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Scenarios of a broader regional Middle East war are as numerous as there are analysts, especially those interested in promoting an agenda such as a stronger Israel, stronger US defense sector, war as a stimulus to the contracting economy, etc. War may not be in the cards before the US presidential election in November 2012, and by then Assad may have fallen. But it does not matter either way, because Islamic regimes will flourish out of the ashes of Middle East revolutions, especially now that the Muslim Brotherhood is in power in Egypt. Is a clash of civilizations inevitable and could such a clash lead to future smaller wars or Western-backed uprisings, or can the West live with Islamic regimes not so different in their approach to the West than Iran?

AUTHOR: Jon Kofas
URL: http://jonkofas.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: jonkofas [at] yahoo.com

At The Atlantic Howard French makes a really good point: if the United States is really committed to democracy in its (to be fair, increasingly engaged) Africa policy, why does it so often partner with autocratic leaders?

It is going to be one crazy second half of the year in South African politics. This theme will be at the heart of my writing for the next three weeks, but let’s just say that President Jacob Zuma’s chances of emerging from the ANC’s Mangaung conference unscathed seem to be declining by the day. I’m not ready to say that the country will see a repeat of the 2007 Polokwane conference that saw Thabo Mbeki ousted from the ANC presidency, an act that led to Mbeki’s resignation as head of state, but the circumstances seem to be conspiring to create another rather interesting moment in the history of the ANC and South Africa.

The competition for continental supremacy between Nigeria and South Africa is a bit of a reductionist fiction — Africa is hardly beset by a bi-polar Cold War competition — but it is true that the two countries’ conceptions of themselves tend to clash. Nigeria has a massive advantage in population. Resources are a bit of a wash– Nigeria produces oil, which would seem to give it an advantage, except that South Africa has a diverse array of  minerals and agriculture — and South Africa is dominant economically, culturally, politically, and militarily. And whatever critiques one might levy against South Africa, it is a bastion of stability and practically represents the platonic ideal of democracy when compared with Nigeria. Still, as Africa’s prominence grows, so too will the sense of competition between these two regional giants.

Important constituencies in South Africa are lining up against nationalization of the mining and other sectors. The Northern Cape ANC wants to emphasize land reform and a report from the national leadership of the ANC calls for higher taxes on the mines. Both reject nationalization, which is a frontal attack on the calls from Julius Malema and some factions in the ANC Youth League for nationalization.

Foreign Policy has produced its 2012 Failed States issue, and Africa continues to be overrepresented on the wrong side of the ledger. Of the bottom twenty states on the 2012 Index, fifteen are from Africa, including the bottom five.

On the positive side, a special report from Global Post indicates that we might be reaching a turning point on combating HIV/AIDS globally and especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

Global Post also has a report on the ways in which Africa’s entrepreneurs are fueling the continent’s growth.

Just a friendly reminder: Mugabe’s got to go. But the devil is in the details — how?

COSATU wants to cut down on the presence of “foreign whites” at the country’s universities. This strikes me as a demogogic solution in search of a problem inasmuch as there is little evidence that qualified students are not getting into universities because those slots are going to foreigners. There are more than a few universities in South Africa that would welcome more bodies on campus, foreign or domestic.

Kenya’s proximity to the failed state that is Somalia and especially with the encroachments of al Shabaab’s militants means that the country runs the risk of becoming embroiled in a “forever war.” This is especially worrisome in light of the country’s own internal divisions that have at best been papered over.

It is hard not to be pleased to see Charles Taylor, Liberia’s former warlord and Big Man, convicted and sentenced for his crimes in Sierra Leone. But as John Campbell has rightly pointed out, the trial and its outcome was not without its problems and its potentially problematic ramifications going forward.

A few weeks back the New York Times had a story on Laamb, traditional (but increasingly lucrative) traditional wrestling in Senegal.

In case you missed it, F. W. De Klerk gave a non-apology apology interview with CNN. There were times when I wanted to bang my head repeatedly against my desk. de Klerk was a pivotal figure in South Africa’s transition because he saw the inevitable changes that his predecessor P. W. Botha refused to recognize. But de Klerk was no hero. The idea that Nelson Mandela had to share the Nobel Peace Prize with de Klerk even while de Klerk’s government was engaging in myriad Third Force and Dirty Tricks campaigns is simply galling.

In the New York Times Ian Bremmer argues that Africa stands at a vital pivot point that should allow its leaders finally to have real options in operating in a global economy.

Finally, if you haven’t bookmarked Awesome Tapes From Africa just do it now.

AUTHOR: Derek Charles Catsam
URL: http://africa.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: derekcatsam [at] hotmail.com