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The tragedy of Sri Lanka

AS THE Sri Lankan government twists and turns and manouevres in order to try and prevent a war crimes investigation being ordered by the United Nations into its conduct during the war against the Tamil Tigers in 2009, the first definitive account of the conflict has emerged.

Former UN spokesman in Sri Lanka, Gordon Weiss, has written a book titled The Cage which gives a detailed and powerful account of the tragedy as it unfolded.

Weiss had to tread a difficult path as he wrote the book; given the oath that he took as an UN employee, he was unable to divulge any material that came to him in that capacity. Despite this very difficult obstacle in his path, he has done an extremely credible job in tracing the history of Sri Lanka that has a bearing on the country’s current position.

The Tamil Tigers, formed in the early 1970s, became the most powerful of the groups fighting for a separate state for their people and were known for the reign of terror that they imposed. They killed anyone standing in their way and massacred both Sinhalese and Muslims to enforce their writ. They were also not loath to kill their own people, if those people happened to be standing in the way of their supreme leader, Velupillai Pirapaharan and his ruthless ambitions.

The Tigers made a number of miscalculations. They reasoned that no state would resort to the type of bloodthirsty and ruthless tactics they employed, no government would indulge in the kind of indiscriminate killing that they carried out. The Tigers forgot that the state had twice put down rebellions, by Sinhalese youth in the shape of the Janata Vimukti Peramuna, in 1971 and again in 1989, in a singularly, bloody-minded manner, killing all and sundry and in a pretty gory manner too.

The Tigers also thought that India would act as a bulwark if things became really bad – after all, the main powerbroker in the Indian Ocean had broken a siege of the Tamils in the 1980s, at a stage when the Sri Lankan army had them cornered. India, of course, has a Tamil population to which it has to cater, given that the main Tamil party in India is in coalition with the ruling party at the federal level. And finally, the Tigers failed to realise that in the post-2001 world, countries are less inclined to regard breakaway groups as romantically as they did in the past.

Sri Lanka ensured that India would not act as an obstacle this time by bringing China into the picture very cleverly. The Sri Lankans first asked India if it would be interested in constructing a port in the southern Hambantota area; when India declined, realising that it might be obligated to Sri Lanka if it accepted, the Sri Lankans asked the Chinese who gratefully accepted. The contract was then expanded to include a naval base; when Sri Lanka went to China to seek weapons and influence at the UN level for its pursuit of the Tigers, Beijing was only too happy to oblige.

When India realised that China was cutting in on its normal sphere of influence, it agreed to provide Sri Lanka with intelligence that led to the destruction of many of the Tiger arms re-supply craft, thus depriving the Tigers of fresh stocks of arms. By doing this, the Indians once again hoped to get back into Sri Lanka’s good books.

In 2002, the Sri Lankan government had signed a ceasefire with the Tigers; at that point, the Tamil group controlled something less than the one-third of the island which was its maximalist demand for its own state. At this point, Pirapaharan could well have bargained and got at least two-thirds of what he had set down as his ambit claim. But he refused to budge and in 2003 announced that the Tigers were withdrawing from the ceasefire.

In 2005, the current president, Mahinda Rajapakse, came to power. A year later, having put his brother, Gotabaya, in charge of defence, the war began to eliminate the Tigers. Gotabaya was promised that political considerations would not interfere with this goal; in the 1980s, when India made food drops to the besieged Tamils, Gotabaya was a member of the armed forces and that memory remained with him.

The Rajapakses kept to their word. They massacred the Tigers and shot a number of leaders of the movement in cold blood as they were trying to surrender. They did not mind if there was collateral damage in the form of about 40,000 civilians killed by both sides. They had a goal and they were as bloodthirsty as Pirapaharan in their determination to achieve it, come hell or high water. They had a regular well-paid army which was not asked to fight with one arm tied behind; the Tigers did not have the number of troops to match as several of their hardened fighters had left the movement in 2002, confident that the struggle was over.

While the low-level war began in 2006, the government only formally abrogated the ceasefire in 2008. By May 19 the following year, it was able to declare victory and show Pirapaharan’s body on television. His twisted dream had come to an end, a lesson to all those fighting for separate states that one needs to compromise in order to achieve at least a part of one’s objectives.

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Obama angers Israel – and conveniently forgets that Saudi Arabia exists

SOON after he came to office in 2009, US President Barack Obama made a trip to Cairo and gave a stirring speech at Cairo University. Obama is probably the best speaker in world politics and can soar to heights of great rhetoric; the effect of his Cairo speech was probably magnified by the fact that he was a few months into his four-year term and hopes were high that he would live up to the promises he had made while campaigning for the presidency.

A little less than two years later, with a great deal of cynicism over what Obama has turned out to be, he gave a second address today, focused on the Middle East, this time from the White House. And in so doing, he may well have ensured that he loses the presidential election in 2012.

The speech was apparently meant to give an official American stance on the incidents that have taken place in the Middle East since last December – the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and the ongoing struggle for freedom in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and smaller agitations in other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

The killing of Osama bin Laden would have guaranteed Obama re-election had he not opened his big mouth about Israel’s borders. But he chose to do precisely this and, in so doing, may well have lost the backing of the powerful Israeli lobby that can decide who rises or falls in American politics.

George Bush Senior was the last US president to feel the power of this lobby after he withheld loan guarantees from Israel in order to force the country to attend peace talks in Madrid in 1991; he lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton.

Obama’s mistake was to backtrack on US policy; it is well-known that the US backs a settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians based on the ceasefire lines of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. This stance ensures that Israel retains control of the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip which it can then use as bargaining chips. Jerusalem is the main obstacle. (The so-called peace process over the last 20 years has given the Gaza Strip and about 20 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian control.)

But in his speech today, Obama said a two-state settlement between Israel and the Palestinians would be based on the borders that existed before the 1967 war. At that time, Jordan was occupying the West Bank and Egypt held the Gaza Strip. And Israel was not in control of Jerusalem.

Obama has a chance to fall on his knees and grovel and reverse his stance – he is due to speak to the biggest and most powerful Israeli lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, soon. But if he does repeat his comments there, then you can bid goodbye to the chances of a Democrat being in the White House for the next four years.

Predictably, Obama came down in support of Arab countries where the people have decided to fight for freedom. But his gestures to help these nations – involving the IMF and the World Bank – means that the process that was gone through in South America to make the nations of that continent servants of the US will be re-enacted all over again.

As expected, Obama did not dare to say a word about Saudi Arabia. There have been several low-key protests in the kingdom and women have threatened to drive en masse in protest against the ludicrous rule that prevents them from doing so. But Obama seemed unaware of this.

He mentioned the repression in Bahrain and even went to the extent of saying that Shia mosques should not be destroyed by the Sunni rulers but he did not chide Saudi Arabia for leading troops into Bahrain and playing a leading role in savagely quelling the popular protests.

The US treads carefully when it comes to Saudi Arabia. There is no better example to illustrate this than the events of 9/11; despite the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked the US were Saudis, Washington did nothing to protest. Instead, it helped several members of the bin Laden family and royals from the Saudi clan to leave the US immediately after the attacks, at a time when air traffic was grounded.

The name of the game is oil. The Saudis are still the biggest producers and the country with the largest remaining reserves. If explorations in Iraq do turn up more reserves as some have predicted, then a future US president may criticise Saudi Arabia in public.

For the moment, Obama is as beholden to the Saudis as Dubya. He is conscious that the US still consumes 25 percent of the world’s petroleum and is up to its tits in debt.

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Sri Lanka: reconciliation will come only after probe into war crimes allegations

TWO years after its war against the Tamil Tigers ended, the government of Sri Lanka is trying desperately to avoid an UN investigation being launched into alleged war crimes during the fighting.

The government is now making the rounds of various countries, trying to bolster support for its position, and has first gone to India, the power-broker in the region. But there is a damning UN report (PDF, 9.2 MB) which clearly indicates that civilians were killed in cold blood during the war which ended an insurrection that ran for nearly 30 years.

There are videos on the internet, including a couple that have been broadcast by Britain’s Channel 4 TV channel, of Tamil civilians being blindfolded and shot in the back of the head by uniformed Sri Lankan troops. An army official and a soldier have both told the channel of how the policy during the war was to shoot to kill, not to bother about taking prisoners. And these orders came right from the top, which means the president, Mahinda Rajapakse.

Rajapakse ‘s brother, Gotabaya, implemented these decisions as he is the defence minister. As someone who holds joint US and Sri Lankan citizenship, he is more likely than others to face a a probe for involvement in war crimes. It all depends on which lobby wins out – the government or the supporters of the Tamils.

Sri Lanka is not a signatory to many UN conventions and hence is not bound to carry out a probe despite the damning report. However, the secretary-general can force the country to accept an investigation if he so decides. But like the heads of the UN in the past, Ban Ki-moon has never shown firmness in dealing with anything. A great deal thus depends on countries which still place some value on human rights.

Former UN official Gordon Weiss has written a book about the war which is due to be available in the next day or two. This would be the first authoritative account of the conflict to see the light of day – all that has aired by both sides in the conflict has been propaganda.

There are tens of thousands of Tamils still held in camps in Sri Lanka; the government’s stance is that it wants to weed out the guerrillas among them and the release the rest. But two years on, this excuse is beginning to wear a little thin.

Trying to convince the world that it is aiming at reconciliation at this stage is unlikely to work – unless there are powerful sponsors. It looks like India is attempting to play the sponsor, judging by the sentiments reportedly express by Indian officials to the Sri Lankan foreign minister G. L. Peiris. India is, of course, aware that if it took the high road on human rights, then there would be umpteen calls for investigations into the savagery wrought by Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir.

By the end of this year, if no UN probe is begun, one more government would have killed its own citizens in cold blood and got away scot-free. The most dangerous thing about this whole episode is that other countries, like the Philippines, which are plagued by internal unrest due to militant groups fighting for legitimate rights, are beginning to talk of the Sri Lankan method as the model.

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Bin Laden’s death: things grow curiouser and curiouser

AS the days go by, the number of questions and lies around the killing of Osama bin Laden by American secret service troops seems to only grow longer. And the doubts emanate right from statements made by the head of the country and all the way down.

(Reuters has posted graphic images taken after the raid.)

Here’s a sample of the questions that I would like to see answered:

President Barack Obama said the operation had commenced in August year when evidence was obtained by the CIA that bin Laden may be hiding in Pakistan. That means it was eight months before the actual hit took place. Was this not enough time to plan things properly, including a version of events that needed to be made public, a designated spokesman, and a co-ordinated release of information?

If the Americans, as stated, were unsure, until they entered the building , that bin Laden was really inside, how come they had already arranged for an imam (a Muslim religious leader) to be on a warship ready to bury the man?

Why was this imam waiting in readiness if, as is being touted, the mission was a kill or capture mission?

Why did the Americans pretend that their own officials (Obama and his senior aides) had followed the raid minute by minute when the CIA director Leon Panetta himself said that there was a period of about 20 to 25 minutes when nobody in Washington had any idea about what was going on?

Why did the Americans shoot an unarmed man and then give out – even Obama mentioned it – that he had resisted arrest?

Why did the Americans say bin Laden had used one of wives as a human shield when the woman had actually run towards them and they had shot her in the foot?

Why did the Americans claim the house in which bin Laden was hiding was worth a million US dollars when in reality it was worth only a quarter of that?

Why was this house described as a mansion when it was really tatty inside?

Why did American officials say a son of bin Laden named Hamza was killed and later change the name to Khalid?

Why did Americans claim that there was a fierce 40-minute firefight with people in the Abbottabad house where bin Laden was and later change it to just one person in the house having a gun? And that one person was killed moments after the raid commenced.

With so many unanswered questions and lies hanging over this event, can one really blame the conspiracy theorists for going into overdrive?

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Bin Laden’s death: the old American habit of lying is back

THE US of A sure knows how to screw up things. For them, the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by American forces was an act that would have guaranteed a lot of good karma right across the world.

The problem is, they tried to embellish the tale of his death with unnecessary lies. There’s a simple rule about lies – much in the same way that cadavers float to the surface, lies generally get exposed. The only variable is their shelf life.

It hasn’t taken long for the Americans’ lies to be exposed. For one, bin Laden was unarmed when he was killed. The Americans said he had fired back at them when they entered the room in which he was; now it turns out that both bin Laden and one of his wives were in that room, both were unarmed and the woman rushed towards the Americans and they shot her in the foot. This is straight from the White House, courtesy its spokesman Jay Carney.

Bin Laden was then killed in cold blood. The Americans lied when they said they could not have taken him alive. Of course, anyone who knows anything about Afghanistan knows that the Americans did not want to capture him alive and put him on trial – a lot of what he would have said in a courtroom would have been pretty damaging to the CIA.

Another lie the Americans told was about bin Laden using the woman in the room as a human shield – turns out he did no such thing. The Americans shot the woman in the foot when she ran towards them as they entered the room. Bin Laden did not grab her and hold her in front of him as a shield. An attempt to paint him as a coward failed. Why did they try to do so?

There are other lies that are being exposed: CIA veteran Bob Baer, speaking to the BBC, pointed out that it would have been impossible for the type of helicopters used in the raid to kill bin Laden to operate in the area without being noticed as they make an awful racket (he exaggerated to get his point across, saying that they could have been heard in Karachi, more than 1500 kms away).

Baer also pointed out that it would have been impossible for the helicopters to enter Pakistani airspace without being spotted on radar; given that Pakistan shares a border with two countries it distrusts – India and Afghanistan – it is on the alert round the clock. The Pakistanis were in on the whole thing – nothing else explains this.

Baer was also adamant that the raid could not have happened without Pakistani troops being present – though, he said, they would have stayed outside the premises as they did not want to be involved in the killing.

It is inconceivable that the Pakistan armed forces were not aware that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad which is about 122 kilometres from the Pakistan capital, Islamabad. Abbottabad is also home to the Pakistan Military Academy and Baer made the point that it was impossible for a foreigner to be in the area without gossip spreading about his or her reason for being there.

It is well known that Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence has a soft spot for extremists. The agency was provided with billions of dollars by the Americans during the war against the Soviets and it channelled the funds to the various militias in Afghanistan, with the lion’s share going to the Pashtun groups; Pashtuns are present in Pakistan in large numbers, hence the bias.

The ISI is close to the Afghan Taliban and also the local version, the Pakistan Taliban. There are plenty of sympathisers within ISI ranks, men who want to see Pakistan become a fundamentalist Islamic state.

To believe that a unit like this was unaware of the presence of bin Laden in Abbottabad is like asking one to believe that the moon is made of cheese.

This constant changing of the story has led to one thing – the proliferation of conspiracy theories on the internet.

There have been conspiracy theories aplenty about the September 11 attacks despite the fact that the two masterminds, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin Al-Shibh, spoke to journalist Yosri Fouda of Al-Jazeera and detailed the plot.

Fouda, along with Nick Fielding of the Times, wrote a book titled Masterminds of Terror in 2003 detailing the modus operandi of the attacks but this has not quelled the conspiracy theorists. You can’t get closer to the plot than by reading this book.

There are already plenty of conspiracy theories on the internet about bin Laden’s death. I hope it doesn’t turn out that the Americans got the wrong man!

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Bin Laden’s death: the fallout

THE death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan today means that the US President Barack Obama will have absolutely no problem getting re-elected.

Bin Laden was killed by American secret service troops in Abbotabad, an affluent suburb close to the Pakistan capital, Islamabad.

Not that Obama has looked like having a worthwhile challenger from the Republican side in his bid for another four years in the White House; however, given the fractured state of the American nation, there was always a possibility that someone from the right would be able to capitalise on the dissatisfaction caused by the financial problems dogging the country.

That possibility is now precisely zero.

A second fallout of the killing is that Pakistan will face increased attacks within its borders. When Obama announced the news, he had to walk a tightrope – he could not let on that Pakistani troops had also been involved but at the same time he could not make it look as though the Americans had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.

But given that such a killing could not take place in a suburb like Abbotabad, home to the wealthy and educated for the most part, without Pakistani cooperation at a very high level, it is impossible to believe any report that says Pakistani special forces were not involved as well. This will not win Pakistan’s rulers any brownie points with their own population.

Pakistan has had few settled periods in its own history. It has been under martial rule for most of its existence after a painful partition from India in 1947. It has festering internal problems all over the place and is beholden to the US for aid. To the West and many other countries bin Laden was a terrorist; to Pakistan and many other countries who have suffered due to the wishes of American imperialism, he was seen as someone who had managed to gain some revenge.

And to people like the Palestinians, who have suffered under the yoke of Israeli occupation for decades, bin Laden was a hero who kept to the straight and narrow, demanding justice for them while taking the fight to the one country which has ensured that Israel is not held to account.

In Britain, there must be at least a few people who are old enough to recall the manner in which the colonial empire used its policy of divide and rule to ensure that India did not stay united and wonder if, with the benefit of hindsight, that was a wise policy. The child born of that policy, Pakistan, (which ironically means the land of the pure), has been implicated as playing some role or the other in practically every single notable act of terrorism in the last 30 years.

Does the US now draw the curtain on Dubya’s war on terror? Can it pull back troops from Afghanistan now that the reason for them going there no longer exists? What does it do with the body? Muslims bury the dead as soon as possible; the Americans have removed bin Laden’s body to the Bagram air base in Pakistan and will have to decide whether they show it to the world or else quietly bury it. Either option will create its own problems.

The US has painted this as a major victory; yet is it really so? Is the fact that the most powerful nation in the world took nearly 10 years to capture a man like bin Laden a demonstration of superior military and tactical ability? The killing has left as many questions as existed before.

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The royal censor gets into the act

THE British royal family, an anachronism in this day and age, has shown its tendency to dictate proceedings in a strange way, totally against the grand British tradition of free speech.

Prince Charles has instructed the BBC to place strict conditions on the feed of the wedding between his son William and Kate Middleton which it provides to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; these strictures effectively prevent what would have been the best program on the wedding, the view of the Chaser team, from going to air.

What’s outrageous is that the restrictions are specifically aimed at the Chaser – other not-so-straight coverage, such as that planned by Australia’s Channel 10, has no restrictions placed on it.

Charles has laid down the law to the BBC and the organisation has bent over and shown its backside.

The wedding is not a private affair – hundreds of millions of pounds in state funds will be used to provide security. Only the wedding expenses are being borne by the House of Windsor and the Middleton clan – the British taxpayer is forking out by the bucket at a time when the country’s economy and the financial standing of a large percentage of the populace is not exactly what one can describe as healthy.

It is a royal shame to waste public money at a time when most of the rest of the country is struggling to pay its bills. But when did the royals ever give a hoot about the public?

It is far too late for the Chaser folk to organise their own footage of anything remotely close to the wedding; indeed, people would like to watch some part of the official proceedings as they listen to the unique take of the Chaser team who are a class act.

Every country that claims to follow the liberal tradition and have a free press has its own set of satirists – for example, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, and Bill Maher in the US, Ricky Gervais and the Little Britain team in the UK and the Chaser and a multitude of others in Australia.

But the cold, clammy hand of censor Charles has clamped down and it’s back to the colonial era again when Britain told Australia what it could and couldn’t do. And Britain wants to spread the democratic tradition to other lands, I’m told.

This is a fine example, right from the top, of the class-ridden British society. Censorship at its brilliant best. One more good reason, if any more were needed, for Australia to cut the apron strings and become a republic.

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The migrant problem

AUSTRALIA is a nation of migrants. Apart from the Aborigines, the original inhabitants of this big, brown land, every single resident has come from afar, some on the first convict ships in the 1700s, others more recently.

Migration is thus a central issue in Australian political, social and cultural life. It is easy to get people worked up over issues around migration, and starting from rednecks – who advocate that only white people should migrate here – to the bleeding heart liberals who want all and sundry welcomed, you can find every shade of opinion vented in some forum or the other.

In recent days, people detained at immigration centres in Australia have started protesting, often violently, against being held in these centres. The reason? They feel that their cases are taking too long to resolve. Of course, some of those who are up in arms have had their applications for refugee status rejected and face the prospect of being deported.

Others have a peculiar problem – they are stateless and hence even though their cases have been rejected, they cannot be deported as there is no country that will take them. The problem, as it exists today, is quite serious – detainees burnt down nine buildings at a detention centre in New South Wales. Some of the ringleaders are still up on the roof, refusing to come down.

The protests have spread to other parts of the country and detainees at centres in Victoria and the Northern Territory have also started protesting.

One must bear in mind that it is the poorer class of would-be migrant who comes to Australia in a leaky boat and gets detained. The more affluent come by air and are never part of the public discussion. British backpackers by the thousand overstay here but are never deemed to be part of the problem. They are rarely detained despite being as big, or probably a bigger, drain on the national economy than the detained ones.

The government is reluctant to do anything that could be seen as a throwback to the policies of the Howard government – a coalition of the Liberal and National parties. Additionally, it is dependent on the Greens for its stability so it cannot take steps that are seen as too harsh. Yet something has to be done because the situation as it stands is giving the opposition plenty of ammunition to attack the government.

A part of the problem is down to perception. The Labor party is seen as being soft on migrants – even though the practice of detention was begun by a Labor prime minister, Paul Keating. And though the last Liberal prime minister, John Howard, made lots of near-racist statements about migrants, the level of migration was never higher than under him. He knew well that he had to cater to the business lobby – which supports higher migration quotas – so he quietly increased the numbers while publicly speaking out against migration.

After Labor came to power in 2007, some of harsher policies of the Howard mob were watered down. The offshore processing of migrants was stopped and so was the practice of issuing what are called temporary protection visas.

Since 2007, the numbers coming to Australia in boats to ask for refugee status has increased – but when considered against the total number of refugee applicants worldwide, it is but a drop in the ocean. The immigration department is an inefficient organisation and processing claims takes far too long. The detention centres are run by an inefficient American organisation, Serco, and people in the centres develop mental health problems as they stay longer and longer in crowded centres.

The expressions of frustration are the effects; the cause is an inefficient system. Labor governments are not exactly renowned for their efficiency in anything and the immigration process reflects the government of the day. Not that Howard’s mob did things much better.

The solution? I think Australia should cease being a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees. Then nobody can rock up to the Australian border and ask for refugee status.

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The myths of Anzac Day

AN ARMY is sent to invade another country to satisfy the ambitions of an imperial power. The army fails miserably in its mission, and ends up being cannon fodder.

Years later, the country which provided the armed forces is uttering pious slogans that this was the defining experience that shaped it as a nation. You would call that country a nation of losers, wouldn’t you?

Yet this is modern Australia. And the military fiasco that is said to define the country is the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops in Gallipoli during World War I. Tomorrow, there will be much talk about the Anzac spirit – as though the spirit in the Australian army ranks at that time was any different to that which pervaded the German and Japanese ranks during World War II.

A lot of this drivel is driven by politicians who strive to find anything behind which they can unite a fractious nation and prevent people from asking questions that will expose the hypocrisy of the political class. People who have no idea of the horrors of war extol its virtues and are ever eager to despatch young men and women to serve as cannon fodder for the imperial power of the day.

Australians are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan as a bulwark for American troops who prefer to bomb from afar and expect Australians to do the dirty work. As indeed they do.

For some time, especially during the era of the Vietnam War, Anzac Day was largely ignored. It has been revived by politicians like John Howard who found a cause behind which they could hide. The Returned Servicemen’s League has cash by the bucket poured into it and statues of soldiers are erected at every street corner to glorify the killing and carnage that is never visible to the populace at large.

Americans have developed this worship of war to a fine art. No-one can question the deployment of troops to any far-flung corner of the world – it is sacrosanct. Many Australian politicians would love to have a similar situation, as a mask for their own shortcomings. Patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels – and Australian politicians squarely fall into that class.

There is also more than a touch of racism in this whole war fetish. As the comedian George Carlin pointed out once, America has invaded only brown and black countries since World War II. Never once have the Yanks gone into a white nation since the Berlin airlift.

Quite often the racism inherent in these adventures is revealed in behaviour by troops. Remember the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib? But that is dismissed as an aberration. After all, the politicians say, boys will be boys, won’t they?

Anzac Day makes me sick.

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Brotherly love can often extend too far

IT IS unlikely that there are too many Bahrainis who would look kindly on the intrusion into their internal affairs by the neighbouring Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia. After the recent spate of demonstrations in the little island nation appeared to be getting out of control, the Saudis led a posse across the causeway and began a brutal crackdown.

The Saudis are aware that any flirtation with liberalisation will affect their own country, the most mysterious and shrouded on the Arabian Peninsula. And they have always had a paternalistic attitude towards Bahrain given that Iran, Riyadh’s main rival for power and influence in the region, takes a keen interest in the affairs of the little island which is said, by some, to be the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden.

If that is so, then there is certainly more than a single serpent roaming around. Dissatisfaction over the employment policies of the current ruler – King Hamad, the son of Shaikh Isa bin Sulman Al Khalifa, who elevated the country to a constitutional monarchy in 2002 from a mere emirate – boiled over and, drawing inspiration from protests in other regions of the Middle East, the Bahrainis started their own version of the French revolution.

Protests continue to this day and there now appears to be evidence of the brutality of the Saudi crackdown. Of course, the Saudis know only two methods of quelling opposition – either buy them off with bribes or else kill the whole lot. The first method would not have worked, so now they are taking recourse to the second.

A distance behind the Saudis, and standing tall in support, are our good friends, the men and women from the land of the brave and the free, the United States of America. Bahrain may be just a glob of sand when viewed from a plane, but it is home to the US Fifth Fleet. Hence, Uncle Sam is solidly behind a return to the status quo. After all, we cannot have a gentleman by the name of Mahmoud Ahmedinajed pulling the strings in Bahrain, now can we?

Bad memories are evoked in Bahrain when one talks of liberalisation. In 1973, Shaikh Isa, who had then been in power fo 12 years, decided to liberalise and a constitution was published, guaranteeing freedom of religion, conscience and speech. A parliament was elected by 85 percent of the adult males who were eligible to vote.

Alas, it did not quite work out – the ruling family, the Khalifa clan, expected the right-wing lobby of merchants to gain a majority of seats. They did not; instead, reactionary religious leaders and left-wing elements were voted in in large numbers.

Over the next couple of years, this mob tried to spread their influence – one day their pet cause was preventing women from playing a role in public life, the next day they would try to suggest that the national oil company be taken over.

Finally, in 1975, when they began to oppose detetntion without trial, Shaikh Isa suspended the whole lot and returned to ruling by decree – with the added feature of having his own family in every post of any influence. The Prime Minister. Shaikh Khalifa bin Sulman Al Khalifa, has been holding that post since then.

Though Bahrain is an Arab country, a large number of its citizens are of Iranian origin. The balance of the Shia-Sunni is skewed towards the former – and these two Muslim factions, who owe their genesis to the battle over a successor to the Prophet Muhammad, are generally not the best of neighbours.

However, they are hardly at each others’ throats as painted by the Western media; rather, it is the ruling family which, fearful of agents of Iranian influence, has excluded Shias largely from public life and from public sector employment. This has led to a feeling of injustice and it is, thus, hardly surprising that the majority who are out there protesting are Shias.

The intervention by troops from what is called the Arab Gulf Cooperation Council countries – Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab Emirates – does not find favour with its own members, solely because a defence pact signed by the six was meant to defend against external aggression. Members of the defence forces in the AGCC are not exactly experts at combat – when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the AGCC forces did not exactly show a great deal of alacrity in rushing out to defend their northerly neighbour.

However, Saudi Arabia has always been the big brother of the region and, thus, despite their opposition to getting involved in the affairs of a “brotherly” state – even the AGCC agreement is against interference in each others’ domestic affairs – the others have maintained a stoic silence on this aspect of the troubles in Bahrain.

The island has no oil of its own and is a service centre, with a large number of banks operating in a free climate. There are handouts from the Saudis now and then, and the Americans are keen to see the place quiet. Moving the Fifth would be a massive logistics exercise and upset the economy of Bahrain – not to mention the owners of the better class of brothels on the island. The chances of any protest succeeding are, thus, much less than evens.