The Progressive Response
Volume 5, Number 40
November 30, 2001
The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)—a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.
Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) www.irc-online.org and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
WHY THE U.S. DIDN'T OVERTHROW SADDAM HUSSEIN
By Stephen Zunes
U.S. SHOULD ACT TO OPEN MEETINGS OF IFIs
By Robert Naiman, Center for Economic and Policy Research
II. Outside the U.S.
NO ONE ASKING ORDINARY AFGHANS WHAT THEY WANT
By Sayed Aqa and Deonna Kelli Sayed
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
(Editor's Note: As part of FPIF's effort to provide timely analysis of the U.S. war on terrorism, we have opened a new page on our website dedicated to addressing frequently asked questions. This FAQ series http://www.fpif.org/faq/index.html is part of our Justice Not War rapid response initiative http://www.fpif.org/justice/index.html, which includes posting statements from citizen groups around the world and listing upcoming events. In this issue of the Progressive Response, we feature our FAQ about intelligence operations.)
* What are the intelligence operations underway and in the planning? What new authority and funds have the CIA and other agencies received or requested?
President Bush signed an intelligence order in September 2001, after the terrorist attacks, directing the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake its most sweeping and lethal covert action since the founding of the agency in 1947. The "finding" explicitly calls for the destruction of Osama bin Laden and his worldwide al Qaeda network. The president added more than $1 billion to the agency's war on terrorism, most of it for the new covert action. The operation will include "unprecedented" coordination between the CIA and commando and other military units.
The Bush administration, drawing on a finding prepared by President Clinton in 1998, has determined that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for assassination by covert action. The Bush finding broadens the class of potential targets beyond bin Laden and his immediate circle of operational planners and also beyond the present boundaries of the fight in Afghanistan.
Like the military campaign against bin Laden and the Taliban, the covert action plan is designed to be massive and decisive. It instructs the CIA to attack bin Laden's communications and security apparatus, as well as the entire infrastructure of the al Qaeda network. Presumably the CIA-operated Predator unmanned drone aircraft with high-resolution cameras and Hellfire antitank missiles will be used to target specific weapons systems.
Congressional supporters of the CIA want to make it easier for the agency to recruit so-called "unsavories" who would have better access to terrorist organizations and to conduct political assassinations against the terrorists themselves. These congressional advocates of "taking the gloves off" include the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees, although the CIA itself does not have the resources or the experience to do paramilitary or covert actions. Not only is it illegal under international law to authorize political assassinations, but the CIA's track record in past operations is very checkered. Many of the CIA's most spectacular failures--including the 1954 coup against Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, a string of star-crossed plots to kill Fidel Castro and the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in the 1960s, and plots in the 1970s to destabilize and eventually overthrow Chile's democratically elected president Salvador Allende--included the use of assassination and paramilitary forces.
For more information:
The CIA: The Need for Reform
Melvin A. Goodman
http://www.fpif.org/papers/cia/index.html
"Intelligence Issues for Congress," CRS Issue Brief, updated
June 4, 2001
http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/IB10012.html
FPIF Four-Part Framework:
A New Agenda to Counter Terrorism
http://www.fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html
WHY THE U.S. DIDN'T OVERTHROW
SADDAM HUSSEIN
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor's Note: This Global Affairs Commentary is also posted in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111gulfwar.html.)
There has been a curious bout of revisionist history in recent weeks criticizing the U.S. decision not to "finish the job" during the 1991 Gulf War and overthrow the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. With such a lopsided victory in the six-week military campaign, these right-wing critics argue the U.S. could have easily marched into the capital of Baghdad and ousted the dictator.
However, the decisive military victory--which came with relatively few American casualties--resulted in large part because Iraqi forces were concentrated in flat, open desert. This was conventional and open combat, where U.S. forces could excel and take full advantage of their firepower and technological superiority. Had U.S. forces moved north toward Baghdad, however, they would have had to march through more than 200 miles of heavily populated agricultural and urban lands. Baghdad itself is a city of more than five million.
Invading U.S. forces would have been faced with bitter, house-to-house fighting in a country larger than South Vietnam. Iraqis who may have had little stomach to fight to maintain their country's conquest of Kuwait would have been far more willing to sacrifice themselves to resist a foreign Western invader.
The UN Security Council had authorized member states to use military power to enforce its resolutions demanding an Iraqi withdrawal from occupied Kuwait. There was no authorization to invade Iraq. The U.S., by basic tenets of international law and in the eyes of international community, would have become the aggressor.
The broad coalition of nations so assiduously put together by President George Bush would have fallen apart. Indeed, press reports and my own interviews with foreign ministers and other government officials of the Arab Gulf monarchies following the war indicated absolutely no support for carrying the war any further. Indeed, there was already a strong sense that the U.S. had inflicted unnecessary damage on Iraq's civilian infrastructure with serious humanitarian consequences, going well beyond what was necessary to rid Iraqi forces from Kuwait.
Even Washington's European, Canadian, and Australian allies were adamantly opposed to extending the war to Baghdad. The U.S. would have had to do it alone.
If an occupying U.S. army had succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, then what? Would a government installed by an invading Western power that had just ravaged the country with the heaviest bombing in world history have any credibility with the Iraqi people? American occupation troops would have been subjected to constant hit-and-run guerrilla attacks from Baghdad's narrow alleyways, forcing the U.S. into a bloody counterinsurgency war. At best, the U.S. would have had to lead an extensive effort at the kind of "nation-building" that Bush's son and other Republican leaders have repeatedly denounced in recent years.
Even putting the logistics aside, there is little evidence that the U.S. even wanted Saddam Hussein overthrown. When Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south of the Iraq rebelled in the aftermath of the Gulf War and threatened Saddam Hussein's regime, the U.S. decided to ban only the use of fixed-wing aircraft by the Iraqi air force, which could have threatened U.S. troops. However, by allowing Saddam's helicopter gunships to operate unimpeded, the rebels were crushed.
The Bush administration feared that a victory by Iraqi Kurds might encourage the ongoing Kurdish uprising in Turkey, a NATO ally. They also feared what a radical Shiite Arab entity would mean to U.S. Gulf allies with restive Shiite populations.
Keeping Saddam Hussein in power while subjecting his country to debilitating sanctions and sending in international inspectors to destroy his offensive military capabilities seemed at the time like the preferred alternative.
There are many valid critiques of U.S. policy toward Iraq before, during, and after the Gulf War. Failing to invade and overthrow the Iraqi government, however, is not one of them.
(Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as a senior policy analyst and Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, online at www.fpif.org.)
Also see FPIF's FAQ:
Will Iraq be the next target of the U.S. war on terrorism?
http://www.fpif.org/faq/0111iraq.html
U.S. SHOULD ACT TO OPEN MEETINGS
OF IFIs
By Robert Naiman, Center for Economic and Policy Research
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF policy brief. Entire text posted at: http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol6/v6n38ifis.html.)
The international financial institutions (IFIs), particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, but also including the regional development banks such as the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, have come under unprecedented criticism in the United States. Many now ask whether these institutions do more harm than good, and whether resources contributed to these institutions are an effective use of U.S. tax dollars.
Criticisms of the IFIs include the following: their failure to promote economic growth or reduce poverty in the past twenty years; their insistence on collecting debt payments from the poorest countries in the world at the expense of spending on health care and education; their insistence on policy conditions, such as user fees on primary health care and education; reduced subsidies for poor people to access clean drinking water; and their enforcement of labor flexibility policies that make it easier to fire workers and harder for workers to organize. The World Bank's continued support of socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining extraction and large dams is also widely criticized.
But the most commonly expressed concern about these institutions is that they are secretive in their decisionmaking and that this secrecy undermines democracy in developing countries. Key economic and social policies are removed from the effective control of democratically elected parliaments in borrower countries to closed negotiations between government finance officials and officials of the IMF and the World Bank. Meetings of the policymaking bodies of the IMF and the World Bank--the boards of directors--are closed to the scrutiny of the public and the news media.
There are no recorded votes on IMF and World Bank loans and policy documents, nor publicly available minutes or transcripts of IFI board meetings, and key policy and project documents are also withheld from the public. This secrecy undermines democratic decisionmaking not only in borrower countries but in creditor countries as well, as it is almost certain that the majority of people in the U.S., for example, would never support keeping children out of school in Africa because their parents cannot pay school fees.
Effective democracy requires information. This is why the Freedom of Information Act exists in the United States and why many states have "open meetings" laws that require public notice and open meetings whenever a majority of officials on a government body meet to discuss policy at that body. If the IMF and the World Bank were subject to the Illinois Open Meetings Act, for example, G7 meetings would also have to be open to the public and the news media, since IMF and World Bank policies are often determined in G7 meetings, and Americans would be able to find out what our government is doing at these institutions.
Conversely, if the IFI boards of directors were open to the public and to the news media, if there were recorded votes, if the minutes and transcripts of board meetings were immediately published on the institutions' web sites, if draft policy and project documents and agreements between the IFIs and borrower countries were released prior to their approval to give civil society groups the opportunity to lobby their governments against odious provisions, this would of course not immediately or automatically eliminate the harmful policies of the IFIs. But it would greatly level the playing field on which battles over IFI policies are fought out, and would dramatically improve the chances of achieving the reforms of IFI policies that civil society groups are seeking.
Ultimately, the ability of people in the U.S. to affect the policies of the international financial institutions depends on Congress. Few Americans can get a meeting with the Treasury officials who conduct U.S. policy at the IFIs, but most Americans can get a meeting with, if not their congressional representative, then at least that congressional member's staff person who covers U.S. policy at the international financial institutions. The leverage of Congress, in turn, ultimately depends on the power of the purse. Congress can refuse to appropriate more money for these institutions if they refuse to abandon harmful policies, and can attach conditions to funding, such as requirements to oppose particular policies.
Representative Doug Bereuter (R-NE), chair of the subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee that oversees U.S. policy at the international financial institutions, has introduced legislation that requires the U.S. to seek open board meetings at the regional development banks (H.R. 2604). Rep. Bereuter's bill would also strengthen the existing requirement that the U.S. oppose user fees on primary health care and education at the regional development banks. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) is offering an amendment to the bill that would require the U.S. to oppose policy conditions that increase fees on poor people to access clean drinking water, while Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) is offering an amendment that would require the U.S. to oppose regional development bank financing of dams that violate the recommendations of the World Commission on Dams, such as those involving forced relocation.
While these mandates would not directly apply to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, by passing this legislation Congress would clearly indicate to the administration, to the management of the IMF and the World Bank, and to member countries of these institutions what Congress' expectations of these institutions are likely to be in the future. Congress would indicate that it expects the international financial institutions to be open to news media and public scrutiny, that it expects them to stop promoting user fees on primary health care and education, that it expects them to stop promoting policies that undermine access to clean drinking water, and that it expects them to stop supporting large dams.
The donor countries are currently negotiating the terms of an increase in funding to the International Development Authority (IDA), the World Bank's lending arm in the poorest countries. It is anticipated that an increase in funding for IDA will be before Congress next year. If critics of the international financial institutions succeed in placing effective reform conditions on the regional development banks in this year's appropriations cycle, they will be in a good position to impose these reforms on the World Bank next year in the context of the IDA authorization.
If a precedent were established this year with respect to removing harmful policies of the regional development banks, Congress and civil society organization would not be limited to the above-mentioned reforms as conditions for appropriations to IDA. Congress could also require that the World Bank cancel 100% of its debt claims against poor countries, that the World Bank convert 50% of its future lending in poor countries to performance-based grants linked to increased access to education, health care, clean drinking water, and sanitation and delinked from policy conditionalities like privatization. It could also require that the World Bank cease policy conditions such as freezing the minimum wage and imposing labor flexibility conditions that make it easier to fire workers and harder for workers to organize into effective trade unions.
In years past, when Congress expressed its desire for reform of the international financial institutions, it often contented itself with vague and unenforceable exhortations. If the principle is established that Congress can effectively compel the abolition of harmful IFI policies as the price of U.S. contribution to these institutions, there is no limit to what policies might be removed. The removal of harmful IFI conditionalities with respect to education, health care, and water alone would significantly advance the internationally agreed upon goals of providing universal access to these basic human needs.
(Robert Naiman <naiman@cepr.net>, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington (CEPR), has authored numerous articles on globalization and U.S. foreign economic policy, including "The Emperor Has No Growth: Declining Economic Growth Rates in the Era of Globalization" (co-authored with Mark Weisbrot), "Is U.S. Treasury Above the Law?," and "World Bank Grants Would Reduce Poor Country Debt Without Cost to the United States" (CEPR, 2001).)
II. Outside the U.S.
(Editor's Note: FPIF has a new component called "Outside the U.S.," which aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html. This week's commentary is also available at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111afghanvoice.html.)
NO ONE ASKING ORDINARY AFGHANS
WHAT THEY WANT
By Sayed Aqa and Deonna Kelli Sayed
Afghans are accustomed to "hoping for the best and expecting the worst." The fragility of the current situation begs for great care and concern not to repeat past failures of Western policy. Great care must be taken in any steps in formulating a post-Taliban Afghanistan that includes an acceptable government as well as provisions for development and economic stability. Most importantly, efforts must reflect the wishes of ordinary Afghans inside of Afghanistan in order to gain credibility and long-term stability. Sadly, these sentiments seem to be ignored.
Currently, there are two distinct discussions on nation building--one from Afghans in the West and the other from Afghans closer to home. The discourse on nation building by the majority of Afghans in the West desires to restore Afghanistan to what it once was by utilizing symbols from the past, as their vision remains embedded within an idea of what Afghanistan was at the time of exile. The other discourse, found mostly among Afghans inside Afghanistan, dramatically revisions a future free from the baggage of the past and goes beyond politics and beyond fascination with "ethnic representation."
The proposal for a loya jerga (grand council or grand assembly) is filled with good intentions but remains highly problematic. The idea is endorsed by Afghans in the West, yet does not enjoy uncritical enthusiasm among Afghans inside the country. It is important to remember that no government or political system has been established through a loya jerga in the recent history of Afghanistan. While jergas (councils) are very effective and will continue to work in the local context to solve land or intra-family disputes, one must proceed cautiously in advocating a jerga at the national level, particularly at one of the most politically sensitive and economically underdeveloped moments in Afghan history.
What Afghans need is substance rather than symbolism in terms of governance. Attempts by the international community to find symbols, be they in the former King or a loya jerga, may be useful in the short-term yet may violently undermine long-term stability in Afghanistan.
Policy pundits tread on fragile ground as ethnic composition unfairly dominates visions of a post-Taliban reality. This indicates the perspectives of ordinary Afghans who are not represented in policy considerations. Ethnicity was never a major issue among ordinary citizens as friendships and relationships have always formed across ethnic lines. For example, our own predominately Pashtun village in Logar has a Tajik as tribal chief. Ethnic representation is important but it is an unwise axiom upon which to base government structure. The current focus on ethnicity is primarily a post-Soviet phenomena perpetrated by a small number of politicians and warlords promoting their interests in the absence of any other justifiable cause.
The short-term goal of any process should be the establishment of a Council of Leaders consisting of representatives from the different regions of Afghanistan. The Council would be selected through a transparent mechanism with the active involvement of an internationally diverse group of UN observers, including a large number of individuals from Islamic countries--including Muslim scholars and clerics. The observers can, for example, receive a list of 200 names presented by the local jergas from the eight regions of Afghanistan. The criteria for such lists would include a requirement that a small percentage--perhaps 10%--of the names on each regional list would be from that region and the remainder of the names be from other regions. This would encourage cross-regional coalitions and identify leaders with truly national appeal. Additional criteria for such lists might include percentages of tribal elders, credible former mujahideen, educated Afghans, etc. These lists would then be studied and names appearing in the majority of the lists would be considered to form the Council of Leaders.
This Council would provide transitional leadership for a specified number of years and determine how political development would proceed at the end of the Council's tenure. While this Council is in place, economic investments from the international community, along with monitoring of investments, must foster the economy to ensure stability. A mechanism to air grievances must also be part of this process.
There are certain demographics in Afghanistan that must be involved in any discussions regarding governance: tribal leadership, religious leadership, intellectuals, and those involved in fighting against Soviets. There have to be certain criteria for potential participants. For example, General Dostum, currently with the Northern Alliance, is widely perceived as guilty of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many Afghans will find him an undesirable representative. It is important that representatives have local credibility inside of Afghanistan and are not extremely controversial.
In terms of development, the international community as well as Afghans in the West can assist with investments, institution building, and human resource development at this stage. It is important that observers are present during each step to ensure credibility and transparency. It is also essential that there are economic observers to account for the process of economic development and to counteract corruption. The World Bank, EU, UN, and other bilateral donors already have personnel on the ground who could play such a role.
This proposal differs from a loya jerga in two ways. The international community is involved at the local level to gather names from local Afghans and the role of the Council is not to discuss but to lead the country for a transitional period of perhaps two years. The presence of the international community is essential at this stage to ensure the fairness and credibility of the processes. Furthermore, such a process will inherently bring forth ethnically diverse representatives as well as those affiliated with different political groups, yet politics and ethnicity will not overpower local credibility and acceptance of the representatives. The West must be ready to accept that many representatives may not be well known by Western intelligence agencies or by Afghans in the West. Instead, local preferences for Afghans will be prioritized in this process. Furthermore, the Taliban cannot be completely sidelined in this process.
A creative discourse of care and concern must emerge from the international community. Ordinary Afghans, those who have lived through twenty years of war and have remained relevant to current realities, must have an opportunity to determine their future.
(Sayed Aqa <sayed@anama.baku.az> is an Afghan aid worker who has been involved in humanitarian activities and peace negotiations inside Afghanistan since 1986. He is the founder of two NGOs, the Mine Clearance Planning Agency (MCPA) and the Afghan Campaign to Ban Landmines, and a 1997 Nobel Peace Prize co-Laureate. He currently works for the United Nations. Deonna Kelli Sayed <spoojhmai@yahoo.com> is an American Muslim who has been active in the Muslim-American community and with issues relating to the Muslim world. This appeared in slightly different form in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn on November 16, 2001.)
III. Letters and Comments
Seeking new authority for the CIA seems to be a response to those who are asking to "unleash the CIA." My response is this: When the CIA is "unleashed," what is the result? It seems that there is no control. In the book, Bitter Fruit, we find that in 1954, the CIA--with the approval of President Eisenhower, Secretary of State Dulles, and CIA director Dulles--executed the overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala. The overthrow was directed by the U.S. ambassador from the U.S. embassy. The U.S. dictated who was to be the new president. Even when the CIA is "leashed," problems arise: In the 1980s, Senator Barry Goldwater, on the Senate Committee responsible for CIA oversight, was incensed many times when then CIA director William Casey repeatedly circumvented Congressional directives by finding ways to covertly support Contra operations in Nicaragua and mine harbors. Unleashing the CIA means no accountability and a good possibility of blowback.
- Jerry Kohler <jdkohler@pcez.com>
By demonizing the government you [See: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0109mandela.html] apply the same tactics that you are condemning. I recall Mandela getting a warm welcome here and also receiving a lot of financial aid. USA is the major contributor of food and medical supplies to Afghanistan. Because bin Laden was somewhere in the mujahedin organization you connect President Reagan directly to him. If you have to use distortion to make points, I question your creditability. We have made mistakes in the past and have learned from them. We also have successes in the past though you fail to see them. Selective truth is not truth at all.
- Ross Beighley <rosbei@hotmail.com>
I'm very pleased to see your linking [See: http://www.fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html] to the International Criminal Court under your "STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL LEGAL SYSTEMS TO HOLD TERRORISTS ACCOUNTABLE" section. I'd like to suggest a link to my own organization for further information on strengthening international legal systems. The Coalition for the International Criminal Court's website, http://www.iccnow.org/ has many relevant documents, including press releases from a recent press conference linking the September 11th attacks to the court.
- Jess Iverson
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