[ Dopo il Sudan (bombardamento dell'industria farmaceutica, 1998), la
Jugoslavia, la Sierra Leone, l'Afghanistan e l'Iraq, il primo ministro
britannico Tony Blair si e' entusiasticamente lanciato a caldeggiare
l'ennesima "guerra umanitaria" - di nuovo contro il Sudan, come in un
circolo perverso... E di nuovo, le giustificazioni addotte si basano su
quelle plateali menzogne alle quali egli ha oramai abituato il pubblico
britannico, che infatti lo considera "B-LIAR" - "B il bugiardo". Ma
dietro la sfacciata propaganda di Blair si nasconde, di nuovo,
nient'altro che petrolio: quel petrolio del Darfur che le cancellerie
occidentali vogliono sottrarre tanto al concorrente cinese, quanto al
primo, legittimo proprietario - il popolo africano. Lo sostiene J.
Laughland a chiare lettere sulle pagine del quotidiano piu' venduto
d'Inghilterra, il Guardian... ]
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4983677-111381,00.html
Comment
The mask of altruism disguising a colonial war
Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
John Laughland
Monday August 2, 2004
The Guardian
If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came
not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but
rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked
about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral
responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that
we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent - as General
Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed
- and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence.
Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he
has fought in this, surely one of the most bellicose premierships in
history. The bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, the 74-day
bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the intervention in Sierra Leone in
the spring of 2000, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, and the
Iraq war last March were all justified with the bright certainties
which shone from the prime minister's eyes. Blair even defended Bill
Clinton's attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan in
August 1998, on the entirely bogus grounds that it was really
manufacturing anthrax instead of aspirin.
Although in each case the pretext for war has been proved false or the
war aims have been unfulfilled, a stubborn belief persists in the
morality and the effectiveness of attacking other countries. The
Milosevic trial has shown that genocide never occurred in Kosovo -
although Blair told us that the events there were worse than anything
that had happened since the second world war, even the political
activists who staff the prosecutor's office at the international
criminal tribunal in The Hague never included genocide in their Kosovo
indictment. And two years of prosecution have failed to produce one
single witness to testify that the former Yugoslav president ordered
any attacks on Albanian civilians in the province. Indeed, army
documents produced from Belgrade show the contrary.
Like the Kosovo genocide, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as we
now know, existed only in the fevered imaginings of spooks and
politicians in London and Washington. But Downing Street was also
recently forced to admit that even Blair's claims about mass graves in
Iraq were false. The prime minister has repeatedly said that 300,000 or
400,000 bodies have been found there, but the truth is that almost no
bodies have been exhumed in Iraq, and consequently the total number of
such bodies, still less the cause of their deaths, is simply unknown.
In 2001, we attacked Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and to
prevent the Taliban from allegedly flooding the world with heroin. Yet
Bin Laden remains free, while the heroin ban imposed by the Taliban has
been replaced by its very opposite, a surge in opium production,
fostered by the warlords who rule the country. As for Sierra Leone, the
United Nations human development report for 2004, published on July 15,
which measures overall living standards around the world, puts that
beneficiary of western intervention in 177th place out of 177, an
august position it has continued to occupy ever since our boys went in:
Sierra Leone is literally the most miserable place on earth. So much
for Blair's promise of a "new era for Africa".
The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops
into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil.
For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be "no blood
for oil" in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge
untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil
pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a
clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of
energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies
should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession
in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National
Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor.
We ought, therefore, to treat with scepticism the US Congress
declaration of genocide in the region. No one, not even the government
of Sudan, questions that there is a civil war in Darfur, or that it has
caused an immense number of refugees. Even the government admits that
nearly a million people have left for camps outside Darfur's main towns
to escape marauding paramilitary groups. The country is awash with
guns, thanks to the various wars going on in Sudan's neighbouring
countries. Tensions have risen between nomads and herders, as the
former are forced south in search of new pastures by the expansion of
the Sahara desert. Paramilitary groups have practised widespread
highway robbery, and each tribe has its own private army. That is why
the government of Sudan imposed a state of emergency in 1999.
But our media have taken this complex picture and projected on to it a
simple morality tale of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They gloss over
the fact that the Janjaweed militia come from the same ethnic group and
religion as the people they are allegedly persecuting - everyone in
Darfur is black, African, Arabic-speaking and Muslim. Campaigners for
intervention have accused the Sudanese government of supporting this
group, without mentioning that the Sudanese defence minister condemned
the Janjaweed as "bandits" in a speech to the country's parliament in
March. On July 19, moreover, a court in Khartoum sentenced six
Janjaweed soldiers to horrible punishments, including the amputation of
their hands and legs. And why do we never hear about the rebel groups
which the Janjaweed are fighting, or about any atrocities that they may
have committed?
It is far from clear that the sudden media attention devoted to Sudan
has been provoked by any real escalation of the crisis - a peace
agreement was signed with the rebels in April, and it is holding. The
pictures on our TV screens could have been shown last year. And we
should treat with scepticism the claims made for the numbers of deaths
- 30,000 or 50,000 are the figures being bandied about - when we know
that similar statistics proved very wrong in Kosovo and Iraq. The
Sudanese government says that the death toll in Darfur, since the
beginning of the conflict in 2003, is not greater than 1,200 on all
sides. And why is such attention devoted to Sudan when, in neighbouring
Congo, the death rate from the war there is estimated to be some 2 or 3
million, a tragedy equalled only by the silence with which it is
treated in our media?
We are shown starving babies now, but no TV station will show the
limbless or the dead that we cause if we attack Sudan. Humanitarian aid
should be what the Red Cross always said it must be - politically
neutral. Anything else is just an old-fashioned colonial war - the
reality of killing, and the escalation of violence, disguised with the
hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we
are incapable of ever learning anything.
· John Laughland is an associate of Sanders Research Associates
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Jugoslavia, la Sierra Leone, l'Afghanistan e l'Iraq, il primo ministro
britannico Tony Blair si e' entusiasticamente lanciato a caldeggiare
l'ennesima "guerra umanitaria" - di nuovo contro il Sudan, come in un
circolo perverso... E di nuovo, le giustificazioni addotte si basano su
quelle plateali menzogne alle quali egli ha oramai abituato il pubblico
britannico, che infatti lo considera "B-LIAR" - "B il bugiardo". Ma
dietro la sfacciata propaganda di Blair si nasconde, di nuovo,
nient'altro che petrolio: quel petrolio del Darfur che le cancellerie
occidentali vogliono sottrarre tanto al concorrente cinese, quanto al
primo, legittimo proprietario - il popolo africano. Lo sostiene J.
Laughland a chiare lettere sulle pagine del quotidiano piu' venduto
d'Inghilterra, il Guardian... ]
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4983677-111381,00.html
Comment
The mask of altruism disguising a colonial war
Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan
John Laughland
Monday August 2, 2004
The Guardian
If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came
not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but
rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked
about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral
responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that
we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent - as General
Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed
- and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence.
Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he
has fought in this, surely one of the most bellicose premierships in
history. The bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, the 74-day
bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the intervention in Sierra Leone in
the spring of 2000, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, and the
Iraq war last March were all justified with the bright certainties
which shone from the prime minister's eyes. Blair even defended Bill
Clinton's attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan in
August 1998, on the entirely bogus grounds that it was really
manufacturing anthrax instead of aspirin.
Although in each case the pretext for war has been proved false or the
war aims have been unfulfilled, a stubborn belief persists in the
morality and the effectiveness of attacking other countries. The
Milosevic trial has shown that genocide never occurred in Kosovo -
although Blair told us that the events there were worse than anything
that had happened since the second world war, even the political
activists who staff the prosecutor's office at the international
criminal tribunal in The Hague never included genocide in their Kosovo
indictment. And two years of prosecution have failed to produce one
single witness to testify that the former Yugoslav president ordered
any attacks on Albanian civilians in the province. Indeed, army
documents produced from Belgrade show the contrary.
Like the Kosovo genocide, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as we
now know, existed only in the fevered imaginings of spooks and
politicians in London and Washington. But Downing Street was also
recently forced to admit that even Blair's claims about mass graves in
Iraq were false. The prime minister has repeatedly said that 300,000 or
400,000 bodies have been found there, but the truth is that almost no
bodies have been exhumed in Iraq, and consequently the total number of
such bodies, still less the cause of their deaths, is simply unknown.
In 2001, we attacked Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and to
prevent the Taliban from allegedly flooding the world with heroin. Yet
Bin Laden remains free, while the heroin ban imposed by the Taliban has
been replaced by its very opposite, a surge in opium production,
fostered by the warlords who rule the country. As for Sierra Leone, the
United Nations human development report for 2004, published on July 15,
which measures overall living standards around the world, puts that
beneficiary of western intervention in 177th place out of 177, an
august position it has continued to occupy ever since our boys went in:
Sierra Leone is literally the most miserable place on earth. So much
for Blair's promise of a "new era for Africa".
The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops
into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil.
For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be "no blood
for oil" in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge
untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil
pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a
clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of
energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies
should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession
in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National
Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor.
We ought, therefore, to treat with scepticism the US Congress
declaration of genocide in the region. No one, not even the government
of Sudan, questions that there is a civil war in Darfur, or that it has
caused an immense number of refugees. Even the government admits that
nearly a million people have left for camps outside Darfur's main towns
to escape marauding paramilitary groups. The country is awash with
guns, thanks to the various wars going on in Sudan's neighbouring
countries. Tensions have risen between nomads and herders, as the
former are forced south in search of new pastures by the expansion of
the Sahara desert. Paramilitary groups have practised widespread
highway robbery, and each tribe has its own private army. That is why
the government of Sudan imposed a state of emergency in 1999.
But our media have taken this complex picture and projected on to it a
simple morality tale of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They gloss over
the fact that the Janjaweed militia come from the same ethnic group and
religion as the people they are allegedly persecuting - everyone in
Darfur is black, African, Arabic-speaking and Muslim. Campaigners for
intervention have accused the Sudanese government of supporting this
group, without mentioning that the Sudanese defence minister condemned
the Janjaweed as "bandits" in a speech to the country's parliament in
March. On July 19, moreover, a court in Khartoum sentenced six
Janjaweed soldiers to horrible punishments, including the amputation of
their hands and legs. And why do we never hear about the rebel groups
which the Janjaweed are fighting, or about any atrocities that they may
have committed?
It is far from clear that the sudden media attention devoted to Sudan
has been provoked by any real escalation of the crisis - a peace
agreement was signed with the rebels in April, and it is holding. The
pictures on our TV screens could have been shown last year. And we
should treat with scepticism the claims made for the numbers of deaths
- 30,000 or 50,000 are the figures being bandied about - when we know
that similar statistics proved very wrong in Kosovo and Iraq. The
Sudanese government says that the death toll in Darfur, since the
beginning of the conflict in 2003, is not greater than 1,200 on all
sides. And why is such attention devoted to Sudan when, in neighbouring
Congo, the death rate from the war there is estimated to be some 2 or 3
million, a tragedy equalled only by the silence with which it is
treated in our media?
We are shown starving babies now, but no TV station will show the
limbless or the dead that we cause if we attack Sudan. Humanitarian aid
should be what the Red Cross always said it must be - politically
neutral. Anything else is just an old-fashioned colonial war - the
reality of killing, and the escalation of violence, disguised with the
hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we
are incapable of ever learning anything.
· John Laughland is an associate of Sanders Research Associates
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004