April 23, 2008
American Exception
By ADAM LIPTAK
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.
Criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized nations say they are mystified and appalled by the number and length of American prison sentences.
The United States has, for instance, 2.3 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation, according to data maintained by the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College London.
China, which is four times more populous than the United States, is a distant second, with 1.6 million people in prison. (That number excludes hundreds of thousands of people held in administrative detention, most of them in China’s extrajudicial system of re-education through labor, which often singles out political activists who have not committed crimes.)
San Marino, with a population of about 30,000, is at the end of the long list of 218 countries compiled by the center. It has a single prisoner.
The United States comes in first, too, on a more meaningful list from the prison studies center, the one ranked in order of the incarceration rates. It has 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.)
The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The others have much lower rates. England’s rate is 151; Germany’s is 88; and Japan’s is 63.
The median among all nations is about 125, roughly a sixth of the American rate.
There is little question that the high incarceration rate here has helped drive down crime, though there is debate about how much.
Criminologists and legal experts here and abroad point to a tangle of factors to explain America’s extraordinary incarceration rate: higher levels of violent crime, harsher sentencing laws, a legacy of racial turmoil, a special fervor in combating illegal drugs, the American temperament, and the lack of a social safety net. Even democracy plays a role, as judges — many of whom are elected, another American anomaly — yield to populist demands for tough justice.
Whatever the reason, the gap between American justice and that of the rest of the world is enormous and growing.
It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed.
“In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States,” Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in “Democracy in America.”
No more.
“Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror,” James Q. Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. “Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons.”
Prison sentences here have become “vastly harsher than in any other country to which the United States would ordinarily be compared,” Michael H. Tonry, a leading authority on crime policy, wrote in “The Handbook of Crime and Punishment.”
Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States “a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach.”
The spike in American incarceration rates is quite recent. From 1925 to 1975, the rate remained stable, around 110 people in prison per 100,000 people. It shot up with the movement to get tough on crime in the late 1970s. (These numbers exclude people held in jails, as comprehensive information on prisoners held in state and local jails was not collected until relatively recently.)
The nation’s relatively high violent crime rate, partly driven by the much easier availability of guns here, helps explain the number of people in American prisons.
“The assault rate in New York and London is not that much different,” said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. “But if you look at the murder rate, particularly with firearms, it’s much higher.”
Despite the recent decline in the murder rate in the United States, it is still about four times that of many nations in Western Europe.
But that is only a partial explanation. The United States, in fact, has relatively low rates of nonviolent crime. It has lower burglary and robbery rates than Australia, Canada and England.
People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Mr. Whitman wrote.
Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.
Those figures have drawn contempt from European critics. “The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism,” said Ms. Stern of King’s College.
Many American prosecutors, on the other hand, say that locking up people involved in the drug trade is imperative, as it helps thwart demand for illegal drugs and drives down other kinds of crime. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, for instance, has fought hard to prevent the early release of people in federal prison on crack cocaine offenses, saying that many of them “are among the most serious and violent offenders.”
Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher.
Burglars in the United States serve an average of 16 months in prison, according to Mr. Mauer, compared with 5 months in Canada and 7 months in England.
Many specialists dismissed race as an important distinguishing factor in the American prison rate. It is true that blacks are much more likely to be imprisoned than other groups in the United States, but that is not a particularly distinctive phenomenon. Minorities in Canada, Britain and Australia are also disproportionately represented in those nation’s prisons, and the ratios are similar to or larger than those in the United States.
Some scholars have found that English-speaking nations have higher prison rates.
“Although it is not at all clear what it is about Anglo-Saxon culture that makes predominantly English-speaking countries especially punitive, they are,” Mr. Tonry wrote last year in “Crime, Punishment and Politics in Comparative Perspective.”
“It could be related to economies that are more capitalistic and political cultures that are less social democratic than those of most European countries,” Mr. Tonry wrote. “Or it could have something to do with the Protestant religions with strong Calvinist overtones that were long influential.”
The American character — self-reliant, independent, judgmental — also plays a role.
“America is a comparatively tough place, which puts a strong emphasis on individual responsibility,” Mr. Whitman of Yale wrote. “That attitude has shown up in the American criminal justice of the last 30 years.”
French-speaking countries, by contrast, have “comparatively mild penal policies,” Mr. Tonry wrote.
Of course, sentencing policies within the United States are not monolithic, and national comparisons can be misleading.
“Minnesota looks more like Sweden than like Texas,” said Mr. Mauer of the Sentencing Project. (Sweden imprisons about 80 people per 100,000 of population; Minnesota, about 300; and Texas, almost 1,000. Maine has the lowest incarceration rate in the United States, at 273; and Louisiana the highest, at 1,138.)
Whatever the reasons, there is little dispute that America’s exceptional incarceration rate has had an impact on crime.
“As one might expect, a good case can be made that fewer Americans are now being victimized” thanks to the tougher crime policies, Paul G. Cassell, an authority on sentencing and a former federal judge, wrote in The Stanford Law Review.
From 1981 to 1996, according to Justice Department statistics, the risk of punishment rose in the United States and fell in England. The crime rates predictably moved in the opposite directions, falling in the United States and rising in England.
“These figures,” Mr. Cassell wrote, “should give one pause before too quickly concluding that European sentences are appropriate.”
Other commentators were more definitive. “The simple truth is that imprisonment works,” wrote Kent Scheidegger and Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in The Stanford Law and Policy Review. “Locking up criminals for longer periods reduces the level of crime. The benefits of doing so far offset the costs.”
There is a counterexample, however, to the north. “Rises and falls in Canada’s crime rate have closely paralleled America’s for 40 years,” Mr. Tonry wrote last year. “But its imprisonment rate has remained stable.”
Several specialists here and abroad pointed to a surprising explanation for the high incarceration rate in the United States: democracy.
Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favor of tough crime policies. In the rest of the world, criminal justice professionals tend to be civil servants who are insulated from popular demands for tough sentencing.
Mr. Whitman, who has studied Tocqueville’s work on American penitentiaries, was asked what accounted for America’s booming prison population.
“Unfortunately, a lot of the answer is democracy — just what Tocqueville was talking about,” he said. “We have a highly politicized criminal justice system.”
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
A HNIC in the US Spreme Court
WASHINGTON — Discrepancies in reports about an appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas at a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago have prompted new questions to the Supreme Court from a group that advocates changing campaign finance laws.
Justice Clarence Thomas appeared at a political retreat in 2008.
Justice Thomas’s Wife Sets Up a Conservative Lobbying Shop (February 5, 2011)
Thomas Cites Failure to Disclose Wife’s Job (January 25, 2011)
Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues (October 9, 2010)
When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.
In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.
Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.
“I don’t think the explanation they’ve given is credible,” Mr. Pearson said in an interview. He said that if Justice Thomas’s visit was a “four-day, all-expenses paid trip in sunny Palm Springs,” it should have been reported as a gift under federal law.
The Supreme Court had no comment on the issue Monday. Nor did officials at the Federalist Society or at Koch Industries.
Common Cause maintains that Justice Thomas should have disqualified himself from last year’s landmark campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case, partly because of his ties to the Koch brothers.
In a petition filed with the Justice Department last month, the advocacy group said past appearances at the Koch brothers’ retreat by Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with the conservative political work of Justice Thomas’s wife, had created a possible perception of bias in hearing the case.
The Citizens United decision, with Justice Thomas’s support, freed corporations to engage in direct political spending with little public disclosure. The Koch brothers have been among the main beneficiaries, political analysts say.
Justice Clarence Thomas appeared at a political retreat in 2008.
Justice Thomas’s Wife Sets Up a Conservative Lobbying Shop (February 5, 2011)
Thomas Cites Failure to Disclose Wife’s Job (January 25, 2011)
Activism of Thomas’s Wife Could Raise Judicial Issues (October 9, 2010)
When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.
In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.
Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.
“I don’t think the explanation they’ve given is credible,” Mr. Pearson said in an interview. He said that if Justice Thomas’s visit was a “four-day, all-expenses paid trip in sunny Palm Springs,” it should have been reported as a gift under federal law.
The Supreme Court had no comment on the issue Monday. Nor did officials at the Federalist Society or at Koch Industries.
Common Cause maintains that Justice Thomas should have disqualified himself from last year’s landmark campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case, partly because of his ties to the Koch brothers.
In a petition filed with the Justice Department last month, the advocacy group said past appearances at the Koch brothers’ retreat by Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with the conservative political work of Justice Thomas’s wife, had created a possible perception of bias in hearing the case.
The Citizens United decision, with Justice Thomas’s support, freed corporations to engage in direct political spending with little public disclosure. The Koch brothers have been among the main beneficiaries, political analysts say.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Exporting the Super Bowl
By LINH DINH
Of the 225 countries that watched the Super Bowl, nearly none play American football. Not familiar with the rules of the game, they were merely staring at a spectacle. Of all American sports, football is one that has not spread overseas. It doesn’t translate well. The amount of equipments required exclude poor countries, which are most of the world, but there is perhaps much in its nature that precludes universal attraction. It is extremely violent. On every play, someone is knocked down, but he doesn’t writhe and grimace, as in soccer, but gets right back up. With his padded shoulders and helmeted head, a football player appears more than human. He is a machine. A robot. A mascot for NFL broadcasts is a hulking, dancing robot. With his thick neck and impervious to pain, a football player is the opposite of your weepy feely, pencil-necked intellectual. He is no wuss.
The objective of every football play is to gain real estate. For tactical reasons, a soccer player often passes a ball backward, sometimes even to his own goalie, but in football, there is only the forward thrust. In fact, a backward pass is illegal. Gaining yards is so important that it defines the success of every play, and of every player who touches the ball. A running back had a successful day if he gained 100 yards, even if he never scored and his team lost. In no other sports are statistics kept of yards gained. A soccer or basketball player can dribble the length of the field or court without tallying anything, but in American football, each yard must be counted.
This nearly continent-size country has always defined itself by rapidly expanding, by gaining yards and miles. Settle the coast, then foray inland. Move the natives out of the way. Get rid of them. Kill them. Half of Mexico was swallowed up, then Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, on and on, until now, America has at least 700 military bases in 130 countries. That’s a lot of yards gained. Granted, there are no people that have not engaged in territorial warfare with their neighbors, but the relentless reach of the United States is unprecedented.
Much more than land, America invades minds. There is scarcely a brain alive that’s not constantly titillated and harassed by American culture. Worldwide, people wear hats and shirts with American words and slogans they don’t understand. They listen to American lyrics and babble English words, even to themselves. In Vietnam not too long ago, a woman asked if I liked the song, “Aleet Beeper.” What she meant was “Careless Whisper.” Whatever its title and whatever it meant, she liked that song. Also in Vietnam, I saw “POLO” stickered onto a Japanese motorbike. This man had Americanized his modest rice cooker, since America is glamorous and cool, much more so than Japan or anywhere else, for that matter.
Humans are warm but machines are cool. Notice the ubiquity of “cool” to denote anything positive in American English. Americans aspire to become hard, tough, and efficient machines that feel no pain. More specifically, they identify with their car, that carapace that enwraps them daily and gives them personality and status. Spending more time with his car than anything or anyone else, the American’s best friend is his automobile. Nowadays, it can even speak and tell him where to go. Year in and year out, car commercials dominate the Super Bowl. Becoming anthropomorphic, they can drive themselves and chat to each other. One can say that the main objective of each Super Bowl is to sell more wheels.
Clueless of the rules, foreigners still tune in to the Super Bowl, since empire exudes not just power, but a kind of sexual allure. The alpha male also demands vigilant attention. He is dangerous and you can’t hide from him. By his cold-blooded calculations or whims, a person in the remotest place may just die in his sleep, killed by a plane or drone, even without knowing why. A recent report revealed that only eight percent of Afghan men had even heard of the attacks on 9/11 of 2001, America’s pretext for invading their country.
Even more than usual, war lurked behind this Super Bowl. Before Christina Aguilera botched “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Lea Michele sang “America the Beautiful,” so there were two national anthems, so to speak. Troops with flags were arrayed behind these singers. As Aguilera fluffed and mumbled, we caught a glimpse of a grinning George W. Bush. Our war-criminal-in-chief would appear again later, as would Condi Rice. After Aguilera’s last note, military jets roared overhead. During the game, we were suddenly introduced to Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, a decorated veteran of our invasion of Afghanistan. He stood with other soldiers beyond the end zone, waving. As has become customary, the announcers thanked all of “our troops” worldwide “for all that they do.” Earlier, there was a shot of American soldiers watching the Super Bowl in Afghanistan.
America is beautiful, but so is every other country. None can match her in mass media allure, however, in collective hypnosis. In a 1997 article for the US Army War College, Major Ralph Peters sums up America’s cultural edge, “Hollywood goes where Harvard never penetrated, and the foreigner, unable to touch the reality of America, is touched by America's irresponsible fantasies of itself; he sees a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world from which he is excluded, a world of wealth he can judge only in terms of his own poverty.” And, “The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand.”
America is seductive. In fact, the further one is from America, geographically, culturally or economically, the more alluring she can become. Without an actual experience of her, America is pure fantasy, a fabulous rumor.
One of history’s oddest ironies is the name Mỹ Lai, which means “half-American” in Vietnamese. Mỹ is “American.” Lai is “of mixed race.” If a person is “Mỹ lai,” he is half-American. Further, Mỹ in Vietnamese also means beautiful. In colloquial Vietnamese, America is the beautiful country, and Americans, beautiful people. In the half-American village, of a country that called America “beautiful,” American troops killed around 500 unarmed civilians on March 16th of 1968. Nearly all were women, children and the elderly. America seduced, then killed. During one of Israel’s episodic massacres of Arabs—there have been so many, I can no longer remember which one—I saw a photo of a dead child wrapped in a Mickey Mouse blanket. Murdered by an American bomb, she would be buried with her beloved American icon. An American talking rat accompanied her to eternity.
Watching the Super Bowl, Americans and foreigner alike can come away with these clear messages: Fun is not free. We must kill constantly so cars can be sold. We are a virile and vital nation, at least on television. The seats at his spectacle are way out of reach to you, even those who dwell right here, in the cartoony belly of the beast, but your seats at home are free, as long as they haven’t been bombed. Lastly, you can never be like us, the beautiful creatures you see on our shows and movies, but you’re free to stare, stare and stare.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, and the recently published novel, Love Like Hate. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.
Of the 225 countries that watched the Super Bowl, nearly none play American football. Not familiar with the rules of the game, they were merely staring at a spectacle. Of all American sports, football is one that has not spread overseas. It doesn’t translate well. The amount of equipments required exclude poor countries, which are most of the world, but there is perhaps much in its nature that precludes universal attraction. It is extremely violent. On every play, someone is knocked down, but he doesn’t writhe and grimace, as in soccer, but gets right back up. With his padded shoulders and helmeted head, a football player appears more than human. He is a machine. A robot. A mascot for NFL broadcasts is a hulking, dancing robot. With his thick neck and impervious to pain, a football player is the opposite of your weepy feely, pencil-necked intellectual. He is no wuss.
The objective of every football play is to gain real estate. For tactical reasons, a soccer player often passes a ball backward, sometimes even to his own goalie, but in football, there is only the forward thrust. In fact, a backward pass is illegal. Gaining yards is so important that it defines the success of every play, and of every player who touches the ball. A running back had a successful day if he gained 100 yards, even if he never scored and his team lost. In no other sports are statistics kept of yards gained. A soccer or basketball player can dribble the length of the field or court without tallying anything, but in American football, each yard must be counted.
This nearly continent-size country has always defined itself by rapidly expanding, by gaining yards and miles. Settle the coast, then foray inland. Move the natives out of the way. Get rid of them. Kill them. Half of Mexico was swallowed up, then Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, on and on, until now, America has at least 700 military bases in 130 countries. That’s a lot of yards gained. Granted, there are no people that have not engaged in territorial warfare with their neighbors, but the relentless reach of the United States is unprecedented.
Much more than land, America invades minds. There is scarcely a brain alive that’s not constantly titillated and harassed by American culture. Worldwide, people wear hats and shirts with American words and slogans they don’t understand. They listen to American lyrics and babble English words, even to themselves. In Vietnam not too long ago, a woman asked if I liked the song, “Aleet Beeper.” What she meant was “Careless Whisper.” Whatever its title and whatever it meant, she liked that song. Also in Vietnam, I saw “POLO” stickered onto a Japanese motorbike. This man had Americanized his modest rice cooker, since America is glamorous and cool, much more so than Japan or anywhere else, for that matter.
Humans are warm but machines are cool. Notice the ubiquity of “cool” to denote anything positive in American English. Americans aspire to become hard, tough, and efficient machines that feel no pain. More specifically, they identify with their car, that carapace that enwraps them daily and gives them personality and status. Spending more time with his car than anything or anyone else, the American’s best friend is his automobile. Nowadays, it can even speak and tell him where to go. Year in and year out, car commercials dominate the Super Bowl. Becoming anthropomorphic, they can drive themselves and chat to each other. One can say that the main objective of each Super Bowl is to sell more wheels.
Clueless of the rules, foreigners still tune in to the Super Bowl, since empire exudes not just power, but a kind of sexual allure. The alpha male also demands vigilant attention. He is dangerous and you can’t hide from him. By his cold-blooded calculations or whims, a person in the remotest place may just die in his sleep, killed by a plane or drone, even without knowing why. A recent report revealed that only eight percent of Afghan men had even heard of the attacks on 9/11 of 2001, America’s pretext for invading their country.
Even more than usual, war lurked behind this Super Bowl. Before Christina Aguilera botched “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Lea Michele sang “America the Beautiful,” so there were two national anthems, so to speak. Troops with flags were arrayed behind these singers. As Aguilera fluffed and mumbled, we caught a glimpse of a grinning George W. Bush. Our war-criminal-in-chief would appear again later, as would Condi Rice. After Aguilera’s last note, military jets roared overhead. During the game, we were suddenly introduced to Sergeant Salvatore Giunta, a decorated veteran of our invasion of Afghanistan. He stood with other soldiers beyond the end zone, waving. As has become customary, the announcers thanked all of “our troops” worldwide “for all that they do.” Earlier, there was a shot of American soldiers watching the Super Bowl in Afghanistan.
America is beautiful, but so is every other country. None can match her in mass media allure, however, in collective hypnosis. In a 1997 article for the US Army War College, Major Ralph Peters sums up America’s cultural edge, “Hollywood goes where Harvard never penetrated, and the foreigner, unable to touch the reality of America, is touched by America's irresponsible fantasies of itself; he sees a devilishly enchanting, bluntly sexual, terrifying world from which he is excluded, a world of wealth he can judge only in terms of his own poverty.” And, “The films most despised by the intellectual elite--those that feature extreme violence and to-the-victors-the-spoils sex--are our most popular cultural weapon, bought or bootlegged nearly everywhere. American action films, often in dreadful copies, are available from the Upper Amazon to Mandalay. They are even more popular than our music, because they are easier to understand.”
America is seductive. In fact, the further one is from America, geographically, culturally or economically, the more alluring she can become. Without an actual experience of her, America is pure fantasy, a fabulous rumor.
One of history’s oddest ironies is the name Mỹ Lai, which means “half-American” in Vietnamese. Mỹ is “American.” Lai is “of mixed race.” If a person is “Mỹ lai,” he is half-American. Further, Mỹ in Vietnamese also means beautiful. In colloquial Vietnamese, America is the beautiful country, and Americans, beautiful people. In the half-American village, of a country that called America “beautiful,” American troops killed around 500 unarmed civilians on March 16th of 1968. Nearly all were women, children and the elderly. America seduced, then killed. During one of Israel’s episodic massacres of Arabs—there have been so many, I can no longer remember which one—I saw a photo of a dead child wrapped in a Mickey Mouse blanket. Murdered by an American bomb, she would be buried with her beloved American icon. An American talking rat accompanied her to eternity.
Watching the Super Bowl, Americans and foreigner alike can come away with these clear messages: Fun is not free. We must kill constantly so cars can be sold. We are a virile and vital nation, at least on television. The seats at his spectacle are way out of reach to you, even those who dwell right here, in the cartoony belly of the beast, but your seats at home are free, as long as they haven’t been bombed. Lastly, you can never be like us, the beautiful creatures you see on our shows and movies, but you’re free to stare, stare and stare.
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories and five of poems, and the recently published novel, Love Like Hate. He's tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.
ElBaradei: Soros's Man in Cairo
by Maidhc Ó Cathail
(Saturday, February 12, 2011)
"Tel Aviv’s concerns about the loss of a friendly dictator next door, however, should be assuaged somewhat by the fact that ElBaradei could collaborate with the considerable number of Israel partisans at ICG. Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, who helped start the group, was once dubbed “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill,” and in 1998 led a group of neoconservatives who urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Fellow neocon Kenneth Adelman assured Americans in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed that the Israeli-induced invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Even more reassuring for nervous Israelis must be the presence of Nahum Barnea, the prominent Israeli columnist who sharply criticised fellow journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Akiva Eldar for their “mission” of support for the Palestinians."
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In a February 3 Washington Post op-ed piece titled “Why Obama has to get Egypt right,” George Soros wrote that the U.S. president had “much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy.” Notwithstanding the reasonableness of his advice, past experience suggests that the Hungarian-born hedge fund manager has something to gain himself from regime change in Cairo.
In his public memo to the president he helped elect, Soros noted that it was a “hopeful sign” that the Muslim Brotherhood was cooperating with Mohamed ElBaradei, whom he disinterestedly described as “the Nobel laureate who is seeking to run for president.” He neglected to mention, however, that up to ElBaradei’s January 27 return to crisis-torn Egypt, the former IAEA chief had been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, which Soros, the thirty-fifth richest person in the world, helped create and finance.
The International Crisis Group describes itself as “an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict,” but self-descriptions can often be misleading. “The ICG is a fascinating case study of the way human rights organizations, governments and international corporations work hand in glove these days,” George Szamuely wrote of the influential think tank’s role in the Balkans. “‘Independent’ figures like Soros identify a ‘crisis’ demanding urgent government attention. Governments act on them and then parcel out the lucrative contracts to Soros and his pals.”
One of Soros’s more notorious “pals” is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of Yukos Oil, who by the age of 32 had amassed assets worth more than $30 billion in the rigged post-Soviet “privatisation” of state-owned property. When the Jewish oligarch was arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud in 2003, Soros denounced the charges as “political persecution,” called for the expulsion of Russia from the G-8, and urged the West to intervene. Khodorkovsky’s partner in crime, Leonid Nevzlin, fled to Israel before he was found guiltyin absentia of ordering the murders of several politicians and businesspeople that got in the way of Yukos’s expansion plans. Like Soros and Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin has since attempted to rebrand himself as a “philanthropist.”
Tel Aviv’s concerns about the loss of a friendly dictator next door, however, should be assuaged somewhat by the fact that ElBaradei could collaborate with the considerable number of Israel partisans at ICG. Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, who helped start the group, was once dubbed “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill,” and in 1998 led a group of neoconservatives who urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Fellow neocon Kenneth Adelman assured Americans in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed that the Israeli-induced invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Even more reassuring for nervous Israelis must be the presence of Nahum Barnea, the prominent Israeli columnist who sharply criticised fellow journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Akiva Eldar for their “mission” of support for the Palestinians.
And among ICG’s elite international list of senior advisers—defined as “former Board Members (to the extent consistent with any other office they may be holding at the time) who maintain an association with Crisis Group, and whose advice and support are called on from time to time”—we find Shlomo Ben-Ami, former foreign minister of Israel; Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel; and Shimon Peres, current president of Israel.
On the face of it, it seems hard to reconcile the substantial pro-Israel presence at ICG with Soros’s claims to be a “non-Zionist.” But things are seldom what they seem with Soros. Two years after the founding of J Street, it emerged that he had given substantial donations to the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby. Not everyone is convinced by J Street’s claims to be a genuine alternative to AIPAC either. As one astute commentator put it, J Street is “little more than a spin-off of the existing Israel Lobby to make it more palatable to the liberal Democrats that make up the Obama Administration.”
Moreover, some of Israel’s most fervent advocates on Capitol Hill have received donations from Soros, who has become “one of the largest political-campaign contributors in American history.” In an interview with a conservative Jewish radio talk show, Senator Charles Schumer said he believed that HaShem (Orthodox Jewish term for “God”) gave him his name—which means “guardian”—so that he could fulfill his “very important” role in the U.S. Senate as a “guardian of Israel.”
Essentially filling the same role in the House of Representatives until 2008 was the late Congressman Tom Lantos, whom a former U.S. diplomat referred to as “the Hungarian-American guardian of Israel’s interests in Congress.” As co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Lantos knowingly deceived his co-chairman and the public about the identity of “Nayirah,” whose incubator atrocity story helped justify American intervention in the 1991 Gulf War. Lantos, who is said to have “shared a common drive for promoting democracy and human rights” with his close friend Soros, also championed the fugitive Nevzlin as an innocent victim of anti-Semitism.
“I hope President Obama will expeditiously support the people of Egypt,” Soros wrote in his Post op-ed. “My foundations are prepared to contribute what they can.” If the Egyptian people have as much sense as they have courage and determination, however, they will tell this self-described “committed advocate of democracy and open society” what to do with his “philanthropy”—and his Nobel laureate.
(Saturday, February 12, 2011)
"Tel Aviv’s concerns about the loss of a friendly dictator next door, however, should be assuaged somewhat by the fact that ElBaradei could collaborate with the considerable number of Israel partisans at ICG. Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, who helped start the group, was once dubbed “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill,” and in 1998 led a group of neoconservatives who urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Fellow neocon Kenneth Adelman assured Americans in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed that the Israeli-induced invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Even more reassuring for nervous Israelis must be the presence of Nahum Barnea, the prominent Israeli columnist who sharply criticised fellow journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Akiva Eldar for their “mission” of support for the Palestinians."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In a February 3 Washington Post op-ed piece titled “Why Obama has to get Egypt right,” George Soros wrote that the U.S. president had “much to gain by moving out in front and siding with the public demand for dignity and democracy.” Notwithstanding the reasonableness of his advice, past experience suggests that the Hungarian-born hedge fund manager has something to gain himself from regime change in Cairo.
In his public memo to the president he helped elect, Soros noted that it was a “hopeful sign” that the Muslim Brotherhood was cooperating with Mohamed ElBaradei, whom he disinterestedly described as “the Nobel laureate who is seeking to run for president.” He neglected to mention, however, that up to ElBaradei’s January 27 return to crisis-torn Egypt, the former IAEA chief had been a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group, which Soros, the thirty-fifth richest person in the world, helped create and finance.
The International Crisis Group describes itself as “an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict,” but self-descriptions can often be misleading. “The ICG is a fascinating case study of the way human rights organizations, governments and international corporations work hand in glove these days,” George Szamuely wrote of the influential think tank’s role in the Balkans. “‘Independent’ figures like Soros identify a ‘crisis’ demanding urgent government attention. Governments act on them and then parcel out the lucrative contracts to Soros and his pals.”
One of Soros’s more notorious “pals” is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of Yukos Oil, who by the age of 32 had amassed assets worth more than $30 billion in the rigged post-Soviet “privatisation” of state-owned property. When the Jewish oligarch was arrested for tax evasion, embezzlement and fraud in 2003, Soros denounced the charges as “political persecution,” called for the expulsion of Russia from the G-8, and urged the West to intervene. Khodorkovsky’s partner in crime, Leonid Nevzlin, fled to Israel before he was found guiltyin absentia of ordering the murders of several politicians and businesspeople that got in the way of Yukos’s expansion plans. Like Soros and Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin has since attempted to rebrand himself as a “philanthropist.”
Tel Aviv’s concerns about the loss of a friendly dictator next door, however, should be assuaged somewhat by the fact that ElBaradei could collaborate with the considerable number of Israel partisans at ICG. Former U.S. Congressman Stephen Solarz, who helped start the group, was once dubbed “the Israel lobby’s chief legislative tactician on Capitol Hill,” and in 1998 led a group of neoconservatives who urged President Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Fellow neocon Kenneth Adelman assured Americans in a 2002 Washington Post op-ed that the Israeli-induced invasion of Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” Even more reassuring for nervous Israelis must be the presence of Nahum Barnea, the prominent Israeli columnist who sharply criticised fellow journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and Akiva Eldar for their “mission” of support for the Palestinians.
And among ICG’s elite international list of senior advisers—defined as “former Board Members (to the extent consistent with any other office they may be holding at the time) who maintain an association with Crisis Group, and whose advice and support are called on from time to time”—we find Shlomo Ben-Ami, former foreign minister of Israel; Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel; and Shimon Peres, current president of Israel.
On the face of it, it seems hard to reconcile the substantial pro-Israel presence at ICG with Soros’s claims to be a “non-Zionist.” But things are seldom what they seem with Soros. Two years after the founding of J Street, it emerged that he had given substantial donations to the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby. Not everyone is convinced by J Street’s claims to be a genuine alternative to AIPAC either. As one astute commentator put it, J Street is “little more than a spin-off of the existing Israel Lobby to make it more palatable to the liberal Democrats that make up the Obama Administration.”
Moreover, some of Israel’s most fervent advocates on Capitol Hill have received donations from Soros, who has become “one of the largest political-campaign contributors in American history.” In an interview with a conservative Jewish radio talk show, Senator Charles Schumer said he believed that HaShem (Orthodox Jewish term for “God”) gave him his name—which means “guardian”—so that he could fulfill his “very important” role in the U.S. Senate as a “guardian of Israel.”
Essentially filling the same role in the House of Representatives until 2008 was the late Congressman Tom Lantos, whom a former U.S. diplomat referred to as “the Hungarian-American guardian of Israel’s interests in Congress.” As co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Lantos knowingly deceived his co-chairman and the public about the identity of “Nayirah,” whose incubator atrocity story helped justify American intervention in the 1991 Gulf War. Lantos, who is said to have “shared a common drive for promoting democracy and human rights” with his close friend Soros, also championed the fugitive Nevzlin as an innocent victim of anti-Semitism.
“I hope President Obama will expeditiously support the people of Egypt,” Soros wrote in his Post op-ed. “My foundations are prepared to contribute what they can.” If the Egyptian people have as much sense as they have courage and determination, however, they will tell this self-described “committed advocate of democracy and open society” what to do with his “philanthropy”—and his Nobel laureate.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Two Pillars of Cynicism
By VIJAY PRASHAD
Ululations of joy broke out in Tel Aviv when it became clear that neither the United States nor the Egyptian ruling elite wanted to succumb to the pressures from below. It was all very well to allow managed democracy in Eastern Europe or in Central Asia, but such illusions were out of the question for the Middle East. A cobwebbed tradition of orientalist scholarship had proclaimed the Arab incapable of Enlightenment inventions such as democracy (a convenient example is Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, 1973). Their policy cousins, in the diplomatic warrens of Foggy Bottom and in Kiryat Ben Gurion, absorbed this twaddle. For them, the Arab World would only ascend to Democracy in the long-term. In the short term, where we all live, it would have to make do with Stability. When the masses gathered in Tahrir Square, they were not harbingers of Democracy for Washington and Tel Aviv: instead, they augured something worse than Mubarak – rule by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Visions of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas ran through their future plans. Israel would be encircled by cartoon character Ayatollahs who resembled Jafar, the Grand Vizier of Agrabah (from Disney’s 1992 Aladdin). It was all too much to bear.
Obama’s White House and State Department seemed unable to keep up with the pace of events in Egypt and in the Arab world in general. One revolutionary wave after another put various scenarios for diplomacy and intervention into the shredder. The popular uprisings did not keep to any timetable, and their phases seemed hard to predict. The intransigence of the people in Tahrir Square, in particular, dazzled the planners. Frank Wisner’s friendly chat with Mubarak got the old man to agree to leave by September. In his place came Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, an old friend of Israel and the United States. But the people in Tahrir Square seemed to know that if they went home and disbanded the force that they had created, in the dark night Suleiman’s agents would swoop into their homes, take them to Abu Zaabal to be hung upside down and beaten. Too much is known of the ways of the secret police to allow the dynamism of the Tahrir Square to be so easily broken up. Mubarak’s gambit was patently insufficient.
But this is all that the United States could offer. Too much is at stake. The two pillars of U. S. foreign policy must be allowed to remain intact. If they fall, then the U. S. will lose the Middle East in the same way as it has substantially lost South America. These defeats and retreats portend the collapse of U. S. hegemony.
Pillar 1.
The first pillar is to maintain Egypt as a firm ally in the U. S. led war on terror. Here the Mubarak regime is not following the United States. It has interests that parallel those of Washington. The secular regime set up by Gamal Abdul Nasser was already at war with political Islam within Egypt. Nasser’s popularity held the Muslim Brotherhood in check. Nasser’s aide, Anwar Sadat, had been the Egyptian military’s liaison with the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1930s. When he took over from Nasser, Sadat tried to outflank the Brotherhood from the right, calling himself the Believer President (al-rais al-mou’min), and bringing the shari’a into the constitution of 1971. Sadat could not do the job. The Islamists killed him in 1981.
Sadat’s successor, Mubarak, also tried to dance with the Islamists, but was not successful. In 1993, Mubarak picked a career military man, General Omar Suleiman, to run his internal security department, the Mukhabarat el-Aama. Two years later, Mubarak was to go to a meeting in Addis Ababa. Suleiman insisted that an armored car be flown to Ethiopia. Suleiman sat beside Mubarak when the Islamist gunmen opened fire on the car. The armor saved them. Mubarak signed legislation that made it a crime to even sympathize with Islamism, and his regime built five new prisons to fill with Brotherhood members. Some of these prisons became the torture chambers after 9/11 run by Suleiman on behalf of the CIA. Mubarak and Suleiman matched Bush and his clique in their hatred of the Brotherhood. [For more on this, see Lisa Hajjar’s essay Suleiman: the CIA’s Man in Cairo,” al-jazeera, February 7]. They were natural allies.
But Egypt’s willingness to be a partner had been strained by the Iraq War. In 2008, Ambassador Margaret Scobey worried that Egypt’s eagerness had flagged (08Cairo2543, Wikileaks). “The Egyptians have lost confidence in U. S. regional leadership. They believe that the U. S. invasion of Iraq was an unmitigated disaster that has unleashed Iranian regional ambitions and that the U. S. waited far too long to engage in Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts.” Ambassador Scobey worried that “Egypt’s aging leadership” was averse to change. Defense Minister Field Marshall Tantawi had been in office since 1991, and he had “been the chief impediment to transforming the military’s mission to meet emerging security threats.” Mubarak “is in solid health,” she wrote, and would run and win in the 2011 election. “Despite incessant whispered discussions, no one in Egypt,” she noted, “”has any certainty about who will eventually succeed Mubarak.”
The U. S. had long considered Omar Suleiman to be the best bet. In 2006, the Cairo Embassy wrote (06Cairo2933, Wikileaks), “Our intelligence collaboration with Omar Soliman is now probably the most successful element of the relationship.”
Suleiman saw Iran under the hood of every Brotherhood car. In 2009, he met General David Petraeus in Cairo. Ambassador Scobey wrote a note back to the State Department on July 14 (09Cairo1349, Wikileaks). “Soliman stressed that Egypt suffers from Iranian interference, through its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies, and its support for Egyptian groups like Jamaatt al-Islamiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood,” she wrote. “Egypt will confront the Iranian threat, he continued, by closely monitoring Iranian agents in Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and any Egyptian cells.” This was music to the ears of the Washington Hawks. Suleiman was a reliable upholder of Pillar no. 1.
Pillar no. 2.
The second pillar of U. S. foreign policy in the region is to protect Israel. Israel has faced no major threat since the 1973 war, when Egypt’s powerful army took it on. The Egypt-Israel peace treat of 1979 allowed Israel to pivot its entire security strategy to face off against much weaker actors, such as Lebanon and the Palestinians. Egypt’s withdrawal has allowed Israel to exert itself with overwhelming force against the Palestinians, in particular. As well, Egypt’s volte-face in 1979 allowed Israel to reduce its defense spending from 30 per cent of its Gross National Product to 7 per cent of its GNP.
As part of this deal, the United States provides each country with a large bursary each year: Israel receives about $3 billion and Egypt receives $1.5 billion. Most of this money goes toward the military and security services of these two allies. The U. S. subvention and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty create an exaggerated asymmetry between the Israeli armed forces and the Palestinian fighters.
Protests in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the action, sent a tremor through Tel Aviv’s establishment. If a new government comes to power with the Brotherhood in alliance, this might lead to the abrogation of the 1979 treaty. If this were to occur, Israel would once again be faced with the prospect of a hostile Egypt, and its Goliath stance against the Palestinians would be challenged.
In 2008, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Egyptian leadership in Cairo. When his team returned to Tel Aviv, his adviser David Hacham debriefed the U. S. embassy’s Luis G. Moreno (08TelAviv1984, Wikileaks). Hacham said that the team was “shocked by Mubarak’s appearance and slurred speech.” They talked about Iran and Mubarak and Barak agreed that “Israel and Egypt have a common strategic interest in stopping the expansion of Iranian influence in the region, as well as a common view of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.” Then, strikingly, Moreno wrote a parenthetical note, “We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.”
If Suleiman takes the reins, in other words, the second pillar of U. S. interests will remain stable.
The actions of U. S. foreign policy have not progressed much from the inclinations of Teddy Roosevelt. In 1907, he wondered if “it is impossible to expect moral, intellectual and material well-being where Mohammedanism is supreme.” The Egyptians were “a people of Moslem fellahin who have never in all time exercised any self-government whatever.” This was disingenuous. Roosevelt knew of course that the British ruled over Egypt. The Egyptians rose in revolt in 1881 under Ahmed Arabi against the Khedive (the British puppet Twefik Pasha), and once more in Alexandria in 1882. These rebellions, or the urge for self-government, was interpreted cynically by the British as its opposite: a reason to stay, to tame the passions of the population. The British would withdraw, the Foreign Office wrote, “as soon as the state of the country and the organization of the proper means for the maintenance of the khedivial authority will admit it.” This promise was repeated almost verbatim sixty-six times between the early 1880s and 1922. It was Nasser who tossed them out in the 1950s. Roosevelt threw in his lot with the British consul, Lord Cromer. Cromer, he said, “is one of the greatest modern colonial administrators, and he has handled Egypt just according to Egypt’s needs.” This is what Omar Suleiman said recently, that Egypt is too immature for democracy in the Enlightenment sense. Wisner whispered just this nonsense in his ear when he was in Cairo.
Tahrir Square burst with enthusiasm and resilience on February 8. The U. S. hastily told the Egyptian authority to make a few more concessions. Anything will do as long as the two pillars remain intact. Joe Biden called Suleiman and told him to make “immediate, irreversible progress.” The U.S. and Israel wanted Suleiman to take the reins at least four years ago. The protests have simply hastened the script. The people of Egypt want to write a new play.
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just
Ululations of joy broke out in Tel Aviv when it became clear that neither the United States nor the Egyptian ruling elite wanted to succumb to the pressures from below. It was all very well to allow managed democracy in Eastern Europe or in Central Asia, but such illusions were out of the question for the Middle East. A cobwebbed tradition of orientalist scholarship had proclaimed the Arab incapable of Enlightenment inventions such as democracy (a convenient example is Raphael Patai’s The Arab Mind, 1973). Their policy cousins, in the diplomatic warrens of Foggy Bottom and in Kiryat Ben Gurion, absorbed this twaddle. For them, the Arab World would only ascend to Democracy in the long-term. In the short term, where we all live, it would have to make do with Stability. When the masses gathered in Tahrir Square, they were not harbingers of Democracy for Washington and Tel Aviv: instead, they augured something worse than Mubarak – rule by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). Visions of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas ran through their future plans. Israel would be encircled by cartoon character Ayatollahs who resembled Jafar, the Grand Vizier of Agrabah (from Disney’s 1992 Aladdin). It was all too much to bear.
Obama’s White House and State Department seemed unable to keep up with the pace of events in Egypt and in the Arab world in general. One revolutionary wave after another put various scenarios for diplomacy and intervention into the shredder. The popular uprisings did not keep to any timetable, and their phases seemed hard to predict. The intransigence of the people in Tahrir Square, in particular, dazzled the planners. Frank Wisner’s friendly chat with Mubarak got the old man to agree to leave by September. In his place came Intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, an old friend of Israel and the United States. But the people in Tahrir Square seemed to know that if they went home and disbanded the force that they had created, in the dark night Suleiman’s agents would swoop into their homes, take them to Abu Zaabal to be hung upside down and beaten. Too much is known of the ways of the secret police to allow the dynamism of the Tahrir Square to be so easily broken up. Mubarak’s gambit was patently insufficient.
But this is all that the United States could offer. Too much is at stake. The two pillars of U. S. foreign policy must be allowed to remain intact. If they fall, then the U. S. will lose the Middle East in the same way as it has substantially lost South America. These defeats and retreats portend the collapse of U. S. hegemony.
Pillar 1.
The first pillar is to maintain Egypt as a firm ally in the U. S. led war on terror. Here the Mubarak regime is not following the United States. It has interests that parallel those of Washington. The secular regime set up by Gamal Abdul Nasser was already at war with political Islam within Egypt. Nasser’s popularity held the Muslim Brotherhood in check. Nasser’s aide, Anwar Sadat, had been the Egyptian military’s liaison with the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1930s. When he took over from Nasser, Sadat tried to outflank the Brotherhood from the right, calling himself the Believer President (al-rais al-mou’min), and bringing the shari’a into the constitution of 1971. Sadat could not do the job. The Islamists killed him in 1981.
Sadat’s successor, Mubarak, also tried to dance with the Islamists, but was not successful. In 1993, Mubarak picked a career military man, General Omar Suleiman, to run his internal security department, the Mukhabarat el-Aama. Two years later, Mubarak was to go to a meeting in Addis Ababa. Suleiman insisted that an armored car be flown to Ethiopia. Suleiman sat beside Mubarak when the Islamist gunmen opened fire on the car. The armor saved them. Mubarak signed legislation that made it a crime to even sympathize with Islamism, and his regime built five new prisons to fill with Brotherhood members. Some of these prisons became the torture chambers after 9/11 run by Suleiman on behalf of the CIA. Mubarak and Suleiman matched Bush and his clique in their hatred of the Brotherhood. [For more on this, see Lisa Hajjar’s essay Suleiman: the CIA’s Man in Cairo,” al-jazeera, February 7]. They were natural allies.
But Egypt’s willingness to be a partner had been strained by the Iraq War. In 2008, Ambassador Margaret Scobey worried that Egypt’s eagerness had flagged (08Cairo2543, Wikileaks). “The Egyptians have lost confidence in U. S. regional leadership. They believe that the U. S. invasion of Iraq was an unmitigated disaster that has unleashed Iranian regional ambitions and that the U. S. waited far too long to engage in Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts.” Ambassador Scobey worried that “Egypt’s aging leadership” was averse to change. Defense Minister Field Marshall Tantawi had been in office since 1991, and he had “been the chief impediment to transforming the military’s mission to meet emerging security threats.” Mubarak “is in solid health,” she wrote, and would run and win in the 2011 election. “Despite incessant whispered discussions, no one in Egypt,” she noted, “”has any certainty about who will eventually succeed Mubarak.”
The U. S. had long considered Omar Suleiman to be the best bet. In 2006, the Cairo Embassy wrote (06Cairo2933, Wikileaks), “Our intelligence collaboration with Omar Soliman is now probably the most successful element of the relationship.”
Suleiman saw Iran under the hood of every Brotherhood car. In 2009, he met General David Petraeus in Cairo. Ambassador Scobey wrote a note back to the State Department on July 14 (09Cairo1349, Wikileaks). “Soliman stressed that Egypt suffers from Iranian interference, through its Hezbollah and Hamas proxies, and its support for Egyptian groups like Jamaatt al-Islamiyya and the Muslim Brotherhood,” she wrote. “Egypt will confront the Iranian threat, he continued, by closely monitoring Iranian agents in Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and any Egyptian cells.” This was music to the ears of the Washington Hawks. Suleiman was a reliable upholder of Pillar no. 1.
Pillar no. 2.
The second pillar of U. S. foreign policy in the region is to protect Israel. Israel has faced no major threat since the 1973 war, when Egypt’s powerful army took it on. The Egypt-Israel peace treat of 1979 allowed Israel to pivot its entire security strategy to face off against much weaker actors, such as Lebanon and the Palestinians. Egypt’s withdrawal has allowed Israel to exert itself with overwhelming force against the Palestinians, in particular. As well, Egypt’s volte-face in 1979 allowed Israel to reduce its defense spending from 30 per cent of its Gross National Product to 7 per cent of its GNP.
As part of this deal, the United States provides each country with a large bursary each year: Israel receives about $3 billion and Egypt receives $1.5 billion. Most of this money goes toward the military and security services of these two allies. The U. S. subvention and the Egypt-Israel peace treaty create an exaggerated asymmetry between the Israeli armed forces and the Palestinian fighters.
Protests in Egypt, with the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the action, sent a tremor through Tel Aviv’s establishment. If a new government comes to power with the Brotherhood in alliance, this might lead to the abrogation of the 1979 treaty. If this were to occur, Israel would once again be faced with the prospect of a hostile Egypt, and its Goliath stance against the Palestinians would be challenged.
In 2008, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Egyptian leadership in Cairo. When his team returned to Tel Aviv, his adviser David Hacham debriefed the U. S. embassy’s Luis G. Moreno (08TelAviv1984, Wikileaks). Hacham said that the team was “shocked by Mubarak’s appearance and slurred speech.” They talked about Iran and Mubarak and Barak agreed that “Israel and Egypt have a common strategic interest in stopping the expansion of Iranian influence in the region, as well as a common view of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.” Then, strikingly, Moreno wrote a parenthetical note, “We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.”
If Suleiman takes the reins, in other words, the second pillar of U. S. interests will remain stable.
The actions of U. S. foreign policy have not progressed much from the inclinations of Teddy Roosevelt. In 1907, he wondered if “it is impossible to expect moral, intellectual and material well-being where Mohammedanism is supreme.” The Egyptians were “a people of Moslem fellahin who have never in all time exercised any self-government whatever.” This was disingenuous. Roosevelt knew of course that the British ruled over Egypt. The Egyptians rose in revolt in 1881 under Ahmed Arabi against the Khedive (the British puppet Twefik Pasha), and once more in Alexandria in 1882. These rebellions, or the urge for self-government, was interpreted cynically by the British as its opposite: a reason to stay, to tame the passions of the population. The British would withdraw, the Foreign Office wrote, “as soon as the state of the country and the organization of the proper means for the maintenance of the khedivial authority will admit it.” This promise was repeated almost verbatim sixty-six times between the early 1880s and 1922. It was Nasser who tossed them out in the 1950s. Roosevelt threw in his lot with the British consul, Lord Cromer. Cromer, he said, “is one of the greatest modern colonial administrators, and he has handled Egypt just according to Egypt’s needs.” This is what Omar Suleiman said recently, that Egypt is too immature for democracy in the Enlightenment sense. Wisner whispered just this nonsense in his ear when he was in Cairo.
Tahrir Square burst with enthusiasm and resilience on February 8. The U. S. hastily told the Egyptian authority to make a few more concessions. Anything will do as long as the two pillars remain intact. Joe Biden called Suleiman and told him to make “immediate, irreversible progress.” The U.S. and Israel wanted Suleiman to take the reins at least four years ago. The protests have simply hastened the script. The people of Egypt want to write a new play.
Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His most recent book, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, won the Muzaffar Ahmad Book Prize for 2009. The Swedish and French editions are just
Counter-revolution brought to you by...
By Pepe Escobar
It will be a long, winding, treacherous and perhaps bloody road before the popular Egyptian revolution even dreams of approaching the post-Suharto Indonesian model (the largest, most plural democracy in a Muslim-majority country) or the current Turkish model (also sanctioned at the ballot box).
As predicted (Rage, rage against the counter-revolution - Asia Times Online, February 1) the counter-revolution is on, and
brought by the usual suspects; the Egyptian army; Mubarakism's comprador elites; and the triad of Washington, Tel Aviv and European capitals.
After more than two weeks of protests on the streets of Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak, this is what the White House's "orderly transition" is all about - with Washington still playing all sides even as the Egyptian street smashed the mirror and defied for good the "stability"/terror imposed on it by the dark side.
The counter-revolution goes way beyond comments by Frank Wisner, a United States Central Intelligence Agency/Wall Street asset who is US President Barack Obama's secret agent to Cairo and a personal friend of the Egyptian president, on the desirability of Mubarak stay and supervise the transition.
It comes across almost casually as Robert Springborg, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, tells Reuters, "The military will engineer a succession. The West - the US and the EU [European Union] - are working to that end. We are working closely with the military ... to ensure a continuation of a dominant role of the military in the society, the polity and the economy." Translation; erase the people to ensure "stability".
The tent city in Tahrir Square in the capital, Cairo, is very much aware that decades of Egypt as a US client-state plus endless International Monetary Fund/World Bank manipulations created the perfect economic storm that was a key cause of the revolution. That's also a key cause for the street to want - according to one of its top slogans - the whole regime brought down. Connecting the dots, the street also knows that a truly representative, sovereign Egyptian government cripples the entire US-controlled Middle East power arrangement.
Historically, what Washington always really feared is Arab nationalism, not crackpot self-made jihadis. Arab nationalism is intrinsically, viscerally, opposed to the 1979 Camp David peace accords, which have neutralized Egypt and left Israel with a free iron hand to proceed with its slow strangulation of Palestine; for As'ad Abu Khalil of the Angry Arab website, every Middle East expert who worked on the accords "helped construct a monstrous dictatorship in Egypt".
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, now with the New America Foundation, spells it out further for the New York Times, "The Israelis are saying, apres Mubarak, le deluge ... The problem for America is, you can balance being the carrier for the Israeli agenda with Arab autocrats, but with Arab democracies, you can't do that."
Correction; in fact it's after Mubarak not the deluge but "our torturer" - Vice President Omar Suleiman, the head of the Mukhabarat, widely dubbed by protesters "Sheikh al-Torture", after his performance tossing at least 30,000 people in jail as suspected jihadis, accepting CIA renditions, and torturing the rendered. Innocents among them include Sheikh Libi, who, under torture, confessed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's goons were training al-Qaeda jihadis; former US secretary of state Colin Powell had no qualms using this "information" at his infamous speech to the United Nations in February 2002 justifying war on Iraq.
Throw the bums into the Nile
Essentially, this is what the Egyptian street wants. Mubarak down immediately. Suleiman starts a national dialogue with an opposition coalition, observed by a neutral UN delegation. Then a constitutional assembly is established to amend articles 77, 78 and 88 of the constitution to enable any Egyptian to be a candidate for the presidency.
The state of emergency (in effect for over 25 years) is lifted. The judicial system establishes monitoring bodies for future elections. A national coalition body is established to monitor the transition during the next six months, and organize elections according to international standards. New guidelines are set for legal political parties not vetted by Mubarakism's National Democratic Party (NDP) but by an independent neutral body. The country starts over with the rule of law and an independent judiciary.
The youth groups central to the revolution go way beyond. They want; the resignation of the entire NDP, including Suleiman; a broad-based transitional government appointed by a 14-strong committee, made up of senior judges, youth leaders and members of the military; the election of a council of 40 public intellectuals and constitutional experts who will draw up a new constitution under the supervision of the transitional government, then put it to the people in a referendum; fresh local and national elections; the end of emergency law; the dismantling of the whole state security apparatus; and the trial of top regime leaders, including Mubarak.
The street simply does not trust the self-described "Council of Wise Men" - which includes secretary general of the Arab League Amr Moussa; Nobel prize-winner and Obama adviser Ahmed Zuwail; professor Mohamed Selim al-Awa; president of the Wafd party Said al-Badawi; powerful Cairo businessman Nagib Suez and lawyer Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd - who are all in favor of Suleiman presiding over the "orderly transition", under the pretext that the opposition leadership is extremely divided and cannot agree on anything. But to believe that Suleiman will agree to dissolve his own party, dissolve parliament, dissolve the police state and change the constitution, they must be all under the spell of an Orientalist opium dream.
For the moment, the new Wafd party (six seats) and Tagammu (five seats) are the largest regime-approved opposition parties in parliament (518 seats). Then there's al-Ghad ("Tomorrow"), founded by Ayman Nour (he contested the last presidential election and ended up in jail). The Generation Y in the streets views them all as irrelevant; they congregate around the Kefaya ("Enough") movement, and have just formed a Youth Front for Egypt.
For the moment the only opposition group spelling out key economic demands is the brand new Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions; they want a monthly minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds (about US$204), annual raises matching inflation and guaranteed rights to bonuses and benefits.
Obviously nothing will change in Egypt without a new constitution capable of guaranteeing political rights to Copts, Shi'ites, Baha'i, Nubians, Bedouins, you name it. At the same time, secular Egyptians, Christians, the brand new Youth Front for Egypt, Nasserists, New Wafd partisans, socialists, all seem to agree there is no specter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) turning Egypt into sharia law. Superstar scholar Tariq Ramadan, whose grandfather Hasan al-Banna founded the MB in 1928, stresses this is "completely an ideological projection to protect geopolitical interests".
The MB by all local estimates does not represent more than 22% of the Muslim population; so 78% wouldn't vote for them. Egyptian society already practices what can be considered a very moderate brand of Islam. Islam is the state religion; the hijab and the niqab are common, as well as the galabiya for men.
And for those brandishing the specter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (and who obviously cannot tell a Shi'ite from a Sunni) Egypt's social and religions composition is completely different from Iran's. What's definitely more revealing is what the Arab world itself considers to be a threat. An August 2010 Brookings poll showed that only 10% of Arabs regard Iran as a threat; instead they consider the US (77%), and even more Israel (88%) as the major threats.
Allow me to spread you with democracy
The street has pyramids of reasons to worry. All evidence points out to these days that shook the world evolving towards a Washington-spun definition of "stability", with an "orderly transition" conducted by a former torturer and the regime fully in place, buying time, arguing that all crucial constitutional changes need to be discussed - plus the internal Egyptian argument that Mubarak cannot step down now either because it's unconstitutional or because then it would be chaos.
And as the standoff persists - even with the street still fully mobilized - what passes for dialogue between the regime and a few sectors of the opposition, including the usurpers of the revolution, is bound to split the already divided and essentially leaderless protest movement. Washington is not exactly unhappy. Nor are the EU minions. The EU's foreign policy chief Lady Catherine Ashton defends Suleiman - with whom she has spoken - as having a "plan in place" to meet some of the protester's demands. The crucial operative word here is "some".
Imagine the result of all this sound and fury, the hundreds dead and thousands wounded by the regime - in addition to the untold thousands eliminated these past three decades - being this aseptic "orderly transition" conducted by "Sheik al-Torture", hailed by politicians and corporate media in Washington, European capitals and Tel Aviv as a democratic victory for the street revolution/collective will of the Egyptian people.
Minimalist political/economic reforms are already being dangled as rotten carrots - even as foreign journalists keep being arrested, goons terrorize protest leaders and state media remains in Animal Farm mode. Egyptian public opinion is being slowly, methodically split. The military junta is showing no cracks. Suleiman and Annan are Washington darlings. Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi is Pentagon supremo Robert Gates' darling.
The military dictatorship certainly wants America to keep spreading democracy in Egypt - as in aid money paying for Abrams tanks assembled in suburban Cairo, Boeing selling CH-47 Chinook helicopters, Lockheed Martin selling F-16s (a $230 million contract), Sikorsky selling Black Hawks, L-3 Ocean Systems selling equipment for detection of submarine threats, CAE from Tampa, Florida selling C-130H weapons system, plus an influx of 450 brand new Hellfire II missiles, not to mention the very helpful tear gas canisters from Combined Systems Inc (CSI) in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
And don't forget those Pentagon contracts showing the US government spent over $110 million to buy and maintain Mubarak's fleet of nine Gulfstream jets. Those in Tahrir Square would be wondering whether any one of the Gulfstreams could be used to jet him to Guantanamo?
A wily counter-revolution is exactly what the revolution needs right now to remain on maximum alert. When "orderly transition" is finally seen for what it is, there's a great probability not only Egypt but the whole Arab world will become a ball of fire.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
It will be a long, winding, treacherous and perhaps bloody road before the popular Egyptian revolution even dreams of approaching the post-Suharto Indonesian model (the largest, most plural democracy in a Muslim-majority country) or the current Turkish model (also sanctioned at the ballot box).
As predicted (Rage, rage against the counter-revolution - Asia Times Online, February 1) the counter-revolution is on, and
brought by the usual suspects; the Egyptian army; Mubarakism's comprador elites; and the triad of Washington, Tel Aviv and European capitals.
After more than two weeks of protests on the streets of Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak, this is what the White House's "orderly transition" is all about - with Washington still playing all sides even as the Egyptian street smashed the mirror and defied for good the "stability"/terror imposed on it by the dark side.
The counter-revolution goes way beyond comments by Frank Wisner, a United States Central Intelligence Agency/Wall Street asset who is US President Barack Obama's secret agent to Cairo and a personal friend of the Egyptian president, on the desirability of Mubarak stay and supervise the transition.
It comes across almost casually as Robert Springborg, professor of national security affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, tells Reuters, "The military will engineer a succession. The West - the US and the EU [European Union] - are working to that end. We are working closely with the military ... to ensure a continuation of a dominant role of the military in the society, the polity and the economy." Translation; erase the people to ensure "stability".
The tent city in Tahrir Square in the capital, Cairo, is very much aware that decades of Egypt as a US client-state plus endless International Monetary Fund/World Bank manipulations created the perfect economic storm that was a key cause of the revolution. That's also a key cause for the street to want - according to one of its top slogans - the whole regime brought down. Connecting the dots, the street also knows that a truly representative, sovereign Egyptian government cripples the entire US-controlled Middle East power arrangement.
Historically, what Washington always really feared is Arab nationalism, not crackpot self-made jihadis. Arab nationalism is intrinsically, viscerally, opposed to the 1979 Camp David peace accords, which have neutralized Egypt and left Israel with a free iron hand to proceed with its slow strangulation of Palestine; for As'ad Abu Khalil of the Angry Arab website, every Middle East expert who worked on the accords "helped construct a monstrous dictatorship in Egypt".
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, now with the New America Foundation, spells it out further for the New York Times, "The Israelis are saying, apres Mubarak, le deluge ... The problem for America is, you can balance being the carrier for the Israeli agenda with Arab autocrats, but with Arab democracies, you can't do that."
Correction; in fact it's after Mubarak not the deluge but "our torturer" - Vice President Omar Suleiman, the head of the Mukhabarat, widely dubbed by protesters "Sheikh al-Torture", after his performance tossing at least 30,000 people in jail as suspected jihadis, accepting CIA renditions, and torturing the rendered. Innocents among them include Sheikh Libi, who, under torture, confessed that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's goons were training al-Qaeda jihadis; former US secretary of state Colin Powell had no qualms using this "information" at his infamous speech to the United Nations in February 2002 justifying war on Iraq.
Throw the bums into the Nile
Essentially, this is what the Egyptian street wants. Mubarak down immediately. Suleiman starts a national dialogue with an opposition coalition, observed by a neutral UN delegation. Then a constitutional assembly is established to amend articles 77, 78 and 88 of the constitution to enable any Egyptian to be a candidate for the presidency.
The state of emergency (in effect for over 25 years) is lifted. The judicial system establishes monitoring bodies for future elections. A national coalition body is established to monitor the transition during the next six months, and organize elections according to international standards. New guidelines are set for legal political parties not vetted by Mubarakism's National Democratic Party (NDP) but by an independent neutral body. The country starts over with the rule of law and an independent judiciary.
The youth groups central to the revolution go way beyond. They want; the resignation of the entire NDP, including Suleiman; a broad-based transitional government appointed by a 14-strong committee, made up of senior judges, youth leaders and members of the military; the election of a council of 40 public intellectuals and constitutional experts who will draw up a new constitution under the supervision of the transitional government, then put it to the people in a referendum; fresh local and national elections; the end of emergency law; the dismantling of the whole state security apparatus; and the trial of top regime leaders, including Mubarak.
The street simply does not trust the self-described "Council of Wise Men" - which includes secretary general of the Arab League Amr Moussa; Nobel prize-winner and Obama adviser Ahmed Zuwail; professor Mohamed Selim al-Awa; president of the Wafd party Said al-Badawi; powerful Cairo businessman Nagib Suez and lawyer Ahmed Kamal Aboul Magd - who are all in favor of Suleiman presiding over the "orderly transition", under the pretext that the opposition leadership is extremely divided and cannot agree on anything. But to believe that Suleiman will agree to dissolve his own party, dissolve parliament, dissolve the police state and change the constitution, they must be all under the spell of an Orientalist opium dream.
For the moment, the new Wafd party (six seats) and Tagammu (five seats) are the largest regime-approved opposition parties in parliament (518 seats). Then there's al-Ghad ("Tomorrow"), founded by Ayman Nour (he contested the last presidential election and ended up in jail). The Generation Y in the streets views them all as irrelevant; they congregate around the Kefaya ("Enough") movement, and have just formed a Youth Front for Egypt.
For the moment the only opposition group spelling out key economic demands is the brand new Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions; they want a monthly minimum wage of 1,200 Egyptian pounds (about US$204), annual raises matching inflation and guaranteed rights to bonuses and benefits.
Obviously nothing will change in Egypt without a new constitution capable of guaranteeing political rights to Copts, Shi'ites, Baha'i, Nubians, Bedouins, you name it. At the same time, secular Egyptians, Christians, the brand new Youth Front for Egypt, Nasserists, New Wafd partisans, socialists, all seem to agree there is no specter of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) turning Egypt into sharia law. Superstar scholar Tariq Ramadan, whose grandfather Hasan al-Banna founded the MB in 1928, stresses this is "completely an ideological projection to protect geopolitical interests".
The MB by all local estimates does not represent more than 22% of the Muslim population; so 78% wouldn't vote for them. Egyptian society already practices what can be considered a very moderate brand of Islam. Islam is the state religion; the hijab and the niqab are common, as well as the galabiya for men.
And for those brandishing the specter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran (and who obviously cannot tell a Shi'ite from a Sunni) Egypt's social and religions composition is completely different from Iran's. What's definitely more revealing is what the Arab world itself considers to be a threat. An August 2010 Brookings poll showed that only 10% of Arabs regard Iran as a threat; instead they consider the US (77%), and even more Israel (88%) as the major threats.
Allow me to spread you with democracy
The street has pyramids of reasons to worry. All evidence points out to these days that shook the world evolving towards a Washington-spun definition of "stability", with an "orderly transition" conducted by a former torturer and the regime fully in place, buying time, arguing that all crucial constitutional changes need to be discussed - plus the internal Egyptian argument that Mubarak cannot step down now either because it's unconstitutional or because then it would be chaos.
And as the standoff persists - even with the street still fully mobilized - what passes for dialogue between the regime and a few sectors of the opposition, including the usurpers of the revolution, is bound to split the already divided and essentially leaderless protest movement. Washington is not exactly unhappy. Nor are the EU minions. The EU's foreign policy chief Lady Catherine Ashton defends Suleiman - with whom she has spoken - as having a "plan in place" to meet some of the protester's demands. The crucial operative word here is "some".
Imagine the result of all this sound and fury, the hundreds dead and thousands wounded by the regime - in addition to the untold thousands eliminated these past three decades - being this aseptic "orderly transition" conducted by "Sheik al-Torture", hailed by politicians and corporate media in Washington, European capitals and Tel Aviv as a democratic victory for the street revolution/collective will of the Egyptian people.
Minimalist political/economic reforms are already being dangled as rotten carrots - even as foreign journalists keep being arrested, goons terrorize protest leaders and state media remains in Animal Farm mode. Egyptian public opinion is being slowly, methodically split. The military junta is showing no cracks. Suleiman and Annan are Washington darlings. Defense Minister Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi is Pentagon supremo Robert Gates' darling.
The military dictatorship certainly wants America to keep spreading democracy in Egypt - as in aid money paying for Abrams tanks assembled in suburban Cairo, Boeing selling CH-47 Chinook helicopters, Lockheed Martin selling F-16s (a $230 million contract), Sikorsky selling Black Hawks, L-3 Ocean Systems selling equipment for detection of submarine threats, CAE from Tampa, Florida selling C-130H weapons system, plus an influx of 450 brand new Hellfire II missiles, not to mention the very helpful tear gas canisters from Combined Systems Inc (CSI) in Jamestown, Pennsylvania.
And don't forget those Pentagon contracts showing the US government spent over $110 million to buy and maintain Mubarak's fleet of nine Gulfstream jets. Those in Tahrir Square would be wondering whether any one of the Gulfstreams could be used to jet him to Guantanamo?
A wily counter-revolution is exactly what the revolution needs right now to remain on maximum alert. When "orderly transition" is finally seen for what it is, there's a great probability not only Egypt but the whole Arab world will become a ball of fire.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo
Suleiman, a friend to the US and reported torturer, has long been touted as a presidential successor.
Lisa Hajjar Last Modified: 07 Feb 2011 14:10 GMT
Suleiman meets with Israeli president Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv, November 2010 [Getty]
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was anointed vice president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he has long been the CIA’s main man in Cairo.
Mubarak knew that Suleiman would command an instant lobby of supporters at Langley and among 'Iran nexters' in Washington - not to mention among other authoritarian mukhabarat-dependent regimes in the region. Suleiman is a favourite of Israel too; he held the Israel dossier and directed Egypt’s efforts to crush Hamas by demolishing the tunnels that have functioned as a smuggling conduit for both weapons and foodstuffs into Gaza.
According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:
"Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his meetings with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe that Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have to figure in any succession scenario."
From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of Mossad.
In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).
"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."
Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
Suleiman the torturer
In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper - and 'wrapped up like a spring roll'.
In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.
Frustrated that Habib was not providing useful information or confessing to involvement in terrorism, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a shackled prisoner in front of Habib, which he did with a vicious karate kick. In April 2002, after five months in Egypt, Habib was rendered to American custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan - and then transported to Guantanamo. On January 11, 2005, the day before he was scheduled to be charged, Dana Priest of the Washington Post published an exposé about Habib’s torture. The US government immediately announced that he would not be charged and would be repatriated to Australia.
A far more infamous torture case, in which Suleiman also is directly implicated, is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Unlike Habib, who was innocent of any ties to terror or militancy, al-Libi was allegedly a trainer at al-Khaldan camp in Afghanistan. He was captured by the Pakistanis while fleeing across the border in November 2001. He was sent to Bagram, and questioned by the FBI. But the CIA wanted to take over, which they did, and he was transported to a black site on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, then extraordinarily rendered to Egypt. Under torture there, al-Libi "confessed" knowledge about an al-Qaeda–Saddam connection, claiming that two al-Qaeda operatives had received training in Iraq for use in chemical and biological weapons. In early 2003, this was exactly the kind of information that the Bush administration was seeking to justify attacking Iraq and to persuade reluctant allies to go along. Indeed, al-Libi’s "confession" was one the central pieces of "evidence" presented at the United Nations by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case for war.
As it turns out, that confession was a lie tortured out of him by Egyptians. Here is how former CIA chief George Tenet describes the whole al-Libi situation in his 2007 memoir, At The Center Of The Storm:
"We believed that al-Libi was withholding critical threat information at the time, so we transferred him to a third country for further debriefing. Allegations were made that we did so knowing that he would be tortured, but this is false. The country in question [Egypt] understood and agreed that they would hold al-Libi for a limited period. In the course of questioning while he was in US custody in Afghanistan, al-Libi made initial references to possible al-Qa'ida training in Iraq. He offered up information that a militant known as Abu Abdullah had told him that at least three times between 1997 and 2000, the now-deceased al-Qa'ida leader Mohammad Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek training in poisons and mustard gas.
"Another senior al-Qa'ida detainee told us that Mohammad Atef was interested in expanding al-Qa'ida's ties to Iraq, which, in our eyes, added credibility to the reporting. Then, shortly after the Iraq war got under way, al-Libi recanted his story. Now, suddenly, he was saying that there was no such cooperative training. Inside the CIA, there was sharp division on his recantation. It led us to recall his reporting, and here is where the mystery begins.
"Al-Libi's story will no doubt be that he decided to fabricate in order to get better treatment and avoid harsh punishment. He clearly lied. We just don't know when. Did he lie when he first said that al-Qa'ida members received training in Iraq - or did he lie when he said they did not? In my mind, either case might still be true. Perhaps, early on, he was under pressure, assumed his interrogators already knew the story, and sang away. After time passed and it became clear that he would not be harmed, he might have changed his story to cloud the minds of his captors. Al-Qa'ida operatives are trained to do just that. A recantation would restore his stature as someone who had successfully confounded the enemy. The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing. (pp. 353-354)"
Al-Libi was eventually sent off, quietly, to Libya - though he reportedly made a few other stops along the way - where he was imprisoned. The use of al-Libi’s statement in the build-up to the Iraq war made him a huge American liability once it became clear that the purported al-Qaeda–Saddam connection was a tortured lie. His whereabouts were, in fact, a secret for years, until April 2009 when Human Rights Watch researchers investigating the treatment of Libyan prisoners encountered him in the courtyard of a prison. Two weeks later, on May 10, al-Libi was dead, and the Gaddafi regime claimed it was a suicide.
According to Evan Kohlmann, who enjoys favoured status among US officials as an 'al-Qaeda expert', citing a classified source: 'Al-Libi’s death coincided with the first visit by Egypt’s spymaster Omar Suleiman to Tripoli.'
Kohlmann surmises and opines that, after al-Libi recounted his story about about an al-Qaeda–Saddam-WMD connection, "The Egyptians were embarassed by this admission - and the Bush government found itself in hot water internationally. Then, in May 2009, Omar Suleiman saw an opportunity to get even with al-Libi and travelled to Tripoli. By the time Omar Suleiman’s plane left Tripoli, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had committed 'suicide'."
As people in Egypt and around the world speculate about the fate of the Mubarak regime, one thing should be very clear: Omar Suleiman is not the man to bring democracy to the country. His hands are too dirty, and any 'stability' he might be imagined to bring to the country and the region comes at way too high a price. Hopefully, the Egyptians who are thronging the streets and demanding a new era of freedom will make his removal from power part of their demands, too.
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California - Santa Barbara and is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.
This article first appeared on Jadaliyya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Lisa Hajjar Last Modified: 07 Feb 2011 14:10 GMT
Suleiman meets with Israeli president Shimon Peres in Tel Aviv, November 2010 [Getty]
On January 29, Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s top spy chief, was anointed vice president by tottering dictator, Hosni Mubarak. By appointing Suleiman, part of a shake-up of the cabinet in an attempt to appease the masses of protesters and retain his own grip on the presidency, Mubarak has once again shown his knack for devilish shrewdness. Suleiman has long been favoured by the US government for his ardent anti-Islamism, his willingness to talk and act tough on Iran - and he has long been the CIA’s main man in Cairo.
Mubarak knew that Suleiman would command an instant lobby of supporters at Langley and among 'Iran nexters' in Washington - not to mention among other authoritarian mukhabarat-dependent regimes in the region. Suleiman is a favourite of Israel too; he held the Israel dossier and directed Egypt’s efforts to crush Hamas by demolishing the tunnels that have functioned as a smuggling conduit for both weapons and foodstuffs into Gaza.
According to a WikiLeak(ed) US diplomatic cable, titled 'Presidential Succession in Egypt', dated May 14, 2007:
"Egyptian intelligence chief and Mubarak consigliere, in past years Soliman was often cited as likely to be named to the long-vacant vice-presidential post. In the past two years, Soliman has stepped out of the shadows, and allowed himself to be photographed, and his meetings with foreign leaders reported. Many of our contacts believe that Soliman, because of his military background, would at least have to figure in any succession scenario."
From 1993 until Saturday, Suleiman was chief of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service. He remained largely in the shadows until 2001, when he started taking over powerful dossiers in the foreign ministry; he has since become a public figure, as the WikiLeak document attests. In 2009, he was touted by the London Telegraph and Foreign Policy as the most powerful spook in the region, topping even the head of Mossad.
In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial. In The Dark Side, Jane Mayer describes how the rendition program began:
"Each rendition was authorised at the very top levels of both governments [the US and Egypt] ... The long-serving chief of the Egyptian central intelligence agency, Omar Suleiman, negotiated directly with top [CIA] officials. [Former US Ambassador to Egypt Edward] Walker described the Egyptian counterpart, Suleiman, as 'very bright, very realistic', adding that he was cognisant that there was a downside to 'some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way'. (p. 113).
"Technically, US law required the CIA to seek 'assurances' from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn't face torture. But under Suleiman's reign at the EGIS, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former CIA officer [head of the al-Qaeda desk], who helped set up the practise of rendition, later testified, even if such 'assurances' were written in indelible ink, 'they weren't worth a bucket of warm spit'."
Under the Bush administration, in the context of "the global war on terror", US renditions became "extraordinary", meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial - but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites - and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.
Suleiman the torturer
In October 2001, Habib was seized from a bus by Pakistani security forces. While detained in Pakistan, at the behest of American agents, he was suspended from a hook and electrocuted repeatedly. He was then turned over to the CIA, and in the process of transporting him to Egypt he endured the usual treatment: his clothes were cut off, a suppository was stuffed in his anus, he was put into a diaper - and 'wrapped up like a spring roll'.
In Egypt, as Habib recounts in his memoir, My Story: The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, he was repeatedly subjected to electric shocks, immersed in water up to his nostrils and beaten. His fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks. At one point, his interrogator slapped him so hard that his blindfold was dislodged, revealing the identity of his tormentor: Suleiman.
Frustrated that Habib was not providing useful information or confessing to involvement in terrorism, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a shackled prisoner in front of Habib, which he did with a vicious karate kick. In April 2002, after five months in Egypt, Habib was rendered to American custody at Bagram prison in Afghanistan - and then transported to Guantanamo. On January 11, 2005, the day before he was scheduled to be charged, Dana Priest of the Washington Post published an exposé about Habib’s torture. The US government immediately announced that he would not be charged and would be repatriated to Australia.
A far more infamous torture case, in which Suleiman also is directly implicated, is that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi. Unlike Habib, who was innocent of any ties to terror or militancy, al-Libi was allegedly a trainer at al-Khaldan camp in Afghanistan. He was captured by the Pakistanis while fleeing across the border in November 2001. He was sent to Bagram, and questioned by the FBI. But the CIA wanted to take over, which they did, and he was transported to a black site on the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea, then extraordinarily rendered to Egypt. Under torture there, al-Libi "confessed" knowledge about an al-Qaeda–Saddam connection, claiming that two al-Qaeda operatives had received training in Iraq for use in chemical and biological weapons. In early 2003, this was exactly the kind of information that the Bush administration was seeking to justify attacking Iraq and to persuade reluctant allies to go along. Indeed, al-Libi’s "confession" was one the central pieces of "evidence" presented at the United Nations by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to make the case for war.
As it turns out, that confession was a lie tortured out of him by Egyptians. Here is how former CIA chief George Tenet describes the whole al-Libi situation in his 2007 memoir, At The Center Of The Storm:
"We believed that al-Libi was withholding critical threat information at the time, so we transferred him to a third country for further debriefing. Allegations were made that we did so knowing that he would be tortured, but this is false. The country in question [Egypt] understood and agreed that they would hold al-Libi for a limited period. In the course of questioning while he was in US custody in Afghanistan, al-Libi made initial references to possible al-Qa'ida training in Iraq. He offered up information that a militant known as Abu Abdullah had told him that at least three times between 1997 and 2000, the now-deceased al-Qa'ida leader Mohammad Atef had sent Abu Abdullah to Iraq to seek training in poisons and mustard gas.
"Another senior al-Qa'ida detainee told us that Mohammad Atef was interested in expanding al-Qa'ida's ties to Iraq, which, in our eyes, added credibility to the reporting. Then, shortly after the Iraq war got under way, al-Libi recanted his story. Now, suddenly, he was saying that there was no such cooperative training. Inside the CIA, there was sharp division on his recantation. It led us to recall his reporting, and here is where the mystery begins.
"Al-Libi's story will no doubt be that he decided to fabricate in order to get better treatment and avoid harsh punishment. He clearly lied. We just don't know when. Did he lie when he first said that al-Qa'ida members received training in Iraq - or did he lie when he said they did not? In my mind, either case might still be true. Perhaps, early on, he was under pressure, assumed his interrogators already knew the story, and sang away. After time passed and it became clear that he would not be harmed, he might have changed his story to cloud the minds of his captors. Al-Qa'ida operatives are trained to do just that. A recantation would restore his stature as someone who had successfully confounded the enemy. The fact is, we don't know which story is true, and since we don't know, we can assume nothing. (pp. 353-354)"
Al-Libi was eventually sent off, quietly, to Libya - though he reportedly made a few other stops along the way - where he was imprisoned. The use of al-Libi’s statement in the build-up to the Iraq war made him a huge American liability once it became clear that the purported al-Qaeda–Saddam connection was a tortured lie. His whereabouts were, in fact, a secret for years, until April 2009 when Human Rights Watch researchers investigating the treatment of Libyan prisoners encountered him in the courtyard of a prison. Two weeks later, on May 10, al-Libi was dead, and the Gaddafi regime claimed it was a suicide.
According to Evan Kohlmann, who enjoys favoured status among US officials as an 'al-Qaeda expert', citing a classified source: 'Al-Libi’s death coincided with the first visit by Egypt’s spymaster Omar Suleiman to Tripoli.'
Kohlmann surmises and opines that, after al-Libi recounted his story about about an al-Qaeda–Saddam-WMD connection, "The Egyptians were embarassed by this admission - and the Bush government found itself in hot water internationally. Then, in May 2009, Omar Suleiman saw an opportunity to get even with al-Libi and travelled to Tripoli. By the time Omar Suleiman’s plane left Tripoli, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had committed 'suicide'."
As people in Egypt and around the world speculate about the fate of the Mubarak regime, one thing should be very clear: Omar Suleiman is not the man to bring democracy to the country. His hands are too dirty, and any 'stability' he might be imagined to bring to the country and the region comes at way too high a price. Hopefully, the Egyptians who are thronging the streets and demanding a new era of freedom will make his removal from power part of their demands, too.
Lisa Hajjar teaches sociology at the University of California - Santa Barbara and is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.
This article first appeared on Jadaliyya.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
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