Obama needs to support Egyptians as well as Mubarak

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By Michele Dunne and Robert Kagan
Friday, June 4, 2010; A17

When President Obama called for a "new beginning" in U.S. relations with the Muslim world a year ago, he picked Cairo as the setting for his speech. It was a provocative choice, the capital of a close ally of the United States but also of the three-decades-old autocracy of Hosni Mubarak.

When Obama declared his commitment to "governments that reflect the will of the people" and said that leaders "must maintain your power through consent, not coercion," Egyptians thought they heard a not-so-subtle reference to their aging leader. One enthusiastic Egyptian shouted, "Barack Obama, we love you!" -- the only such interjection during the address.

A year later, Egyptians are scratching their heads about why Obama came to Cairo. In meetings in Cairo this week, Egyptian civil society and political activists across the spectrum voiced their disappointment, asking, "I know they're busy, but can't the Obama administration spare any time at all for what is going on inside Egypt?" and saying resignedly of the president, "He seems like a nice guy, but I guess he's just not going to do anything for us."

The disappointment is understandable. As Egypt heads into controversial parliamentary elections in fall 2010 and a presidential election in 2011, the Obama administration has been tone-deaf, intent on continuing to improve relations with the increasingly brittle and unpopular Mubarak regime. It has cut democracy assistance spending in Egypt by half, agreed to forbid assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development to groups that lack the government's stamp of approval, and is discussing a future "endowment" that would commit the United States to years of assistance with diminished congressional oversight. When administration officials have privately raised questions about democracy or human rights with the Egyptian government, their carefully calibrated "quiet diplomacy" has been dismissed or ignored. Obama himself politely asked Mubarak during an August 2009 Oval Office meeting to fulfill his 2005 pledge to lift the state of emergency under which Egyptians have been repressed since 1981. Mubarak brushed him off. Last month, Mubarak renewed the state of emergency for another two years, conveniently the period during which parliamentary and presidential elections will occur. The Obama administration called it "regrettable."

Meanwhile, Mubarak is in ill health and may not even make it to the next presidential election. His regime has systematically excluded or discredited new leaders who enjoy any public support, leaving the field of potential successors depressingly impoverished. One would think that under the circumstances both Egyptians and the U.S. government would be working to put in place an open political process so that any new leader could win the support of the people and thus ensure order in this important nation. But the Egyptian government is paralyzed by the aging Mubarak's refusal to look beyond his own rule. And the Obama administration, in pursuit of an illusory stability, stands mute and passive as the predictable train wreck draws nearer.

This administration prides itself on its progressive approach to this post-Cold War world, but it is repeating the mistake that Cold War-era administrations made when they supported right-wing dictatorships -- right up until the point when they were toppled by radical forces.

Obama's Cairo speech had the admirable goal of improving relations with the Muslim world, but the manner in which the administration has pursued this goal has been flawed from the beginning. It has focused almost exclusively on building bridges with leaders and governments. Yet in Egypt, and in Iran, a gulf has opened between the government and the citizenry. Obama has strengthened ties with the aging Mubarak while ignoring the concerns of Egypt's increasingly restive population. "What about us?" one prominent democracy activist asked. "Do we count for anything in this U.S.-Egypt relationship?"

When rebels ousted the corrupt government in Kyrgyzstan in April, they noted angrily that the United States had never stood up for their rights in the face of rigged elections and human rights abuses, placing a clear priority on strategic cooperation with the government. Watch out. If the Obama administration does not figure out how to make clear that it supports the political and human rights of Egyptian citizens, while cooperating with the Egyptian government on diplomatic and security affairs, people will be saying that about the United States in Cairo one of these days -- and maybe sooner than we expect.

There is still time to turn around this failing policy. Vice President Biden visits Egypt next week. There are, as always, numerous crises on the agenda. But if the administration wants to try to head off the next crisis, in Egypt, then Biden should use the opportunity to have a frank talk with Mubarak and other senior officials. In private, he can explain why it is so important, for both Egypt and the United States, that Mubarak take immediate steps to open the political process in this difficult period of transition. In public, Biden needs to make clear that the United States stands for free, fair and competitive elections -- for Egyptians, just as for everyone else.

Given the sorry history of the United States supporting the oppressors rather than the oppressed in that part of the world, such a commitment would be the kind of "new beginning" the Egyptian people seek.

The writers, senior associates at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are members of the nonpartisan Working Group on Egypt, a consortium of policy experts from Carnegie, the Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch, the Center for American Progress, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Foreign Policy Initiative and Freedom House.

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Haiti's elite spared from much of the devastation

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By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 18, 2010; A08

PETIONVILLE, HAITI -- Through decades of coups, hurricanes, embargoes and economic collapse, members of the wily and powerful business elite of Haiti have learned the art of survival in one of the most chaotic countries on Earth -- and they might come out on top again.

Although Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake destroyed many buildings in Port-au-Prince, it mostly spared homes and businesses up the mountain in the cool, green suburb of Petionville, home to former presidents and senators.

A palace built atop a mountain by the man who runs one of Haiti's biggest lottery games is still standing. New-car dealers, the big importers, the families that control the port -- they all drove through town with their drivers and security men this past weekend. Only a few homes here were destroyed.

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"All the nation is feeling this earthquake -- the poor, the middle class and the richest ones," said Erwin Berthold, owner of the Big Star Market in Petionville. "But we did okay here. We have everything cleaned up inside. We are ready to open. We just need some security. So send in the Marines, okay?"

As Berthold stood outside his two-story market, stocked with fine wines and imported food from Miami and Paris, his customers cruised by and asked when he would reopen. "Maybe Monday!" he shouted, then held up his hand to his ear, for customers to call his cellphone.

So little aid has been distributed that there is not much difference between what the rich have received and what the poor have received. The poor started with little and now have less; the rich simply have supplies to last.

But search-and-rescue operations have been intensely focused on buildings with international aid workers, such as the crushed U.N. headquarters, and on large hotels with international clientele. Some international rescue workers said they are being sent to find foreign nationals first.

There is an extreme, almost feudal divide between rich and poor in Haiti. The gated and privately guarded neighborhoods resemble a Haitian version of Beverly Hills, but with razor wire.

Elias Abraham opened the door of his pretty walled compound, a semiautomatic pistol on his right hip and his family's passports in his back pocket.

His extended family's four-wheel-drive sport-utility vehicles are filled with gas. He has a generator big enough to power a small hotel. And even if his kids are sleeping in the courtyard because they are afraid of the continuing aftershocks, his maids are dressed in crisp, blue uniforms and his hospitable wife is able to welcome visitors with fresh-brewed coffee.

Abraham has not been unaffected by the quake. His Twins Market grocery store collapsed Tuesday and fell prey to looters Wednesday.

"They took everything," said Abraham, the Haitian-born son of a Syrian Christian merchant family. "I don't care. God bless them. If they need the food, take it. Just don't take it and sell it for a hundred times what it is worth.

"This is not the time to think about making money," he added. "We need security. We need calm."

Up in the mountains, there are flower vendors selling day-old roses across the street from refugees in tents. There are beauty salons, fitness gyms and French restaurants. All of them are shuttered but mostly undamaged.

Few buildings collapsed in Petionville and the surrounding area, but a drive through the hillsides found only three or four spilling into ravines.

"Thank God for the mountain," said Wesley Belizaire, who escaped to the hills above Petionville with 15 friends and family members to camp out in a sprawling stucco. "It is so safe, safe, safe." The house belongs to his boss, the owner of a travel agency, who was visiting the Bahamas when the quake struck.

The police are operating out of a well-supplied station in Petionville, where the parking lot was filled with idle police trucks. There have been few reports of looting here, even though the town has banks on every corner. Hervé Delorme, executive marketing director of Sogebank, stood outside a branch and said the building was safe and sound. "Only because of the electricity and communications we do not have the technology available to open," he said.

Across the street, one of the few pharmacies in the area was open. It was guarded by three Haitian police officers with rifles who let one customer in at a time. Down at the General Hospital, families wandered through the courtyard filled with patients with amputated limbs and open wounds, begging foreigners for medicine.

For better or worse, it will likely be the residents of Petionville who through their government connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses will receive a large portion of U.S. and international aid and reconstruction money.

After a service at St. Louis Catholic Church in Port-au-Prince early Sunday, Yva Souriac was warning fellow parishioners what would come next with international assistance. "They only give the aid money to the same big families, over and over. So I ask, what is the point? They have given money to these families to help Haiti for 50 years, and look at Haiti. I say the Americans need to make up a new list."

Elite Revolutionary Guard's expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options

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By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A10

TEHRAN -- A major expansion in the role played by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is giving the elite force new economic and political clout, but it could also complicate efforts by the United States and its allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts.

Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard say its growth represents a logical expansion for an organization that is not a military force but a popular movement that protects the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard's expanded economic role is mirrored by a greater role in politics and security since the disputed presidential election in June, which the government says was won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide but which the opposition says was stolen.

U.S. officials consider the Guard a ripe target for sanctions over Iran's controversial nuclear program because of the group's central role in repressing post-election opposition protests. The officials are also concerned that broader-based sanctions risk alienating the Iranian public at a time when the government here faces protests from an energized opposition. But they also know that because of the Guard's growing economic influence, sanctions on it could pinch the broader Iranian public as well.

Supporters and opponents alike say the Guard has dramatically expanded its reach into Iran's economy, with vast investments in thousands of companies across a range of sectors. Working through its private-sector arm, the group operates Tehran's international airport, builds the nation's highways and constructs communications systems. It also manages Iran's weapons manufacturing business, including its controversial missile program.

The Guard has received at least $6 billion worth of government contracts in two years, according to state-run media. But the amount could be much higher in reality because many deals are not made public. Known large projects include the construction of a subway system in the eastern city of Mashhad and infrastructure ventures in the oil and gas industry. In September, Etemad-e Mobin, an investment company that Iranian media have widely linked to the Guard, bought a 51 percent share of the national telecommunications business minutes after it was privatized. Its main competitor was disqualified at the last moment because of "security problems."

Current U.N. and U.S. sanctions already target the Guard, as well as some related companies, for involvement in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. Treasury Department has assembled lists of dozens of companies that it suspects are Guard front operations or affiliates. U.S. officials say they hope to broaden the existing sanctions to include this substantial list of additional Guard companies, either with U.N. Security Council authority or through a coalition that would include major industrialized powers and key Persian Gulf countries.

Guardians of the system

Constitutionally established as a defender of the Islamic revolution, the Guard was created to work separately from the regular army, which was distrusted by the country's new leaders when they took over in 1979. The religious leadership has used the Guard to take on competing political and ethnic groups. It was also at the forefront of fighting during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Saying the Islamic revolution had entered a "new phase," the Guard led a deadly crackdown on street protests after the election last year and accused opposition politicians, dissidents and journalists of an elaborate plot to bring down Iran's leaders. The Guard has since grown into one of the most visible power players in the country and is the strongest opponent of the grass-roots movement that has staged protests in several cities.

"They [the Guard] have become the main, most faithful caste, to protect the system of Islamic government," said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a former journalist, who now works as an analyst at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran. "In exchange, wealth, power and respect are being transferred to them at an increasing rate." He was among many arrested last month after a day of major demonstrations. The reason for the arrest was not clear.

Ties between the Guard and the Ahmadinejad government are close.

Key cabinet ministries, such as oil, energy, interior and defense, are led by former Guard commanders. A former energy minister, Parviz Fattah, was appointed deputy commander of the Guard's massive Khatam ol-Anbia construction division, which is at the heart of the organization's business activities. It has 29 branches, called 'Ghorbs,' which build airplanes, dams, and oil and gas installations. Most of the Guard's contracts are with the government.

Opposition leaders say the Guard's business interests are corrupting the organization. "If the Guard has to calculate on its abacus every day to see how much the prices of their shares have gone up or down, it cannot defend the country and national interests," opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said last week in a statement posted on a Web site linked to him.

"After the war, the Guard did not become a useless military machine, which would be of no use during peacetime," said the Guard's top commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, in a September interview with the Jam-e Jam newspaper. "Today we are active in the fields that the revolution requires."

The Guard's construction garrison acts as a commercial company, but it is unclear what happens with its revenue. Commanders say the Guard income is transferred to the national treasury, but there are no public records that provide any amounts. Most of the group's contracts are carried out by its business divisions, which directly compete with private-sector firms.

The rise of the Guard

Iranian officials say they are undaunted by the threats of new sanctions. They point to four previous rounds of U.N. sanctions that have not proved very effective.

"U.S. sanctions will have no negative effect since the Guard organization is self-sufficient. Everything they need is here in Iran," Kazem Jalali, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said in an interview. "The Americans know that the Guard Corps is a defender of the values of the Islamic revolution. So the Americans aim to target its core."

The Guard's expansion into Iran's economy started in the early 1990s, when then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to jump-start private enterprise in the state-run economy by allowing state organizations to undertake commercial projects. The political rise of the Guard runs parallel with the ascendancy of the reformists in 1997. The movement called for more personal freedoms, fewer Islamic restrictions and a greater role for democracy. Political hard-liners turned to the Guard for more muscle in combating the reformists; in exchange, the Guard was given more influence in the economy and in politics.

In a November interview with the Ettemaad-e Melli newspaper, which is critical of the government, Guard commander Gen. Massoud Jazayeri said that the force could now "even compete with huge multinational and international companies" and added: "We don't want to receive an income but want to satisfy the people."

The result has been that the Guard controls a large part of Iran's economy, analysts say. "You can't see a single project above $10 million that is not executed by the Guard or one of their organizations," said Shamsolvaezin, the analyst. He warned that economic power could produce more demands for political power. "Some of our leaders now fear that [the Guard] will take everything into their hands."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie in Tehran contributed to this report.

Letter From Khartoum

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Sudan’s Empty Election

Rebecca Hamilton

REBECCA HAMILTON is a Fellow at the Open Society Institute, a Visiting Fellow at the National Security Archive, and the author of a forthcoming book on the impact of advocacy on Darfur policy.

At a clandestine meeting in a nondescript Khartoum suburb, a man started reading a list of numbers to me. "Between the census conducted in 1983 and the one conducted in 1993, the nomadic population in South Darfur decreased by just over 5.5 percent," my informant summarized. "This was largely due to the drought, which led to a loss of livestock and forced many nomads into the towns." He resumed his list of numbers. "If we are to believe the recent census, this same nomadic population has increased by 322 percent."

Last year's census was conducted to determine how many parliamentary seats would be allocated to each geographical area in Sudan's April 2010 election. Sudan's ruling party refused to release its raw census data, but anomalies like this one are widespread. With numbers unexpectedly high among populations that support the current regime and lower than anticipated in opposition-dominated regions, many Sudanese believe that the census has been manipulated for political purposes. Distorted census figures like these are just one of many tactics being used to ensure that next year's election will come out in favor of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), led by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal.

Over the past few years, international engagement with Sudan has focused on the western region of Darfur, where more than 200,000 civilians died and 2.7 million remain displaced as a result of a conflict that the U.S. government characterized as genocide. The catastrophic events in Darfur certainly warranted international attention, but this attention came at the cost of monitoring other important domestic developments. While the global spotlight has focused on Darfur, Bashir has been quietly consolidating power, emulating such despots as Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who have adopted the trappings of democracy while working to subvert it.

Bashir belongs to the Jaali -- one of the northern riverine Arab tribes that, despite being a minority, have maintained control of Sudanese political life for as long as anyone can remember. In 1989, Bashir and his allies launched a military coup that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi. Once in power, Bashir banned political parties, dissolved trade unions, and prohibited demonstrations. He was reelected after running unopposed in 1996 and again, with 86.5 percent of the vote, in 2000 -- the second rigged election of his tenure.

Sudanese politics are best understood as a struggle for control by an elite center over a vast and marginalized periphery -- a long-standing dynamic that was entrenched under British rule, from 1899 to 1956. During Bashir's reign, the most visible manifestation of this center-periphery tension has been the civil war between his NCP government and the main opposition group in the country's south, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) -- a conflict that led to the deaths of two million people over the course of two decades. And it was just as this war was coming to an end that rebel groups in Darfur took up arms to fight for representation in their marginalized area of the country.

The idea of a democratic election was put on the Sudanese agenda largely at the behest of the United States during negotiations to bring the north-south war to an end. The concluding document of those negotiations, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), was signed in January 2005. It set out an ambitious program for a multistage transition period to democratic rule and promised southerners a referendum on secession from Sudan in 2011.

At the time, neither the NCP nor the SPLM was particularly keen to hold an election that risked diminishing the seat allocations assigned to them for the pre-election period. But the U.S. government insisted there could be no democratic transformation of Sudan unless citizens went to the polls. Steeped in U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign policy agenda of democracy promotion, the architects of this grand vision focused not only on representation for the marginalized south but envisaged citizens in all of Sudan's peripheral areas voting for representatives who would serve their interests.

Back in 2005, there was a compelling logic to this. The six-year interim period between the signing of the CPA and the 2011 referendum was designed to sell southerners on the benefits of remaining part of a unified Sudan. They would see development in their region, the theory went, and get a taste of a new Sudan -- where repressive laws would be revoked and human rights would be respected. A national election held halfway through the period would reinforce these changes, and southerners would have over two years between the election and the referendum to experience life under democratic rule.

But nearly five years later, progress toward democratization has, if anything, gone into reverse. It is already clear that if the election takes place in April 2010, it will be under conditions that make a mockery of democratic principles. And since the elections have been delayed on multiple occasions, they are now scheduled to take place a mere eight months before the referendum in which southerners are almost certain to vote for independence. The international community is pouring millions of dollars into the formation of a government that will likely be dissolved just months after taking office.

Driving into town from Khartoum's international airport, visitors are greeted by a slew of pro-NCP billboards featuring heavily airbrushed images of Bashir in military or religious attire. "Bashir is our dignity!" they proclaim. Even Bashir's indictment by the International Criminal Court has been spun by the NCP. As the state-run media tell it, Bashir's indictment was an attack on the Sudanese people; voting for him, therefore, is an act of patriotism.

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Meanwhile, for Sudan's opposition parties, making even the most basic political statement entails extreme risk. In mid-August, I met with Hassan al-Turabi, a key Islamist involved in orchestrating the 1989 military coup that brought Bashir to power. (They later had a falling out after Bashir suspected Turabi of plotting to overthrow him.) Midway through our interview, one of his several attendants insisted he take an urgent call. The leader of the Sudan Congress Party, a minor opposition group, was being detained by Sudan's omnipresent security services for trying to hold a public meeting. "How can we hold an election if we can't even hold a meeting?" Turabi asked. "We are living under an absolute dictatorship."

As a former host to Osama bin Laden, Turabi is not the most trustworthy of characters, but when it comes to the topic of repression, he is not exaggerating. Sudan's National Security Act has long enabled security forces to detain anyone without any justification for renewable periods of up to 90 days. Parliament has "reformed" the law to reduce the time detainees can be held, but the NCP-controlled intelligence service retains the power to detain its opponents. This means that the "ghost houses," where intelligence agents torture detainees, are unlikely to disappear.

The government may not be willing to reform repressive laws, but it is prepared to use its largesse to attempt to reform potential dissidents. The first thing I noticed at the Khartoum residence of the former Darfur rebel Minni Minawi was the Sudanese government license plate on his brand-new black Mercedes. Appointed a presidential adviser after being the only rebel leader to sign the ill-fated 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, Minawi has been living comfortably in Khartoum, doing nothing for those he once claimed to represent.

Most dispiriting of all my meetings was the one with Ghazi Suleiman -- the man once referred to as "the godfather of human rights in Sudan." Responding to allegations of rape in Darfur, Suleiman now parrots Bashir's line, "They are all false. . . . I have been to Darfur and met a woman who had claimed she was raped," he said. "I asked her what does this word 'rape' mean? She had no answer." It seemed fruitless to point out that a woman who had been raped might not want to tell her traumatic story to a skeptical male stranger. According to Suleiman, "Now is the best time in the history of Sudan."

For those who cannot be co-opted, intimidation seems to be the NCP's preferred tactic. While I was in Khartoum, the government threatened to lift the parliamentary immunity of Yasir Arman, the head of the SPLM's northern delegation, for speaking out against public order laws. These vaguely worded morality laws serve as ideal vehicles for harassing anyone who has fallen out of favor with the government. "Yasir Arman is an MP, a prominent figure -- and they manage to bully him," said Salih Mahmoud Osman, a globally acclaimed human rights activist and a member of the Sudanese parliament. "Imagine what it is like for ordinary people. How can they possibly vote freely? "We've been hearing the U.S. government has agreed to donate $21 million for elections. We know the Carter Center has been holding workshops. But elections are supposed to be about the will of the people. To hold an election in this climate . . ." Osman's voice trailed off in despair.

Sudanese citizens are being asked to go to the polls for their first "democratic" election in over two decades under decidedly undemocratic circumstances. Even in the semi-autonomous south of the country, where repression is less overt, potential voters face significant hurdles. In an area where the UN reports a literacy rate of 24 percent (only 12 percent for women), voters are being asked to complete 12 separate ballots. Members of the international community -- which has signed up to fund a significant portion of the election (the UN has just announced a $91 million donation to the Bashir-appointed National Elections Commission) -- must ask whether they should be supporting this election at all. As one Sudanese academic who requested anonymity put it: "Elections with what objective? Legitimating an illegitimate regime?"

Bashir and the NCP have maneuvered themselves into something of a win-win situation. If the election goes forward, they are assured of a victory; if the election does not take place, they stay in power. As the NCP sees it, the key difference is that if the election happens, the indicted war criminal Bashir will become the democratically elected Bashir, granting the ruling regime a veneer of legitimacy. For Sudanese citizens and their outside supporters, this will undermine any push for a true democratic transformation.

While the world's attention has been on Darfur, the ruling regime in Khartoum has not lost focus on their primary goal: survival. An election was forced upon them, and they have risen to the challenge. Always a step ahead, they have put the pieces in place to ensure that they will be the ostensibly democratic choice of the Sudanese people on election day. In the NCP's best-case scenario, Sudanese citizens will simply accept this fraud.

But public dissent, a rarity in Sudan, is brewing. Following the CPA, civil society activists had hoped that constitutionally mandated legal reforms would prohibit NCP security agents from arresting and detaining citizens and that other laws used to suppress dissent would be repealed. Nearly five years on, cosmetic reform notwithstanding, little has changed. In the past two weeks, anti-NCP demonstrations have erupted both in Khartoum and in the south, suggesting that even if the international community does not take a stand against the failure to establish the conditions for a free and fair election, it is conceivable that the Sudanese people will.

To date, the NCP has responded to the protesters with tear gas, arrests, and an announcement that such demonstrations are illegal. But this may not be enough to suppress dissent among a population with long-standing and legitimate grievances in a country awash with arms.

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The 20 Most Powerful People in Iran

Power and public discourse in the Islamic Republic are dominated by fewer than two dozen heavyweights, ranging from ayatollahs to entertainers (and one TV network).

NEWSWEEK

Published May 23, 2009

From the magazine issue dated Jun 1, 2009

1. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - Supreme Leader
Watch his actions, not his words. Having made his name as a pragmatist before taking over as Iran's top holy man, he tries to reconcile the two roles: he tends to take the more popular side in every debate, while spouting radical rhetoric.

2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - President
Favored to win another four-year term as Iran's second-most-powerful man. The Supreme Leader can always overrule him but until recently has tried to avoid direct confrontation. Khamenei is said to have particularly enjoyed his performance during nuclear negotiations.

3. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - Eminence Grise
As head of the Expediency Council the ex-president is in charge of settling disputes between Iran's Parliament and the Council of Guardians. A Khomeini confidant, he knows all the skeletons in the regime's closet and may play a quiet role in U.S.-Iran talks.

4. Mohammad Khatami - Ex-President
After 18 years of conservative rule, Iranians were stunned by the reformist's 1997 upset victory: their votes counted! Although he proved unable to keep his lofty promises, many young people still see him as the best hope for change. They took it hard when he quit this year's race.

5. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati - Oversight Chief
The Council of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution is a panel of six clerics and six lawyers that oversees all legislative bills and decides who can run in parliamentary and presidential elections. Its 83-year-old chief is an enthusiastic Ahmadinejad supporter.

6. Ali Larijani - Majlis Speaker
The national legislature's pragmatic leader is the well-heeled son of an influential cleric, as well as Iran's former nuclear negotiator. He remains close to Khamenei. Ahmadinejad defeated Larijani in the 2005 presidential race, and their disputes since then have become a public spectacle.

7. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari - Revolutionary Guards Commander
Specialized in guerrilla missions and unconventional warfare during the war with Iraq. He's said to owe his current post to his popularity with young troops and his up-to-date plans for defense against possible threats from Israel and America.

8. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf - Mayor of Tehran
A former Revolutionary Guards commander and security chief, he stepped into Ahmadinejad's old job as mayor after a failed bid for the presidency in 2005. Supporters praise him for fixing the mess they say Ahmadinejad left behind, and they hope he'll do the same for Iran in 2013.

9. Ayatollah Abbas Vaez-Tabasi - Holy Estate Director
Controls what is arguably the country's wealthiest single institution, the Holy Estate of Imam Reza, which owns hundreds of companies, mines and farms. Every year millions of pilgrims visit the shrine of the Shia saint, the only one buried in Iran.

10. Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi - Radical Scholar
The plugged-in director of the Imam Khomeini Education & Research Institute is one of the most hardline and influential interpreters of Islamic teachings in Qum. His students are among the city's brightest and most politicized.

11. Seyyed Javad Shahrestani - Sistani's Envoy
Despite 30 years of political Islam in Iran, many Shiites still see Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as their religious leader, or marja ("object of emulation"). The resolutely apolitical Shahrestani is Sistani's son-in-law, as well as his representative in the Islamic Republic.

12. Saeed Mortazavi - Prosecutor General of Tehran
Has been responsible for closing dozens of newspapers and sentencing journalists and activists to lengthy jail terms. Human-rights groups accuse him of harsh interrogation methods. He recently organized a group of lawyers to prosecute alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza.

13. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi - Head of Judiciary
Born in Iraq, he was a leader in the fight against Saddam's dictatorship before fleeing the country in 1979. Has made impressive progress on court reform since Khamenei named him top judge in 1999, but many judges remain beyond his jurisdiction.

14. Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi - Campaign Manager
Friends with Ahmadinejad since childhood, and an architect of his political rise, Samareh has been called an Iranian Karl Rove. He recently resigned from his post as a senior presidential adviser in order to devote himself full time to Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection.

15. Mir Hossein Mousavi - Ex–Prime Minister
Dark-horse presidential candidate and an enigma to just about everyone. Older Iranians remember him as prime minister and a close Khomeini ally in the 1980s, but he's spent the past 20 years painting and designing buildings. Now he's wooing young voters as a reformist.

16. Mohsen Rezaei - Khamenei Adviser
The former Revolutionary Guards commander and secretary of the Expediency Council is a close and loyal adviser to the Supreme Leader. He's a devout traditionalist but more pragmatic than the current president, and is hoping to unseat him in the June 12 elections.

17. Hossein Shariatmadari - Newspaper Editor
Khamenei's top man at Kayhan, the leading conservative daily. His editorials, special reports and "Hidden Half" feature (devoted to the darker side of public figures he dislikes) read like a cross between intelligence reports and an Iranian version of Fox News.

18. BBC Persian Service - Illegal TV Network
The ban on satellite dishes is widely ignored: Iranians want news they can trust, not state TV. The Persian Voice of America is too pro-Washington for some. Since early this year, many have turned instead to the BBC and popular anchors like Farnaz Ghazizadeh (above).

19. Adel Ferdosipour - Sportscaster
Easily the country's most popular TV host. When angry sports officials tried to get him fired recently for criticizing them on his weekly show (Iranian soccer, a national passion, is in crisis, beset by scandal and poor play), more than 3 million loyal fans sent text messages to keep him on.

20. Mehran Modiri - Social Satirist
Has survived 20 years by choosing his battles. Today his television comedies rule Iran's airwaves, with audiences so big that broadcast executives don't balk at his lampoons of Iranian life. Reformist politicians crave his endorsement, but he wants to stay in business.

Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/199145

Suicide and Progress in Modern Nusantara

Michael Buehler

The final resting place for every politician Michael Buehler

Sri Hayati was found dead outside the village of Bangunjaya in West Java at 7.30 on the morning of 15 April 2009. Using her headscarf, she had hung herself on a pole in a hut in a rice field. The 24 year old woman had been running for a seat in the parliament of Banjar City for the National Awakening Party but had gathered only ten votes in the general legislative elections that were conducted on 9 April. According to the local media, Hayati, who was four months pregnant, committed suicide due to this dismal result.

In the town of Takalar, South Sulawesi, Saribulan Daeng Singara, a 56 year old housewife, slit her wrist with a razor in her bathroom on 28 April 2009. Again, a failed candidacy for the local parliament had apparently triggered her suicide. After racking up massive debts to finance her political campaign in the elections, Singara saw no other way out, so said the local press.

These were by no means isolated incidents. In the days immediately following the legislative elections, suicides and suicide attempts by political candidates were reported from several places across the far-flung Indonesian archipelago, including the city of Pontianak in West Kalimantan and Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara.

No election-related killings

The reports about the suicides of legislative candidates around the time of the elections contrast with a complete absence of stories about politically-motivated killings during the same period. While there were the occasional articles about electoral violence, usually in the form of voter intimidation, there were no reports whatsoever of candidates killing each other in the competition for seats in the national parliament or sub-national assemblies.

There were no reports whatsoever of candidates killing each other in the competition for seats in the national parliament or sub-national assemblies

This is in stark contrast to other democracies in Southeast Asia. In the 2007 elections in the Philippines, 37 candidates were killed and 24 were wounded, a slight improvement compared to the 2004 elections during which 40 candidates were murdered and 18 candidates were injured, according to data from the Philippine election commission. In addition, 121 people who were not candidates but canvassers, campaign managers or voters were killed in 2007, and 148 were killed in 2004.

Election-related killings of parliamentary candidates are also common in Thailand. Politically-motivated murders amongst candidates became so widespread in the 1980s that some commentators regarded them as an indication of consolidation of the Thai electoral system. Benedict Anderson famously argued in a 1990 article (‘Murder and progress in modern Siam’) that such murders were a sign that national parliament had become a site where power was concentrated, making it worth one’s while for ambitious local political bosses to murder their rivals. More than a dozen political killings were reported in the 2005 elections in Thailand.

The absence of political murders in Indonesian elections is remarkable inasmuch as many of the conditions that are believed to play a role in election-related killings amongst candidates in other Southeast Asian countries – such as weak election commissions, the prevalence of private security organisations and thugs in the political system and the absence of programmatic politics – can be found in Indonesia too.

Why don’t aspiring politicians murder each other in Indonesia? Both institutional and sociological factors play a role. A number of aspects of the institutional design of Indonesia’s new democracy at the local level dampen the winner-take-all dynamic that motivates political killings elsewhere. The absence of a tradition of feuding between oligarchic clans and the political dominance of bureaucrats at the local level have the same effect.

Not worth the trouble?

If we assume that murders of political opponents result from intense competition for highly valued positions, it makes sense that political systems that either lessen the intensity of competition or reduce the value of the prizes will reduce the incentives to kill.

One way to reduce the incentive to kill is to increase the number of political prizes available for each pool of candidates. Despite the increase in the number of electoral districts for the 2009 general election from 69 to 77, the number of electoral districts in Indonesia is still relatively low compared to Thailand with 174 districts or the Philippines, which now has 220 electoral districts. This means that in Indonesia, on average three to ten parliamentary seats are up for grabs per electoral district in legislative elections. In Thailand, the number drops to one to three seats per district. In the Philippines, there is only one seat allocated per electoral district. In short, more seats can be won in Indonesia per election district. Presumably this plays a part in lowering the incentive for candidates to resort to drastic measures such as killing a political opponent, because they believe they have a reasonable chance of winning at least one of the seats on offer.

The civil service background of most Indonesian candidates for executive positions greatly reduces the probability of political murder

It is also possible to argue that seats at both the national parliament and sub-national level do not come with enough powers – and hence, money-making potential – to make them worth killing for. The Regional Governance Law No 32/2004 stripped local parliaments of their rights to impeach district heads, appoint regional secretaries and screen election candidates for executive posts. Various other regulations of past years have shifted power from the legislative to the executive at the national level too and this trend seems to continue. For example, the State Secrecy Bill, should it be adopted in its current form, might deprive the national parliament of its right to investigate any violation allegedly involving the executive government and its officials.

But by the same token, elections for local executive government positions in Indonesia should be bloody affairs. Elections for the key local government positions, notably of district heads (bupati in rural areas, mayors in urban municipalities) operate on a winner-take-all basis. Moreover, the spoils of office are also greater. Already empowered by Indonesia’s post-Suharto decentralisation policies, the Regional Governance Law No 32/2004 increased the power of the district heads even more with regard to matters like appointment procedures for crucial positions in the local bureaucracy. It also gave them greater fiscal powers, for example the power to authorise expenditure and set priorities and ceilings in local budgets. District heads also issue local regulations and taxes in cooperation with local parliaments. As many studies of local government in post-Suharto Indonesia have revealed, such far-reaching responsibilities also open up all kinds of opportunities for self-enrichment.

Surely these powers and potentials make district head posts worth killing for? Yet here again Indonesia confounds the wider Southeast Asian trend. Direct elections for such positions have been largely peaceful ever since they were introduced in 2005.

Again, there are institutional reasons for why this is the case. For instance, the time a district head can spend in office in Indonesia is capped. A district head can only serve two terms in his or her entire life anywhere in the archipelago, each term lasting five years. While there are various districts where out-going heads have tried to replace themselves with their offspring, overall it is much more difficult for Indonesian local elites to entrench themselves in sub-national executive positions than it is in other Southeast Asian countries. In the Philippines, for example, a regent can occupy his post for three consecutive three year terms, get his wife elected for a term, and then run for another three consecutive terms, get his wife elected for a term, setting in train a virtually never-ending cycle that can be passed on to the next generation. The institutional setting in Indonesia results in a more open and fluid system that makes political killings less likely. Political hopefuls have the possibility to gain office by just sitting it out, rather than by trying to break an incumbent’s dominance by murder.

Indonesia’s local elites prefer to share out the spoils of government rather than kill each other for them

Another reason might be that the fragmentation of Indonesia’s administrative structure has enlarged the number of lucrative posts available for competition. Between 1998 and 2009, Indonesian political elites increased the number of districts in the country from 230 to 510. This had the immediate effect of providing more district head positions and local assembly seats for ambitious local politicians. Indeed, there were many cases where candidates who were unsuccessful in election campaigns to become heads of larger districts would then lead lobbying campaigns to split off a smaller district and, when successful on that score, become its head.

More generally, elites in these districts have also gone about creating bloated local state apparatuses. The Regional Governance Law No 32/2004, for example, incorporated the wage bill of local bureaucracies in the formula for calculating how much money is transferred from the national level to sub-national administrative units. The larger the local bureaucracy, the more money the district or municipality concerned will receive from the central government. Receiving more money from the central government, local politicians have greater opportunities to provide jobs, favours and handouts to local elites, including potential rivals. Such structural incentives for rent-seeking thus have the positive impact of easing the competitive pressures on local elites. Basically, there is enough money and opportunities sloshing around in the system to at least partially satisfy everybody who is influential at the local level. Indonesia’s local elites prefer to share out the spoils of government rather than kill each other for them.

Economic factors have reinforced this dynamic. Socio-economic conditions over recent years in Indonesia have lessened the ferocity of elite competition by enlarging the pie of government funds that can be spread around. As the World Bank’s Public Expenditure Review from 2007 shows, Indonesian government spending has risen continuously since the year 2000. Aggregate expenditure increased by 20 per cent and transfers to sub-national governments grew by 32 per cent since 2006 alone, mainly due to the government’s reduction of fuel subsidies that opened up space for additional spending. These favourable conditions are likely going to continue in the immediate future. Despite a global economic downturn, Indonesia’s economy has been doing rather well. Indonesia’s budget will rise from Rp 1,000 trillion in 2009 to about Rp 1,800 trillion in 2014. A large chunk of this money will be pumped into the expansion of the government apparatus. Between 2010 and 2014 an estimated Rp 2000 trillion will be used up for government administration alone. In short, the money passing through the state apparatus is continually enlarging, providing sufficient opportunities for large parts of the political elite to benefit from it in a myriad of formal and informal ways, and thereby easing pressure on political competition.

Local traditions and weak thugs

The strongest explanations for Indonesia’s relatively peaceful electoral scene are sociological. There is no tradition of long-standing family feuds between oligarchic clans in Indonesia unlike in other Southeast Asian countries, where such dynamics explain a great many political killings. As authors like John Sidel have argued, the highly centralised state apparatus of the New Order regime under the dictatorial leadership of Suharto prevented local strongmen from emerging.

Clans and families in Indonesia have become more openly competitive since Suharto’s downfall in 1998. They have resorted to tactics that were unimaginable during the New Order. In 2007, for example, Amin Syam, then governor of South Sulawesi, tried to pressure his main competitor Syahrul Yasin Limpo into aborting his bid for the governorship by leaking a pornographic home movie, which featured the latter prominently. The unwitting movie star was voted into office nevertheless, perhaps expressing the hopes of the electorate that his performance in government would be better than what they had seen in the movie. However, bitterly antagonistic relations between dynasties that can turn elections into a season of vengeance in the Philippines (and to a lesser extent in Thailand) do not yet exist in Indonesia.

Despite the analysis of some commentators, the role of parastatal security forces and thugs in Indonesian political contests is marginal

Moreover, despite the analysis of some commentators, the role of parastatal security forces and thugs in Indonesian political contests is marginal. Professional doomsters like Vedi Hadiz, of the National University of Singapore, have told us that ‘shadowy gangsters and thugs are on the rise’ and that ‘beatings…the use of paramilitary organizations and…bomb threats were pervasive’ during elections in Indonesia. These quotations are from an article written by Hadiz in a 2003 edition of The Pacific Review, in which he also warned of a ‘democracy driven by thuggery’ that was characterised by ‘political violence, vote buying and kidnappings’ recalling ‘some of the experience of countries like Thailand and the Philippines’.

In fact, though Hadiz writes about the importance of gangsters and violence in Indonesian politics in general terms, most of his research focused on North Sumatra province, where gangsterism in politics traditionally looms large. But even the influence of thugs and the role of violence in North Sumatra’s politics are often exaggerated. There were no political murders in the gangster-infested capital of the province, Medan, during the 1999, 2004 or 2009 elections. True, gangsters have managed to win a few political positions in elections there. Three well known gangsters, Bangkit Sitepu, Moses Tambunan and Martius Latuperissa were elected to the local assembly in the city of Medan in 1999 (each representing different parties). Once in parliament, however, such figures behaved no more violently or corruptly than the average Indonesian parliamentarian. And in most provinces, they hardly feature as prominent political players anyway.

The politically influential ‘big boss’ Olo Panggabean in Medan died peacefully in his bed as a result of complications from diabetes at the age of 68

Moreover, gangster figures, should they find their way into politics, have been unable to escape the new democratic dynamics. While the official results of the legislative elections in Medan in 2009 were not out at the time of writing, it seems that of the three, only Bangkit Sitepu managed to get re-elected in 2009. Of the 50 parliamentarians in the assembly, 39 are new faces. What is most interesting is that in Indonesia even political gangsters seem to accept the election results. Indonesian thugs do not go on killing-sprees even if voted out of office, as is shown by the absence of politically-motivated murders in Medan. The manner of death of politically influential ‘big boss’ Olo Panggabean in Medan a fortnight after the elections is telling. On 30 April 2009, this capo di tutti capi died peacefully in his bed as a result of complications from diabetes at the age of 68.

Bureaucrats as bosses

Probably most important of all in explaining why there is so little violence against electoral candidates is the nature of the candidate pool in Indonesia, which differs markedly from pools in other Southeast Asian countries. In Indonesia it is mostly bureaucrats who compete for district head posts while in the Philippines it is families rooted in landownership or career politicians. In Thailand, at the height of political killings, most competitors for political posts were part of an extra-bureaucratic bourgeoisie consisting of merchants and members of the trading communities in the country’s big cities.

The civil service background of most Indonesian candidates for executive positions greatly reduces the probability of political murder. If a bureaucrat is running in local executive elections, the legal context in Indonesia dictates that such a candidate has to step down from his or her current position as a state official (jabatan). However, he or she remains a member of the bureaucratic apparatus (pegawai negeri sipil), and so retains insurance benefits, access to pension funds and, most importantly, has the opportunity for a future job in the bureaucratic apparatus if he or she fails in the election. A bureaucratic career is a comforting safety net for would-be government heads, creating much less of a winner-takes-all dynamic than one finds in the Philippines or Thailand where businessmen or landlord candidates don’t have bureaucratic careers to fall back on, and where failure might spell financial ruin. As the implications for a failed candidacy are less severe in Indonesia, candidates have less incentive to rely on risky and brutal methods.

Suicides

For whom then do elections in Indonesia turn into a deadly event? There were cases reported from Bali, Semarang and South Aceh of male candidates dying from heart attacks after they were presented with their poor election results. Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that suicides occur predominantly among women candidates. Put on party lists simply to fulfil the requirement in the election law which says that every third ranking on a party list has to go to a female candidate (the so-called zipper system), many of these women were inexperienced and did not know what to expect when they entered politics. Commenting on Sri Hanyati’s death, the local ward boss of the National Awakening Party, Zaenal Muttaqien simply said: ‘Sri was only a sympathiser of [the party]. She was neither a party functionary nor a member of the party board. Initially, we...just suggested to her that she become a candidate to fulfil our quota of female candidates’. Unfortunately, such women often become heavily indebted in order to finance their election campaigns. When they see their poor results, they not only feel humiliated, they also realise that they have no opportunities to regain the money they spent on their campaigns. For a small number, suicide is the only way out.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that suicides occur predominantly among women candidates

But for this dismal background, it would be tempting to say that it is heartening news that more political candidates in Indonesia die at their own hands than at the hands of their political opponents. These suicides - and the gender politics that give rise to them - are tragic. But it is also worth celebrating the relative rarity of electoral killings in Indonesia, and reflecting on its causes.

Political killings are usually a symptom of difficulties of maintaining a monopoly of power. When political competition is fierce and the stakes are high, killing can be one way of eliminating rivals. In Indonesia, local elites have worked out ways to handle political challenges without bloodshed. Instead of squabbling fatally over the cake of political power, local elites have worked out ways to share it out. It is this dynamic that above all accounts for the fact that if parliamentary candidates in Indonesia meet their maker prematurely, they do so because of suicide not murder. ii

Michael Buehler (mb3120@columbia.edu) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Southeast Asian Studies at Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University.

Kingdom 'Not Free' in 2008

Wednesday, 22 July 2009 14:04 Sebastian Strangio

A REPORT released Thursday by the US-based international watchdog organisation Freedom House rated Cambodia as "not free" and claimed that the government had only "paid lip service" to its stated goals of combating corruption and improving governance.

In its 2009 Freedom in the World report, an annual comparison of global political rights and civil liberties, the organisation said Cambodia had earned its rating due to endemic corruption, free speech restrictions and the lack of an independent judiciary in the Kingdom.

"Cambodia is not an electoral democracy," the report stated.

"Prime Minister Hun Sen and the [Cambodian People's Party] dominate national and local politics through their control of the security forces, officials at all levels of government and the state-owned media."

The report also paints a picture of a judiciary "marred by inefficiency and corruption", and claims corruption and abuse of power by high-ranking government officials have "significantly hindered" economic growth.

"Although the economy has been growing as a result of increased investments ... these enterprises frequently involve land grabs by the political elite, top bureaucrats and the military," the report states.

Each year, Freedom House designates countries as "free", "partly free" or "not free". Except for 1993 and 1994, Freedom House has rated Cambodia as "not free" every year since the report was launched in 1973.

Thun Saray, president of the local rights group Adhoc, said the report generally described the situation in Cambodia accurately, though he said the static "not free" rating did not capture the dynamic of transition the country is still experiencing.

Referring to the recent crackdown on government critics, he said Cambodia was certainly in a period of decline.

But he said history showed a pattern of ups and downs.

"Sometimes we see the political space widen, and sometimes we see it narrow down," he told the Post.

"The improvement is that people are more aware of their rights than ever before."

He added: "In a transitional period there are always struggles between democratic and authoritarian forces, and sometimes the authoritarian forces prevail."

A transitional period
Phay Siphan, spokesman for the Council of Ministers, said he had not seen the Freedom House report, but that Cambodia still faces many challenges.

He said the current government had experienced peace and stability only in the past 11 years, providing a narrow window for reform.

"We understand that we do have some flaws, but [I would like to] remind them that we are still in a stage of reform and development," he said.

"Thank God the CPP is still strong, to keep this country at [the stage] where everyone can enjoy work and enjoy seeing human rights and development."

The new Freedom House report echoes an earlier press freedom report from the organisation, which ranked Cambodia 132nd among 195 countries surveyed.

In its 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, global corruption monitor Transparency International listed Cambodia as the 166th most-corrupt country out of 180 nations surveyed.

Venezuelan State That Chávez Family Rules Is Rife With Kidnapping

By SIMON ROMERO

BARINAS, Venezuela — Stretching over vast cattle estates at the foothills of the Andes, Barinas is known for two things: as the bastion of the family of President Hugo Chávez and as the setting for a terrifying surge in abductions, making it a contender for Latin America’s most likely place to get kidnapped.

An intensifying nationwide crime wave over the past decade has pushed the kidnapping rate in Venezuela past Colombia’s and Mexico’s, with about 2 abductions per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the Interior Ministry.

But nowhere in Venezuela comes close in abductions to Barinas, with 7.2 kidnappings per 100,000 inhabitants, as armed gangs thrive off the disarray here while Mr. Chávez’s family tightens its grip on the state. Seizures of cattle ranches and crumbling infrastructure also contribute to the sense of low-intensity chaos.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

“This is what anarchy looks like, at least the type of anarchy where the family of Chávez accumulates wealth and power as the rest of us fear for our lives,” said Ángel Santamaría, 57, a cattleman in the town of Nueva Bolivia whose son, Kusto, 8, was kidnapped while walking to school in May. He was held for 29 days, until Mr. Santamaría gathered a small ransom to free him.

The governor of Barinas, Adán Chávez, the president’s eldest brother and a former ambassador to Cuba, said this month that many of the kidnappings might have been a result of destabilization efforts by the opposition or so-called self-kidnappings: orchestrated abductions to reveal weaknesses among security forces, or to extort money from one’s own family.

“With each day that passes,” the governor said recently, “Barinas is safer than before.”

Through a spokeswoman, he declined to be interviewed.

In an election last year marred by accusations of fraud, Adán Chávez succeeded his own father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, a former schoolteacher who had governed Barinas for a decade with the president’s brother, Argenis, the former secretary of state in Barinas.

Another brother, Aníbal, is mayor of nearby Sabaneta, and another brother, Adelis, is a top banker at Banco Sofitasa, which does business with Adán’s government. Yet another brother, Narciso, was put in charge of cooperation projects with Cuba. The president’s cousin Asdrúbal holds a top post at the national oil company.

Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.

One opposition leader, Wilmer Azuaje, detailed to prosecutors and legislators what he said was more than $20 million in illegal gains by the family since the president’s father was elected governor in 1998. But in a brief review of those claims, National Assembly, under the control of Chávez loyalists, cleared the family of charges of illicit enrichment.

“In the meantime, while the family wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism, we are descending into a neo-capitalist chaos where all that matters is money,” said Alberto Santelíz, the publisher of La Prensa, a small opposition newspaper.

One reason for the rise in kidnappings is the injection of oil money into the local economy, with some families reaping quick fortunes because of ties to large infrastructure projects.

A new soccer stadium, built under the supervision of Adelis Chávez’s at a cost of more than $50 million, is still unfinished two years after its first game in 2007, joining other white elephants dotting Barinas’s landscape. Nearby lies the unfinished Museum of the Plains, intended to celebrate the culture of the president’s birthplace. A sprawling shopping mall stands half-completed after its backers fled a shakedown by construction unions.

More than a decade into the Chávez family’s rule in Barinas, the state remains Venezuela’s poorest, with average monthly household income of about $800, according to the National Statistics Institute. Kidnapping, once feared only by the wealthy, has spread in Barinas to include the poor. In one case this year of a 3-year-old girl kidnapped in the slum of Mi Jardín, the abductor, when told that the only thing of value owned by the girl’s mother was a refrigerator, instructed her to sell it to pay the ransom.

Kidnapping specialists here said the abductors were drawn from two Colombian rebel groups, a small Venezuelan guerrilla faction called the Bolivarian Liberation Front, other criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Just a fraction of the kidnappings result in prison sentences.

“With impunity rampant in Barinas, how can our governor say with a straight face that people are kidnapping themselves?” asked Lucy Montoya, 38, a hardware store owner whose sister, Doris, a 41-year-old mother of three, was kidnapped in March.

Doris Montoya’s abductors have not freed her or communicated with her family since receiving ransom money in May, Lucy Montoya said, adding, “The government’s handling of this crisis is an affront to our dignity as human beings.”

Meanwhile, new figures show kidnappings climbing to 454 known cases in the first six months of 2009, including about 66 in Barinas, compared with a nationwide 2008 estimate of between 537 and 612. But officials acknowledge that the true figures are probably higher because many cases are never reported.

Here in Barinas, victims seethe over the inaction of the president and his family. “Our ruling dynasty is effectively telling us we are expendable,” said Rodolfo Peña, 38, a businessman who was abducted here last year. “The only other plausible theory,” he said, “is that they are too inebriated by power to notice the emergency at their feet.”

Revolutionary Guards Crush Dissent and Widen Control in Iran

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — As Iran’s political elite and clerical establishment splinter over the election crisis, the nation’s most powerful economic, social and political institution — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — has emerged as a driving force behind efforts to crush a still-defiant opposition movement.

From its origin 30 years ago as an ideologically driven militia force serving Islamic revolutionary leaders, the corps has grown to assume an increasingly assertive role in virtually every aspect of Iranian society.

And its aggressive drive to silence dissenting views has led many political analysts to describe the events surrounding the June 12 presidential election as a military coup.

“It is not a theocracy anymore,” said Rasool Nafisi, an expert in Iranian affairs and a co-author of an exhaustive study of the corps for the RAND Corporation. “It is a regular military security government with a facade of a Shiite clerical system.”

The corps has become a vast military-based conglomerate, with control of Iran’s missile batteries, oversight of its nuclear program and a multibillion-dollar business empire reaching into nearly every sector of the economy. It runs laser eye-surgery clinics, manufactures cars, builds roads and bridges, develops gas and oil fields and controls black-market smuggling, experts say.

Its fortune and its sense of entitlement have reportedly grown under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Since 2005, when he took office, companies affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards have been awarded more than 750 government contracts in construction and oil and gas projects, Iranian press reports document. And all of its finances stay off the budget, free from any state oversight or need to provide an accounting to Parliament.

The corps’s alumni hold dozens of seats in Parliament and top government posts. Mr. Ahmadinejad is a former member, as are the speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, and the mayor of Tehran, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. And the influence of the Revolutionary Guards reaches deep into the education system, where it indoctrinates students in loyalty to the state, and into the state-controlled media, where it guides television and radio programming.

“They are the proponents of an authoritarian modernization, convinced that the clergy should continue supplying the legitimation for the regime as a sort of military chaplains, but definitely not run the show,” said a political scientist who worked in Iran for years, but asked not to be identified to avoid antagonizing the authorities.

They are so influential partly because they present a public front of unity in a state where power has always been fractured. By contrast, clerics have many different agendas and factions. Nonetheless, there are glimmers of fractures under the corps’s opaque and disciplined surface.

Political analysts said that behind the scenes there were internal disagreements about the handling of the election and the demonstrations against disputed results that gave a second term to Mr. Ahmadinejad.

“I have received reports, at least part of the top commanders in the Revolutionary Guards are not happy with what is going on,” said Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, who says he has a network of contacts around the country. “There are even reports of some who have protested.”

Even a former commander in the corps, Mohsen Rezai, who served for 16 years, decided to challenge the status quo by running for president this year, and he openly complained of the government’s failure to investigate accusations of vote-rigging.

One political analyst said that many of the rank and file were known to have voted for Mohammad Khatami, an outspoken reformer, when he was first elected president in 1997.

The corps is not large. It has as many as 130,000 members and runs five armed branches that are independent from the much bigger national military. It commands its own ground force, navy, air force and intelligence service. The United Nations Security Council has linked its officials to Iran’s nuclear program. The West suspects Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons, an allegation the government denies.

The corps’s two best-known subsidiaries are the secretive Quds Force, which has carried out operations in other countries, including the training and arming of the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon; and the Basij militia. The Basiji, who experts say were incorporated under the corps’s leadership only two years ago, now include millions of volunteer vigilantes used to crack down on election protests and dissidents.

Members of the Revolutionary Guards and their families receive privileged status at every level, which benefits them in university admissions and in the distribution of subsidized commodities, experts said.

Mr. Nafisi, the RAND report co-author, said a former commander in the corps estimated that all the corps and Basiji members, together with their families, added up to a potential voting bloc of millions of people. “This new machinery of election was quite important in bringing Ahmadinejad forward,” Mr. Nafisi said.

Within this bloc is a core of military elites who have displaced — and at times clashed with — the clerical revolutionaries who worked beside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in founding the Islamic republic. They are the second generation of revolutionaries, ideologically united and contemptuous of first-generation clerics like former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and of reformers and those eager to engage with the West. The corps has even trained its own clerics.

In an essay describing the rise of the Revolutionary Guards phenomenon, Professor Sahimi drew a portrait of the new elite: leaders in their mid-50s who as young men joined the corps and fought two wars: one against Iraq in the 1980s and another to force out the Mujahedeen Khalq, which the United States considers a terrorist organization and which is now based in Iraq.

The corps then split into two groups. One believed that Iran needed a chance to develop politically and socially; the other, which emerged the victor, was intent on maintaining strict control. Mr. Nafisi said Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was close to that second group.

“He went to the war front several times, more than any other commander,” Mr. Nafisi said. “He made personal contact with many commanders, got to know them and earned their loyalty. Now all the people in charge were basically assigned to him at the time of war.”

Today, the corps has expanded its role and reach. Its financial interests have, for example, been linked directly to the government’s foreign policy. Iran may well have remained silent on the attacks on Uighur Muslims in China this month in part because Beijing is one of the main trading partners with the corps.

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war, Mr. Rafsanjani, then the president, encouraged the corps to use its engineers to bolster its own budget and to help rebuild the country. Since then, a Revolutionary Guards company, Khatam al-Anbia, has become one of Iran’s largest contractors in industrial and development projects, according to the RAND report. Its contracts with the government, including projects like the construction of a Tehran subway line, hydroelectric dams, ports and railway systems, are carried out by the company’s subsidiaries or are parceled out to private companies.

What is less quantifiable is the corps’s black-market smuggling activity, which has helped feed the nation’s appetite for products banned by sanctions, while also enriching the corps. The Rand report quoted one member of Iran’s Parliament who estimated that the Revolutionary Guards might do as much as $12 billion in black-market business annually.

In his will, Ayatollah Khomeini asked that the military stay out of politics, and senior Revolutionary Guards officials have been careful to defend themselves against accusations of political meddling after the June 12 election. But Gen. Yadollah Javani, director of the corps’s political arm, warned the public that there was no room for dissent.

“Today, no one is impartial,” he said, according to the official news agency IRNA. “There are two currents: those who defend and support the revolution and the establishment, and those who are trying to topple it.”

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Toronto, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

Untold Truths About the American Revolution

By Howard Zinn, July 3, 2009

There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from, “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”

You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.

The American Revolution—independence from England—was a just cause. Why should the colonists here be occupied by and oppressed by England? But therefore, did we have to go to the Revolutionary War?

How many people died in the Revolutionary War?

Nobody ever knows exactly how many people die in wars, but it’s likely that 25,000 to 50,000 people died in this one. So let’s take the lower figure—25,000 people died out of a population of three million. That would be equivalent today to two and a half million people dying to get England off our backs.

You might consider that worth it, or you might not.

Canada is independent of England, isn’t it? I think so. Not a bad society. Canadians have good health care. They have a lot of things we don’t have. They didn’t fight a bloody revolutionary war. Why do we assume that we had to fight a bloody revolutionary war to get rid of England?

In the year before those famous shots were fired, farmers in Western Massachusetts had driven the British government out without firing a single shot. They had assembled by the thousands and thousands around courthouses and colonial offices and they had just taken over and they said goodbye to the British officials. It was a nonviolent revolution that took place. But then came Lexington and Concord, and the revolution became violent, and it was run not by the farmers but by the Founding Fathers. The farmers were rather poor; the Founding Fathers were rather rich.

Who actually gained from that victory over England? It’s very important to ask about any policy, and especially about war: Who gained what? And it’s very important to notice differences among the various parts of the population. That’s one thing were not accustomed to in this country because we don’t think in class terms. We think, “Oh, we all have the same interests.” For instance, we think that we all had the same interests in independence from England. We did not have all the same interests.

Do you think the Indians cared about independence from England? No, in fact, the Indians were unhappy that we won independence from England, because England had set a line—in the Proclamation of 1763—that said you couldn’t go westward into Indian territory. They didn’t do it because they loved the Indians. They didn’t want trouble. When Britain was defeated in the Revolutionary War, that line was eliminated, and now the way was open for the colonists to move westward across the continent, which they did for the next 100 years, committing massacres and making sure that they destroyed Indian civilization.

So when you look at the American Revolution, there’s a fact that you have to take into consideration. Indians—no, they didn’t benefit.

Did blacks benefit from the American Revolution?

Slavery was there before. Slavery was there after. Not only that, we wrote slavery into the Constitution. We legitimized it.

What about class divisions?

Did ordinary white farmers have the same interest in the revolution as a John Hancock or Morris or Madison or Jefferson or the slaveholders or the bondholders? Not really.

It was not all the common people getting together to fight against England. They had a very hard time assembling an army. They took poor guys and promised them land. They browbeat people and, oh yes, they inspired people with the Declaration of Independence. It’s always good, if you want people to go to war, to give them a good document and have good words: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, when they wrote the Constitution, they were more concerned with property than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You should take notice of these little things.

There were class divisions. When you assess and evaluate a war, when you assess and evaluate any policy, you have to ask: Who gets what?

We were a class society from the beginning. America started off as a society of rich and poor, people with enormous grants of land and people with no land. And there were riots, there were bread riots in Boston, and riots and rebellions all over the colonies, of poor against rich, of tenants breaking into jails to release people who were in prison for nonpayment of debt. There was class conflict. We try to pretend in this country that we’re all one happy family. We’re not.

And so when you look at the American Revolution, you have to look at it in terms of class.

Do you know that there were mutinies in the American Revolutionary Army by the privates against the officers? The officers were getting fine clothes and good food and high pay and the privates had no shoes and bad clothes and they weren’t getting paid. They mutinied. Thousands of them. So many in the Pennsylvania line that George Washington got worried, so he made compromises with them. But later when there was a smaller mutiny in the New Jersey line, not with thousands but with hundreds, Washington said execute the leaders, and they were executed by fellow mutineers on the order of their officers.

The American Revolution was not a simple affair of all of us against all of them. And not everyone thought they would benefit from the Revolution.

We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.

Once a historical event has taken place, it becomes very hard to imagine that you could have achieved a result some other way. When something is happening in history it takes on a certain air of inevitability: This is the only way it could have happened. No.

We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.

Howard Zinn is the author of “A People’s History of the United States.” The History Channel is running an adaptation called “The People Speak.” This article is an excerpt from Zinn’s cover story in the July issue of The Progressive.