UN chief appeals for end to Libya killing

Ban Ki-moon's plea comes as concern mounts over crisis in Misurata and Obama approves use of armed Predator drones. Last Modified: 21 Apr 2011 20:19

As the battle for Libya rages on, the rebels have called for international troops to help defeat Gaddafi [GALLO/GETTY] Casualties are on the rise as Libyan government forces and rebel fighters battle it out on the streets of besieged western city of Misurata, amid calls by the UN chief to "stop fighting". Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, urged Libyan authorities on Thursday to "stop fighting and stop killing people" and said the world body's priority was to secure a ceasefire. "At this time our priority is to bring about a verifiable and effective ceasefire, and then we can expand our humanitarian assistance, and we are going to engage in political dialogue," he said during an official visit to Moscow.  Keep up with all the latest developments here Meanwhile, in Washington the US defence secretary told the Reuters news agency that the US president had approved use of armed Predator drones in Libya, and that missions involving the unmanned aircraft were set to begin. The Libyan rebels have been trying since mid-February to end Muammar Gaddafi's 41-year-old rule but have struggled against his more experienced and better equipped forces. International forces have been carrying out air raids on forces loyal to Gaddafi since March 19, in a mission headed by NATO since March 31. The NATO-led coalition is enforcing a UN mandated no-fly zone in Libya, which authorises "all necessary measures" to protect civilians from attack by Gaddafi's forces. Border post captured Earlier on Thursday, pro-democracy fighters took control of the Libyan side of a key border crossing with Tunisia, in a remote western region. Witnesses said pro-Gaddafi forces abandoned their weapons and fled into Tunisia. Click on image for comprehensive coverage on Libya Sue Turton, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Benghazi, said there was fierce fighting before the rebels were able to seize control of the post. "The post ... has some 6,000 Libyans trying to get into Tunisia trying to flee the fighting here. People are camped out there," she said. "We're also hearing from the national council here that this isn't the first time that they've taken control of that outpost. They're just watching to see whether Gaddafi forces strike back and try to take the post back again." Elsewhere in the country, Libyan state television said, NATO forces struck the Khallat al-Farjan area of the capital Tripoli, killing seven people and wounding 18 others. The report could not immediately be independently verified. But NATO denied that any air raid had killed civilians, saying the target was a command and control bunker in a military compound. The developments came on a day forces loyal to Gaddafi rained mortar fire on Misurata, the only rebel stronghold in the country's west where fighting has trapped 300,000 residents. Medics said they have seen children with shrapnel and bullet wounds, with snipers allegedly killing and causing terror among the residents. Misurata's plight Food and water are hard to be found and the hospitals are totally overwhelmed in Misurata. Many residents have been forced to flee. Up to 50 or 60 people ... are being injured per day," Mohammed Al Fagieh, chief surgeon at a hospital in Misurata, told Al Jazeera. "I'm talking about the hospital, I'm not talking about Misurata. The number might double or triple sometimes." Moussa Ibrahim, the Libyan government spokesman, said Gaddafi's forces control more than 80 per cent of Misurata and the rebels hold "the sea port and the area surrounding it". "Among the casualties of the fighting in the city are Western journalists Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, both photojournalists, who died in a mortar attack on Wednesday. Ibrahim said Libyan troops were not to blame for their deaths of the two photographers. "We are very sad for the loss of any human life even from the rebel side, so we're really sad for the loss of these two lives," he said. "It's not the responsibility of our army." As reports of the humanitarian crisis in Misurata poured in, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, accused Gaddafi's troops of continuing their "vicious attacks". "Colonel Gaddafi's troops continue their vicious attacks including the siege of Misurata. There are even reports that Gaddafi forces may have used cluster bombs against their own people," she said on Thursday. Signs of war crimes The UN has said it is looking for signs of war crimes in Libya. The Gaddafi government has strenuously denied attacking civilians in Misurata. Valerie Amos, the UN humanitarian chief, said the situation has not yet reached the point where the UN needs NATO troops to secure humanitarian supplies in the country. "At the moment, we have an agreement with the European force and with NATO that should we reach a point where the utilisation of civilian assets becomes impossible because of the security situation, we, the UN, would call on them for support for military assets," she said. Al Jazeera's Sue Turton said many Libyans are looking abroad to see when international help will come. "There has been talk of possibly foreign troops on the ground. Whether or not foreign troops are allowed on this soil is still a matter of contention. I've been told by the [rebel] Libyan Transitional National Council that maybe those troops could be provided by some of the Arab countries rather than the European countries." David Cameron, the British prime minister, insisted on Thursday that NATO was not edging towards deployment of ground troops in Libya despite the recent decision by several European nations to send military advisers to assist rebel forces. "The UN Security Council does limit us. We're not allowed, rightly, to have an invading army, or an occupying army," he told BBC Scotland radio. Russia said the sending of advisers exceeded the Security Council mandate to protect civilians. "We are not happy about the latest events in Libya, which are pulling the international community into a conflict on the ground. This may have unpredictable consequences," Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Conflict leads to Afghan displacement, but which side most to blame?

Photo: ISAF Media/Flickr

US forces in Afghanistan - “tactical victories may prove to be strategic setbacks”

KABUL, 21 April 2011 (IRIN) - One irony of the current security situation in Afghanistan is that foreign forces, whose ostensible aim is to protect civilians while fighting the Taliban, may be responsible - directly or indirectly - for the bulk of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country, whose number is rising.

About 400 individuals were displaced each day in 2006-2010 - 730,000 in total - mostly due to military operations by US/NATO forces, according to the Oslo-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC), an affiliate of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

The so-called “surge” in US/NATO troops and increased counterinsurgency operations in 2010 resulted in the displacement of about 85,000 people in the volatile south of the country alone. About 10,000 were also displaced by anti-insurgent offensives in the north, IDMC said.

“The US and ISAF [NATO-led International Security Assistance Force] currently lack an understanding of internal displacement in the context of their operations,” Jacob Rothing, an IDMC country analyst, told IRIN, adding that their own standard operating procedures to minimize civilian displacement were not developed and used by US/NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, local militias hired by the government and its US/NATO allies for counterinsurgency purposes, were extorting communities and grabbing land, resulting in further internal displacements, Rothing alleged.

ISAF said it could not “agree or disagree” with the allegation that forces under its command were responsible for most of the civilian displacements in Afghanistan.

“We have not seen the means by which the causes of conflict-related displacements are assigned,” said John L. Dorrian, an ISAF spokesman.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it was not in a position to say which warring party was most to blame for most internal displacement.

“We can certainly say that people are mostly displaced by conflict - all fighting parties have to be blamed,” said Nader Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman in Kabul.

ISAF, meanwhile, said that its counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign was focused on the protection of civilians.

Casualties

“The clear principle that Gen David Petraeus [commander of all US/NATO forces in Afghanistan] has conveyed to ISAF troops is that civilian casualties and collateral damage are detrimental to ISAF's cause,” John L. Dorrian, a NATO/ISAF spokesman in Kabul, told IRIN, adding that if troops operated contrary to the COIN principles “tactical victories may prove to be strategic setbacks”.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported in March that civilian casualties attributed to foreign forces dropped by 26 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year, but the number of noncombatants killed and wounded by armed opposition groups increased by 28 percent in the same period. Over 2,770 Afghan civilians were killed in 2010, UNAMA said.

While US and ISAF forces made successful efforts in 2010 to minimize civilian casualties and loss of life, they have not made equivalent efforts to reduce the scale of forced internal displacement, despite its scale and the demonstrated impact of displacement on support for international forces

However, the Taliban rejected UNAMA’s report, calling it “biased”.

“While US and ISAF forces made successful efforts in 2010 to minimize civilian casualties and loss of life, they have not made equivalent efforts to reduce the scale of forced internal displacement, despite its scale and the demonstrated impact of displacement on support for international forces,” said an IDMC report released on 11 April.

Government’s weak capacity

Over one million people were displaced in 2002 after the Taliban regime was toppled by a US-led military intervention. Most of the Pashtun IDPs who had left their homes in the north of the country in 2001-2002 have either returned to their home areas or have been integrated elsewhere in the country, according to aid agencies.

However, with the intensification of conflict over the past five years, tens of thousands of people, mostly in the volatile south, have been forced out of their homes.

While international aid agencies have responded to some of the immediate needs of IDPs (mostly food and non-food aid items), the government has been criticized for its ineffectiveness in solving problems associated with displacement.

“The Afghan government is generally unable or unwilling to assist IDPs,” said the IDMC report.

Islamudin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugee and Returnee Affairs (MoRRA), agreed there was a lack of institutional capacity to provide long-term solutions to the growing internal displacement.

“MoRRA is part of the government and there are capacity weaknesses all across government. We don’t overlook this but we are committed to building and improving our capacity,” said Jurat.

More IDPs in 2011

More than 390,000 IDPs are currently scattered across the country, mostly in makeshift camps and informal settlements, according to UNHCR, which also says the real number of IDPs could be significantly higher as it does not have access to all of them.

About 49 percent of IDPs are female and 51 percent are male. Fifty-four percent are under 18 and fewer than 2 percent are over 60, according to IDMC.

Despite the unprecedented US/NATO military presence (over 150,000 soldiers), insecurity is widely anticipated to exacerbate in 2011 with more tragic consequences for civilians.

“The IDMC expects displacements to rise in 2011 in comparison to 2010,” said Jacob Rothing, adding that 78,000 people were displaced between September 2010 and January 2011 compared to only 18,000 in the five preceding months.

“Displacement is already increasing in the north,” he said.

Other humanitarian agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have also warned that the security situation has become “untenable” for civilians.

“The first two months of 2011 have seen a dramatic deterioration in the security situation for ordinary Afghans,” ICRC said on 15 March.

To reduce civilian displacements, IDMC said, US/NATO forces should abide by their own standard operating procedures to protect civilians “before, during and after” military operations and develop appropriate monitoring and reporting mechanisms on forced displacements.

“We would strongly encourage the military leadership to develop such guidelines in consultation with UNHCR, IDPs and other competent organizations,” said IDMC’s Rothing.

NATO/ISAF said it was providing “an enormous amount of humanitarian aid” to Afghans - almost 500,000 beneficiaries in the first quarter of 2011.

Aid agencies, however, contend that in terms of humanitarian response they come first, and that NATO/ISAF’s best help would be to avoid or at least minimize civilian displacements as a result of their military activities.

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New East-West Center Publication

New Publications

Dealing with Davis: Inconsistencies in the US-Pakistan Relationship
by Huma Yusuf
Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 103 (Washington, DC: East-West Center in Washington, March 28, 2011)
2 pp.
Download PDF file free of charge

 

The nine-week standoff between the United States and Pakistan over the fate of Raymond Davis, an American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a traffic stop, ended on March 16 with his sudden release from jail. Davis was freed under Islamic law, which allows a murderer to receive pardon from the family of his victims on payment of compensation, or "blood money." Religious parties protested the decision, stating that the law had been applied incorrectly to satisfy US demands for Davis' release. Still, media and analysts inside and outside Pakistan have termed the development a "win" for the country. Huma Yusuf discusses how US security interests underpinning US-Pakistan relations, as evidenced in the Davis case, are entrenching ISI's paramount influence in Pakistan further to the great detriment of Pakistan's civilian institutions.

The Asia Pacific Bulletin (APB), produced by the East-West Center in Washington, publishes summaries of Congressional Study Groups, conferences, seminars, and visitor roundtables, as well as short articles and opinion pieces. APB summaries are always two pages or less, designed for the busy professional or policymaker to capture the essence of dialogue and debate on issues of concern in US-Asia relations. For more information on the series, including submission guidelines, visit http://www.eastwestcenter.org/apb

 

 

Related publications:

Bloody Blasphemy: Antagonizing Religious Minorities in Indonesia and Pakistan
by Endy Bayuni
Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 97 (Washington, DC: East-West Center in Washington, March 2, 2011)

Pakistan's Courts: A Counterterrorism Challenge
by Huma Yusuf
Asia Pacific Bulletin, no. 77 (Washington, DC: East-West Center in Washington, November 1, 2010)

Military Professionalism in Asia: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives
edited by Muthiah Alagappa
(Honolulu: East-West Center, 2001)

 

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Search the East-West Center Publications website for publications by the East-West Center and its staff. Contact the East-West Center Publication Sales Office at ewcbooks@EastWestCenter.org.

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Former Saleh allies form new party in Yemen

Last Modified: 18 Apr 2011 21:57



Yemen's protests are in their third month and bring tens of thousands onto the streets almost every day [Reuters]


Members of Yemen's ruling party including three former ministers formed a new bloc to support protests against the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president.

The new party, called the Justice and Development Bloc, opposes the suppression of protests and is demanding an end to Saleh's 32-year rule, Mohammed Abu Lahoum, its leader, said on Monday.

The protests, inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia, are now in their third month and bring tens of thousands of people onto the streets almost every day demanding an end to endemic poverty and corruption. Scores of protesters have been killed.

At least 88 people were wounded on Monday in the Red Sea port of Hudaida as plain clothes police fired bullets and tear gas at protesters, who responded by hurling stones, witnesses and doctors said.

After years of backing Saleh as a bulwark against regional instability and the activities of al-Qaeda's active Yemeni branch, Saudi Arabia and the United States are now pressing him to negotiate with the opposition on handing over power.

The new Justice and Development Bloc includes former ministers for tourism, human rights and transport from the ruling party, and a number of members of parliament, who joined a stream of former officials who have already deserted Saleh.

'Difference in views'

"We support the youthful revolution and we are with it," Lahoum said. "The issue is not the split from the ruling party but the difference in views."

The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), including Saudi Arabia, have offered to mediate between the opposition and the government. But the Yemeni opposition rejects such talks without guarantees that Saleh will relinquish power.

No breakthrough was reached at a meeting between opposition leaders and GCC foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia on Sunday night.

A ruling party official told Reuters news agency a high-level delegation from the party would head to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, for a meeting there on Tuesday.






In Hudaida, residents said that plainclothes police armed with clubs, pistols and stones had attacked thousands of protesters who had marched into the streets outside the square where they have been camping for weeks calling for Saleh to go.

"We're appealing for help in medical supplies as we're really suffering from a severe shortage ... the medical situation is really bad," Abdul Jabar Zayed, a protester, said.

"We have some friends missing and we think they were arrested, we are still making calculations but no specific number yet."

In a first round of clashes hurt 15 people, two were shot and the others were beaten or hit with stones, doctors said, and protesters began to withdraw back to their camp.

Clashes erupted again as riot police fired shots and tear gas at a group of protesters, witnesses said.

Protesters responded by marching out of their camp again, this time headed for Hudaida's main thoroughfare, residents said.

Five people were shot and 68 were beaten or suffering from teargas inhalation, they said. Zayed said protesters had built a roadblock to try to prevent police getting closer to the demonstrations.

Fears of Indonesia's Ahmadiyah sect

Image via Wikipedia18 April 2011 By Kate McGeown BBC News, Bogor, Indonesia

In the Indonesian city of Bogor, members of a small Islamic sect called the Ahmadiyah tried to ignore the police patrol car parked opposite their mosque as they walked to Friday prayers.

Peering in through the window, I could see them kneeling, facing Mecca, listening to a sermon.

But at any slight noise, several heads turned round nervously.

The Ahmadiyah are afraid and it is obvious why. Hardline Islamic groups want the sect to be banned - they say it deviates from the tenets of Islam, and therefore has no place in Indonesian society.

Over the past few months these hardliners have become increasingly vocal in their demands - holding rallies in central Jakarta and airing their views in the media.

But some have taken it even further. In February, a violent mob bludgeoned three Ahmadis to death. Since then, houses and mosques have been attacked and protesters have vowed to escalate the violence if they do not get their way.

And it is not just hardliners who want the Ahmadiyah disbanded.

In TV talk-shows and internet chat-rooms, it is obvious that an increasing number of Indonesians, while not condoning the violence, would like to see an end to the Ahmadiyah in their country.

One man we spoke to, who lived opposite the Ahmadis' mosque in Bogor, said he thought it would be better if they just went away.

Even the local authorities are making life difficult for them.

In common with some other provinces, officials in West Java - which includes the city of Bogor - have recently issued a new set of decrees restricting the Ahmadiyah's activities.

The Ahmadiyah are not allowed to promote any of their activities, or convert anyone to their faith. They are also being encouraged to attend meetings to re-integrate themselves into mainstream Islam. Low profile

So what have the Ahmadiyah done that is causing so much offence?

When I watched their prayers through the window, there did not appear to be any obvious differences between the Ahmadis and the mainstream Sunni Muslims who make up the majority of the Indonesian population.

The men were modestly dressed, and the women - confined to the balcony - wore the hijab. The format seemed virtually identical to Islamic prayers I have seen in other mosques.

Afterwards, when I spoke to Muhammad Harris, the local Ahmadiyah leader, he agreed that his faith was actually very similar to that of his Sunni neighbours.

"The prophet Muhammad is the last prophet - there is no other prophet after him," he said.

"But unlike others Muslims, we believe our founder was a loyal disciple who was chosen to continue the teaching of Islam that came through Muhammad."

Hardline Islamic groups, though, insist the Ahmadiyah faith disputes that Muhammad was the last prophet, and is therefore nothing short of blasphemy - an offence against Islam and a violation of Indonesian law.

And Mohammad Harris is suffering for it.

There used to be a sign outside his mosque saying it belonged to the Ahmadiyah, but that has been taken down now, after officials asked for it to be removed.

People he knows have had to flee their homes after being threatened, and having their mosques and homes attacked.

His own mosque has not been affected, but given the presence of the police patrol outside the building - one plain-clothed officer was even inside, mingling with the congregation - it is obvious that it might be a target. 'Took an oath'

While local authorities have been announcing decrees against the sect, the national government has so far shied away from making any definite pronouncements against the Ahmadiyah.

After all, although Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, it has a secular constitution - including the right to freedom of religious expression.

Nasarudin Umar, the religious ministry's director general for Islamic guidance, said he wanted to explore other measures before banning the Ahmadiyah.

"We're asking Islamic groups, clerics and experts to give comprehensive guidance to both Ahmadiyah members and mainstream Muslims. We believe that the more they understand their religion, the more co-operative they'll be.

"In terms of whether the Ahmadiyah should be banned, we're still studying whether it will be the best."

Other officials, though - including the religious affairs minister Suryadharma Ali - have already decided that the sect should be disbanded.

For human rights groups, this is a very worrying sign. In the past, Indonesia has often been praised for its religious tolerance, allowing many different faiths to live together side by side.

Poengky Indarti, executive director of the rights group Imparsial, said that if the government decided to ban the Ahmadiyah, other minority groups might meet the same fate.

"In the near future I think that it's also dangerous for the Shia groups here in Indonesia, because many Indonesians are majority Sunni - I'm afraid this will become a clash between Islam versus Islam," she said.

But whatever the government tries to do to limit the Ahmadiyah, the one thing it will not be able to do is convert the faithful, Muhammad Harris among them.

"God willing I'll always be an Ahmadiyah," he said. "I took an oath to follow it and I'm going to stick to it."

French Colonial Past Casts Long Shadow Over Policy in Africa

Image via Wikipedia

By STEVEN ERLANGER

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy, having suddenly engaged France in shooting wars in Libya and Ivory Coast, seems to be harking back to the old days of French African policy, sometimes known as Françafrique, when Paris and its army dictated politics in its former colonies and reaped economic rewards.

French troops and helicopters were vital in bringing the drama in Abidjan to a close, striking the heavy weapons and presidential palace of the defeated Ivory Coast presidential candidate Laurent Gbagbo and making possible his arrest. And France has been the country that has pushed hardest for intervention in Libya on behalf of the opposition to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But Mr. Sarkozy and the Foreign Ministry reject the suggestion of a return to colonial reflexes, emphasizing that in both cases France acted under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council that authorized the use of force to protect civilians. French officials also point out that Libya was an Italian colony, never French; that French troops did not arrest Mr. Gbagbo; and that Paris was slow to understand the depth of the anger in its former protectorate, Tunisia.

Mr. Sarkozy’s line for Africa has been “neither interference nor indifference.”

France’s colonial empire covered much of North and West Africa, from Algeria to Ivory Coast. The colonies were gradually granted independence in the 1960s, but France still has troops based in Africa and close business, political, linguistic and personal ties to its former colonies, which as a whole give France more importance in the world.

Accusations persist of France taking sides to make new presidents or overthrow old ones, of illegal political contributions and payoffs, of parallel but separate policies run by the Élysée and the Quai d’Orsay. The newspapers, for instance, have depicted the friendship of Mr. Sarkozy’s former wife, Cécilia, with the French wife of Gbagbo rival Alassane Ouattara, and Mr. Gbagbo played heavily on anti-French sentiment in his effort to retain power.

The French newspaper Libération said of Ivory Coast that “even if wrapped in a U.N. resolution and supported by countries in the region, this French mission resembles the interventions of the past and risks being seen as such by young Africans.” Fifty years after African independence, the paper said, France has “found itself anew on the front line in a continent to which Nicolas Sarkozy promised a ‘renewed’ relationship, the end of old privileges and a military disengagement.”

Achille Mbembé, a Cameroonian-born historian and critic of French involvement in Ivory Coast, said that France continued to support African dictators, mentioning the leaders of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Chad and Togo. He saw “a continuity in the management of Françafrique — this system of reciprocal corruption, which, since the end of colonial occupation, ties France to its African henchmen.”

Albert Bourgi, a professor of law and brother of Robert Bourgi, a lawyer who helped manage African matters for France for Jacques Chirac and his successors, wrote in Le Monde that Ivory Coast “reawakens the memory, sometimes damning, of numerous excesses of French African policy between 1960 and today.”

He recalled the words of Louis de Guiringaud, a former foreign minister, who said in 1978, “Africa is the only region of the world where France can take itself for a great power, capable of changing the course of history with 500 men.”

But other historians and analysts suggest that Mr. Sarkozy was sincere when he said that his African policy would emphasize partnership and not paternalism, and note that he does not share the same ties to Africa as his predecessors, in particular Mr. Chirac and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, infamous for a scandal over African diamonds allegedly received as a gift.

“Sarkozy has no nostalgia for the former colonies, and I believe there has not been any real change in his African policy,” said Antoine Glaser, former editor in chief of Lettre du Continent, an African newsletter, and co-author of “Sarko in Africa” and “How France Lost Africa.” He added: “The policy is still marked by realpolitik and pragmatism. For Sarkozy, it’s much more the political, diplomatic and geostrategic opportunities of the moment.”

In a way, Mr. Glaser said, Mr. Sarkozy was “trapped” in Ivory Coast, with French troops protecting thousands of French citizens in Abidjan and being asked by the United Nations to end the Gbagbo standoff, which troops loyal to Mr. Ouattara seemed unable to do. Even in 2002, when French troops arrived to separate the two rivals in a civil war, France did not choose sides, Mr. Glaser said, a major departure from colonialist policy. “But with presence of the French troops, even under a U.N. mandate, there’s always the phantasmagoria of Françafrique, all the colonial past. France has not yet been able to turn the page completely.”

Stephen W. Smith, former Africa editor of Le Monde, co-author with Mr. Glaser and now an instructor at Duke University, said that France was not returning to the period of Françafrique, which largely ended in the mid-1990s and was most closely associated with Jacques Foccart, who ran Africa for Charles de Gaulle.

“Sarkozy is not interested in Africa, but sees it as more of a nuisance than an asset,” Mr. Smith said. Africa is important for energy and France’s self-image, he said, but French presence and influence in its former colonies are much reduced with generational and political change. As the long Gaullist period ended in France, so did the reign of the early African fathers of independence, most of them French-trained or empowered, and democracy has loosened what were effectively partnerships.

“Françafrique was a Franco-African construction,” Mr. Smith said, “a deal struck with African leaders who knew what they were doing.” With time and politics, he said, the deal degraded into corruption, secret political financing and more personal ties. “Foccart guaranteed a continuity impossible in France today and the African fathers of independence were in power a long time,” he said. “When you started to have more democracy and alternation in power, the system fell apart.”

Today, France has little corporate involvement in the main economic pillars of Ivory Coast, cocoa, coffee and oil, Mr. Smith said. In the 1980s, there were 50,000 French expatriates in Ivory Coast; now the number is 12,000, of whom at least 7,000 are dual nationals.

France is visible in construction, electricity and telecommunications, but has bigger investments in non-Francophone Africa. In Ivory Coast, France ranks only fifth in import-export totals, while Nigeria is first.

Still, French businessmen are investing all over Africa, and many feel a tie to a French-speaking former colonial empire. But the special French mix of accusation and guilt over African colonialism is a kind of relic, Mr. Smith said.

“In the period of Françafrique, there were very few dissident voices in France,” Mr. Smith said. “There is a kind of rediscovery, a soul-searching exercise that is also an exercise in identity. Many French don’t look at Africa as it is, but at themselves, as a mirror effect, mostly as a villain, but sometimes as a help.”

But on the left and the right, Mr. Smith said, “the centerpiece is always France.” In a straitened French media world, too, he said, which can afford fewer foreign correspondents, “the presence of the people of Africa dwindles.” Libya and Ivory Coast represent, then, a kind of “caricature of Françafrique,” said the Socialist legislator François Loncle. But as Mr. Glaser said, “So long as France has soldiers deployed on African soil, the ambiguity will last.”

A City in Libya Takes Halting Steps to Democracy

Image via Wikipedia

By ROD NORDLAND

BENGHAZI, Libya — Even at 9 a.m. on the seaside Corniche in front of the courthouse, the flaps on all the tents are closed, the trailer windows shaded, the privacy screens still erected for those who bedded down on mats on the broad sidewalks. Democracy sleeps late.

As the fighting on the front line in eastern Libya settles into a stalemate 100 miles south of here, this city where the revolution against the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi began in earnest on Feb. 17 has started to grapple with a daunting problem: building democracy in a society where there never was such a thing. Far out of the range of Colonel Qaddafi’s artillery and no longer worried about his air force, “Free Libya” is free to reinvent itself.

The courthouse on the Corniche is still singed inside and out from the populist fires that raged there. “We went inside the courts and suddenly there we were, in charge,” said Iman Bugaighis, a professor of orthodontics who was an early spokeswoman for the rebels.

This is the epicenter of the rebel uprising, where public outrage at past injustices became armed resistance to present ones. Today, hundreds of pairs of eyes gaze over the Corniche, from fliers and posters plastered on the walls of the buildings on the seafront.

“Missing, missing, martyred, missing, missing, missing, martyred, martyred,” a guide reads from the descriptions under the faces, bearing the blank stares reserved for identity cards.

By late morning, the courthouse is crowded with people searching the walls for the faces of lost friends or bowing their heads before those they know have died. The Red Crescent Society lists 500 people still missing in Benghazi alone; it says 144 were killed.

Nearby, the former bar association building is filled with artists, musicians and activists, churning out posters, banners and revolutionary rock songs. Raw democracy is nothing if not creative. Latif Frajeni, 12, watched one day recently as his father, Mohammed, 50, taped up a revolutionary poem. Mr. Frajeni, a clerk at a stevedoring company, has written poetry before, but this is his first published work, if only on a wall.

Pride of place in the building is given to reproductions of the scurrilous anti-Qaddafi caricatures of a local artist, Kais al-Hilali. He was hunted down and assassinated after provoking the government by skewering Colonel Qaddafi on walls. In Mr. Hilali’s spirit, a doormat outside the building bears a version of the puffy face of the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, as Colonel Qaddafi is officially known; visitors take care to pause and wipe their feet on it.

Along the Corniche, in front of the courts, scores of tents and trailers accommodate grass-roots efforts at democracy: one for law students, another for lawyers; one to report spies, another for some mothers and their daughters who have appointed themselves in charge of sweeping up the mess every morning.

Many of the tents are devoted to exposing past injustices, things once only whispered about. Democracy gets to speak out. The Al Ahly Sports Club tent commemorates the destruction of the city’s first division soccer team, after Benghazi fans booed Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saadi. Local people claim Saadi, a professional soccer player, was so terrible that his father must have purchased his position on a team.

The Abu Salim massacre tent documents what human rights advocates say were the mass murders of as many as 1,200 prisoners by guards in June 1996 after they protested poor conditions at Abu Salim, a notorious prison in Tripoli. This is a work in progress, as one by one family members bring in photographs of loved ones who died that day.

There is even a lost-property tent, mismatched flip-flops spilling out: sometimes the Corniche becomes so crowded, especially for Friday Prayer, that some people leave footwear behind.

Democracy is also messy. Despite repeated calls by the Transitional National Council to stop firing into the air because of the danger to innocent bystanders, every fresh piece of good news brings bursts of celebratory gunplay. “A lot of these guys don’t believe it,” said Dr. Salem Langhi, who treated eight wounded recently after a celebration. “They think the bullet’s headed into outer space.”

Once an almost elegant seafront city, Benghazi now is a mess on the Mediterranean. The volunteers may sweep up the Corniche every day, but elsewhere trash piles up.

“This is total freedom,” said Dr. Bugaighis, the orthodontics professor. “Before, somebody was in charge, really in charge, of everything. Now we can do whatever we want, and it means nobody is in charge and we are discovering the meaning and the borders of freedom.”

“We paid a high price, and we are in charge of this revolution,” she said. “Yes, there’s NATO in the sky, but what’s happening on the ground, we are doing that.” Her best moment so far was when she came across a committee of teenagers who were literally rewriting their Libyan history textbook.

“That really gave me hope,” she said.

On Wednesday, under the improbable rubric “Engineers for Revolution,” thousands gathered at a wedding hall here to exchange views and practical advice. Their wall-size logo showed the mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb morphing into the green canopy of a tree.

“What’s happening now — everybody was astonished that it could ever happen,” said the newly appointed governor of Benghazi’s central bank, Ahmed S. el-Sharif. “We were thrown in the deep end and are learning how to swim. Before, there was no system, no administration; it was all a one-man show.”

Democracy could prove dangerous, Mr. Sharif acknowledged, but nothing compares to the threat that every Libyan lived under during Colonel Qaddafi’s 42 years in power.

Mr. Sharif said that people of his age group had worried that the young — the median age of Libyans is about 24 — would have been permanently ruined by years of government indoctrination and that when the moment of freedom came, they would not go for it.

Then he returned home one day to find his son Abdullah, 17, emptying the family’s pantry into boxes to distribute to the poor. His other son, Mohammad, 22, came out dressed in work clothes to take the family pickup and help clean up the neighborhood.

“I saw him as a lazy person, always sleeping late; we could never get him to take our own garbage out, and there he was,” he said. “It was amazing. I was so happy. I couldn’t keep the tears from my eyes.”

“Now, he’s on the front line.” Libya’s new democrats may well have been part of an oil-rich state’s PlayStation 3 generation, but that also explains one of the most common slogans in graffiti around town: “Game Over.”

Gaddafi’s Tripoli lives under pall of fear

Image via Wikipedia
By Simon Denyer, Monday, April 18, 12:22 PM

TRIPOLI, Libya — The armed men arrived this month, pounded on the door and took Ibrahim’s cousin away. There was not a word of explanation and not a word since about where he has been taken.

“I can’t even ask anyone where my cousin is. It’s too dangerous,” the 33-year-old told two reporters who had briefly slipped away from their government minders, on a chance encounter in the maze-like streets of Tripoli’s walled old town.

“Everyone is scared,” he added, looking furtively to the right and left, wary of government informers. “We can only talk to a few close friends. We can’t trust anyone else.”

Human rights groups say the Libyan government embarked on a systematic and widespread campaign to imprison critics in Tripoli after protests against Moammar Gaddafi’s rule erupted — and were violently put down — in February. Ibrahim’s account, and that of other Tripoli residents, suggests that the campaign is continuing this month, albeit at a slower pace.

“Gaddafi and his security forces are brutally suppressing all opposition in Tripoli, including peaceful protests, with lethal force, arbitrary arrests, and forced disappearances,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Given Libya’s record of torture and political killings, we worry deeply about the fate of those taken away.”

The rebel Transitional National Council — the de facto government in eastern Libya — says 20,000 people have been “kidnapped” by the Gaddafi government and are being held in inhumane conditions in several prisons across the capital, as well as in police and army camps and in an old tobacco factory. That figure could not be independently confirmed, but Human Rights Watch said the detentions were significant and widespread.

The jails include Abu Salim prison, notorious for the massacre of hundreds of prisoners after an uprising in 1996.

Detainees include rebel soldiers captured as the fighting has ebbed and flowed along the coastal towns of Libya. But they also include anti-government activists, journalists, people who organized protests on Facebook or simply took part in the demonstrations, as well as people who spoke with the foreign media, human rights groups say.

Gaddafi’s powerful second son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, conceded in an interview that there had been arrests but said no one had been tortured, and added he was supervising a program to release the prisoners.

“It happened because it was a big tsunami here in Libya,” he said. “But the police have started to release them one after another. ... We are living in the same country. It is not in our advantage to humiliate them, to kill them or to torture them.”

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said he had just one response to the charges: to ask Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International why they had not responded to a government invitation to visit and find out for themselves.

Both organizations said they had not been granted permission to enter government-controlled Libya since the protests and conflict began. Human Rights Watch said the group has received an unofficial spoken invitation to come to Tripoli and is now discussing a formal invitation. Amnesty International says it has received no such offer.






The first wave of arrests began following February’s protests, with government agents even combing the hospitals of Tripoli for people wounded in the demonstrations.

Another wave of detentions took place in other cities as government forces first advanced along the coast in early March and then retreated from the outskirts of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi when NATO airstrikes began March 19. About 1,000 people have disappeared from government-controlled areas in the besieged city of Misurata alone, according to the city council.

Some people have been released after signing a pledge not to repeat offenses “against capacity of the Great Jamahiriya,” Gaddafi’s term for the Libyan state, residents interviewed by The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch said.

But many more are untraceable. Some appear to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ali al-Barg, a 45-year-old doctor and father of four, was last seen tied up next to a military truck and a shot-up ambulance outside the eastern town of Giminis on March 19, bound and lying on the ground with bruises on his face. He was still in his medical scrubs.

He had left Benghazi the night before in a clearly marked ambulance to look for wounded along the road to Ajdabiya, Human Rights Watch said. His driver was also in custody but a nurse with the group had been shot and killed, according to Hossam al-Majri, a doctor with the Benghazi Medical Committee.

“There were three soldiers there in military uniform and machine guns guarding them,” Nuri Massoud, an ambulance driver who came on the scene told Human Rights Watch. “We tried to talk to them, asking them why they were detaining a doctor, but they ordered us not to talk to them and made us sit down with them for about an hour before telling us to leave.”






The missing also include a number of American citizens, including Reda al-Mizaygri, a Libyan American neurosurgeon from Charleston, W.Va., who was last seen leaving the eastern city of Ajdabiya with cardiologist Idriss Busheri on March 16, heading toward Benghazi in a private car.

American freelance journalist Matthew VanDyke has also been missing since mid-March, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. A Libyan friend told the family that VanDyke was captured by pro-government forces in the eastern city of Brega and later transported along with more than 1,000 Libyan civilians to the Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte.

In Tripoli, Gaddafi’s supporters cruise the streets in minibuses, waving green flags, or assemble in Green Square by the Mediterranean to chant slogans. Neighborhoods such as Tajoura where the protests were strongest are still encircled by government checkpoints. On Fridays, armed soldiers and militiamen lock down the entire city, while foreign journalists are barred from leaving their hotels.

But still, in whispered asides, Gaddafi’s critics manage to make their views heard. “He is crazy,” one elderly shopkeeper said when his other customers had gone. “Stupid man, he has killed too many of his own people.”

Ibrahim has been forced to close his clothes shop as international sanctions on Libya have cut his supply lines. He still visits the offices of the multinational company where he used to work until its foreign employees fled, but only to check that everything is okay. Mostly, he is reduced to waiting.

“We could build Libya like Abu Dhabi or Dubai, but we have to be free,” he said, echoing a common refrain of many Libyans.

“I have a tricolor in my house,” he added, referring to the black, green and red flag adopted by the rebels. “I will bring it out when we are free.”


denyers@washpost.com

From the Jungles of Bangladesh to the Halls of Harvard

Josephine Ho | April 18,2011




Every morning, students line up in front of The Padamu Residential Education Centreschool in Bangladesh to recite the national anthem. (Photo: Maung Ting Nyeu)

A nomadic mountain boy grows up in a remote village of Bangladesh, near the border of Burma. Each day, he navigates a jungle path for two miles to attend a small primary school, passing monkeys and snakes along the way. He studies hard, earns good grades, and, years later, is accepted into the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.

That boy, Maung Ting Nyeu, recognizes that he was one of the lucky ones. "Education saved me," says Maung to TakePart. To ensure that children living in underserved areas of the world are given the opportunity to receive an education, Maung devotes much of his free time to volunteering for Right to Learn International (RLI).

In Bangladesh, indigenous populations make up less than 1% of the entire population and schools are scattered miles away from these remote, mountainous villages.



The Padamu Residential Education Centre provides food, clothes and education to 72 children from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. (Photo: Maung Ting Nyeu)

"Hundreds of children are displaced because of political conflicts in the country...some of those kids get involved in the internal political conflict and they’re not alive anymore, or some are alive and they live as day laborers," says Maung. "Not only can they not send their children to school, they cannot even feed their own family."

Political conflicts are not the only problems nomadic tribes have to face. These Internationally Displaced People (IDP) experience different cultures, religions, languages, and food from the majority population of Bangladesh.

"For kids growing up in indigenous tribes, it's quite an uphill battle to become assimilated to the Bangladesh community," he says. Maung himself grew up speaking his tribal language, picked up a neighboring tribal language, and was schooled in Bengali (the official language of Bangladesh), making English his fourth language.

Today, nearly 2 billion people in developing countries are inadequately educated, receiving little or no education at all. The literacy rate in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a swath of land in southeastern Bangladesh, is below 28%. As director of the Golden Hour Project (under RLI), Maung has contributed to the development of the Padamu Residential Education Centre, which serves 72 students from grades 1-5. "Obviously we wanted to get more students but based on our limited funding, we started with 72. We targeted the children who are either orphans or lost one of their parents. Our goal is to help those children see the window of the outside world and access information in a way where they can connect with each other, allowing them to dream and be inspired."



Children gather to receive donated food and school supplies. (Photo: Maung Ting Nyeu)

The all-inclusive school supports the students's food, schooling, books, clothes, and even the sandals on their feet.

Currently, Golden Hour Project is trying to secure computers through the non-profit, One Child Per Laptop (OLPC)

Maung has volunteered with OLPC writing software and designing a tribal keyboard catered for the children of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. "The short term goal is to benefit the children of the Chittagong Hill Tracts by multilingual keyboard and curriculum that meet the needs of local educators and local people. The long term goal, and the beauty of this project, is that whatever we develop, we can make it available for the whole world...If someone comes from Africa or a remote village in China, and they want to do the same, they do not have to start from ground zero. They can take the framework that we built and adjust them to their local needs," says Maung.

Maung reminds Take Part that the success of the school is due to the combined efforts of numerous passionate individuals. "There are passionate people who are in different industries such as law, or business," he says. "They are also helping us. It is the result of the combined effort of many individuals."

Aid to Cambodia rarely reaches the people it’s meant to help

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Waiting for handouts from tourists

By Joel Brinkley, Sunday, April 17, 7:45 PM

Representatives of more than 3,000 governments and donor organizations are meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Wednesday. If past experience is indicative, they will pledge to provide hundreds of millions in aid.

Most of these donors should simply stay home.

Year after year, smiling Cambodian government leaders attend these pledge conferences, holding out their hands. But first they have to listen as ambassadors and aid officers stand at the podium, look them in the eye, and lambast them for corruption and jaw-dropping human rights abuses.

Each year Prime Minister Hun Sen promises to reform. The donors nod and make their pledges — $1.1 billion last year. Then everyone goes home and nothing changes. In the following months, officials dip into the foreign aid accounts and build themselves mansions the size of small hotels, while 40 percent of Cambodia’s children grow up stunted for lack of nutrition during infancy.

This year should be different. Over the past two decades, the Cambodian government has grown ever more repressive. Now it is actually planning to bite the hand that feeds it: The legislature is enacting a law that would require nongovernmental organizations to register with the government, giving venal bureaucrats the ability to shut them down unless they become toadies of the state.

Eight major international human rights organizations are calling on Cambodia to back down, saying the bill is “the most significant threat to the country’s civil society in many years.” Donors, they say, should hold back their pledges. But they say that every year, and each year the donors ignore them. Meanwhile, the status of the Cambodian people the aid is supposed to help improves little if at all. Nearly 80 percent of Cambodians live in the countryside with no electricity, clean water, toilets, telephone service or other evidence of the modern world.

All of this might surprise most Americans. It has been decades since many people here have given Cambodia even a thought. Forty years ago, Cambodia was on the front pages almost every day as the United States bombed and briefly invaded the state during the Vietnam War. Then came the genocidal Khmer Rouge era, when 2 million people died.

How many know what has happened there since? Last month, the Nexis news-research service carried 6,335 stories with Thailand in the headline. Vietnam had 5,196. For Cambodia, 578.

Most people don’t know that Cambodians are ruled by a government that sells off the nation’s rice harvest each year and pockets the money, leaving its people without enough to eat. That it evicts thousands of people from their homes, burns down the houses, then dumps the victims into empty fields and sells their property to developers.

That it amasses vast personal fortunes while the nation’s average annual per capita income stands at $650. Or that it allows school teachers to demand daily bribes from 6-year-olds and doctors to extort money from dirt-poor patients, letting them die if they do not pay.

This is a government that stands by and watches as 75 percent of its citizens contract dysentery each year, and 10,000 die — largely because only 16 percent of Cambodians have access to a toilet. As Beat Richner, who runs children’s hospitals there, puts it, “the passive genocide continues.”

You wouldn’t know any of that from the donors’ behavior. You see, for foreigners Phnom Penh is a relatively pleasant place to live. Rents are cheap and household help is even cheaper. Espresso bars and stylish restaurants dot the river front — primarily for diplomats and aid workers.

Donors have largely been able to pursue whatever project they wanted without interference. They knew that the government would steal some of their money. But so what?

“Some money goes this way or that way,” said In Samrithy, an officer with a donor umbrella group. “But it’s useful if some of it reaches the poor. Not all of it does but some does. That’s better than nothing.”

Even with that, many donors feel the way Teruo Jinnai does. He’s the longtime head of the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh. “Here I have found my own passion,” he told me. “Here, I can set my own target. So that gives you more power, more energy, more passion.”

Well, Mr. Jinnai, the noose is tightening. If, as expected, the NGO bill becomes law, government repression will reach out for you, too. Isn’t it time, then, for all those donors to make a statement? On Wednesday stand up and tell the government: I am withholding my aid.

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is the author of “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land.”

U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show

Image via Wikipedia

Barada River

By Craig Whitlock, Sunday, April 17, 11:01 PM

The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.

The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups say scores of people have been killed by Assad’s security forces since the demonstrations began March 18; Syria has blamed the violence on “armed gangs.”

Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria. The channel is named after the Barada River, which courses through the heart of Damascus, the Syrian capital.

The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad. In January, the White House posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years.

The cables, provided by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, show that U.S. Embassy officials in Damascus became worried in 2009 when they learned that Syrian intelligence agents were raising questions about U.S. programs. Some embassy officials suggested that the State Department reconsider its involvement, arguing that it could put the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Damascus at risk.

Syrian authorities “would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change,” read an April 2009 cable signed by the top-ranking U.S. diplomat in Damascus at the time. “A reassessment of current U.S.-sponsored programming that supports anti-[government] factions, both inside and outside Syria, may prove productive,” the cable said.

It is unclear whether the State Department is still funding Syrian opposition groups, but the cables indicate money was set aside at least through September 2010. While some of that money has also supported programs and dissidents inside Syria, The Washington Post is withholding certain names and program details at the request of the State Department, which said disclosure could endanger the recipients’ personal safety.

Syria, a police state, has been ruled by Assad since 2000, when he took power after his father’s death. Although the White House has condemned the killing of protesters in Syria, it has not explicitly called for his ouster.

The State Department declined to comment on the authenticity of the cables or answer questions about its funding of Barada TV.

Tamara Wittes, a deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees the democracy and human rights portfolio in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said the State Department does not endorse political parties or movements.

“We back a set of principles,” she said. “There are a lot of organizations in Syria and other countries that are seeking changes from their government. That’s an agenda that we believe in and we’re going to support.”

The State Department often funds programs around the world that promote democratic ideals and human rights, but it usually draws the line at giving money to political opposition groups.

In February 2006, when relations with Damascus were at a nadir, the Bush administration announced that it would award $5 million in grants to “accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.”

But no dissidents inside Syria were willing to take the money, for fear it would lead to their arrest or execution for treason, according to a 2006 cable from the U.S. Embassy, which reported that “no bona fide opposition member will be courageous enough to accept funding.”

Around the same time, Syrian exiles in Europe founded the Movement for Justice and Development. The group, which is banned in Syria, openly advocates for Assad’s removal. U.S. cables describe its leaders as “liberal, moderate Islamists” who are former members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barada TV

It is unclear when the group began to receive U.S. funds, but cables show U.S. officials in 2007 raised the idea of helping to start an anti-Assad satellite channel.

People involved with the group and with Barada TV, however, would not acknowledge taking money from the U.S. government.

“I’m not aware of anything like that,” Malik al-Abdeh, Barada TV’s news director, said in a brief telephone interview from London.

Abdeh said the channel receives money from “independent Syrian businessmen” whom he declined to name. He also said there was no connection between Barada TV and the Movement for Justice and Development, although he confirmed that he serves on the political group’s board. The board is chaired by his brother, Anas.

“If your purpose is to smear Barada TV, I don’t want to continue this conversation,” Malik al-Abdeh said. “That’s all I’m going to give you.”

Other dissidents said that Barada TV has a growing audience in Syria but that its viewer share is tiny compared with other independent satellite news channels such as al-Jazeera and BBC Arabic. Although Barada TV broadcasts 24 hours a day, many of its programs are reruns. Some of the mainstay shows are “Towards Change,” a panel discussion about current events, and “First Step,” a program produced by a Syrian dissident group based in the United States.

Ausama Monajed, another Syrian exile in London, said he used to work as a producer for Barada TV and as media relations director for the Movement for Justice and Development but has not been “active” in either job for about a year. He said he now devotes all his energy to the Syrian revolutionary movement, distributing videos and protest updates to journalists.

He said he “could not confirm” any U.S. government support for the satellite channel, because he was not involved with its finances. “I didn’t receive a penny myself,” he said.

Several U.S. diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funneled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit. According to its Web site, the council sponsors projects in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America to promote the “fundamental elements of stable societies.”

The council’s founder and president, James Prince, is a former congressional staff member and investment adviser for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Reached by telephone, Prince acknowledged that the council administers a grant from the Middle East Partnership Initiative but said that it was not “Syria-specific.”

Prince said he was “familiar with” Barada TV and the Syrian exile group in London, but he declined to comment further, saying he did not have approval from his board of directors. “We don’t really talk about anything like that,” he said.

The April 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus states that the Democracy Council received $6.3 million from the State Department to run a Syria-related program called the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative.” That program is described as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” to produce, among other things, “various broadcast concepts.” Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV.

U.S. allocations

Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, said the Middle East Partnership Initiative has allocated $7.5 million for Syrian programs since 2005. A cable from the embassy in Damascus, however, pegged a much higher total — about $12 million — between 2005 and 2010.

The cables report persistent fears among U.S. diplomats that Syrian state security agents had uncovered the money trail from Washington.

A September 2009 cable reported that Syrian agents had interrogated a number of people about “MEPI operations in particular,” a reference to the Middle East Partnership Initiative.

“It is unclear to what extent [Syrian] intelligence services understand how USG money enters Syria and through which proxy organizations,” the cable stated, referring to funding from the U.S. government. “What is clear, however, is that security agents are increasingly focused on this issue.”

U.S. diplomats also warned that Syrian agents may have “penetrated” the Movement for Justice and Development by intercepting its communications.

A June 2009 cable listed the concerns under the heading “MJD: A Leaky Boat?” It reported that the group was “seeking to expand its base in Syria” but had been “initially lax in its security, often speaking about highly sensitive material on open lines.”

The cable cited evidence that the Syrian intelligence service was aware of the connection between the London exile group and the Democracy Council in Los Angeles. As a result, embassy officials fretted that the entire Syria assistance program had been compromised.

“Reporting in other channels suggest the Syrian [Mukhabarat] may already have penetrated the MJD and is using the MJD contacts to track U.S. democracy programming,” the cable stated. “If the [Syrian government] does know, but has chosen not to intervene openly, it raises the possibility that the [government] may be mounting a campaign to entrap democracy activists.”


whitlockc@washpost.com