FW: Bush & Co. franchise: International war on dissentersTHIS IS REALLY A WAR
ON DISSENTERS
BY Naomi Klein
September 8, 2003
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/07/1062901938406.html
The war on terror is now a weapon for governments wanting to crush opponents,
says Naomi Klein.
The Marriott Hotel in Jakarta was still burning when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono,
Indonesia's Security Minister, explained the implications of the day's attack:
"Those who criticise about human rights being breached must understand that
all the bombing victims are more important than any human rights issue."
In a sentence, we got the best summary yet of the philosophy underlying George
Bush's so-called War on Terror. Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it
blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism -
real and exaggerated - has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments
around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.
Many have argued that the War on Terror is the US Government's thinly veiled
excuse for constructing a classic empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two
years into the crusade, it's clear this is a mistake: the Bush gang doesn't
have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a
dozen. Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and
they know how to contract out. What Bush has created in the WoT is less a
"doctrine" for world domination than an easy-to-assemble toolkit for any
mini-empire looking to get rid of the opposition and expand its power.
The War on Terror was never a war in the traditional sense. It is, instead, a
kind of brand, an idea that can be easily franchised by any government in the
market for an all-purpose opposition cleanser. We already know that the WoT
works on domestic groups that use terrorist tactics, such as Hamas or the
Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia. But that's only its most basic
application. WoT can be used on any liberation or opposition movement. It can
also be applied liberally on unwanted immigrants, pesky human rights activists
and even on hard-to-get-out investigative journalists.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was the first to adopt Bush's franchise,
parroting the White House's pledges to "pull up these wild plants by the root,
smash their infrastructure" as he sent bulldozers into the occupied
territories to uproot olive trees and tanks to raze civilian homes. It soon
included human rights observers who were bearing witness to the attacks, as
well as aid workers and journalists.
Another franchise soon opened in Spain with Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar
extending his WoT from the Basque guerilla group ETA to the Basque separatist
movement as a whole, the vast majority of which is entirely peaceful. Aznar
has resisted calls to negotiate with the Basque autonomous government and
banned the political party Batasuna (even though, as The New York Times noted
in June, "no direct link has been established between Batasuna and terrorist
acts"). He has also shut down Basque human rights groups, magazines and the
only entirely Basque-language newspaper. Last February, the Spanish police
raided the Association of Basque Middle Schools, accusing it of having
terrorist ties.
This appears to be the true message of Bush's war franchise: why negotiate
with your political opponents when you can annihilate them? In the era of WoT,
concerns such as war crimes and human rights just don't register.
Among those who have taken careful note of the new rules is Georgia's
President Eduard Shevardnadze. Last October, while extraditing five Chechens
to Russia (without due process) for its WoT, he stated that "international
human rights commitments might become pale in comparison with the importance
of the anti-terrorist campaign".
Indonesia's President Megawati Soekarnoputri got the same memo. She came to
power pledging to clean up Indonesia's notoriously corrupt and brutal military
and bring peace to the fractious country. Instead she has called off talks
with the Free Aceh Movement, and in May invaded the oil-rich province in the
country's largest military offensive since the 1975 invasion of East Timor.
Why did the Indonesian Government think it could get away with the invasion
after the international outrage that forced it out of East Timor? Easy:
post-September 11, the Government cast Aceh's movement for national liberation
as "terrorist" - which means human rights concerns no longer apply. Rizal
Mallarangeng, a senior adviser to Megawati, called it the "blessing of
September 11".
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo appears to feel similarly blessed. Quick to
cast her battle against Islamic separatists in the southern Moro region as
part of the WoT, Arroyo - like Sharon, Aznar and Megawati - abandoned peace
negotiations and waged brutal civil war instead, displacing 90,000 people last
year.
But she didn't stop there. Last August, speaking to soldiers at a military
academy, Arroyo extended the war beyond terrorists and armed separatists to
include "those who terrorise factories that provide jobs" - clear code for
trade unions. Labour groups in Philippine free-trade zones report that union
organisers are facing increased threats, and strikes are being broken up with
extreme police violence.
In Colombia, the Government's war against leftist guerillas has long been used
as cover to murder anyone with leftist ties, whether union activists or
indigenous farmers. But things have got worse since President Alvaro Uribe
took office in August 2002 on a WoT platform. Last year, 150 union activists
were murdered. Like Sharon, Uribe quickly moved to get rid of the witnesses,
expelling foreign observers and playing down the importance of human rights.
Only after "terrorist networks are dismantled will we see full compliance with
human rights", Uribe said in March.
Sometimes WoT is not an excuse to wage war, but to keep one going. Mexican
President Vincente Fox came to power in 2000 pledging to settle the Zapatista
conflict "in 15 minutes" and to tackle rampant human rights abuses committed
by the military and police. Now, post-September 11, Fox has abandoned both
projects. The Government has made no moves to reinitiate the Zapatista peace
process, and last month Fox closed the office of the under-secretary for human
rights.
This is the era ushered in by September 11: war and repression unleashed, not
by a single empire, but by a global franchise. In Indonesia, Israel, Spain,
Colombia, the Philippines and China, governments have latched on to Bush's WoT
and are using it to erase their opponents and tighten their grip on power.
Last month, another war was in the news. In Argentina, the Senate voted to
repeal two laws that granted immunity to the sadistic criminals of the
1976-1983 dictatorship. At the time, the generals called their campaign of
extermination a "war on terror", using a series of kidnappings and violent
attacks by leftist groups as an excuse to seize power.
But the vast majority of the 30,000 people who were "disappeared" weren't
terrorists; they were union leaders, artists, teachers, psychiatrists. As with
all wars on terror, terrorism wasn't the target; it was the excuse to wage the
real war: on people who dared to dissent.
Naomi Klein is a Canadian journalist and the author of No Logo.