Archive 1986 – 2017

Vad slags utbildning kommer Iraks barn att få under ockupationen? Vi har hört det gång på gång och vi känner det som en gammal sanning: våra barn är vår framtid. Under dessa veckor inriktar sig medierna nästan helt på kriget, på militären som “återuppbygger” Irak (efter att ha förstört Irak) och inriktningen är på politik. Men förutom säkerheten är det ingen sida av återuppbyggnaden, försoningen och utvecklingen efter kriget som är viktigare än utbildningsystemet i bred mening. Det förtjänar verkligen mer uppmärksamhet från mediernas sida än vad det får. Det USA:s administration gör just dessa veckor är avsett att få långvarig inverkan på det irakiska samhället – det vill säga om de lyckas. Jag blir därför givetvis mycket nyfiken när en vän för ett par dagar skickar mig en epost och frågar om jag har sett att ett företag som heter Creative International Associates Inc, CAII, och som är baserat...

What kind of education will Iraq’s children get under US occupation? We’ve heard it time and again and we know it’s an old truth: our kids are the future. These weeks, the media focus almost exclusively on the war, on military people who “rebuild” Iraq (after having destroyed it) and they focus on politics. But together with security, no aspect of post-war reconstruction, reconciliation and development is more important than the education system in a broad sense. It certainly deserves more media attention than it gets. What the US occupation administration does these very weeks is intended to have a long-term impact on the Iraqi society – that is if they succeed. Naturally, therefore, I get very curious when, a few days ago, a friend sends me an e-mail asking whether I have seen that Washington-based Creative International Associates Inc, CAII, has been awarded a contract worth US$ 62 million to re-build...

By Margaret Owen Widows for Peace and Reconstruction July 26, 2003 18 June 2003 Dear Senator Clinton NEEDS AND ROLES OF IRAQI WOMEN IN POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION, DEMOCRACY AND PEACE-BUILDING I have often heard you speak about the human rights of women and children in developing countries in general, and in countries afflicted by armed conflict specifically. I have listened to you with admiration at the Beijing Conference of 1995, and at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in previous years. Aware of your commitment to justice for women, I am writing to you on behalf of Iraqi Women in the hope that you will be able to exert your considerable influence in the US Senate to ensure their human rights at this crucial time in their history. I am the Founder of the international, UK-based NGO (with consultative status at the UN) EMPOWERING WIDOWS IN DEVELOPMENT (EWD). After...

LONDON – It is unlikely that the judicial enquiry now set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair following the apparent suicide of David Kelly, the senior expert on weapons of mass destruction, will get to the bottom of why Dr Kelly chose to die. The assumption that he was angered on the one side by a BBC report that erroneously overstated what he had said to one of its reporters or, on the other, that he felt he was being made a fall guy by the government doesn’t add up. He clearly had doubts about the government’s case for going to war, but even inside the ministry of defence he was no lone voice – many of the generals advised against going to war. As for the BBC, at worst the reporter “sexed up” what Kelly told him, a hazard anyone who deals with the press even occasionally is acutely...

LONDON – When six years ago the British lowered the Union Jack on their last remaining important colony, Hong Kong, Chris Patten, the governor, buried his face in his hands, for the entire world to see, and felt the profoundest sentiment a proud and ambitious politician could experience – failure. It was indeed a personal failure to be added to his other great misfortune, the timing of elections back home in Britain that made it impossible for him to become prime minister. But on that damp evening it was the people of Hong Kong, those who knew him well could tell, that pierced his conscience. The British had let them down. They were giving up a colony having unaccountably failed to bequeath it with a functioning democracy. In every country except Palestine in 1948- when the top British officials literally dropped the keys to their secretariat on the steps of the...

LONDON – By now it is fair to say that only the economists and newspaper headline writers are still in love with GNP (Gross National Product) as a way of measuring progress. Everyone in any country that has experienced rapid economic growth, whether it be a mature economy like the United States or Sweden or an up and coming one like Taiwan or Brazil knows from their own bitter experience that it doesn’t tell you that much about a society. It gives a kind of useful bench mark of aggregate economic momentum. But, beyond that, the more one looks at it the more misleading it can become. For most people health, security and love are the three important things in life, and how many people can put their hands on their heart and say they are sure that in their own lives these three things are eternally spoken for. Besides, income...

LONDON – The crisis in the Congo, and to a lesser extent in Liberia, throws into relief an issue that has long lain at the doorstep of the United Nations – whether or not to authorize the use of an almighty force and a civilian occupying administration. It is not just the Americans who have shied away from going all the way. At various times countries from all the four corners have given it short shrift. “Peacekeeping” with lightly armed troops was the compromise, which worked well when both sides arrived at the point (often after a lot of fighting) when they wanted a neutral middleman, as in the Middle East or Cyprus (where it averted a Bosnian type Christian/Muslim war), but less well where things were still on the boil, as in the Congo in the early 1960s and Rwanda in 1994. The question pressed by the widening civil wars...

If Usama bin Laden is still alive – and the indications are that he is – he must be feeling very pleased with himself, because his terrible terrorist activities are beginning to bear fruit, and his main aim of polarising the world and creating a clash of civilisations is on the point of fruition. His call to the Muslims of the world “you are either with the faithful believers or with the infidels”, seems to have been echoed by President Bush’s insistence that “you are either with us or with the terrorists.” Last summer I visited the United States after many years. I was very pleased to find that the Americans have regained their composure after the dreadful events of 11th September and that they are the same positive, optimistic, friendly and hospitable people that they have always been. At the same time, I found some signs of hardening of...

By If Usama bin Laden is still alive – and the indications are that he is – he must be feeling very pleased with himself, because his terrible terrorist activities are beginning to bear fruit, and his main aim of polarising the world and creating a clash of civilisations is on the point of fruition. His call to the Muslims of the world “you are either with the faithful believers or with the infidels”, seems to have been echoed by President Bush’s insistence that “you are either with us or with the terrorists.” Last summer I visited the United States after many years. I was very pleased to find that the Americans have regained their composure after the dreadful events of 11th September and that they are the same positive, optimistic, friendly and hospitable people that they have always been. At the same time, I found some signs of hardening...

LONDON – It is very difficult to know if the U.S. in on course or off course with its policy towards Iran. This is in large measure because Washington hasn’t made up its mind on what course it wants to set. President George Bush said last weekend that an Iran with nuclear weapons cannot be tolerated. At the same time there are no plans afoot to invade Iran and topple the regime and get rid of the country’s alleged possession of dangerous nuclear facilities and materials. Yet no one any longer really doubts that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. (This column argued as long as four years ago that this, in all likelihood, was the Iranian intention.) Surely the U.S. should go into Iran now and get the whole nasty business of regime change over. There are indeed a few outspoken Iranians who say they would welcome this....

The Bush administration told the American people over and over again that war against Iraq was necessary because Saddam Hussein was lying about not having weapons of mass destruction. We were told that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat to the United States. We were told that our government knew where those weapons of mass destruction were located. And yet, after another brutal war in which thousands of innocent civilians were killed, the Bush Administration can produce no evidence that Saddam Hussein had the weapons of mass destruction. Prior to the war, the Bush administration offered detailed descriptions of Iraq’s weapons programs, including the claims famously made by Colin Powell before the UN Security Council. Bush administration claims included assertions that Iraq had a program for enriching uranium, that it had weaponized thousands of liters of biological weapons, including anthrax and botulism, and that Iraq could...

COPENHAGEN – Today Belgium feels the lash. Yesterday so did Denmark and tomorrow, we are promised, so will Taiwan. But none of these three sturdy, self-confident nations is going to buckle. If anything Big Brother publicly humiliating them has toughened their sinews. Belgium came under direct fire last week from Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Defence Secretary, who threatened to move NATO headquarters out of Brussels unless Belgium agrees to re-write its controversial human rights legislation that allows non-Belgians to be tried in Belgium for alleged war crimes on the basis of the now widely accepted principal of international jurisprudence, universal jurisdiction. The principle is enshrined in the statutes of the new International Criminal Court. (Although it gives the right of first crack of the whip to the courts of the country of the accused, an often overlooked point, particularly in the Bush Administration.)  It was also recognized by the British House...