By Walden Bello

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.

Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets.

African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.

From Exporter to Importer

At the time of decolonization in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter, its exports averaging 1.3 million tons a year between 1966-70. Today, the continent imports 25% of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. Hunger and famine have become recurrent phenomena, with the last three years alone seeing food emergencies break out in the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, Southern Africa, and Central Africa.

Agriculture is in deep crisis, and the causes are many, including civil wars and the spread of HIV-AIDS. However, a very important part of the explanation was the phasing out of government controls and support mechanisms under the structural adjustment programs to which most African countries were subjected as the price for getting IMF and World Bank assistance to service their external debt.

Instead of triggering a virtuous spiral of growth and prosperity, structural adjustment saddled Africa with low investment, increased unemployment, reduced social spending, reduced consumption, and low output, all combining to create a vicious cycle of stagnation and decline.

Lifting price controls on fertilizers while simultaneously cutting back on agricultural credit systems simply led to reduced applications, lower yields, and lower investment. One would have expected the non-economist to predict this outcome, which was screened out by the Bank and Fund’s free-market paradigm. Moreover, reality refused to conform to the doctrinal expectation that the withdrawal of the state would pave the way for the market and private sector to dynamize agriculture. Instead, the private sector believed that reducing state expenditures created more risk and failed to step into the breach. In country after country, the predictions of neoliberal doctrine yielded precisely the opposite: the departure of the state “crowded out” rather than “crowded in” private investment. In those instances where private traders did come in to replace the state, an Oxfam report noted, “they have sometimes done so on highly unfavorable terms for poor farmers,” leaving “farmers more food insecure, and governments reliant on unpredictable aid flows.” The usually pro-private sector Economist agreed, admitting that “many of the private firms brought in to replace state researchers turned out to be rent-seeking monopolists.”

What support the government was allowed to muster was channeled by the Bank to export agriculture - to generate the foreign exchange earnings that the state needed to service its debt to the Bank and the Fund. But, as in Ethiopia during the famine of the early 1980s, this led to the dedication of good land to export crops, with food crops forced into more and more unsuitable soil, thus exacerbating food insecurity. Moreover, the Bank”s encouraging several economies undergoing adjustment to focus on export production of the same crops simultaneously often led to overproduction that then triggered a price collapse in international markets. For instance, the very success of Ghana’s program to expand cocoa production triggered a 48% drop in the international price of cocoa between 1986 and 1989, threatening, as one account put it, “to increase the vulnerability of the entire economy to the vagaries of the cocoa market.” 1 In 2002-2003, a collapse in coffee prices contributed to another food emergency in Ethiopia.

As in many other regions, structural adjustment in Africa was not simply underinvestment but state divestment. But there was one major difference. In Latin America and Asia, the Bank and Fund confined themselves for the most part to macromanagement, or supervising the dismantling of the state’s economic role from above. These institutions left the dirty details of implementation to the state bureaucracies. In Africa, where they dealt with much weaker governments, the Bank and Fund micromanaged such decisions as how fast subsidies should be phased out, how many civil servants had to be fired, or even, as in the case of Malawi, how much of the country’s grain reserve should be sold and to whom. In other words, Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reached into the very innards of the state’s involvement in the agricultural economy to rip it up.

The Role of Trade

Compounding the negative impact of adjustment were unfair trade practices on the part of the EU and the United States. Trade liberalization allowed low-priced subsidized EU beef to enter and drive many West African and South African cattle raisers to ruin. With their subsidies legitimized by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, U.S. cotton growers offloaded their cotton on world markets at 20-55% of the cost of production, bankrupting West African and Central African cotton farmers in the process.2

These dismal outcomes were not accidental. As then-U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block put it at the start of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations in 1986, “the idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism from a bygone era. They could better ensure their food security by relying on U.S. agricultural products, which are available, in most cases at lower cost.”3

What Block did not say was that the lower cost of U.S. products stemmed from subsidies that were becoming more massive each year, despite the fact that the WTO was supposed to phase out all forms of subsidy. From $367 billion in 1995, the first year of the WTO, the total amount of agricultural subsidies provided by developed country governments rose to $388 billion in 2004. Subsidies now account for 40% of the value of agricultural production in the European Union (EU) and 25% in the United States.

The social consequences of structural adjustment cum agricultural dumping were predictable. According to Oxfam, the number of Africans living on less than a dollar a day more than doubled to 313 million people between 1981 and 2001 –or 46% of the whole continent. The role of structural adjustment in creating poverty, as well as severely weakening the continent’s agricultural base and consolidating import dependency, was hard to deny. As the World Bank’s chief economist for Africa admitted, “We did not think that the human costs of these programs could be so great, and the economic gains would be so slow in coming.”4

That was, however, a rare moment of candor. What was especially disturbing was that, as Oxford University political economist Ngaire Woods pointed out, the “seeming blindness of the Fund and Bank to the failure of their approach to sub-Saharan Africa persisted even as the studies of the IMF and the World Bank themselves failed to elicit positive investment effects.”5

The Case of Malawi

This stubbornness led to tragedy in Malawi.

It was a tragedy preceded by success. In 1998 and 1999, the government initiated a program to give each smallholder family a “starter pack” of free fertilizers and seeds. This followed several years of successful experimentation in which the packs were provided only to the poorest families. The result was a national surplus of corn. What came after, however, is a story that will be enshrined as a classic case study in a future book on the 10 greatest blunders of neoliberal economics.

The World Bank and other aid donors forced the drastic scaling down and eventual scrapping of the program, arguing that the subsidy distorted trade. Without the free packs, food output plummeted. In the meantime, the IMF insisted that the government sell off a large portion of its strategic grain reserves to enable the food reserve agency to settle its commercial debts. The government complied. When the crisis in food production turned into a famine in 2001-2002, there were hardly any reserves left to rush to the countryside. About 1,500 people perished. The IMF, however, was unrepentant; in fact, it suspended its disbursements on an adjustment program with the government on the grounds that “the parastatal sector will continue to pose risks to the successful implementation of the 2002/03 budget. Government interventions in the food and other agricultural market ... crowd out more productive spending.”

When an even worse food crisis developed in 2005, the government finally had enough of the Bank and IMF’s institutionalized stupidity. A new president reintroduced the fertilizer subsidy program, enabling two million households to buy fertilizer at a third of the retail price and seeds at a discount. The results: bumper harvests for two years in a row, a surplus of one million tons of maize, and the country transformed into a supplier of corn to other countries in Southern Africa.

But the World Bank, like its sister agency, still stubbornly clung to the discredited doctrine. As the Bank’s country director told the Toronto Globe and Mail, “All those farmers who begged, borrowed, and stole to buy extra fertilizer last year are now looking at that decision and rethinking it. The lower the maize price, the better for food security but worse for market development.”

Fleeing Failure

Malawi’s defiance of the World Bank would probably have been an act of heroic but futile resistance a decade ago. The environment is different today. Owing to the absence of any clear case of success, structural adjustment has been widely discredited throughout Africa. Even some donor governments that once subscribed to it have distanced themselves from the Bank, the most prominent case being the official British aid agency that co-funded the latest subsidized fertilizer program in Malawi. Perhaps the motivation of these institutions is to prevent the further erosion of their diminishing influence in the continent through association with a failed approach and unpopular institutions. At the same time, they are certainly aware that Chinese aid is emerging as an alternative to the conditionalities of the World Bank, IMF, and Western government aid programs.

Beyond Africa, even former supporters of adjustment, like the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington and the rabidly neoliberal Economist acknowledged that the state’s abdication from agriculture was a mistake. In a recent commentary on the rise of food prices, for instance, IFPRI asserted that “rural investments have been sorely neglected in recent decades,” and says that it is time for “developing country governments [to] increase their medium- and long-term investments in agricultural research and extension, rural infrastructure, and market access for small farmers.” At the same time, the Bank and IMF’s espousal of free trade came under attack from the heart of the economics establishment itself, with a panel of luminaries headed by Princeton’s Angus Deaton accusing the Bank’s research department of being biased and “selective” in its research and presentation of data. As the old saying goes, success has a thousand parents and failure is an orphan.

Unable to deny the obvious, the Bank has finally acknowledged that the whole structural adjustment enterprise was a mistake, though it smuggled this concession into the middle of the 2008 World Development Report, perhaps in the hope that it would not attract too much attention. Nevertheless, it was a damning admission:

Structural adjustment in the 1980’s dismantled the elaborate system of public agencies that provided farmers with access to land, credit, insurance inputs, and cooperative organization. The expectation was that removing the state would free the market for private actors to take over these functions—reducing their costs, improving their quality, and eliminating their regressive bias. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some places, the state’s withdrawal was tentative at best, limiting private entry. Elsewhere, the private sector emerged only slowly and partially—mainly serving commercial farmers but leaving smallholders exposed to extensive market failures, high transaction costs and risks, and service gaps. Incomplete markets and institutional gaps impose huge costs in forgone growth and welfare losses for smallholders, threatening their competitiveness and, in many cases, their survival.

In sum, biofuel production did not create but only exacerbated the global food crisis. The crisis had been building up for years, as policies promoted by the World Bank, IMF, and WTO systematically discouraged food self-sufficiency and encouraged food importation by destroying the local productive base of smallholder agriculture. Throughout Africa and the global South, these institutions and the policies they promoted are today thoroughly discredited. But whether the damage they have caused can be undone in time to avert more catastrophic consequences than we are now experiencing remains to be seen.
3 June 2008

Sources
1. Charles Abugre, “Behind Crowded Shelves: as Assessment of Ghana’s Structural Adjustment Experiences, 1983-1991,” (San Francisco: food First, 1993), p. 87.
2. “Trade Talks Round Going Nowhere sans Progress in Farm Reform,” Business World (Phil), Sept. 8, 2003, p. 15
3. Quoted in “Cakes and Caviar: the Dunkel Draft and Third World Agriculture,” Ecologist, Vol. 23, No. 6 (Nov-Dec 1993), p. 220
4. Morris Miller, Debt and the Environment: Converging Crisis (New York: UN, 1991), p. 70.
5. Ngaire Woods, The Globalizers: the IMF, the World Bank, and their Borrowers (Thaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), p. 158.

Walden Bello is a senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, a program of Chulalongkorn University’s Social Research Institute, and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) Column

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By Ronnie Cummins

Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news. While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.

The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis: millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels; corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests, floods, and unpredictable weather.

Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that we can move beyond crisis to positive solutions. Connecting the dots in our food-climate-energy crisis, millions of green consumers are voting with their dollars for foods and products that are healthy, locally produced, energy efficient, and eco-friendly. A growing number of politicians, mainly at local and state levels, are also waking up.

Organic food and farmers markets are booming. Chemical-free lawns and gardens, green buildings, solar panels, wind generators, “buy local” networks, and bike paths are sprouting. A critical mass of organic-minded Americans are waking up to the fact that we must green the economy, drastically reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas pollution, re-stabilize the climate, and heal ourselves, before it’s too late.

For 10,000 years locally based family farmers and ranchers managed to grow and distribute healthy food, and ample feed and fiber, largely without the use of petroleum-based chemical fertilizers, toxic pesticides, animal drugs, or energy-intensive irrigation, processing, and long-distance transportation.

In 1945 most of the U.S.’s six million family farmers were still rotating their crops and cultivating a wide variety of fruits, grains, beans, and vegetables organically, fertilizing with natural compost, and generally practicing sustainable farming methods they had learned from their parents and grandparents.
By 1945, as part of the war effort, Americans were growing a full 42 percent of our vegetables and fruits in our backyards, schoolyards, and community Liberty Gardens.

The nutritious, primarily non-processed foods that people cooked for their family meals were purchased from locally owned grocers who stocked their shelves with a wide variety of items - typically grown or raised within a 100 mile radius of our communities.

In the 1950s the average American household spent 22 percent of our household income for fresh, locally produced food. Currently we are spending 13-15%, though low-income households are spending 30-35%.

By today’s standards the post-war generation was relatively healthy in terms of low rates of diet-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, food allergies, birth defects, and learning disabilities.

Sixty years later we have a Fast Food Nation, living in denial (at least until recently), gorging ourselves on the industrialized world’s cheapest and most contaminated fare, allowing out-of-control politicians, corporations and technocrats to waste our tax money on corporate welfare, destroy the environment, starve the poor, wage a multi-trillion dollar war for oil, and destabilize the climate.

The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Turning back to the time-tested practices of local, eco-friendly, organic food and farming will go a long way toward restoring our health and the health of the planet. Revitalizing democracy and bringing our politicians to heel will guarantee that these organic and green alternatives become the norm.

Organic and local farms dramatically reduce energy use in the agricultural sector by 30-50 percent while safely sequestering in the soil enormous amounts of greenhouse gases. Decades of research have shown that small farms produce far more food per acre than chemical farms, especially in the developing world, and that organic farms outperform chemical farms (by 40-70%) under the kind of adverse weather conditions that are quickly becoming the norm. Buying local and regionally grown organic products means food doesn’t have to travel 1500-3500 miles before it reaches your kitchen.

Crisis demands change. We must continue to buy local and organic foods and green products. Patronize farmers markets. Start or expand your garden. Move your diet away from restaurant fare and over-consuming meat and animal products. Buy in bulk and cook your meals at home with healthy whole foods ingredients -vegetables, fruits, beans and grains. If you’re going to eat meat or animal products, make sure they’re both organic and grass-fed or free range. Most important of all, get political. Demand an end to the war. Demand healthy and sustainable food and farming, energy, and climate policies from your local, state, and federal elected public officials or else vote them out of office. Don’t panic - go organic.
13 June 2008

To press the politicians on these burning issues, go to:
http://www.grassrootsnetroots.org

Ronnie Cummins is National Director of the Grassroots Netroots Alliance.

Source: Common Dreams News Center

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MIDDLE EAST STILL AT WAR: THE U.S. IS LOSING BUT THE WINNERS ARE UNCLEAR

by Phyllis Bennis

This is a period of rapid and dramatic decline of American economic power around the world, and that, along with massive anger directed at U.S. policies around the world, has resulted in a precipitous drop in U.S. diplomatic and political influence. As a result, for those committed to maintaining Washington’s superpower status, choosing military force to assert U.S. global reach becomes more, not less likely. Forcing a real end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq is more difficult than ever. U.S. military support to Israel is higher than ever. And the danger of a U.S. military strike on Iran remains as high as ever.

Despite and because of its huge military presence and the continuing horror of the occupation and war in Iraq, there is no question that Washington has lost significant influence in the Middle East. U.S. efforts to dominate and control the region’s governments, resources, and people are failing. U.S.-backed governments and movements across the Middle East are rejecting the Bush administration’s demand that they isolate, sanction, and threaten the other governments and movements that Washington deems the bad guys - those linked to Iran. Instead the U.S.-backed governments are themselves launching new bi-, tri-, and multi-lateral negotiations with “the bad guys” outside of U.S. control, and often in direct contradiction to U.S. wishes.

The Bush administration is making rosy-eyed claims that the Arab world is unified behind its anti-Iran campaign. One of the White House spin shops last week bragged about “growing agreement among regional leaders regarding Iran’s challenge to peace and security.” But in fact, the Middle East is far from unified behind White House positions, and the U.S. is losing. U.S. allies are refusing to toe Washington’s dangerous line of “no negotiations with anyone we say is a bad guy.”

From Baghdad to Beirut, from Ramallah to Ankara and Cairo to Tel Aviv, U.S.-backed governments are talking to, even signing agreements with those Washington loves to hate - those allied with Iran. The occupation-backed Iraqi government is rebuffing the Bush administration’s anti-Iran crusade. The Gulf Cooperation Council - the Saudi-led union of pro-U.S. Arab petro-states - welcomed Iran as a neighboring participant and potential trading partner at their annual meeting last month. The pro-U.S. Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is engaged in backroom unity talks with Hamas, and Israel is quietly negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, with both processes led by the U.S.-backed government of Egypt. The U.S.-backed government in Beirut just signed a formal agreement with the elected Hezbollah-led parliamentary opposition, giving Hezbollah significant new power and allowing the election of a new president not known for pro-U.S. views. Bush’s high-profile “talking equals appeasement” speech in the Israeli Knesset failed to persuade Tel Aviv not to talk to Syria, and Turkey announced it has been hosting Syrian-Israeli negotiations. One unnamed Bush administration official called the new peace talks “a slap in the face.”

The impact of all these developments remains uncertain. Some of these new initiatives may fail, and some (particularly the current version of an Israeli-Syrian rapprochement) may create serious dangers even if they succeed. But what is clear is that it hasn’t been a good season for the war buffs of the Bush administration. Perhaps in response to this increasingly public Middle East repudiation of the U.S. “isolate Iran” strategy, some key Bush administration officials are for the moment backpedaling away from some of their earlier rhetoric. Even as Hillary Clinton speaks of “obliterating” Iran (presumably including its 70 million people), Bush’s favorite general David Petraeus now claims that in dealing with Iran, he favors diplomacy as a first choice. At least for the moment.

So we have to figure out how to build on the changing discourse, understand the still-rising dangers, and turn the work of the anti-war movement to the strategic task of transforming anti-war public opinion into real anti-war policy.

On Iran - softening the rhetoric - for the moment

Largely because of last December’s publication of the national Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program and was not even necessarily interested in building one, anti-Iran rhetoric has been rapidly shifting from Iran-is-building-a-nuclear-bomb to Iran-is-killing-U.S.-troops-in-Iraq-by-arming-militias. Weeks ago the Pentagon claimed it was about to go public to show stashes of weapons allegedly captured in Karbala and from Moqtada al Sadr’s forces in Basra earlier this year. Those weapons were supposedly produced in Iran, thus allegedly “proving” Iranian support for Iraqi militias - but instead the whole propaganda effort collapsed when U.S. inspectors said none of the weapons or ammunition could actually be traced to Iran. As Gareth Porter described it, the effort was aimed at “breaking down Congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.” But the effort failed. The Baghdad press briefing was cancelled. At around the same time, the U.S.-backed Iraqi prime minister Nuri al Maliki sent his own delegation to Iran to discuss “evidence” provided to the Iraqi government by the U.S. about Iranian “meddling” in Iraq. The delegation returned to Baghdad, quietly, and the Iraqi government announced it was creating its own investigation. Furious with the Maliki government’s refusal to join its anti-Iran crusade, one U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times, “we were blindsided by this.”

And now two influential ‘realist’ figures - Zbigniew Brzezinsky and General William Odom, writing in the Washington Post havecalled for an end to the current Bush policy of small carrots and heavy sticks which, they say “may work with donkeys but not with serious countries.” The U.S., they say, would do better “if the White House abandoned its threats of military action and its calls for regime change.”

But changing discourse and winning broad public opposition to the Bush strategy of endless war in the Middle East, does not yet mean an end to the danger.

As we have seen with the Iraq war, even massive shifts in public opinion do not inevitably change policy: even 70% U.S. public opposition to the war has not translated into a shift in policy to actually end the war and occupation.

On Iraq - the discourse and the Congress

The House of Representatives’ recent “no” vote on the supplemental war bill, defeating Bush’s request for $168 billion for funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for more than another year, clearly reflected the anti-war movement’s success (along with the effect of continuing U.S. military casualties and continued U.S. failure) in transforming public discourse on the war. Aside from partisan posturing, there is no way that 149 Democrats would risk actually voting against the war funding unless they could count on public opinion being against the war and in favor of Congress refusing to pay for it. We have created a new reality - in which the political price for supporting the war is higher than for opposing the war. And now even the majority of Democrats aren’t willing to pay that higher price.

Whatever the intentions of war-mongering Republicans or the opportunistic Democratic leadership, and even if the decision is overturned later, the vote simultaneously reflected and enhanced the political legitimacy of a clear anti-war position. For the anti-war movement, it was a huge victory, bringing to fruition - even if only temporarily - at least half of the goal articulated by AFSC’s slogan “not one more death, not one more dollar.”

Israel Talks - to isolate Iran? But occupations continue

The new Israeli-Syrian negotiations, and Israel’s unofficial talks with Hamas stand in direct defiance of Bush’s Knesset speech less than two weeks ago in which he equated “negotiations with the terrorists and radicals” and World War II-era appeasement of Hitler. As the New York Times described it, Israel has become “the latest example of a country that has decided it is better to deal with its foes than to ignore them.”

Certainly talking is better than not talking. But not all talking is serious, and motivations must be considered as well. Prime Minister Olmert is under investigation for bribery, and may soon be indicted. He has pledged to step down from his position if he is charged, but in the meantime he is opening and announcing new “diplomatic initiatives” at a furious pace, presumably at least partly to pressure prosecutors not to risk Israel’s claimed national interests by forcing him to resign.

ISRAEL-SYRIA

The necessary terms for ending the Israeli-Syrian conflict have been clear for many years: Israel would have to return all the occupied territory of the Golan Heights to Syria, in return for a full peace treaty between the two countries.

But there is no indication Israel is prepared to relinquish its longstanding insistence on keeping full control of the Sea of Galilee, permanently preventing Syria from accessing what should be its fair share of the strategic water reserves. Seizing and maintaining control of water resources in the largely arid region has long been a major goal of Israel’s occupations, including that of the Golan Heights. (In south Lebanon, Israel’s desire to access the water of the Litani River led to more than 20 years of occupation, and the apartheid wall currently snaking through the West Bank was built with all the major Palestinian aquifers on the Israeli side of the barrier.)

Certainly Olmert has strategic goals regarding Syria, beyond concerns about his own political future. Israel is trying to pull Syria away from Iran, its strategic ally, with the aim of further isolating Tehran. Israel is trying to force a broad shift in Syria’s regional role, almost certainly demanding that Syria abandon its longstanding support for Hamas and Hezbollah as part of the price for a peace deal with Israel. The White House opposes Israel’s talks with Syria overall, but some in the administration share the goal of splitting Syria from Iran - including some from both sides of the administration’s ideological fault line. Some of the realists who would prefer not to expand the current disastrous wars in the Middle East to Iran may favor an Israeli-Syrian rapprochement as a means of lowering tensions, while some of the reckless war-mongers who remain eager to launch military strikes against Iran may see such an arrangement as easing the way for a glorious new war. Syria would have to decide that a partial agreement with Israel, plus the chance of being removed from the U.S. terrorism list, is worth abandoning its most reliable ally. Possible, but a risky challenge for the weak Damascus leadership.

Further, despite its appearance of independence, NATO member and EU-wannabe Turkey is unlikely to engage in serious diplomacy in direct defiance of Bush’s dictates. And influential voices in the White House continue to say no. Bush’s top Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams (the same who was convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s) is leading the White House opposition by claiming talks with Israel would “reward” Syria. So a serious Israeli-Syrian breakthrough seems unlikely in the short term.

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

The Israeli-Hamas talks being held under Egyptian auspices despite U.S. opposition, are desperately needed. Ending Israel’s criminal blockade of Gaza, that has led to such a drastic humanitarian crisis for 1.7 million Palestinians, is crucial for saving Palestinian lives, as well as for any hope of rebuilding Gaza’s shattered society. Such a step, along with a mutual ceasefire in and from Gaza, could dramatically reduce violence in the area. But so far there is little reason for optimism. Bush’s continuing policy of boycott and isolation of Hamas, means that any European or other support for talks with Hamas will be very limited. There will be little real international governmental pressure on Olmert to negotiate seriously for a ceasefire and ending the blockade, let alone for a real end to Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies, and without that, Olmert has little incentive to change his government’s policies. That is why the international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) remains so crucial as an alternative means of pressure.

Another set of talks is also continuing - this time with U.S. support - between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), ostensibly over long-term “two-state” goals. But those talks are largely a place-holder, with both Olmert and Abbas politically weakened, and with the U.S. undermining any serious talks by continuing to support Israeli annexation of huge blocs of territory and Israel’s denial of the right of return. While those talks go on, the living conditions of Palestinians in the occupied territories continue to deteriorate. The UNRWA director in Gaza called the humanitarian crisis in Gaza “shocking and shameful” - and noted that the agency faces a $117 million funding shortfall.

LEBANON AGREEMENT ENDS FIGHTING BUT...

Lebanon’s U.S.-backed government and the Hezbollah-led opposition finally signed an agreement ending 18 months of political stalemate. The agreement marked a significant victory for Hezbollah - giving it a veto over government decisions, and allowing its military wing to keep its arms. This means defeat of the U.S. effort to maintain control of Lebanon by isolating Hezbollah, disarming it and eliminating it as a political force. But it also means that Lebanon’s confessional political system, imposed under French colonial rule, remains in place. It is a system based on keeping the population divided by religion and sect, making national unity virtually impossible, and making future tensions and instability virtually inevitable - probably as early as next summer’s elections. In the meantime Hezbollah remains more influential than ever - a scenario fraught with its own contradictions.

IRAQ - on the ground

The fighting in Sadr City between the Mahdi Army militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, and the U.S. occupation-backed Iraqi Army, has at least temporarily subsided. But the relative calm is likely to be short-lived, as neither military force was militarily defeated and the issues of occupation and disparities of power remain unresolved. The Mahdi fighters simply stopped fighting at a certain point, and whether they remain in the city, or have regrouped somewhere else, remains uncertain. Sadr City, like much of the rest of Baghdad, is now characterized by high cement walls newly built by U.S. and Iraqi Army troops that divide the city into tiny enclaves. As one NPR reporter described Baghdad today, the city remains perhaps the most militarized city in the world, where one cannot move more than 100 yards before encountering a military checkpoint.

In Iraq, this is what democracy looks like.
28 May 2008

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. Her latest books include the just-published Iran in the Crosshairs: How to Prevent Washington’s Next War available from IPS - info@ips-dc.org or 202-234-9382. Also available on line at www.ips-dc.org.

Source: UFPJ Talking Points

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