Spellbound

Even though Western commentators praised the elections that were recently carried out in Iraq, Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories, the correspondents seemed to have overlooked the essential fact that popular power and authority don’t rest with the people in any of these entities, even after the elections. If, for example, a referendum were carried out in any of these regions asking the residents whether they wanted the foreign troops to leave, imagine how many would answer positively. But would the forces actually leave these ostensibly democratic areas?

A specter is haunting the Middle East: the specter of "democratic occupation."

It is not surprising that, following the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on Feb. 8, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas used almost the same language to announce a cessation of hostilities between the two peoples. Reading from a prewritten script, they both stated that the Palestinians would stop all acts of violence against Israelis, while Israel would cease all military activity against Palestinians. The director of the show was not Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the host of the event, but newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To be sure, neither Rice nor any other American was present at the summit, but the Bush administration’s spirit was ubiquitous.

Many reporters and analysts applauded the meeting, claiming that it will pave the way for a resumption of dialogue and cooperation. They seemed to suggest that Israelis and Palestinians are on the doorstep of a new era. All of this begs the question: Will the Bush administration manage to stop the seemingly endless cycle of violence and rekindle the so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

The answer is a resounding yes—on the condition, of course, that one believes in magic.

President George W. Bush would have to succeed in casting at least one of two spells in order to create fertile ground for negotiations. He would need to charm Abbas into renouncing the three most essential demands that have informed the Palestinian struggle since the late ’80s: Israel’s full withdrawal to the 1967 borders, the establishment of a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem and the recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees. Or alternatively, Bush would have to enchant Sharon and get him to abandon his plan of creating Palestinian Bantustans in the Gaza Strip and in approximately 50 percent of the West Bank, with no Palestinian right of return and no sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem.

But even if Abbas were to fall prey to the spell, his renunciation would be worthless, because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a clash of civilizations, despite the ongoing attempt of the mainstream media to present it as such. Instead, it’s a struggle between two unequal rivals over land, self-determination and basic human rights. And basic human rights are not a commodity that a leader can easily bargain with or exchange.

It is also difficult to imagine Sharon being so enthralled that he would actually change his position. After all, he was the proponent of “the Jordan is Palestine solution” for many years and currently considers a withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the West Bank as a major concession.

But if the magic won’t work, then how is the Bush administration planning to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why is Secretary Rice so optimistic?

The answer lies in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a unique Middle Eastern model is being enforced. Bush and his aides have managed to resurrect a distinct political practice rarely used in the history of humankind, and for this at least, they deserve credit. For lack of a better term, one could call this practice “democratic occupation,” a neologism recently formulated by former Israeli Knesset member Tamar Gozansky. The strategy is straightforward: gaining and maintaining control of the land, while bestowing a democratic face on the occupation.

Even though Western commentators praised the elections that were recently carried out in Iraq, Afghanistan and the occupied Palestinian territories, the correspondents seemed to have overlooked the essential fact that popular power and authority don’t rest with the people in any of these entities, even after the elections. If, for example, a referendum were carried out in any of these regions asking the residents whether they wanted the foreign troops to leave, imagine how many would answer positively. But would the forces actually leave these ostensibly democratic areas?

Another way of testing these democracies is to ask a series of forthright questions: Will the newly elected Iraqi parliament really rule the country? Does President Hamid Karzai control Afghanistan? And who is in command of the occupied Palestinian territories—Mahmoud Abbas?

Considering that the Bush administration is unwilling to pressure Israel to dismantle all of its settlements and to respect its recognized international borders—the necessary conditions for true negotiations between the two parties—it seems that the Sharm El-Sheikh summit was convened because the administration wants to replicate the “democratic occupation” model in the Israeli-Palestinian context.

This is not to say that Bush lacks talent as a magician. Indeed, since the true goal of his administration is to control and dominate the Middle East, the fact that he has managed to convince the majority of Americans that he is promoting freedom and democracy in the region is no less than fantastic.


Neve Gordon teaches at Ben-Gurion University Israel and is the editor of From the Margins of Globalization: Critical Perspectives on Human Rights. He can be reached here.

Turd Bremer's Mercenaries

U.S. Said to Pay Iraq Contractors in Cash

WASHINGTON - U.S. officials in postwar Iraq (news - web sites) paid a contractor by stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack and routinely made cash payments around Baghdad from a pickup truck, a former official with the U.S. occupation government says.

Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s palaces that served as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority, former CPA official Frank Willis said.

Officials from the CPA, which ruled Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, would count the money when it left the vault, but nobody kept track of the cash after that, Willis said.

"In sum: inexperienced officials, fear of decision-making, lack of communications, minimal security, no banks, and lots of money to spread around. This chaos I have referred to as a 'Wild West,'" Willis said in testimony he prepared to give Monday before a panel of Democratic senators who want to spotlight the waste of U.S. funds in Iraq.

A senior official in the 1980s at the State and Transportation departments under then-President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites), Willis provided The Associated Press with a copy of his testimony and answered questions in an interview.

James Mitchell, spokesman for the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, told the AP that cash payments in Iraq were a problem when the occupation authority ran the country and they continue during the massive U.S.-funded reconstruction.

"There are no capabilities to electronically transfer funds," Mitchell said. "This complicates the financial management of reconstruction projects and complicates our ability to follow the money."

The Pentagon (news - web sites), which had oversight of the CPA, did not immediately comment in response to requests Friday and over the weekend. But the administrator of the former U.S. occupation agency, L. Paul Bremer III, in response to a recent federal audit criticizing the CPA, strongly defended the agency's financial practices.

Bremer said auditors mistakenly assumed that "Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war."

When the authority took over the country in 2003, Bremer said, there was no functioning Iraqi government and services were primitive or nonexistent. He said the U.S. strategy was "to transfer to the Iraqis as much responsibility as possible as quickly as possible, including responsibility for the Iraqi budget."

Iraq's economy was "dead in the water" and the priority "was to get the economy going," Bremer said.

Also in response to that audit, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman had said, "We simply disagree with the audit's conclusion that the CPA provided less than adequate controls."

Willis served as a senior adviser on aviation and communications matters for the CPA during the last half of 2003 and said he was responsible for the operation of Baghdad's airport.

Describing the transfer of $2 million to one contractor's gunnysack, Willis said: "It was time for payment. We told them to come in and bring a bag." He said the money went to Custer Battles of Middletown, R.I., for providing airport security in Baghdad for civilian passengers.

Willis said a coalition driver would go around the Iraqi capital and disburse money from the a pickup truck formerly belonging to the grounded Iraqi Airways airline. The reason is because officials "wanted to meld into the environment," he said.

Willis' allegations follow by two weeks an inspector general's report that concluded the occupying authority transferred nearly $9 billion to Iraqi government ministries without any financial controls.

The money was designated for financing humanitarian needs, economic reconstruction, repair of facilities, disarmament and civil administration, but the authority had no way to verify that it went for those purposes, the audit said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record), head of the Democratic group that is holding Monday's hearing, said he arranged for Willis' testimony because majority Republicans have declined to investigate the suspected misuse of funds in Iraq.

"This isn't penny ante. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars have been wasted and pilfered," Dorgan, D-N.D., said in an interview ahead of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee's session.

Willis concluded that "decisions were made that shouldn't have been, contracts were made that were mistakes, and were poorly, if at all, supervised, money was spent that could have been saved, if we simply had the right numbers of people. ... I believe the 500 or so at CPA headquarters should have been 5,000."

LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer