Eric Margolis

THE THUNDER OF TURKISH WAR DRUMS

The current crisis between Turkey and the Kurds has been building up for decades. In recent weeks, Turkish-Kurdish tensions burst into flames. Marxist-nationalist PKK guerillas fighting for an independent nation for Turkey’s 20 million or so Kurds killed a score of Turkish soldiers and captured eight.

Hundreds more Turkish soldiers have been killed in eastern Anatolia by increasingly effective Kurdish fighters known as `pesh-merga,’ who have been receiving more and better weapons from fellow Iraqi Kurds.

Fiercely nationalist Turks demand their armed forces invade Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish mini-state to destroy PKK bases. The Turks have massed 100,000 troops and armor on their mountainous border with Iraq. Limited Turkish air attacks and ground probes inside Iraq began last week.

A decade ago, I covered the brutal guerilla war in the hills of bleak, windswept Eastern Anatolia between Kurdish PKK guerillas (Turks brand them `terrorists’) and the Turkish Army. At the time, the world ignored this ugly conflict in which 35,000 people had by then died. I came away torn by sympathy for both sides in this tragic conflict.

No one should be surprised by this crisis. Critics long warned the US invasion of Iraq would inevitably release the genii of Kurdish nationalism. Creation of a virtually independent, US-backed Kurdish state in northern Iraq was certain to provoke a violent reaction by Turkey.

Ankara has warned for a decade it would never tolerate creation of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq which it fears would quickly spark demands by Turkey’s restive Kurds for their own state.

Washington has been piously urging `restraint’ on Turkey, a key US-ally. By contrast, after two Israeli soldiers were captured last year in a routine border clash with Hezbullah guerillas, the White House gave Israel a green light to bomb and invade Lebanon, killing over 1,100 civilians and caused $4 billion of damage.

This crisis is a huge mess for all concerned. Turkey provides 70% of air-delivered supplies to US forces in Iraq and allows US military aircraft to use its airspace. Turkey also quietly allows Israel certain overflight rights, which may eventually include the right to launch an air blitz against Iran through Turkish air space. Israel’s recent air attack on a mysterious Syrian building was flown over Turkish territory. Turkey’s military approved the Israeli overflight; its civilian government knew nothing about the attack until afterwards.

Meanwhile, anti-Americanism is peaking in Turkey. Turkey’s powerful army and civilian government make conflicting policies. Turkey’s popular democratic government wants no part of America’s war in Iraq and is loathe to attack Iraq, fearing getting embroiled in the US-created debacle. But Turkey’s powerful military establishment, a state within the state with very close links to the Pentagon and Israel, is pressing for an invasion of Iraq.

Iraq’s Kurds, America’s only ally in that strife-torn nation, discreetly back the PKK, and are working for fully independent Kurdish state. The Kurdish mini-state in northern Iraq is already de facto independent, with its own government, finances, army, and flag. The feeble US-installed regime in Baghdad has almost no influence over the Kurds, even though its president, Jalal Talabani, is also one of the two senior Kurdish leaders.

Turkey’s government must respond to surging public outrage, but fears major military action in Iraq will foreclose its hopes of getting into the European Union, and put it on a collision course with the US in Iraq. Interestingly, US forces in Iraq have turned a blind eye to the PKK’s operations there and to its cross-border attacks into Turkey.

Israel, which has its eye on Mesopotamia’s oil, is secretly backing Iraq’s Kurdish mini-state and hopes one day to build an oil pipeline from Iraqi Kurdistan to Haifa, either via Jordan or through a splintered Syria – which is also high on Israel’s hit list. But Israel is also a close ally of Turkey’s right-wing generals who hate Kurds as much as their own democratic government led by able PM Recep Erdogan. The Israelis are thus caught in the middle of the Turkish-Kurdish conflict, just as they were recently during the bitter dispute between Turkey and the Armenians.

A new danger looms. The US invasion devastated Iraq and effectively split into three pieces - fulfilling the first step in Israel’s grand strategy of fragmenting Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Iraq’s Mosul oil region, which formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire, is a mere 119 kms from Turkey’s border. Kirkuk is only a bit further. After World War I, the British Empire grabbed this oil-rich region, cobbling together the unnatural state of Iraq to safeguard the oil.

If Iraq slides further into the abyss, Turkey and Iran may partition Iraq. Today, Turkey has no oil. Its fragile economy is hammered by having to earn US dollars to buy oil. But if Turkey repossessed Iraq’s northern oil fields, this nation of 70 million with 515,000 men at arms would become an important power that would reassert traditional Turkish influence in the Mideast, Balkans, Caucasus, and Central Asia.

`Pan-Turanism,’ the idea of spreading Turkish influence from its eastern border across the Turkic lands of Central Asia to the Great Wall of China remains dear to the hearts of many Turkish nationalists and far rightists. Iraq’s huge oil reserves are a big temptation Ankara cannot ignore. After all, if the US can invade Iraq for oil, why not neighboring, ex-owner Turkey?

Meanwhile, Washington mutters about launching attacks on PKK, which it also brands `terrorists.’ But with the glaring double standards typical of US Mideast policy, Washington closes its eyes – and may be secretly arming- Iraqi Kurds who are attacking Iran. Turkey insists it is fighting `terrorism’ and has every right to strike into Iraq to protect its national security – one of President George Bush’s justifications for invading Iraq.

This Kurdish fracas comes just as Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush are fanning hysteria over Iran and threatening war. Their latest claim: Iran `might’ have nuclear knowledge, so is a world danger.

Welcome to Washington’s new bogeyman: `thoughts of mass destruction(tmd’s).’

Throw in the growing crisis in key US ally Pakistan, and we face one unholy mess.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

BENAZIR BHUTTO SUPS WITH THE DEVIL

NEW YORK - Just before departing for her dramatic return to Pakistan after years of self-imposed exile, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told me of her joy at going home, and plans to rebuild democratic government in her nation.

Tragically, Benazir’s triumphant homecoming turned into a bloodbath as an attempt to assassinate her in Karachi left nearly 150 dead and hundreds wounded. While the western media blamed Islamic radicals, Ms Bhutto was quickly to accuse unnamed elements within the armed forces and security establishment. She was, in effect, blaming Gen. Musharraf, the man with whom she is now expected to cooperate under a US-brokered power-sharing deal.

Meanwhile, Washington, and even the First Lady Laura Bush, have been blasting Burma’s military junta for brutal repression. At the same time, Pakistan’s US-backed military junta, which receive $1 billion monthly in covert US payments, is waging war against its own restive people, thousands of whom have been killed by the armed forces. According to the Bush Administration’s thinking, shooting and beating rebellious Buddhist monks is evil; shooting and beating rebellious Muslim religious leaders is `anti-terrorism.’

I wished Benazir a bon voyage just before she left Dubai for her historic return home, and cautioned her that my extensive reader mail from Pakistan was running very much against her because of the deal she had made with military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf to allow her return. I reminded her of the old saying, `he who sups with the Devil had better use a very long spoon.’

The widespread view among Pakistanis is that Benazir’s return and impending political power-sharing with Musharraf was engineered by Washington to add a veneer of legitimacy of democracy to his discredited military regime. Unless Bhutto can quickly and decisively distance herself from Musharraf and his Bush Administration sponsors, and show she is really in charge as prime minister, she and her cause may be gravely tarnished.

The US-arranged back-room deal between Bhutto and Musharraf also flies in the face of her claims to be restoring democracy to troubled Pakistan. He is dropping criminal charges for corruption against her – which the general insists are legitimate and she denies – in exchange for her cooperation with his military regime. There is no disguising that this is a tawdry deal worked out with two of Washington’s staunchest Pakistani supporters.

As reported in my recent columns, the US has filled all senior positions in Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence service, ISI, with pro-American generals approved by the Pentagon and CIA. Even if Musharraf is ousted or blown up, the US believes it can retain firm control over Pakistan and use its armed forces to wage war there and in Afghanistan against nationalist and Islamist forces battling western influence.

The military rules Pakistan. Musharraf and his American patrons run Pakistan’s military. So what is left for future prime minister Bhutto?
If Pakistanis conclude she is being cynically used, as it now appears, her political career could founder. If she can somehow push Musharraf and his generals back to their barracks, she will emerge triumphant. One suspects that Bhutto is hoping that Washington will abandon the highly unpopular Musharraf, ease him out of power, and make her the sole leader of Pakistan – with the US-dominated armed forces continuing to hold the real power behind the scenes.

Given the dizzying current political confusion between Musharraf, Bhutto, the Supreme Court, and exiled former PM Nawaz Sharif, it’s impossible to predict what will happen next. But one thing is certain: recent polls show a majority of Pakistanis believe America under President George Bush has launched a war against Islam, and that Musharraf is America’s agent in Islamabad. These disturbing beliefs could easily lead to increasing violence, even full-scale civil war.

Even if Musharraf and Bhutto eventually agree on some form of power-sharing, they will find themselves riding a tiger. America’s 2001 invasion and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, and Washington’s ongoing efforts to control Pakistan’s government, have ignited a spreading regional insurrection against western influence.

If the simmering civil war in nuclear-armed Pakistan blows into a wider conflict, the result will be an exceptionally dangerous world crisis in which nuclear-armed India could quickly become involved. The growing threat of a US attack on Iran will only deepen and spread the danger. An explosion in Pakistan would also isolate US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s most important national institution, the armed forces, has failed its duty to the nation. Instead of allowing itself to be rented like the sepoys in the mercenary armies of Britain’s 19th century Imperial Indian Raj to wage war on its own people, Pakistan’s military should be assuring its commanders serve the interest of the nation, rather than foreign powers. $1 billion a month rents a lot of cooperation, it is true. But Pakistan’s once proud soldiers have sold their honor cheap.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

CHE GUEVARA - MOTHER THERESA OF THE LEFT

NEW YORK – In long-ago 1963, I was attending Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service School in Washington DC. A classmate, whose father was Ecuador’s ambassador, told me the following story.

Ecuador’s then president, Carlos Arosemena, a nationalist firebrand with no love for the Yankees, showed up drunk at a dinner for American officials and Peace Corps workers. Instead of delivering the usual platitudes, he yelled, `why don’t all you damned gringos go home and stop exploiting our country!’

An hour later, Ecuador’s army chief called the Pentagon and asked permission to overthrow the government. The Pentagon gave the green light, the army’s tanks rolled, and `El Presidente’ was bundled off into exile. In those days, truant leaders in Central and South America where quickly deposed by Washington whenever they stepped out of line or angered the large US firms that dominated the region’s economy.

Had I been a Latin American student in those distant days, I might well have become a revolutionary.

An Argentine medical student, Ernesto Guevara, nicknamed `Che,’ did. Outraged by the endemic poverty across Latin America, Guevara determined to launch a crusade against the American Empire, on which he blamed the continent’s ills. But the dashing `Che,’ who has become a worldwide icon and cult figure of youthful struggle against injustice, ended up the tool of another empire, and a truly malign one, the Soviet Union.

Che Guevara joined Fidel Castro’s revolution against Cuba’s US-supported Batista regime. Guevara quickly became Fidel’s right-hand man and hero of the revolution. Cuba was transformed from sleepy banana republic to Marxist police state. This was the only successful battle in which Guevara participated.

However, Guevara was no desk-bound revolutionary, and Cuba was too small for two big revolutionary egos. Che saw himself as natural leader and apostle of anti-western `liberation struggles’ across the Third World. He went off, improbably, to Africa to launch world-wide revolution.

Commemorating the 40th anniversary last week of Che’s death, Fidel Castro hailed him as the `messenger of militant internationalism.’ Old warhorse Castro added. `he still fights with us and for us.’

Fidel is right. The image of the sexy, cigar-chomping Che, raffishly bearded, sporting jaunty black beret, is universal. Youngsters born 25 years after Che was killed wear his image on T-shirts and quote his fuzzy revolutionary maxims. He has become the Mother Theresa of the left.

Today, the Third World has another version of militant revolutionary Che. Osama bin Laden. Like Che’s vow to `liberate’ Latin America, Osama launched a violent, one-man crusade to drive US influence from the Muslim World. Bin Laden commands a similar degree of celebrity across the Muslim World as did Che in 1960’s Latin America.

But for all his panache and swashbuckling, Che failed miserably as a guerilla leader, first in eastern Congo, then, fatally, in Bolivia.

Guevara believed `oppressed’ Congolese would rise up and stage a communist revolution – led, of course, by Che – to overthrow the puppet government installed by Belgian mining interests and CIA. Instead of a revolutionary proletariat, he found tribesmen just creeping out of the stone age who listened to their witch doctors, not the teachings of Karl Marx.

CIA quickly organized a small mercenary army, supported by US pilots flying B-26’s attack bombers. Included in this force were the legendary mercenaries, `Mad Mike’ Hoar and the `White Devil,’ as Africans called him, `Col. Bob Denard,’ who just died this past weekend in France. The CIA’s boys whipped Che’s Cubans and sent them packing.

Che next chose Bolivia, Latin America’s poorest nation, as a target for revolution. Che believed Bolivia’s subsistence farmers would revolt against the ruling, US-backed oligarchy. In reality, Bolivia’s peasants turned their backs on Che and his band of Marxist insurgents and informed the army on their whereabouts.

Guevara was hunted down by a special US unit, led by legendary, Cuban-born CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez. The wounded Che was captured and executed, either by Bolivian soldiers or Rodriguez, on 9 October, 1967. Who killed Che remains a subject of debate and mystery. Interestingly, in 2005, old warrior Rodriguez called for `special action’ against a new Marxist menace, Venezuela’s anti-American leader, Hugo Chavez.

The cult of the sainted Che has obscured the fact he was an ardent Communist. Revelations from KGB files show that `anti-imperialist’ revolutions in Bolivia, Nicaragua and El Salvador, and leftwing groups in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile, were secretly funded and armed by the Soviets. Moscow used both Fidel’s Cuba and Che to undermine US influence in Latin America. Both were eager to cooperate.

Guevara and Castro were hard line Communists from day one, not socialist agrarian reformers, as they pretended, and as myth now holds. Being dedicated Communists meant they were part of history’s most lethal political system that killed nearly 100 million people in the 20th Century – or ten times the number of victims of Hitler’s Nazi system. It is worth recalling that Communist revolutionaries came to power in Russia and China calling for justice and `liberation’ for peasants, yet ended up by slaughtering them by the millions during Soviet collectivization, or causing tens of millions to starve during Mao’s crazy Great Leap Forward.

Che and Fidel had nothing to do with Soviet crimes in Europe, of course, but they did defend and support them, and the political philosophy that engendered them. They supped with the devil in Moscow to advance their cause of anti-Yankee revolution.

In the end, Marxist revolutions failed everywhere except Cuba. But Che and Fidel did have one positive effect. They scared the United States sufficiently to make it cease treating Latin America like a plantation, cease dealing through military juntas, and afford Latin Americans a measure of respect and dignity that had previously been absent.

Now, three decades later, democratic parties of the left have been elected across Latin America, including Bolivia – and the sky has not fallen. Hugo Chavez’s calls for populist socialism and reduction of America’s worldwide influence often echo the fiery orations of Che and Fidel from long ago.

However, this time around, the KGB is long gone, and CIA is busy chasing a new revolutionary menace, this time a new Che Guevara in a turban, Osama bin Laden.


copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

BENAZIR BHUTTO’S REVOLUTION - AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

LONDON – When I met with Pakistan’s former – and likely next - prime minister here in London, Benazir Bhutto looked remarkably relaxed considering she had just flown in from New York and was about to shortly launch a political revolution in Pakistan.

Since we have known one another for years, the mood was informal and congenial, but the subject matter of our lengthy, one-on-one talk fizzed with political electricity and high drama.

Miss Bhutto was cautiously optimistic about the coming months. However, her view of current events in Pakistan was grim. `The situation is ugly,’ she said. Days earlier, many of her Pakistan People’s Party supporters had been beaten with bricks by the police and seriously injured. Pakistan is facing growing violence between the military, Islamic militants, and tribal insurgents. Early this week, over 250 Pakistani soldiers and tribesmen were killed in heavy fighting in Waziristan.

Last month, Pakistan’s first female prime minister gave me a worldwide exclusive, revealing she would return to Pakistan on 18 October. At the time, she still faced serious criminal charges in Pakistan over corruption cases that have dragged on for years. Bhutto denies any guilt and insists the cases were political vendettas. None have ever been proved.

Ms Bhutto reaffirmed she would depart London on the 17th and land the next morning in Karachi, the bastion of her political support.

Bhutto vowed she would go ahead even if forces of the military regime headed by Gen.-President Pervez Musharraf tried to arrest her. But the next day, after weeks of what she termed `stalling’ by Musharraf’s US-backed military regime, the embattled military regime announced corruption charges against Bhutto had been lifted, opening the way for her legal return. Or so it appeared in the murky fog of Pakistani politics.

The fate of Pakistan’s other main political leader, Nawaz Sharif, who was kicked out when he tried to return recently, remains uncertain. Nawaz refused to deal with Musharraf and remains in exile.

Musharraf’s plummeting domestic support and intensified pressure from Washington are pushing the reluctant general into a deal with old foe Bhutto, whose dislike for Pakistan’s powerful military brass is exceeded only by her ardent desire to regain political power.

`No, not a deal,’ insists Bhutto, `a constitutional arrangement.’ Whatever you call it, barring potential last-minute snags, it seems the long-anticipated, American-brokered power sharing agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto is close.

But late last week, Pakistan’s born-again Supreme Court further muddied the political waters by declaring last Saturday’s presidential election could proceed, but it would delay ruling – until the day before Benazir’s planned return - if Musharraf could serve as both president and military leader, a clear violation of Pakistan’s constitution.

Next, Pakistan’s national assembly and regional parliaments voted another presidential term for Gen. Musharraf. This was pure political charade as the vote was boycotted by opposition parties and the assemblies packed by the regime’s supporters, many of whom had been `elected’ by rigged votes.

Hanging over all of this was Musharraf’s threat to declare marshal law and lock up all his political opponents and media critics if he did not get his way. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was clearly put on notice.

`The army would like to distance itself from the perception it is running the country,’ says Bhutto. `The longer military dictatorship continues, the more we will face violence from extremist groups.’

Would the army fight a national uprising against Musharraf, I asked? `No, the army is highly disciplined. The mainly Punjabi army won’t fire on its own people,’ she predicted, nor would it split.

President Musharraf also named loyal ally, military intelligence chief Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, as new armed forces commander, and appointed other loyalists to senior positions. My sources say all were vetted and approved in advance by Washington.

Musharraf may resign as armed forces commander but he and Washington will still pull the military’s strings. Since the military is the only national institution that really works and holds respect, nameplates will change but the power will remain in the same hands as now. Musharraf will also retain another major level of power: dispensing the $1 billion or more a month of US aid – not including secret CIA stipends to senior officials and generals.

Benazir Bhutto, outwardly confident and determined, believes she can take charge of turbulent Pakistan in time to ward off an internal explosion or even civil war that would shake South Asia and deprive the US of a key ally.

But during her previous two terms, she was never fully able to grasp the reins of power and constantly thwarted by her generals. This time around, her position is likely to be even weaker and her powers ill-defined and contested.

Musharraf and the Bush Administration hope she will provide democratic window-dressing while the military runs the show and fights Islamists and tribesmen.

Ironically, while Washington was loudly denouncing Burma’s military junta, it was moving heaven and earth to prop up Pakistan’s military regime, as well as military regimes in Egypt and Algeria, all of whom have killed or jailed far more of their citizens than Burma. It seems beating Buddhist monks is a no-no, but shooting Muslim mullahs and imams is perfectly acceptable.

Meanwhile, Bhutto is determined to get the army out of politics. So who will really be in charge? Will Pakistanis accept a new government hand-crafted by Washington?

`The military is the problem, not solution,’ she says. ‘If there is a fair vote early next year, our party(PPP) and its allies will win.’

High drama awaits Pakistan on the 18TH when Benzair crosses the Rubicon. One should not underestimate this very tough lady, but she has set some very daunting goals.

As I was leaving London, a determined Benazir Bhutto sent me a message worthy of Rudyard Kipling: `Our next meeting, if not at the foothills of the Khyber Pass, then at the shores of the Arabian Sea.’
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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007

BURMA: PROCEED WITH CAUTION

PARIS – The growing unrest and mass street demonstrations that have flared across Myanmar in recent weeks may herald an extremely dangerous period for this nation formerly known as Burma.

Military-ruled Myanmar is extremely difficult to enter and bans foreign journalists. This writer has managed to slip into Myanmar three times. On the last, I was told the secret police were actually conducting bed checks in people’s homes in the capital Yangon (formerly Rangoon)to ensure no trouble-makers from the rebellious northern states were in town.

On my second visit, I eluded the secret police and got to see the nation’s Noble prize-winning democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi in her home, where she has been under house arrest for 17 years.

The crisis in Myanmar seems a simple morality drama. The saintly Suu Kyi is held like a bird in a cage by a junta of brutal, wicked generals, who until recently called themselves the wonderfully Orwellian name of `State Law and Order Council,’ or SLORC for short. In 1988, the junta’s soldiers crushed student demonstrations, killing 3,000. After Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory in 1990 elections, the generals annulled the voted and declared martial law.

This week President George Bush and other western nations called for even tighter sanctions against Burma’s junta and urged its replacement with democratic government.

Burma indeed is a nasty police state. Its generals have plundered resources and kept this magnificent nation in direst poverty. Myanmar is often called a `jewel’ and `unspoiled Asia of 1940’s.’ True enough. But that’s because the junta and its predecessor, mad dictator, Gen. Ne Win, turned Burma into a weird hermit kingdom and one of the world’s poorest countries.

But extreme caution is advised in dealing with Myanmar. If things go wrong there, it could turn into an Southeast Asian version of Iraq, Yugoslavia or Afghanistan.

Myanmar’s central government has been at war for 50 years with 17 ethnic rebel groups seeking secession from the former 14-state Union of Burma created by Imperial Britain, godfather of many of the world’s worst current problems.

Burmans, of Tibetan ethnic origin, form 68% of the population of 57 million. But there are other important, distinct ethnic groups: Shan, the largely Christian Karen, Kachin, Chin, Mon, Wa, and Rakhine, Anglo-Burmese, Indians and Chinese. The largest, Shan, with their Shan State Army, are ethnically close to neighboring Thailand, and in cahoots with the Thai military. Each major ethnic group has its own army and finances itself through smuggling timber, jewels, arms, and drugs.

The military juntas in Rangoon, and its 500,000-man armed forces, know as `Tatmadaw,’ battled these secessionists for decades until the current junta managed to establish uneasy ceasefires with all the major rebel groups.

If the junta were to be replaced by a democratic civilian government led by the gentle Suu Kyi, and military repression ended, it is highly likely Myanmar’s ethnic rebellions would quickly re-ignite. The only force holding Myanmar together is the military and secret police.

Shan, Karen, Kachin, and Mon still demand their own independent nations. Burma’s powerful neighbors – India, China and Thailand – have their eye on this potentially resource-rich nation. They, and neighboring Bangladesh, also fear Burma’s troubles will spill across their borders, as occurred in 2002 when the military junta expelled thousands of Muslims to Bangladesh from the Arakan region.

China exercises strong political, economic and military influence over Myanmar and is building a naval base near Rangoon to give it direct access for the first time to the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean. India sees rival China threatening its rebellion-plagued eastern hill states along the Burmese border, and is increasingly alarmed by Chinese naval ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

A new democratic government in Yangon-Rangoon that is not tough enough to deal with secessionist regions around its troubled periphery could see Burma fall into internal turmoil and also invite intervention by covetous neighbors. At worst, India and China could even clash head-on over control of strategic Burma, a threat identified in my book on Asian geopolitics and Indian-Chinese rivalry, `War at the Top of the World.’

So the west should tread with great caution in Burma. War teaches geography, as Roman historian Tacitus rightly noted, but the western world has not even yet figured out the difference between Bosnians, Croats and Serbs, never mind Wa, Chin, Kachin and Karen.

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copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007