Untitled Document

WORLD NEWS
No. 221, Apr. 10-16, 2003

South America: political impotence
in the face of crisis
go to article

Rich countries deplete
Africa’s medical resources
go to article

Australian policy on Timorese
refugees ‘immoral’ - critics
go to article

Protesters condemn war on Iraq
as ‘dramatic defeat for humanity’
go to article

Hundreds of casualties each hour
as US takes Baghdad

Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, wounded during an airstrike according to hospital sources, lies in a hospital bed in Baghdad, April 6, 2003. Abbas was fast asleep when a missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned, badly burned and blowing off both his arms. Reuters/Faleh Kheiber

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Apr. 9 (AGR)— Scenes of jubilation mixed with outbreaks of looting erupted across Baghdad on Wednesday as US troops progressed through the Iraqi capital.

Meanwhile, casualties continued to be admitted to hospitals on an average of 100 per hour, as the International Red Cross (ICRC) announced it has suspended operations in Baghdad following the death of a Canadian member of the humanitarian team caught in a crossfire.

Administration officials cautioned that difficult and dangerous days may yet lie ahead for American and British forces.

“The war is not over,” said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer as the cascade of developments hastened internal talks about when and how the president might declare victory.

Iraq’s UN ambassador told reporters that “the game is over and I hope peace will prevail.” Mohammed Al-Douri’s comments to reporters in New York were the first admission by an Iraqi official that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s forces had been overwhelmed.

As US Marines rolled in from the east on day 21 of the war, hundreds of people gutted official buildings, dragging off all they could carry, from air conditioners to flowers.

Reuters television crews watched cheering crowds sack UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel and drive off in UN cars.

Most of the city has been without electricity and water for a week. Working telephone lines are scarce.

Brigadier-General Vincent Brooks said the military campaign would go on to pursue “regime appendages” in various parts of Iraq.

US-led forces have yet to occupy northern cities such as Mosul, Kirkuk, and Tikrit, Hussein’s birthplace and power base, 110 miles north of the capital.

Earlier this week, a US warplane dropped four bunker-buster bombs and blasted a smoking crater 60 feet deep at a building in the capital. The residential area attacked was where US officials believed the Iraqi president was meeting with at least one of his sons and other members of his inner circle.

Residents standing around the rubble said shrapnel killed victims as far as 200 meters away.

The daylight airstrike by a single B-1B bomber broke windows and doors up to 300 yards away, ripped orange trees out by the roots, hurled steel beams 100 yards and left a heap of broken concrete, mangled iron rods and shredded furniture and clothes.

Iraqi rescue workers using a bulldozer to search the rubble said that three bodies had been recovered -- those of a small boy, a young woman and an elderly man -- and that the death toll could be as high as 14. The woman’s head had been severed from her torso.

Workers at a nearby mall swept the glass and other debris from the sidewalk.

“When this war will end? It depends on that scum Bush,” said Amer Hamad Abdullah al-Jabouri, who works at the complex.

Whether Hussein is alive or dead remains unknown.

Journalists killed by US military

Two journalists were killed and at least three were injured Tuesday when US forces fired on their hotel in central Baghdad.

Reuters news agency Editor-in-Chief Geert Linnebank said in a statement. “[The] incident…raises questions about the judgment of the advancing US troops who have known all along that this hotel is the main base for almost all foreign journalists in Baghdad.”

“The tank was receiving fire from the hotel, RPG [rocket propelled grenade], and small arms fire, and engaged with one tank round. The firing stopped,” claimed General Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division.

However, Herve de Ploeg, a journalist who filmed the attack, said “I did not hear any shots in the direction of the tank.”

In the film, the tank’s turret is seen moving towards the Palestine Hotel, where foreign reporters have set up shop, and the gun carriage lifting and waiting at least two minutes.

“It had been very quiet for a moment. There was no shooting at all. Then I saw the turret turning in our direction and the carriage lifting,” said De Ploeg.

“It was not a case of instinctive firing.”

David Chater of Sky News, who was in the hotel, said he saw a tank barrel aiming in his direction just before the blast hit.

“A lot of us feel very vulnerable now. How can we continue doing this if US tanks are targeting western journalists?” he said.

There are fewer media reports now coming out of Baghdad.

The Abu Dhabi TV office in Baghdad was also targeted by US bombing, the station and BBC reported.

Earlier Tuesday, a correspondent for the Al-Jazeera television network was killed when the satellite TV channel’s office in Baghdad was completely destroyed during a US air raid.

The office was heavily damaged by two missiles and another cameraman was injured, Al-Jazeera said.

Correspondent Tareq Ayyoub’s death brings the death toll of journalists and others working for media organizations to eight in just 19 days.

Some Al-Jazeera employees felt the bombing might have been deliberate, as the station has been reporting extensively on the plight of Iraqi civilians and the number of casualties from US bomb attacks.

“We are witnesses to what is happening. We are not a party,” said one Al-Jazeera correspondent. “The killing of colleague Tareq Ayoub and the bombardment of the Al- Jazeera office is to cover up the great crime which the Iraqi people are subjected to at the hands of the United States.” Chief editor Ibrahim Hilal, speaking from the station’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said witnesses “saw the plane fly over twice before dropping the bombs. Our office is in a residential area and even the Pentagon knows its location.”

‘Too many casualties to count’

All across Baghdad, hospitals were inundated with wounded, many of them women and children hit by cluster bombs.

The number of casualties in Baghdad is so high that hospitals have stopped counting the number of people treated, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Sunday.

“No one is able to keep accurate statistics of the admitted and transferred war wounded any longer as one emergency arrival follows the other in the hospitals of Baghdad,” the ICRC said in a statement.

They lay in lines: the car salesman who’d just lost his eye but whose feet were still dribbling blood, the motorcyclist who was shot by US troops near the Rashid Hotel, the 50-year-old female civil servant, her long dark hair spread over the towel she was lying on, her face, breasts, thighs, arms and feet pock-marked with shrapnel from a cluster bomb.

Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12, was fast asleep when war shattered his life. A missile obliterated his home and most of his family, leaving him orphaned and badly burned and blowing off both his arms.

“It was midnight when the missile fell on us. My father, my mother, and my brother died. My mother was five months pregnant,” the traumatized boy told Reuters at Baghdad’s Kindi hospital.

His aunt, three cousins and three other relatives staying with them were also killed in this week’s missile strikes on their house in Diala Bridge district east of Baghdad.

At the hospital, staff were overwhelmed by the sharp rise in casualties since US ground troops moved north to Baghdad last Thursday and intensified their aerial assault.

Medical staff working round the clock without breaks were also hampered by power cuts and the lack of clean water. Back-up generators were being used at the hospitals but they needed to be shut down occasionally to prevent them from overheating.

Ambulance after ambulance raced in with casualties from around the capital. Victim after victim was rushed in, many carried in bed sheets after the stretchers ran out. Doctors struggled to find them beds.

There is no independent figure for casualties but hospital sources put them at hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded.

“Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy. Now I do,” said Doctor Sadek al-Mukhtar. “There are the military and there are the civilians. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians.”

The future

John Bolton, under secretary of state for arms control and international security told reporters he hoped Iran, Syria, and North Korea, will get the message.

“We are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their national interest,” he said, citing the three when asked what the post-war period may hold.

The United States has the “sovereign right” to prosecute Iraqi leaders for war crimes in its own courts, and will not hand Saddam Hussein or his henchmen to any international tribunal, senior US officials said Monday.

Senior Pentagon and State Department officials summoned reporters to hear a pre-emptive rejection of any role for the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- the permanent war crimes tribunal established in The Hague.

Instead, Iraqi leaders accused of war crimes could be tried in federal courts in the United States, or by special military tribunals, they said. The officials claimed that the United States had the right to imprison those found guilty, or sentence them to death, and added that Britain, as its ally in the war, would have the same rights.

As the time arrives for decisions about running Iraq, both the main Kurdish and Shia opposition groups Sunday rejected US plans to put Jay Garner, a retired general, in charge.

“We are concerned that this looks more and more like an occupation,” said Hamid al-Bayati, a senior official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), the most prominent Shia group.

“With this approach the Americans will face both security and administrative problems.”

Fawzi Hariri, an official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), added: “We will always be grateful to the Americans for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but they need to understand that military rule just won’t work.”

Many in the northern-based opposition are privately scathing about those they regard as being dependent on the US -- meaning both the Iraqi-Americans gathering in Kuwait and the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

“What is their constituency? It’s not inside Iraq,” said a senior KDP official. “They don’t even have a medium for talking to people in the country.”

INC head Ahmed Chalabi arrived in Southern Iraq over the weekend, airlifted there by US military forces. The move raised speculation that the Pentagon hopes to bolster his chances of governing a post-war Iraq.

Chalabi has long been a highly controversial favorite of administration officials such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and former Pentagon Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. And though his relations with the CIA have soured completely since he led a failed 1996 uprising, he was once supported by at least $97 million in agency and congressional funds -- money which detractors have accused Chalabi of mismanaging.

Chalabi is a wanted criminal in Jordan, where he was sentenced in absentia to 22 years of hard labor for embezzling $70 million from his family’s Petra Bank. Of late, both the CIA and the State Department have accused him of giving bad intelligence that suggested war in Iraq would be a cakewalk.

Chalabi has little to no support within Iraq.

Reports indicate that hundreds of youth have left Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, and Saudi Arabia to fight against the US invasion.

Saddam Hussein’s ruling Ba’ath Party is secular and has been traditionally discouraged by Islamists, but the government has recently appealed to Muslims to fight against the invaders.

While most of the volunteers are non-Iraqis, there are hundreds of Iraqis in exile who are either returning or want to go back to fight for their homeland. More than 1,000 Iraqis living in Scandinavia have reportedly volunteered to return to their native country.

“These people are our liberators,” said a schoolteacher who lives in an apartment block close to the Palestine Hotel. “They will teach the Americans what it means to come into our land.”

“Maybe the real war will begin after the Americans think it has ended,” the teacher said.

Sources: AP, BBC, Daily Telegraph, Fox News, Guardian, Independent (UK), IPS, New York Times, Qatar News Agency, Reuters

Australian policy on Timorese
refugees ‘immoral’ - critics

By Kalinga Seneviratne

Sydney, Apr. 2 (IPS)-- Australia’s international profile, already hurt by criticism of its role in the US-led invasion of Iraq, is under fire for is its desire to boot out East Timorese asylum seekers who fled the former Indonesian territory more than a decade ago.

The Australian government has through the years approved very few of the refugee applications of the more than 1,600 asylum seekers who fled East Timor after the 1991 Dili massacre by the Indonesian military. Now, they say that peace has returned to East Timor and want the people to go back there.

But in a speech last week, East Timorese President Xanana Gusmao slammed Australia’s policy as lacking in compassion.

Most of these asylum seekers have put down their roots here, and their children have spent their formative years being educated in Australian schools while waiting for their refugee status to be determined by Canberra.

Take for instance Fivo Frietas, whose case epitomizes the irony of Australia’s legalistic approach to the refugee issue. He was named the ‘Young Australian of the Year’ earlier this year for his services to the East Timorese community in Australia -- and five days later received his deportation notice.

“Well, I’m the Young Australian of the Year, but I’m still an asylum seeker,” laughed the 28 year-old Frietas.

“My people here have already integrated their lives, so please let them stay, they are part of Australia,” he pleaded. “I’m an Aussie, but the government doesn’t recognize [and says] ‘you’re not Aussie’.”

Gusmao, who was on a private visit to Australia, said that the reception of the more than 1,600 East Timorese living in Australia “will not incur great hardships on the Australian economy.”

But for the new, impoverished country of East Timor, they “will merely constitute another 1,600 mouths to be fed [and] dozens of more families that we are unable to shelter.”

He has made a personal appeal to Australian Prime Minister John Howard to let the East Timorese remain in Australia until his country is able to get on its feet economically. It is unlikely to be soon, he added. “They (government) say everything is safe in East Timor. Indonesians have gone, a new government has been elected and it is a democratic state,” explained Elizabeth Biok, a solicitor who represents the International Commission of Jurists.

“This puts the asylum seekers in a terrible position. We have no legal grounds to fight. [Our] only hope is to appeal to the minister [of immigration] on humanitarian grounds,” said Biok, who said that the East Timorese refugees have been in a legal limbo for over a decade. Since 1995 she and many others have been fighting a legal battle on their behalf.

Since East Timor became an independent country in May last year, those who have been granted what is called a Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) have been told that this visa will expire soon and they need to go back home.

Two months ago, most of them received letters from the immigration department giving them 28 days to prove that they are legally entitled to remain in Australia.

The immigration department has already rejected over 475 cases, leaving the rest of the 1,130 with virtually no hope of getting permanent residency here.

But Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock refused to concede any ethical ground. “If people decide to avail themselves of judicial procedures -- and a lot of people do -- and they remain in Australia while they exercise these entitlements, that puts no ethical obligation on the government,” he argued on Australia Broadcasting Corp. on Sunday.

Speaking on the same program, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Australia, Michel Gabaudan, said that there is no legal obligation for the Australian government to allow the East Timorese to remain in Australia.

He said Canberra has honored its obligations under international law and “once the circumstances [under which they came here] have been exceeded, there’s nothing in international law which says [that the] governments that have accepted refugees on humanitarian grounds or temporary protection have continuing obligations.”

While conceding the legal arguments, refugee activists argue that Australia does have an ethical obligation to the East Timorese.

Susan Connelly, a Catholic nun of the Josephine order, says that this is the time for Australians to show gratitude to the 40,000 East Timorese who died helping 300 Australians soldiers to escape the Japanese occupation during the Pacific War.

“How do we begin to repay that?” she asked during Sunday’s television program on East Timorese refugees. “One thing we could do is not to send back 1,600 [Timorese] who are basically Australians and who would be a huge drain to the economy there,” she said.

“[They] will not fit in to the society, simply because the fact is that they are Australian and all they need is a piece of paper,” she explained.

Andrew McNaughton, convenor of the Australian East Timor Association, argues that “oil has been a factor all the way through” and this has been “very damaging to the interests of the East Timorese people.”

He points out that these refugees were left in legal limbo in the mid-1990s because Australia had signed the Timor Gap Treaty with the Indonesian government to share the oil wealth there and Canberra did not want to ruffle the sensitivities of the Suharto government by granting these people refugee status here. Among those featured on Australian television in recent weeks are young East Timorese who have grown up here, such as Pedro Cham.

Cham, who grew up in Melbourne and plans to sit for his university entrance exam this year, has been school captain, won three academic awards and holds a part-time job.

His appeal to the government’s Refugee Review Tribunal for permanent residency status has been rejected and his future is in the hands of the immigration minister, who can still grant him that on special case basis.

Cham says his studies are being affected by the uncertainty he faces. “I can’t cope with it any more,” he said.

Biok said one of those rejected is a 72-year-old woman who needs regular medication for a heart problem. “There’s nothing for her there. No support, no medication,” she pointed out.

Said Biok: “It is a very cruel process. It’s absolutely immoral.”

Protesters condemn war on Iraq
as ‘dramatic defeat for humanity’

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Apr. 9 (AGR)— Thousands of anti-war protesters once again took to the streets last week demanding an end to the US led war on Iraq.

Across the US, Britain, elsewhere in Europe, Latin America, as well as the Arab world, several thousands marched through the streets denouncing the military attacks.

In Australia, anti-war demonstrators made a daring protest as the latest contingent of Australians to be deployed to the Persian Gulf was farewelled in Sydney by Prime Minister John Howard on Tues., Apr. 8.

As the HMAS Sydney left Sydney, a number of protesters in small boats chased the vessel, with one managing to climb on to the hull of Sydney to unfurl an anti-war banner.

Police were unsuccessful in attempts to stop the protest and pursued other protest boats following the Sydney.

On Apr. 7, thousands marched in protest in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where US President George W. Bush met with British Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss the war in the Middle East and the Northern Ireland peace process.

Veteran Civil Rights campaigner Eamonn McCann of the Socialist Workers Party lambasted Bush and Blair for their hypocrisy in calling on activists in Northern Ireland to use only political means of action while feeling free to use the bomb and bullet themselves when they do not get their way in international institutions.

Some of Derry’s best known landmarks were transformed by protesters angry at the arrival of Bush. A black shroud was hung over the famous Free Derry Wall and the statue of Celtic goddess Macha at Altnagelvin Hospital was surrounded by candles.

In Iran, police clashed with scores of anti-war protesters who threw stones and firecrackers at the British embassy in Tehran, witnesses said.

The embassy compound has become a focal point for demonstrations against the US-led attack in neighboring Iraq.

Witnesses said a crowd of up to 300 people, apparently members of hardline Islamic volunteer groups, marched to the front of the embassy late on Monday afternoon chanting “Death to Britain” and “Britain and America are the two Satans.”

The clashes outside the British embassy followed a peaceful demonstration outside the diplomatic compound by religious students earlier in the day.

All Iran’s religious schools halted classes on Monday to stage protests against the war on Iraq, the official IRNA news agency said.

In Qom, the center of Shi’ite Muslim learning in Iran about 80 miles south of Tehran, about 3,000 clerics and theological students protested the presence of Western forces close to Shi’ite Muslim shrines in southern Iraq.

Shi’ite Muslim Iran has given repeated warnings to US and British forces not to damage sites in the southern Iraqi cities of Kerbala and Najaf which are home to some of the most sacred shrines for their branch of Islam.

On Sat., Apr. 5, as many as 3,000 people in London, England marched from the BBC Broadcasting House to the US embassy protesting both the war and mainstream media’s coverage of the war and protests were held at several US and British military bases across the United Kingdom.

Thousands in Canada held more rallies against the war in Iraq, denouncing violence and condemning recent comments by US Ambassador Paul Cellucci.

The largest protest was in Toronto, where about 4,000 protesters gathered downtown. About 150 police officers guarded the US Consulate as the demonstrators marched past the building on their way to a nearby square. There were no reports of clashes or other trouble.

Anti-war activists cheered as Shirley Douglas, daughter of New Democratic Party founder Tommy Douglas, rebuked Cellucci for criticizing Ottawa’s decision not to back the use of military force in Iraq, and for complaining about some Ministers of Parliament’s blunt criticism of US President George W. Bush.

“Ambassador, you have found it necessary to scold us, to be cross with us, and you may even want to punish us eventually,” she said.

Peace rallies were held in several other cities in what’s become an almost routine weekend event for the past few months. About 1,000 people gathered in the rain in Vancouver, and roughly 100 turned up in the snow in Halifax.

More than 50,000 people marched through the streets of Multan in central Pakistan on Fri., Apr. 4, denouncing the US-led war on Iraq and urging Muslims to prepare for holy war against “American infidels.”

Demonstrators praised Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, waved placards, and burned effigies of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.

An Egyptian-American civil rights activist and more than a dozen others were arrested in Cairo, Egypt after trying to hold an anti-war protest outside a mosque.

About 20,000 others protested the war elsewhere in Egypt, while in Jordan, hundreds took to the streets chanting “down, down USA” and burning US and British flags.

More than 7,000 people, carrying miniature versions of Scud missiles over their shoulders, stopped traffic in the capital of Bahrain for more than two hours, chanting “Children are dying, women are dying, let’s go on jihad.”

Police used batons and tear gas to disperse thousands of anti-war demonstrators who stormed the offices of two US companies in Bangladesh. Police said at least 50 people were injured.

In Solo, Indonesia, a crowd of 10,000 torched a plastic foam Statue of Liberty and chanted “Bush is a terrorist.”

In Gaza City on the West Bank, of occupied Palestine, about 2,000 supporters of the Islamic militant Hamas group marched to the city center, waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags and carrying a coffin with “UN Security Council” written on it.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, about 1,500 Palestinians burned Israeli, US, and British flags and effigies of Bush, Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

On Thurs., Apr. 3, thousands of people demonstrated in Greece to protest the Iraq war as a nationwide strike shuts down state services and businesses and disrupted flights

The action closed banks, businesses, schools, and stores around the country.

In Athens, about 10,000 people filed past the US Embassy shouting anti-war slogans.

Another 15,000 people marched to the American consulate in the northern port city of Thessaloniki. Smaller protests were held in cities around Greece.

A four-hour strike by air traffic controllers forced the cancellation or postponement of dozens of domestic and international flights at airports around Greece.

“The smoke of war will not drown out our voices,” said Vangelis Motafis, head of Greece’s largest labor union.

The Greek public is overwhelmingly opposed to the war and all main political parties support the daily demonstrations at the US Embassy.

Although the government fully backs the demonstrations, it has allowed the US to use Greek airspace and a US Navy base on Crete in its war on Iraq.

In Britain, more than 5,000 young people brought central London to a standstill on what campaigners branded a “day of shame.”

Banner-waving groups shouted, chanted, and blew whistles outside Parliament hours before an organized demonstration by the Stop the War coalition got underway.

In Brighton, police used pepper spray after a dozen protesters forced their way into the town hall. There were also protests in other UK cities including Glasgow, Leeds, Edinburgh, Bristol, Cambridge, and Sheffield.

Police sealed off Bristol city center and arrested two people after about 400 protesters -- some of them schoolchildren -- flooded the streets.

And in Newcastle upon Tyne, a crowd of up to 250 trade unionists, council workers, and university students gathered in the city center with anti-war demonstrators, bringing traffic to a halt.

The umbrella group Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (CTBI) and The Muslim Council of Britain, took a tough stand in a joint statement.

“In this time of crisis and deep disappointment, it is vitally important that, despite the occasional unhappy use of ‘crusade’ language by some American political leaders, none should see the conflict as one between faiths.”

In Geneva, the World Council of Churches, which links 342 churches in 100 countries, condemned the US attack as “immoral, illegal and ill-advised.”

The group called on Christian churches to cooperate with people of other faiths, especially Muslims, “to restore confidence and trust among the nations of the world.” To head off inter-religious tension, Anglican bishops in some British cities invited Muslims to hold Friday prayers in Christian cathedrals rather than mosques. The Vatican, too, has been very worried that the conflict may harm relations between religions, particularly in Muslim countries where Christians are in a minority. It said the Vatican’s embassy in Baghdad would remain open despite the conflict in order to help oversee Catholic charitable efforts for Iraqis caught up in the war. In Bosnia, the Council of Islamic Community said the attack on Iraq should not be seen as provocation for a religious war and called on all Muslims “not to fall victims to possible provocations.”

France’s Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches also put aside their differences in a joint statement that denounced the attacks as “a dramatic defeat for humanity.” Lutheran leaders in Germany and Scandinavia denounced the war and expressed concern for the plight of refugees.

Riot police used water cannons and batons to push back rock- throwing Egyptian protesters near the US embassy in Cairo and in the city’s central Kasr el-Nil Street, as hundreds of people called for the expulsion of the US ambassador. “Empty Bush’s embassy, and throw out the ambassador,” they chanted. “Americans and Israelis are one enemy.”

In Damascus, Syria, riot police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters who pelted them with rocks and sticks and tried to shove their way toward the US embassy. Police arrested several of the youths.

The demonstrators, waving Iraqi flags and pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called President Bush a “war criminal” and condemned Arab states allied with Washington as traitors and “slaves to America and its dollar.” They demanded Syria expel the US ambassador and close down the embassy, which had been temporarily shut to the public to “assess the security situation.”

Scuffles first broke out when some 1,500 angry protesters in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square faced off with police. Crowds of demonstrators chanted “with our spirits and our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for Iraq,” and “there is no god but God.” As tempers flared, some protesters broke through police lines and tried to storm toward the US embassy, but police held them back with water cannons and batons. Some demonstrators also tried to stone the Egyptian embassy but police stopped them. The protesters called for the death of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who they accuse of failing to act to prevent war on Iraq.

Syria, the only Iraqi neighbor on the United Nations Security Council, is staunchly opposed to the war.

Sources: ABC News, Associated Press, Belfast Telegraph, IMC UK, Reuters, This Day

Rich countries deplete
Africa’s medical resources

By Anso Thom

Apr. 4— Conservative estimates by Wilma Meeus and David Sanders at the University of the Western Cape’s School of Public Health show that the United States has saved at least $3.86 million in training fees by employing doctors from Nigeria, which has lost 21,000 doctors to the superpower.

Nigeria in turn incurred a loss of $420 million, while Zimbabwe conservatively lost $16.8 million through the loss of 840 doctors. According to the United Nations, 31 of 53 African countries have less than 32 doctors per 100,000 people, with 17 of these countries having less than 10 doctors per 100,000 people.

In 41 countries there are less than 135 nurses per 100,000 people. Seventeen countries have less than 50 nurses per 100,000 people.

Meeus said researchers had found that Africa was set to become a major source of migrants during the 21st century, and that 33,800 people migrated annually from Africa since the beginning of the 1990s, of whom about 20,000 to 23,000 are highly skilled.

She pointed out that the available data was incomplete and that it was not possible to establish over what time period the migration occurred.

“It is known that 21,000 Nigerian physicians left for the USA, the Sudan lost 17 percent of its doctors, and Ethiopia and Zambia both lost about 50 percent of its doctors, but the period over which this occurred is lacking,” Meeus said.

Meeus found that between 1985 and 1995, 60 percent of Ghana’s medical graduates left. In 1999, 78 percent of physicians in South Africa’s rural areas were non-South Africans. During the 1990s Zimbabwe lost 840 of 1,200 medical graduates, while at least 2,114 South African nurses left for the United Kingdom during 2001.

A United Nations document published in 2000 stated: “It can be extrapolated that between 1985 and 1990, on the 60,000 professionals who emigrated, the continent lost $1.2 billion. This represents the reverse of what development aid tries to achieve through transfer of technology and human resources.”

The document warned that this development paradox, combined with the limited ability of the African countries in building, retaining, and utilizing indigenous capacities critical to Africa’s growth and development, would deprive Africa of its vital development resources and make it more heavily dependent on foreign expertise.

In the 1970s, the US government calculated that it gained $20,000 for every skilled worker from a developing country.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that for each professional aged between 25 and 35 years, $184,000 is saved in training costs by developed countries.

Meeus said that the 27 richest developed countries have a workforce of about three million professionals educated in developing countries.

Using the conservative figure of $20,000 per person educated outside these 27 countries, the transfer of wealth from developing to developed countries is about $60 billion.

The savings to these rich countries is a staggering $552 billion if the UNCTAD figure of $184,000 is used.

The United Nations also found that Africa spent an estimated 35 percent of overseas donor assistance annually, about $4 billion, on salaries of 100,000 foreign experts (all sectors, not only health) to replace lost capacity, to build capacity, and/or to provide technical assistance.

Source: South African Online Health Service

South America: political impotence
in the face of crisis

By Marcela Valente

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr. 3 (IPS)— Loss of political credibility, agreements to cut short terms in office, calls for resignations and the rupture of party alliances are increasingly frequent proof in South America of its leaders’ inability to confront both economic crisis and the demands of an impoverished population.

“Presidents are finding it difficult to reach the end of their terms and their popularity tends to decline rapidly once they reach power. These are indications of governability problems,” said sociologist Ernesto López, professor at the Argentine University of Quilmes.

“The most significant of these problems is the tension between the demands of a globalized economy and the capacity for social inclusion,” a challenge that the political systems in the region have proved unable to meet, López said.

The subordination of politics to the market devalues the democratic system, provokes a crisis of representation and feeds skepticism among citizens, writes the sociologist in his book Globalization and Democracy.

This situation is expressed with different nuances throughout South America. On one extreme is Brazil, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva continues to enjoy strong popularity since taking office Jan 1.

On the other is Paraguay, whose president, Luis González Macchi, barely ekes out one percent approval in opinion polls.

Shortly after taking office in 1999, González Macchi achieved 80 percent popularity ratings, according to polling firm Gabinete de Estudios de Opinion. In February he scarcely escaped impeachment by the Paraguayan Senate, though he could not refute the various charges of corruption made against him.

The Senate decided to keep González Macchi in office only because of the proximity of presidential elections, to take place this month, say analysts.

A survey conducted in March by the same polling firm showed that 64 percent of the Paraguayans consulted considered the government’s performance “very poor,” 22 percent said “poor,” 12 percent “adequate,” and just 1.2 percent described the González Macchi administration as “good” or “very good.”

Paraguay’s southern neighbor Argentina suffered a dramatic institutional shock in December 2001, when massive protests erupted due to the Fernando de la Rúa government’s failure to respond to deepening social problems. De la Rúa stepped down amidst the chaos just two years into his four-year term.

Adolfo Rodríguez Saá, his replacement named by the Argentine Congress, survived in the post just 10 days. Current president Eduardo Duhalde was designated in his place on Jan. 1, 2002.

Duhalde moved up elections seven months, with his successor to be chosen in a national vote on Apr. 27.

Bolivian President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was on the verge of resigning in January when, just five months after taking office, he was faced with massive peasant protests. Clashes with security forces left 19 people dead. Then, in February, marches by the capital’s police force and the media ended with 33 fatalities.

The inability to satisfy the demands for social programs while also complying with the fiscal adjustment demands imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) destroyed Sánchez de Lozada’s popularity, just as occurred with Argentina’s De la Rúa.

The Bolivian president remains in office, but his approval rating plummeted from 46 percent to 21 percent in six months, according to a study by the polling institute Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado.

Another sign of today’s political climate is the rupture of government alliances as soon as the first difficulties arise in keeping campaign promises. This phenomenon is manifest in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Uruguay.

The demand for Sánchez de Lozada’s resignation came not only from the leading opposition party, the leftist Movement to Socialism of peasant leader Evo Morales, but also from the Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR).

It was precisely the votes of MIR in Congress that allowed Sánchez de Lozada to defeat Morales — the second-place candidate in last year’s elections — to win the presidency.

In Peru, President Alejandro Toledo faced similar demands to step down in early 2002, when the economic crisis dragged him down from the auspicious heights with which he began his mandate.

Toledo was sworn into office July 2001 with an approval rating of more than 60 percent, but his image was eroded to the extent that he maintained the same neo-liberal economic program of his predecessor Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and did not introduce new ways of “doing politics.”

Rising fuel prices, an end to reduced telephone rates, continued privatizations and increasing unemployment chipped away at Toledo’s popularity until it hit bottom in September, with just 11 percent of respondents supporting him, according to Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado.

“IMF commitments stand in the way of Toledo keeping his electoral promises,” commented Peruvian economist Hugo Aquino, of the private Instituto Avance Económico.

“The drama of representative democracies in countries of lower political development is that it favors candidates who make spectacular promises. The electorate does not have the means to realize that they are impossible to fulfill,” noted Aquino.

The same sort of decline that Toledo suffered also hit leftist President Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador. The economic crisis that erupted soon after he took office in January pushed his initial popularity of 65 percent down to 50 percent by March, according to local polling firm Spectrum.

Meanwhile, his partners in the governing coalition threaten to abandon ship.

Gutiérrez’s main ally, the indigenous movement, says the president is not fulfilling his campaign promises and has staked his bets on continuing the neo-liberal policies of his predecessors, with hikes in fuel prices, utility rates and transportation charges.

Another government that is between a rock and a hard place is that of Jorge Batlle in Uruguay. The president has seen his initial approval rating of 57 percent (in March 2000 when he was sworn in) plunge to 15 percent of respondents in surveys conducted by Factum polling company.

His negative ratings, meanwhile, have been just the inverse, jumping from 15 to 63 percent.

Batlle, of the long-standing Colorado Party, was also abandoned by his electoral ally, the country’s other historic political group, the National (Blanco) Party, soon after Uruguay began sinking into its current economic crisis.

“The two traditional parties lost articulation with civil society and have not been able to adapt in changing times,” according to Gerardo Caetano, director of political science at the state-run University of the Republic of Uruguay.

“This inability to adapt has brought with it institutional debilitation,” he said.

“The politicians are beginning to recognize their difficulties in mediating, in representing diverse interests, and in synthesizing those demands in their political programs [due to the fact that] they continue to resort to the same old measures in dealing with new problems,” explained Caetano.

In this sense, said the political scientist, the region’s democracies today are at an “institutional crossroads,” with a panorama of great economic instability and profound social inequalities.

This tense combination will only allow those countries with solid institutions — such as Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay — to successfully confront the challenge, said Caetano.

In López’s opinion, Colombia and Venezuela are on a different political plane. Colombia is unique because its political situation is “determined by the internal war” against insurgent groups and drug trafficking, and Venezuela because of the polarization between those who support President Hugo Chávez and the opposition.