US Military deaths in Iraq pass 1000

US Military deaths in Iraq pass 1000

Compiled by Greg White

Sept. 8 (AGR) — The death toll for the US military in Iraq passed 1,000 on Sept. 8 as violence continued to escalate throughout the country. The grim milestone was surpassed after a surge in fighting, which has killed a total of 17 soldiers in the past four days in a spate of attacks in Baghdad and a suicide bombing near Fallujah.

The death toll includes deaths from hostile and non-hostile causes since President Bush launched an invasion of Iraq in March 2003. All but 138 US personnel were killed after combat operations had been officially declared over.

The youngest to die was 18 and the oldest, 59, according to an Associated Press analysis of Department of Defense statistics; 97% were men; about two dozen were women. Although more than 600 were white, others were black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American.

The number of wounded has reached 6,900 according to Defense Department records. 1,100 soldiers and marines were injured in August, which was the highest toll in a month long period since the war began.

The pace of US military deaths has not diminished since the transfer of sovereignty to the interim government headed by Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on June 28.

In June, 42 US troops were killed, in July 54 were killed and in August the death toll was 66.

Bush administration officials sought to put the 1,000 deaths in Iraq in the context of the war against terrorism.

“When combined with US losses in other theaters in the global war on terror, we have lost well more than a thousand already,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, blamed the spike in US combat deaths on an insurgency that “is becoming more sophisticated in its efforts to destabilize the country.”

“We are aggressively seeking and capturing those insurgents who are not willing to do so themselves, but are encouraging people to commit suicide attacks,” Myers told reporters Tuesday. “Make no mistake, we will continue to pursue those who seek to disrupt progress in Iraq.”

Fighting continues in Sadr city

US casualties in Iraq have surged in recent weeks, particularly among Marines in the Baghdad suburb of Sadr city. A breakdown in negotiations in recent weeks between US forces and the Madhi army led by Moqtada al-Sadr has led to sporadic fighting in the Shia neighborhood.

Despite a peace deal that ended three weeks of fighting in Najaf last week, many members of al-Sadr’s militia are thought to have returned to Sadr City with their weapons.

A new eruption of violence brought an abrupt end to a period of relative calm which had followed Sadr’s call last week for a ceasefire and pledge to join the political arena. Al-Sadr aides said fighting broke out after talks with interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s government stalled. The government had refused al-Sadr’s demands to keep American troops out of the neighborhood.

The Iraqi health ministry said 40 Iraqis were killed and more than 270 wounded in overnight clashes on Sept. 6. A US military spokesman said marines came under attack numerous times and that at least one soldier had been killed and two injured while they waited for a team to defuse a roadside bomb.

Fierce battles continued into Sept. 7, killing 2 marines. The clashes marked the deadliest combat in the Baghdad neighborhood since April.

During the fighting, US warplanes flew over the sprawling neighborhood - home to some 2 million people. American tanks, their turrets spinning, deployed in key intersections. Ambulances with sirens wailing rushed the wounded to hospitals as plumes of heavy, black smoke rose over the mainly Shiite neighborhood.

US forces appeared to be carrying out most - if not all - of the fighting. No Iraqi security forces were seen during the clashes, though US spokesmen talked of “multinational forces” involved in the operations, a term that sometimes includes Iraqi troops.

US officials said that gunmen fired on Americans simply carrying out patrols. An al-Sadr spokesman, Sheik Raed al-Kadhimi, blamed “intrusive” American patrolling for provoking the fighting.

Locals said the clashes had broken out after a provocative American patrol went deep into Sadr City, a stronghold of the Mahdi army.

“The Americans tried to arrest some people from the Mahdi army,” said Abu Hussein, a 20-year-old shopkeeper. “They come here, and start randomly arresting and randomly shooting. Then the Mahdi army fires back.”

Sadr city was relatively calm again by Sept. 8. Al-Sadr’s militia announced a unilateral cease-fire but warned it would fight back in self defense.

The militia remained heavily armed and in control of the northern half of Sadr City, a densely populated district of small alleys filled with booby traps and hidden bombs.

Suicide bomb targets convoy outside of Fallujah

Seven US marines and three Iraqi National Guardsmen were killed on Sept. 6 in an attack on a military convoy on the outskirts of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed vehicle after driving along side of the convoy.

The strength of the blast sent the engine from the vehicle used in the bombing flying “a good distance” from the site, a military official said. Witnesses said the attack took place 9 miles north of Fallujah and destroyed two Humvees.

The ambush on the military convoy was the single deadliest strike on US forces since May.

A group linked to Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - Tawhid and Jihad - posted a statement on a militant Web site claiming responsibility for the attack, describing it as “a martyr operation ... that targeted American soldiers and their mercenary apostate collaborators from the Iraqi army.” The group has claimed responsibility for most of the suicide bombings in Iraq in the past year and a half.

The US military retaliated by launching several new airstrikes on suspected insurgent safe houses in Fallujah. Witnesses said flames erupted across whole neighborhoods as US warplanes bombarded suspected guerrilla targets in the eastern part of the city. Clouds mushroomed over the city and people fleeing the chaos spoke of corpses and wounded left behind.

Six Iraqis were reported killed and 24 others injured. In the first attack late on Sept.7, US jets fired several missiles on Fallujah, killing four people and wounding 11 others. A hospital spokesman said that a child and an elderly man were among the dead. US jets struck again the following day, killing two Iraqis.

A US air strike on Fallujah on Sept.1 killed 20 people, prompting a mass demonstration by hundreds of protesters who condemned the killing of civilians by US warplanes.

The city has also increasingly come under heavy artillery fire, sending families fleeing and causing civilian casualties, hospital sources say.

A military spokesman said in a statement that “significant numbers of enemy fighters (up to 100) are estimated to have been killed” by shelling. The claim could not be verified, and officials acknowledged that US forces have not entered the city of Fallujah itself.

Sources: Agence France Press, al-Jazeera, AP, BBC, Guardian (UK), Reuters

Spy probe scans neo-cons’ Israel ties

By Jim Lobe

Seattle, Washington, Sept. 1 (IPS)— The growing scandal over claims that a Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent US neo-conservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years.

According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be identified, the FBI has been intensively reviewing a series of past counter-intelligence probes that were started against several high-profile neo-cons, but which were never followed up with prosecutions, to the great frustration of counter- intelligence officers, in some cases.

Some of these past investigations involve top current officials, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, whose office appears to be the focus of the most recently disclosed inquiry; and Richard Perle, who resigned as Defense Policy Board (DPB) chairman last year.

All three were the subject of a lengthy investigative story by Stephen Green, published by Counterpunch in February. Green is the author of two books on US-Israeli relations, including Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, which relies heavily on interviews with former Pentagon and counter-intelligence officials.

At the same time, another Pentagon office concerned with the transfer of sensitive military and dual-use technologies has been examining the acquisition, modification and sales of key hi-tech military equipment by Israel obtained from the US, in some cases with the help of prominent neo-conservatives who were then serving in the government.

Some of that equipment has been sold by Israel — which in the past 20 years has become a top exporter of the world’s most sophisticated hi-tech information and weapons technology — or by Israeli middlemen, to Russia, China and other potential US strategic rivals. Some of it has also found its way onto the black market, where terrorist groups — possibly including al-Qaida -- obtained bootlegged copies, according to these sources.

Of particular interest in that connection are derivatives of a powerful case-management software called Promis that was produced by Inslaw, Inc in the early 1980s and acquired by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, which then sold its own versions to other foreign intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern Europe.

But these versions were modified with a “trap door” that permitted the seller to spy on the buyers’ own intelligence files, according to a number of published reports.

A modified version of the software, which is used to monitor and track files on a multitude of databases, is believed to have been acquired by al-Qaida on the black market in the late 1990s, possibly facilitating the group’s global banking and money-laundering schemes, according to a Washington Times story of June 2001.

According to one source, Pentagon investigators believe it possible that al-Qaida used the software to spy on various US agencies that could have detected or foiled the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The FBI is reportedly also involved in the Pentagon’s investigation, which is overseen by Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Technology Security John A. “Jack” Shaw, with the explicit support of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The latest incident is based on allegations that a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) career officer, Larry Franklin -- who was assigned in 2001 to work in a special office dealing with Iraq and Iran under Feith -- provided highly classified information, including a draft on US policy towards Iran, to two staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of Washington’s most powerful lobby groups. One or both of the recipients allegedly passed the material to the Israeli Embassy.

Franklin has not commented on the allegation, and Israel and AIPAC have strongly denied any involvement and say they are cooperating fully with FBI investigators.

The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by staunch neo-conservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by William Luti, a retired navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq.

Part of the office’s strategy included working closely with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmad Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaida.

Feith’s office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to whom it “stovepiped” its analyses without having them vetted by professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for Intelligence of Research (INR).

Since the Iraq war, Feith’s office has also lobbied hard within the US government for a confrontational posture vis-a- vis Iran and Syria, including actions aimed at destabilizing both governments -- policies which, in addition to the ousting of Saddam, have been strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hardline neo-conservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle’s associate at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others.

Despite his status as a career officer, Franklin, who is an Iran specialist, is considered both personally and ideologically close to several other prominent neo-conservatives, who have also acted in various consultancy roles at the Pentagon, including Ledeen and Harold Rhode, who once described himself as Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz’s chief adviser on Islam.

In December 2001, Rhode and Franklin met in Europe with a shadowy Iranian arms dealer, Manichur Ghorbanifar, who, along with Ledeen, played a central role in the arms-for-hostages deal involving the Reagan administration, Israel and Iran in the mid-1980s that became known as the “Iran-Contra Affair.”

Ledeen set up the more recent meetings that apparently triggered the FBI to launch its investigation, which has intensified in recent months amid reports that Chalabi’s INC, which has long been championed by the neo-conservatives, has been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran.

Feith has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel’s Likud Party, and his former law partner Marc Zell has served as a spokesman in Israel for the Jewish settler movement on the occupied West Bank. He, Perle and several other like-minded hardliners participated in a task force that called for then- Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to work for the installation of a friendly government in Baghdad as a means of permanently altering the balance of power in the Middle East in Israel’s favor, permitting it to abandon the Oslo peace process, which Feith had publicly opposed.

Previously, Feith served as a Middle East analyst in the National Security Council in the administration of former president Ronald Reagan (1981-89), but was summarily removed from that position in March 1982 because he had been the object of a FBI inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to Green’s account.

But Perle, who was then serving as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, which, among other responsibilities, had an important say in approving or denying licenses to export sensitive military or dual-use technology abroad, hired Feith as his “special counsel” and later as his deputy, where he served until 1986, when he left for his law practice with Zell, who had by then moved to Israel.

Also serving under Perle during these years was Stephen Bryen, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the subject of a major FBI investigation in the late 1970s for offering classified documents to an Israeli intelligence officer in the presence of AIPAC’s director, according to Green’s account, which is backed up by some 500 pages of investigation documents released under a Freedom of Information request some 15 years ago.

Although political appointees decided against prosecution, Bryen was reportedly asked to leave the committee and, until his appointment by Perle in 1981, served as head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a group dedicated to promoting strategic ties between the US and Israel and one in which Perle, Feith and Ledeen have long been active.

In his position as Perle’s deputy, Bryen created the Defense Technology Security Administration, which enforced regulations regarding technology transfer to foreign countries.

During his tenure, according to one source with personal knowledge of Bryen’s work, “The US shut down transfers to Western Europe and Japan [which were depicted as too ready to sell them to Moscow] and opened up a back door to Israel.” This is a pattern that became embarrassingly evident after Perle left office and the current deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, took over in 1987. Soon, Armitage was raising serious questions about Bryen’s approval of sensitive exports to Israel without appropriate vetting by other agencies.

“It is in the interest of the US and Israel to remove needless impediments to technological cooperation between them,” Feith wrote in “Commentary” in 1992. “Technologies in the hands of responsible, friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel, serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote peace thereby.”

Perle, Ledeen, and Wolfowitz have also been the subject of FBI inquiries, according to Green’s account. In 1970, one year after he was hired by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, an FBI wiretap authorized for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing classified information with an embassy official, while Wolfowitz was investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document on the proposed sale of a US weapons system to an Arab government to an Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer.

In 1992, when he was serving as under secretary of defense for policy, Pentagon officials looking into the unauthorized export of classified technology to China found that Wolfowitz’s office was promoting Israel’s export of advanced air-to-air missiles to Beijing in violation of a written agreement with Washington on arms re-sales.

The FBI and the Pentagon are reportedly taking a new look at all of these incidents and others, in the words of a New York Times story on Aug. 29, to “get a better understanding of the relationships among conservative officials with strong ties to Israel.”

It would be a mistake to see Franklin as the chief target of the current investigation, according to sources, but rather he should be viewed as one piece of a much broader puzzle.

Israeli/Palestinian aggression continues with more bombings

Compiled by Josh Ferguson

Sept. 8 (AGR) — Sixteen people, including a 3-year-old boy, were killed and over 90 others were wounded on Aug. 31, in near-simultaneous suicide attacks on two buses in the southern city of Be’er Sheva. The Palestinian military organization Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks, the first suicide bombings inside Israel in five months. Hamas said it was avenging the assassinations of two of its leaders -- Abdel Aziz Rantissi and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin -- earlier this year.

The Palestinian Authority condemned “any attacks that target civilians, whether Israelis or Palestinian,” Palestinian Minister Saeb Erekat said. The United States and European Union also condemned the attacks.

The attacks were the first inside Israel since Mar. 14, when 11 Israelis were killed in part of Ashdod. In the same period, Israeli forces have killed 436 Palestinians. In March, 92 were killed; in May, 128 were killed and 545 wounded; and in August, 43 were killed and 285 were wounded.

In response to the Be’er Sheva attacks, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon vowed that “the fight against terror will continue with full strength.”

One week later, on Sept. 7, the Israeli army followed through with this promise by carrying out an air strike on a Gaza football field where Hamas militants were conducting training exercises. 14 Hamas members were killed in the attack.

Erekat has recently appealed to the international backers of the stalled roadmap peace plan for the region “to intervene immediately” to bring peace to the region.

However, despite international pleas for peace, neither side shows any signs of backing down.

In an official statement, Hamas has vowed that its response to the most recent attacks on Hamas members would be avenged with another attack similar to the one in Be’er Sheva.

“Our response to this crime will come. Our double strike in Beersheva is an example of the kind of blow which we can inflict on the Zionists,” it said in a statement.

Traditionally moderate Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei also warned Israel to expect a “justified retaliation” from Hamas after the 14 were killed in Gaza.

“The ugly crime that was perpetrated by the Israeli occupation…is an escalation of the situation in the area,” Qorei told reporters in Ramallah. “This crime cannot possibly be silenced and will result in justified retaliations.”

Meanwhile, Sharon’s official spokesman, Raanan Gissin, claimed that “the order for the terrorist attacks comes directly from Khaled Meshaal’s bureau based in Damascus… we will strike Hamas everywhere — in Gaza, in Damascus — in order to avoid the assassinations of Israelis,” Raanan Gissin.

Likewise, foreign minister Silvan Shalom had earlier claimed that Syria “is responsible for terrorist acts against us because this country is home of the headquarters of terrorist organizations and orders to carry out these attacks are given in Damascus.”

Although no official offensive against Syria has been initiated yet, government spokespeople continue to assert that they are imminent if Syria continues to harbor Palestinian militants.

Meanwhile, Israel announced that some 150 Palestinians were being freed from military-run detention centers, days after the end of an eighteen day hunger strike by inmates.

Palestinian prisoners called off their hunger strike last week. The hunger strike had been initiated on August 15 in protest of prison conditions. Israeli officials insist that the release of prisoners was merely to make room in the prisons, and that no concessions had been made as a result of the strike.

Israel’s official response to the strike was expressed by the Israeli Public Security Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who told reporters that the prisoners “can strike for a day, a month, even starve to death, we will not respond to their demands.”

Palestinians, who regard the prisoners as heroes of their nationalist cause, demand amnesty for all of the detainees.

“They arrest Palestinians every day, at checkpoints, inside cities and villages, everywhere,” Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Hisham Abdel-Razik told reporters. “It would only take them minutes to arrest the same number [that they are freeing].”

The security sources said none of the freed detainees had been involved in attacks on Israelis. “These are prisoners without blood on their hands,” a military source said.

Many of Israel’s 7,000 Palestinian prisoners were arrested for alleged militant activity and have been held in “administrative detention” without charge or trial — conditions that have drawn censure from international human rights groups.

Tuesday’s release was the biggest since January, when Israel freed 400 Palestinian inmates as part of a prisoner exchange deal with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah.

Those who left Israeli jails Sept. 7 were met with none of the jubilation that greeted Palestinians freed in the Hizbollah deal and in prisoner releases last year that Israel had billed as gestures to bolster US-backed peace efforts.

Most trickled in ones and twos across checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank and were lucky if family members had been given advance notice to meet them, witnesses said.

The Haaretz newspaper quoted military sources saying Israel’s defense establishment was increasingly worried by prison overcrowding.

Sources: Agence France Press, AP, BBC, Reuters

Kurdish refugees’ Tokyo sit-in nears 50 days

By Suvendrini Kakuchi

Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 31 (IPS)— Nearly 50 days have passed since a group of Kurds, desperate for refugee status after years of waiting, launched a sit-in at the entrance of the building in the Japanese capital that houses the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Although the protest has been largely fruitless, they vow to press on.

“There is nothing else we can do. This is our only hope,” said Ahmet Kazankiran, his voice hoarse and eyes blood shot, after spending sleepless nights on the concrete floor with his family and another Kurdish family that includes a two-year-old boy.

The group is demanding that the UNHCR help them acquire refugee status or urge Japan to relocate them to a third country that would be amenable to their asylum request.

Kazankiran, currently fighting a deportation order by the Ministry of Justice, and fellow protestor Erdal Dogan claim they face death if sent back to Turkey because of their activities in Turkey and Japan in support of Kurdish independence.

The Turkish government has banned the Kurdish language and has been suppressing the independence movement.

In addition to their families, an Iranian Kurd has joined the two men joined in their protest.

Last week, Kazankiran was taken to a hospital after showing signs of acute fatigue. His son, Mustapha, who sleeps by his side in the family’s tent, said the stress, intensified by poor living conditions — they sleep only two to three hours a day and are unable to bathe — has taken its toll on everyone.

His 48-year-old father, he added, is growing more desperate as time goes by with no signs of change or help from authorities.

“Since we began our protest, the only response we have gotten was an order to move as quickly as possible,” he explained. “The situation is unbearable.”

Local UNHCR officials have refused to answer questions, but they released a statement last week calling on the Japanese government to assist the asylum seekers, voicing particular concern about the health impact on the young children in the group.

“We are not slaves. We are refugees and must be given our rights,” said 30-year-old Dogan, who has also taken residence at the office building with his family.

The government maintains that people like Dogan want to remain in Japan for economic reasons. The Justice Ministry made public a report, based on an investigation its officials conducted in Turkey, that presumes Dogan is in Japan to earn money.

Human rights activists, however, question the government’s motives, citing Japan’s notoriously poor record in accepting refugees.

Between 1982, when Japan joined the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, and 2002, nearly 2,800 foreigners applied for refugee status. However, only 298 applications were approved. The approval rate last year was even lower, when just 11 of 336 applications were granted.

The numbers are even more dismal for Turkish nationals seeking asylum, 90 percent of whom, according to activists, are Kurds. Over the past five years, none of the 330 applications filed by Turks have been approved.

Japan lags far behind its western industrialized counterparts. The United States and Britain accept about 40,000 refugees annually, while Germany takes in 20,000.

“The plight of the Kurds is an apt illustration of the cold reception for refugees in Japan. There is much to be done to support their psychological and financial needs,” said Eri Ishikawa, spokeswoman for the Centre to Support Refugees, a citizens’ group that provides humanitarian aid to asylum seekers.

The group is now monitoring the protesting Kurds. Ishikawa says members have joined the sit-in and are providing food and other medical needs. “We are so worried about their health, which is deteriorating given the sweltering heat this summer. We are on call 24 hours in case they need us,” she explained.

Kazankiran’s case, according to supporters, is particularly traumatic. A Turkish citizen, he arrived in Japan in 1990 and was later joined by his wife and five children. The slightly built man earned a living doing various work, including truck driving, until an accident caused him to lose his job.

He first applied for refugee status in 1996, but this was not approved. Two later applications were turned down after the Justice Ministry appealed a 1999 decision by the Tokyo District Court that granted him refugee status.

Akikata Kobayashi, a lawyer who has volunteered to represent Kazankiran, said Japanese officials who investigated his case have found discrepancies in his testimony, such as certain dates when he claimed to be in Turkey but was actually in Britain. “Such problems work against his case,” he acknowledged.

Still, Ishizkawa argues that the government’s stance illustrates how human rights and the need to protect people from persecution have less priority in Japan’s policy towards refugees and asylum seekers.

“The issue that faces Japan now is protecting Kurds from persecution in Turkey,” she said. “And clearly, given UNHCR intervention, Kazankiran needs help. That must be the priority.”

Chávez to further strengthen social reforms

By Humberto Márquez

Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 31 (IPS)— The Venezuelan government is creating three new ministries to address economic and social development needs, in an attempt to translate President Hugo Chávez’s triumph in the Aug. 15 recall referendum and the current windfall oil profits into further advances and improvements for the poor.

Chávez announced the creation of ministries of housing and food, and of a third that he said “could be called the ministry of ‘the people’s power,’” which will link the roughly 20 public agencies whose mission is to provide small loans and microcredits to individuals, companies and productive enterprises.

Chávez also called for “strict enforcement of the ‘Land Law’ against the latifundium,” a measure that drew sharp attacks in late 2001 from the business and agribusiness communities, which joined the opposition’s call for a business shutdown and street marches that created the climate in which a short-lived coup d’etat removed the president for two days in April 2002.

The president also ordered the allotment of an additional $100 million to 10 special plans — known as “missions” — that provide food aid and have greatly expanded health and educational coverage for the poor.

Last year, the government’s social programs absorbed between $1.5 and $2 billion, according to independent estimates (official figures have not been made available).

The “missions” have benefited millions of people from the lowest socioeconomic strata in oil-rich Venezuela, where more than half of the population of 25 million lives below the poverty line.

Chávez, who won the Aug. 15 recall referendum with 60 percent of the votes cast and will thus complete his term, which ends in January 2007, said the social programs “must gradually become basic institutions of the new social state,” thus forming part of a broad new social safety net.

“With respect to fiscal questions, we will follow an expansionist policy in terms of public investment, which will bolster and attract private investment,” he added. “We will not follow the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund, which order tight fiscal policies and cuts in social programs.”

In the past few years, Venezuela’s budget has averaged $26 billion a year. Oil exports represent more than half of all fiscal revenues.

This year, several billion dollars in additional oil revenues have flowed into the state coffers because prices are 50 percent higher than the projections on which the budget was based.

Marino Alvarado, president of the local human rights group Provea, told IPS that “the main task in Venezuela, for both the government and the opposition, is fighting poverty.”

Out of a total 12 million economically active people, 15.5 percent are unemployed, according to official figures, while one out of two work in the informal sector of the economy.

In addition, the 2001 census shows that in this country of 6.3 million households, there is a deficit of 1.6 million housing units, and 100,000 new homes are needed every year, due to population growth, said Alvaro Sucre, president of the Construction Chamber.

Housing and employment are overlapping issues, because construction absorbs abundant labor power, “but new resources are needed — some $2 billion — besides the political will to create a (housing) ministry,” said Sucre.

The question of food is one of the government’s major concerns. Among its numerous social programs, it has created a network of shops that sell food at subsidized prices in poor neighborhoods, as well as a network of community soup kitchens.

In Venezuela, the cost of the basic food items needed by a family of five exceeds the minimum salary, which stands at $168 a month, and 12 percent of people over the age of 15 suffer a nutritional deficit.

In his frequent public appearances, the leftist Chávez often expresses his frustration that Venezuela must import staple products that it could be producing, like corn, beans, chicken or sugar.

Nationally produced food only covers 60 percent of the population’s minimum requirements of proteins and calories.

Land ownership is heavily concentrated in Venezuela, as in much of Latin America, in “latifundia,” or great landed estates. According to the National Land Institute, which oversees the government’s land reform and redistribution efforts, 60 percent of arable property belongs to just two percent of landowners.

Under Chávez’s land law, punitive taxes are charged for estates over a certain size that have left land lying unproductive, after which the government can intervene and expropriate idle land.

In addition, the state is repossessing state land that was illegally occupied by large landholders, for redistribution to peasant farmers, mainly through the formation of cooperatives and collective farms, on the argument that this is the only way they can compete with large-scale agribusiness interests.

The distributed land remains in the hands of the state, which is to provide the new cooperatives with housing, health care, education and soft credits. By August 2003, 3.3 million acres had been handed over to just under 63,000 families.

The president recently stated that “Wherever there are latifundia, wherever land has been left unused, the hand of the state should arrive, through the Ministry of Agriculture and the Land Institute.” He also plans to use the army to help carry out an inventory of unproductive rural property.

“We are not enemies of rural estates, we aren’t going to burn them or invade land,” said the president, “but we have a constitution and a land law that must be respected, and the land must be for those who work it, for planting rice, corn and onions. We cannot have empty, unoccupied land.”

José Luis Betancourt, president of the Stockbreeding Federation, which loudly opposed Chávez’s land law when it was passed in 2001, said the president “is repeating the recipe of three years ago, when we asked him to tone down his discourse. That law is a punitive instrument.”

Hiram Gaviria, ex-president of the agriculture federation, who served as ambassador to France under Chávez but has now joined the opposition, said “the problems of agricultural productivity in Venezuela are due to the lack of policies of technical assistance and financing, not the concentration of land.”

The government’s offensive to deepen its social reforms comes at a time when it is in a strong political position, now that Chávez’s mandate was reaffirmed in the unprecedented Aug. 15 referendum, in which he won nearly five million votes, 1.2 million more than he took in the 1998 elections.

The recall referendum left the Democratic Coordinator opposition alliance, and the Fedecámaras business association which leads the coalition, badly weakened.

After the April 2002 civilian-military coup, Pedro Carmona, the head of Fedecámaras at the time, was named de facto president, until Chávez was restored to power by loyal factions of the military and by immense crowds of his supporters.

Carmona’s successor, Carlos Fernández, led a two-month business lock-out and oil strike in late 2002-early 2003 that unsuccessfully demanded that Chávez step down.

Albis Muñoz, the current president of Fedecámaras and one of the members of the Democratic Coordinator’s campaign team for the referendum, which was held after the opposition collected the necessary number of signatures, complained of “fraud” during the Aug. 15 vote.

However, the international election observer teams of the Organisation of American States and former US president Jimmy Carter’s Carter Center said there was absolutely no sign of vote-rigging or other irregularities, and that any complaints of fraud were “unwarranted.”

Chávez has invited the opposition to dialogue, on the condition that it recognize his victory in the referendum. His associates have begun holding meetings with business organizations that have marked their distance from Fedecámaras, like the powerful Venezuelan-American Chamber of Industry and Commerce, most of whose members are US investors.