The Human Costs
Of Four Years Of War
Part One:

The US Invasion Has Ccaused
Nearly Three-Quarter Million
Iraqi Deaths
[www.wsws.org]

On the fourth anniversary of Washington’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq, President Bush delivered a five-minute midday televised speech pleading with the American people to give his latest escalation of the war more time to suppress Iraq resistance to the US occupation.

In a subdued and defensive tone, Bush recycled the same lies used to promote and justify the war since well before the launching of the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad in March of 2003. He claimed once again that the US had intervened because of the “threat” Iraq posed to the world, without mentioning the supposed substance of that threat, weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorist groups, both of which were fabricated by the White House.

He made the absurd claim that the US-backed Iraqi regime is “working to build a free society that upholds the rule of law, that respects the rights of its people, that provides them security . . .” This is under conditions in which death squads and terrorist attacks claim scores if not hundreds of lives daily, and disappearances and torture are rampant.

Finally, he once again invoked September 11, echoing the innumerable attempts of his administration to perform the political sleight of hand of blaming Iraq for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and selling the war of aggression as vengeance for those killed in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon.

Pretext

The “consequences for American security would be devastating,” if US troops were withdrawn from Iraq, Bush declared. He continued, “The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they used to plan the attacks of September 11, 2001. For the safety of the American people, we cannot allow this to happen.”

The reality is that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, which was utilized as a pretext for launching a long-planned war to conquer Iraq and its oil wealth. And the US invasion is the cause of, not the solution to, the chaos in Iraq. The claim that the US troops must remain in the country because otherwise terrorists could set up training camps there could be used to justify the invasion and occupation of any country in the world that Washington perceives as insufficiently stable or repressive.

Bush’s speech provoked predictable rebuttals from his ostensible political opposition, the Democratic leadership in Congress. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada charged that the last four years have amounted to “a series of failures by the Bush administration: failure to plan for the occupation, failure to anticipate an insurgency, failure to provide for our troops, and a failure to level with the American people.”

Others condemned Bush for allowing Iraq to divert military resources from the “real” war on terror.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized Bush’s handling of the war, referring, like many others, to the more than 3,200 soldiers killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands wounded, while adding that the invasion and occupation had brought “our military’s readiness to the lowest levels since the Vietnam war.”

Meanwhile, the House Democrats are moving ahead with plans to approve over $100 billion in “emergency” funding to pay for the war and its escalation, while attaching non-enforceable language suggesting a timeline for the withdrawal of some - though by no means all - US troops from Iraq.

Destruction

What is ignored entirely in this phony debate and largely obscured by the mass media is the staggering level of death and destruction that the four-year-old US war has inflicted upon the Iraqi people.

Press reports marking the fourth anniversary of the war largely glossed over this question, or presented figures that wildly underestimated the death toll.

Thus, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday, “an estimated 60,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US-led invasion on March 20, 2003.”

CNN similarly stated, “Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000, possibly much higher.”

The figure of 60,000 Iraqi deaths was given by both NBC and ABC in their early morning newscasts.

For its part, the cable news network MSNBC declared simply that the number of Iraqis killed was “almost impossible to estimate.”

Casualties

The source of these estimates - or why any estimate is next to impossible - is not explained by these media organizations. It is as if the fate of the Iraqi people - whose “freedom” is constantly invoked as the supposed purpose of the war - is a minor question, of no real interest to anyone.
Even if the unattributed estimates of 60,000 dead were true, it would represent a horrifying slaughter, representing 20 dead Iraqis for every US soldier killed. The reality, however, is that the ratio is at least 200 to 1.

In October of last year, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published the results of a meticulous epidemiological study finding that an estimated 655,000 Iraqis had lost their lives as a result of the US war and occupation between March of 2003 and June of 2006. The public health experts who directed the study - the only scientific investigation of Iraqi casualties - cautioned that the real death toll could be significantly higher and attributed nearly one third of it directly to US military operations.

Given the marked escalation of the violence in the past several months, it is entirely likely that three-quarters of a million Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation of their country.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m20.shtml

British Government Scientists
Vouched For Validity Of Study
Estimating 655,000 War Deaths In Iraq

By Naomi Spencer
28 March 2007
[www.wsws.org]

British government scientists endorsed the validity of a study released last October that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, the BBC reported March 26.

Despite the advice of its own scientists, however, the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with US President Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard, brushed aside the study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the British medical journal the Lancet, calling its methodology “flawed” and its results “suspect.” The media in both the US and Britain buried the report.

According to documents obtained by the BBC World Service’s “Newshour” program under a freedom of information request, senior officials and scientists had advised the Blair government against publicly criticizing the findings, saying that the methodology was “a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”

The BBC report confirms the validity of the Johns Hopkins study and underscores the monumental scale of US and British war crimes in Iraq. It also highlights the dishonesty and complicity of the media in these crimes.

The Johns Hopkins study, published October 11, 2006, compared mortality rates before and after the US-led invasion by conducting thousands of interviews in Iraq. The survey was an enormous undertaking, with a sample size of over 12,800 individuals in 1,849 households in 47 randomly chosen areas throughout the country. With 95 percent statistical certainty, researchers concluded that the number of war dead was between 392,979 and 942,636, with the highest statistical likelihood around 655,000.

In 92 percent of the interviews, respondents furnished death certificates for the researchers. They concluded that, in three years, 2.5 percent of the Iraqi population had been killed in the war - an average of more than 500 a day. Most of the deaths were from gunfire. If the rate of Iraqi deaths were extrapolated to the US population, the toll of American fatalities would be 7.5 million - nearly equal to the population of New York City.

President Bush

At a press conference the same day the study was published, President Bush told reporters, “I don’t consider it a credible report . . . Neither does General Casey, neither do Iraqi officials.” The Iraqi Health Ministry’s mortality estimate is one-tenth the Johns Hopkins estimate. Without providing an explanation, alternative estimate, or even demonstrating that he had read the study, Bush described the methodology as “pretty well discredited.”

Australian Prime Minister Howard declared, “I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research. I don’t. It’s not plausible. It’s not based on anything other than a house-to-house survey.”

Likewise, a spokesman for Tony Blair told the press, “The problem is they’re using an extrapolation technique from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq which isn’t representative of the country as a whole. We have questioned that technique right from the beginning and we continue to do so.”

The British government issued a statement following Monday’s BBC report in which it reiterated the same “uncertainty:” “The methodology has been used in other conflict situations, notably the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, the Lancet figures are much higher than statistics from other sources, which only goes to show how estimates can vary enormously according to the method of collection.”

Among the documents obtained by the BBC was a memo by the chief scientific adviser at the British Ministry of Defense, Roy Anderson, written just two days after the Johns Hopkins study was published. The memo said, “The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq.”

Responding to Anderson’s memo, a British government official wrote, “Are we really sure the report is likely to be right? That is certainly what the brief implies.”

Another official responded to Anderson’s statement: “We do not accept the figures quoted in the Lancet survey as accurate.” Yet in the same email, the official stated, “However, the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.”

Political

Clearly, the reason the Blair government did not accept the estimates had nothing to do with the science, and everything to do with the political and legal implications of a death toll on the scale of genocide for which the US-led coalition is responsible.

There has been virtually no US media coverage of the BBC’s damning report. A day after the story broke in Britain, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, the four major broadcast networks and other outlets failed to mention the report. Only the Washington Times online picked up the story, reposting a United Press International brief of less than two hundred words.

The mainstream press has played an integral role in suppressing politically damaging information from the build-up to the Iraq invasion up to the present. With its latest blackout, the US media yet again affirms its complicity in the mass killing and social devastation carried out by American imperialism in Iraq.

Last October, when the Johns Hopkins study was released, the New York Times and Washington Post buried the story in their back pages and made no editorial comment. When confronted by reporters for the World Socialist Web Site about his newspaper’s handling of the subject during a talk on security and press freedom at the University of Michigan in October, New York Times editor Bill Keller shrugged off the suppression of the story, saying, “We didn’t splash it on the front page.”

On October 18, 2006, the Wall Street Journal ran the despicably entitled opinion piece, “655,000 War Dead? A Bogus Study on Iraq Casualties.” It was written by Steven Moore, who had worked under Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Declaring that “the Johns Hopkins tally is wildly at odds with any numbers I have seen in that country,” Moore suggested that the study was ideologically biased.

As the blackout on Monday’s BBC report makes clear, the media continues to keep people in the dark about the scale of the carnage in Iraq and shield those who are responsible.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m28.shtml

The Bush Administration
Manoeuvres To Unseat
Iraqi Government

By Peter Symonds
16 March 2007
[www.wsws.org]

Despite denials from Washington, there are growing signs that the Bush administration has issued threats to its puppet government in Baghdad to meet US-dictated “benchmarks” or face the consequences. The White House aims not only to end the military disaster in Iraq and open up the country’s oil for exploitation, but to fashion an Iraqi regime more supportive of US preparations for aggression against Iran.

Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki feared the Bush administration would “torpedo” his government if it failed to meet US demands. The article highlighted a US threat to withdraw support from the government if it failed to pass a draft hydrocarbons law by the end of June that would open up Iraqi oil and gas fields to American corporations.

In line with its efforts to forge an alliance of so-called Sunni states against Shiite Iran, Washington is also demanding a government in Baghdad by the end of the year “acceptable to the country’s Sunni Arab neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt”. These governments are concerned that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the emergence of a Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad have bolstered Iran’s influence in Iraq and throughout the region.

The Arab League, which consists largely of states controlled by Sunni elites, issued a statement earlier this month demanding an end to anti-Sunni discrimination and measures to enhance the political role of the Sunni minority, which formed the social base of Hussein’s Baathist regime. The comments provoked an angry statement from the ruling Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), denouncing the Arab League for its “flagrant interference in Iraq’s internal affairs,” which would “incite discord and acts of violence inside Iraq”.

The US has reinforced “Sunni” demands by imposing “benchmarks” on the Maliki government, requiring a reversal of previous de-Baathification laws, fresh elections for regional councils and changes to the present Iraqi constitution. The measures would open the door for members of the Sunni elite to play a greater political role and resume their posts in the state bureaucracy and security forces.

Oil Law

The New York Times yesterday reported that the Maliki government had already failed to meet these objectives which were due to be completed this month. A Pentagon assessment submitted to the US Congress on Wednesday said Maliki had “promised to reform his government, beginning with his cabinet and ministries,” but there had been no changes as yet. It also pointed to “little progress on the reconciliation front [with Sunnis]” and modest steps toward finalising the oil legislation.

At the end of last month, the Maliki cabinet, under pressure from Washington, adopted an oil law aimed at ending the bitter differences over the internal sharing of revenues. But the legislation is yet to be passed by the national assembly, where it is opposed by two significant blocs—the Iraqi National List led by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and the Sunni-based Iraqi Accord Front. Both are demanding constitutional changes to enhance the position of Sunnis as the price for supporting the oil legislation.

As a result, Maliki is caught in a dilemma. Any concessions to the Sunni minority are bitterly opposed by the Shiite fundamentalist parties on which his ruling coalition rests. But if he fails to meet the Bush administration’s “benchmarks,” in particular the passage of the oil law by June, he risks the loss of American backing. “Al-Maliki is committed to meeting the deadline because he is convinced he would not survive in power without US support,” one of his close associates told Associated Press.

Officially, the Bush administration has denied issuing any ultimatum to the Maliki government. “The notion that we have in any way, shape or form threatened to bring down his government over this law is simply untrue,” US State Department spokesman Tom Casey told the media. Behind the scenes, however, US officials are not only insisting that the “benchmarks” have to be met, but are actively conniving with Allawi to undermine the Maliki government and prepare an alternative regime.

Allawi is a former Baathist thug who broke with the Hussein regime. A longstanding CIA asset, he was installed as prime minister in May 2004 by the US proconsul in Baghdad, Paul Bremer III, but failed dismally in national ballots. In the December 2005 election, Iraqis overwhelmingly repudiated Allawi’s Iraqi National List (INL), which currently has only 25 seats in the National Assembly. After retiring to London, he then returned to Iraq and is attempting to make a comeback with obvious backing from Washington.

Anti-Sunni

Allawi is positioning himself as the mouthpiece for the Bush administration’s policies: opposing anti-Sunni discrimination, posturing as a “secular” alternative to Maliki’s Shiite coalition and seeking support from neighbouring Arab states. His INL, which currently has five ministers, is threatening to pull out of Maliki’s government if its demands are not met. In a statement issued on March 1, the bloc warned “it will soon no longer be able to accept the responsibility of being in this government, because of its sectarian domination and narrow-mindedness”.

In recent weeks, Allawi, with US support, has assembled an alliance of more than 80 seats in the 275-seat National Assembly, including the Sunni-based Tawafuq bloc, as well as independents and smaller parties. His prospects of challenging Maliki were boosted by the decision of the Shiite Fadhila party to walk out of the UIA coalition last week. Fadhila, which has 15 MPs, has criticised the UIA’s “sectarianism” and is being actively courted by Allawi, but has yet to join his grouping.

Allawi is also wooing the Kurdish nationalist parties, which have 55 seats. He travelled to the Kurdish north last week to meet with Massoud Barzani, who is head of the Kurdish regional government. As Barzani’s spokesman Abdul-Khaleq Zanganah told Associated Press, the two held talks on forming “a national front to take over from the political bloc now supporting al-Maliki”. The presence of the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, at the discussions was an obvious sign of US backing for the enterprise, as well as a warning to Maliki.

Just as significant is the fact that the two men flew to Riyadh this week for discussions with the Saudi monarchy, which, with Washington’s encouragement, has taken a more aggressive role in regional politics since the end of last year, with the aim of undermining Iranian influence. Sections of the Saudi elite are openly hostile to the Maliki government, regarding it as little more than a stooge for their regional rival Iran. Allawi needs no convincing to get rid of Maliki, but Kurdish leaders may well need inducements and guarantees.

The main objective of the two major Kurdish parties—Barzani’s Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—has been to secure an autonomous Kurdish regional government and to extend it to include the oil-rich northern area around Kirkuk. Allawi and his bloc, however, are calling for constitutional changes that would weaken or even abolish regional groupings of provinces. At the same time, Barzani may consider an alliance with Allawi as necessary to ensure continued US backing.

Withdrawal

Much of the commentary about Allawi’s obvious manoeuvring is preoccupied with speculation about possible political combinations that would give him a parliamentary majority. For instance, if Allawi fails to gain the support of the Kurdish parties, the UIA will continue to control the National Assembly, provided its 113-seat bloc remains intact. Such calculations ignore the fact that neither the Bush administration nor Allawi would have the slightest hesitation in ignoring the Iraqi constitution, dispensing with its extremely limited “democratic” norms and using other means to seize power.

The World Socialist Web Site reported a series of articles in the US press last year, beginning in August, openly hinting that the Bush administration was considering dispensing with the Maliki government and “democracy” in Iraq. It is significant that the reemergence of Allawi into the political limelight coincides with an article in the Los Angeles Times on March 12 revealing that the Pentagon has already begun planning for a fallback strategy if the current “surge” of US troops in Baghdad should fail to suppress the anti-US insurgency and expanding sectarian civil war.

According to the newspaper, the “El Salvador” option is currently under consideration, which includes a gradual withdrawal of US forces and a renewed emphasis on training Iraqi fighters. “El Salvador veterans and experts have been pushing for the model of a smaller, less visible US advisory presence,” the article reported. “Some academics,” it noted in passing, “have argued the US military turned a blind eye to government-backed death squads or even aided them.” In fact, the US-backed death squads and savage military repression were the strategy used to eliminate leftist opponents of the regime in El Salvador and terrorise the entire population. At the height of the bloodletting in the early 1980s, over 13,000 people were being slaughtered a year.

Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations argued in the Los Angeles Times that the El Salvador option would not work in Iraq because of the country’s raging sectarian civil war. Any attempt to build a plan around training the Shiite-dominated government forces, he said, was bound to fail. The obvious solution is to get rid of the Maliki government and install a strongman who is prepared to do whatever it takes to stamp his authority on the security forces and unleash death squads to eliminate opposition to the US occupation.

Allawi certainly fits the bill. During his long exile from Iraq before 2003, he maintained close connections with dissident elements of the Baathist security and intelligence apparatus and has been accused of masterminding several terrorist acts against Hussein’s regime. After his installation as prime minister in 2004, he reappointed former Baathist officials to key posts to exploit their expertise in suppressing political opposition. During Allawi’s term of office, notorious death squads such as the Wolf Brigade were established with the assistance of US advisers such as James Steele, a veteran of the El Salvador campaign.

Allawi is not averse to getting his hands dirty. In July 2004, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that two Iraqi eyewitnesses saw Allawi shoot dead six handcuffed and blindfolded prisoners at the Al-Amariyah security centre in Baghdad the previous month. The cold-blooded executions, carried out in front of US special forces troops, were meant as a lesson to Iraqi police and troops that they could also kill with impunity. No adequate investigation has been carried out into this brutal incident.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iraq-m16.shtml

Sand Ban A Lost Opportunity
For Economic Cooperation
Says S'pore PM

By Jackson Sawatan
[bernama.com]


SINGAPORE, March 18 (Bernama) -- Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has described Indonesia's ban on sand export as a lost opportunity for economic cooperation which hurts both sides, a report here said.

Commenting for the first time on the issue, Lee said that Singapore had to accept the decision and look for ways to overcome the problem.

"The official explanation is that it's because of concerns over the environment and that it has nothing to do with other issues which we are negotiating like the extradition treaty and the defence cooperation agreement or the ongoing talks on boundary demarcation," he told a group of Japanese journalists ahead of his visit to Japan today, as reported by The Straits Times.

Last month, Indonesia imposed the ban on the export of sand of which Singapore is the biggest importer, citing environmental concerns.

Lee said: "So, we accept the explanation they've given us and we hope that over time, the matter will stabilise and we will be able to resume our cooperation."

The sand import ban took a new twist just days after it took effect on Feb 6 when several Indonesian legislators remarked that the ban was Indonesia's way of pressuring Singapore into signing an extradition treaty and to resolve border disputes between both countries.

Indonesia wants the extradition treaty to bring back Indonesian tycoons which Jakarta has alleged to have fled to Singapore, taking with them corrupt money.

Following the ban, Singapore released its sand stockpile to ease the shortage of the building material.

Lee said Singapore's sand stockpile would last for a considerable time and that the cost increase would be quite bearable.

He described as unfortunate that the problem has come up. "We don't fully understand why," he said.

Besides releasing its sand stockpile, Singapore is also importing sand from other sources to make up for the shortage and is exploring ways to reduce dependency on sand in construction.

"There is potential to go for more efficient processes, steel and drywalls. These are things which we are embarking on to reduce our construction costs," he said.

-- BERNAMA
http://www.bernama.com

Singapore And Neighbors
Just Can't Get Along

By Wayne Arnold and Thomas Fuller
[International Herald Tribune]

Some countries have strategic oil reserves; others stockpile rice or wheat. The island nation of Singapore has emergency reserves of imported sand.

The sand is there to secure Singapore's insatiable demand for concrete, a reminder of Singapore's vulnerability as a nation without a hinterland to supply it with vital resources.

Singapore's government is now being forced to tap its sand horde after its usual supplier, Indonesia, abruptly banned exports in February, citing the impact of a recent Singapore construction boom on its beaches and island environments.

The ban touched off the latest in a string of disputes between Singapore and its neighbors over water, land reclamation, satellite concessions, corporate takeovers and the flight patterns of the Singaporean Air Force — just to name a few.

A Malaysian politician has blamed Singapore for worsening floods in his constituency. A top Indonesian politician has appealed for the recall of Singapore's ambassador. The general in Thailand who led the coup there last September has accused Singapore of tapping his phones.

Tiffs between Singapore and its neighbors are nothing new, and analysts say the latest dust-ups are unlikely to seriously harm relations.

But the analysts say that the recent quarrels highlight the fissures that continue to thwart the region's ability to compete collectively against the economies of India and China.

If Singapore and its neighbors cannot agree to share such basic resources as sand and water, they say, the dream of a single market by 2015 - the stated goal of the 10-member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - may be illusory.

"They're more competitive with each other than natural allies," said Robert Broadfoot, managing director of the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy in Hong Kong.

The disputes also raise questions about Singapore's drive to expand its investments in the region. Singapore's advances appear to be aggravating what might be described as a personality conflict between what is one of the world's richest countries and its much larger, but much poorer, neighbors.

"We see Singapore in two ways," said Drajad Wibowo, a legislator from Indonesia's National Mandate Party. "On one hand as a role model for development; on the other hand, many see Singapore as an arrogant economic giant, which is prepared to use its financial muscle to 'undermine' neighboring countries."

Singapore's problems with its neighbors are as old as the country itself. Independence in 1965 came about after it was ejected by Malaysia.

Singapore's leaders took advantage of their city's historic role as a trading post to lure investment and manufacturing, vaulting Singapore within 20 years to the ranks of the world's most affluent nations - and breezing past Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand along the way.

While its shrewdness has prompted frequent comparisons to Switzerland, some say its assertiveness places it closer to Israel. In his memoirs, Singapore's founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, said his goal "was to leapfrog the region, as the Israelis had done."

Like Israel, Singapore is an ethnic anomaly, a predominantly Chinese population in a predominantly Malay region. Indeed, Singapore even sought advice from Israel on how to build its defenses after independence. As such, Singapore has become a magnet for ethnic Chinese talent and wealth from around Southeast Asia.

But while Singapore is part of the region, it often seems to be apart from it. In a region where politics are ruled by nuance and consensus, they say, Singapore can be self-servingly rational, legalistic and seemingly tone-deaf to local sensitivities.

"Singapore doesn't really care about the opinion of its neighbors," the former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad complained to a Thai television station in January. "Singapore believes the most important thing is what profits Singapore."

"Their values and their efficiency don't export well," said Broadfoot.

Singapore's officials, for the most part, are not apologetic.

"For Singapore, the rule of law and the protection of property are absolutely important from the days we were established as a trading post for the British East India Company," said Foreign Minister George Yeo in a written response to questions. "Why else would this piece of rock, amidst thousands scattered in the archipelago, flourish?"

In Singapore's Parliament, legislators recently complained that Singapore was being picked on unfairly. One member of Parliament blasted efforts by neighbors to make Singapore a "scapegoat for their own domestic troubles."

But as the disputes accumulate there are also voices in Singapore calling for a change of approach.

A March 12 editorial in Business Times, which like all Singapore newspapers is state controlled, proposed that the government's investment arm, Temasek, create a charitable foundation.

While that might not eliminate "nationalistic responses" to Temasek's activities in the region, the editorial read, "giving back rather than merely extracting profits (legitimate though that may be), yields a huge payoff for companies in terms of building good will, respect, networks, and in the end, profitability."

The rising animosity in Thailand toward Singapore is especially troubling for the city-state because the two countries were Cold War allies with little history of rancor. The mood began to change when Singaporean banks took over Thai banks after the 1997 financial crisis, adding to a general resentment among the Thai elite about selling off distressed assets.

In 2004, when Singapore struck a 15- year deal with the Thai military for use of one of its military bases, activist groups in Thailand said the deal violated the country's sovereignty.

More recently, Singapore became a national punching bag in Thailand after Temasek led a group of investors in buying the telecommunications empire of Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister ousted in the coup last September.

The Thai government says the transaction was illegal, an accusation Singapore denies.

As for Indonesia, it remains unclear what sparked the new ban on sand exports. Indonesia's official explanation is damage to its environment. In 2002, Indonesia begin restricting exports of sand after reports emerged of entire islands disappearing as Singapore expanded.

However, Indonesia's maritime affairs minister, Freddy Numberi, later said the ban was also aimed at pressuring Singapore into signing a long- stalled extradition treaty.

Wealthy Indonesians, particularly ethnic Chinese, have long used Singapore as a haven from Indonesia's periodic strife. Indonesians are the leading foreign property owners in Singapore, and wealthy Indonesians keep as much as $87 billion stashed in Singapore banks, according to estimates.

Many Indonesians suspect that Singapore is harboring white-collar criminals, though there have been no publicized cases of fugitives living here.

Indonesia's foreign minister denied Freddy's claim, but Singapore bristled, calling Indonesia's mixed signals "puzzling and disappointing."

Singapore says the two countries had already agreed that the extradition treaty would be negotiated, together with a defense cooperation pact. Foreign Minister Yeo told Singapore's Parliament last week that an agreement was near.

The confusion over Indonesia's policy is only growing, though. In late February, the Indonesian Navy detained 13 tugs pulling barges full of granite, another widely used construction material, saying they were searching for smuggled sand.

It was into this fracas that the speaker of Indonesia's Parliament, Agung Laksono, waded when he called for the recall of Singapore's ambassador.

"I think the government must immediately send the Singaporean ambassador home in protest against that country's unfriendly attitude," he was quoted as saying by Indonesia's state news agency, Antara.

Now, with the price of sand nearly triple what it was before the ban, Singapore is drawing down its sand stockpiles while looking for new suppliers. How long the reserves will last and where sand will be bought, authorities won't say.

In the meantime, Singapore is standing firm.

"From time to time, we must expect other countries will pressure Singapore in the hope that we will then give way to their demands," Yeo told Parliament. "Singaporeans know that, if we give in to such pressures, we would only invite more such pressures."

http://malaysia-today.net/blog2006/newsncom.php?itemid=3163

Final Part:
Australian PM Outlines
Indefinite Military Agenda
In South Pacific
[www.wsws.org]

The Howard government’s vision of neo-colonial military-led interventions in the Pacific lasting 10 to 20 years presents enormous dangers to working people and youth in the Pacific Islands and in Australia.

It will inevitably produce a catastrophe. The population of the Pacific Islands have suffered a long history of British, French, German, and Australian colonial domination. It is impossible that such forms of rule can be peacefully imposed in the twenty-first century. Pacific Islanders have every right to resist Canberra’s machinations and it is only a matter of time before Australian soldiers and police are targeted. The initial stages of such a struggle are already evident in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Canberra will respond by escalating its violence and repression, unleashing military force on a scale not seen in the Pacific since World War II.

The domestic repercussions will be no less calamitous. Democratic rights are already under sustained attack, and this will intensify as opposition to Howard’s agenda mounts. Bourgeois democratic norms and basic legal and constitutional rights are fundamentally incompatible with a state of permanent military mobilisation. In its efforts to forge a constituency for war and divert mounting social tensions, the political and media establishment is pumping out the poison of national chauvinism—involving the incitement of anti-Muslim racism and promotion of “Australian values”—and glorifying militarism.

Militarism

Young people face a future of being dragooned into the armed forces as cannon fodder for military interventions. School children are already being encouraged to enlist in the cadets and then the army. The Howard government has introduced a military “gap year” for those who have finished school but do not wish to immediately begin their tertiary education. Last year Howard announced that an additional $10 billion will be spent to recruit another 2,600 troops, on top of a 1,500 increase announced in December 2005, bringing the total increase to 20 percent. Half a billion dollars has also been committed for the near doubling of the Australian Federal Police’s “international deployment group”—an outfit focussed on operations in the South Pacific. Inevitably, these initiatives will soon be accompanied by moves to introduce conscription.

The billions of dollars in public funds being poured into the military represent a massive social misappropriation. While funding for public health and education, social infrastructure, and welfare and social services have all been gutted by successive state and federal governments, “defence” spending has skyrocketed. Australia is now the eleventh largest military spender in the world and ranks ahead of countries such as Israel, Turkey, Brazil, and Iran.

The political starting point for a struggle against the turn to militarism and war is the recognition that not a single element within the Australian political and media establishment opposes any aspect of the Howard government’s neo-colonial operations in the South Pacific. To the extent that the opposition Labor Party and its new leader Kevin Rudd have any criticisms of the government, they are all from the right. Rudd accuses Howard of incompetence for allowing an “arc of instability” to develop, and advocates greater tact in diplomatic efforts aimed at browbeating Australia’s neighbours. Like the Greens, Labor calls for the redeployment of Australian troops from Iraq to the South Pacific in order to bolster operations in East Timor, the Solomons, and elsewhere.

Interventions

The unanimous defence by Labor and the minor parties of Australia’s Pacific interventions ultimately derives from their support for the profit system and the nation-state system upon which it rests. Opposition to war, militarism, and neo-colonialism can only be advanced on an independent socialist and internationalist basis.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) will be standing candidates in the New South Wales state election scheduled for March 24 and the federal election due later this year. Our campaign will be focussed on building a mass movement of the working class against militarism and war—in Iraq, the Middle East and in the South Pacific. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all US, Australian and other troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and all Australian soldiers, police, and bureaucratic personnel from the Pacific. We demand an end to all those regional “aid” programs that function as nothing more than international slush funds for Australian corporations.

Instead, billions of dollars in genuine aid must be spent to lift the Pacific Islands out of poverty and undo the terrible legacy of colonialism and the damage still being inflicted by International Monetary Fund and World Bank programs.

At the same time, the SEP defends the right of every worker in the region to freely travel and work in Australia with full democratic and legal rights. We urge every socially conscious worker and young person in Australia and throughout the Pacific to take up the fight for this perspective by contacting the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and building it as the new international party of the working class.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sep-j18.shtml

Singapore-Malaysia Ties
'Good And Getting Better'
[wongkanseng.blogspot.com]

THE Prime Ministers of Singapore and Malaysia will hold their first retreat in May in one of the clearest signs yet that bilateral ties are 'good and getting better'.

That was the phrase Minister for Foreign Affairs George Yeo used yesterday to describe warming relations.

He told Parliament that Mr Lee Hsien Loong would lead a delegation of ministers up north for a retreat with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi and his colleagues.

Singapore had also proposed setting up a consulate in Johor Baru, a move welcomed by Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, said Mr Yeo as he gave an overview of the Republic's foreign relations.

Quoting his Malaysian counterpart, Mr Yeo said he agreed with him that bilateral ties 'have never been better'.

Datuk Seri Syed Hamid had also said that while it did not mean all bilateral issues had been resolved, the two sides were now moving to a more mature track and could separate those areas where there was potential for progress and move ahead on them.

'I welcome this new phase in our relationship,' said Mr Yeo.

'Close cooperation between our two countries will benefit our peoples,' he added.

He expressed his own delight at Genting's successful bid for the Sentosa integrated resort project. Singapore also looked forward to working with Malaysia on the Iskandar Development Region in south Johor 'on the basis of mutual respect and mutual benefit'.

Mr Yeo told the House too that the National University of Singapore would be conferring on the Sultan of Johor an honorary doctorate when he visits the Republic next month.

Turning to the overall regional and international outlook for Singapore, Mr Yeo said it was favourable.

Ties between the big powers, namely, the United States, China and Japan, which affected Singapore, had improved.

On the regional front, Singapore was doing all it could to move Asean forward as it believed that a strong and peaceful regional grouping could play a major role in maintaining the larger peace in Asia.

On current tensions with some fellow Asean members, Mr Yeo said it was understandable that Singaporeans would be concerned, but they should take the ups and downs in their stride.

'From time to time, we must expect countries to pressure us in the hope that we will then give in to their demands,' he said.

Singapore would not give in to such pressures but was always prepared to build good relations with its neighbours on the basis of mutual respect and benefit, he said.

He was responding to nine Members of Parliament, who asked about Indonesia's recent ban on sand exports to the Republic.

Mr Yeo replied that it was 'not clear' what caused the recent events that threatened bilateral relations.

'We know, for a fact, that President Yudhoyono values good bilateral relations, as we do,' he added, referring to Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

On ongoing talks for an extradition treaty and a defence cooperation agreement, Mr Yeo said the two countries were not far from a solution.

Both have agreed to elevate the negotiations to the ministerial level so that 'they can be jointly concluded on an overall balance of benefits', he added.

On Thailand, he was confident that ties would weather the uproar over former premier Thaksin Shinawatra's visit to Singapore in January.

MPs welcomed the news of improving ties with Malaysia.

On the proposed consulate in Johor, Mr Michael Palmer, deputy chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for Defence and Foreign Affairs, said: 'If our interests in Johor increase, we should have diplomatic representation. It would help our businesses there if and when they run into any problems.'

shpeh@sph.com.sg

http://wongkanseng.blogspot.com/2007/03/singapore-malaysia-ties-good-and.html