18 December 2003 Edition

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The world in 2003

• Iraq

The capture of Saddam Hussein at a farm in Adwar, ten miles from his home town of Tikrit, on Saturday 13 December, may secure the electoral fate of US President George W Bush. The Iraq war initially sent Bush's poll ratings soaring. However, they had been steadily falling as the post-war situation grew increasingly dangerous and the US public became increasingly sceptical about his Iraq strategy. The detention of Saddam may make the forthcoming Presidential campaign a lot easier for the Republicans.

The war on Iraq went ahead despise strong opposition on the streets — on 15 February millions of people demonstrated against war in major cities worldwide — and without the international governmental support that previous US incursions had enjoyed. President Bush enjoyed the open support of only two governments, the British and the Spanish, when it came to taking the issue of war to the United Nations. Others, like the Dublin Government, did not express open support for the US campaign, but allowed the use of their airspace, airports and their military bases to the US army.

The justification for this war was the defiant attitude of Saddam's regime, which was charged by the US government of ignoring UN resolutions, and the presence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the country. To sustain the arguments, the US and British Government did not hesitate to be imaginative with their evidence, including plagiarising the thesis of a 23-year-old student. The Iraqi government bent to each of the Bush administration's requirements, and UN weapons inspectors declared they could not find any WMD in Iraq. However, the war started on 19 March 2003 regardless.

Since then, the US casualty rate is more than ten times that experienced by the US in the Gulf War of 1991. To put it in some perspective, while the total of those killed and injured in Vietnam represented 9% of the total number of combat troops, the rate for US combat troops killed in Iraq has already reached 9.5%.

The capture of Saddam came almost five months after his sons, Qusai and Odai, were killed on 22 July in a gun battle with US troops in the northern city of Mosul. Coalition officials hoped the sons' deaths would weaken the Iraqi resistance; instead the guerrilla campaign escalated.

• World Trade Organisation

Social movements celebrated victory on Sunday 14 September as the fifth Ministerial meeting of the WTO collapsed as developing countries, led by African delegates, walked out and rich countries for a change failed to impose their will.

Kenyan delegate George Odour Ongwen announced that his country was walking out of the negotiations because of the intransigence of the EU and US. The developing country members of the WTO refused to accept the EU's demand to include negotiations on new issues, including investment, government procurement, trade facilitation and competition.

Developing countries had said for weeks that they were already overburdened and hurt from previous concessions, and were not prepared to negotiate until the issue of agriculture was sufficiently addressed.

Although 70 developing countries formally submitted a letter to the facilitator, Canadian Minister Pierre Pettigrew, opposing the launch of negotiations on all four new issues, the 13 September Cancun draft still carried decisions to directly launch negotiations on two issues (trade facilitation and government procurement) whilst indirectly launching negotiations on investment and half launching the remaining issue (competition).

This generated a profound sense of frustration and outrage among many of the countries that had stated their no negotiations position. Similarly, the 32 developing countries championing stronger language on agriculture were angry that their concerns were not at all addressed.

• Palestine

Despite United Nations condemnation, Israel continues to build an apartheid Wall around the West Bank — also referred to as the "fence" or "security fence" — under the pretext of keeping suicide bombers out. This has become the latest unilateral offensive in Israel's annexation of Palestinian territory, destruction of agriculture and property and violation of human rights. When it is completed, some 10% of the West Bank land will have been "temporarily"confiscated.

The route of the Wall is designed to incorporate into Israel all the settlements that have been built on Palestinian territories. Israel is cutting off Palestinian towns and villages from their surrounding countryside and fragmenting Palestinian built-up areas in segregated pockets on both sides of the Wall, furthering the division of the West Bank into dozens of small entities that cannot sustain themselves and that are more like disconnected open-air prisons surrounded by Israeli military checkpoints and settlements. The Wall is the result of a long-term policy of unilateral segregation.

In addition, the Wall separates water sources and networks from agricultural lands. Approximately 30 groundwater wells will be separated by the Wall from the villages dependant on them, meaning even further Israeli control over Palestinian water resources. The Palestinians got an idea of what was coming their way when, during the laying the groundwork for the Wall, Israeli bulldozers destroyed some 35,000 meters of water pipes used for both agricultural and domestic use.

Despite international and national opposition (the numbers of Israeli soldiers opposing and publicly criticising Sharon's illegal policies are increasing) the current Israeli administration continues with the construction of the Wall. Likewise with its policy of targeted assassinations and rejection of all peace initiatives — the latest being the so-called Geneva Accord, with Sharon describing as "traitors" those Israelis involved in the negotiations to draw up the document.

Havana good time... Members of the Irish-Cuban solidarity group are pictured at the H-Block memorial in Havana, Cuba. The group spent three weeks there at a work-camp during the autumn, where they were joined by a delegation of over 350 activists from the rest of Europe

• The Basque Country

Continuing with its repressive policies, the Spanish establishment continued its attack against Basque cultural, grassroots, language, media, and youth organisations. The right-wing Spanish Government, headed by José María Aznar — with the help of the Spanish judiciary and media — has waged a war against anything symbolising Basque identity and resistance. After the banning of Batasuna on 17 March, the Spanish Government prevented Basque pro-independence citizens' groups and political organisations from standing in the local elections on 25 May, effectively taking the right to vote for what they believe in from more than 100,000 Basques.

Earlier in the year, on 20 February, the only Basque-language daily newspaper, Euskaldunon Egunkaria, was shut down and ten of its then current or former staff — including the editor, Martxelo Otamendi, were arrested on suspicion of "supporting an armed group". Spanish paramilitary police, the Guardia Civil, carried out a large-scale raid on the newspaper's headquarters in Andoain (Gipuzkoa), and local offices in Iruñea (Pamplona), Bilbo (Bilbao) and Gasteiz (Vitoria), which they then proceeded to close down. In this case, as in many others, the detainees said that they had been tortured while in police custody.


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