Oct. 27, 2009--The United Steel Workers Union, North America's largest industrial trade union, announced a new collaboration with the world's largest worker-owned cooperative, Mondragon International, based in the Basque region of Spain.

News of the announcement spread rapidly throughout the communities of global justice activists, trade union militants, economic democracy and socialist organizers, green entrepreneurs and cooperative practitioners of all sorts. More than a few raised an eyebrow, but the overwhelming response was, "Terrific! How can we help?"
The vision behind the agreement is job creation, but with a new twist. Since government efforts were being stifled by the greed of financial speculators and private capital was more interested in cheap labor abroad, unions will take matters into their own hands, find willing partners, and create jobs themselves, but in sustainable businesses owned by the workers.

"We see today's agreement as a historic first step towards making union co-ops a viable business model that can create good jobs, empower workers, and support communities in the United States and Canada," said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. "Too often we have seen Wall Street hollow out companies by draining their cash and assets and hollowing out communities by shedding jobs and shuttering plants. We need a new business model that invests in workers and invests in communities."

"This is a wonderful idea," said Rick Kimbrough, a retired steelworker from Aliquippa, Pa, and a 37-year-veteran of Jones and Laughlin Steel. "Ever since they shut down our mill, I've always thought, 'why shouldn't we own them?' If we did, they wouldn't be running away." J&L's Aliquippa Works was once one of the largest steel mills in the world, but is now shutdown and largely dismantled. Much of the production moved to Brazil.

The USW partnership with Mondragon was a bold stroke. While hardly a household word in the U.S and little known in the mass media, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC) has been the mother lode of fresh ideas on economic democracy and social entrepreneurship worldwide for 50 years. Started in 1956 with five workers in a small shop making kerosene stoves, MCC today has over 100,000 worker-owners in some 260 enterprises in 40 countries. Annual sales are pegged at more than 16 billion Euros with a wide range of products--high tech machine tools, motor buses, household appliances and a chain of supermarkets. MCC also maintains its own banks, health clinics, welfare system, schools and the 4000 student Mondragon University--all worker-owned coops.

Over the past decade, there have been a handful of efforts to apply the model and methods of MCC to projects in the United States. Almost all are on a small scale--several bakeries in the Bay Area, some bookstores, and most recently, an industrial laundry and solar panel enterprise in Cleveland. In Chicago, Austin Polytechnical Academy, a new public high school in a low-income neighborhood, was inspired, in part, by Mondragon, and a group of its students recently took part in a study tour of MCC in the Basque region.

But the USW initiative, and the potential clout behind it, puts the Mondragon vision on wider terrain. An integrated chain of worker-owned enterprises that might promote a green restructuring of the U.S. economy, for instance, would not only be a powerful force in its own right. It would also have a ripple effect, likely to spur other government and private efforts to both supplement and compete with it.

The USW is proceeding cautiously. "We've made a commitment here," said Rob Witherell during a recent interview at his Organizing Department's offices in the USW Pittsburgh headquarters. "But for that reason, we want to make sure we get it right, even if it means starting slowly and on a modest scale."

What this means at the moment, Witherell explained is that the USW is looking for viable small businesses in appropriate sectors where the current owners are interested in cashing out. The union is also searching for financial institutions with a focus on productive investment, such as cooperative banks and credit unions.

"It can get complicated," Witherell continued. "Not only do you have to fund the buyout, but you also have to figure out how to lend workers the money to buy-in, so they can repay it at a reasonable rate over a period of time, and still make a decent living."

The core Mondragon model was developed in the 1950s by a Roman Catholic priest, Father Jose Maria Arizmendi. It starts with a school, a credit union and a shop--all owned by workers who each had an equal share and vote. The three-in-one combination allows the cooperative to rely on its own resources for finance and training. The worker-owners cannot be fired. In regular assemblies, they hire and fire their managers, as well as set the general policies and direction of the firm. The workers themselves decide on the income spread between the lowest paid worker and the highest paid manager, which currently averages about 4.5 to one. (Compared with more than 400 to one in the U.S.) As the worker-owners accumulate resources, they can encourage the formation of new coops, indirectly through their bank and directly through their firms, and bring them into the overall structures of MCC governance. This is how they grew from one small shop to 260 enterprises in the past 50 years. Finally, if a worker-owner retires, he or she can 'cash out,' but the share cannot be sold. It is only available for purchase by a new worker-owner at that firm.

This last crucial point was developed by Arizmendi during the course of deep study of Catholic social theory as well as the works of Karl Marx and the English cooperativist Robert Owen. A worker-owner's ability to sell his or her share to anyone was a flaw in Owen's approach, Arizmendi decided, since it enabled outsiders to buy the more successful coops, turning their workers back into wage-labor, while starving the other less successful coops of resources. With Arizmendi's new approach, only four out of the several hundred MCC coop ventures have failed during the half century since Mondragon began.

The difference between worker-owned coops Mondragon-style, and ESOPs, or Employee Stock Ownership Programs more prevalent in the U.S., has to do with legal structure and control. In an ESOP, a portion of the companies stock, ranging from a large minority bloc to 100 percent, is owned by workers but held in a trust. Its value fluctuates with the stock market and workers can get dividends as they are paid, buy more stock, or "cash out" when they retire. If they do "cash out," they pay taxes on the closing amount, unless they roll it over into an IRA. By and large, ESOPs are financial instruments and do not automatically lead to worker control over the workplace or a role in shaping the firm's capital strategies. Managers are hired by the firm's board of directors, in turn, connected to the trust.

"We have lots of experience with ESOPs," said Gerard, "but we have found that it doesn't take long for the Wall Street types to push workers aside and take back control. We see Mondragon's cooperative model with 'one worker, one vote' ownership as a means to re-empower workers and make business accountable to Main Street instead of Wall Street."

The USW, however, will insist on at least one modification of the Mondragon model: the worker-owners will be organized into trade unions, and will sign collective bargaining agreements with the management team. This sets up a unique situation whereby unionized workers reach an agreement with themselves as a workers' assembly and with the management team they hire.

This is not as big of a problem as it may sound. "'This is not heaven and we are not angels' is a common phrase heard by visitors to Mondragon," said Michael Peck, MCC's North American delegate. Within the structure of each MCC enterprise is a 'social committee' of the workers, which looks to their broader social concerns. But, it has also come to play the role of settling day-to-day disputes with the management team, thus serving as a de facto union. Class struggle surely continues, even in a modified form in a worker cooperative.

There are also other features unique to MCC that may or may not apply to its replication in the U.S. Father Arizmendi developed his plan as a community-based survival mechanism following the devastation of the Spanish Civil War and World War Two. He was imprisoned under Franco. The Basque region, a center of anti-Franco resistance, was not only in economic ruin, but was also punished by the Franco government by being denied resources. MCC evolved through self-reliance.

Under Spanish law, because the MCC worker-owners are not technically wage-labor, but get their income from a share of the profits, they are excluded from much of the country's social welfare safety net pertaining to workers. MCC responded by organizing and funding it's own 'second degree' cooperatives--health care clinics, retirement plans, schools and other social services, all cooperatively owned with their own worker assemblies. Much of this integrated second-degree structure may not be required in the U.S. Here, it may make more sense for worker-owned enterprises to form local or regional collaboratives and stakeholder arrangements with county government, credit unions, community colleges and technical high schools, and other nonprofit agencies.

What's in the partnership for Mondragon? Josu Ugarte, President of Mondragron Internacional declared: "What we are announcing today represents a historic first--combining the world's largest industrial worker cooperative with one of the world's most progressive and forward-thinking manufacturing unions to work together so that our combined know-how and complimentary visions can transform manufacturing practices in North America. We feel inspired to take this step based on our common set of values with the Steelworkers who have proved time and again that the future belongs to those who connect vision and values to people and put all three first."

Along with its core values and unique ownership structure, MCC is still a business producing goods and providing services in markets, anchored in Spain but reaching across the globe. It seeks to sustain itself and grow, although it is not driven by the same 'expand or die' compulsion of traditional corporate or privately owned firms. Adding more worker-owners simply gives each worker a smaller slice of a bigger pie. There's no removed batch of nonproducing stockholders raking in superprofits, or trading their stock speculatively as it rises or falls.

MCC firms still compete with traditional rivals for customers in the marketplace, and thus are always seeking a competitive edge. MCC enterprises, for example, are mainly known for high quality products. But when this is combined with a fact of self-management, that they have far fewer supervisory layers on the payroll, the higher quality products hit the marketplaces with a lower price. This puts MCC on the leading edge of Spain's economy.

MCC also looks for other advantages, such as horizontal integration and securing competitive sources of supply. This is why it has cautiously been expanding abroad, buying up supply firms or other complimentary businesses, and seeking to reshape them into the MCC cooperative structure. Often, however, they run into difficulties, where another country's laws treat cooperatives with disadvantages.

That is not the case in the U.S., where even though industrial coops are not common, there are few undue restrictions on their formation. "As we look for firms to purchase," said Witherell, "MCC is not just interested in buying up companies and having the workers as employees. It's the MCC rep that's always pushing on how readily we can convert to worker ownership."

The Mondragon initiative is not the first innovative project of the Steelworkers seeking wider allies. With the encouragement of International President Leo Gerard, following on the anti-WTO street battles in Seattle in the 1990s, the USW helped found the Blue-Green Alliance together with the Sierra Club and other environmentalists. It has worked closely with Van Jones and 'Green for All's jobs initiatives and the union plays a major role in the ongoing annual 'Good Jobs, Green Jobs' conferences. Most recently, the USW was a major participant in the week-long series of events making the oppositional case at the G20 events in Pittsburgh.

For Gerard and the USW, these alliances are matters of utmost practicality and survival. Gerard points out that 40,000 manufacturing facilities in the U.S. have closed since the onset of the 2007 economic crisis, throwing 2 million people out of work. His answer is structural reform in the economy along the lines of a 'green industrial revolution' and to fund it with a tax of speculative capital's financial transfers, known as the 'Tobin Tax.'

"Americans going green--manufacturing windmills and solar cells--would benefit both the economy and environment," said Gerard in a Campaign for America's Future article. "As the Wall Street debacle that pushed this country into the Great Recession last year showed, the United States cannot depend on trading in obscure financial products to support its economy. To survive, America must be able to manufacture products of intrinsic value that can be traded here and internationally." He often notes that there are 200 tons of steel and 8000 moving parts in every large wind turbine--a concept that is never lost on the unemployed and under-employed manufacturing workers that hear it.

The same point is not lost on small and medium-sized businesses looking for orders from new endeavors. This is where green entrepreneurs can form alliances with worker-owned cooperatives, trade unions, living wage job advocates and the global justice movement. The key question is whether the political will and organizational skill can be brought together to make it all happen in a way that most enhances the strength and livelihood of the working class.

Here is where the ball returns to the court of left organizers and solidarity economy activists. Lending a helping hand to the new initiative entails a good deal of investigation into the state of local businesses and conditions, plus building alliances, generating publicity, and contributing educational work among all those concerned. It's not crowded, and there's a lot to be done.
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Carl Davidson writes for Beaver County Blue and SolidarityEconomy.Net. He is a national board member of the Solidarity Economy Network and a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. If you like this article, make use of the PayPal button on http://solidarityeconomy.net

I am traveling through this region, accompanying a group that has decided to come here to get first hand accounts of how farmers are coping with the drought. As we travel, I learn the lay of the land, and its history. Bundelkhand includes almost the entire course of the rivers Betwa, Dhasan and Ken. These flow down from the Vindhyas to confluence with the Yamuna and cradle the towns of Jhansi, Chhatarpur and Sagar, the diamond mines of Panna and the fabulous temples of Khajuraho. The region is united by its language - Bundeli - and a largely shared history and culture of over 1000 years but is divided administratively between Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Our first stop is Mamna village in Hamirpur district of Uttar Pradesh, a settlement of about 10,000 people. We begin talking to a couple of villagers and soon a crowd gathers around us. With no irrigation available to them, the kharif crops are a total loss, say the villagers. They are struggling even for drinking water, sometimes having to transport it from a neighboring village. Harish Kumar has had a job card (guaranteeing him a job under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) for 2 years at least. He was given some work for 1.5 months, and shows an injury sustained while working; however, he has not been paid. The date of registration on his job card has been overwritten twice to make it unclear when the card was issued. There are no work entries in the booklet.

Small farmers in Mamna Village, Hamirpur District, UP holding their 2 year old job cards. There are no work entries in their cards.

Seeing our interest in the job cards, the villagers collect over 10 job cards without any entries in a few minutes. They are all small farmers with a few bighas of land each, and willing to take up any work - but they say none is available. They show the compensation cheques they have got from the state government after the area has been declared drought affected - most are for Rs.250, less than 3 days' wages, for the loss of their kharif crop.

Some steps away, Durjan Chamar, a cobbler in his late sixties, sits forlornly with his tools outside his house waiting for customers. His daughters have married and left home, and having no sons he and his wife have to continue the struggle for a livelihood. He has the patta for three bighas of land given by the government, but as there is no water, there are no crops to be had. There are few customers for his skills in this village. He has tried to obtain work under the NREGA, but without success.

Basket weaving seems to be the sole non-farming related source of income in the village. Not just old men, even able bodied young men can be seen weaving daliyas (baskets) from dried stalks. The baskets fetch Rs.10 each and an old man we talk to says he can make only 3 baskets in a day. He receives no old age pension and is too old to take up any other work.

A large number of the small and marginal farmers have left the village in search of work. They travel to the nearby UP towns to work in brick kilns and to distant Delhi to work in the construction industry or in the factories in the NCR as unskilled labor or even driving rickshaws. We are told that a bus full of migrants from Mamna and neighboring villages has fallen into the Yamuna recently.

Durjan Chamar, a cobbler, displays his job card which has no work entries. There is no demand in the village for his skills and no produce from his 3 bigha land.

On a lane leading to the center of the village, a man sits in the front room of his thatched cottage running his sewing machine. He continues to work as we sit across on a charpoy and talk. His name is Jagdish he tells us, but everyone in the village calls him Bhikari Lal, a name used by his mother to shield her only child from evil eyes.

A farmer with 2 acres, he has turned to tailoring and leased his land for a 50 per cent share of the produce. The income from the land hardly counts. He has already spent a number of years in Kandla and is back now to look after his wife and two children after his mother passed away. He could earn Rs 300 per day in Gujarat, while back in the village, he can at best earn half that amount and the payment does not come easily as the villagers do not have ready cash. He is particular about the education of his children and sends them to a private school; the quality of teaching at the government school, he says, cannot be trusted.

We come to a section of the village where the farmers with large parcels of land - 20- 25 acres - live. They have their own tube wells for irrigating their fields and use tractors. Their complaints are about the price of diesel (electricity is not available most of the time) the difficulty of getting loans for tractors, of availability of seeds and fertilizer, of how agriculture has become unviable.

All the villages we visit present the same story - complete crop failure for the small and marginal farmers who depended on the rains coupled with a lack of local employment opportunities.

We visit Jalalpur, a village that lies on the south bank of the Betwa river in Hamirpur district and has a population of about 3000. There is an old ghat on the river, still in good condition with ancient temples scattered around - the residents say that their settlement dates to the Khilji period and that once there was a thriving commerce on the river.

The village pradhan, a woman, takes us to her house where we are treated to snacks including biscuits and cashew nuts and tea. The pradhan's husband sticks closely to us as we walk through the village. Everyone has job cards and ration cards in this village, we hear from the pradhan's husband. When we manage to lose him briefly, people tell us guardedly that they have job cards but there is no work to be had. Though the village lies by the Betwa, water is not available for irrigation as the river here flows far below the level of the fields.

Are villages in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh doing better? We find out the next day in Ragoli in Chhatarpur District of MP. We first meet the sarpanch of this large village of about 10,000 people and, as expected, hear a lot of good news ... everyone has a job card; the poor have BPL ration cards while the rest have APL cards ...there are enough tube wells in the village for drinking water needs. The Sarpanch also has a few complaints - there is not enough work under NREGA and the government delays payments. The irrigation channel running from the village pond has not been maintained properly. Half the people in the village have migrated in search of work, he tells us.

We walk to a basti populated by the poor Raikwar community - people who traditionally work in water related occupations - to get a different picture. Swami Prasad has a job card that was made in January 2006. He has not got even a single day's work till now. But it is not Swami Prasad alone. Everyone in a group that collects around us have the same story. Job cards are there, but no jobs. Only people close to the Pradhan get work, we hear. No Panchayat Inspector or Block CEO leave alone Collector has ever visited the community, according to these residents. Some of them have been out - to Delhi, Noida and Punjab - to look for jobs and come back after working a while. After Deepawali, some of them will head out again. More than half the people from this village of 10,000 have migrated outside the state seeking work.

A government school just across from where we are standing has a board displayed that declares the menu for the mid day meal each day - the menu includes rice, different dals and green and other vegetables. According to the residents, the children only get rice gruel. The open well in the colony has not been cleaned for ages and has been rendered unfit for use. It would cost just Rs.3000-4000 to clean the well and some people would have got jobs - but this is not a priority of the panchayat. The school has its own well. Residents have to wait for the school to open to lift their water.

Meghraj Singh in front of his hut. He has been denied a BPL card - so he can get no rations except Kerosene.

Adhiyara, a village in Chattarpur District has over 400 families split between the communities of Thakurs, Harijans and Adivasis. There are only 5 bore wells in the village of which 2 are private and one belongs to the school and one has been set up in the Harijan basti. The lone public bore well functions only when there is power. Sometimes, the village has no power for weeks. People are forced to go to neighboring villages for water, walking 2-3 km. In summer, if there is no electricity, women sometimes stand all night in line waiting for water.

At least 100 families have migrated to Delhi, Ludhiana, Punjab and other places, we are told. People with small children migrate with their entire family leaving behind an elderly person to look after their house and cattle. Many small farmers have given their land on lease to others for a fixed sum or a share of the crop. NREGA work is available only for 10-15 people and the Panchayat President distributes it among his friends, the residents allege.

Meghraj Singh has 7 acres of land and is one of three brothers. He is not entitled to a BPL card though he lives in a crude hut. His crop has completely failed. There are two ponds near the village with rain water that is used for watering the cows - but no irrigation is available for the fields. He says farming is unviable and that there are no alternate sources of employment.

The Adivasi hamlet of 20 families is at the far end of the village. Only a few emaciated old men are to be seen around - the younger men have apparently migrated. Their condition is pathetic - no job cards or jobs, no ration cards (BPL or APL), no pension, no compensation for crops lost. There is no government intervention here where the people are most in need. The only forest product available to them is Mahua. The only work is gathering tendu leaves for the forest contractors for which they are paid based on quantity of collection.

Nathu Singh, a farmer with 15 acres land in Adhiyara village, district Chhatarpur has only one plea - "Please tell them to solve our drinking water problem."

Paglu tells us he owns 2 acres but they are useless to him. There is no work to be had in the village even with the bigger farmers. He has worked in cities but he doesn't like it there and prefers to remain in his village. At one time, they used to hunt in the nearby forests but the government has taken away their firearm licenses.

On our way out of the village we meet Nathu Singh. He has 15 acres land. Lest we think he is prosperous, he quickly explains that he has a large family - 3 boys and 3 girls. One can see that he is but a shadow of his former proud self. He has only one plea - please, please tell the authorities to solve our drinking water problem.

All the villages we visit present the same story - complete crop failure for the small and marginal farmers who depended on the rains coupled with a lack of local employment opportunities. The much touted employment guarantee scheme of the government is not functional where it is most needed forcing large scale migration on the landless and even on small farmers. At close quarters, the picture of the panchayati raj is unedifying - viewed, as it is, as being all pervasively corrupt. The rains may have failed Bundelkhand but it is the governments of the two States, and at the Centre who have forsaken the people.
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Kannan Kasturi is an independent researcher and writer on law, policy and governance. The author would like to acknowledge "Perspectives" - a group of University students and teachers from Delhi - who made his visit to Bundelkhand possible.

Having left his home on the banks of the Narmada and the field which sustained him behind, I had expected him to be full of things to say: about his uprootment, the desperation of his existence, the injustice of not receiving an adequate recompense for his field and home. Instead, he welcomed me with silence. A stoic, unnerving silence. He was sitting on the ground with his four kids, shelling tur pods. When I sat facing him, he refused to look up. We sat quietly for many minutes, when I could take it no longer.

Are you tired of visitors? I asked, nervously. I'd been told that this particular site had been visited by three different sympathetic urban groups in the last three days. He looked up finally, with an expression conveying that he'd been pushed to the limits of his tolerance. "We are tired", he replied, "but what can we do? We must accommodate everyone." Are there opportunities for majdoori here? I asked again, wary of sinking back into silence. "Nothing", he said. "Aise hi chalta hai." Do the children go to school? "No."

I retreated, knowing fully well that I couldn't console him. If I couldn't do anything for him, I reasoned, I should at least not force him to narrate a sad old story that he had repeated over the years. His silence had told me what his words never could.

Photo: A river arrested.

The Sardar Sarovar dam stands at 400 feet, having uprooted thousands of families from their homes and agricultural lands. At its full height of 455 feet, the dam will uproot more than three lakh people and disrupt the livelihoods of tens of thousands of others. After a decade and a half of a heroic, non-violent struggle by the people of the Narmada Valley for reclaiming what is rightfully theirs, the Supreme Court, in a grossly unjust 2-1 majority judgement in October 2000, allowed the construction of the dam to proceed. With their faith in the legal system crushed, the people continued to appeal to the wider world, speaking their truth with patience. Over the years which followed, the world too moved on. The dam rose.

But what of the lives it devastated, leaving behind stolen pasts and shattered futures? Huts still dot the landscape of the Valley, perched on steep embankments, precariously close to the rising waters. Children now bathe in a stagnant, polluted river, fearing crocodiles which have increased in numbers as they are trapped by the dam. Families continue to soldier on, though the ground beneath their feet has literally disappeared. They struggle relentlessly for mere daily survival. They survive the obliteration of their simple designs for the future. And they continue to hope to regain what the dam took from them: a roof over their heads, and a field of their own.

For lakhs of people in the valley, displacement translates to but one lived reality: deprivation for generations. For the Government however, displacement comes in different forms which are managed, manipulated and ignored in a variety of ingenious ways. One fundamental distinction that the Government makes between different categories of the displaced, is that many are not entitled to any resettlement. Not even on paper. So tens of thousands who have lost land to make way for the extensive canal network are fighting a losing battle just to be recognized as project affected.

Thousands who will be displaced by the Shoolpaneshwar Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat - planned to compensate for the forests and wildlife lost to the reservoir - are denied their very basic rights. Fishworkers who have lost their livelihoods of fishing and riverbed cultivation are left to struggle and scrape out a living. Those uprooted by the planting of trees to make up for the submergence of forests, have no choice but to oppose the administration. And those dispossessed of lands under cultivation and forest resources in order to resettle other project affected families, are forced to fight off the newcomers, who themselves have fled the engulfing waters of the dam's reservoir!

Of the displaced who are entitled to land-for-land resettlement, thousands are still awaiting their new fields and homes, somehow holding on to a receding hope. In the Adivasi villages on the banks of the reservoir, they live dangerous lives surviving extreme, unthinkable odds. In the fertile plains of Nimad in Madhya Pradesh, they fear the certainty of an impoverished future. And for those who are actually resettled, the outcome is mired with insurmountable difficulties: uncultivable land, tin shacks to live in, flooding in the monsoons, brackish water, poorer diets, fragmented communities, broken promises.

When I attempt to describe this overall picture, the silence of my host in the resettlement site in Gujarat returns to me. Now I know why he chose to say so less. Words probably failed him.

With their faith in the legal system crushed, the people continued to appeal to the wider world, speaking their truth with patience. Over the years which followed, the world too moved on. The dam rose.

• A river runs through it


His stubborn silence stayed with me in the following weeks, while I visited Adivasi villages which were soon to be submerged by the dam. In every village, I was confronted with the reality of dispossession, throwing up questions about justice which begged for answers. In every house, I was moved by accounts of an unflinching struggle in the face of repression by a State which was determined to build the dam at all costs. Every person I met explained the overwhelming difficulties they encountered in the present, and expressed their unrelenting anxiety for the future. Many times, and in more ways than one, they described how the river that had always sustained them had changed drastically in its very nature.

In matter-of-fact words, they pointed out the perils of still having to live on the edge of the dam's reservoir. And finally, most importantly, they put forth the point of view that they were trying to communicate to the wider world beyond their tiny villages. That they had to struggle for decades against a callous State, only to get back the lands, homes and lives which were always, rightfully, their very own.

My travels in the valley over the years were the genesis of this series of stories about the lives of six individuals living in the shadow of India's most controversial dam. Told through the perspectives of the protagonists uprooted by the dam in markedly different ways, these farmers and fishworkers from the Adivasi areas as well as the fertile plains of Nimad, reconstruct their struggles to live with dignity. These are stories of resilience, courage, and ultimately, survival.

They are narratives of a people who have to brace themselves for every threatening monsoon submergence with fortitude. For when the waters rise, this fortitude is all they have with which to hold on. To life. To hope. And if it can still be said, the faint, nebulous possibility of a better tomorrow.

Immersed in their extraordinary narratives, I left the valley after a visit to return to the glitter and sparkle of urban India. On my way back, as the glow of the first electric lights I had seen in several days filtered through my mind, the questions I had unsuccessfully tried to ignore during the trip emerged once again. How could I even begin to comprehend the cost of the comforts that I'd always taken for granted? Could this cost be understood through the life stories I'd just heard, stories which had become an inseparable part of my now troubled mind? Or perhaps, could it possibly be, that the only way to measure this cost was not through spoken words?

Perhaps, someone somewhere was paying the price for my conveniences without saying anything at all. Perhaps they had lapsed into silence. Like my host in the resettlement site in Gujarat, they might have run out of words.
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Neeta Deshpande is a freelance writer based in Bangalore. This article is the first in a series on uprootment and survival in the Narmada valley.

Soon after she moved to her saasri, her dreams began to unravel a layer at a time, revealing a reality which she had to learn to battle every day of her dispossessed life. The grind of poverty, a yearning for justice, and a lingering hope for a saner future, now became permanent features of her life. But the feeling that seeped through her existence and wove together its threads, was perhaps, one of loss. An irrevocable, crippling, total loss.

When Lakshmibehn was still a child, her destiny was shaped by what Jawaharlal Nehru - in a moment of contemplation - called the "disease of gigantism". Nehru was referring to big projects including large dams, and pointed among other things, to the displacement they brought in their wake. He went on to advocate small schemes which, he emphasized, had much greater social value. Ironically, this was the same Nehru who poetically christened large dams the "temples of modern India". In any event, Lakshmibehn's future could not be salvaged from the debris left behind by a dangerously misdirected notion of development.

Much before her wedding, Lakshmibehn's future husband's family was deprived of their agricultural land and the plot on which their house stood in 1961, to build infrastructure for that icon of development in modern India: the Sardar Sarovar dam. When Lakshmibehn married and moved to her husband's house, she learnt that their agricultural land had been taken over by the Gujarat Government by paying the family a meagre Rs.80 per acre. She also learnt that the land on which their house stood no longer belonged to them.

Not even eligible for resettlement according to the Government's policies, and with nowhere to go, no occupation other than agriculture to pursue, the family resolutely refused to move. On their field, the dam builders erected three godowns to store cement for its construction. Lakshmibehn remembers as many as sixty trucks coming to her village every day to transport cement. They wouldn't even have space to stand, she recounts. Day and night, the movement of such trucks made Lakshmibehn's life extremely difficult. Whatever little the family sowed, in the small bit of land they had left over adjoining the house, wouldn't grow.

In neighbouring Vaghadiya - a village on the main road to the dam site - as many as three hundred trucks would arrive daily. Loading and unloading of heavy cement bags was the only occupation available to men to earn a livelihood. Crushed under the weight of an inhuman toil, many died an early death. Their wives - unable to leave their little ones behind and travel for majdoori - started selling alcohol at home. Afflicted by the hazards of rampant unemployment and alcoholism, the village soon went to seed.

When Lakshmibehn moved to Gora as a bride in the mid-seventies, a new road was being constructed in the village. With their fields swallowed up by the cement godowns, the family soon began to labour on this road. Each worker earned a ridiculously paltry Rs. 2.50 a day.

How did they manage? They couldn't, she answers. But what could she have done? Her in-laws and two of her sisters-in-law were also dependent on the couple. Lakshmibehn had to search for greens in the forest. She had to make do with lal juwari - grain of an inferior quality. She remembers buying a tiny bottle of oil and using a few drops of it every time to make it last as long as possible. You think about how difficult it must have been, she throws the question back, as if she shouldn't have to answer it. Tum socho.

After two decades of battling a debilitating penury, Lakshmibehn's husband Govind was employed as a chowkidar in Kevadia Colony: a town with offices and accommodation for the engineers and staff building the dam. Today, he earns Rs.6000 a month, of which Rs.1000 is saved in his provident fund. The five-thousand rupees that he brings home must support everyone in the family, including the couple's unemployed son, his wife and their children.

"We should be resettled according to the same policy as the submergence oustees, with five acres of land and a house plot. They have lost their livelihoods to the reservoir of the dam, we have lost ours to its colony. So where is the difference?" (Picture: The Sardar Sarovar dam under construction. - Photo courtesy International Rivers.)

• Living on the edge
• Lakshmibehn's legacy of loss


Is Lakshmibehn able to save, ever? What savings, she replies matter-of-factly. Other than the thousand rupees which are deducted from her husband's salary every month, she can't even save five rupees. About Rs. 3000 has to be paid off for groceries bought on credit. Clothes and books for the children's schooling have to be purchased. Some money has to be parted with for social obligations like marriages. Add to that purchases from the ration shop, and she has nothing left over. In another year, her husband is due for retirement. How is her family expected to survive then?

Lakshmibehn's son Harilal, in spite of his best efforts, has never had any work by way of which he could have supported his wife and three children. Had their land not been lost to the cement godowns for the construction of the dam, Harilal could have earned his livelihood by farming. Now, he is left with absolutely nothing to do. When a nala was being dug in the colony, he too became a labourer. Like his father, he worked as a chowkidar at an ashram school for a month. Beyond these fleeting chances of earning something, anything at all, he has always been unemployed. "What work will he do?" says Lakshmibehn. "There is no work here."

In the early nineties, after years of relentless struggle as part of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), the Government made a new offer to the nearly 950 families in the six villages uprooted by the colony including Gora: cash compensation of Rs.12,000 an acre up to a maximum of three acres, and a house plot. Officials told the villagers bluntly: Take this money. And leave. Once and for all.

Lakshmibehn's family, in spite of their trying circumstances, refused. They knew that they couldn't even have rebuilt their house with the cash they were offered, leave alone buying replacement land. "We haven't taken the money", she declares emphatically. "We should be resettled according to the same policy as the submergence oustees, with five acres of land and a house plot. They have lost their livelihoods to the reservoir of the dam, we have lost ours to its colony. So where is the difference?"

As the construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam nears completion, Lakshmibehn's hopes for her long lost land have been gradually rekindled. For the past six years, the cement godowns on her land are lying empty. Why doesn't the Government remove them and return the unused land to her family? She attends meetings organized by the NBA, she stands up to police harassment and repression. But Government officials have never even bothered to inform her of their plans. "How will they inform us?" she asks, somewhat surprised. "No one ever comes here."

Even more bad news

The Government, on its part, has fresh, ambitious plans, fully capable of extinguishing the embers of hope which Lakshmibehn has somehow managed to keep alive. The year before last, new surveys were conducted in Gora, following which two gates were constructed. The sign on one of these gates reads: Heritage Village, Rajpipla Forest Department. But Lakshmibehn can't read what it says. Her family was never told the purpose of the gates. But by now, they know that such developments can only mean bad news.

Of the land acquired for the project colony and related works, a large part remains unused. But instead of returning this land to its rightful owners, the Gujarat Government now has an entirely different plan. A spectacular tourism project with private sector participation is now coming up, on these very lands once acquired for a 'public' purpose. The proposed features in the first stage of the project include restaurants, a food court, hotels, a rose garden, camping and adventure sports, among others.

A fresh wave of police repression has been let loose on the villagers, to facilitate the progress of the project. At an NBA meeting that Lakshmibehn attended last year, she witnessed her fellow protestors being beaten and forced into police vans. Such repression, however, does not deter her from standing her ground.

In this new scheme of things, with the Government's plans afoot for welcoming urban consumers to a tourist paradise at Kevadia Colony, Lakshmibehn is viewed as a mere obstacle, even a nuisance. In a developing, growing India, she must keep her truth, her loss, her hope, all to herself. For even if she speaks out, with her reservoir of courage and perseverance, who will hear her story? ⊕
__________________
Neeta Deshpande is a freelance writer based in Bangalore. This article is part of a series on uprootment and survival in the Narmada valley. Names of persons in this article have been changed.

Asia goes to a private matriculation school that has joined the rank of schools in Krishnagiri that churn out state toppers. One school claims to have sent all their students to either medical or engineering colleges. Asia aspires to join a professional course too, following the footsteps of her older sister Ayesha, an Engineering student and an alumna of the same school.

Buses of Matriculation school reach the most remote villages in Krishnagiri to pick up students, while students of government schools often face the prospect of trekking kilometres through hostile terrain to reach schools. Pic: Krithika Ramalingam.

R Chitra Devi, their mother, says government schools with their Tamil medium education does nothing to ensure a good career path or ensure employment. Private schools using state curriculum are not challenging enough. "Matriculation schools are the only English medium schools available to most parents who aspire for a better lives for their children. When the school ensures an entry into professional courses, then long school hours are a good price to pay," she adds.

The drill mill

The matriculation schools intensively drill their children and prepare them from board examinations in class X and Class XII, by altogether skipping the curriculum for Classes 9 and XI. Schools issue books for class IX and XI, but ask the students to also buy the next year's books. The students are then coached on the higher classes' syllabus for the next two years till the answers become second nature to them, said Abdul Sukkur, Asia's father.

In Krishnagiri, Dharmapuri, and Thiruvannamalai - once considered backward educational districts - there has been a steady increase in the number of matriculation schools. Many are residential, some day schools, most offering hostel facilities to those from other districts. School hours range between 10 and 14 in the higher classes. Often three or four students rent a home near the school with one parent staying with them to look after their needs. Fees are Rs.50,000 upward and accountability to parents or authorities non-existent.

"Some schools get a disclaimer from the parents that anything that happens to the child within the school premises can't be the responsibility of the school. Yet, around 3,500 to 5,000 students study at each of this school. When professional courses become the only way to ensure a reasonable living, parents make that choice for their children," says Sukkur.

In Dasapatti, village in Pennagaram block of Dharampuri, the Madiahs have made the same choice for their son Vijay*. Madiah is a marginal land holder and makes much of his living from selling tea on his cycle and Nagaselvi works on their field when not brewing tea for her husband's business. But their son, a class 9 student, is sent to a residential school in the neighbouring Namakkal district. "The residential school in Rasipuram had got a few state ranks. He (Vijay) was losing his discipline here because of his friends and his mark started slipping. So we put him where we know he will be made to work hard. Yes, he does miss us, but we try and make his stay there special," says a resigned Nagaselvi.

They pay upward of Rs.24,000 for the hostel and another Rs.28,000 as school fees per year, money that small farmers can hardly afford. Austerity measures mean the older sister does not get the education she wants - Shanta* (name changed) attended a Tamil medium school and now studies English Literature in a private college. "She is finding it difficult there (in classes) when all her classmates have an advantage, but she does want to be a lecturer and thinks we (parents) have played favorites with Vijay," adds Nagaselvi.

The humble residence of the Madiahs is home to many a dreams. They send their 9th grader son to a private residential school in the hope that he will enter professional courses. Pic: Krithika Ramalingam.

At Pennagaram, access to government schools is still poor and the number of English-medium schools that are affiliated to other boards limited. "At Kulipatti village near Kotturmalai around 28 children between the ages of 6 and 14 were out of school. The government school is on the other side of a catchment area that flooded during both South West and North East monsoon as the area receives rain between July and December. But with Matriculation schools starting in the area, school buses go right up to remote village to pick up children," says M Shankar of Development Education and Environment Protection Society.

Of the many streams in Tamilnadu, Matriculation schools have grown considerably over the last 4-5 years. A 17.51 lakh students were enrolled in matriculation schools in the state in 2004-2005, which stood at 23.13 lakh in 2008-2009, according to the State School Education Department statistics. In Krishnagiri, matriculation schools make up one-third of all un-aided schools (which don't receive grant from the government) at 69 of 220 schools, but parents I spoke to say the number is not representative as many schools had opened four to five years ago that do not have upper primary or higher classes have said they will affiliate themselves with the Matriculation board. "If it is English-medium education, then it has to be Matriculation schools," says R Anuradha, the Sukkurs' colleague at Association of Rural Communities for Development.

Tamil or other local language medium of instruction means the students stand a chance of getting only government jobs. The choice is between teachers and other revenue department posts. "Vocational training has been ignored in the favour of higher education in colleges, which fail to equip the students with knowledge and skill set involving computers and English language," she says.

In Krishnagiri, Thiruvannamalai and Dharmapuri districts, I meet many a youth who has a diploma or degree in Education that qualifies them to be teachers. Or they are readying themselves for Tamilnadu Public Services Commission examinations.

In Pennagaram, Dharmapuri, I meet two 20-somethings, C Veeramani and S Urvashi(*), who despite their degrees have been unable to find a work that matches their qualification. Urvashi scored 1045 on 1200 in the State Board exam and has a B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering. Today she works as personal assistant to a Highways Road contractor for a salary of Rs 2,500. "At the many interviews I have been to after graduation, I was often told my English language skills are poor. The soft skills training imparted in the college was not sufficient", she says. Today Urvashi's only hope for a decent earning is sitting for the government revenue department examinations.

"With Tamil medium education many find that teaching in schools is all they are qualified to do. The youth believe there will be a huge recruitment drive for teachers. These (western Tamilnadu) districts have the highest number of teachers training institutes."

Veeramani, a graduate in Botany, has also been finding the going tough in getting gainful employment. Currently working with DEEPS in their watershed management project, Veeramani is equipping himself with another skill set - computer applications. "I started working as a painter alongside my friends on graduation. We worked in Bangalore and other urban areas. My friends then told me there is a lot of scope for teachers, so I got a teacher training diploma from Varuvan Vadivelan (teacher training college) after paying Rs.60,000 as fees. I've registered with the Teachers Recruitment Board and I have been told I stand a chance only in the year 2015," says Veeramani. He now hopes his computer applications qualification will get him a good job in the interim.

Tamilnadu has a total of 1.13 lakh graduates in Education (or those with Bachelors in Education degree) and 1.06 lakh secondary grade teachers and 1.22 lakh post graduate teachers registered at the employment exchanges. A recruitment freeze that was in effect till 2006 was recently lifted and teachers are being taken in on the basis of their seniority. Veeramani tells me around 90 colleges for teacher training exist in the combined district of Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri each turning out around 50 trained teachers every year. The TTIs across the border in Karnataka are more popular as they charge half of fees of Tamilnadu TTIs.

"With Tamil medium education many find that teaching in schools is all they are qualified to do. Also, in the western districts (Salem, Namakkal, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, Thiruvannamalai), the youth believe there will be a huge recruitment drive for teachers. These districts have the highest number of teachers training institutes," he says.

Swapping the blackboard for the keyboard

S Abdul Wahid of Quaid-E-Millath Nagar, Chengam was in the same boat as Veeramani, but today he has given up on his dream of being a school teacher. He instead works for one of the few rural BPOs in Tamilnadu. A degree in commerce, certificates in computer applications and a teacher training diploma was all brought to nought in the employment scene. "I worked odd jobs to help my farmer parents with expenses, but jobs for my education qualifications never came," says Wahid.

A view of the 120 seater rural BPO at Chengam that offers employment opportunities to many a rural educated youth. Pic: Krithika Ramalingam.

It was then the Chengam panchayat union started computer applications, English language and soft skill training for those who had completed class 12 under the Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY). When jobs were still not forthcoming, the Panchayat Union Chairman G Kumar started a rural BPO to give employment to those who were trained under the government scheme. Today, Paramount InfoTech is a 120-seater KPO/BPO that does non-voice data entry work.

M Subramaniam, Manager says, the BPO now does search engine optimisation for newspapers, data entry for census work. "Voice based work involves a good command over language and also an ability to think on the feet, which the rural students do not have. Most of our staff is from government and corporation schools with their Tamil-medium instruction do not have the confidence to start a casual conversation in English," he says.

I meet many first generation women white collar women workers. Many from the Muslim community tell me it would have been very difficult for them to convince their parents to let them work in another town. With the Rural BPO things have changed.

Eighteen-year-old A Hazeena, whose father earns a livelihood as the village tailor, says despite two other programming diploma, she did not find any employment. "My parents had both studied only till class IX and wanted to see me as a Software Engineer, so I studied C, C++, SQL. But when that did not get me any jobs, I was reluctant to attend another training (RSVY). Thanks to the exposure from this job, I am more confident of joining a degree course and earning my living in the IT field," she says.

Tough act to follow?

So, why is it difficult to replicate this example elsewhere? Chengam Panchayat Union chairperson Kumar says private players don't want to start rural BPOs. "Many were intimidated at the lack of good talent, given the reputation of rural schools. There were no subsidies, no incentives for starting the rural BPO. An NGO helped me get a loan from a nationalised bank and the BPO was born in my Panchayat office with 10 computers," he says. Two years since then, Kumar has recovered his costs and his gives employment to many from backward communities, some of them women who have been abandoned by their marital families and other first generation learners like Wahid.

While Tamilnadu has announced it will frame a rural BPO policy, there has been very little private enterprise in starting rural BPOs. With only two other successful BPOs run by the Krishnagiri district administration in Sanasandhiram and Uthangarai, the need to start more rural BPOs is becoming more urgent. Shankar of DEEPS says migration is close to 30 percent in the three districts - in some villages, half the families have moved out. "Migration brings with it its own set of issues - HIV/AIDS in the migrant community is high, there is little security about food, education or livelihood. Families are split and the children pay the heaviest price. There is an urgent need to find local employment rural educated youth," says Shankar of DEEPS.

Some things don't change

Progress is still leaving out many in the rural communities. In other parts of Chengam block and neighbouring parts of Dharmapuri district, the issues are still the same. Fourteen-year-olds who read at the level of primary school students, many who don't get a chance to go to school, poor facilities.

At Kurumapatti, 30 kms from Chengam block headquarters, I meet Irula children who have never been to school. "The problems are the usual ones: poor bus service to this remote area - a 2 kms-walk to the primary school, lack of ICDS facilities, poor awareness amongst the Irulas. Mobilising admissions has been difficult," says T Devendiran of Gandhi Kasturbha Village Development Society (GKVDS) which runs Non-formal Education centres at Kurumapettai.

Fourteen-year-old Yuvaraj (first from left) attends the evening NFE classes conducted by GKVDS at his village, Kurumapatti. This is the first school for Yuvaraj, where he has learnt to read and write in the last two years. His dream of joining a school, however, has still not come true. Pic: Krithika Ramalingam.

Sandwiched between the Pennai river and hills of the Western Ghats, the villagers are isolated from the mainstream, preferring to let their children tend goats and cattle. Children's only contact with the outside world is the evening classes run at the village at the home of GKVDS educator G Karthikeyan. He spends the early evening rounding up the 30-odd children. The agenda for the class is set by the students. "They chose what they want to learn, that is the only way to keep the children in the class," he says.

The education material is poor, but the instructors improvise on a daily basis to keep the attention of the first generation learners. Fourteen-year-old K Yuvaraj, who has been to the classes for the last two years and can now read sentences in Tamil. He wants to go to school, but the NGO finds it difficult to accommodate him into school given his age. Two others who were enrolled in Kurumapatti panchayat schools - S Sona and S Sembaruthi - this June are no longer going to schools because the non-formal education programme of the NGO is not accredited by the Sarva Siksha Abhyan (Universal Primary Education) Programme as a bridge course.

Other NGOs say hiccups like this are few and far in between and the SSA programme has worked well in keeping children in school. Official numbers are 5505 children in Dharmapuri, 8667 in Krishnagiri 8667 and 4456 in Thiruvannamalai out of school children. With the rolling in of the universal secondary education programme, Shankar thinks the districts can do only better on education parameters. In his words: "What would be important is to look at rural employment and structuring courses to ensure that even those who complete secondary schooling are employable." ⊕

* Names changed to protect identity.

Krithika Ramalingam is a Chennai-based development journalist. This article is part of a series on education sponsored by Confederation of Indian Organisations for Service and Advocacy, a not-for-profit Tamilnadu-based organisation.

Police quietly removed safeguards against Taser-related brutality

A Minneapolis man who was Tased by police after surrendering and putting both hands on the hood of a squad car says he wants restitution from the police. On Monday, Rolando Ruiz's lawyer released dashcam video of an April 30 incident in which Ruiz can be seen with his hands on the hood of a car when a police officer approaches him and Tases him in the neck. Ruiz then falls to the ground, and can be heard screaming in agony as the officer kneels over him. As WCCO-TV in Minneapolis notes, the video begins moments before the Tasing, so it's unclear whether there was a physical confrontation beforehand. But it is clear that Ruiz was not being aggressive at the moment he was hit with a conducted energy weapon. Ruiz' attorney, Albert Goins, says his client's civil rights were violated, and he wants the police department to settle out of court for $75,000 or he says he will bring a federal lawsuit against the officers and Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan.

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Life became very tough in the last few months in my home town of Jandola.

The army sealed off the entire tribal agency [district] for more than three months and there were constant artillery shellings and bombings by Cobra helicopters and F-16 fighter jets.

The big danger was that any bullet, shell or rocket fired by the army could hit civilians. Civilians faced the same danger from the Taliban.

We, ordinary people from South Waziristan, are against the militancy of the Taliban and al-Qaeda

Many people were killed - both militants and civilians. I saw several bodies of militants near the mountains of Jandola.

After the heavy clashes began, myself and my family moved out of South Waziristan. We made the journey two days after the army operation started. We travelled together with 30 other people.

The journey was tough and people moved with great difficulty. It took us almost three days to reach Dera Ismail Khan and another two to get to Punjab.

We are now staying with my friend's family in Mianwali. They are kind-hearted and look after us.

'Pray for success'

Most of our relatives are now in Punjab. All of them are financially weak. We are farmers, so we are hoping we can sow some crops here to earn money.

We miss our home and we pray for the success of the army, so that we can go home soon.

The killing of Baitullah Mehsud, the supreme commander of the Taliban, was, of course, a great victory.

He damaged not only South Waziristan, but the whole of Pakistan. He allowed foreign militants to come and get trained in South Waziristan.

The militants inflicted massive damage on our home town. They are robbers. They used to steal our animals.

I would like to tell the West that Pakistan is a moderate and positive country.

We, ordinary people from South Waziristan, are against the militancy of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. We hate them and this is the truth coming from our hearts.

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." -- Voltaire

11/04/09 - "WPA" - Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Somalian civil society and court system are so devastated from decades of war that one wouldn't expect its citizens to have the means to raise serious legal challenges to Washington's apparent belief that it can drop bombs on that sad land whenever it appears to serve the empire's needs. But a group of Pakistanis, calling themselves "Lawyers Front for Defense of the Constitution", and remembering just enough of their country's more civilized past, has filed suit before the nation's High Court to make the federal government stop American drone attacks on countless innocent civilians. The group declared that a Pakistan Army spokesman claimed to have the capability to shoot down the drones, but the government had made a policy decision not to. 1

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, behaves like the world is one big lawless Somalia and the United States is the chief warlord. On October 20 the president again displayed his deep love of peace by honoring some 80 veterans of Vietnam at the White House, after earlier awarding their regiment a Presidential Unit Citation for its "extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry". 2 War correspondent Michael Herr has honored Vietnam soldiers in his own way: "We took space back quickly, expensively, with total panic and close to maximum brutality. Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop." 3

What would it take for the Obamaniacs to lose any of the stars in their eyes for their dear Nobel Laureate? Perhaps if the president announced that he was donating his prize money to build a monument to the First -- "Oh What a Lovely" -- World War? The memorial could bear the inscription: "Let us remember that Rudyard Kipling coaxed his young son John into enlisting in this war. John died his first day in combat. Kipling later penned these words:

"If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."

"The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature." -- James Madison, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 2, 1798.

A wise measure, indeed, but one American president after another has dragged the nation into bloody war without the approval of Congress, the American people, international law, or world opinion. Millions marched against the war in Iraq before it began. Millions more voted for Barack Obama in the belief that he shared their repugnance for America's Wars Without End. They had no good reason to believe this -- Obama's campaign was filled with repeated warlike threats against Iran and Afghanistan -- but they wanted to believe it.

If machismo explains war, if men love war and fighting so much, why do we have to compel them with conscription on pain of imprisonment? Why do the powers-that-be have to wage advertising campaigns to seduce young people to enlist in the military? Why do young men go to extreme lengths to be declared exempt for physical or medical reasons? Why do they flee into exile to avoid the draft? Why do they desert the military in large numbers in the midst of war? Why don't Sweden or Switzerland or Costa Rica have wars? Surely there are many macho men in those countries.

"Join the Army, visit far away places, meet interesting people, and kill them."

War licenses men to take part in what would otherwise be described as psychopathic behavior.

"Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him." -- Colonel Potter, M*A*S*H

"In the struggle of Good against Evil, it's always the people who get killed." -- Eduardo Galeano

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a Taliban leader declared that "God is on our side, and if the world's people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us." 4

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job." -- George W. Bush, 2004, during the war in Iraq. 5

"I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." -- Barack Obama. 6

Why don't church leaders forbid Catholics from joining the military with the same fervor they tell Catholics to stay away from abortion clinics?

God, war, the World Bank, the IMF, free trade agreements, NATO, the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, "anti-war" candidates, and Nobel Peace Prizes can be seen as simply different instruments for the advancement of US imperialism.

Tom Lehrer, the marvelous political songwriter of the 1950s and 60s, once observed: "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." Perhaps each generation has to learn anew what a farce that prize has become, or always was. Its recipients include quite a few individuals who had as much commitment to a peaceful world as the Bush administration had to truth. One example currently in the news: Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres which won the prize in 1998. Kouchner, now France's foreign secretary, has long been urging military action against Iran. Last week he called upon Iran to make a nuclear deal acceptable to the Western powers or else there's no telling what horror Israel might inflict upon the Iranians. Israel "will not tolerate an Iranian bomb," he said. "We know that, all of us." 7 There is a word for such a veiled threat -- "extortion", something normally associated with the likes of a Chicago mobster of the 1930s ... "Do like I say and no one gets hurt." Or as Al Capone once said: "Kind words and a machine gun will get you more than kind words alone."

The continuing desperate quest to find something good to say about US foreign policy
Not the crazy, hateful right wing, not racist or disrupting public meetings, not demanding birth certificates ... but the respectable right, holding high positions in academia and in every administration, Republican or Democrat, members of the highly esteemed Council on Foreign Relations. Here's Joshua Kurlantzick, a "Fellow for Southeast Asia" at CFR, writing in the equally esteemed and respectable Washington Post about how -- despite all the scare talk -- it wouldn't be so bad if Afghanistan actually turned into another Vietnam because "Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides. ... America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. ... American war veterans publicly made peace with their old adversaries ... A program [to exchange graduate students and professors] could ensure that the next generation of Afghan leaders sees an image of the United States beyond that of the war." 8 And so on.

On second thought, this is not so much right-wing jingoism as it is ... uh ... y'know ... What's the word? ... Ah yes, "pointless". Just what is the point? Germany and Israel are on excellent terms ... therefore, what point can we make about the Holocaust?

As to America not winning the war in Vietnam, that's worse than pointless. It's wrong. Most people believe that the United States lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, by poisoning the earth, the water, the air, and the gene pool for generations, the US in fact achieved its primary purpose: it left Vietnam a basket case, preventing the rise of what might have been a good development option for Asia, an alternative to the capitalist model; for the same reason the United States has been at war with Cuba for 50 years, making sure that the Cuban alternative model doesn't look as good as it would if left in peace.

And in all the years since the Vietnam War ended, the millions of Vietnamese suffering from diseases and deformities caused by US sprayings of the deadly chemical "Agent Orange" have received from the United States no medical care, no environmental remediation, no compensation, and no official apology. That's exactly what the Afghans -- their land and/or their bodies permeated with depleted uranium, unexploded cluster bombs, and a witch's brew of other charming chemicals -- have to look forward to in Kurlantzick's Brave New World. "If the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed," he writes. God Bless America.

One further thought about Afghanistan: The suggestion that the United States could, and should, solve its (self-created) dilemma by simply getting out of that god-forsaken place is dismissed out of hand by the American government and media; even some leftist critics of US policy are reluctant to embrace so bold a step -- Who knows what horror may result? But when the Soviet Union was in the process of quitting Afghanistan (during the period of May 1988-February 1989) who in the West insisted that they remain? For any reason. No matter what the consequences of their withdrawal. The reason the Russians could easier leave than the Americans can now is that the Russians were not there for imperialist reasons, such as oil and gas pipelines. Similar to why the US can't leave Iraq.

Washington's eternal "Cuba problem" -- the one they can't admit to.
"Here we go again. I suppose old habits die hard," said US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on October 28 before the General Assembly voted on the annual resolution to end the US embargo against Cuba. "The hostile language we have just heard from the Foreign Minister of Cuba," she continued, "seems straight out of the Cold War era and is not conducive to constructive progress." Her 949-word statement contained not a word about the embargo; not very conducive to a constructive solution to the unstated "Cuba problem", the one about Cuba inspiring the Third World, the fear that the socialist virus would spread.

Since the early days of the Cuban Revolution assorted anti-communists and capitalist true-believers around the world have been relentless in publicizing the failures, real and alleged, of life in Cuba; each perceived shortcoming is attributed to the perceived shortcomings of socialism -- It's simply a system that can't work, we are told, given the nature of human beings, particularly in this modern, competitive, globalized, consumer-oriented world.

In response to such criticisms, defenders of Cuban society have regularly pointed out how the numerous draconian sanctions imposed by the United States since 1960 have produced many and varied scarcities and sufferings and are largely responsible for most of the problems pointed out by the critics. The critics, in turn, say that this is just an excuse, one given by Cuban apologists for every failure of their socialist system. However, it would be very difficult for the critics to prove their point. The United States would have to drop all sanctions and then we'd have to wait long enough for Cuban society to make up for lost time and recover what it was deprived of, and demonstrate what its system can do when not under constant assault by the most powerful force on earth.

In 1999, Cuba filed a suit against the United States for $181.1 billion in compensation for economic losses and loss of life during the first 39 years of this aggression. The suit held Washington responsible for the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding and disabling of 2,099 others. In the ten years since, these figures have of course all increased. The sanctions, in numerous ways large and small, make acquiring many kinds of products and services from around the world much more difficult and expensive, often impossible; frequently, they are things indispensable to Cuban medicine, transportation or industry; simply transferring money internationally has become a major problem for the Cubans, with banks being heavily punished by the United States for dealing with Havana; or the sanctions mean that Americans and Cubans can't attend professional conferences in each other's country.

These examples are but a small sample of the excruciating pain inflicted by Washington upon the body, soul and economy of the Cuban people.

For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear much of that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the General Assembly on the resolution, which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone:

Year Votes (Yes-No) No Votes
1992 59-2 US, Israel
1993 88-4 US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994 101-2 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1995 117-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996 138-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997 143-3 US, Israel
1998 157-2 US, Israel
1999 155-2 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2000 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003 173-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2004 179-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005 182-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006 183-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007 184-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008 185-3 US, Israel, Palau
2009 187-3 US, Israel, Palau

How it began, from State Department documents: Within a few months of the Cuban revolution of January 1959, the Eisenhower administration decided "to adjust all our actions in such a way as to accelerate the development of an opposition in Cuba which would bring about a change in the Cuban Government, resulting in a new government favorable to U.S. interests." 9

On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government." 10 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo.

Notes

The Nation (Pakistan English-language daily newspaper), October 10, 2009 ↩
Washington Post, October 20, 2009 ↩
Michael Herr, "Dispatches" (1991), p.71 ↩
New York Daily News, September 19, 2001 ↩
Washington Post, July 20, 2004, p.15, citing the New Era (Lancaster, PA), from a private meeting of Bush with Amish families on July 9. The White House denied that Bush had said it. (Those Amish folks do lie a lot you know.) ↩
Washington Post, August 17, 2008 ↩
Daily Telegraph (UK), October 26, 2009 ↩
Washington Post, October 25, 2009 ↩
Department of State, "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba" (1991), p.742 ↩
Ibid., p.885 ↩
-

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

- Voltaire

By Robert Fisk

November 04, 2009 "The Independent" -- Could there be a more accurate description of the Obama-Brown message of congratulations to the fraudulently elected Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan? First the Palestinians held fair elections in 2006, voted for Hamas and were brutally punished for it - they still are - and then the Iranians held fraudulent elections in June which put back the weird Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whom everyone outside Iran (and a lot inside) regard as a dictator. But now we have the venal, corrupt, sectarian Karzai in power after a poll far more ambitiously rigged than the Iranian version, and - yup, we love him dearly and accept his totally fraudulent election.

And now we are still trying to persuade his opponent to join a national unity government, an administration led by the man whose vote-stuffing was the very reason that same leader of the opposition - the good pseudo-Pashtun Abdullah Abdullah - refused to run in a second round of elections. And Karzai got his fawning congrats from the Obama-Brown twins. So that's OK then. Wagons Ho. For Westmoreland, read McChrystal. Send in the brave 40,000 to join the rest of the US cavalry as it fights its way west - or rather south-west - to the Khe Sanh of Afghanistan in Year Eight of the War on Terror.

The March of Folly was Barbara Tuchman's title for her book on governments - from Troy to Vietnam-era America - that followed policies contrary to their own interests. And well may we remember the Vietnam bit. As Patrick Bury, a veteran British soldier of our current Afghan adventure, pointed out yesterday, Vietnam is all too relevant.

Back in 1967, the Americans oversaw a "democratic" election in Vietnam which gave the presidency to the corrupt ex-General Nguyen Van Thieuman. In a fraudulent election which the Americans declared to be "generally fair" - he got 38 per cent of the vote - Thieu's opponents wouldn't run against him because the election was a farce.

In 1967, Washington needed the elections to give legitimacy to this revolting dictator - and thus provide credibility to its own military occupation of Vietnam in the war against Communism. As in Vietnam - where Saigon was a lonely kingdom of brutal power totally isolated from the rest of the country - Karzai is going to rule over an equally tiny island of corruption, protected by US mercenaries while the Americans perform their familiar role of propping up a dictator.

As ex-Lieutenant Bury sagely points out, the Afghan war is "campaigning on a par with the 19th-century British colonial army trying to manage the unwinnable... What was or is the strategy behind these long, bloody conflicts?" Well, in 1967, it was the possible communisation of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Now it is Pashtunistan, Baluchistan, Waziristan. For us, the vast ignorant "plebes", it's supposed to stop the Taliban/al-Qa'ida beasts from attacking our looming towers all over again, albeit that the 2001 murderers in question largely hailed from that friendly, moderate, brutal, oligarchical monarchical dictatorship called Saudi Arabia where - thank the good gods - they don't hold elections.

But it's part of a dreary pattern. US forces were participating in a civil war in Vietnam while claiming they were supporting democracy and the sovereignty of the country. In Lebanon in 1982, they claimed to be supporting the "democratically" elected President Amin Gemayel and took the Christian Maronite side in the civil war. And now, after Disneyworld elections, they are on the Karzai-government side against the Pashtun villagers of southern Afghanistan among whom the Taliban live. Where is the next My Lai? Journalists should avoid predictions. In this case I will not. Our Western mission in Afghanistan is going to end in utter disaster.

November 04, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- At the weekend, six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantánamo -- Muslims from China's Xinjiang province -- were released to resume new lives in the tiny Pacific nation of Palau (population: 20,000). I have written at length about the plight of Guantánamo's Uighurs, innocent men caught up in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, who were mostly seized and sold to US forces by Pakistani villagers after fleeing a settlement in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains where they had been living a Spartan live for several months, free from Chinese oppression. Some were hoping to make their way to Turkey, to find work, but had found their way hard, and had been advised to seek out the settlement; others nursed futile dreams of rising up against the Chinese government, and, while working to make the settlement habitable, occasionally shot a few rounds on their only weapon, an aged Kalashnikov.
I have also written about how the US authorities knew, almost immediately, that these men had no connection to either al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but how, nevertheless, they flew them to Guantánamo, allowed Chinese interrogators to visit them, and tried, in their tribunals at Guantánamo, to make out that they were connected to a Uighur separatist group, which, obligingly had been designated by the Bush administration as a terrorist group to secure leverage with the Chinese government in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

I have also written about how five of the 22 Uighurs in Guantánamo were released in Albania in May 2006, and how the others had to wait another two years for a US court to have the right to examine one of their cases, concluding that the government's supposed evidence resembled a nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I also explained how, last October, the government abandoned trying to claim that any of the other 16 were "enemy combatants," but appealed when, ruling on their habeas corpus petitions, Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered their release into the United States, because they could not be returned to China, where there were fears that they would be tortured, because no other country had been found that would accept them, and because their continued detention in Guantánamo was unconstitutional.

I have also written about how the Obama administration shamefully defended its predecessor's opinion in the Court of Appeals, and refused to push to release the men in the US, and how, as a result, officials were once more obliged to scour the world seeking countries prepared to enrage China by accepting any of them, finally persuading Bermuda to take four in June, and now persuading Palau to take another six.

I have also written up the stories of these men, in my book The Guantánamo Files, in additional online chapters, and in articles over the last few years, but I am drawing them together here to tell the stories of six men who, nearly eight years after their wrongful and mistaken capture, are finally free from Guantánamo, even if an uncertain future awaits them on an island with no other Uighurs, and only a transient Muslim population of immigrant workers.

Survivors of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre

Although three of them, discussed below, were amongst the 18 seized together by Pakistani villagers, three others were seized in different circumstances. Two, remarkably, survived a notorious massacre in a fortress in northern Afghanistan before they even ended up in US custody. Seized by soldiers of the US-backed Northern Alliance (the opposition to the Taliban), they and other randomly-seized prisoners were taken to Qala-i-Janghi, a mud-walled fortress under the command of the warlord General Rashid Dostum, along with hundreds of mainly Arab and Pakistani fighters for the Taliban, who had left the city of Kunduz, the Taliban's last outpost in the north of Afghanistan, after a surrender was negotiated between the Northern Alliance and senior Taliban leaders.

Tricked into believing that they would be allowed to return home, some of the men responded to the betrayal -- and fears that they were to be executed -- by starting an uprising, which was savagely put down by US bombers, representatives of the US and British Special Forces, and Alliance soldiers. The survivors hid in a basement while the battle raged, and 86 men emerged a week later, after the basement had been bombed and, eventually, flooded. The survivors included three Uighurs, and two of these men -- Ahmad Tourson and Nag Mohammed -- were released in Palau.

Almost nothing is known about Mohammed (identified on his release as Edham Mamet), who was 26 years old at the time, as he refused to take part in his tribunal at Guantánamo or any of the military's annual review boards, and also refused to meet with his lawyers, but Tourson, who was 30 when seized, attended his tribunal -- one of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), deliberately one-side affairs convened in 2004-05 to assess whether the prisoners were "enemy combatants," who could continue to be held without charge or trial -- and willingly explained how, in 2000, he had traveled to Afghanistan with his family, but was caught in the street by Northern Alliance forces in November 2001 and taken to Qala-i-Janghi.

Describing the circumstances of his arrest, he said, "Foreigners, bad people, good people, soldiers, fighters. Everybody walks through the street and I am passing through the road, then I am captured by General Dostum's troops. It does not explain that all these people are al-Qaeda. It is kind of funny looking. Everybody walks in the street, everybody walks."

Talking about his experience of the Qala-i-Janghi massacre, he stated, "I was taken there when I was captured. I did not participate in the riot. They dropped bombs and I was injured. I was not a soldier." He also told the tribunal that a Uighur friend of his was killed in Qala-i-Janghi, and provide the panel of military officers with one of the most succinct explanations of why neither he nor any of his fellow Uighurs would wish to fight Americans. "I have nothing against the Americans," he said. "Why would I participate in the riot? All Uighurs have one enemy, the Chinese. We have no other enemies."

A stray Uighur seized in Pakistan

The other Uighur who was not seized as part of the group of 18 is Adel Noori, who was 32 years old at the time of his capture, and, who, like his fellow countrymen, maintained in Guantánamo that he had only one enemy -- the Chinese Communist government. He explained that he was "never asked to participate in a jihad against the United States while in Afghanistan," and "had no negative feelings toward the United States."

Noori had arrived in Kabul in July 2001 and had stayed at a house until the US began bombing the city in October. Denying an allegation that the house was a "training camp," he explained, "It was a small house and not a training camp. There wasn't any room for training." When the bombing began, he said that he and the other Uighurs in the house "ran in all directions for safety." He and three companions ended up fleeing to Pakistan, where, according to the US authorities, they "were arrested by the Pakistani police while trying to evade detection (dressed in burkas)" in Lahore on January 15, 2002, a desperate ploy at a time when Arabs and other foreigners in Pakistan were being seized and sold to US forces for bounty payments.

Three of the 18 Uighurs seized in Pakistan

Of the three men who were seized after fleeing the settlement in the Tora Bora mountains, Dawut Abdurehim, who was 27 years old at the time and who sold animal skins in China, told his tribunal that he lived at the settlement from June to October 2001, and, in response to an allegation that the settlement had been provided by the Taliban, gave the tribunal a history lesson, explaining how "the Afghan people and the Uighurs have had a relationship since the 1920s," and how, "In the Taliban's time, they just gave a place for the Uighur people ... The place we stayed had trees around it. We didn't step into other people's property. We just stayed where we were."

Abdurehim also explained that he and his 17 companions were captured in Pakistan after fleeing the settlement when it was destroyed in a US bombing raid. He described how one person was killed in the bombing raid -- "his body was exploded" -- and how afterwards "we moved around and some places even had monkeys that were also screaming at us." He also described being visited by a Chinese delegation in Guantánamo, in which, he said, he was vaguely threatened, but reported that "some other Uighurs had conversations with bad, dirty language," in which they were told that "when we go back to the country, we'd be killed or sentenced to prison for a long time." He also explained that, after three years in Guantánamo, he had not heard from his family. "They don't know where I am," he said. "They think I'm still doing business somewhere."

Another of the men, Abdulghappar Abdul Rahman, who was 28 at the time of capture, told his tribunal that he had traveled to Afghanistan to "get some training to fight back against the Chinese government," but although he arrived at the settlement in the mountains near Jalalabad in June 2001, he explained that he actually spent most of his time working on mending the house that was there, and on only one occasion shot three bullets from the solitary Kalashnikov.

In common with his compatriots, he also stressed that he had nothing against the United States. He said that his own people "and my own family are being tortured under the Chinese government," and when asked, "Was it your intention when you were training to fight against the US or its allies?" came up with an answer that summed up the feelings of all of Guantánamo's Uighurs even more forcefully than Ahmad Tourson: "I have one point: a billion Chinese enemies, that is enough for me. Why would I get more enemies?"

In December 2007, Abdulghappar wrote a letter from Guantánamo, which I published after it was cleared by the Pentagon's censors and made available by his lawyers in March 2008. In it, he explained how he and his companions "left our homeland in order to escape from the brutal suppression and unfair treatment from the Chinese government towards our people. The Uighur youth back home were either incarcerated because of false accusations or prosecuted and executed because of bogus allegations. It was extremely difficult for any Uighur to see a future for themselves within our homeland, and both young and middle-aged Uighurs started to leave East Turkistan [the Uighurs' name for their homeland before Chinese occupation] and try to find survival abroad, if anyone could find a way to get out."

After explaining the circumstances of the men's capture, he lamented the fact that the US authorities had failed to recognize their plight:

We were very pleased at the beginning when the Pakistanis turned us over to American custody. We sincerely hoped that America would be sympathetic to us and help us. Unfortunately, the facts were different. Although in 2004 and 2005 we were told that we were innocent, we have been incarcerated in jail for the past six years until the present day. We fail to know why we are still in jail here. We still hope that the US government will free us soon and send us to a safe place. Being away from family, away from our homeland, and also away from the outside world and losing any contact with anyone is not suitable for a human being, as, also, is being forbidden from experiencing natural sunlight and natural air, and being surrounded by a metal box on all sides.

He then described how his health had declined, and how one of his countrymen, Abdulrazaq (who is still at Guantánamo) had been told in August 2007 that he would be released. As a result, he asked to be moved from the isolated cells in Camp 6, and embarked on a hunger strike when his request was refused. Abdulghappar added:

Currently, he is on punishment and his situation is even worse. He is shackled to the restraint chair and force-fed twice a day by the guards, who wear glass shields on their faces ... Abdulrazaq would never want to go on hunger strike. However, the circumstances here forced him to do so, as he had no other choice. If the oppression was not unbearable, who would want to throw himself on a burning fire? In the US constitution, is it a crime for someone to ask to protect his health and to ask for his rights? If it does count as a crime, then what is the difference between the US constitution and the Communist constitution?

Little is known of the last man, Anwar Hassan, who was 27 when he was seized, because he, like Nag Mohamed, refused to take part in his tribunal or his review boards. However, his lawyers, Angela Vigil and George Clarke, explained that he was one of several prisoners whose tribunals had been reconvened when they produced what Matthew Waxman, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, regarded as the wrong result. They noted that, "contrary to the government's suggestion," the change of determination between the first and second CSRTs was not based on "additional classified information" (of which there was none), but seemed, instead, to have been based solely on "communications" from Matthew Waxman "pressing for [a] reversal" of the first CSRT determination.

The "do-over" tribunals were a low point, even for the Bush administration, with its complete disregard for fairness, justice and the law, but with a massacre, human trafficking for bounty payments, cynical deals between the US and Chinese governments, and hunger strikes and force-feeding as part of these men's experience of US custody, it remains a disappointment to me that they have now -- apparently for nearly $100,000 a head -- been thrown on the tender mercies of the people of Palau, rather than being allowed to settle in the United States.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon -- click on the following for the US and the UK).

November 04, 2009 "The Times" -- An Italian court sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison today for their role in the abduction of an Egyptian terrorist suspect in the first trial over "extraordinary renditions".

The Americans were all tried in absentia, but the verdicts were nevertheless hailed by human rights campaigners as an important victory that could open the way to further prosecutions. Two lower-ranking agents of the Italian military agency SISMI were sentenced to three years each.

None of the convicted CIA agents is in Italy, and successive Italian governments have refused to ask for their extradition.

Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Milan, was given an eight-year sentence while 22 other agents received five years each. Classed under Italian law as "fugitives", all were represented by Italian lawyers who had little or no contact with their clients.

Citing diplomatic immunity, Oscar Magi, the presiding judge, acquitted three other Americans as well as five Italian defendants who could not be judged because the Italian state had withheld evidence which it maintained was classified information.

They include General Niccolo Pollari, former head of SISMI, and his deputy Marco Mancini. The trial, which opened in June 2007, is the first in the world over the abduction of terror suspects during the Bush era by the CIA and its proxies and their subsequent "rendition flights" to third countries which permit or turn a blind eye to torture.

Abu Omar, an imam and militant Islamist whose real name is Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, was seized on a Milan street in February 2003. He was taken to the US air force base at Aviano in northeastern Italy, then flown to the US base at Ramstein in Germany, and eventually to Cairo. He claims he was tortured.

He was released after four years in prison without being charged, and now lives in Egypt. He told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that he had been "hung up like a slaughtered sheep and given electrical shocks" during his interrogations. "I was brutally tortured and I could hear the screams of others who were tortured too," he said.

The CIA agents left numerous traces of the operation, including the use of credit cards and mobile phones. Prosecutors say the lack of precautions suggests they believed they were operating with the sanction of the Italian authorities.

The prosecution also charged that the kidnapping of Abu Omar was a violation of Italian sovereignty which had compromised Italian security. Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, has denied all knowledge of the kidnapping.

General Pollari has aleady stepped down as head of SISMI over the affair. Armando Spataro, the prosecutor, had asked for a 13-year sentence for Mr Pollari and 12 years for Mr Lady.

The trial was held up after the Italian Government sought to have it shelved on grounds of national security. However, Italy's Constitutional Court ruled that it could go ahead, while agreeing that some evidence was inadmissible because it involved state secrets.

Lawyers for Abu Omar have demanded €10 million in damages. The court awarded him €1 million, and €500,000 for his wife.

At the time of his abduction, Abu Omar was under surveillance by the Italian authorities on suspicion of recruiting Islamic extremists to send to Iraq, and was noted for advocacy of violence in his sermons at his mosque.

In June Lady spoke to Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by Mr Berlusconi's brother Paolo, about the affair. "Of course it was an illegal operation. But that's our job. We're in a war against terrorism," he said.

He added: "I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors. It was not a criminal act, it was an affair of state."

Joanna Mariner of Human Rights Watch said that the case had put the war on terror on trial. She added: "There should be dozens of CIA rendition cases in the US courts, but unfortunately there are none. By meticulously investigating the facts and surmounting formidable obstacles, Italian prosecutors have set an example that US prosecutors should follow."

- Eduardo Galeano