Month: July 2012

Divesting from All Occupations

Posted on

In response to ongoing violations of international law and basic human rights by the rightist Israeli government of Benyamin Netanyahu in the occupied West Bank and elsewhere, there has been a growing call for divestment of stocks in corporations supporting the occupation.

Modeled after the largely successful divestment campaign in the 1980s against corporations doing business in apartheid South Africa, the movement targets companies that support the Israeli occupation by providing weapons or other instruments of repression to Israeli occupation forces, investing in or trading with enterprises in illegal Israeli settlements, and in other ways. Although human rights activists recognize such tactics as a legitimate form of nonviolent international solidarity with an oppressed people, right-wing groups supporting the occupation as well as some more moderate organizations concerned about the strident anti-Israel tone of some divestment supporters have denounced the movement.

Still, the campaign has scored notable successes. One target of the campaign has been the Caterpillar company, which has provided Israeli occupation forces with bulldozers that have illegally demolished thousands of Palestinian homes. In recent months, TIAA/CREF— the leading provider of retirement benefits for those in the academic, research, medical, and cultural fields—has removed Caterpillar from its Social Choice Fund. The influential Morgan Stanley Capital International has delisted Caterpillar from its World Socially Responsible Index, and the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation has joined a growing list of groups which have divested stockholdings in the company. At the recent General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, a resolution to divest from Caterpillar, along with Motorola and Hewlett Packard, for their complicity in the occupation was defeated by the narrowest of margins.

Opposing Occupation Everywhere

At the Presbyterian gathering and elsewhere, many opponents of the divestment resolution acknowledged that the Israeli government is engaged in serious human rights abuses in the occupied territories, but expressed concerned that the divestment resolution unfairly “singles out Israel.” Indeed, there are a number of governments in the world that engage in worse human rightsabuses than Israel, and violations of human rights should be opposed regardless if they take place within a country’s internationally-recognized borders or in an illegally occupied territory. Given that Israel is the world’s only Jewish state, there is understandably particular sensitivity if Israel alone is seen as being targeted, however serious the government’s transgressions.

However, there is a much stronger legal case for opposing human rights abuses in territories recognized as under foreign belligerent occupation. International law prohibits under most circumstances foreign companies from exploiting natural resources within such territories. Similarly, there are a host of legal issues regarding the export of weapons and other military resources to country’s that utilize them in suppressing the rights of those under occupation.

Indeed, these very issues were subjected to international debate during South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, and Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor.

Today, there are only three countries that are engaged in what the United Nations and the international community recognize as a foreign belligerent occupation: Israel, Morocco, and Armenia. (Although a moral case can be made for the independence of Tibet, Chechnya, and West Papua (as well as a number of other territories that aspire to become independent), the international community deems them as being within the internationally recognized borders of China, Russia and Indonesia respectively, and are therefore not recognized as occupied territories.)

Virtually no major international companies support Armenia’s current occupation of the small strip of Azerbaijan territory it controls. However, a number of companies support Morocco’s ongoing illegal occupation of the nation of Western Sahara.

U.S.-based Kosmos Energy is the only oil company in the world licensed for offshore oil exploration in the territorial waters of occupied Western Sahara. In 2002, a UN legal analysis determined that proceeding with such exploration activities would be in violation of international law. Similarly, two U.S. fertilizer companies – PCS and Mosaic – are major customers of Morocco’s illegal phosphate production in occupied Western Sahara. And, as is the case of the Israeli-occupied territories, U.S.-based arms manufacturers have supplied Moroccan occupation forces engaged in what independent human rights groups have described as gross and systematic human rights violations, including manufacturers of the teargas that has been used to break up peaceful demonstrations calling for the right of self-determination.

Expanding the Boycott

The Palestinian solidarity struggle would be considerably strengthened if, instead of calling for divestment specifically from companies supporting the Israeli occupation, the call was for divestment from companies supporting all foreign belligerent occupations.

Since it would effectively mean just one additional country and only a small number of companies, it would not take much attention away from the Israeli occupation and Western companies supporting the occupation. More importantly, it would help move the debate away from a divisive pro-Israel vs. anti-Israel dichotomy, where people often end up just talking past each other, to where the debate belongs: human rights and international law.

Morocco is a predominantly Arab Muslim country. By including Western Sahara along with Palestine, the movement would avoid the accusation that it is unfairly singling out Israel. After all, it would be targeting all illegal occupations, not just one.

Morocco, like Israel, is in violation of a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a landmark decision of the International Court of Justice regarding their occupation. Morocco, like Israel, has illegally moved tens of thousands of settlers into the occupied territory. Morocco, like Israel, engages in gross and systematic human rights abuses in the occupied territories. Morocco, like Israel, has illegally built a separation wall through the occupied territories. Morocco, like Israel, relies on the United States and other Western support to maintain the occupation by rendering the UN powerless to enforce international law. Morocco, like Israel, is able to maintain the occupation in part through the support of multinational corporations.

And just as Palestine is recognized by scores of countries and is a full member of the Arab League, Western Sahara is recognized by scores of countries and is a full member of the African Union, thereby insuring international support.

Not only would including all occupations in the divestment campaign help protect the movement from spurious charges of “anti-Semitism” and broaden its appeal, it would help bring attention to the little-known but important self-determination struggle of the Sahrawi people against the illegal and oppressive Moroccan occupation of their country, which was invaded by the U.S.-backed kingdom in 1975, eight years after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank and other Arab territories. (For a summary of the Western Sahara struggle and its implications, see Western Sahara: The Other Occupation)

Given the intense polarization, harsh polemics, and suspicions regarding Israel and Palestine, a campaign based more on universal legal and moral principles against occupation, rather than targeting a particular country that has a strong and influential domestic constituency, would be far more effective. Given the suffering of the Palestinian (and Sahrawi) peoples and the complicity of the U.S. government and U.S. corporations in their oppression, they deserve nothing less.

Sudan’s protests become civil insurrection

Posted on

A growing anti-government movement consisting of nonviolent demonstrations as well as scattered rioting is beginning to threaten the Sudanese dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, an indicted war criminal, who has ruled this large North African nation for twenty-three years. Beginning as protests against strict austerity measures imposed three weeks ago, the chants of the protesters have escalated to “the people want to overthrow the regime,” the line heard in recent uprisings in other Arab countries, including Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria.

Could Sudan be the next Arab country in which an autocratic government is brought down in a largely nonviolent civil insurrection?

Some analysts have dismissed the prospects of a successful uprising by noting the sheer brutality of the Sudanese regime, responsible for a genocidal counter-insurgency war in its western province of Darfur and decades of bloody repression in the southern part of the country, now the newly-independent republic of South Sudan.

However, it is not the brutality of the regime that determines whether or not it can be toppled by a largely nonviolent civil insurrection. The 900 people killed during the 18-day Egyptian uprising was a higher total than any 18-day period of the Syrian uprising during its earlier nonviolent phase, but the Egyptian revolutionaries persisted and won. Similarly, Tunisian dictator Ben Ali ordered his forces to open fire on the hundred s of thousands of nonviolent protesters on Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis, but the soldiers refused, forcing him to flee.

What determines the fate of autocrats being challenged by civil insurrections is not the threat of repression per se as it is the ability of the pro-democratic opposition to undermine the pillars of support for the regime – such as security forces, economic elites, foreign backers, and others – through massive non-cooperation.

Many in the West are unaware that Sudan – despite its horrific history of authoritarianism and violence in recent decades – also has a history of largely nonviolent pro-democracy civil insurrections which pre-date not just the recent revolts of the “Arab Spring,” but the pro-democracy uprisings in Africa during the early 1990s that brought down dictatorships in Mali, Benin, Madagascar and elsewhere in the continent.

The first major Sudanese pro-democracy insurrection took place against the regime of Field Marshal Ibrahim Abboud in October 1964. When authorities tried to ban increasing public debate regarding the legitimacy of the military government, which had ruled the country since 1958, large protests by a coalition of students, professionals, workers, leftists, nationalists and Islamists broke out. Within a week, a general strike had shut down the country. On October 28, scores of nonviolent protesters in Khartoum were gunned down by government forces. Politicians and activists, through family and other personal ties, took advantage of a deepening split within the military to convince them to depose Abboud and return the country to civilian governance on October 30. A series of unstable civilian coalition governed the country until a military coup in 1969, led by Jafaar Nimeiry.

Over the next sixteen years, Nimeiry shifted his ideology from left-wing nationalist, to pro-Western anti-communist, to Islamist, but not his autocratic style of leadership. Early in the spring of 1985, however, there were a series of massive and largely nonviolent demonstrations in the capital of Khartoum and the neighboring city of Omdurman. A general strike called by trade unions and professional organizations paralyzed the country as the pro-democracy movement gained increasing support from a growing cross-section of the population, including the business community. Despite thousands of arrests and scores of shootings, the largely-peaceful protests continued, with even the country’s judiciary joining in the civil rebellion. Protesters shut down pro-government radio stations and occupied airport runways to prevent Nimeiry, who was on a state visit to Washington, from returning home. On April 6, the military seized power, formally overthrowing the dictator. Pro-democracy activists continued their protests, however, forcing the new junta to allow for an interim civilian-led government followed by democratic elections which gave the Sudanese one of the most open democratic political systems in the Arab world.

As with the earlier experiment in democracy, however, the shaky civilian governments which followed were unable to unify the country and a coalition of military officers and hardline Islamists seized power in 1989 and have ruled ever since.

This inevitably raises the question of whether such an uprising can succeed again.

There are some major differences between Sudan today and Sudan during these previous uprisings, not the least of which has been the systematic destruction under al-Bashir’s rule of key civil society institutions, particularly the trade unions, which played a major role in the 1964 and 1985 uprisings. Still, pro-democracy groups like Girifna (Arabic for “We are fed up”) have continued to organize.

In addition to armed regional rebellions in the west, south and northeast in recent decades, there have also been periodic nonviolent struggles for greater democracy and accountability. In the 1990s, anti-regime protests were gaining traction until the 1998 U.S. bombing of the country’s largest pharmaceutical plant (apparently based on erroneous intelligence that it was a chemical weapons factory controlled by Al-Qaeda) enabled the regime to steer popular resentment towards the United States. Another uprising in 2005, centered in the poorer shantytowns of the capital, was violently suppressed.

The current uprising, however, is the most serious to challenge the regime so far. Despite being met by severe repression, there have been some impressive innovations by the pro-democracy forces. Recognizing the vulnerability of large concentrations of protesters to the armed forces of repressive regimes, the protests have organized as a series of simultaneous small demonstrations in many part of the country and various neighborhoods of the capital. Though students, as in the previous uprisings, are disproportionately represented among the protesters, there is also a strong component of poor and working class Sudanese, as well as older people. The grievances are not ethnic or even ideological as much as they are a simple demand for accountable government. Women have been playing an important role as well, with the first protest of the current uprising being organized by female students at the University of Khartoum on June 15.

Just as the movement has been consciously decentralized in terms of protests, it has been consciously decentralized in terms of organization. One pro-democracy activist noted how the secret police arrest Girifina members daily as if they are looking to jail the leadership, but “they just can’t get it that Girifna is a leaderless movement and no matter how much you arrest of us we simply will not stop.”

Though the movement faces enormous challenges and victory is by no means certain, the current protests in Sudan illustrate that even the most brutal regime is ultimately vulnerable if it loses legitimacy in the eyes of its people.