OPERATION LOWERING EXPECTATIONS
After the initial promises of 'home before Ramadan', American military spokesmen have set about lowering public expectations of early success in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld wondered out loud whether Osama bin Laden could ever be caught, saying that it was like finding a needle in a haystack, while military men wondered whether the war on terrorism would take years, or lifetimes, if indeed it ever could be won. Having anticipated immediate collapse of the Afghan Taliban regime under US fire, military spokesmen now sing the praises of the hardy mountain warriors - the better to excuse their own poor performance.
Estimates of the enemy's advantages tell us precious little about the actual balance of forces on the ground, but a great deal about US preoccupations. The US is concerned first to establish an open-ended justification for the militarisation of international relations. As the world's pre-eminent military power, America prefers to see international cooperation assume a military form, where its own advantages over its European and East Asian competitors are strongest. The 'war against terror' is the substitute for the Cold War as rationale for US military mobilisation and diplomacy.
But the very open-ended character of the 'war against terror' carries great costs for American society, as it does for the wider world. America's chosen targets are abstractions - 'terror' - or they are enemies who are, because of their marginal relation to society, unpredictable and difficult to influence. The 'war against terror' in its nature, terrifies people, in America as it does abroad. Promoting a state of emergency, with restrictions on civil liberties and constant alert has a debilitating effect, leading to anxiety, panic, absenteeism, repressive police measures and public disorder. But above all, it makes victory impossible, since the real enemy is not bin Laden or the Taliban, but America's own nightmares. The administration has little option but to lower expectations of an early victory.
OFFICIAL TERRORISM IN ISRAEL
Since the beginning of the Intifada last October 189 Israelis and 755 Palestinians have been killed (including 42 in the last week) and 16,460 injured. Of the dead 15 per cent were under 15 years old, while 30 per cent in total were under 18. Sixty-three per cent were shot by live ammunition and shelling killed a further 22 per cent. Thirty-two per cent were hit in the head or neck; upper body injuries accounted for 56 per cent of the deaths. Israeli soldiers killed 86 per cent and 86 per cent of the dead were civilians.
Children (under 18s) sustained 36 per cent of the injuries in the West Bank and 57 per cent in Gaza. 82 per cent of West Bank injuries, and 60 per cent of those in Gaza, were to the upper body. An estimated 2,000 Palestinians will suffer from permanent disability, including 437 children.
Meanwhile closures have reduced the West Bank to 64 separate clusters and Gaza to 3. Curfews, whereby Palestinians are allowed to leave their houses for a couple of hours every few days, have been enforced in several areas (notably in the IDF controlled area of Hebron, which over 30,000 Palestinians share with 400 settlers). Since October 2000, 1850 residents of the Occupied Territories, and 1,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel itself, have been detained. 50 per cent of these were children and 900 remain in prison.
The Occupied Territories have suffered a 51 per cent drop in GNP, while unemployment has risen to 48 per cent. One million three and hundred thousand Palestinians are now living on less than $2 per day; double the pre-intifada number. Up to January 2001 the economic loss was calculated at $2 billion. In addition 4,000 buildings including 773 homes have been extensively damaged by shellfire, or in Israeli house demolitions. Over 100 water wells have been destroyed and 25,000 fruit of olive trees uprooted. 42,000 dunums of land, 78 per cent of which was agricultural, has been bulldozed.
Israeli incursions into nominally Palestinian controlled areas this week marked another bloody episode in the intifada. Israeli society continues to back Sharons brutal war against the Palestinian people. Sharons attempts to equate Yasser Arafat and Osama Bin Laden seem, however, to have fallen on deaf ears, in the new Islamophile Washington. Perhaps Bush will follow in his fathers footsteps and force a new deal on the Israelis.
In fact a more natural comparison for Osama Bin Laden would be the early Zionists. Often middle class malcontents they believed that Jewish civilisation could never be reconciled with that of Western Europe. They devised increasingly elaborate schemes for the construction of a homeland that would allow the Jew to be a natural Jew. These schemes came to fruition in the establishment of Israel, a tragic symbol of the triumph of particularism. Nick Frayn
THE IRA DISARMED YEARS AGO
Weapons' decommissioner, Canadian General de Chastelain, confirmed that a substantial number of the Irish Republican Army's arsenal had been voluntarily 'put beyond use' - sealed in concrete according to most speculations. As everybody agrees, the destruction of these weapons is as important as a symbol of the IRA's good behaviour as it is a practical measure.
Though it has suited Unionist and British politicians to query the nationalist militia's seriousness about the ceasefire, the truth is that the Republican leadership disarmed the movement many years earlier, when it called upon the colonial authority, Britain to solve the northern Irish 'problem' (Towards a Lasting Peace, February 1992).
The intransigent die-hards date Sinn Fein's withdrawal from the goal of Irish independence to 1986, the year the Ard Fheis agreed to contest elections in the 'partition Dail' - but in principle there is no reason why greater political engagement ought necessarily mean compromise with the occupying force.
The real change that presaged the end of Ireland's struggle for independence was the generalised defeat of national liberation movements culminating in the West's war against Iraq, and the New World Order announced by George Bush Senior. After September 11th the model of militant opposition to imperialism was stamped indelibly as fanatical terrorism, persuading the former republicans to make the last gesture of their ideological disarmament. -- James Heartfield