Water War in the Land of Two Rivers

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Water War in the Land of Two Rivers

Climate Change: Nuclear Is No Solution!

The United States Wants to Create Conditions to Attack Venezuela

US Embargo Against Venezuela: State Department's Mock Indignation Gives the US a Bad Name

Extension of Panama Canal Project: More than an Apple of Discord

By Gilles Munier; Translation : Xavière Jardez

In 2450BC, Lower Mesopotamia was the theatre of the first war for water ever known so far- and ever documented by historians-. The two city-states, Lagash and Umma fought over  the control of the irrigation canals fed by the Tigris River in the vicinity of their borders. Eannatum, King of Lagash, came out victorious and a stele shows him holding in his left hand a net where his enemies are caught. However, in 2150 BC, Lugazaggesi of Umma avenged the destruction of his city and Lagash was destroyed…..

In this opening 21st century, many Iraqis, short of confidence in the future of peace in the region, accuse Turkey of playing a dangerous game in carrying on with the construction of 22 dams and 19 hydroelectric plants on the Tigris, the Euphrates and their tributaries, under the GAP project ( the Great Anatolia Project). Coupled with the forestalled establishment of "the Great Kurdistan", the next war for water might well be- too- in Mesopotamia.

What Herodote wrote about the symbiosis between Egypt and the Nile, goes for Iraq which "is a gift of the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers". Today, the question is: for how long? A few observers who, like me, could travel wide and large in this desperate country, these past thirty years, wonder whether this "prophecy" said to be from Boutros-Boutros Ghali, is not already  underway. The next war in the Middle East, he said in 1987, - he was the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt- would be "a war for water". The relentless pursuit of the GAP and, in the long term, the creation of a Kurdish State in Iraq risk precipitating its outbreak.

GAP  and "the peace pipeline"

The GAP would have remained in a pigeonhole without the willpower of Türgüt Ozal and Süleyman Demirel, nicknamed "the king of the dams". It so happened that both politicians, - who had been in turn Prime Minister and President of the Republic in the years 1980-1990- were engineers specialized in electric and hydroelectric energies and convinced that the Taurus –the Turkish water tower- would restore Turkey in its past glory.

On the paper, Ozal and Demirel’s dreams summed up as the improvement of an added 1 800 000 hectares of  agricultural lands, the construction of road infrastructures, airports and a new railway network and increase in electric production needed for the development of the region.  But those dreams also meant what they dare not say, i.e. expelling the Kurds from the region, settling peasants of Turkish origin, regarded as colonialists, birth and development of the Kurdish national movement, thinning of soils due to intensive farming, spoiling of archaeological  sites, natural hazards of a wide range, armed conflicts with Syria and Iraq.

Compared with 1980, Syria and Iraq nowadays receive only 40% of the flow of the Euphrates. An increase in the population of Iraq and its after-war reconstruction would lead to a growing demand in water which, if not met, would definitively result in strained relationship with Turkey in the years to come. For the Iraqis who see the Turks as the successors of the Ottomans, in twenty years "the needs of our countries would be such that the only choice left to us would be between submission to Ankara dictates or war". And Demirel’s statement that "Syria and Iraq have no more rights on Turkish waters than we have on their oil" has a nasty edge to it.

In 1997, Süleyman Demirel keen on refurbishing his reputation as a mediator offered to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States to build two "aqueducts" baptized "the peace pipelines" to provide them with drinking water which would be sold or battered for oil. None of them agreed to that deal preferring to embark on alternative research rather than take the chance to be dependent for years on the goodwill of the Turks.

Drying up of the Tigris

Between 1990 and 2001 I noticed the harbingers of that terrible war predicted by Boutros-Boutros Ghali during my visits to cities along the Euphrates, crossing the "third River" in the Marshes, or in Basra. The Iraqi leadership refused then to face the situation because they could not confront Turkey at a time when the United States were trying to strangle to death their country. They usually dodged all issues related to the consequences of the drying-up of the Euphrates River or worst, what would happen when the people of Baghdad discovered an empty Tigris.

On the ground, the situation was more than worrying. What impressed me most in 1990 at Ramadi when driving over the bridge that spans the Euphrates was that I could not recognize the land my eyes were used to. The river was but a mere streak of water. I had read about the GAP but I had not imagined– and least of all, the peasants who would  loose all their crops- that Türgüt Ozal would authorize the filling of the Ataturk dam without giving a thought to the acquired rights of the people living along and off the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq since ancient times.

On August 3^rd , 1990, after Iraq stormed Kuwait, Saddam Hussein eager to put to the test Turkey’s intentions were the conflict to worsen had sent to Ankara, Issan al Chalabi, minister of oil, to ask the Turkish government to increase the volume of water of the Euphrates to 200 m3/sec. that is, a little more than one-third. He met with a refusal and in February 1991, as war was at its peak, Turkey even decreased the flow by 40% during three days. ..Despite the technical arguments raised, this decision was actually a warning to the Iraqi President: George Bush, senior had openly asked the Turkish government to deviate the two mythical rivers so as to bring Baghdad to its knees. Ozal refused and therefore the US administration decided to destroy water treatment plants. In 1991 a Harvard University delegation reported that out of 20 plants, 17 electric plants had been bombed, 11 of them completely. Declassified DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) documents of 1990 and 1991 confirmed that the Pentagon had targeted the civilian populations, children as well, hoping that the Iraqis would subsequently overthrow Saddam Hussein, in utter violation of art. 57 of the Geneva Convention. 

For the past thirteen years, the Iraqis had a foretaste of what a war for water would be. True they could drink and water their fields …yet with water polluted by bacteria and chemicals released by Turkey. Out of one and a half million people or more - most of them children- how many have been little by little poisoned to death?

The Ma’dan country

The "Third River" between the Tigris and the Euphrates did not spring out of the "diabolical" mind of Saddam Hussein. The first concern of those at the root of this project was neither to chase smugglers or robbers hiding in the marshes, nor to crush the many Shia or communist cells teeming there at one time. In fact, the construction of the Turkish dams meant that the marshes would disappear altogether.

Actually, the Third River project goes back to the 50’s and is English. Digging an artificial river was originally designed to fill the irrigation canals instead of letting the water flow into the marshes. Preliminary works based on studies prepared by the British engineer, Franck Haigh started in 1953.  They were soon abandoned after the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy by General Kassem on July 14, 1958.

Draining part of the marshes dear to the British explorer, Wilfred Thesiger came up again under Saddam Hussein with a new objective spelt as the development of agricultural lands to which the environmental damages caused by the GAP were not foreign. It had become urgent to wash away the salt content and the pollution of the two big Rivers into he Gulf waters. Works started in 1991, just after the First Gulf War and the "Third River" was implemented in no time.

No one would ever have thought in those days that the embargo imposed on Iraq by the United Nations would last thirteen years. Pumps, sluices, seeds, fertilizers, tractors and other miscellaneous agricultural items could only be bought after being authorized by the UN Sanctions Committee and it then followed that the agricultural projects of the "Third River" -or as it was called  the "Saddam River"- could not be fully carried through. Most of the contracts were suspended or called off under the suspicion of "dual use". According to the American, some parts of the pumps made of special metal could be used to make bombs….Engine parts of tractors could equip tanks ….Chemical elements of fertilizes turned into components of weapons of mass destruction…and so on and so on…Today, those Iraqis who had favoured the overthrow of Saddam Hussein wonder why the Americans never put a halt to the works in progress whereas they were bombing civilian and military buildings every single day between 1991 and 2003. Thus, the dried-up swamplands changed slowly into a desert. The Ma’dan whom Saddam Hussein intended to turn into farmers had to leave for Kirkuk or for other swamplands, in  particular near Samara.

Basra

Down in the south, Basra is in no better shape. It has been a long time since that region where the Old Testament locates the earthly Paradise is no longer what it used to be. The Shatt al Arab is silted up and the canals of the "Venice of the Arab Gulf" are but open-air sewages. Towards  Kuwait, in Basra suburbs, the sun glitters over salt-caked patches.

Around the Fao peninsula, a desolate landscape faces the traveller. Nothing is left where before local boats crisscrossed a labyrinth of channels. The land has been churned up by three wars in twenty-five years. Palm tree grooves once the pride and the beauty of the Shatt are a mere souvenir. Numerous trunks stand as petrified witnesses of the Iran-Iraq War and bar the horizon. In the vegetable souk, the legendary tomatoes of Sinbad the Sailor’s country are contaminated with depleted uranium and synonymous of cancer. Water is all around…but a litre of drinking water is more expensive than a litre of petroleum.  Here, people do not hold the embargo or "Saddam revenge" responsible for this situation alone but the Turks and their "dammed GAP".  The only hope entertained by the pro-Iranian mullahs is in the construction of a pipeline bringing clear water to the Basra inhabitants from a nearby tributary of the Tigris, the river Karoun. It is obvious that if carried out this project will tilt the whole region towards Iran which since the last Gulf War dominates the political scene unchecked. Whereas they had rejected the Turkish "peace pipeline", Qatar has agreed that Iran provides part of its needs in water and Koweit might follow up.

Ilisu , the dam of contention

These ominous signs would be of little importance were other plans not to threaten Mesopotamia, specially the construction of the Ilisu dam, one of the biggest hydro-electric dam of Turkey on the Tigris, 65 kms from the Iraqi border.

In June 2001, a report branding it as obnoxious for the" environment and human rights" compelled the British government to withdraw its support. A campaign led by "the Friends of the Earth" against the eviction of 70 000 Kurds it will entail and the disappearance of the one thousand years old  Middle Ages troglodyte site of Hasankeyf  (Hassan Pleasure) forced the British group Balfour Beatty to disengage from the consortium in charge of the construction of this giant dam.

At the end of  2001 - and because of the evil nature of Saddam Hussein -, no one and least of all the proponents of the environment cause intended to take up the case of the disastrous consequences of the running of this dam on the most populated areas along the Tigris - Mosul, Tikrit (!), Samara, Baghdad and Kut-

However, at the same time, the Iraqi officials dare say aloud what they had kept for themselves for tactical reasons. They voiced their concern over the hazards that could befall their country in case of earthquakes in the Turkish Kurdistan: "If the Attatürk dam were to give way, the Vice-Minister of Interior told me, the whole mass of water it holds back would carry away all the structures built downstream and a cataclysm of the scale of the Biblical Flood would engulf part of Syria and Iraq."

Though situated at around one hundred kilometres from the Euphrates, Baghdad would be flooded. On July 2, 2002, Abdul Sattar Salman Hussein , Chairman of the Iraqi Sciences Organisation for Water Resources, wrote to the French-Iraqi Friendship Organisation (AFI) to help convince the Alsthom Group not to replace the Balfour Beatty Group. He threatened to cancel all contracts signed with this Group and blacklist it if it were to provide Turkey with electric turbines.

The occupation of Iraq by the United States buried the issue of the dam for the time being.   But, its construction has not been abandoned, the banking and finance systems awaiting better days to start the works anew.

Greater Kurdistan

The de facto self-rule enjoyed by Kurdistan since 1991 and  the overthrow of Saddam Hussein en April 2003 pave the way to the establishment of an independent Kurdish State. If Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani – the two Kurdish feudal chiefs of Iraq- succeed in separating Kirkuk (1) from the rest of the country to make it the capital of independent Kurdistan, the "Great Kurdistan" would hold two major stakes: oil and water. Will they use them to blackmail both Baghdad and Ankara with all the dangers lurking in that move or will they play one country against the other in a diplomatic game postponing in so doing a crisis over  water for a while?

All will depend upon the counsels of their all-too-ubiquitous Israeli advisers.  They certainly would try to compete with the swift development of Turkish Kurdistan and make theirs the dreams of grandeur of Demirel and Ozal without the means to reach it and resorting to risky operations in which they are masters. Water and oil can be a blessing or a curse. A scenario where Iraq, Iran and Turkey would rally against them is not far-fetched. Jalal Talabani must remember that by offering assistance to the Iranian pasdaran to make their way to Halabja in March 1988, he had sparked a true war of gas and caused the death of an estimated 5000 civilians. According to Stephen Pelletiere, a CIA analyst in charge of the file, the battle of Halabja was actually "a war for water". The pasdarans and the People’s Union of Kurdistan (PUK) were to gain control of the Darbandikhan dam which provides water to Baghdad off the Diyala tributary.

The blood of water

In 2002 and 2003, hundred of thousands people marched through the streets of capital cities around the world to show their opposition to the US aggression against Iraq. One of the slogans chanted throughout was "No war for oil". No one thought of chanting "No war for water".

And yet, water is one of the hidden objectives of the war. George Schultz, former Secretary of State under President Reagan, is today member of the Bechtel Board. In December 1983, he entrusted Donald Rumsfeld with convincing Saddam Hussein to build a pipeline between Kirkuk and Aqaba. As a reward, he authorized the delivery to Iraq of Bell combat helicopters which were used in Kurdistan. In September 2002, roundabout turn. He was Chairman of the "Liberation Committee of Iraq" and had written in the Washington Post: "We have good reasons to start a military operation against Hussein and a multilateral effort for its reconstruction after his overthrow".  In April 2003, his company has obtained, as expected, a 680 millions dollars contract to "reconstruct" Iraq! From thereon, he is canvassing for the privatisation of the Tigris and Euphrates waters.

Iraqis should watch out that what happened to Bolivia in 1999 does not happen to them. The World Bank had recommended the privatisation of water resources as well as its supply network. Bechtel via one of its branches snatched the market. It needed a popular revolt to quash the "law on clean water and cleansing" carried out secretly. With Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank, Georges Shultz and the neo cons have the right pawns in the right places to initiate anew a similar operation on a bigger scale.

Ishak Alaton a Turkish businessman close to George Soros stated to the New York Times (2/3/1999) that " those who control water will be the winners of the future and Turkey is one of them….I do believe that if the 20th century has been the century of oil, the next century will be the century of water". 

We are witnessing manoeuvres designed at taking control of the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The "war for water" that the United States are waging in Mesopotamia against Europe has started but Europe is not aware of it.

Zoe Kenny, Green Left Weekly of Australia, May 31, 2006.

Despite being seen as a climate change "renegade", Prime Minister John Howard is currently attempting to gain "greenie" points by pushing for acceptance of "cleaner and greener" nuclear power as the solution to global warming. However, environmentalists, scientists and opposition political parties have roundly dismissed Howard's call for a "full-blooded debate" on nuclear power as a false debate with a pre-determined winner that ignores a gamut of possible renewable energy options.

While visiting Ireland on May 22, Howard made his call for a public debate on nuclear power as well as flagging the possibility of establishing a uranium enrichment plant in Australia. This would convert powdered uranium ore ("yellowcake"), which has 0.7% of the fissionable uranium-235 isotope, into nuclear fuel rods with a 3-5% U-235 content, thus adding value to Australia’s uranium exports.

Howard’s apparent motivation for pushing for nuclear power – that it is the "best" solution to reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and curtailing climate change – is not convincing. As Labour frontbencher and former Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) president Peter Garrett told the May 23 Melbourne Age, Howard has "done absolutely zip on climate change".

The Howard government’s current climate change policy would allow a 100% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, which would lock the world into a 3-4^oC rise in average global surface temperatures, causing catastrophic climate change.

Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and allows a greenhouse mafia of powerful fossil-fuel resources corporations headed by BHP to write government greenhouse policy (as was revealed by ABC TV’s Four Corners programme earlier this year). In its 2006 budget, the Howard government only allocated a measly $100 million towards combating climate change.

According to Climate Action Network Australia's March 2004 report The Real Way Forward, the federal government is still giving massive subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry while cutting funding for research into renewable energy. In 2002, the government pulled funding for the Australian Cooperative Centre for Renewable Energy, a key alternative energy research institution. In the same year, the government provided $22 million to invest in researching "carbon geo-sequestration" – a scheme to bury carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations.

If the Howard government were truly concerned with climate change, nuclear power would not be on its agenda.

Professor Ian Lowe, current president of the ACF, told ABC TV’s May 24 Lateline programme, "Nuclear power is too expensive, too slow and makes too little difference and is too dangerous".

A single nuclear reactor could take up to 10 years to build and cost $3 billion, as well as releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide in the construction process. This rules nuclear power out as a rapid and cost-effective solution to climate change, to say nothing of the potential catastrophic dangers of accidents and the still unresolved problem of storing nuclear waste safely for tens of thousands of years.

According to Lowe, "wind and solar could be delivering energy next year. Efficiency could be producing gains next week. These are cost-effective solutions that are much better, in terms of timing, than the hope that nuclear might be the answer."

"Renewable energy (mostly hydro) already supplies 19% of world electricity, compared to nuclear's 16%," the ACF’s website notes, adding: "Renewable energy could meet most of the world's energy demand by 2100, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency predicts that nuclear power will only contribute to 12% of world electricity by 2030, despite the projected growth of nuclear power in China and India.

The ACF points out that Australia currently gets 8% of its electricity from renewable energy, down from 10% in 1999. By contrast, Britain plans to increase its renewable proportion of electricity by 100% by 2020, Germany and Denmark by 300%.

Why is Howard pushing for nuclear power? He first raised the need to look at the nuclear "option" on May 19, while visiting Washington. The US government is pushing nuclear power as the "best" solution to global warming.

Last year, US President George Bush won from Congress a host of "incentives" for the nuclear industry, including tax breaks and insurance against regulatory and legal delays in constructing new plants. On May 22, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that 16 corporations had expressed interest in building 25 new nuclear reactors in the US.

"For the sake of economic security and national security, the United States of America must aggressively move forward with the construction of nuclear-power plants", Bush told 300 employees at Exelon Nuclear's Limerick nuclear power station in Pennsylvania on May 24.

Addressing an anti-Bush protest rally in Limerick, Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network pointed out that a US Department of Energy draft report that has since been removed from the DoE’s website had concluded that a combination of renewable energy sources and increased energy efficiency could meet all US energy needs by 2020.

"Bush is following the need of corporate interests, not what’s good for the people", Ewall said.

Corporate interests also lie behind Howard’s nuclear-power push. With increased demand for uranium from India and China, the market price for uranium has doubled in the last 12 months. Australia’s mining companies, including BHP, are champing at the bit to get their share of the market, and the number prospecting for uranium reserves increased from five in 2003 to more than 70 today.

With Australia having the world’s largest reserves of uranium, these companies stand to make huge profits from a global expansion of the nuclear power industry.

by Ali Rodriguez Araque, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, May 15, 2006

The government of the United States climbs to new heights of cynicism and shamelessness when it tries to tie Venezuela to its particular vision of international terrorism. It affirms that Venezuela is not "collaborating sufficiently" with the fight against terrorism.

If "not collaborating" means not supporting the virtual genocide that it practices against the people of Iraq and failing to condemn it with all might before all the possible forums, then under no concept or pretext can it be said that Venezuela is not willing to "collaborate". If "not collaborating" means condemning the pretence of imposing upon the people of Iran the need to resign from its legitimate right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful ends, under the extreme threat of military attacks against it, Venezuela is proud to respond that it shall never lend itself to demands of such nature, no matter what pressures are brought to bear against it.

Public opinion knows the emphasis that the present Administration, with President Bush at the helm places on the principle that "a terrorist is not only he who engages in acts of terrorism, but also those who harbour them". This principle permits us to affirm without fear of being mistaken that current US authorities are terrorists. By the same token, public opinion is well aware of the shelter that the US is providing the most criminal of terrorists in the Western Hemisphere, Luis Posada Carriles, a well-known assassin on the payroll of the CIA. Public opinion also knows of the order given by US authorities to release two persons accused of terrorism by Venezuelan courts of justice: Antonio Colina and Germán Varela, who placed bombs in the diplomatic missions of Spain and Colombia, allied countries of the United States of America. The Bush Administration has simply not responded to the request made by Venezuela for their extradition, under treaties and international law, to answer for their crimes. Instead, the US shields behind miserable accusations such as the danger that these criminals will be tortured.

What are they trying to hide behind these accusations against Venezuela?

The essence of the problem is not its false fight against terrorism. Behind its despicable accusations is a useless campaign of shame designed to isolate Venezuela, destabilize its democratic government and prepare the political conditions for an attack. To that end, along with other actions, it wants to handicap our defences. That is the reason why it prohibits the sale of arms and corresponding services. That is the reason why it brings pressure to bear to prevent it from acquiring the means to defend itself, including simple border vigilance, or what has happened with the negotiations to acquire aircraft from Spain and Brazil. That is the reason behind the accusations that Venezuela has launched an arms race. There is too much clarity to obscure it with accusations and shameless acts. They have tried to separate Venezuela from its other friendly nations on the continent and the world. They have failed and will continue to do so.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela denounces to the world this new stage in the US strategy of defeating our democratic government in order to impose, as it has done so many times on the continent and in the world, an obedient dictatorship. We ratify that Venezuela will not succumb to any kind of pressure. It will firmly resist the attacks of this nature and counsels not to confuse the cowardly and opportunistic expressions of some, with the will of the people. This is an error that they have committed recently with other people that pay dearly with their dignity, but who also must pay with the price of aggression.

Our country extends its hand of friendship to the people of the US, but it does not hesitate to close its fist to respond to an aggression, may it be verbal as well as material, as undertaken by an immoral government with an aggressive nature. Our people have confidence in the wisdom of the people of the US and we are confident that they will know to impose their will before those who not only assassinate the people of other countries, but also those who sacrifice their own children for their worthless cause.

Council on Hemispheric Affairs, May 18, 2006

Following the announcement by the State Department that it was imposing an arms sale sanction against Venezuela, a Chávez advisor infuriated Washington when he responded with an apparently retaliatory announcement that Caracas would consider selling its American-made F-16's to Iran. The proposed sale irritated US policymakers, whose initial imposition of the embargo was rationalized by the vague, if not totally contrived, accusations involving Hugo Chávez's friendship with the leaders of US classified rogue states of Cuba and Iran. Caracas' threat of selling off the F-16 is somewhat logical, as the US earlier had denied Venezuela the parts necessary to maintain its fleet of 21 F-16's, rendering those aircraft – which are in need of upgrading and repair – little better than scrap metal.

In a certain sense, Washington's new round of bluster can be properly seen as merely part of an ongoing war of words and spleen against Caracas, in which Chávez more than holds his own, much to the joy of the average Latin American. Venezuela and the US have exchanged countless salvos of sharp rhetoric at each other, with Chávez describing the US as a "pig" whose appointment at the slaughterhouse is imminent, and Secretary of State Rice portraying the Chávez administration as unconstructive and as being "a negative force in the region". Venezuela's gonzo response to the new US embargo fits into the milieu of bounteous hot air that has become increasingly typical between the two countries, though it has not yet ended up with the CIA ultimately being called in to settle matters.

Bringing in Goebbels

There is some reason to believe, however, that the State Department actually does have a plan, and that these verbal jabs on Washington's part have a calculated purpose, as they seem to represent a concerted attempt to undermine the legitimacy of Chávez's constitutional government. This effort already has included backing a failed coup against him in April 2002 – which has resulted in unremitting hostility ever since. It is also worth commenting that Chávez's own reaction has been only slightly less confrontational. The big difference is that Chavez is being the playful, irascible, confounding and confrontational wunderkind that he always has been.

As for the State Department, with Secretary Condoleezza Rice as its author, its Venezuela policy continues to be bovine, hypocritically cynical and grossly unprofessional in promoting a heavy handed policy against Venezuela, as much based on inventions and gross exaggeration as on facts. This strategy, after it condemns all other peaceful options and decides to turn to a CIA deployment or negotiates an agreement with a contract killer to eliminate Chávez in order to safeguard the US' oil supply from the regime, would cost Washington dearly.

Taking the high road that should strike a responsive chord with most Latin Americans, the Venezuelan leader observed that the United States "tramples on small and weak nations". Yet at this point, Chávez neither has threatened nor halted supplies of oil to the United States. Nor did he seem particularly distressed by the sanctions. An official Venezuelan foreign ministry communiqué was issued stating that the US accusation was "despicable" and was "based on a futile campaign to discredit and isolate Venezuela, to destabilize its democratic government and prepare the political conditions for attack".

One can only hope that somewhere in the Bush administration, a concentration of fast disappearing wisdom remains, and that it can bring to a halt the State Department's precarious – if not suicidal – descent into reckless arrogance and sprawling self-indulgence. As of now, the administration's game plan is primitively simple and grossly offensive. Inspired by Nazi-era propaganda czar, Joseph Goebbels, the model is to keep on relentlessly denouncing Chávez as a "dictator" until the public begins to automatically accept the connections between the word and the man.

Of course, standing in the way of the administration's success in convincingly making its case is the fact that Chávez's political movement has won twice the number of highly attended elections than President Bush has, and by consistently far larger majorities – around 60 percent better. Furthermore, the TV networks are overwhelmingly dominated by the Chávez-hating middle-class opposition, and the same is true for the print media. To describe today's Venezuela as a dictatorship is an unmitigated lie, and despite the adamant pleas of Rice and Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, it is subscribed to only by a questionable sector of the US media, led by Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl and the extraordinary science fiction editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.

by Nidia Diaz, Granma International, May 12, 2006

On April 24, Martín Torrijos, president of Panama, announced the official proposal for the extension of the Canal, consisting of the construction of a third lock with a view to the so-called Panamax boats, superior in depth to the current Panamax, transiting that inter-ocean route. From that point and even long before, voices have been raised to renege on that decision, approval of which is to go before Parliament and a national referendum.

Viability studies on the project were undertaken by the ACP (Panama Canal Authority) and its executive, while the president has made the green light conditional on – in the first place – the amplification being self-financing, meaning that the investment would have to be recouped from progressive increases in tolls and not via taxes on the population.

In second place, he warned that the funding must be acquired by the ACP and not by the government, whose budget has to be allocated to the basic needs of Panamanians. And finally, a commitment not to create new reservoirs that would imply the uprooting of campesinos living in the area and far less new flooding that would destroy or damage the environment.

Controversial Project

However, why is the presidential project provoking opposition in Panamanian sectors? According to information the amplification of the third lock for the transit of the Post Panamax would cost $6 billion and its completion is anticipated for 2014, the year of the Canal's centenary.

Critics of the project, including figures like former President Jorge E. Illueca, as well as economists, environmentalists, retired personnel from the Canal sector, naval pilots and engineers are pointing out that, according to information available, there are no more than 300 Post Panamax vessels worldwide (less than 7% of the world fleet) and the majority of them are oil tankers that have been used from the outset in the Suez Canal, given that their original cargo comes from the oil-producing countries of that region.

While some 13,000 ships pass through the Panama Canal annually, thus allowing the circulation of more than 90% of the entire world mercantile fleet and its principal users, it is the Panamax vessels that, according to the official project, would raise the tolls. This could lead to the Panamax seeking another less onerous route, given that the publicised expansion could make the Canal less competitive.

On the other hand, the ACP would contribute half of the canal profits to the investment, thus depriving the state of that income, and the remainder would have to be obtained in loans from private-sector banks.

In that context, in a question-and-answer paper on the issue, Roberto N. Méndez affirms that as the investment is in the high-risk category, the interest charged by the private banks would be in the order of 7-8%. Thus the country would also be taking on the sacrifice of directing heavy resources to the construction of a third lock during the seven years that the works would take, or the payment of some $2 billion in interest on the loan between 2007 and 2025.

All the sources consulted confirm that at this point the Post Panamax vessels are used on two main routes: the Asia-US West Coast and the US East Coast-Europe-Asia, for which the Suez Canal is the most appropriate route in both cases.

Those who argue that the Panama Canal could replace those routes should consult a study by Tomás Drohan Ruiz, retired director of the Panama Canal Engineering, Dredging and Construction Department who, from the ranks of critics of the project, assures that Panama cannot offer any advantages to the Post Panamax vessels bearing in mind that the ports of Hong Kong and Singapore are first and second in the annual movement of the abovementioned vessels. That the distance between New York and Singapore is shorter via the Suez Canal (10,140 nautical miles) than if the ships were to take the extended Panama Canal route (12,520 nautical miles). In terms of Hong Kong the distance from either port would be the same, but the former could give itself the luxury of lowering tolls to avoid losing users in a competition that the Canal in the isthmus could not win.

The Social Angle

But, beyond all considerations of a technical nature, one of the fundamental reasons for opposition to the project is related to its social cost.

For those promoting the project, the amplification could give the country a source of employment of 3,000-5,000 jobs while the works are underway and particularly at their peak moment. This figure is contained in a study by the Technical University of Panama and other documents leaked by the ACP itself.

We are talking of a country that has a 25% unemployment or underemployment rate and which, in order to meet the annual growth of those entering the army of the unemployed, 30,000 jobs need to be created every year, according to the Drohan report.

Meanwhile, the so-called Report to the Country, signed by former president Jorge E. Illueca and other specialists like Fernando Manfredo Jr, ex-Canal administrator, assured that with the resources utilised for the extension works during the anticipated time period a highly extensive plan of social and economic development could be executed, as detailed in the document.

For his part, in reference to the subject, Dr. Antonio Aledo Tur, professor of Environmental Sociology at the University of Alicante, has affirmed that the project in question would benefit the large transnational shipping companies rather than Panamanians.

The Aledo Tur study meticulously analyses the social situation and argues that the fundamental question, in this case, is "if the proposed construction project for a third lock is going to reduce inequality in Panama".

"It is in the framework of those structures of inequality and poverty, which lead to the marginalisation of urban areas and underdevelopment in rural areas, where all the public and social policies of Panama should be directed. This problem is so acute that it should be the centre of gravity of any debate in Panama, including the matter of amplification," states the Spanish sociologist.

Suspicious Influences Exposed

Over and above the good intentions of the some of its promoters, it is a fact that 11 of the 17 members of the ACP's International Assessment Board are directly or indirectly linked to the large international shipping company consortiums and alliances like the Grand Alliance, Cosco, MSC, etc.

Other Board members such as Joe Reeder, a former US secretary of state, and Admiral William J. Bud Flanagan are also in favour of the amplification.

It is no secret that Reeder is responding to the interests of the Pentagon, which is very keen on these works that would facilitate the transit of its most modern aircraft carriers, which currently cannot move from one ocean to the other via the canal.

Meanwhile, Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist and ex-official of the US National Security Agency, revealed in a sensational report on March 24 that an influential group of Latinos from the Republican Party and within the centre of power in Washington are determining US policy in terms of investment and business in Latin America.

Echoing that information, Panamanian international analyst Julio Yao, adds that – according to Madsen – that group is pressuring the Panamanian government to disassociate itself from the agreement with Venezuela and Colombia that would allow the construction of the Oil Terminals pipeline to end on the Panamanian Pacific coast, thus facilitating the export of Venezuelan oil to China.

Yao formulates one question: "Why are we going for a referendum on the amplification of the Canal if its only object is to approve or reject the engineering project without us being able to decide on the conditions of contract, the implications for our national development?"

The Alternative?

According to the Illueca report, Manfredo and his collaborators, the alternative to the Canal's expansion needs lies in the construction of the Megaport of the Americas; in other words, a gigantic container transfer port that could receive the abovementioned Post Panamax ships and from there transfer the containers to Panamax or smaller vessels, which would increase the flow of containers passing through the Canal and thus its profitability.

The Megaport would be located in the Farfan-Palo Seco area, west of the Pacific access to the Canal, right where a port and container dock is being constructed. It would cost $600-800 million, financed with state capital by the ACP itself, and its construction would take three to four years, recouping the investment without indebting the country.

For now, the national debate on the way in which the Canal capacities should be amplified – a third lock or a megaport – is growing in political and economic circles and in the media. Specialists in marine transportation and port activities are also expressing their opinions.

Nevertheless, what is clearly at stake is an issue of strategic importance for the future of Panama – much more than an apple of discord – and it is becoming increasingly evident that interests at a far remove from the country's national development are being moved to utilise the issue against Latin America integration and as a way of recovering influence, domination and money over the inter-oceanic way that the Torrijos-Carter Treaties correctly placed under Panamanian sovereignty.