An Imperial Adventure Set To Continue

For readers of a certain age, Bandung in Indonesia recalls a time of tremendous hope and progress. It was there in 1955 that the Non Aligned Movement of countries in what we now call the Global South was in effect born.

A great conference of newly independent nations was held the West Java city. Attending were Nehru from India, Nasser from Egypt, Zhou Enlai from China (who narrowly survived an assassination attempt on his way to the gathering) and many others - all hosted by President Sukarno of Indonesia, who had led the vast country's independence struggle against Dutch colonialism.

It was Sukharno who was more determined than most to ensure that these countries banded together to have a major voice on the world stage. The process was formalised at a further conference in Tito's Belgrade.

Quite naturally, the newly independent states had varying outlooks and policies, internal and external. But they shared a vision of economic development freed from the worst excesses of Western-dominated capitalism and of an implacable opposition to colonial or imperialist interference.
It was not to be an easy path. Ten years after the Bandung conference Sukarno was overthrown in one of the bloodiest counter-revolutionary coups in history. Hundreds of thousands of his supporters and of the Indonesian Communist Party were wiped out. Estimates vary from half a million to three times that number. The American embassy in Jakarta helpfully supplied the military and murder gangs with lists of Communists it had compiled over the years.

All of this came flooding back to me on a recent visit to Indonesia as I stood in awe in the grand hall where the historic Bandung conference took place. I was there to promote the launch of Viva Palestina Indonesia, by people who have been inspired by the siege-breaking efforts the we launched from Britain three years ago - the first Viva Palestina convoy left London for Gaza on Valentine's Day 2009 as the smoke was still rising from Israel's Operation Cast Lead.

The launch was a huge success, demonstrating that Palestine has become the world over the touchstone for those who care about international justice, just as the struggle against apartheid South Africa was 30 years ago.

I met senior politicians from across the party spectrum in Indonesia, as well as renown writers and cultural figures. For a reports of the tour, go to www.vivapalestina.org

Everywhere there was not only a deep sympathy for Palestine in this overwhelmingly Muslim country of 250 million people. There was also a shared understanding - from the nationalist strands that look back to Sukarno to the Islamically-inspired parties and NGOs - that the suffering of the Palestinians results from both the unfinished legacy of the colonial period and from the modern forms that great power domination takes.

In the West, Bandung may be a half-remembered or never-known episode today. It isn't in Indonesia and in many other parts of the world. Despite all the hardship - which included millions dead in the struggles to free just two countries, Algeria and Vietnam - what was once known disparagingly as the Third World did largely achieve national independence. Wealth, military power and the control of international institutions, however, continued to lie with the US and the old colonial powers.

But a process of change was unleashed that could not be held back. So now, against all the odds, we are seeing a rebalancing of the world. The centre of gravity is shifting east, and south. It is not something that the 1 percenters in Washington, Berlin, London and Paris are prepared to take lightly. The latest doctrinal paper from the Pentagon, signed off by the most disappointing president in US history since Andrew Johnson took over from the slain Abraham Lincoln, is tellingly entitled Securing US Leadership in the 21st Century.

It singles out two countries that stand as obstacles to maintaining that "leadership": China and Iran. Wars - really big wars - tend not to happen when empires are at their height. They often occur in history when one empire or regional/global order is giving way to something else. And they often start with clashes around one of other of the hotspots that had boiled up in the previous phase.

So for all these reasons there could scarcely be a better time for civil society in Indonesia to take a more prominent role over one of the most egregious injustices in one of the hottest spots in the world - Palestine.

Under Sukarno, Indonesia punched above its considerable weight. It then disappeared from the world stage under the dictatorship of General Suharto, until he was spectacularly overthrown in revolution in 1998. That came at the time of the East Asian financial crisis - which ricocheted around the world, forcing devaluation and default in Russia. It seemed a terrible economic crisis at the time. Only now do we know how much worse was yet to come.

The fall of Suharto, in retrospect, seems like a harbinger for those who came from the same anti-Bandung stable: Ben Ali and Mubarak.

Three years into the most severe economic crisis since the 1930s more and more parts of the global order are creaking. There are immense dangers. But also signs of the spirit that fought for progress 60 years ago.

You can sense it in Jakarta and Bandung, where next winter, with the help of the local authorities and justice campaigners there will be another gathering which I hope will play a small but significant part in helping to meet those dangers and bring support to the people of Palestine.

Iran and Syria

The orgy of hypocrisy Western capitals over the UN vote on Syria this week was a fitting response from that quarter to the stomach-churning scenes from the incipient civil-war in Syria.

How dare the Russians and Chinese vote no, they said, seemingly oblivious to the scores of no votes, vetoes, cast by the US and its allies not only against moves for progress in the Middle East and criticism of Israel, but ranging from rejecting measures to bring food security to billions of people on the planet to ending the occupation of East Timor.

I can do no better than to point you to two pieces of journalism that cut through this hypocrisy, and with razor sharp intellect explain what stands behind it to make the clear case against the buildup for war in the Middle East - against Iran and, by proxy, through manifold intervention in Syria.

The Star's leader on Monday should go down as one of the most prescient and timely editorials this paper has ever published in its long history. And, if the editor will forgive the indiscretion of citing another publication, my friend Seamus Milne in the Guardian on Wednesday forensically tore away the propaganda campaign of those who seek to exploit the suffering in Syria to advance a policy of, well, securing US "leadership" in the 21st century.

A growing number of people in Britain are rightly worried, very worried, about the prospects of open military conflict with Iran - other forms of war are already being undertaken, assassination, invasion of airspace, economic blockade. It is testimony to the great campaign against the war on Iraq that public opinion is anxious.

Many can see the eerie parallels - supposed weapons of mass destruction, demonisation of a government and people, talking heads calmly debating how to escalate the tension while refusing to rule out its murderous crescendo.

Fewer see the link with our rulers' meddling in Syria, though the opinion polls show that there is equally no appetite for sending troops, fresh from the killing fields of Helmand, to the Levant. There is, however, some support for what they euphemistically called a "no fly zone" over Libya. That turned out to be a free fire zone, which resulted in 30,000 dead, ethnic cleansing and the rupture of the country into rival fiefdoms, run by militias against the will and hopes of the people- a lot of little Gaddafis.

Our masters, however, do see the link. They are have no interest in the people of Syria. But they do have a vital interest in seeking to ensure that the outcome is a weakened Syria with, they hope, a government more pliable, more accommodating to Western suzerainty and prepared to sign a surrender peace with Israel. Crucially, they want a Syria that will join rather than resist the military encirclement of Iran.

So do the Saudis and the Gulf states, who with double-speak even George Orwell could not have imagined, are about to launch a "Friends of Democratic Syria" initiative. These kleptocratic monarchies don't even bother to go straight to the Arab League, but instead gather as the Gulf Cooperation Council, which  Morocco - several thousand miles from the Gulf - is to join, presumably by dint of its monarchical and pliant nature.

They are fighting a proxy war in Syria. And they are busy now, through bribery, bulling and bludgeoning, to ensure that they dominate the opposition forces there through the foreign-based SNC, just as they structured the TNC in Libya so it would suit their interests.

A glimmer of what they are up to came with a failed attempt by Israel's supporters, and some claiming to stand with the Syrian people, to turn a leaked email exchange I had two years ago with Damascus into some heinous scandal.

I did indeed write to the government of Syria asking for their permission to take a convoy of aid to Gaza through their country and then by sea to Egypt. I did the same to the governments of Egypt and of Turkey. I did praise Syria for its refusal to beat the path of Mubarak and the Gulf sheiks to collaboration with Israel over the siege of Gaza and with the US in the region. Do those who rile at this not want a Syria that is independent and dignified? I think they do not.

The convoy, planned as people around the world rose in outrage at the massacre aboard the Mavi Marmar (and Western leaders wrung their hands and passed more ammunition to Israel), did pass through Syria, where it was boosted by massive contingents from north Africa, Jordan and the Gulf, and onto Egypt and into Gaza. So I resile from nothing, just as all those who have resisted the Gaza siege and stood against war in the Middle East should resile from nothing.

Remember how the doctrine of liberal humanitarian intervention was deployed by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton in the lands of former Yugoslavia? We were told how the deployment of troops in Bosnia would end the killing. It did not. That ended only with a political settlement - just as the US now recognises in Afghanistan after a decade of bloodshed and when it was on offer even before the war was launched.

We were told the 10-week bombing campaign of Serbia and Kosovo would end suffering. It intensified it. We were told it was done for the highest ideals, indeed contrary to any grubby interest; that it marked the end of imperialist hypocrisy and war. In fact, it was the precursor, lowering the threshold to a decade of war which continues into this decade.

So let no one be fooled. This is a stepping stone to further war; indeed it is a proxy for the big battle, cowing Iran and its people by one means or another in order to secure a refashioned hegemony in the region.

The people who are battling to fulfil the hopes of the successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia do not what that. Nor do most of the people in the region. You should stand against it to.

If you fear, as you should, the possibility of the war with Iran that the Israeli hard right are pushing for, then the time is now to stand against the propaganda, meddling and drive for intervention over Syria and across the Middle East.

This article was first published in the Morning Star