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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons A week in the world
Extrajudicial colonialism
By Peter SnowdonIt was another unpredictable week for dictators and wannabe-dictators around the world. President Augusto Pinochet of Chile returned to Santiago Friday, where he was received in triumph by the military, led by army Commander-in-Chief Ricardo Izurieta. A band struck up the general's favourite tune -- Lili Marlene -- and, doubtless invigorated by the autumnal air and carnival atmosphere of the homeland from which he had been kept against his will for almost a year and a half, Pinochet, to the astonishment of the assembled crowd, cast aside his wheelchair, and walked.
"I was very surprised to see him walk," said Gen. (Rtd.) Guillermo Garin. "But I can quite understand it. He is a soldier. And he wanted to stand to receive the salute from the commanders-in-chief. The fact that he was in his homeland, and the presence of all the people who came to welcome him, gave him the strength he needed to rise."
Doubtless the eminent British doctors who only recently declared the general unfit to stand trial on medical grounds were even more surprised than General Garin. Meanwhile Sergio Bitar, leader of the Chilean Democratic Party, summed the situation up rather more succinctly than Pinochet's fellow criminal -- sorry, former colleague -- when he described the ex-torturer's miraculous performance as, simply, "grotesque".
Nor does the standard of medical care which Pinochet will receive in his homeland seem likely to be up to scratch: admitted immediately to Santiago's military hospital, he was released after only nine hours.
Still, Pinochet was lucky to reach Chile at all. His plane was stopped half-way along the runway at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, before take-off, where it was delayed for 20 minutes. Those hoping for a cliff-hanger decision by the British government to extradite the general after all were disappointed, however, when it turned out that the reason for the delay was so that Pinochet could receive a last-minute gift from his great admirer and some-time bovver-boy, Margaret Thatcher -- a silver "armada plate" inscribed with her signature. Armada plates were first cast in 1588 to celebrate Sir Francis Drake's defeat of the Spanish fleet in the English channel. In her farewell note, Lady (sic) Thatcher, who was one of the most active opponents of the attempt to bring the general to justice, wrote: "Your return to Chile has ensured that Spain's attempts to impose judicial colonialism have been firmly rebuffed."
As an aide put it, "She wanted to send a clear message that she and Pinochet together had vanquished the Spanish." Thatcher, whose government was responsible for the Falklands War, the Gibraltar shootings of three suspected IRA officers, and the violent suppression of organised labour in Britain, has of course long been famous for her preference for extrajudicial colonialism, both at home and abroad.
Meanwhile, the Chilean National Television station (TVN) revealed that the country's reputation as a supplier of dubious arms to dubious causes remains intact, as it reported that leading businessman Carlos Cardoen has been selling cluster bombs via Zimbabwe to President Laurent Desire Kabila's Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kabila's regime is currently engaged in a brutal civil war with rebel forces supported by Rwanda and Uganda. Cardoen admitted his company Metalnor had been in contact with the Zimbabwean government, but denied that they had supplied the bombs in question.
A cluster bomb is a package containing up to 450 kg of explosives, divided into hundreds of sub-projectiles. When dropped, the package opens up at altitude, and the mini-bombs within it fan out to cover an area up to 250 m across. Some of them may be fitted with timers, and their explosion can be delayed for up to days after impact. Unlike land mines or chemical weapons, there is no international ban on this type of weapon, which is currently manufactured in France, Britain, Israel, South Africa and the US, as well as in Chile. However, lawyers have long argued that their use contravenes the 1977 Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts.
Cardoen, who began his career making explosives for the mining industry, moved into the weaponry business in the 1970s, after the US imposed an arms embargo on the Pinochet regime. He made his fortune selling cluster bombs to Iraq during its war with Iran in the 1980s, which subsequently allowed him to diversify into new -- and more respectable -- lines of activity. In 1997, the US had an international arrest warrant issued in his name. Since 1990, Cardoen has been a leading backer of Chile's transition to democracy, and an active supporter of successive centre-left governments.
Austria also enjoyed its share of embarrassment this week, following the surprise resignation of Jorg Haider, leader of the right-wing Freedom Party (FP), whose presence in the Conservative-led coalition has triggered a spate of protest throughout the European Union. Haider resigned, insisting that his intention was to facilitate the work of the government. However, no sooner had he stepped out of the limelight, than he thrust himself right back into it, accusing France of seeking to dominate Europe at the expense of the German-speaking nations, and promising to use his membership of Brussels's Committee of the Regions -- Haider is the elected-governor of the State of Carinthia -- to goad the commission into action (what action remained unclear).
Commentators noted, however, that Haider's decision to distance himself from the ruling coalition comes at an opportune moment. EU sanctions are beginning to bite, just as the government seeks to implement an economic austerity plan. Haider is thus henceforth ideally placed to criticise not only the EU, but also the Austrian government, leaving his lesser FP colleagues to carry the can.
Democratic controversy of a different kind continues to plague Zimbabwe in the wake of last month's referendum, when the attempt by Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF Party to rewrite the country's constitution so as to permit large landowners to be dispossessed without compensation was roundly defeated. The new constitution would also have considerably strengthened the powers of the presidency, and the result was widely seen as a vote of no confidence in the Mugabe regime, whose popularity has ebbed considerably in recent years.
Over the last three weeks, veterans of the war of independence have occupied over 50 white-owned commercial farms. Although Mugabe vowed on television Thursday that no action would be taken against them, on the same day Home Affairs Minister Dumiso Dabengwa ordered the former guerillas to quit the farms immediately, and threatened unspecified "contingency plans" which could be used against them.
Meanwhile, the government unveiled a proposed constitutional amendment which would allow land to be taken without payment and redistributed to landless blacks. Most of the country's fertile land is still controlled by whites, even though they represent less then one per cent of the population.
Although the anger of the former guerrillas is quite genuine, many sources have expressed concern that they are being manipulated by the government to its own ends, ahead of the April elections. In the past, land redistribution has tended to benefit a small, already-privileged black elite, rather than the landless majority.
