Sudanese women fill jugs with water at the Internally Displaced Persons camp of Krinding on the outskirts of the western town of El-Geneina, near the border with Chad, Sept. 21. (AFP Photo)

Water was the biggest buzz at the 2004 Women's International League of Peace and Freedom Congress in the little town of Kungalv, Sweden. Who has it? Who needs it? Who does it belong to? Is it clean enough to drink? Are we running out of it? Will it be the next excuse for war? During the week-long conference, which included official reports from twelve countries, over 300 sisters from 31 countries discussed the condition, distribution and availability of water in their own countries.
The Congress took place in Nordiska Folkhighschool, situated on one of the many Kungalv hills overlooking sleepy canals and rivers. Nordiska Folkhighschool is one of 350 schools in a special government-supported school system exclusively "for adult people who long to study something during the winter," according to the headmaster. "There are no structures here-no exams, no curriculum, no credits and no prescribed courses." Though some of the legislative business of WILPF (the world's oldest women's peace and justice organization) was structured, this beatific school and its informal, patient hosts inspired the process of learning, sharing and rebuilding a unique, collective knowledge which often extended into long, late night discussions. Indeed, over the course of the Congress, the picture of world's water took on a grim and dangerous face.
A dramatic shift came with the 1991 UN decision-muscled by international corporations and the World Trade Organization--to define water as a human need instead of a human right, meaning that it can now be bought and sold for profit by private companies.
In spite of the eternal floods and droughts, water was taken for granted by most of world's people until the exploding 21st century demands of population growth, pollution, industrialization, militarization and privatization created the current critical scarcity. The Congress learned from WILPF women in developing nations that the high yield genetically engineered seeds, developed by the US and forced upon their farmers, had actually created an irrigation catastrophe. Indigenous, drought-resistant crops were replaced with crops that required more water. Rivers began to dry up before reaching the ocean. The previous sustainable irrigation methods were replaced with deep wells and large dams were built to compensate for the lack of water, at a rate of two a day for the last 50 years.
"Sixty-three hundred people in the world die every day from lack of water," announced Regina Birchem, the newly elected President of International WILPF.
"Just as we fought wars over oil, so will we fight wars over water," was the threatening mantra hanging over the Congress. Dr. Shusma Pankule of India did confirm, "We have disputes with Pakistan on one side and with China on the other over water." Israel has stolen the Palestinian water and is selling it back to them at prices they cannot afford," reported Aliyah Strauss of Israel. "The situation is explosive."
Privatization is a grave part of the problem. Vivendi Universal (France), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (France), Bouygues-Saur (France), RWE-Thames (Germany) and Bechtel-United Utilities (US) have become the water barons who are taking over public utilities. A common practice is to buy the water from a poor community, bottle it and sell it to consumers in the US, thereby leaving the original community without enough water to sustain itself. These corporations also buy up local water rights and sell the water back to the community at much higher rates.
There are many, many grassroots communities already engaged in taking back their water and in finding long term solutions to the water dilemma.
In Sri Lanka, Dulci de Silva reported that "we are resisting converting water to a commodity for exploitation by international water markets as encouraged by the World Bank. We have established several campaigns to protect our water. We have collected signatures; we have a coalition of 300 women's groups and NGOs and farmers and everybody who is being affected by the encroaching privatization of water in Sri Lanka."
Laura Santina
COMMONDREAMS.ORG

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Afghanistan has a distinguished culture and social and political order in which one of the most prominent features is that whoever, from Mughal rulers to former king Zahir Shah, leaves the country for exile, has never been able to regain his writ. Legendary Afghan resistance leader in the jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is no exception.
Those who know the mujahideen commander closely affirm that the firebrand Hekmatyar of the mid-1970s at Kabul University is no different from the Hekmatyar of today. In one sense this is true - he still vehemently believes in armed struggle against foreign forces in the country, and he is still intimately involved in political wheeling and dealing, in cahoots with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), just like in the mid-1970s.
However, his many years in exile in Iran--he left the country as prime minister when the Taliban came to power in 1996--seriously undermined his command structure in Afghanistan, and except for carrying out a few sporadic attacks against US forces, his role at present in the resistance is minimal.
Hekmatyar himself, though, at this point is still committed to waging a guerrilla war against US-led forces in Afghanistan.
During his exile in Tehran, Hekmatyar instructed his commanders not to fight against the Taliban and ordered them to disarm. As a result, the HIA's more than 100,000 fighters scattered, some to Peshawar and the Pakistani tribal areas, or into the population to live under Taliban rule.
Hekmatyar left Iran for Afghanistan in February 2002. It remains a mystery exactly where he is based at present, but he has not stopped his political maneuvering.
There are good Taliban and there are bad Taliban, and both are in Pakistan's favor. For the bad Taliban, Islamabad is happy to see them marginalized yet continuing their resistance in Afghanistan as Pakistan does not want them back in the country, where their presence upsets the US, and consequently the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf comes under pressure.
The good Taliban, meanwhile, can be used to bolster Karzai's strength in Kabul, and once he is reelected president, which he is expected to be next month, they will become Pakistan's eyes and ears and help keep the anti-Pakistan Northern Alliance away from Kabul.
Similarly with the HIA, distinctions will be made. The political wing, based in Peshawar, will receive a sizeable chunk of ministerial portfolios in Karzai's next cabinet--again, acting as Pakistan's eyes and ears. As for Hekmatyar, insiders do not rule out the possibility that once a political role for the HIA is assured after the presidential elections and before the parliamentary elections, and after an "honorable" deal is made to reduce the presence of US forces in Afghanistan, the HIA will give up its armed struggle. Even though its influence within the resistance is limited at present, such a development would be of some significance politically.
Underpinning these developments is a conviction in Kabul and Washington to alienate once and for all the bad Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies so that the US can rid itself of the Afghan mess. Equally determined, though, the hardcore Taliban are not going to give up without a fight.
ATIMES.COM

Everything... everything changes. So goes the refrain in a famous Argentine song. But actually, in Argentina everything stays the same or becomes worse.
Heraclitus's warning against bathing in the same sea twice is lost on our economic ministers, who insist on bathing regularly in contaminated waters. Whenever they go bathing, they follow the same path, first raising concerns over what will happen if Argentina pays back its foreign debt, and then inevitably paying back the debt under strong pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the US.
Sometimes, Argentine negotiators respond to international bond owners, who harass the government in an effort to force payment on what cannot be paid. By playing this endless game, our ministers leave for tomorrow what they lack the courage to face today, knowing full well that this ruse will end tragically for Argentines.
The sagacious historian and politician Arturo Jauretche liked to say, "It's not about changing our collar; it's about ceasing to be a dog". His companions, however, remain unconvinced and seem resigned to failing to find an alternative to the neo-liberal taxation model for paying the foreign debt. They believe we will be condemned to the abyss unless we accept rules created by the world's powerful.
Argentina's foreign debt was generated during the military dictatorships, when the rich nations of the north provided credit to despots and sold them weapons to repress their people. These private debts were passed along to the populace, which received nothing from the loans but is now expected to pay them back.
Indeed, Argentina's case is pathetic. It was a rich country, a great producer of food, where endemic diseases such as leprosy, parasites, and tuberculosis had been defeated and literacy thrived. True, Argentina endured fifty years of military dictatorships and weak civil governments. But, up until the 1970s it was never heavily encumbered by debt. Today, 23 million Argentines are poor, and more than 10 million live below the poverty line. Everyday, nearly 100 children die from hunger and preventable diseases. Our indigenous communities continue to lose their land to foreign corporations. Endemic diseases and illiteracy are increasing. Hundreds of factories have closed, driving up the unemployment rate to nearly 30 per cent. Nonetheless, we continue to transfer capital to rich countries to pay interest on our foreign debt. The more we pay, the more we seem to owe and the less we have.
Still, Latin Americans know how to resist and how to create social movements to fight the "axis of evil"--militarisation, foreign debt, and the Association of Free Trade for the Americas--that seeks to subject their continent to re-colonisation by the US. The free trade agreement, for example, would provide North American companies with the same production and investment conditions that are available to our companies and grant them agricultural subsidies against which no Latin American country can compete.
Because foreign debt has such a direct impact on people's lives, diverse proposals have been made to government officials, in the belief that the foreign debt burden is fundamentally a political problem--one that must be faced now, not later. Essential to any real change is the creation of continental unity and regional affiliations such as Mercosur, and the Andino and Caribbean Pacts. People across Latin America must unite to preserve their sovereignty, their environment, and respect for human rights, all of which are being violated systematically. We need to re-consider how we define our democracies, which appear to be mere formalities with little real substance. The fact that we can vote is an important victory, but it does not guarantee us the hope and dignity that we deserve.
Adolfo PŽrez Esquivel
DAILYTIMES.COM.PK

The more nuclear arms are lying around, the more the chances of them being used. So to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons is a laudable objective. But for the United States, Britain and France to insist on it is hypocritical.
These Western powers have argued convincingly for decades that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace--and themselves maintain nuclear armories long after the cold war has ended. So why shouldn't Iran, which is in one of the world's most dangerous neighborhoods, have a deterrent too?
And where is the source of the threat that makes Iran, a country that has never started a war in 200 years, feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road? If Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel, the country that hard-liners in the United States are encouraging to mount a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear industry before it produces bombs.
The United States refuses to acknowledge formally that Israel has nuclear weapons, even though top officials will tell you privately that it has 200 of them.
The supposition is that Israel lives in an even more dangerous neighborhood than Iran. It is said to be a beleaguered nation under constant threat of being eliminated by the combined muscle of its Arab opponents.
There is no evidence, however, that Arab states have invested the financial and human resources necessary to fight the kind of war that would be catastrophic for Israel. And there is no evidence that Israel's nuclear weapons have deterred the Arabs from more limited wars or prevented Palestinian intifadas and suicide bombers.
Nor have Israel's nuclear weapons influenced Arab attitudes toward making peace. The Arabs knew, as the North Vietnamese knew during the Vietnam War, that their opponent would not dare to use its nuclear weapons.
Israelis say that they need nuclear weapons in case one day an opportunistic Egypt and Syria, sensing that Israel's guard is down, revert to their old stance of total hostility and attack Israel. But, as Zeev Maoz has argued in the journal International Security, these countries keep to their treaty obligations.
Israel's nuclear weapons are politically unusable and militarily irrelevant, given the real threats it faces. But they have been very effective in allowing India, Pakistan, Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, North Korea and now Iran to think that they, too, had good reason to build a nuclear deterrent.
Four of these nations have dismantled their nuclear arms factories, which shows that nuclear policies are not cast in stone. The way to deal with Iran is to prove to its leadership that nuclear weapons will add nothing to its security, just as they add nothing to Israel's.
This may require a grand bargain, which would mean the United States offering a mutual non-aggression pact, ending its embargo over access to the International Monetary Fund and allowing American investment in Iran. It would also mean America coming clean about Israel's nuclear armory and pressuring Israel to forgo its nuclear deterrent.
If Western powers want to grasp the nettle of nuclear proliferation, they need to take hold of the whole plant, not just one leaf.
IHT.COM

The geostrategic nerve center of the Caucasus is Azerbaijan with oil reserves possibly totaling one hundred billion barrels. The country is coveted as an ally or at least a benevolent neutral by regional and world powers: Iran, Russia, the Franco-German combination and the United States. Each of those powers has its own interests, which creates a complex pattern of convergence and divergence among them.
As the object of active interest by powers that are politically and economically stronger than itself, Azerbaijan is threatened with dependency if it falls into the hands of any one of them, but it also has an opportunity for autonomy if it can successfully play them off against one another and maintain a balance of power. With autonomy as its goal, the government of President Ilham Aliyev has pursued a "balanced" foreign policy, opening up diplomatic channels with all of the interested states and giving each of them the hope of satisfying some of its own aims, while Baku maneuvers to achieve its vital interests.
As the Aliyev regime perceives them, the vital interests of Azerbaijan are to settle jurisdictional issues over rights to Caspian Sea oil, ensure security of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline that will move the oil west, secure investment from varied sources on the best terms to develop its oil industry and the rest of its economy, avoid economic or military dependence on any foreign power as it pursues development, and resolve the issue of the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh by regaining sovereignty over it. From Baku's viewpoint, Azerbaijan's future is that of a rising power that will be able to maintain genuine independence in the long term if it can manage the transition to prosperity by skillfully performing its balancing act.
Baku has been able to pursue its balanced strategy because none of the powers impinging on it poses a direct military threat to the regime. The Franco-German combine by necessity is restricted to economic and diplomatic influence, and neither Iran, Russia nor the United States is currently interested in making any provocations that would lead the others into a confrontation with it and risk instability in the oil patch. Each of the impinging powers would like to draw Azerbaijan into its orbit, but their room for action is limited by the others, leaving Baku with a measure of freedom to make deals with all of them and also to refuse their proposals.
From the viewpoint of its vital interests, Baku counts on Washington for help in settling Caspian Sea jurisdiction, since Iran and Russia border Azerbaijan on the Sea and are competing interested parties. Baku also expects Washington to make sure that the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is secure. In the sphere of economic development, Baku wants investment from all of the interested parties, particularly the Franco-German combination. It also wants help from any of them on the Karabakh problem.
In return for its protection and in pursuit of its perceived vital interests, Washington would like to establish a military presence in Azerbaijan as part of its policy of securing oil supplies by encircling and containing Russia and Iran. In response, Russia and Iran want Azerbaijan to remain free of American bases. This configuration of economic and strategic interests allows for a balance of power in which Baku undertakes limited military cooperation with Washington and Moscow, and maintains friendly relations with Iran, satisfying each of them a little and antagonizing none of them.
PINR.COM