Ioannidis, Cyprus, and the irony of history

by Alexandros Nafpliotis

On 16 August 2010, Dimitrios Ioannidis, one of the instigators of the April 1967 coup that brought the Greek Colonels to power, died. During the seven-year reign of the 'junta', Brigadier Ioannidis was director of the Greek military police (ΕΣΑ), and he was known as one of the hardliners of the regime. He rose to prominence in November 1973, when he masterminded, behind the scenes, a new coup that put an end to the liberalising efforts initiated by Georgios Papadopoulos, under the so-called 'Markezinis experiment'.

History showed its ironic face once again, as the 'invisible dictator' (as he was known during 1973-4) passed away on the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Cyprus. Ioannidis' fate was tied to the Mediterranean island.

The Cyprus issue, which eventually brought about the demise of the military junta, was the most predominant foreign policy preoccupation of all the dictators (and especially of Ioannidis) throughout their tenure of power, for they thought that, as Coufoudakis has argued, ‘removing this irritant from Greek domestic and foreign policy and interallied relations, was expected to increase the Colonels' prestige at home and end the régime’s international isolation’. The first signs appeared in the summer of 1970, when a crisis was brewing up on the island, also as a consequence of the attempted assassination of President Makarios earlier that year.

Papadopoulos' handling of the situation in Cyprus, in conjunction with his initiatives in trying to mitigate foreign critics through pursuing a conciliatory line precipitated cracks within the junta, which appeared at that time to be far from united. The internal troubles peaked in the summer of 1970 when Papadopoulos (who was already both prime minister and minister of defence) decided, following Pipinelis’ death, to assume the post of minister of foreign affairs, as well. Jealously prevailed among Papadopoulos’ critics, with the concentration of power in his hands being the real issue. The casualties of the acute internal crisis, which was resolved in September, were the prime minister’s ability to confront the hardliners and his supposed efforts towards the gradual democratisation of the régime.

When, in November 1973, a coup overthrew Papadopoulos, British diplomats were quick to identify Ioannidis as the ‘somewhat shadowy figure’ behind the new government. As a consequence of developments in Greece, however, the British government decided to adopt once more a wait-and-see policy, with greater caution dictated by parliamentary attitudes that were unfavourable to Ioannidis.

A few months later, and before celebrating fifteen years as an independent state, the Republic of Cyprus would cease to exist in its initial form. The coup that the Greek junta, under Ioannidis, launched against Makarios triggered a invasion by Turkey, which still occupies the northern third of Cyprus today, thus dividing the island. The 16th of August 2010 also marks 36 years since the occupation of Morfou, a town in the north of the island, which was founded by Spartans- big admirers of whom were the Greek Colonels.

The actions of the dictator that precipitated the division of Cyprus came back to haunt him; the 16th of August will from now on mark both the beginning of the Republic of Cyprus and the end of the man who tried to dismantle it. And this is an instance of irony that only History can create.

*Alexandros Nafpliotis holds a PhD in International History from the London School of Economics and is currently writing a book on Britain and the Greek Colonels, 1967-1974. His academic blog on the subject can be accessed at http://britainandthecolonels.blogspot.com/.

Neo-Cons, having Declared History's End, Try to Reclaim the Past

Having declared that History ended around 1989, it seems that some neo-conservatives are keen also to reclaim aspects of History as 'their' achievement. In particular, it was claimed by a prominent scholar that the Marshall Plan, among other postwar US foreign policies, was a "quintessentially neo-conservative" policy. This was at a recent (excellent) conference of the BISA US Foreign Policy Group at Leeds University.

In later exchanges, the neo-conservative scholar marshalled arch-neo-conservative, Joshua Muravchik, to the cause: Cold War policies, Muravchik argues, "were muscular policies (we were spending roughly 10 percent of our GNP on defense), to which today's neoconservatism is the heir much more than today's liberalism. While realist policy following the First World War led to unparalleled disaster, neocon policies after the second achieved what was arguably the most perfect success in the history of statecraft-our relatively bloodless victory over a foe possessing the most ponderous military machine ever assembled".

Further more, the argument, it is claimed, was endorsed by no less a source than (neo-conservative?) President Barack Obama in December 2009: "the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions-not just treaties and declarations-that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms".

I don't think that we are in disagreement about fundamentals: the bigger point is correct: the dispute seems to be over what label one applies to the sources of such cold war policies. Perhaps we shd call it 'liberal-internationalist realism' as neither liberal-internationalism nor realism fully captures the blend.

Neo-conservatism, on the other hand, seems to over play the hand: solid conservatives in the 1950s were frequently opposed to Korea, NATO, Marshall aid, Point 4, the UN. So, to the extent that 'neo-cons' (who were they? Was Paul Nitze a neo-con?) can claim to be heirs of Truman, it was in their liberal anti-communist crusade and in their militancy. That unifies them (whoever they were) with the dominant US national security tendency arguing for US preponderance: the US FP establishment. Since neo-cons were not anywhere close to being the tendency they became in the 1970s and after, I doubt that they can be considered the authors of Truman's liberal internationalist realism: that lies much more closely in the contributions of Dean Acheson, partly of George Kennan, in the post-June 1950 period of militarised containment (so ably documented by Jerry Sanders in Peddlers of Crisis), and in activities of a range of elite organisations of which the CFR is a good representative.

The other point of course is that programmes like Marshall aid, but also IMF/World Bank, and even German/Japanese reconstruction, were heavily reliant on the almost two decades of New Deal economic thinking, at the heart of which sat economic and social planning. The recently published excellent book by Jeff Bridoux, American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction, makes the point brilliantly and with powerful historical evidence.

The neocons of today are not noted for their support of such tendencies, even if some of their ancestors might have been relatively liberal on domestic affairs, except McCarthyism. Their general bent was towards economic liberalism/neo-liberalism; that came to fruition in the 1970s in particular and via the Reagan revolution.

Having declared the End of History, neo-conservatives (minus Francis Fukuyama) seem to want to claim their heroic role in its demise.

Guess what? History marches on and simply asserting that neo-conservatives shaped it does not make it so. And the historical record more than amply demonstrates that. 

Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester, Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association and an Associate of the LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Relations Programme.  This post first appeared at his excellent US Blog

Frontier Politics: Israel, Palestine and the Current Talks

By Guy Burton

With direct talks starting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a range of different issues are on the table – and will need to be negotiated if a complete agreement is to be achieved within the proposed one-year deadline. One of those will be the question of the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. To date there has been plenty of ink spilled over where the border should be located. The sources of contention include the issue of land swaps between the two sides, the presence of settlements, and the status of Jerusalem – with both sides claiming it as their capital. Underpinning this discussion are two crucial factors that need to be taken into account: on one hand, there exist differing visions for the border and therefore differing approaches favoured by each side; and, on the other hand, there is the question of governance of the future boundary (i.e. whether it should be managed between the two sides or with the support of a third party).

Placing the Border
The Palestinians and Israelis have very different ideas of where the border should be located. Without reconciling these differences, it is questionable whether any final status agreement would be sustainable. For the Palestinians, their public position is that the border should follow the Green Line, which before 1967 separated Israel from Jordan and Gaza Egypt. The Israelis, by contrast, have been less adamant about the Green Line serving as a decisive international border. This is particularly evident given the state encouragement of Jewish Israeli settlements in the West Bank (and until 2005, in Gaza) since 1967.

The lack of a clear endgame has been an advantage and a disadvantage for Israel. For example, Israel’s unwillingness to define clear boundaries helped it expand and contract the state as necessary. That boundary flexibility enabled Israel to accommodate both the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, to accept the loss of the Sinai following the 1973 war and to evacuate settlements from Gaza in 2005. In this framework of unclear borders, for many Israelis (especially younger ones), the Green Line has become meaningless because they assume the ‘Security’ Wall, built within the Green Line following the Second Intifada, is the ‘real’ border between Israel and Palestine.

At the same time, the absence of a clearly defined vision of border delineation challenges the Israeli concerns regarding both security and the future status of the settlements. Israel’s leadership and the current Netanyahu government emphasise their concern with security, an issue prevalent in Israeli discourse since 1976, when the Allon Plan identified the Jordan Valley region as a potential risk for the transit of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank. Although that fear diminished over subsequent decades (including through the final peace settlement signed between Israel and Jordan in 1994), security-minded Israelis continue to demand a final say over any Palestinian-Jordanian border. Indeed, at a July 2010 meeting of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI) NGO in Jerusalem, Shlomo Gazit, a former major general in the Israeli army and the coordinator of operations in the West Bank after 1967, recommended a diminished Palestinian role in border management.

Addressing the Settlements
Meanwhile, the future status of Israeli settlements within the West Bank remains uncertain. A full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (as demanded by the Palestinians) poses the question of whether the Israeli settlers remaining in the West Bank would be prepared to become Palestinian citizens or become foreign residents in a Palestinian state. If the settlers opt for the latter there is a risk that Israel may not renounce its right to intervene in the West Bank. However, anything other than a complete military evacuation by Israel would reduce Palestinian territorial sovereignty. This has prompted the settlers’ leadership to talk favourably about a ‘one-state’ solution. This recommendation, though, is substantially different from the prevailing – and idealistic – model proposed by the Israeli Left and part of the Palestinian population, who see a bi-national single state with equal citizenship between the two communities as a viable alternative to the continued failure to achieve two separate states. While this model is an inspired solution, the leaders of the settlement movement have a vision that is closer to the present reality within Israel: where Jewish Israelis are full citizens and Arab-Israelis (or Palestinian-Israelis) are effectively marginalised and have to earn the right to citizenship.

Managing the Border
The question of governance over a future Israel-Palestinian border will need to be addressed in the talks. In particular this concerns the extent to which the border will be ‘open’ or ‘closed’ – neither of which may necessarily benefit the Palestinians. One of the ironies of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories after 1967 was the growing ‘openness’ and increasing exchange between the two communities, especially economically. By the time the First Intifada broke out in 1987 there were a considerable number of Palestinian workers crossing into Israel. The First Intifada, the Oslo process and the Second Intifada all served to reduce contact between Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps the most visible manifestation of this is the Security Wall. Also, Israelis rarely enter into Palestinian-controlled areas and the complex pass system limits Palestinians from travelling between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Furthermore, the pass system limited most Palestinians’ exposure to Israelis to those Israelis serving in the military at the checkpoints.

Economic Factors
A key concern for Palestinian negotiators will be whether a future border with Israel will undermine its economy. Despite the ‘closed’ nature of the Security Wall, an estimated 25,000 Palestinians continue to cross through it into Israel to work each year. However, there is no evidence that their status will be improved in the event of a final border agreement between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At another IPCRI event in August 2010, Ephraim Kleiman, an economics professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and a senior adviser to the Israelis during their economic negotiations with the Palestinians in 1993-94, argued that following separation, Israel would be less concerned with maintaining economic links with an independent Palestine. This could lead to a complete shutout of any economic contact between the two sides. A month previously, Shlomo Gazit envisaged a future where borders would need to be closed between Israel and an independent Palestine for at least a generation, in order to achieve greater security.

At the same time, a more open border may not work to the Palestinians’ advantages. Currently Palestinian products are dependent on Israeli controls to pass through to export markets. Moreover, this does not look like it will change: in 2009 the World Bank reported that future commercial traffic from an independent Palestine into Israel would involve a ‘back-to-back system’ through the Security Wall, where goods are off-loaded from trucks on one side of the border to others on the other side – a system similar to that currently in place in Gaza according to a 2009 World Bank report. This will ensure higher transportation costs for Palestinian firms, which will act as a further disadvantage in relation to a more competitive Israeli economy, including in terms of product diversification and access to export markets.

Limited liberalisation of trade at the border may only serve to perpetuate the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians. Even if Israeli restrictions on investment were removed as a result of a two-state solution (e.g. an ending of Israelis’ visa restrictions on foreigners wanting to do business in the West Bank), there remains the fact that much of the work undertaken by Palestinians in Israel is poorly paid and offers few future prospects. Moreover, there is a risk that a similar situation to that which exists in regard to the ‘maquilas’ (or sweatshops) between the US and Mexico may develop. In particular this would involve the sub-contracting aspects of production to low-wage and low-skilled Palestinian labour with Israeli firms marking up and collecting the greater profit margin. The disadvantage of such a model is two-fold: first, it will not provide sufficient wages to Palestinian labourers to escape subsistence; and second, it will not offer a means of sustainable and value-added development for the Palestinian economy.

Conclusion
In sum then, the question of the Israel-Palestine border encapsulates in microcosm the broader challenges facing the two sides in the upcoming direct talks. The status and management of the final borders – whether open or closed – are vital aspects for any final agreement. Furthermore, the issue of a future Israel-Palestine border captures the difference in power relations between the two sides. Although the public impression is of two sides coming to the negotiating table as equals, the reality is that the talks will favour the Israeli position over the Palestinians: the Israeli position is both more fluid (as demonstrated by its flexible approach to border placement) but also more dominant, owing to its troops’ control of the land and movement into, within and out of the Palestinian territories.

Nowhere is Israel’s strength more apparent than if the talks either fail or succeed. If they fail, the prospect of two independent states will be undermined and the drive towards the one-state solution proposed by the settler leadership hastened further. If they succeed then it is likely that the Palestinian economy will continue to be dependent on Israel. In such circumstances – and given the degree of animosity that exists between the two communities – the role of the international community, as third-party guarantors of the border and as a source of investment will be vital if Israel and an independent Palestine are ever to become equals.

Guy Burton is a research associate at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Shifting Sands is the blog of the Middle East International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, analysing current events in the Middle East and contributing to the ongoing deliberations over policy prescriptions.

Amber Holewinski, Editor

The Many Faces of Impunity: a Brief History of Uruguay's Expiry Law

Over the past few weeks, the fight against the impunity still surrounding the perpetration of grave human rights crimes (torture, enforced disappearance, and mass prolonged imprisonment) committed during the 1973-1985 military regime in Uruguay has been gathering momentum. Although impunity has many faces - political, judicial, cultural, the focus of the campaign is Law 15,848 on the Expiry of the Punitive Claims of the State (Caducidad de la Pretensión Punitiva del Estado), or simply the Expiry Law. Without a doubt, the Expiry Law symbolically embodies impunity for many in Uruguay.

The fight against the Expiry Law is not something new, as its origins date back to the day after that Law was enacted by Parliament on 22 December 1986. Two major attempts to “eliminate” the Expiry Law, in 1989 and in 2009 respectively, failed. It seems, however, that we are now weeks, if not days away, from seeing the end of the Expiry Law. How did we get here? And, is the Expiry Law set to go once and for all this time?

Military rule, repression and transition

In the twentieth century, Uruguay was frequently referred to as the ‘Switzerland of Latin America’, a deserved label which underscored the country’s tradition of liberal and participatory democracy (exceptional when compared to the turbulence and authoritarianism of its neighbours); Uruguay’s growing financial and economic markets; rising urban middle class, and high levels of education. By the late 1970s, in the backdrop of the Cold War, the Switzerland of Latin America had, however, more and more come to resemble its neighbours, it similarly being a victim of economic crisis, social and trade union polarisation and conflict, and political violence characterised by the emergence of left and right-wing armed groups. The civic-military regime that took over in June 1973 inaugurated a twelve-year long reign of fear, which combined economic mismanagement with political terror. Uruguay no longer was the “exception” of the region, it having earned by this time another ‘appropriate’ tag as the Torture Chamber of Latin America, due to the brutality of its human rights repression.

In the Southern Cone, the Uruguayan regime most closely resembled a totalitarian system, as the country’s small size and population permitted penetration into both public and private lives. Military rule achieved unprecedented physical control of the country; each citizen was even classified as A, B or C according to political reliability and the possible threats to the state. The regime installed a culture of fear, characterised by inxile - a desire to hide and not be seen by the omnipresent state.

The repression left an unprecedented human toll: between 300 to 500,000 people left for exile; over 60,000 people were arrested and/or detained; between 1973 and 1977, Uruguay had the highest percentage of political detainees per capita in the world; there were approximately 5,000 long-term political prisoners; about 200 Uruguayans disappeared, mostly in Argentina, but also Chile, Colombia, Bolivia and Uruguay itself; finally, there were plenty of children detained with their parents, and several others that disappeared and/or were illegally appropriated by repressors.

The transition to democracy was sealed through negotiations and the so-called “Naval Club Pact” of August 1984 between the armed forces and the political parties, which basically restored the previous political system. Many argue that it was at this juncture that the impunity for the perpetrators of human rights crimes was agreed; others state that the issue never reached the negotiating table. Notwithstanding these debates, impunity would soon be sealed with the adoption of the Expiry Law.

The Expiry Law – what is it all about?

In the early days of transition, the main priority of the new government by the centre-right Colorado party headed by President Julio María Sanguinetti was national pacification, the so-called cambio en paz (peaceful change). The government’s National Pacification Project of March 1985, in fact, provided for the amnesty and release of all political prisoners (with some exceptions); the social reintegration of returning exiles; and the restoration of public jobs to employees unfairly dismissed during the dictatorship. The executive’s human rights policy actively and deliberately sidelined criminal prosecutions against those responsible for human rights abuses - although these crimes had been explicitly and expressly excluded from the remit of Amnesty Law 15,737. Still, it became clear quite soon that the Sanguinetti administration wished to cover the crimes of the recent past under a mantle of silence and oblivion.

As early as April 1985, victims of grave human rights violations and/or their relatives began to bring to the courts cases of human rights abuses perpetrated by security forces during the years of state terrorism. By December 1986, over 700 such cases were under investigation. As a consequence, the armed forces became increasingly restless, openly stating they would not comply with judicial summons to appear in court. The executive portrayed this situation as a possible institutional crisis, pointing to the likelihood of another military coup. In this context, following three previous failed attempts, on 22 December 1986 Parliament enacted the Expiry Law, effectively bringing to an end the possibility of achieving justice and clarifying the past.

The Expiry Law has shaped the trajectory of transitional justice in Uruguay since the early days of transition, it being one of the most relevant legal obstacles to prosecutions up to present. The Law consists of three chapters, dealing respectively with the prosecution of military and police officers; forced retirement of military personnel in 1974; and the role of civilian political institutions and armed forces in relation to promotion of officers. The essence of the law is the prevention of judicial proceedings against military and police officers for human rights violations. The Law is an amnesty “under cover” – the word amnesty never being mentioned in its rather long name. Only four articles consolidate the state of impunity:

• Article one provides that, as a consequence of the logic of the events stemming from the Naval Club Pact and to complete the transition to full constitutional order, the state renounces to its right to prosecute members of the military and police with respect to crimes committed until 1 March 1985;

• Article two excludes from the Law’s remit cases for which there was an indictment in December 1986 and crimes committed for economic gain;

• Article three establishes that judges have to demand - on a case-by-case basis – to the Executive whether the case at hand is covered or not by the Law;

• Article four states that denunciations regarding disappearances presented until December 1986 have to be transmitted to the Executive, which has to order investigations to clarify these facts.

The law, generally known as ley de impunidad (impunity law), was controversial from the very beginning: first, its provisions placed property rights above the right to life, permitting prosecutions for economic property crimes, but not for violating basic human rights. Second, the law undermined the separation of powers and judicial independence, and severely limited the rights of individuals to initiate prosecutions. Third, it authorised the Executive to carry out investigations on disappearances which are normally under the remit of the judiciary.
Between the late 1980s and early 2000s several governments sponsored policies of silence and oblivion; still, under the surface, opposition to the Expiry Law never faltered. In particular, since the late 1990s, the fight against impunity took a legalistic turn, with the identification of exceptions that would permit the circumvention of the Expiry Law. In fact, cases falling outside the Law’s remit began to be presented to the courts, such as crimes committed before the period of the de facto government; by members of the high command before and/or during the dictatorship; by civilians; crimes committed abroad; and case of illegally appropriated children.

This strategy - initially developed by human rights organisations and their lawyers – eventually permitted the re-opening of some judicial investigations and proceedings, which had been paralysed for over a decade. Human rights eventually became part of the executive’s policy only under the left-wing Frente Amplio administration of President Tabaré Vázquez, 2005 to 2010. During Vázquez’s Presidency, over sixty cases of past human rights abuses were excluded from the Expiry Law and justice is now running its course in some of the most emblematic human rights crimes Uruguay has witnessed, such as the kidnapping and assassination of ex-legislators Michelini and Gutiérrez Ruiz in Buenos Aires in 1976, and the enforced disappearance of Elena Quinteros also in 1976.

Uruguay – the country that voted twice for impunity?

Uruguay’s exceptionality however endures, this time in terms of transitional justice where Uruguay is the only country in the world to have submitted its amnesty law to public vote . . . twice!

On 23 December 1986, the day after the Expiry Law had been adopted in a Parliament session that almost culminated in a gunfight, human rights NGOs and important political figures in Uruguay announced the intention to hold a referendum on the law. This initiative aimed to use for the first time the referendum provision of the Uruguayan Constitution, according to which referenda can be held on the condition that 25% of the electorate signs to support the initiative within a year of a contested law’s promulgation. The campaign called for people to be able to express their opinion on the issue and was immediately supported by a whole array of social and political organisations, and parties that had opposed the law in Parliament. After many vicissitudes, the required number of signature was reached and the referendum held on 16 April 1989, when with a turnout of over 80%, the amnesty law was upheld, with 57% of the votes. The defeat at the referendum had a major impact, as the result constituted a shattering defeat for human rights, and the cause of truth and justice. Consequently, the theme of past human rights abuses faded away from the political agenda and public opinion, as the referendum result was accepted as definitively closing the debate on past human rights crimes from the political and legal points of view.

Since the late 1990s, Uruguayan society has slowly begun coming to terms with the legacy of the recent past and the scars left behind by the experience of military rule, especially the costs of the human rights repression. In the last decade, significant initiatives have taken place in transitional justice and accountability, including the establishment of a truth commission to investigate the fate of disappeared-detainees, the Peace Commission, which worked between 2000 and 2003. Despite its shortcomings and limitations, it remains the first project ever to be sponsored by the Uruguayan state, after over a decade of silence and amnesia on these questions. Since 2005, prosecutions have resumed and some sentences handed down by the courts, such as in the case of disappeared teacher Elena Quinteros Almeida for which former Foreign Affairs Minister was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment in April 2010, or the twenty-five years’ sentence to former dictator Gregorio Alvarez handed down in October 2009 and confirmed on appeal in August 2010. Bodies of Uruguayans disappeared have been recovered and identified in Argentina, two of them in Uruguay too in 2005 and 2006. There has been some limited progress on the question of reparations, for which laws have been enacted by Parliament, and also in relation to the opening of state archives, particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Twenty years after the 1989 referendum on the Expiry Law, another grassroots initiative by social, human rights and trade union organisations, culture and public figures, members of the Parliament, and political parties worked to achieve the nullification of the Expiry Law.
The principal objective of this campaign was terminating the culture of impunity that continues to prevail even under democracy. The nullification of the Law was to be achieved through a constitutional reform project that required first the collection of the signatures of 10% of citizens habilitated to vote, i.e. around 250,000 – achieved on 24 April 2009; second, 50% plus one vote on the day of the plebiscite, held on 25 October 2009, to coincide with scheduled national elections. At the ballot box, 52% of the voters maintained the Law. There has not been much discussion of the significance and consequences of this event, or attempts at explaining the result. During some interviews I carried out in November 2009, several possible reasons were suggested, such as the lack of a “NO vote” option; the exclusive focus on the presidential and parliamentary elections which sidelined the plebiscite; the inability to present the question of the nullification as transcending political parties or affiliations, it being a human rights questions; and, the lack of support from the political parties. Further, although voting is a kind of national passion in Uruguay, questions such as accountability for past human rights crimes cannot be subject to a vote. In these instances, it is a fundamental obligation and duty of the state to clarify these abuses, especially the abhorrent and permanent crime of enforced disappearance. These matters which involve human life and human dignity are essential rights recognised by several human rights treaties and decisions by international human rights courts and bodies which cannot be subjected to the will of the voters.

Still, unlike the 1989 referendum which inaugurated a decade of silence on questions of truth and justice, the 2009 plebiscite hailed the beginning of a flurry of activities to widen the discuss on the fight against impunity and achieve the nullification of the law by other means.

Are we days away from the end of the Expiry Law?

A few days before the October plebiscite, the fight against the Expiry Law was already gaining strength. In 2008, Public Prosecutor Guianze had presented to the Supreme Court an unconstitutionality appeal against the Expiry Law. On 19 October 2009, only six days before the plebiscite, the Supreme Court of Justice declared the Expiry Law “unconstitutional” for violating several articles of the Uruguayan Constitution and for its incompatibility with international human rights treaties. The Court’s sentence, however, only applied to the case of Nibia Sabalsagaray that had died under torture in 1974. Still, two more requests for unconstitutionality were presented in December 2009 by Public Prosecutor Tellechea, relating to the “Human Rights Organisations” and “García Hernández, Amaral and others” cases. On 20 June 2010, the unconstitutionality of the Expiry Law was declared in the “Human Rights Organisations” case, which covers twenty murders committed in Uruguay between 1973 and 1976. As in the Sabalsagaray case, the Expiry Law was seen as breaching various articles of the Uruguayan Constitution (including the principle of the separation of powers) and violating international human rights norms, such as those of the American Convention on Human Rights. A similar sentence can be expected in the “García Hernández, Amaral and others” case which relates to the murder of five Tupamaros militants in 1974.

The fight against the Expiry Law has also had an international dimension, thanks to the Gelman case. In fact, Argentine poet Juan Gelman, who finally located his illegally appropriated and missing granddaughter Macarena in March 2000 in Montevideo, presented a case together with her to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Given the repeated failures and denials of justice in Uruguay, Juan and Macarena Gelman presented to the Commission the case relating to the forced disappearance of María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman (Macarena’s mother and Juan’s daughter-in-law) and the suppression of the identity and nationality of María Macarena Gelman, daughter of María Claudia García and Marcelo Gelman. The case also involves the denial of justice, impunity, and the suffering caused to Juan Gelman, his family, Macarena, and the relatives of María Claudia as a result of the failure to investigate the facts and prosecute and punish those responsible by virtue of the Expiry Law. The case, initially presented in May 2006 and considered admissible in March 2007, reached the merits stage in July 2008 with recommendations for Uruguayan to comply with. Given that by December 2009 Uruguay had not fully complied with the Commission’s recommendations, the latter decided to send the case to the Inter American Court of Human Rights in January 2010 – the first time ever Uruguay has had to face this tribunal. Uruguay is charged with violations of the right to life, to freedom and human integrity, to justice, and the right to identity. The Court’s sentence is expected for October 2010.

Some recent developments in the fight against the Expiry Law do in fact originate from Uruguay’s expected condemnation by the Court. It is highly likely that the Court will find Uruguay in breach of its international human rights obligations because of the Expiry Law. This outcome is easy to predict in light of recent jurisprudence by the Court on the question of amnesty laws and their incompatibility with the American Convention (see the judgements in the Barrios Altos (2001) and Almonacid (2006) cases, in which Peru and Chile were respectively condemned). To avoid reaching the sentencing stage and the associated international negative publicity, various projects have been considered to either derogate or nullify the Expiry Law. In July 2010, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was working on a project to eliminate the Expiry Law quickly by nullifying it. In August 2010, the governing Frente Amplio party approved an interpretative draft law to be presented to Parliament in September that declares articles one, three and four of the Expiry Law as violating the Constitution and provides that the Expiry Law can no longer be employed to suspend judicial investigations into the crimes committed during military rule.

Conclusion

This month, September 2010, is likely to see the end of the Expiry Law, a historic event in Uruguay, which many wish to see. Although amnesty laws were a common features a couple of decades back, being adopted either during or immediately after military rule in most Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, etc.) to create a life of comfortable impunity for kidnappers, torturers, murderers and rapists, over the last few years we have seen the opposite trend. From Argentina, to Chile, Peru and Uruguay, amnesty laws have been attacked and challenged in various ways. Trials have since been reopening in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay.

What difference will it make once the Expiry Law is gone? Many cases, over sixty, are already being investigated and more than four hundred have been denounced to the courts. Legally, the end of the Expiry Law will terminate the breach of the separation of powers, given that the judiciary will no longer need to consult the executive when cases of past human rights crimes are presented, and, consequently, the arbitrary justice that allowed investigation in some cases and not in others. Symbolically, impunity will come to an end too. In practice, however, the culture of impunity in Uruguay is not simply the Expiry Law - though the latter did play a major role. For truth, justice and reparations to become a reality much is still needed beyond simply the removal of the Expiry Law: political will from the government, cooperation from the Armed Forces, the opening of state archives, material compensations to the victims and symbolic reparations to society. The end of the Expiry Law can only be welcomed, but it will not automatically end the culture of impunity, which has strong and deep roots.

Francesca Lessa is a research associate for the Latin America International Affairs Programme at the LSE Ideas Centre.

Islamabad and Allies Must Win Hearts and Minds of Flood Victims with Humane Aid Delivery

Even though the flood water is receding from Southern parts of Pakistan, the majority poor in Pakistan, in the North and elsewhere, are still suffering from the month long flood’s devastation.  To redress this situation and to play the offensive strategically, the United States has pushed through a large aid package designed to re-acquaint the mostly poor people of Pakistani to the idea that the U.S. is out for something other than its immediate short-term interests.  That narrative—the U.S. is Pakistan’s partner in its social and economic developmental goals-- now seems to have been undercut by video-images that show inadequate, incompetent aid delivery and the unruly, violent fights that seem to spontaneously burst in flames in over-populated, shoddily built relief camps each time an aid delivery goes awry.  These images register a violent state of nature, where animalistic dominance prevails over long-observed culturally sensitive tribal honor.  The losers of these vicious fights ramble away, their dignity lost.  

Contrast that picture with smoothly moving food queues in relief shelters set up by humanitarian organizations affiliated with banned organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba. Each man is fed and his family is given an adequate share of food, shelter, clothing and medicine, sometimes all at once.  If the logistics of government and Western aid delivery continue to trivialize the victims’ long held sense of dignity, the U.S. and its allies will lose the fight for the hearts and minds of the Pakistani people as they try to rout Islamist militancy in Pakistan.


There is an immediate and urgent need for government and international aid.  More than one third of the country is under water.  1500 and more dead, but nearly 20 million flood survivors (in a population of 170 million) stand on the edge of a catastrophe more devastating than the one they have slipped past.  The United Nations and other NGO’s have been sounding the alert on the possibility of a rapidly deteriorating disease-led public health crisis that could claim tens of thousands more lives.  Food is far more than scarce.  Fresh water is a fiercely guarded find, amidst the flood submerged hills and valleys.  


The government and allied aid disbursement programs are already laudable, though already inefficient and inadequate.  Nevertheless, it seems despite the aid offered, the dignity of the proud, predominantly tribal victims of Pakistan’s flood has become another casualty of the devastation.


“We are not animals, this is not feeding time at the zoo. We are humans, yet the police beat us, they throw food at us. We are not animals," sputtered a man to an Al Jazzier correspondent, recently.  The logistical requirements of aid dispersion has required difficult allocational choices on an industrial level and police patrolling that has seemed to dehumanize the people’s just and immediate needs.  Aid groups sometimes deliver medicine, sometimes food, sometimes water.  It seems these goods are never provided at the same time, in sufficient numbers, to enough people. 


Islamabad and its allies must rectify just this idea of slighted dignity if they wish to achieve modest victory for the U.S allied intervention against Islamists.  Rectifying this widely held claim of dignity is important because it plays into an off-putting narrative that has already defined the U.S. allied relationship with Pakistan and its people. 
Roughly it is this: the U.S. funded internal coups, maintained military dictators in power and bolstered radical militant groups when it suited American short-term interests. As soon as funding U.S. short-term interests drew immediate results, the U.S. left Pakistan to its own devices.  The Pakistani governments that remained after U.S. aid was withdrawn have not benefited the people.  The U.S. involvement in Pakistan therefore has not benefited the people of Pakistan. Something like this must stand behind the Pew Research poll that shows only 17% of Pakistanis have a favorable view of the United States.


Pakistan is in the worst shape it has been since the 1947 partition.  The broadening inequality between the have and have-nots has now yawned gapingly to the distance between the haves and the have-nothings.  (The recent charges that landowners have diverted floodwaters away from their property into poorer neighboring farms have not helped.) The macro-economy has all but collapsed.  Rolling blackouts have decimated domestic and export manufacturing in the country. The U.S. and its allies have been playing for time by throwing money at the elite political echelon. However, Islamist groups like the Tehrik-e-Taliban’s newly energetic recruitment base is just those newly categorized have-nothings.  As the flood rages and the government response remains mired in understandable but inexcusable incompetence, the have nothings will remain simmering in their disgust at politics as usual in Pakistan.  All those people will move toward the Islamists as they intervene into the lives of the flood victims in a humane and sensitive way, shoring up their bellies and their dignity. 


Now, there’s plenty of pain to go around.  In many ways, the rich and the poor are suffering this crisis together.  Due to the flood Pakistan’s infrastructure has eroded back 20, 30 years, affecting rich and poor alike.  Public utilities have been destroyed and collective and individual capabilities have been degraded to a formidable degree.  Schools have been shut in order to make room for the healthcare needs of the flood survivors.  It will take a generation to bring Pakistan back to its starting ground, the position it occupied in whatever index, whatever place in some NGO list it held, even one day before the flood started to take its toll.  So it is amazing that the government can deliver food and medicine at all throughout this large and rough country.  However, the government moves are still not enough to register support amongst the flood victims, a large share of whom have been left to their own devices and who have found help from Islamist relief organizations.


It seems no one in Islamabad has come up with a way to drive home the point that the have-nothings in Pakistan are not alone in their misery; that Islamabad and the U.S care about their well-being.  The government needs to demonstrate that it accords value to the dignity of these suffering people, during this time, this monsoon season, on this month of Ramadan.  However, instead of ameliorating the suffering of the predominantly poor victims of the flood, the means by which aid has been delivered to them only reinforces the disjunct in dignity between the government aid delivery teams and all those hungry men and children, who stretch out their arms, supplicant and angry.


Contrast that with the images of Islamist organizations like Jamaat-ud Dawa, that a month into the flood, still supplies home made iftar meals to flood victims in pockets of Pakistan like Nowshera in the Northwest. Consider the orderly lines, as people are greeted, “Assalamu alaikumm” in sonorous tones.  “Kaisey heh aap” –how are you?” A quick set up and the men, women and children pass along the queue. Indeed, contrary to the assertions of the Zardari government that the Islamist’s ability to deliver aid is waning, these groups have sprung up all through the countryside and claim to have delivered aid to more than 400,000 victims and have more volunteers and donors than the government has been able to muster.


Whatever the provenance of funding of these groups, the victims of the flood walk away with their dignity, plate of food and medicine in hand.  They have no need to fight for their food and water. Their honor is left intact.  Throw me food from above as one might to a dog and, in time, might I not think myself a dog?  The imam scooping rice onto my plate, his hand on mine, who later lays out all the ways that Zardari and his American funders stand against me, will likely win my support in the months to come.  It is through the immediate and humane manner of addressing their nearly captured interlocutors that Islamist organizations will likely recruit new adherents. It is this calculated game that the West is losing.


It is this on-going public relations disaster that will likely stymie U.S and its allied moves to rout Islamists like Tehrik e-Taliban and Lashkar- e -Taiba.  These organizations are multiplying in number in the hearts and minds of Pakistan’s flood victims.  So far, the government in Islamabad hasn’t figured out a way to overcome this disaster.  But if it wishes to survive in office for more than one term—call it a victory to stay in power even that long—it needs to undercut the Islamists aid delivery program by ramping up its own methods of careful and humane aid delivery.  The government needs to maintain the people’s dignity in their own view.  Only then will some of the devastated people of Pakistan come around to the idea that Islamabad and its American allies are now interested in the people’s welfare. 


Faheem Haider is the Senior Blogger on Asia for the Foreign Policy Association.

“What Soviet Threat?” What If Attlee’s Radicalism Had Prevailed?

Although British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee (1945-51), is properly known as a Cold Warrior no less gung-ho than his Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, or the American president, Harry Truman, less well known is Attlee’s rejection of the salience of the Soviet ‘threat’ and promotion of a policy of closing British bases in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Had he prevailed, Clement Attlee may have changed the the role of Britain in the postwar world, prevented the Americans from relying on Britain’s support in numerous foreign wars, and thrust a relatively disarmed, more prosperous Britain into a leading role in a European superstate.

But, of course, Attlee did not get his way and we all know where that led: the 'special relationship' with the United States that lasts till today, a position of subservience in defence of a particular interpretation of British interests as world-wide and requiring very high levels of military spending and an ability and willingness to ‘punch above its weight’ in world affairs. This not only caused Britain (under Attlee) to follow America’s intervention in Korea (1950-53), but also to Harold Wilson’s support short of war (i.e., ground troops) to President Lyndon Johnson’s war on Vietnam, and to Tony Blair’s unflinching backing for George W. Bush’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan.

What precisely did Attlee do that was, on the face of it, so radical? And how did the British military and foreign policy establishments react?

It seems that Clement Attlee (rather naively, according to Churchill’s more ‘realistic’ foreign secretary, Anthony Eden who, it must be recalled, was later to attack Nasser’s Egypt for the temerity to desire control of Egypt’s Suez Canal) took seriously the idea of the United Nations as an international organisation for peace. Attlee thought that rather than holding on to a series of expensive naval and military bases in the Mediterranean Sea and in Egypt, and thereby constitute to Soviet eyes a military threat to the communist superpower, Britain ought to internationalise the defence of the route to India and the east, as well as come to an understanding with the Soviet Union. To Attlee, what looked like defence of British interests to his colleagues in the Foreign Office looked like aggressive preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union to Stalin. This remarkable insight, because of its novelty among the political establishment, earned Attlee opprobrium from the Admiral Cunningham, the First Sea Lord: “What an ass!” retorted Cunningham.

Yet, for a time, Attlee was undaunted. “Where’s the [global] danger now?” he asked: “there was no one to fight.” In almost panto-fashion, Cold Warrior, Ernest Bevin invoked the Soviet Threat – positions vacated by Britain would fall under Soviet control and, one by one, the dominoes would fall. Yet, the Joint Intelligence Committee estimated that the Soviets were unlikely to risk a major war for at least 5 years, given the devastation visited upon that country by Nazi bombardment. But Bevin was undeterred: “It would be Munich over again, only on a world scale, with Greece, Turkey and Persia as the first victims in place of Czechoslovakia. If I am right about Russian ideology, Russia would certainly fill the gap we leave empty whatever her promises…” Attlee refused to budge.

Then, quite suddenly, Attlee changed his mind. Why? The Chiefs of Staff, under Lord Montgomery of Alamein, threatened en masse to resign should Attlee persist in opposing their desire to hold Britain’s positions in the Middle East. And that is pretty much the last the world was to hear of Attlee’s foreign policy radicalism.

What if he had prevailed? Would Britain have withdrawn from its military commitments across the Middle East, Asia and the Far East? Could it have then done without American financial support and built an even stronger welfare state? Would it have seen the ‘loss’ of Korea as just one more domino or, more likely, refused military support for American intervention in Korea? Britain would probably have been unlikely thereafter to intervene in Middle Eastern affairs, perhaps, including helping overthrow the Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1952, invading Egypt with the French and Israelis in 1956 or, perhaps, in putting down the communist-nationalist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s and 1960s.

Of course, we will never know, though Attlee was still committed to defending the British Empire: but the question is still worth pondering.

Inderjeet Parmar is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester and Vice Chair of the British International Studies Association.  This post first appeared at his excellent US Blog