Fierce fighting continues in the Iraqi city of Falluja, with casualties continuing to be sustained among coalition troops and civilians.  The urban nature of this war and the scene there has been described in several Monitor articles this past week.  This includes a piece by Scott Peterson, currently in the city, about the difficulties in determining who is an insurgent as opposed to a civilian.  Ann Scott Tyson writes about how the military has prepared for urban warfare.

Public perception of the modern military may be of a technology-supported fighting force, with use of precision bombing and minimal casualties among troops or civilians.  Military strategists and others initially thought that after World War II, future enemies would not want to conduct battles in cities.  This turned out to be incorrect, as military troops in many countries have had to fight in cities, with different rules of engagement, if any at all.

But analysts recently have revised this theory about where enemies would want to fight; they now believe that insurgency will be an increasing problem as a cause or symptom of conflicts, and that they will occur in urban areas. Since a majority of the world's population is living in or near cities, insurgencies can erupt in these environments.  Steven Metz, a military analyst, wrote in 1993 that there would be two major types of insurgency: spiritual, and commercial.  The former can arise against the push of modernity in a society.  The latter, when a government cannot deliver the basic needs to a needy population. 

Iran, in a bold move earlier this week, declared that it would not conform to guidelines laid down by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Instead, reported the Monitor’s Scott Peterson Friday, it said it plans to resume uranium enrichment activities which are part of a larger nuclear program that was started in 1974.

It’s also the latest episode in an ongoing saga of nuclear rivalry and politics in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1979, then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, made the following statement:

We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations have this capability. The communist powers also possess it. Only the Islamic civilization was without it, but that position was about to change.

Following the Iranian statements, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that while there’s “a clear understanding now that Iran must satisfy the concerns that have been expressed by the international community,” and that the U.S. was “talking about diplomacy and political efforts to stop this movement on the part of the Iranians toward nuclear weapons,” adding, “we’re not talking about strikes.”

The punch line came next. “But every option…of course, remains on the table.”

However, the idea of striking a country in possession of nuclear capabilities is not new. The Center for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies notes that Iraq attacked Iran’s Bushehr plant six times throughout the Iran-Iraq War (or Iraq-Iran war, depending).

The Israeli attack on the Osirak, or Tammuz I, nuclear facilities in Iraq in June of 1981 is undoubtedly the most famous, and it has been lately invoked by the press in the wake of statements coming out of Iran and Israel.

Some commentators have turned the tables and drawn renewed attention towards Israel’s nuclear program. And while, downplaying a nuclear preemptive move, Israel has recently announced acquisition from the United States of 5000 "smart bombs" worth $319 million, including 500 so-called "bunker busters," or BLU-109s, capable of penetrating 7ft of concrete.

Herbert Krosney and Steven Weissman, in their book, The Islamic Bomb, set up an earlier strike against Tammuz that occurred the year before and set off a wave of confusion and misinformation.

It was September 30, 1980, the ninth day of the Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. Iranian Phantom jets had just bombed a power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad, when low on the horizon, two Phantoms came streaking in over the desert sands, rushing headlong at a new target.

[ . . . ]

Early announcements said that the rockets had missed the big new Tammuz I reactor and had scored only “minor damage” to some buildings nearby. A later report in the French magazine l’Express claimed that the rockets had hit the base of the reactor dome, badly damaging the entire structure. It would set the Iraqi nuclear program back at least a year, l’Express suggested.

At the time of the attack, French technicians were still completing construction of Tammuz I, which was not scheduled to go “critical” for at least three months. But a smaller research reactor from France and possibly an older one from the Soviet Union were very much in operation when the rockets struck.

Never before had a nuclear reactor site become a military target in time of war, and perhaps it was the novelty of it al, or the apparent brilliance of the attack, that led l’Express to drop a bombshell of its own. The Phantoms hadn’t come from Iran at all, the magazine had insisted. They were Israeli, and they had taken advantage of the war with Iran to knock out the Iraqi nuclear complex.

But it was not Israel. Not this time.

The truth, it seems, was more prosaic. The later-to-be-deposed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was also the military commander-in-chief, admitted the Phantoms were his. And according to eyewitnesses, it is likely that the place called Tuwaitah was not even a primary objective, but simply a target of opportunity for those two Phantoms on the way home after the bombing of the power plant on the outskirts of Baghdad.

[ . . . ]

The September bombing of Tuwaitah was not the first of the violence in the trouble-plagued history of the Iraqi nuclear program, and it would not be the last. Back in April 1979, unidentified saboteurs broke into a storage hangar at a small engineering firm near Toulon on the French Riviera and dynamited the Osirak, or Tammuz, core only hours before it was due to be shipped to Iraq. In June 1980, in a hotel room in Paris, an unknown intruder bludgeoned to death an Egyptian nuclear engineer who was playing a leading role on the Osirak project. In August, a series of bombings and letter and telephone threats against French and Italian engineering firms sparked a continuing campaign of terror.

The details of the Israeli attack on Osirak are fully exploded in a new book by Roger Claire, but here’s the rough outline of the Israeli attack from Krosney and Weissmann:

But the big attack came on Sunday, June 7, 1981, the eve of the Jewish religious holiday of Shavuot, the celebration of the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses in Sinai. The thoughts of most Israelis were far from the battlefield…

… The attack itself went strictly according to plan. Late in the afternoon, about four o’clock Israeli time, eight of Israel’s new fleet of American-built F-16 jet fighters took off from Etzion air base in the Sinai. Originally designed for high-speed dogfights, the planes had been equipped with extra fuel tanks, to increase their range, and special bomb racks which carried two 2,000-pound MK-84 iron bombs.

…The first bombs to hit the lead and concrete walls had delayed-action fuses. This allowed them to penetrate the dome before exploding, opening holes with pinpoint accuracy and destroying the reactor inside.

The U.S. role in the lead up to the attack is intriguing, according to the biography by Joseph Persico of former CIA director William J. Casey. In it Persico paints a picture of a quid pro quo between Casey and parties in Israel who want something in return for a muted reaction to the shipment of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

First on his agenda was helping to get the AWACS deal through the Congress. The government of Saudi Arabia wanted to spend $8.5 billion for these “airborne warning and control systems” surveillance aircraft. The Reagan administration was eager to make the sale to cement its friendship with the Saudis. Israel was understandably unnerved by the prospect of an Arab state getting supersophisticated planes. …

Casey went to the Middle East and met in Tel Aviv with the Israeli intelligence chief, Major General Yitzhak Hoffi, known as Haka. How could he be helpful? Casey wanted to know. Haka told him that any information the Israelis could acquire from the CIA on certain installations in the Arab world could be most useful. Any in particular? Casey asked. Yes, the Israeli told him. Ten miles outside of Baghdad in Iraq was the Osirak nuclear reactor. The reactor’s core contained 26.4 pounds of weapons-grade uranium 235. The Israelis estimated that their Iraqi antagonists were within five years of producing nuclear weapons.

Casey understood Israel’s concern. Of course he could help—but did Israel really need to be so worried about the AWACS sale to the Saudis? Couldn’t the Jewish lobby in the States be called off? The heads of the intelligence service of the United States and of Israel managed, before Casey left, to arrive at a mutually helpful arrangement.

On Sunday, June 8 Israeli aircraft bombed the Osirak reactor. Casey was notified at home at four-fifty that afternoon. Within two hours, and American KH-11 Big Bird photo reconnaissance satellite was diverted from its customary orbit over the Soviet Union and China; and within six hours, Israeli intelligence was getting KH-11 photos direct by satellite revealing the destruction wrought on the Iraqi plant.

…During the administration’s push to win approval of the AWACS deal, Casey had watched with admiration the energy of two military officers on the project.”

Oliver North and Richard Secord.

For further reference

Iran (Nuclearfiles.org)

Iraq Nuclear Weapons Program—Import Table

Osirak and Beyond

Nuclear Rights and Wrongs

Ikonos Imagery of Dimona, Negev Nuclear Research Center

Iran boasts Dimona now 'within range'

Israel and the Bomb

2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

A recent Monitor article anticipates the global effects of $50-per-barrel oil prices. In summary, this is a macroeconomic benchmark that affects the world. Countries are affected based on how "oil intensive" their economies are - how much they need for transport and industrial production - as well as how much they import.

For example, Japan imports almost all of its oil, but has relatively low oil usage. European countries would suffer in the near term, as they import a lot of their oil as well. Other types of energy would increase in price along with demand - plants may switch to coal from oil, for example. But even though countries that export oil and other natural resources would be receiving more revenues, they would be impacted by economic recessions from the countries bearing the brunt of higher costs.

These and other details are the findings of a report published by the International Energy Agency about the impact of high oil prices on the world economy, concluding that sustained high prices would have a negative effect.

Other than increasing demand, there are several factors causing high prices. A Government Accountability Office report released in July 2004 stated that the increase in merger activity - over 2,600 in the past decade - created huge companies. Refineries prefer to do business with these companies; with their low credit risk and high quotas for orders. The report also mentioned the expansion of hypermarkets that sell gasoline - Wal-Mart, Costco and supermarkets - as another factor.

The worst humanitarian crisis in the world, the ethnic cleansing taking place in Sudan, is the subject of a Monitor article on Monday. This situation has been declared a genocide by the United States Congress, which could help open the path for UN peacekeepers, may prompt governments to impose sanctions on the country, and likely will result in more NGOs being allowed in to help the situation.

In the meantime, the American Bar Association is surveying Sudanese refugees to find out if indeed genocide has occurred, probably for purposes of evidence if this comes to an international tribunal in the future.

However it is defined, it has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives since February 2003. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that the government has resisted allowing aid groups into the country.

Reasons for the crisis are complex and numerous. At the center of the conflict seems to be competition for water and grazing resources between the Janjaweed Arab militias and Sudanese farmers of differing ethnic backgrounds. A map from the Human Rights Watch shows the integration of these ethnolinguistic groups.

A column at the website of the Poynter Institute, a school for professional journalists, claims that the world press is not paying enough attention to this situation, though Monitor coverage is mentioned.

Brad Knickerbocker writes in the March 18 issue of The Christian Science Monitor, "The largest US war effort since Vietnam already is having a major effect on the US military, including the disposition of forces around the world."

The global presence of the US military is large. Very large. In fact, around 70 percent of the world’s countries host US troops of some kind. The official number of active duty personnel, according to Department of Defense numbers released in January 2004, is a little more than 1.4 million. Of those, 435,766 are on duty abroad, including those in Operation Iraqi Freedom. In addition, the Pentagon’s Base Structure Report puts the number of US military facilities around the world at 702, with another 96 in US-held territories.

Agree with him or not, Chalmers Johnson, calls this presence an empire and adds,

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the US military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

Also missing is the number of contracted personnel from PMCs (private military corporations) like Vinnell Corp., MPRI, or AirScan, Inc. , who, in addition to Kellogg, Brown & Root, work or train in foreign countries, like Colombia or Saudi Arabia, where explosions (two in eight years) ripped through Saudi National Guard buildings which house Vinnell personnel.

For more on the US military presence worldwide, see the following:

US Worldwide Military Bases
After 9/11, U.S. policy built on world bases(by Alan Messmer)

A Monitor article this week describes a shelter in Japan for female victims of domestic violence. According to a survey conducted in 2000, 27.5 percent of women reported their husbands had beaten them.

To put this into context, how does this compare with other countries? A United Nations survey in 10 countries found that 17 to 38 percent of women had been assaulted by a partner. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 1 million women and 834,000 men in the US are victims. But according to the US Department of Justice, those numbers have decreased in recent years. The Family Violence Prevention Fund offers yet another measurement, claiming that 3 million women a year are affected. It is important to note how statistics are summarized; some claim that they are number of incidents, some claim the number of women affected. By any measure, domestic violence continues to be a global problem.