The suffering caused by the war in the Gulf is not limited to people in the Middle East, or those with families in the war zone. All around the world, the war's fallout has damaged those working for human rights and freedom.
In some cases, the connection is direct and jarring. For example, President Bush chose January 15 -- the deadline day before the bombing of Baghdad began -- to announce that the United States was releasing funds to support the military government of El Salvador. Six days later, 15 people were massacred by a Salvadoran death squad in a town north of San Salvador.
"The release of aid gave a signal to the death squads and the military that human rights abuses can continue with impunity," said Scott Wright of the Washington, DC-based organization EPICA (Ecumenical Program for Interamerican Communication and Action). Many Central America activists are convinced that the timing was intentional. "They were clearly taking advantage of their ability to control what people hear," said Jennifer Casolo, an American human rights worker who was briefly imprisoned in El Salvador last year for her human rights work. "They chose the day they knew they would get the least press possible."
The Soviet government made similar use of the distraction of the Gulf war when it chose to invade Lithuania on January 13. The presidents of the three Baltic states (and Russian Republic president Boris Yeltsin) issued a plea earlier that week to the United States government, urging a delay in starting the war against Iraq. War in the Gulf, they said, would divert attention from their struggle for independence, and make a Soviet crackdown more likely. Their worries were proved well-grounded when days later Soviet tanks rolled into Lithuania to crush the freedom movement, killing 14 people and injuring more than 100.
Joanne Landy, director of the Campaign for Peace and Democracy, called the decision to move against Lithuania two days before the onset of the Gulf war "a transparently manipulative act, timed in the hope of minimizing international protest" and compared the action to the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary in 1956, when the British and French attack on the Suez Canal diverted the attention of the world to the Middle East.
If the timing of the assault on Lithuania was indeed intended to minimize objection, then it can only be considered a success. The U.S. government -- which needs Soviet backing if the U.N. Security Council is to continue to legitimate the war against Iraq -- issued only a token protest. And the Gulf war serves to bolster regressive forces within the Soviet Union. "The more involved the United States becomes in the Persian Gulf," a member of the Soviet Parliament said, "the more it frees the hands of the conservatives in the [Soviet] military."
The Bush administration's response to the kangaroo-court trials of Tiananmen Square protesters in China was even more tepid. Chinese authorities, who have shown a healthy disregard for world opinion in the past, took advantage of the international preoccupation with the Persian Gulf war to press ahead with trials of democracy activists who had the gall to suggest that recent economic reforms should be followed by political reforms in the world's largest autocratic state.
Two advisers to the student democracy movement, economist Chen Ziming and journalist Wang Juntao, received 13-year sentences in what appears to be an attempt by Chinese leaders to focus the blame on a small number of people for millions marching in the streets. "These sentences were very harsh," a Western diplomat said. "If anything will stir up international human rights concerns, this is it" -- except for the fact, the diplomat noted, that the world's attention is diverted by the Gulf war.
The war has become the great cloak of darkness, covering a multitude of sins. In some regions, activists are concerned that the "new world order" based on the might-makes-right supremacy the U.S. military has established in the Middle East is opening the door for similar U.S. military ventures elsewhere.
A case in point is Korea. The South Korean government has taken advantage of the battle in the Gulf in the timing of its recent arrests of much of the leadership of student and labor organizations. South Korean authorities invoked a national security law which prohibits any unauthorized contact with North Koreans in the crackdown on pro-unification groups -- even while high-level officials from the north and south engage in a series of meetings, allegedly to pursue reunification. But human rights activists contend the government is merely using the law as an excuse to subvert democratization activities.
Many of the same justifications used for "why we have to get rid of Saddam" have been used in relation to North Korea and its leader Kim II Sung. North Korea is on the short list of "terrorist nations" (usually along with Iraq and Cuba); the U.S. government has decried Kim Il Sung's human rights abuses; and the Bush administration has accused North Korea of developing nuclear weapons (the International Atomic Energy Agency maintains that North Korea's nuclear capability is "far in the future").
Even in the midst of war in the Gulf, the U.S. military is gearing up for its annual "Team Spirit" exercise in Korea, a massive mobilization of more than 100,000 U.S. and Korean soldiers in a "test war" against the north. Mili Kang of the Washington, DC-based Korea Coalition told Sojourners that some observers are concerned that, with the end of the Cold War, the Middle East war may be "paving the way for a similar action against North Korea."
The concern about the effect of the Gulf battle on the post-Cold War era is echoed by human rights activists around the globe. Pablo Richard, a Chilean liberation theologian, recently addressed a conference in Brazil on the prospects for Third World countries. A year ago, Richard said, there was hope that the end of the Cold War and the end of rampant anti-communist ideology would provide the Third World with an opportunity to create a new model of development, critical of the Eastern European system but also critical of the West.
Now, particularly in the context of the war in the Gulf, Richard maintains there is a sharper conflict in the Third World -- and particularly in Latin America -- between north and south. With the rhetoric of anticommunism reduced, people trying to defend their own lives and resources become the enemy. Now that the East-West divide is no longer paramount, the United States and others are able to focus more sharply on trying to control the resources of the Third World.
In terms of the Bush administration, some fear that the decision to go to war in the Gulf may stimulate a more aggressive foreign policy elsewhere. With no other force strong enough to hold the United States accountable, the administration is free to act as the world's police force. Unable to be number one economically, Bush has chosen to demonstrate America's supremacy militarily.
The collateral damage of that policy is already being revealed in all corners of the world. The early indications are that Bush's "new world order," far from advancing freedom and democracy, is serving to bolster those who endeavor to crush the human spirit.
Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.
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