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Galesburg
by Gordon Campbell
"I have heard a theory which states that if one jumps as high as ever one can, and then – upon reaching the apex of the jump – one jumps again, flight occurs." – Sock Monkey
Hi, this is Galesburg, an online diary and sounding board for anything at all that happens to intrude on the waking life, not much of which is dictated by politics, thanks.
Stronger influences:the music of Sleater-Kinney, John Darnielle, Townes Van Zandt, Buju Banton, Bukka White, and Bright Eyes, or the movies of Jean Eustache, the Dardenne brothers, Robert Bresson and Preston Sturges, and let's not forget Krazy Kat, or the owl muse. If there's a guiding spirit behind these entries, I'd like to think it was Massai, a childhood hero. In September 1886, Massai was among the prisoners on an army train hauling the last of Geronimo's followers (and their families) away to the living death of a prison camp in Florida. Somehow, he escaped from the train, walked 1500 miles home and mounted a one-man war. In effect, Massai sounded the last note of armed defiance on the American frontier, before he finally melted mysteriously away into the hills. Much the same process round here, folks. Hit, run and melt away.
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So Helen Clark will not, cannot, must not reveal the secret squirrel SIS information on Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui. What could be on the Zaoui file that is making the government so secretive and uneasy? What is it about Zaoui that induced top public servants to agree to lie in unison about him? As an (apparently) moderate Muslim opponent of the regime in Algeria, Zaoui is one of the rare people unlucky enough to get offside with both the Americans and the French – both of whom have been fiercely competing to woo the murderous regime in Algeria (100,000 dead since 1992 and counting) in recent months.
Tough for Helen Clark. If she gives Zaoui a home here, Clark will be offending her hand-kissing chum Jacques Chirac. France is Algeria's biggest trading partner and Chirac made a triumphal visit to Algiers in March, and the Bush administration as well.
Why is Washington so keen on the Algerian regime? It wasn't always this way. After the Algerian elections (which would have brought the likes of Zaoui to power) were overturned by an army coup in January 1992, the Clinton administration kept up secret negotiations with the moderates within Zaoui's political organisation – the FIS – between 1992 and 1995. Even after those negotiations ended, the Clinton administration held the army regime at arm's length. With the advent of Dubya though, the Algerian regime found firm new friends in Washington. In 2001, President Abdelaziz Boutelflika visited the White House twice within four months. After September 11, Algeria was among the first countries in the world to offer support in the new US war against terrorism. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, the Algerian government handed Washington a list of about 350 Algerians living abroad who are accused of having links to al-Qaeda. This list – re-routed via US intelligence agencies back to our own SIS – seems the source of the SIS "secret" data on Zaoui.
Meanwhile, does the cosiness between the US and the Algerian government have anything at all to do with the fact that Algeria is the world's second biggest natural gas exporter, and owns the 14th largest oil reserves on the planet? You bet. In fact, when one realises just who is managing the exploitation of those energy reserves, it gets easier to see why the Clark government is feeling sensitive about Zaoui.
The big player in Algerian oil exploitation is Anadarko Petroleum of Houston, Texas. Since 1991, Anadarko has opened 14 oil fields in Algeria, it now holds a stake in 4 million acres of Algerian land and will be investing $US98 million in the country during 2003 alone. Anadarko gave $150,000 to the Bush election campaign, and CEO Robert Allison Jnr was one of two industry players who met secretly on February 8, 2001 with vice-president Dick Cheney to help frame the Bush energy policy, and Anadarko has been reported as benefitting disproportionately from the subsequent energy bill.
Moreover, Cheney's wife Lynne sat on the board of Union Pacific Resources (which merged in 2000 with Anadarko) and collected a cool $250-500,000 in Anadarko stock after the merger, which she cashed up before her husband took office. Meaning – if New Zealand gives refuge to a major political opponent of a regime so very close to business friends of the Cheneys, you can bet our "soft on terrorism" decision will be noticed in Washington. The toes of the Cheneys are not ones that our government, post Iraq, will be keen to tread on.
So if Zaoui is granted refuge here, the courage of that decision will be all the more admirable. If he isn't allowed to stay, we could all be made complicit in a blood for oil exchange.
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