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MIDDLE EAST WATCH OVERVIEW

Human Rights Developments

The political earthquake that shook the Middle East on September 13, when Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed an interim self-government accord, may have marked the beginning of the end of the forty-five-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict. In the medium term, it may also come to mark a parallel improvement in human rights conditions-not just in the Israeli-occupied territories, but in those frontline states that have long used the conflict as a pretext for violations of the fundamental rights of their own peoples.

Such aspirations could, equally, prove to be mere wishful thinking: human rights per se figured little in the interstate negotiations that took place during 1993, and few officials from any party to the talks, including the United States, publicly articulated concern for human rights. Under prodding, PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat was one of those who did, after the signing; but, misgivings persisted as to whether the PLO was truly committed to a future in which respect for human rights and a pluralistic democracy would be realized. In counterpoint, there were no early signs of an Israeli reassessment of long-established abusive policies and practices in the occupied territories.

Welcome though the Israel-PLO agreement was as an augury of peace, in the region as a whole-from the Maghreb states of North Africa to Iran-the accord was overshadowed by a broader conflict with pervasive implications for human rights: a contest for power, ideological domination, and control over social behavior between insurgent Islamists and established regimes, themselves often of little popular legitimacy and a secular, pro-Western cast. The contest became increasingly violent, and casualties mounted. In Egypt, over the eighteen months to October 1993, some 220 people lost their lives, sixty-six of them members of the security forces. In Algeria, in only the first nine months of the year the fatality toll reached over 700, of whom nearly 500 were Islamists. Islamist gunmen were responsible for many acts of seemingly random violence, including murder and abductions, against secular figures and foreigners; but other unidentified forces also appeared to be taking advantage of the political unrest to carry out killings.

Not that this tragic struggle taking place in much of the Arab world can be accurately depicted only in secular versus religious terms. Even the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Iran, who drew their authority in part from religious wellsprings, faced challenges from hardline Islamists. In appeasing or fighting off these challengers, governments frequently made human rights the casualty.

After a period of several years in which acknowledgment of human rights as an issue with which local rulers had to contend, whatever their political system, appeared to be gaining greater acceptance, in 1993 this trend went into reverse. In the nine states actively monitored by Middle East Watch during the year, respect for fundamental human rights suffered a broad decline. (Middle East Watch was either unable to monitor other states such as Libya and Oman because of a lack of reliable information, or else, as in the case of Jordan, chose not to do so because of their relatively good human rights records.)

Perhaps out of concern for Western sensibilities and aid considerations, most regional governments continued to defend publicly their adherence to accepted human rights norms. Iraq jettisoned any such effort; while other states-the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for instance-attempted to defend their records as being in conformity with Islamic, rather than universal, norms. Iraq and Syria, ruled by longstanding dictators who headed rival branches of the Arab Ba'th Socialist Party, were among those whose officials rejected external pressure over their human rights records as being a Western stick wielded for political purposes. Some of the regional dissatisfaction with attempts to enforce the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other relevant treaties was aired at the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights, at Vienna in June, stirring debate about the universality of human rights and the claimed need to take cultural differences into account in their application.

Among the Arab nations of the Middle East and North Africa, only Jordan and Yemen, each of which held generally free and fair elections during the year, could plausibly claim to be in generalcompliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-ratified by all regional nations except Saudi Arabia. The November elections in Jordan consolidated a democratic opening begun in 1989 by King Hussein. As a result of these two polls, and the 1992 election to a restored National Assembly in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf found themselves surrounded by lively examples of political life-in the process, exposing King Fahd of Saudi Arabia's arguments about the inappropriateness of democracy for the region's peoples. In 1993, the Saudi ruler instituted a long-promised Consultative Assembly; but, in Middle East Watch's view, the appointed advisory body did little to advance participatory democracy and may even have strengthened royal authority. Morocco, like Jordan a pro-Western monarchy with a developed civil society that operates with a qualified degree of freedom, also held parliamentary elections during the year; but the results were marred by allegations of fraud.

Presidential elections were held in two states with strong presidential systems: Egypt and Iran. In both countries the incumbents, Hosni Mubarak and Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, won easy victories, as had been predicted. Neither vote was a fair reflection of popular will, as the conditions under which the elections were held had been effectively predetermined by the government. Their respective regimes' deep political enmity notwithstanding, Mubarak and Rafsanjani shared several common problems. Both presided over states under great population and resources pressures; and attempted cautiously to open up the system to modernizing forces. Neither ruler, though, attempted to pursue the politics of inclusion, thus alienating important sectors of their populations.

Preconditions for genuine popular participation in elections are the interlinked freedoms of expression, association and assembly. In these key aspects of human rights, critical building blocks for the development of a healthy civil society, there was either no improvement during the year under review, or else there was backsliding. The only relatively bright spot in an otherwise bleak picture for the region covered by Middle East Watch was Israel's decision, following the September 13 accord, to relax its previously tight restrictions on peaceful demonstrations and forms of expression such as the display of Palestinian flags.

Otherwise, the regional record was an unending catalog of censorship; bans on meetings, demonstrations, publications and creative works; the closure of private associations; and the arrest of journalists, writers and government critics whose only offense was to espouse views unpopular with the political or religious establishment. Intolerance was driven by politically-backed religious zeal in countries as varied as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Fresh restrictions on freedom of expression were recorded by Middle East Watch in Iran and the seven Arab countries actively monitored in 1993. As described below, government actions increasingly hampered the ability of local and foreign organizations to monitor state abuses of basic human rights. Among certain offenders-Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria-freedom of expression was a virtual dead letter; while in countries such as Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Kuwait the surface impression of lively public discourse and competing ideas was misleading as a guide to official tolerance of dissent or discordant voices.

In a footnote, the generally tolerant attitude toward expression displayed by the Kurdish regional authorities in northern Iraq should be noted. However, even in this Western-protected enclave, inhabited by approximately 3.5 million people the limits of political dissent were sometimes exposed during the year. Middle East Watch observed, with regret, the appearance of rights violations in the self-governing region, including the closure of a newspaper and a number of political detentions. These cases did not appear to represent any systematic policy or practice, however.

Ongoing conflicts within Iraq and Algeria, as well as the international conflict that took place in the Israel-Lebanon border region, in July, were marked by international humanitarian law violations. Middle East Watch argued that in the Israeli-occupied territories and Egypt, persistent and grave though actions by security forces and armed groups of opponents may have been at times, the localized violence did not reach the threshhold set by international humanitarian law. These two states were thus held to norms of behavior relevant to peacetime conditions. Israel is required to uphold the Fourth GenevaConvention covering occupied territory, an obligation that will not disappear as the Palestinian interim self-rule plan is implemented.

Israeli governments have consistently described security force actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as based on the upholding of law and order, rather than combat. However, during the year undercover army units continued to engage in shootings of suspects which amounted, in legal terms, to extrajudicial executions when arrests could have been effected without risk to the soldier.

While most violations derived from the repressive actions of the states concerned, Middle East Watch noted with much concern that grave human rights and humanitarian law violations were either being committed by nongovernmental groups or else were effectively condoned by them. Among the lengthening list of abusive militias and armed underground groups active in 1993 were Hizballa and the South Lebanon Army (Lebanon), Hamas (Israeli-occupied territories), the Islamic Group (Egypt), the Front Islamique du Salut (Algeria), and the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (Iran). Except for the SLA, a mainly Christian protegée of Israel, all were Islamist in their political ideology. The growing resort to violence by opposition groups in much of the Middle East and North Africa was a troubling feature of the year. In some cases, direct responsibility for assassinations and other acts of violence aimed at civilians, or in which noncombatants were placed at needless risk, could not be attributed to identifiable groups. But the fact that these groups usually did not denounce abusive acts committed by unidentified sympathizers was troublesome. While individuals identified with the regime were the main target of armed opposition groups, in several countries-for instance, Egypt and Lebanon-Middle East Watch noted that minorities or members of other groups were also victims.

The use of special courts that expedited legal procedures and afforded lower protection to defendants than standard criminal proceedings was a rash that spread throughout many parts of the region during the year. Even more disturbing were the large number of death sentences handed down by such courts, often on the basis of confessions that had been coercively extracted. In most cases, defendants did not have an opportunity to appeal their sentences to a higher court. Algeria, Egypt and Kuwait were the main offenders in this regard.

Undermining the fundamental concept of an independent judiciary, military courts answerable to government ministers were used to try civilians on charges unrelated to military matters in Lebanon, the Israeli-occupied territories, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. State security courts, usually empowered under emergency legislation, also dealt with human rights-related cases, in Syria and Kuwait.

In a sign of their residual vitality despite widespread official pressure, lawyers' associations and to a lesser extent civilian judges were sometimes able to fight back against the erosion of judicial independence and the rule of law. Among areas where this fight-back took place were Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, and the Israeli-occupied territories.

Iraq, where the rule of law had long been a charade in any case with political overtones, remained in a class of its own: hundreds of executions of suspected dissidents were believed to have been carried out in 1993 with little or no legal process. In November alone, dozens of prominent individuals apparently suspected of plotting against the regime were executed without charge or trial. Reports spoke of hundreds of Shi'a dissidents, arrested in southern Iraq after the March 1991 uprising or more recently, also being summarily executed, in August and September. While the precise scale of these bouts of extrajudicial executions was arguable, there could be no doubt that such killings had taken place in large numbers-in blatant defiance of many resolutions passed by the U.N. Security Council and Human Rights Commission.

In neighboring Iran, the problem with the judiciary was not so much subjugation to the executive branch as the arbitrary rulings of religious courts endowed with considerable decision-making autonomy. Continued recourse to Islamic revolutionary courts, which met behind closed doors in prisons and other undisclosed locations, augmented concerns over a judicial system that presided over one of the highest rates of execution in the world.

The Iranian authorities must also be held responsible for the continuation in 1993 of the fatwa,or religious ruling, issued in 1989 by the late Ayatollah Khomeini against the British writer Salman Rushdie over his book The Satanic Verses, and all those associated with its publication. Nor did the authorities disavow the $2 million "bounty" offered by a semi-independent Iranian foundation for the implementation of the fatwa. Since 1979, the Iranian government has been suspected of involvement in over sixty cases of assassination of exiled opponents; between December 1992 and November 1993, there were at least six successful or attempted killings in which evidence pointed to Tehran's official involvement. After lengthy delays, in late 1993 the trial of persons accused in connection with three celebrated assassinations of Iranians in Western Europe were either due to begin or had commenced. In each case, prosecutors claimed the Iranian authorities were directly involved.

While Iran, aware of the public relations damage caused, no longer released information about judicial executions on a regular basis, Saudi Arabia disclosed that capital punishment reached a record level in 1993. In the first seven months alone, executions-mostly public beheadings-exceeded the total for the preceding year. As in Iran, serious due process flaws often rendered nugatory the proceedings of Saudi courts based on uncodified Shari'a, or Islamic law. Drug offenses were said by officials to be the primary offense that drew the death sentence in both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Political opposition, suspected or actual, may also have added to the execution toll in Iran; but, given the paucity of reliable information, no firm conclusions could be drawn. Iranian opponents and human rights monitors have long claimed that political prisoners were being executed under the guise of being drug offenders.

Elsewhere, firmer assertions can be made about death sentences. In Kuwait, through November, seventeen death sentences were passed on persons charged with collaborating with the enemy during the 1991-92 Iraqi occupation. Another twelve defendants facing the death penalty were due to be sentenced after the publication of this report, and one execution was carried out. In Algeria, over 250 death sentences were passed by special courts. (Many were sentenced in absentia, and could be retried on surrender.) Even against the background of sharply higher levels of Islamist violence, this number was shockingly high. Barely two years earlier, Algeria had prided itself on its human rights record. Impelled by the same surge of Islamist-inspired violence as in Algeria, in Egypt too the government resorted to the death penalty in record numbers: between December 1992 and November 3, 1993, thirty-nine persons were sentenced to capital punishment, of whom seventeen were executed.

Contributing directly to the many travesties of justice that marred the region during 1993 was the endemic problem of torture in detention. Middle East Watch received credible testimony about the practice of torture-for the extraction of information, for punishment, to secure "confessions," or a combination of all three motives-in four countries: Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. All were long-standing abusers of human rights in this arena. Although first-hand testimony about torture was not taken during the year from the five other countries under review-Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait and Syria-Middle East Watch had no reason to believe that any of them had changed previously recorded interrogation practices. In a number of instances, mistreatment or medical neglect of detainees, itself an abuse, led to deaths in detention.

Administrative detention-detention without charge or trial of persons considered by the authorities to be security threats, but against whom sufficient evidence to warrant a trial was lacking-remained an obnoxious practice in Algeria, where it was used against militant Islamists, and the Israeli-occupied territories, where Palestinian activists were the target. However, the numbers in administrative detention in both countries were down significantly in 1993 compared with previous years. In part, this was due to a switch by the respective authorities to other means of dealing with the problem of peaceful opposition.

In Algeria, for example, much greater use was made of summary judicial proceedings before special courts apparently designed to process speedily as many defendants as possible. Meanwhile, in December 1992, in one fell stroke the Rabin government in Israel rounded up and deported 415 Palestinian activists suspected of involvement with Islamist groups. The use of some administrative punishments, such as house demolitions and sealings, lessened during 1993 in the Israeli-occupiedterritories. Nor was there any further resort to deportations. But collective punishments such as an indefinite curfew on the entire Gaza Strip were continued, while other forms, notably a ban on travel by Palestinians across the 1967 "Green Line" border into Israel and East Jerusalem, were newly applied.

As often occurs amidst deteriorating human rights conditions, such as could be observed in 1993 in the Middle East and North Africa, minorities and dissident ethnic groups frequently bore the brunt of abusive government actions or else were not afforded the protection they should have enjoyed under the law. Outstanding examples were the Iraqi Kurds and Shi'a. As in the two previous years, among many other violations, they continued to endure mass arbitrary arrests and executions; the economic and military blockade of parts of regions where they formed a majority; discrimination in the allocation of scarce resources such as food and medicine, as well as in employment and education; and the absence of religious freedom. In the course of suppressing a Shi'a rebel insurgency in and around the southern marshes, the Iraqi government effectively destroyed the ancient way of life of the region's indigenous people, the Maadan. The region's lakes and marshes were drained; villages were shelled and burned; and their inhabitants were either forcibly relocated to areas under government control, or else forced to flee elsewhere. About 7,000 Shi'a refugees managed to cross into Iran between July and September, but most were trapped inside the country by intensive Iraqi military action.

Kurds were mistreated in the two other countries covered by Middle East Watch in which they form a significant minority, Iran and Syria (Turkey, where there is a major problem involving Kurds, is monitored by Helsinki Watch). Much of Iranian Kurdistan was turned into an armed camp during the year, as the authorities battled internal political unrest and guerrilla organizations based across the border in northern Iraq. While information about conditions affecting Iranian and Syrian Kurds was sketchy, arrests and executions were reported in Iran by opposition parties. In Syria, forty Kurds arrested the previous year during the course of demonstrations remained in custody accused of membership in a banned organization.

Apart from Iraq, discrimination against and persecution of religious minorities was reported from Iran and Egypt. In Iran, the 300,000-strong Baha'i sect was subjected to renewed official pressure during the year. In Egypt, the country's Coptic Christians were often the target of Islamist attacks. Thirty-six Copts died in Islamist violence in the eighteen months commencing March 1992. In Middle East Watch's view, government discrimination against the Copts, over freedoms of expression and church building and repair, contributed to a climate in which this vulnerable minority became fair game for extremists. The only positive note for minorities during the year was in Saudi Arabia, where Shi'a political prisoners were quietly released and exiled opponents permitted to return. The price, from a human rights monitoring perspective, was high: those self-exiled groups involved were required to cease publishing critical information about abuses inside the Kingdom.

The Right to Monitor

The ability of private individuals and groups, local or foreign, to gather information openly about government abuses without fear of punishment has rarely been tolerated in the Middle East, outside of Egypt, Israel and the occupied territories. The Maghreb region of North Africa has a better record. Established human rights organizations have long been at work in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, with a degree of freedom; and the governments' sensitivity to criticism on this score has led to the establishment of official human rights organizations in each of these countries. Nominally designed to be independent watchdogs, in practice these bodies became defenders of the official line.

In those parts of the Arab world where local groups have played a formal or informal monitoring role, they usually have done so cautiously. While the gathering of information about current abuses was tacitly permitted during 1993 in some relatively open societies, such as Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia, advocacy work to promote change was much more problematic. Rarely did governments in the region respond substantively to complaints from local organizations, and only infrequently did they respond adequately to foreign human rights groups or U.N. human rights bodies. The de facto limits on localrights organizations put a greater burden on bodies such as Middle East Watch and Amnesty International, which had better access to the media and to governments in a position to exercise pressure on the abusive regional party.

Middle East Watch's ability to conduct missions and investigate alleged abuses in the region was highly qualified. Access to the country has never been a problem in Israel or Egypt, for instance, but to date has been consistently denied by Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In Iran, the government issued visas to permit the investigation of human rights abuses in neighboring Iraq; but was reluctant to discuss its own practices, much less to permit an above-board investigation. In Lebanon and Kuwait, the authorities were generally cooperative. But, until late 1993 the government in Morocco never responded to requests to send a mission to that country; following the receipt of an invitation, a mission to Morocco was planned for early 1994. While the Israeli government has put few obstacles in the way of fact-gathering, over the years it has shown itself reluctant to engage in a substantive dialogue with foreign human rights organizations about its practices.

This pervasive reluctance to deal with foreigners on sensitive issues such as political prisoners and the mistreatment of minorities was not unique to private groups. U.N. agencies and individual officials charged with investigating human rights conditions experienced similar difficulties. In 1993, both Iran and Iraq prevented the U.N. Secretary-General's representatives from conducting on-the-spot missions examining internal conditions, in defiance of U.N. resolutions. Iraq went further, preventing U.N. relief officials and guards from visiting troubled regions of the country. The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross also faced many difficulties in gaining access to prisoners in most of the region, apart from the Israeli-occupied territories.

Consonant with the worsening human rights climate, fledgling local human rights organizations faced fresh restrictions in 1993. In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, newly established groups were closed down on government order; in Saudi Arabia, members were arrested and dismissed from their jobs, but in more tolerant Kuwait it appeared as if the main human rights association, the Kuwaiti Association for the Defense of War Victims (KADWV), would in practice be permitted to continue operating. In Syria, fifteen members of the country's only monitoring body, the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights (CDF), remained in jail. Ten had previously been sentenced to prison terms of up to ten years, while another five faced trial before state security courts during the year.

Operating in the shadows, without official recognition, the KADWV found itself in late 1993 in a similar position to that long endured by the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights (EOHR). EOHR, an independent body with a strong record of investigating and publicizing abuses, had never been granted official recognition; nor did the authorities usually respond to its complaints. Elsewhere, the Tunisian Ligue des Droits de l'Homme reopened, after being effectively closed down under an amended law of association. But in Tunisia and Algeria, both of which were struggling with Islamist violence and government repression, local human rights groups engaged in little substantive work.

In the Israeli-occupied territories and in Jerusalem, several established human rights organizations were active during 1993. Movements of Palestinian workers and the gathering of field information were frequently difficult; otherwise, they suffered few restrictions in their activities. Israeli and Palestinian lawyers also acted as useful sources of information about current abuses, as did Egyptian and Algerian defense lawyers in their countries.

U.S. Policy

With regard to the Middle East and North Africa, the Clinton administration's approach to human rights differed little from that of the Bush administration. This was hardly surprising, given the primacy the administration continued to give to securing peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors-a policy choice that went hand in hand with sublimating human rights concerns. Another constant was the unresolved dilemma of how to handle the Islamist movement challenging secular governments well disposed to the United States.

In international fora, such as the U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, thevigorous espousal of human rights principles by the U.S. and the support given to letting the voices of nongovernmental organizations be heard at the conference was helpful. Middle East NGOs made good use of the occasion to embarrass their governments and lobby others to work for change.

The scheduled visit to Israel, the occupied territories and Egypt of John Shattuck, Assistant Secretary for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, in late November was also a positive sign, on the heels of the Israel-PLO accord. But it remained to be seen whether the Clinton administration would pressure Israel to curb its longstanding abusive practices in the occupied territories, and work actively to promote a pluralistic society committed to the rule of law in the Palestinian-run regions.

The standard argument from Washington that public diplomacy on human rights-related matters would be counterproductive to the Middle East peace process could not be extended, however, to other key U.S. allies in the region, such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco. Concerning their record the administration remained equally silent. With respect to Saudi Arabia and Syria, the contrast between President Clinton's pre-election pledge to get tough on both of them on human rights grounds, and his administration's protective attitude toward them was striking.

Human rights concerns were said to have been raised privately at a high level with the governments of Egypt and Algeria, on one or more occasions during the year. This was welcome. But there was little evidence that the administration was prepared to follow up its verbal communications with public condemnation, or to use other forms of leverage. The resumption of U.S. military aid to Lebanon, in October, was a regrettable development, given the role of the Lebanese army in carrying out politically motivated arrests and holding military trials of civilians. Similarly, U.S. military cooperation with Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia was not accompanied by any visible effort to help curb human rights violations.

The administration expressed a desire to promote the process of democratization in the region, particularly in emerging democracies such as Yemen and Jordan. It also aimed to push the embryonic Palestinian entity in this direction. High-level diplomatic support was given to the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of opposition parties committed to a pluralistic future for Iraq. The administration also supported a proposal that the United Nations establish a commission of inquiry into Iraqi war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But little diplomatic muscle was put into securing the implementation of this laudable proposal, or a parallel plan to deploy U.N. human rights monitors in Iraq. While there was no backtracking from the military protection given to the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, and substantial amounts of relief aid were appropriated by Congress for the Kurds, overall the administration's policy toward Iraq and President Saddam Hussein was largely one of maintaining established policy.

One unfortunate initiative was the June 26 missile attack on the Baghdad headquarters of the Mukhabarat, Iraq's external intelligence service. Launched in reprisal for an alleged plot by Iraqi agents to kill former President George Bush, during a visit to Kuwait, the missile attack killed eight civilians and caused property damage in the surrounding area. Middle East Watch considered the attack unwarranted, especially as the trial in Kuwait of those in custody over the alleged plot had not even commenced. During the year under review, senior administration officials frequently criticized Iraq's human rights behavior in strong terms. They also gave strong support to U.N. efforts to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, while resisting efforts by Iraq and others to lift economic sanctions, in force for over three years.

The Clinton administration also adopted a strong position over human rights abuses committed by Iran and Libya, two other pariah states as far as the U.S. was concerned. Iran was criticized as the ringleader of global terrorism, and concerted efforts were made to restrict Western high-technology goods and financial aid going to Iran. Stringent sanctions were applied through the U.N. against Libya, on the basis of its alleged involvement in the bombing of American and French passenger aircraft.

But, in all of those Middle East states where the U.S. took a strong and principled position on human rights, there was no conflict with other U.S. policy considerations. Where the U.S. did have vital interests in play, particularly in Israel, Washington took a different approach. Human rights policytowards Israel was weaker than under the Bush administration, when occasional public criticism of Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was expressed. And, while the previous administration had shown its willingness to use U.S. financial leverage to bring about a desired political goal-a curb in the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories-President Clinton virtually gave away the candy store, promising Prime Minister Rabin that the $3 billion in annual U.S. aid to Israel would be preserved in future years, without demanding anything in exchange for this important concession.

When the administration faced its first major foreign policy test, in January 1993, over Israel's arbitrary deportation of 415 Palestinians to Lebanon, Secretary of State Christopher fought hard to secure a political deal with Israel that headed off U.N. sanctions and kept the peace talks on track, but abandoned principles long enunciated by the United States concerning the inadmissibility of deportations. In a gratuitous declaration that served to highlight for many states the selective approach taken by the U.S. to the enforcement of U.N. resolutions, the Secretary of State said that the compromise reached with Israel, to permit a phased return of the deportees, was consistent with the position taken on the deportations by the U.N. Security Council in December 1992. It was not.

The Work of Middle East Watch

In 1993 Middle East Watch prioritized its work and restricted active monitoring of human rights to nine of the eighteen countries in its regional bailiwick. In alphabetical order, these were Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Missions were conducted during the year to six of the nine-Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon-some of which were visited twice or even three times. Research was conducted by telephone to those countries where access was not possible. Particular effort was focused on Israel and Iraq.

After the extensive time spent the previous year in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, investigating the government's Anfal campaign against the Kurds, in 1993 comparatively less time was spent inside Iraq itself. Two missions were sent during the year, with the primary purpose of securing further consignments of captured Iraqi secret police documents. (In 1992, Middle East Watch brought out fourteen tons of such documents, for safekeeping and analysis into Iraqi abuses.) But research missions also went to Iran and London, to meet refugees and exiled activists and gather information on the comparatively neglected topic of abuses against the Iraqi Shi'a. These missions resulted in a report and extensive advocacy over the draining of the southern marshes region of Iraq, and brutal treatment of its inhabitants.

In Israel, the second main focus of activity, a researcher was maintained in the field for eight months, through August, to work on selected issues in the occupied territories. Consistent with past emphases, these were the excessive use of force-in the form of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians by undercover army units-and the authorities' failure to investigate or prosecute possible violations by Israeli forces. Following work already published by regional human rights organizations, Middle East Watch also undertook a major research project into abusive interrogation practices amounting to torture. The persistence of reports of torture in detention under the Rabin government required a first-hand examination of a subject that could implicate U.S. financial aid to Israel.

Substantively, research work focused in the region on three themes of significance for Human Rights Watch. These were: freedom of expression, the treatment of minorities and other suppressed ethnic groups, and violations of international humanitarian law. Shorter interventions dealt regularly with the prisoners of conscience and with threatened local human rights groups and activists. Campaigns were mounted on behalf of groups or individuals in Algeria, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Israeli-occupied territories.

A greater emphasis than in the past was placed in 1993 on advocacy work. Much of this was in the traditional arenas of the media, where Middle East Watch consolidated its reputation as a reliable source of timely information on regional human rights issues, other private associations, and government. Meetings were held with regional government officials in Israel, Iran and Lebanon and with diplomats posted to the United States or U.N. from much of the region. And book-length reports were released on,among other subjects, limits to freedom of expression in Iran, prison conditions in Egypt, and undercover killings in the Israeli-occupied territories. Refugee casework with immigration officials and asylum lawyers also formed a regular part of the staff's work.

But, the organization's biggest single advocacy and research effort was devoted to the huge task of bringing a case against Iraq at the International Court of Justice at The Hague. During the year, this task involved research into the captured Iraqi documents, development of the legal theory of the case to be brought by a state party to the Genocide Convention, and seeking a government or governments willing to act as the plaintiff. In addition, two books on the Anfal campaign were released during the year: a case study of the fate of one district, and an overview book on the whole of the 1988 campaign.

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