Hillary Clinton’s Black List

The U.S. State Department’s annual report discusses four countries, three of which are Muslim, and 44 organizations, which are for the most part Islamic.

Officially, the “Rogue States” are no longer in Hillary Clinton’s Department’s vocabulary. But Washington continues to stigmatize countries and organizations with criteria that are, at the very least, subjective. The “neo-cons” have left the White House but four countries are still “blacklisted” in the State Department’s annual report.

One these countries is Iran, which holds the distinction of being “the most active in supporting terrorism and groups hostile to the Middle East peace process.” Already on the docket for its nuclear program, Tehran is accused of supporting the Palestinian Hamas and FPLP, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Afghan Taliban, and of not bringing to justice the Al Qaida activists arrested on its territory.

The same reproach is made to Syria, the second Muslim country on this blacklist. Sudan, despite the recognized collaborative efforts of some of its units with the CIA, is also on the list. Likewise Cuba, Washington’s revolutionary enemy which, in spite of Fidel Castro’s relative withdrawal, continues to accuse Havana of sheltering terrorists (such as those of FARC or ETA).

In terms of organizations, the Basques of the ETA are again courting the FARC, but also the Irish of the IRA, the Sri Lankans of the Tamil Tigers, the Kurds of the PKK, or the Peruvian Maoists of the Shining Path. The State Department’s eclecticism is, as ever, very relative: of the 44 organizations listed, more than two thirds are either Islamists or affiliated. Al-Qaida and its North African “branches” – Al Qaida in Islamic North Africa (AQMI), the Libyan Islamic Combatant Group (GICL), and Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) –, as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Egyptian Gamaat Islamiya, are very obviously in the top tier. Hamas has also been a fixture on this document since 1997.

Aside from the attacks and suicide-attacks against civilians in Israel, this organization – which was victorious in the Palestinian elections of 2006 – was accused of having organized a “military coup” against Fatah in June 2007. But Khaled Meshaal’s recent tacit renunciation of the famous Hamas charter, which advocates the destruction of the state of Israel, could mark a turning point. Commenting on Obama’s recent efforts to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the exiled leader of the movement in effect underscored, in a New York Times interview on May 5, that the new President’s “language is different and positive” and asked that the “20-year-old charter” be laid aside, adding that “we are shaped by our experiences.”

But, for the moment, Hamas remains cloaked in infamy by Washington, which, in application of the 2001 Patriot Act, forbids entry to its territory to anyone having a relationship with it. “The American government approves terrorism by the State of Israel against the Palestinian and Arab people,” commented Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban Foreign Minister.