BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/08/2007

Plotters and Provocateurs

BBC Monitoring

An official broadcast lays bare the sinister intentions of Western do-gooders.

[State television ran this preview of a documentary on the West's "network war" against Belarus. It posits that the work of pro-democracy groups and civil society organizations in post-Soviet states is the "milder" manifestation of a huge program to ensure global American hegemony. The "tough" version of that policy, hatched by the Pentagon and State Department, is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Post-Soviet countries, it argues, are simply defending their sovereignty by banning such groups - TOL]

[Presenter] Despite recent developments in Georgia or Ukraine, it seems that Washington still has its head in the clouds. Foreign analytical centres are working out new scenarios, increasing the number and intensity of democratization programmes and expanding target audiences.

Experts are saying that a war of a new type, based on networks of organizations, is being waged on the post-Soviet space. Our correspondent is trying to investigate who is waging this global information war, what foundations and governments are sponsoring this export of democracy, and what scenario they have prepared for Belarus.

[Correspondent] In 1992, the influential American philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, predicted the end of history. According to Fukuyama, this meant that, with the end of the Cold War, the ideological evolution of mankind stopped and the liberal Western-type democracy had triumphed as the final form of governance. As winners of this war, the USA and its allies got a monopoly on determining a right world order.

[Pavel Zafirulin, captioned as leader the Euarasian Union of Russian Youth, in Russian] According to this geopolicy, there is no such sovereign state as the Republic of Belarus, there is no sovereign Russian Federation or any other sovereign state. This is a one-pole world with globalization and the hegemony of one country - the United States of America. As along as this doctrine remains Washington's official doctrine, they will continue pumping money into all kinds of NGOs and waging "network war" against our countries forever.

[Correspondent] The term "network war" has emerged in recent years. Its concept has been developed by the Pentagon and is being widely put into practice across the world. Its tough form is being implemented in Iraq and Afghanistan. The concept's milder version has been tested in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Political technologies and manipulating information form the basis of "the network war". Networks consist of numerous nodes, and each of them, civil organizations, movements, foundations, human rights activists and the mass media, are playing their particular role: staging protests and pickets, conducting seminars and publishing articles and reports, in other words, displaying any instance of public activity, seeking to deliberately destabilize the situation in the country. In the end, they get the programmed result.

[Aleksey Ostrovskiy, captioned as deputy of the Russian State Duma, in Russian] The main purpose of foreign intelligence services is to advance their influence further to the east, to the Russian border. Of course, because of this, Belarus gets in their way, and the Americans are going to actively pressurize it.

[Correspondent] Seemingly having no single control centre, all elements of the network are functioning under the auspices of US foreign policy executed by the State Department and intelligence services. There are thousands of centres the strategic goal of which is to establish American influence by non-forceful means. The network includes a great number of smaller organizations and foundations that are functioning under the slogan of democratization, and this makes it impossible to qualify them as intelligence operatives.

Ahead of the Maydan protests [during the 2004 Orange Revolution], more than 2,000 NGOs were functioning in Ukraine alone. Of them, 400 were international.

[Volodymyr Kornilov, captioned as director of the Ukrainian branch of the CIS Institute, in Russian] In Ukraine, those foundations, organizations and structures were mushrooming. The year 2004 ended and the Americans decided that they had conquered this country, thus cutting finances immediately. But to use the funds they had invested, for them not to go as water into sand, the most active ones, whom the Americans viewed as their best and the most talented disciples, were used in Kyrgyzstan.

[Correspondent] Ahead of the events in 5m-strong Kyrgyzstan [in 2005], over 2,000 registered NGOs were operating there, with a half of them located in southern Osh Region which became the epicentre of the revolution. Yet again, foreign influence played a key role there.

[Nur Omarov, captioned as doctor of history, Kyrgyzstan, in Russian] As everywhere, including Belarus, they are working through, first and foremost, the structure of NGOs which are covering the entire territory of our country and are very active in the South - [changes tack]. The most active of them, for instance, are the National Democratic Institute of the USA, the Soros Foundation which was involved too and a number of other organizations, such as the International Republic Institute, for instance.

[Correspondent] "The network war" against Belarus began long ago. Over 70 foreign organizations are working against us from abroad. In 1996, Belarus was the first country where they tried to export a revolution to.

[Dmytro Korchynskyy, captioned as leader of the Kiev branch of the UNA-UNSO organization in 1996, in Russian] I was responsible for sending those Ukrainians then. We were thinking about supporting this movement in Belarus, trying to destabilize the situation by joining forces because it was much more difficult to destabilize the situation in Ukraine then. Many of our people were in prisons. And we thought that it could be easier to do in Belarus. We failed.

[Correspondent] After a yet another failure of the Minsk Maydan [Maydan is the Ukrainian for square, Maydan was the main venue of the Orange Revolution in Kiev] in 2006, with the capital city's opposition forces as a key player, foreign think-tanks started working on new scenarios. The number and intensity of democratization programmes have been stepped up, the target audience and the net of pro-Western forces are being expanded. Youth, women's and religious organizations, independent trade unions and regional opposition unions and the mass media are seeking to implement a civil eruption scenario with numerous sources of fire.

[Uladzimir Hihin, captioned as political analyst, in Russian] Belarus can provide the best example for a textbook on political technologies used against our state. Since the mid-90s and up to date, there is hardly a single such technology left that the Americans, intelligence services and political circles in other regions of the world did not use against Belarus. Thanks God, they have not resorted to an open military conflict yet.

[Correspondent] Neighbouring countries are playing an important role in destabilizing the situation in Belarus. Dozens of foundations are forwarding millions of dollars to the new opposition, seasoned specialists on democratization are consulting them on staging street protests and teach them to conduct information wars. Establishing control over Belarus is a tactic goal, while strategic objectives are being clearly moved further to the east.

In December 2005, Russia banned the financing of civil organizations from abroad. The powers that be made a pre-emptive strike two years ahead of the Dissenters Marches that erupted in the cities of Russia in 2007, following the suit of Belgrade, Tbilisi and Kiev. The election year 2008 is yet to come.

[Presenter] You can watch the video film entitled Network War after the Panarama news bulletin on 15 August.

Source:

http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=232&NrSection=2&NrArticle=18933