Canadian tax dollars funding Fatah's Presidential Guard

I am beginning to suspect that Canadian foreign aid is a deep dark black hole in which tax dollars continue to be sucked into the vortex and where no ruling party every knows what becomes of the money. At least I am hoping it’s a non-partisan issue; otherwise it appears that the Harper government is no better or worse than any of its predecessors when it comes to foreign aid policy. And that is truly depressing.

Something tells me I should be reading the British Daily Telegraph more often if I want to see know how Canadian tax payer money is being spent in Gaza:

A former Royal Marine is leading a highly sensitive United Nations operation to train the Palestinian Presidential Guard on a mission that has raised concerns about the impartiality of the UN.

Known as the Karni Project, the operation involves training up to 250 members of the Fatah-controlled force to improve security at the Karni Crossing, the main exit from the Gaza Strip for cargo.

The project is jointly funded by Holland, Canada and Britain.

All three emphasise that the Palestinian Guards are not receiving military equipment but training in border management, including search techniques and perimeter security.

But with Fatah clashing regularly with Hamas gunmen in Gaza, there are concerns that the mission will be construed as favouring one side in a nascent civil war.The situation was not helped by the fact that the project was conceived by Lt Gen Keith Dayton, regional security co-ordinator for the United States, which is at loggerheads with Hamas.

Until repeated inquiries by The Daily Telegraph, the mission was being run under a de facto news blackout. "The UN is meant to be totally impartial, above party politics and factional fighting, so to be seen to be helping just the Presidential Guard, which is connected to Fatah, raises very real risks," one UN field officer not involved with the Karni Project said yesterday. Recent rumours of arms shipments to Fatah from Egypt sparked fierce fighting, with Hamas gunmen attacking a convoy of suspect trucks.

Even though the UN has thousands of employees and numerous agencies in Israel and the occupied territories, a UN "entity" that specialises in dangerous missions was brought in from outside. The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which carries out tasks such as de-mining war zones, sent a small team headed by the former British serviceman to run the training project at Karni.

The team leader was selected because his military background prepared him to work in what is regarded as a hostile environment. The former Royal Marine, who has worked on UN missions for the last 13 years, agreed to meet The Daily Telegraph but his name cannot be used for security reasons.

"Our project is completely transparent and involves nothing except improving the capability of the Palestinians running the border crossing," he said. Nevertheless, he and his small team, which include some other former British servicemen, work in conditions of heightened security, wearing bullet-proof vests when they enter Gaza and never spending more than a few hours on site because of the risk of being caught in Hamas-Fatah fighting.

The Karni Project was born out of the worsening economic situation in Gaza following the withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops in the summer of 2005. Their departure had promised an economic boom led by the export of high-value agricultural products such as cut flowers and cherry tomatoes that would be grown by Palestinian farmers in hothouses vacated by the Israelis.

But the export project collapsed when Israel repeatedly closed the Karni Crossing, the only route for exports, for fear of attack by militants. According to the plan drawn up by Lt Gen Dayton, only by dramatically improving security on the Palestinian side of Karni could a meaningful flow of exports be re-established.

Starting in December, eight specially-selected lieutenants and majors from the Presidential Guard were brought to Jericho in the West Bank to be "trained as trainers" by the UNOPS team. They were only allowed to travel from Gaza to Jericho with Israeli permission, indicating support from Tel Aviv for the project and the improvement in the Presidential Guard capability.

"The first phase of training went well although we identified some shortfalls in leadership that will have to be addressed," the UNOPS team leader said. In January the project shifted to the Karni Crossing itself in Gaza where facilities were found to be basic with no perimeter fence.

It has taken weeks for the UNOPS team to prepare classrooms, a power generator, a secure perimeter and various other items needed to start training the border guards. The first 80 recruits are due to start training next week. The plan is to erect a formidable perimeter wall featuring a steel fence mounted with motion detectors that will pass real-time data to the control room. The site will be patrolled by vehicles mounted with cameras and sensors sending back more data.

Spikes that rise from the road will stop any unauthorised vehicle long before it reaches the border with Israel although the guards will be trained in arrest techniques. The plan is for the guards to remain unarmed on site.

With Karni being used several times in the past by militants to smuggle bombs into Israel, security is high. Now, only 200 truckloads can leave Gaza each day but the plan is to quadruple the flow to 800 once the training is complete. Holland has committed £1.3 million to the project with Canada providing £500,000. Britain has said it will fund £360,000. Project insiders emphasised that no US money is going to the project.

Before anyone utters a comment suggesting that by training Fatah’s Presidential Guard to be better border policeman it improves the lives of Palestinian people; I would like to remind you that Palestinian border agents are not necessarily ineffectual by nature or by a lack of modern training but by way political orientation.

It doesn’t take a highly trained rocket science to not turn the other check when a “martyr in training” attempts to cross the border from Gaza into Israel or is digging a near-by tunnel in order to infiltrate Israel. And do you really expect me to believe that Fatah’s Presidential Guards are so stupid, that when they spot a group of men digging a tunnel not far from the border; their first assumption is that the guys are drilling for water or buried treasure?

Furthermore, let me quote to you the words of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, famed international moderate, and leader of the Fatah party who issued this statement a little over a month ago, "We have a legitimate right to direct our guns against Israeli occupation. It is forbidden to use these guns against Palestinians.”

Let me paraphrase this for the willfully obtuse. Kill Jews – okay; Arabs not so hot. And these are the people we are paying to training.