Author: Helena

Steven Vincent plot thickens

It is an outrage that Steven Vincent was killed and his translator, Nour al-Khal, was shot and badly roughed up last week.
Every single one of the deaths in Iraq through violence and through war-imposed infrastructure decay is an outrage.
The Daily Telegraph (London) has an interesting twist on the story. Colin Freeman writes there that Al-Khal, also known as Nour Weidi,

    has told investigators from her hospital bed that Mr Vincent planned to marry her so she could settle in the United States.

That sounds quite instrumental and non-romantic, doesn’t it?
The case is being investigated in the first instance by Iraqi investigators; but they reportedly have a lot of help from US and British investigators. I’m guessing it was a British investigator who was Freeman’s main source for this story?
He writes:

    “There is a straight-line connection that people have drawn between Steven Vincent criticising the Iraq police and therefore being murdered,” said one investigator.
    “But from the evidence so far, including accounts we have had from the Iraqi interpreter, that is not the immediate conclusion we are drawing. It appears to be quite a complex case.
    “There is the possibility that this was an attempted ‘honour killing’, related in some way to the relationship he had with his interpreter. But it does not fit the pattern of honour killings as it is usually the woman who dies.”
    Mr Vincent, 49, a former art critic who turned to journalism after witnessing the September 11 attacks, had been married to his American wife for 13 years. She is understood to have been aware of his plans to marry Ms Weidi for visa purposes.

Over at The Sunday Times (London) Tony Allen-Mills has some more (and more nuanced) speculation about the role that Vincent’s relationship with Weidi/Khal (also known as Nooriya Tuaiz) may have played in his murder:

    All of these security sources commented that whatever Vincent may have written was unlikely to have offended local sensitivities as much as his relationship with Tuaiz.

Iraq constitution (still yawning)

Steadfast JWN readers will recall that I wrote here a week ago that I judged the current flurry of discussions in Iraq over a new, “permanent” constitution to be quite unrealistic and therefore a big yawn.
I still do.
And the sheer chutzpah of the American occupation chiefs over this whole issue is truly mind-boggling.
The Iraqis had their election on January 30. US “Ambassador” John Negroponte shortly thereafter left town… The Americans took no political initiatives at all regarding Iraq for many long months… The security situation for the Iraqis almost immediately deteriroated radically… Six months later “Ambassador” Khalilzad finally deigns to show up… And his big message to the Iraqi political bosses is suddenly “Hurry up guys! Get this permanent constitution done! You only have three weeks left to do it! We cannot extend the August 15 deadline!”
Gimme a break. Is that really supposed to be a serious way to facilitate/shepherd an extremely momentous– yes, even truly existential— negotiation over the future governance of Iraq??
Of course not. That’s why I think that any piece of paper that comes out of these hurried, Washington-coerced “negotiations” will scarcely be worth anything.
But in the mean-time, these “negotiations” have underlined what some of the key issues will be… Huge issues, like identity, the role of Islam in the Constitution, the degree and nature of federalism, language rights, the relations between different sub-groups, etc.
In South Africa it took just over three years– from 1990, when Mandela was released and the ANC and other anti-apartheid movements were decriminalized, to the point where the ANC and the National Party reached agreement on the format and modalities for the 1994 elections– for the leaders of these already well-defined political movements to come to basic agreement on their continued coexistence within one fully democratic South African state.
Along the way they had to wrestle with exactly the same kind of issues that the Iraqi parties are. (With the exception of the question of the “role of Islam.” But of course, for the National Party and many Afrikaaners, keeping the definition of SA as a “Christian Nation” was something they felt very strongly about.)
In Iraq, as I’ve noted before, the party system is far less well developed than in South Africa in 1990. Which makes the negotiating even harder to conduct.
So why on earth should Zal Khalilzad imagine that he can accomplish in three weeks what it took De Klerk and the ANC more than three years to accomplish??
… Anyway, I just wanted to further clarify why I don’t think the minutiae of the current discussions on the “permanent” constitution are worth paying too, too much attention to.
Meanwhile, let Khalilzad and all his backers in Washington remember that they don’t actually need to “achieve” an Iraqi constitution in order to get out of the country… All they need to do is leave. If they tell folks that that is what they intend to do, hundreds of different parties, organizations, and governments around the world will be happy to help them find a way to do that.

Saudi succession

Following the recent death of Fahd ibn Abdel-Aziz ibn Saud, there are now at least 18 other sons of Abdel-Aziz– or most likely, more– who potentially could be in line to the throne, after Abdullah ibn Abdel-Aziz, the new king. Miqrin, the youngest of these awlad (children of) Abdel-Aziz, is indeed in his fifties, and has many uncles who are patrilineal grandsons of Abdel-Aziz who are older (and most probably wiser) than him.
Many of those grandsons, including longtime Foreign Minister Prince Saud ibn Faisal ibn Abdel-Aziz, 64, could also plausibly think they have some claim to the throne at some point. And I’m sure Saud al-Faisal is by no means the oldest “prince” of his generation…
So when will the generational handover take place? Who knows?
To supplement what I wrote here last week, I offer you the following analysis of succession issues in Saudi Arabia, which comes from Michael Herb of Georgia (USA) State University, with his permission. Michael was doing a quick analysis of the Saudi Press Agency reports of the recent bay’a proceedings, in which everyone who’s anyone in (the male half of) Saudi society came forward to swear fealty to the new king:

Continue reading “Saudi succession”

Another naughty nuclear proliferator

Interesting piece on BBC Wednesday night relating how, back in 1958, British officials sold Israel some of the “heavy water” that was a vital part of Israel’s clandestine nuclear-weapons production.
According to documents dug out of the British archives by BBC researchers, the people who decided to do that also decided not to tell the Americvans. They also, according to the surmise in this piece, decided against telling high-level British officials, as well:

    the archives suggest that the decision to sell heavy water was taken simply by civil servants, mainly in the Foreign Office and the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Well, doesn’t this just prove to you that you can’t trust those British to keep good control of vital nuclear precursor materials… I mean, either the officials concerned were acting on their own, clandestinely (in which case the country’s control systems in this vital area are unacceptably leaky), or these officials were actually acting with the knowledge and connivance of the highest-levelo national command authorities (in which case you can’t trust the national command authorities.)
Either way, Britain is unacceptably a proliferator of vital nuclear precursors, and should be punished for its crimes!!!
But who would punish it? The Security Council… Funny thing, that Britain like the rest of the world’s “recognized” nuclear weapons states, has a veto power on the Security Council…
Happy Hiroshima Remembrance Day, everyone.

Rosen & Weissman indicted

Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both former high-level employees of the powerful, strongarming pro-Israeli pressure group AIPAC, were both indicted in federal court today. The WaPo’s Dan Eggen wrote that,

    Today’s indictment outlines a much broader case against Rosen and Weissman than has previously been indicated, alleging that the two disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 and that the topics ranged from Saudi Arabia to al Qaeda to Iran. Recipients of the information included foreign governments and reporters, the 26-page indictment says.

It’ll be interesting to see how much further this goes.

Steven Vincent, RIP

I am at our big annual Quaker gathering in the Shenandoah Valley this week. I saw the accounts of the murder in Basra of freelance journo Steven Vincent. What a tragedy.
Just recently, he published an oped in the NYT strongly criticizing the degree of control that the Shiite parties have won over the security forces in Basra. So the circumstances of his killing are extremely fishy indeed.
I was looking at the blog he’d been keeping during his latest visit to Iraq. He wrote well and (obviously) tried to get outside the Green Zone bubble as much as he could. I note, though, that unlike most US reporters today he never gave any byline credit at all — even under a nom-de-plume– to his translator, Nouraya Itais Wadi (also known as Nour al-Khal).
In his blog he did sometimes write about her, in a fairly patronizing way and under the name “Layla”. But in his writings published elsewhere he kept in place the paradigm of the fearless, all-knowing Western male who goes “out” to some third-world adventure and through his own amazing omniscience and sensibility is able to capture the essence of the story. No professional recognition at all given to the “native informant” without whom literally none of his work would have been possible.
Nouraya Itais Wadi was badly injured in the attack that killed Vincent. My greatest hope now is that she can get the medical help, rehab help, and professional advancement and recognition that I hvae no doubt that she deserves. Deep sympathies, too, to Vincent’s widow, Lisa.

South Sudan peace in the balance

Pray for peace in Southern Sudan. Pray hard. Southern leader John Garang, who was made into a vice-president as part of the recent peace accord between southerners and the central government in Khartoum, has died in a helicopter crash, in bad weather in an area of the south under the control of his militia.
Peace in Darfur is really important, too. But the suffering in South Sudan over the past 15 years has been truly, truly horrendous.

King Fahd RIP

So they finally turned off the life-support systems for King Fahd. But not until the man formerly known as Crown Prince (now “King”) Abdullah had gotten a few of his ducks into a row by putting his own person (Prince Turki bin Faisal) into the ambassadorial post in DC, etc.
Abdullah is 81. The new “Crown Prince”, as expected, is Sultan bin Abdel-Aziz, 77. There’s a bunch more sons of Abdel-Aziz who could stake their own claims to the throne in turn… But the “rising stars” of the next generation are already in their mid-to-late 60s; and I would imagine they’re probably getting even more impatient than Britain’s Prince Charles.
The succession system is so complex for two reasons: (1) Abdel-Aziz and many other Saudi “princes” have always had a truly dynastic/political view of marriage and childbearing. Abdel-Aziz married scores of times, taking wives from different tribes and different parts of the kingdom in an attempt to lock all those families and regions into his political system. (Also, to indulge himself.)
And (2), the Saudis don’t have a system of primogeniture; plus, the ruling “kings” haven’t done a very good job of having all their younger brothers and half-brothers murdered to ensure that power sticks in their own immediate line. (Please note that I am not actually advocating interpersonal violence here. This is simply a reference to a famous episode in British royal history.)
I’ve learned a bunch of stuff about Abdullah over the years, but I don’t really know what to conclude about the “political prospects” raised by his succession at this point. In a very real sense, the Saudis’ bizarre system of rule by massive oil-rent payola allied to Wahhabism is in deep, deep trouble right now anyway, regardless of which extremely aged “prince” takes over.
I was, however, disturbed to learn from this AP story that, “Abdullah has married more than 30 times and usually keeps four wives at a time, as allowed by Muslim law.”
My God, it’s pathetic. In this day and age??? That there’s someone coming into power there who still thinks of women only as chattels, sexual playthings, and vessels for his projects of dynastic reproduction?
It occurs to me that the Saudi “princes”, as a whole, have ways too much disposable income. (Like all their good friends in the US oil industry.) All very depressing…

Faiza, Khalid, Raed

There is a lovely meditation on Faiza’s blog last night. She was recounting a conversation she had with God recently…

    we said after the war : OK, this is America coming to Iraq , it will teach our new leaders how to respect human rights , and how to accomplish democracy in our country…we were anxious to see how is the freedom and democracy look like !
    but now, after two years and more, we are depressed, and fled out of our horrible life in iraq. and still dreaming that one day we can really achieve freedom and democracy in our country
    i mean real one , not fake …
    and still believe that we all can work to make the change we want , its not individual dream or action, it should be done by the big groups of people…
    and God is watching and waiting to see our actions..
    and in the judgment day He will ask everyone : what you have done to help oppressed people on earth ?
    what you have done to achieve justice and peace on earth?
    its our responsibility….
    God will never send angels to make peace on earth… its our responsibility…
    my heart still sad for iraq and iraqis..
    but still i have hope that we can all work together to stop this madness .

And here is a long post on her son Khalid’s blog describing what happened to him during his recent imprisonment. He got beaten a few times, but met many people inside the Ministry of Interior building where he was held who had been treated a lot worse than he was. Most of them were, like him, Sunnis. (He comes, actually, from a mixed Sunni-Shiite family.)
The “reason” they picked Khalid up was because at the university where he studies he’d been surfing the internet and reading the comments on his brother Raed’s blog…
Three days or so after his detention, he was taken before a judge:

    On Thursday, the judge decided that I was innocent. He figured out that the papers [i.e. the printouts from raed’s blog’s comments section] were from a public forum, and he didn

Counter-insurgencies and large-scale incarceration

Today I finished writing a long article I’ve been working on for a while, about the role of large-scale incarcerations in colonial counter-insurgency campaigns… Well, that was was sort of what it ended up being about. It started out as something slightly different, but in this case (unlike most others) my writing process was a fairly intuitive one, so I just sort of followed the narrative where it led me, and learned a lot in the process.
Yes, I’m sure you’re all really eager to find out about my writing process. (Irony alert.)
Well, along the way, I wrote quite a lot about the anti-Mau Mau campaign in Kenya. I borrowed acouple of Bill’s books about French counter-insurgency strategies in Algeria. I talked a bit with a friend about Dutch counter-insurgency strategies in Indonesia. (Did you know that when the Japanese invaded Indonesia during World War 2, the Dutch administrators of an entire detention camp called Boven Digul escaped to Australia– and took their Indonesian prisoners with them? What an interesting episode.)
Anyway, the main thing I wanted to put up here is this link to a really fascinating article titled Patterns of frontier genocide 1803