So I did largely succeed in getting done, over this past week, what I needed to do on my violence-in-Africa book. Namely, I “uploaded” back into the relevant portions of my brain the three chapters about post-genocide Rwanda that I first-drafted back in July.
(Next, the same for the three chapters on South Africa, and the two chapters on Mozambique. Then, use all that uploaded material as the basis for my concluding reflections on the post-atrocity policies in these three countries. Rather than, which I tried to do six weeks ago, writing the conclusion of the book almost out of thin intellectual-Helena air… I just feel much, much more comfortable as a thinker and writer when I keep close to my empirically-based material. Besides, one of the intentions of the book is to give voice to extraordinarily experienced and wise people in these three countries whose voices almost never get heart in the rich countries that dominate the self-styled “international community”.)
Anyway, Rwanda. What a multiply tragic place. I’ve been following Rwanda’s post-genocide “story” fairly closely since October 2000, and undertook a really productive research visit to the country in 2002, followed by another to the UN’s massive gravy train, oops sorry, the “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda”, in Tanzania, the following year.
Most of my colleagues in the human-rights movement in the west went almost gaga with delight over the creation of the ICTR and its slightly older sister-court for former Yugoslavia, ICTY, back in the early-mid-1990s. But actually the political-social effects of both courts, within the territories they were supposed to “serve”, have been either quite disastrous (ICTR) or somewhere between quite irrelevant and moderately negative (ICTY), and nobody much in either the UN or the west-dominated “human-rights movement” seems to have given a damn.
But meanwhile many international lawyers and their staffs have been able to make out like bandits, so that must be good news, mustn’t it?
I have never for a moment doubted the good intentions of the human rights activists and others who urged the creation of these courts… I mean, “ending impunity”, “establishing accountability”, and all those other fine things are good in their own rights, aren’t they?
Oh, plus, certainly in Rwanda’s case, there were all these enormous great mushroom clouds of sheer human guilt wafting around– as in, why the heck didn’t the UN do more to actually stop the 1994 genocide?, or, more to the point, why did the Clinton administration actually work hard at the UN in 1994 to dismantle the existing UN force in Rwanda, despite its hard-won and indisputable record in saving the lives of threatened Tutsis?…. Yes, plenty of raw unprocessed guilt to go around.
And so we, instead of deploying peacekeepers we had the unseemly sight of the deployment of UN prosecutors to Rwanda. Here’s what the “righteous Hutu” genocide survivor Andre Sibomana, who saved hundreds of threatened Tutsi and Hutu lives in 1994, had to say about ICTR:
Author: Helena
Political uncertainty, Iraq
“They shoot hostage-rescuers, don’t they?” is not the only news story in Iraq these days. (Though I must admit it’s a pretty darn’ shocking one.)
But check out Zaineb Naji’s latest piece for IWPR from Baghdad, as well. It’s titled Political uncertainty continues. It’s a succinct and professional summary of the situation.
Of course she also mentions the crucial future deadlines against which the current prolongation of political uncertainty needs to be measured:
- Under the country’s interim law, the constitution must be drafted by August 15, in order to go to a public referendum in October.
The law does allow for a six-month extension, but that would delay a general election scheduled for December, and the timetable for the eventual withdrawal of Coalition troops from Iraq. [emphasis by HC]
Well, surprise, surprise.
Too bad that last year, when “wunderkind” and Presidential Medal of Freedom (or whatever) winner Jerry Bremer was cobbling together his extremely long-drawn-out and complex scheme for the transition, he made this business of actually forming the transitional government based on January’s nationwide elections so cumbersome, eh?
Even worse that the UN apparently let him get away with it.
And so, Iraq carries on with no legitimately constituted government. How long before Sistani calls people out into the streets to protest the continuing obstructionism, I wonder? (And also, perhaps, the accuracy of the ballot-counting process itself, about which allegations continue to swirl and about which his people are certainly well informed…)
A word from Canada
Heck, maybe I’ll have to move to Canada after all. I can’t think of a single former US government minister with the wit, the wisdom, and the sheer perspicacity that Lloyd Axworthy displayed in this carefully crafted letter to Condi Rice.
The background is the general pique in Canada over (1) the Bushies’ extremely wacky and destabilizing decision to go ahead and deploy a wildly unreliable system of so-called “missile defense” that certainly impacts majorly on the security status of our northern neighbors, and (2) our Prez’s incredibly rude decisision to announce this fait accompli in public, in Canada, without having even thought to consult with Canada’s very friendly government first…
Axworthy, alert JWN readers probably recall, was the canny Canuck who spearheaded the coalition of small and medium-size states that made the Anti-Landmine Treaty a reality back in the mid-1990s. (Yes, yet another international treaty to which Washington refused to become a party.)
But I guess I hadn’t realized before that Axworthy also has a really stupendous rhetorical style… Maybe it has something to do with having practiced his politics in the cut-and-thrust of a parliamentary system, as opposed to the blow-dried-but-boring culture of, say, an imperial presidency…
Well, the whole of his open letter to “Dear Condi”, published yesterday in the Winnipeg Free Press is a really good read. But here’s a slightly shortened version:
- Dear Condi,
I’m glad you’ve decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It’s a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.
I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.
But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can’t quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.
As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we’ve had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we’re going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.
Sure, that doesn’t match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a “liberation war” in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.
Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government’s role should be when there isn’t a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.
Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defence can be made openly.
You might also notice that it’s a system in which the governing party’s caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don’t want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada’s continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.
Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.
Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.
If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don’t embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond…
Interesting takes on Lebanon
[Oops I thought I’d posted this at 10 p.m. last night but it turns out I failed to hit the vital “Publish” button. Still worth looking at though.]
Two thoughtful and interesting op-eds about Iraq today. One by Flynt Leverett in the NYT, and one by David Ignatious in the WaPo.
Both writers make the excellent point that Hizbullah is a serious, sizeable force in Lebanese politics that is not about to be sidelined, and that its differences with the frothy activists (my words) of the much photographed anti-Syrian demonstrators will have a serious effect on developments.
David had this interesting little note:
- An encouraging sign is that Hezbollah’s leader, Said Hasan Nasrallah, met quietly Monday night in Beirut with Samir Franjieh, one of the leaders of the pro-democracy opposition. They discussed a possible deal whereby Hezbollah would agree to disarm its militia and join a new government, so long as that government wasn’t openly anti-Syrian and Hezbollah was allowed to keep its “resistance” squads. That’s a steep price, but getting Hezbollah inside the tent of political change might be worth it.
Real politics happening there. Excellent.
Thought-provoking but less above-board was something David mentioned further down:
- An interesting idea for squeezing Iran comes from an Iraqi Sunni leader named Mithal Alusi, who’s visiting Washington this week. He suggests inviting dissident Iranian Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri to the holy city of Najaf to explain his view that political rule by mullahs is incompatible with Islam. That would make Tehran think twice about meddling in Iraq.
It might have been more honest for David to tell his readers that this Alusi is a former member of Chalabi’s INC who was canned from the organization after he made a much-publicized visit to Israel. So perhaps Alusi’s credibility back home in Iraq might be just a tiny bit low?
Radical change in Arab world
Nearly all Arab-world political systems have become completely ossified over recent decades. The last time there was a major, region-wide series of shifts was around 1970. That was the year, for example, that Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel-Naser died and– within days of that occurrence– the relatively conservative “corrective movement” wing of the Syrian Baath Party headed by Hafez al-Asad took over from the much more populist and radical wing of the party that had preceded it.
The PLO guerrillas got chased out of Jordan that year, too. Altogether, the shifts of 1970 were toward much more cautious, status-quo-preserving powers taking over. Saddam Hussein, who was consolidating his grip on power in Iraq at that time, was part of that trend.
Anwar as-Sadat, who came in that year, was assassinated in 1981 and was succeeded by his Vice-President Hosni Mubarak, who has made a point of not naming his own VP since then. (I wonder why not?)
Hafez al-Asad died in 2000 and was succeeded by his son Bashar, a.k.a. at the time, “the default option”. Nothing very new there. Of course, the western media which often tends to go gaga over youthfulness, thought that Bashar’s youth itself was sufficient to qualify him for being a visionary innovator. How wrong can you be? (As I noted at the time.)
Arafat, wily old survivor that he was, succumbed to some physical cause last year. In that case, my theory that youthfulness often signifies only increased caution was amply rewarded, since the notably un-youthful Abu Mazen has been considerably bolder and more sure-footed politically than the (other) “Old Man”.
Oops, I forgot Saddam. He got toppled almost two years ago, and has been replaced by…. Who knows what?
Well anyway, a major emerging trope in the so-called “coverage” of the western new media has become that the “implantation of democracy” in Iraq has led to a gathering cascade of democratization throughout the region… Starting with elections in Palestine (everyone conveniently forgetting or downplaying the successful elections there in 1996, which led politically to a resounding success for Arafat and diplomatically to a total dead end. RIP.)… Carrying on with the much-lionized “red and white revolution” in Beirut (western media people conveniently neglecting the extremely large, yellow-flagged Hizbullah demonstrations in Beirut of ten days ago)… And now, there’s even Hosni Mubarak saying (gulp!) he’ll allow competitive elections in Egypt at the end of the year!!!!
How much substance– and what substance, exactly– is there in all this?
Well, it sure is interesting to live in a time when history, the march of which has been stayed by US-backed stasis and conservatism for the past 35 years, suddenly starts galloping into fast-forward.
One thing I really don’t understand, though, is the shallowness and wishful thinking of all the commentators here in the States who look at what’s happening and say something very simplistic like, “Oh, people power! Great! That’s bound to come out in a pro-US way because the people there will all see how much the US has done for them!”
One first thing to note is that, for all the western swooning over the “success” of Iraq’s election on January 30, the winners in that election have thus far not been allowed by the occupation forces to come to power at all!
(And meanwhile, Allawi’s puppet government has been passing decrees to clamp down on civil society, etc. What possible “legitimacy” can such steps have at this point, I wonder?)
As a US citizen, I see my main task as being to continue pushing hard for the ending of the illegitimate US diktat over Iraq, and the implementation there of the Iraqi people’s will. Right now. No excuses.
But I’m also happy to look at the other countries in the region where the US is active….
Democracy denied in Iraq
Check out the new element near the top of the sidebar on the JWN front page.
It’s about a week since I started getting very curious as to why the actual implementation of the people’s will , as expressed in the late-January election, was taking so long to get implemented.
Now, I’m even curiouser.
(Regarding that counter on the sidebar, I haven’t figured out how to get it to update itself automatically, so I counted until tomorrow, Thursday. If anyone knows how to get it to update automatically, could you post some suitable HTML code or links to same in the comments? Thanks!)
Hard at work here
I’ve been working hard at making myself get my Africa book finished. Since I also have a life (okay, this may come as a surprise to some blog-readers), this means I need to cut back on blogging a bit.
Who knows, maybe I’ll blog more about Africa or post some other interesting tidbits on JWN along the way? Right now, though, I have nine already drafted chapters of the book to re-wrestle with and then about three more to write. It’s high-order concentration that’s needed here, not lots of distractions like blogging.
Especially not blogging about the Middle East.
I figured there will still be a big story in the ME even after the Africa book gets done.
Oldtimer’s view from Beirut
A friend from Beirut who wishes to be identified simply as “Oldtimer” sent me the following:
Just finished your good piece in CSM. It is good to see that you are somewhat optimistic on what appears to be a remarkable change in Lebanese politics, especially the breaking down of the taboo of criticising Syria. I hope it works and more than that, hope it will
continue. I am not so sure.
We are sorely lacking wise and charismatic leadership on the street and the strain is showing. We have Christian youth who have made the issue one of Geagea or Aoun. We have hardnosed Phalangists who want to open the case of slain president-elect Bashir Gemayel. We have Sunnis divided in themselves now totally rudderless. Anything close to a leader we had Walid who has been mobilizing a large segment of the Druze, but with his sectarian restraints, he has now taken refuge in Mouktara, having “seen the light.” Worse, Shiites have not been brought in and some seem to have decided to coopt them by insults. Very wrong and fool-hardy.
Of course there are vast numbers of truly patriotic, angry, well-meaning Lebanese who are about to be fed up with the unorganized nature of the opposition. If these people give up, then we can forget the sea of change in Lebanese politics.
Did you hear that Patriarch Sfeir threatened to leave the opposition if they persisted with their calls of PEACEFUL INTIFADA? We need more of such a realistic and cool-headed approach.
I suppose the term SNAFU was a Lebanese creation.
Marine’s Girl URL hijacked??
My friend Judy alerted me yesterday to the fact that Marine’s Girl’s blog seemed to be down. Today, there is something there at her customary URL, acrossriver.blogspot.com, but it ain’t her. It certainly looks as though someone has hijacked her URL.
MG had a huge problem back in November 2003, reported here, when some officious Marines gunnery sergeant threatened her and her guy with all kinds of problems if she continued publishing. On that occasion, she got some good support from wellplaced people in the Marines’ officer’s corps that persuaded her it was safe for to resume blogging just along the same lines she had been…
Some of the most poignant, intimate, and revealing posts on her blog have been the records of IM sessions she’s had over the months with her guy, in Iraq. He’s back looking after her in Michigan now. (She has a bad cancer-plus-chemo problem.)
I found a recent version of her blog’s front page by hitting “Cache” on the Google listing for it. But on that cached version, none of her archives were accessible. Seems like someone has really done a job on her URL.
I’m assuming that this time she’s been keeping copies of her own archives (please, MG!), so I hope she and VK (her guy– Valiant Knight) can get it back up in some form, soon. Except that, of course, there’s lots else going on in their lives right now.
How mean does a person have to be to launch an attack like this on a brave, truthful woman with a severe cancer problem and her guy who’s spent maybe 18 months in Iraq already but who has come back to tend to her?
Please, JWN people, let us all know if you get hold of any news about her and/or her blog. (I emailed her an enquiry, but who knows when she’ll be able to reply?)
And send her all the spiritual support you can. She, her guy, and her 10-year-old son Danny need our prayers.
Abu Mazen saves the day?
Pity the poor members of the Fateh bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council, who were elected to their positions at the height of post-Oslo optimism in January 1996 and will face re-election again this summer… If you were a Fateh legislator (as the majority of the PLC members have been), how on earth would you go about defending your movement’s decidedly lack-luster performance since 1996– on practically the whole range of issues, from diplomacy to the economy, to corruption, to the failure to ensure the people even the barest modicum of personal security?
Well, if you were a Fateh legislator you’d probably be working overtime right now to position yourself as a tough defender of the people’s interests, someone who is definitely not about to be duped by yet another Palestinian government made up of Arafat cronies and retreads…
So when PM Abu Alaa’ put together just such another government and presented it to the PLC earlier this week– no dice! (What a tin ear the guy has, eh?)
He tried again, yesterday, after rejigging a few names. Still no dice. It took Abu Mazen swooping in late last night to caucus with the Fateh legislators before they could all finally agree on a list.
Uber-“crony” Saeb Erakat got demoted. Nabil Shaath got shifted sideways. Dahlan did well. Surprisingly, one of the people from the earlier list who made it was Arafat nephew Nasser al-Kidwa, as new Foreign Minister. Actually, not so surprising, since by general agreement Kidwa has done a very competent job representing the PA/PLO at the UN.
Still, to me, the interesting thing was not the details of “who’s up” and “who’s down”, as much as the deft little show of political force that Abu Mazen put on, coming in at the moment of apparent crisis and doing the political work with the legislators that Abu Alaa’ had been unable or unwilling to do.
You’d think that Abu Alaa’ would have been a litttle swifter about seeing the need to meet the legislators at least part-way? After all, they will all be “on trial” together, as the Fateh movement, come the PLC elections in July… and Hamas has already given them some nasty surprises in two small rounds of municipal elections since December.
It’s great to see something like real national politics, with issues of re-electability and being held accountable, taking place among the Palestinians. Still, the whole process will only have real, lasting meaning if they get a truly viable chunk of land in which to conduct it. Does Abu Mazen (unlike his predecessor) have a winning strategy to win that for them? Not clear yet.