Author: Helena

Election news- Palestine

Election plans for both Palestine and Iraq are in the news. In Iraq, they are being planned with a view to the possible withdrawal of the occupation forces– certainly, a total withdrawal is what the vast majority of Iraqis want to see ensue after them.
In Palestine, it is less clear what will ensue from the elections scheduled for January 9. Clearly, the consensus among Palestinians for a total withdrawal of the forces occupying their country is even stronger than the consensus among Iraqis in that regard. But the Israelis are not about to simply do that, election or no election.
Here, by the way, is the column I had in Monday’s CSM on the Palestinian election issue. I argue there that the “diaspora” Palestinians– that is, those millions of Palestinian refugees whom Israel still prevents from returning even to the area of the future Palestinian state– should be represented in the upcoming elections…
I have to say that, regrettably, it ain’t going to happen. Well, not this time, anyway.
Many, many contacts are going on now in preparation for the Palestinian elections, which are solely for the position of ‘chairman’ (or ‘president’) of the Oslo-decreed ‘Palestinian authority’. Which doesn’t actually have much, if any, real authority. But will be heading the negotiations with the Israelis from here on out.
Each of the major Palestinian groups/blocs will be presenting its candidate, and several ‘independents’ have announced their candidacy too. There’s a possibility that Fateh will nominate Marwan Barghouthi, who’s in jail in Israel serving five life terms. He could then become a Mandela-like icon figure. Interesting…

    Update: They ended up choosing Abu Mazen… However, Marwan’s cousin Dr Mustapha Barghouthi is mentioned as a possibility for the “leftist” candidate…

Continue reading “Election news- Palestine”

Syria-1 (and Lebanon)

(Written Sunday) This morning we visited the
1,300-year-old Omayyad Mosque. We saw a 1,000-year-old Islamic madrasa
(school) and a stunning 250-year-old palace and nearby khan (a
merchant’s lodging- and meeting-house). We walked along the Street
Called Straight. I shopped a little in the broad, cavernous Souq al-Hamidieh,
and Bill took some photos… Having thus reimmersed ourselves in the busy rhythms
of Damascus’s Old City, a couple of taxi rides and a quick change of clothes
later we were sitting with Syria’s Minister of Expatriate Affairs, the feminist
former litterateuse Bouthaina Shaaban.

It was a short, informal discussion. Dr. Shaaban is going to Geneva
tomorrow to take part in a meeting on “women and peace”, but she slotted
us into her schedule at the last minute. I last saw her– even more
briefly– when I was in Damascus in December 2002. This time, I asked how
the atmosphere had been in Damascus back in May or June of last year when
the Americans, fresh from having vanquished Saddam’s regime in Iraq, was
making very belligerent noises about Syria. “We were never afraid,”
she said. “What could we do? We are are here, and we’ll stay
here.”

She said she thought Foreign Minister Farouq Shara would be going to the
“summit” on Iraqi reconstruction that starts tomorrow in Sharm al-Shaikh,
Egypt. She said she hoped the summit could help to find a way to make
elections happen in Iraq, and that Iraq’s neighboring states– all of whom
will be represented at the meeting– could play a role in that…

Continue reading “Syria-1 (and Lebanon)”

A little closer to Fallujah

Ha! I’ve got a very expensive connection here at our hotel in Damascus.
Last night we took a really interesting quick tour of the Old City etc by car, then had dinner at a place high up on Jebel Kassioun overlooking the twinkling lights of the city. Our host talked a bit about how anguished most Syrians, especially those in the northeast of the country, feel about the events in Fallujah.
Ilana Ozemoy has a very sobering piece of reporting from Falluj-ozny in today’s US News & World Report…

    Once the sky stopped raining fire and the smoke from the tank cannons vanished, it was time to pick up the pieces. But where to start? What had been houses were now piles of brick and glass, demolished by 500-pound bombs. Whole city blocks were leveled, the rubble and mangled carcasses of cars pushed to the sides of the streets by the force of Abrams tanks. In crushing the Sunni insurgents who had laid claim to the streets, U.S. and Iraqi forces left Fallujah looking like a city ripped asunder by a hurricane. “It’s in bad shape. I don’t know what they [residents] have to come back to,” said Sgt. 1st Class John Ryan of the 1st Infantry’s Division Task Force 2-2…
    Rooting out a thousand or so insurgents in Fallujah required American commanders to commit some 10,000 troops, reinforced by punishing air power. The Army’s 1st Infantry Division, lacking the number of soldiers necessary to search every house, employed its tanks, blasting heavy cannon rounds in answer to snipers’ gun-and mortar fire to minimize time–and U.S. casualties. “You never want to destroy someone’s city like this. These people have worked hard for what they have,” said Staff Sgt. David Bellavia, of Task Force 2-2’s Alpha Company. “But this was the only way to eliminate those fanatics.”
    … While some houses survived with little damage, whole swaths of the city were made virtually unlivable. On the eastern side of Fallujah, which suffered some of the heaviest fighting, the front of one house looked as if it had been sliced off with a bread knife. The upstairs bedroom remained intact, a small vase of plastic roses sitting undisturbed above a perfectly made bed while the guts of the house spilled into the front yard, burying a man caked with blood and dust.
    …with weeks to go before the electricity is turned on and serious reconstruction work begins, Fallujah risks becoming a sequel to the battle for Baghdad–a quick, effective military operation, followed by a slow and problematic reconstruction effort. What Iraqis have seen so far are the images of scorched neighborhoods and wounded civilians looped on Arab satellite TV newscasts, and those who survived the fighting angrily condemned the military tactics. “There was no food, no water, no electricity–just the smell of gunpowder,” recalled Muhsan Fuad, 30, who fled his house in Fallujah’s Jolan neighborhood a few days after the offensive began, transporting the remains of a cousin killed by mortar fire. “It’s a war for freedom and democracy where there is no mercy, no law, no difference between men, women, and children. This is the American way of democracy?”

By the way, the piece is titled “Destroying it to save it?”.

On the road to Damascus

In about an hour I’ll be leaving Beirut to go to Damascus for a few days. Returning here Wednesday. Then next weekend (God, or mainly the Iranian visa authorities, willing) we’ll be going to Iran, to a conference on Islam and Democracy in Mashhad.
I’m unclear what the possibilities for posting from Damascus will be. But even if I can’t post, I’ll try to write some things that I can put up once I get back here Wednesday.
Hey, who knows what transformational lightning might strike on the road to Damascus this time? One of the biggest things that happened to me on it in the past is that, stuck at the border awaiting permission to enter one time in the late 1970s, I read a book that ended up changing my life.
No, it wasn’t the Bible. Some day I might tell you that whole story….

Fallujah, Grozny, Jenin…

The International Committee for the Red Cross, which is the global guarantor and depository for the laws of war, yesterday issued another of its strong statements about the actions of the combatants (including American combatants) in Iraq.
Since the situation is so grave, and the ICRC statement so precise and well-crafted,I’m going to copy the whole text of it into this post. After that, I have a few reflections of my own.
Here’s the statement:

    As hostilities continue in Falluja and elsewhere, every day seems to bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and dignity. This week it was the killing of a wounded fighter and of yet another hostage

Trainor on Fallujah, etc.

Retired 3-star Marine General Bernard Trainor is sort of an intellectual’s military leader. Well, they like to fawn all over him at Harvard University’s prestigious “Kenndy School of Government”, where he helps run a security-studies program. Here’s his take on whether the US military has in mind any “exit strategy” from Iraq:

    I don’t think they have an exit strategy in mind at this particular point. I think the concept is to maintain our forces in there. Do we need more forces? Yes, we [do], but that’s a double-edged sword. If we start to put more American forces in, all that does is agitate the people who feel that this is an American occupation. But we do need the forces.

Are you feeling more secure yet? Are you reassured that the Prez sho’ looks as though he knows what he’s fixin’ to do in Iraq?
… Well, neither do I.
The above quote comes in the latest of the periodic little “interviews” conducted with Trainor by Bernie Gwertzman, a retired national-security correspondent for AP who now works at the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. He puts them out in a handy little column that the CFR produces and distributes jointly with the NYT.
(Have we mentioned enough “prestigious”– equals East Coast, old money– US institutions yet? I’m sure you get the drift.)
Trainor was generally laudatory about what the US fighting men had achieved in Fallujah. Speaking about the Fallujah operation in a notable past tense (!) he said:

    They all did very well… I think the performance of the army and the Marines is probably indistinguishable. The First Marine Expeditionary Force is the lead in the operation. [The operation] was very, very well planned, and I think they caught the insurgents by surprise because they feinted as if they were going to come from the south and, in fact, came from the north. When the Marines went in there shooting with lots of support, the issue was never in doubt. I think it went very quickly, and I think it worked with surprisingly low casualties.

Also, this:

Continue reading “Trainor on Fallujah, etc.”

More on Kevin Sites

I’m a bit behind the curve here– but I found this interesting story about photog Kevin Sites in yesterday’s NYT. It quoted Sites as saying that:

    he had received hate mail and threats since the broadcast, in edited form, on the initial NBC News report. A comment section on a Web site he maintains has been shut down because of death threats.

Death threats?? Because of what? Because he was doing his job?
I certainly hope all the law enforcement agencies in the US and elsewhere are conducting extensive investigations into who made those terroristic threats, and that those people will be dealt with with all the power of the law.

    Update: They could start by checking out the authors of some of the comments posted here.

Robert F. Worth, the author of the NYT piece, adds: “Mr. Sites has maintained a low profile since emerging from the fighting in Falluja, avoiding the area where other reporters on the base are billeted.” I wonder what kind of solidarity–or possibly its opposite?– they have been offering him?
Kevin does have his own blog. He’s a freelancer, working on contract for NBC. The footage from the mosque was, of course, produced as part of a “pool report”, which meant that access to all of it had to be equal to all pool members.
His blog has written posts and photos. On Nov. 10th, he was already in (or near) Fallujah. He wrote ,

    The Marines are operating with liberal rules of engagement.
    “Everything to the west is weapons free,” radios Staff Sgt. Sam Mortimer of Seattle, Washington. Weapons Free means the marines can shoot whatever they see — it’s all considered hostile.

He also wrote:

Continue reading “More on Kevin Sites”

Riverbend’s family “celebrates” Eid

The Eid al-Fitr, which comes at the end of Ramadan, is a much-loved Muslim family feast. Families gather for long visits. The kids get new outfits. Everyone eats a lot and reminisces. Good family time. You know, like Christmas or Easter for Christians, Pesach for Jews. Every religious or national community has such festivals.
It wasn’t so much fun for Riverbend’s family in Baghdad this year. They had finaly been able to get together, and the television was playing Al-Jazeera when the infamous mosque-shooting tape came on. Here’s how River describes it:

    We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It’s the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, “Is he dead? Did they kill him?” I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.
    “What was I supposed to tell them?” He asked, an hour later, after we had sent his two daughters to help their grandmother in the kitchen. “What am I supposed to tell them- ‘Yes darling, they killed him- the Americans killed a wounded man; they are occupying our country, killing people and we are sitting here eating, drinking and watching tv’?” He shook his head, “How much more do they have to see? What is left for them to see?”

Continue reading “Riverbend’s family “celebrates” Eid”

Fallujah battle continues

    Update, Thursday 1400 GMT: In addition to all the following, even the New York Times is reporting that “Senior Marine intelligence officers in Iraq are … emphasizing that expectations for improved conditions [in Fallujah] have not been met.” Sounds bad, huh? Read the whole piece there.

I’ve seen confirmation elsewhere of my earlier surmise that the US/Allawist assault on Fallujah was timed to be over by November 22, the day the “Reconstructing Iraq” conference is due to open in Sharm al-Shaikh, Egypt…
Well, the best-laid plans can go awry. The resisters/insurgents in Fallujah are still very active in several parts of the city, according to this report on Al-Jazeera.net this morning.
The report quotes Iraqi journalist Fadil al-Badrani, who is still in the city, as saying:

    “Fierce resistance is still raging with rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and machine guns against the US forces stationed on the outskirts of Falluja.”
    … Badrani said American war planes and tanks had resorted to bombing the holdout sectors of the city and some areas were still not under their control.
    “Clashes are still continuing the southern and eastern edges of the town. US forces have so far failed to storm the northern al-Julan neighbourhood,” he said.
    He added that US-led forces had abandoned al-Julan and the northern parts of the city, resorting shelling and aerial bombing those areas.

The reports in the western media about aerial bombing raids over parts of the city offer confirmation of the view that: (1) fierce resistance is continuing, and (2) there are sizeable parts of the city over which the US forces notably do not exercize on-the-ground control. If they did, then (1) they wouldn’t need the aerial bombardments, and (2) the air attacks would actually be impossible, given the density of US forces present on the ground throughout the whole city.

Continue reading “Fallujah battle continues”