Author: Helena

The River bends again

She’s back!
Riverbend, that is.
Read her latest post about the “insurmountable combination of heat and family issues ” that’s kept her from blogging recently. Including, the death of “an older aunt”:

    She had a stroke shortly after the war and has been deteriorating ever since. [snip] The first problems we faced occurred in the graveyard. Upon visiting the graveyard, my uncles discovered that the family plot which had been purchased years ago had very recently been occupied by some strangers who could find very little room elsewhere in the overcrowded cemetery. The grounds keeper apologized profusely but said that they were bringing in an average of almost 100 bodies a month this year to his graveyard alone- where was he supposed to bury the bodies?
    After some negotiations, the uncles were directed to some empty spaces on the outer borders of the cemetery and the aunt was resignedly buried there. Immediately after began the 7-day mourning ritual in the deceased aunt’s house. For seven days- from morning until evening- friends, family and neighbors all come to give the family their condolences and mourn the dead. This is called a ‘fatiha’ or a wake. Another wake is simultaneously held at a local mosque and this one is attended by the men- it lasts for only three days. Scheduling the mosque wake was also an issue because so many of the mosques are booked for wakes lately.
    Lately, the condolences from neighbors and friends come in the form of, “She was much too young for such a death, but you should thank God- it’s a better death than most these days… ” And while death in general is still regarded as unfortunate, it is preferable to die of a stroke or natural causes than to die, say, of a car bomb, gun shot, beheading or under torture…

You get the drift. Not a happy one. But we, at least, are blessed by having Riverbend there to write about it for us.
Thanks, River. And welcome back!

Al-Libi’s coerced ‘information’ = crud

Douglas Jehl has a piece in today’s NYT about the fact that the information “gleaned” from CIA interrogations of high-ranking Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was subsequently recanted by him–and the “information” in question was subsequently “discredited”.
So much for the justifications for torture based on the “necessity” of using it to get information about imminent threats, and the “value” of the information thus obtained.
This is especially significant, because the alleged “info” that al-Libi gave his interrogators was about how Saddam’s Iraq had allegedly “provided training in chemical and biological weapons to members of al-Qaeda”, and was a good part of the purported “evidence” that was used to jerk US and UK citizens into supporting the invasion of Iraq.
Juan Cole has a lengthy post on his blog today, the gist of which is that maybe al-Libi’s “confession” was part of a much bigger, and very fiendish campaign by the Qaeda leadership to jerk the US into the war against Iraq… as part of an even broader campaign that jerked the US into the invasion of Afghanistan and also sought to rupture US-Saudi ties.
It’s a daring theory. Personally, I believe the Iraq and Saudi parts of it are much more persuasive than the Afghan part… After all, Qaeda lost a very valuable safe haven as a result of the US invasion of Afghanistan; whereas the overthrow of Saddam’s regime and the weakening of the House of Saud were very much in its interest…
Be that as it may, the big question about the whole al-Libi interrogation story still remains about that of the notable ineffectiveness of trying to gain useful information from a captive through torture…

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Foreign contractors: an Afghan problem, too

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting’s Afghanistan page is always worth a visit. Right now, they have this sad piece of reporting there:

    The sudden collapse of the western part of Kabul’s state-run Jamhoriat hospital on July 26, which was being renovated by the Chinese company, Complant, has heightened concern about the numerous construction projects in the country. At least six Afghans were killed in the collapse and more than 30 others were injured, including 2 Chinese workers. At least 30 people are still reported missing.

Click here for the rest of the story…

Hague court Appeals Chamber releases Blaskic

The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has rapped one of the court’s main Trial Chambers sharply over the knuckles by overturning 16 of the 19 counts of the Trial Chamber’s earlier conviction of Croatian General Tihomir Blaskic.
July 29, the Appeals Chamber rendered these findings, and reduced Blaskic’s sentence from 45 years to nine years. Since Blaskic has already served eight years and four months, and has been what the court described as a “model prisoner”, he was later in the day released.
The summary that the Appeals Chamber issued of its finding makes clear its view that the Trial Chamber had committed several significant errors of law as well as errors of fact in reaching its earlier judgment. Regarding “fact”, in the four years since the Trial Chamber reached its judgment, substantial new evidence has come to light that has tended to exonerate Blaskic. But the Appeals Chamber made clear that on each of the T.C.’s earlier judgments it had considered errors of law before it even started considering errors of fact; and where the errors of law were on their own substantial enough to lead to overturning the T.C.’s judgment, then the A.C. did not even consider the issues of fact.
It is evidently a good thing, from the rule-of-law viewpoint, that defendants at the international criminal tribunals have access to a well-constituted appeals procedure. However, the fact that the Appeals Chamber can overturn so many of the T.C.’s judgments merely on matters of law, rather than on matters of (newly adduced) fact seems to me fairly troubling. It would be great if the judges at the two different levels could get their acts a bit better together regarding what constitutes sound legal argument on all or most of these cases. And then, just consider what this whole process must have cost: the process of trying Blaskic on all these 19 counts, and then the subsequent process of overturning 16 of those convictions….

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Getting ‘traction’ in Iraq

On a number of occasions, including in this July 2003 JWN post, I’ve reflected on the “slippery” nature of the Iraq question.
Nowadays, the problem of the lack of traction in the country is at a new level of criticality–and in two different though linked dimensions.
In the security dimension, the current plan of the eager-to-withdraw occupiers is that new Iraqi security forces will be rapidly trained up so that they can police most of the country, as the occupiers withdraw ever further into out-of-sight cantonments.
But how do you even start to assemble Iraqi security people in the required numbers if you can’t even assure security for those Iraqis willing to come forward and enlist?
You need a traction point. It doesn’t appear to be there.
And then, in the political dimension, there’s a similar lack-of-traction problem, as shown by the failure of Allawi’s present “transitional” administration to meet the deadline for convening the first precursor body, that will then choose a second precursor body, to help organize an election, that will choose the Constitution-writing body, that will the lay out the rules for (sometime along the way there in the distant future) actually exercizing sovereign self-government of the country…
A big lack-of-traction problem there, too.
And of course these two dimensions are linked. How can you convene any of the national-level precursor bodies if the country is still wracked by inssecurity? And on the other hand, how can you ever get a national representative enlistment into the security forces if great chunks of the national population feel alienated politically from the occupier-backed regime?
Some people might call these chicken-and-egg problems. But with all the complexity in Iraq these days it looks like what you’d have with this metaphor is a massive omelette made with ground-up chicken feet, gristle, and beaks, garnished with bloody chicken feathers…. Not easy to find any way out of such a morass…
However, if you look at these as lack-of-traction problems, it’s just possible that–once you can find a more solid point from which to intervene–then enough traction can be provided slowly to start unraveling all aspects of the problem.

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Democrats pull punches on Iraq, Palestine

I’m coming near the end of a 24-hour, drop-by appearance in my home town, playing hooky from residential conference some 50 miles away. Thursday afternoon I went to a small-group presentation on the 9/11 Commission’s work, given by its Executive Director Phil Zelikow. Then I got to watch the Democratic Convention on C-SPAN, including John Kerry’s 55-minute “acceptance” speech…
A couple of themes emerged as common to both experiences: themes that show us just how eager Kerry and the rest of the Dems are these days not to lay themselves open to any charges that at a time when the country is at “war” they are openly attacking or criticizing the Prez on matters of significance.
Especially regarding foreign policy.
Thus, at a time when everyone realizes that the main issue is Iraq, Kerry is not telling us anything specific at all about what he would do there that is different from what the current Prez is already doing– except, perhaps, “internationalize” it a bit more (though heaven knows, Bush has been trying to do that, as well, without too much success).
And at a time when just about everyone in the US with two synapses to rub together in their brains realizes that the Bush administration’s fawning embrace of Sharon’s agenda in Palestine has been building huge resentment of US policy throughout the more-vital-than-ever Muslim world, and boosting recruitment for the Islamist extremist groups considerably– not a word from Kerry or any of the rest of the Dems that would indicate even a chink of light between them and Bush/Sharon on Palestine.
Similarly in the work of the 9/11 Commission…

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Bantustans: South Africa and Palestine

How quickly the world forgets. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the apartheid government in South Africa pushed forward its plan to create “Bantu homelands” within South Africa which would:

    (a) be small, territorially non-contiguous, and located in some of the country’s most unfertile regions, and
    (b) be totally under the control of the Pretoria government in practice, even though four of the ten homelands were given a nominal “independence”. (Note the importance of the fact that no significant outside powers–except Israel!–ever gave formal recognition to this “independence”.)

What did the map of all of South Africa with the ten tiny homelands inside it look like? It looked like this. Maps of the Bantustans are so hard to come by these days that it took me a while to find that one: it came from vol. 7 of the TRC’s report, p.935.
When you look at that map, remember that the Black African population of South Africa at the time was more than 75% of the total. No wonder the vast majority of the country’s people rose up to oppose that system, and replaced it with a unitary system of one-person-one-vote democracy.
So here, now, are some maps that show what has been happning to the occupied Palestinian territories during the 37 years of Israel’s military occupation:
First up, this very clear map from the Foundation for Middle East Peace that shows the “leopard spots” of limited self-government in the occupied West Bank that the Palestinians were allowed under the post-Oslo “peace process” of 1993-2000.
Then, we have this map of the situation in Gaza as of last October. It comes from the UN’s Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs. If you click on the link for the large version there, you can see clearly just how much of the surface-area of Gaza is now off-limits to the Palestinians, because of the Israeli settlements and various “security” needs. And oh, the Israeli “security roads” just happen to cut the “Palestinian” parts of Gaza into four non-contiguous chunks.
There are a few other things worth remembering in this picture…

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Go, Jimmy!

Kudos to Jimmy Carter for mentioning the need for an Arab-Israeli peace process in his speech
at the Democratic Convention last night. In all the general US political rhetoric about “what needs to be done to combat the threat from Islamic extremism”, this item is all too frequently completely ignored.
And that’s been happening inside the Democratic Party as much as elsewhere, with Kerry’s platform and rhetoric apparently even trying to outbid Bush in lauding Ariel Sharon and all his schemes.
But there was dear Jimmy Carter last night, saying this:

    The United States has alienated its allies, dismayed its friends, and inadvertently gratified its enemies by proclaiming a confused and disturbing strategy of ‘pre-emptive’ war. With our allies disunited, the world resenting us, and the Middle East ablaze, we need John Kerry to restore life to the global war against terrorism.
    In the meantime, the Middle East peace process has come to a screeching halt for the first time since Israel became a nation. All former presidents, Democratic and Republican, have attempted to secure a comprehensive peace for Israel with hope and justice for the Palestinians. The achievements of Camp David a quarter century ago and the more recent progress made by President Bill Clinton are now in peril.
    Instead, violence has gripped the Holy Land, with the region increasingly swept by anti-American passions. Elsewhere, North Korea’s nuclear menace – a threat more real and immediate than any posed by Saddam Hussein – has been allowed to advance unheeded…

What was really interesting to see, on the televised version of the speech last night, was the high degree of support that Carter got from the audience–for this portion of the speech as for all his utterances.
I really do believe that there are many people in the Democratic Party and elsewhere throughout the country who realize that something is terribly out-of-whack in the US’s current radical tilt toward Sharon and his policies– and also, that this pro-Sharon tilt is linked to the strong antipathy expressed to toward US policies in Muslim societies throughout the world.
The American people are not stupid. It’s often the case, though, that they don’t quite know how to start talking about these issues without sounding anti-Semitic… And of course, the extremist Likud supporters who have positioned themselves in various “watchdog” roles around the country are always ready to leap onto someone expressing, say, criticism of this Israeli government’s policies and denounce her or him as “anti-Semitic”….

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Allawi’s blond beasts

I don’t think I’m an anti-white racist… But am I the only person who’s a bit perplexed by all the repeated pictures of Iyad Allawi, the ‘prime minister’ of the supposedly ‘independent’ transitional government of Iraq always appearing in public being very publicly guarded by a squad of very Aryan-looking and heavily armed blond beasts? Is this, I wonder, quite the image that he wants to project?

South Africa, the microcosm

I’ve thought for a while–and I don’t think I’ve blogged about this before, though I may be wrong there–that you can look at South Africa as a microcosm of the whole world. Specifically, you can look at the behavior of the US of A with respect to the rest of the world like the behavior of the Whites in apartheid-era South Africa with regard to the rest of their (non-White) compatriots.
You can see how it goes: the hegemonic group, despite its definitely minority status, thinks not only (a) that it can ‘speak for’ and control the majority, but also that (b) there are good reasons why this should be so: reasons based in the realm of ethics, ‘Manifest Destiny’, superior values, ‘Christian civilization’, or whatever; and no, sheer naked force is just incidental to the whole equation.
Except that of course it’s not. Force, and the ability to control and intimidate (another word for ‘terrorize’) the majority lie at the heart of any attempt by a minority to exercize control.

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