“Up to 100” ghost detainees

    [Update to the following, added Fri a.m.: Excellent lead editorials on this subject today in both the WaPo and the NYT.
    The NYT also led with the news story on this on the front page. Down near the bottom of that story is this intriguing little bit of reporting involving our old friend Dougie Feith. End of update.]

From Reuters, today (Thursday):

    The United States kept up to 100 “ghost detainees” in Iraq off the books to conceal them from Red Cross observers, a far higher number than previously reported, Army generals told Congress on Thursday.

This is serious. It’s a well-known fact in international human-rights practice that when people are detained in secret, that is the situation in which they are at most risk of extreme abuse.
The one major case people know of, in Iraq, was the one where a ghost detainee was apparently beaten to death and then his body was kept on ice (and photographed) before MPs took it out for disposal.
As I’ve noted here before, the worst abuses the apartheid-era security forces committed against SA nationals happened when those people were not in formal detention. Sometimes they would have people in formal detention, then release them especially so they could pick them up off the streets again and keep them “off the record books” before they tortured them to death.
Today, it was Gen. Paul Kern, commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, who told a Senate committee hearing on abuses of Iraqi prisoners that he believed the number of ghost detainees held in violation of Geneva Convention protections was “in the dozens to perhaps up to 100,” far surpassing the eight people identified in an Army report, the Reuters report says.
The main reason Kern and Maj. Gen. George Fay, deputy commander at the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, who was also testifying could not be more precise was, they said, because the CIA–which apparently was responsible for the vast majority of cases of ‘ghost detainees’– did not give the Army investigators the info they needed for a more precise estimate.
Reuters added:

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Political progress: the missing element in Iraq

Okay, one more time, I want to restate my views on what’s really needed in Iraq. These views are based on my 30 years as a Middle East analyst, my experiences in Lebanon and Israel/Palestine, and my more recent work looking at how protracted and violent conflicts in Africa and elsewhere have been successfully terminated.
In the US (and some international) discourse, some people say you need to put emphasis on security in Iraq, so that you can get around to economic reconstruction. Some say you need to put the emphasis on economic reconstruction, so you can get around to security.
And so they duke it out between themselves! Security first! No, economic reconstruction first! You’re wrong! No, you are!
Are they listening to Iraqis? Not very much.
I think people engaged in those kinds of arguments are missing the essential element: the need many, many Iraqis have articulated and continue to articulate to see real movement to the building of an accountable democratic order.
It’s the politics, stupid!
I’ve heard echoes, certainly, of a similar missing-the-point debate between “security firsters” and “economy firsters” with regard to the Palestinian question. There, the almost wilful desire of the Likud government (and many previous Israeli governments) not to hear the clear demand of the Palestinians for some real political progress is quite easy to understand.
But why the deafness of the US government and the vast majority of US commentators to the similar demands now being voiced by Iraqis?

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The CSM column on Iraqi elections

My Sept. 9 column in the CSM on the need for a US de-escalation in Iraq and more focus on the election process there is now up on their website: here.
It looks more or less as good as I’d hoped it would, though God knows the discipline of keeping under 850 words is sometimes really wearing.
(That’s why I really like doing things for Boston Review. One of my pieces there ran 14,000 words, and I think they said it was the longest article they’d ever run.)
I wish the mainstream media had more information about the election-prep process in Iraq. It really is what people should be focusing on!
Anyway, do post any comments you have about the piece up here. (And if they’re nice comments, send them as a Letter to the Editor to the CSM, too… My editors there say they always get plenty of anti-Helena rants in their mailbag.)
Also, alert reader and web-surfer BQ found my latest Hayat piece up on Hayat’s English-language website. That’s here. So you can put away your Hans Wehr Arabic-language dictionaries and read it in English now.
As for me, I’ll be pulling out my Hans Wehr soon and heading to Beirut for two months, God willing. Bill the spouse is coming, too. We each have plans of some degree of vagueness for what we want to do there. If conditions in Baghdad allow it, I plan to head on over there. Who knows?
We’ll leave Charlottesville at the beginning of October. I need to crash on my book about Africa before then. I’m into Chapter 10 already. Woohoo!

The first 1,000

It is a somber moment. It happened today: according to AP, 999 US service members have now died in Iraq, along with three civilian employees of the military. Total: 1,002 families bereaved by the violence of a war that was totally unnecessary.
And of course, there are also the far, far larger number of families bereaved inside Iraq, and the smaller numbers of families bereaved in all the “coalition” and other countries involved in the Cheney-Halliburton adventure in Iraq.
One big question: Why doesn’t John Kerry make exactly this same point, about the unnecessary–indeed, fraudulent–nature of the whole Iraq war project?
I saw him on ABC News tonight. He expressed appropriate sympathy with the families. Then he went on to say something quite anodyne like “We will carry on fighting for what they fought for.” For Bush’s version of manifest destiny and fat contracts for Cheney’s chums: that’s what you want to fight for, John Kerry?? Shame on you.
Anyway, I don’t want to expend energy lamenting John Kerry’s tin ear on the war. I wanted to write a bit about the cyclical structure of the violence in Iraq these days, and the responsibility of the US to participate in–indeed, to lead–a major turn toward de-escalation…

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Trial news: Saddam & Slobo

There were two piece in today’s Iraqi Press Monitor related to the plans to try Saddam Hussein.
One, from the independent daily Al-Sabah said this:

    “Iraq for All” news network was informed that the Cabinet has decided to dismiss Salim al-Chalabi, the man chose to chair the special court to try Saddam Hussein. The decision results from demands to move Saddam’s trial out of Iraq, which Chalabi opposed. An arrest warrant was recently issued for Chalabi…

That sounded pretty intriguing. Chalabi opposed moving the trial outside of Iraq? Has that possibility really been discussed, I wonder? Or was it some kind of a bungled rendering of the idea of “extending the purview of the trial beyond acts committed inside Iraq” that the report was referring to, instead?
That might have been what the discussion was about–given the other recent news that the Iraqis have been trying to urge Iran not to press its own strong case against Saddam for war crimes–and also, given the degree of Iraqi-nationalist opposition to the idea of including the Kuwaitis’ claims against him on the charge-sheet.
The other IPM piece related to an article in yesterday’s al-Sharq al-Awsat, a pan-Arab daily published in London. Since this paper has a good online edition, I was able to go over to the original article there to read it. (Which also let me get a bead on the accuracy of IPM’s highly abbreviated rendering of it in English: fairly good, I would say, but still some room for improvement…)
Anyway, here’s what IPM said:

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Thinking like Karl Rove

It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it…
So okay, if I were Karl Rove, what would I need to have happen in Iraq before November 2?
I think, if I were him, the thing I’d most like to see is some palpable progress toward stability and elections in Iraq. (As in Afghanistan, where the holding of the elections has been rushed forward to October, specially to fit Mr. R’s election priorities in the US.)
But if actual progress toward stability in Iraq doesn’t look probable–and faking it for the whole electorate might be a LOT harder than faking it for the GOP faithful who flocked to new York last week– then, well, how would a bit of determined bang-bang play for Bush’s election campaign instead?
My fears about this are certainly related to my experience of seeing half a dozen successive Prime Ministers in Israel launch escalations in Lebanon as part of their re-election strategies… Oh, the Lebanese have a very intimate view of the dark chauvinistic under-belly of Israel’s “democracy”. And then, remember the strong influence that Israeli politicians have on many in Bush’s close circle.
Actually, if I were Karl Rove, I wouldn’t think that a big, showy escalation in Iraq would necessarily–in the US context–be such a great vote-getter. But still, I might be tempted… Wag the dog, and all that…
So my fears in this regard [Helena speaking now, not Mr. R.] were piqued when I read a big piece of US Army swagger coming from the lips of Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the number 2 in the military command in Iraq, as reported by AP’s Jim Krane today.
Krane wrote:

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Running my first 4-mile race

Today, I got up at 6 a.m. to go and take part in the first running race I’ve competed in since I was nine years old (42 years ago). It was the Charlottesville Women’s 4-miler, which is a great community event here in my hometown. This year, they capped participation at 1,850 runners…
Well, I usually run three miles, every other day. That’s the mainstay of my fitness routine. I figured four miles wouldn’t be too much of a stretch– and anyway, whenever I’m in New York, I usually put in just a little under four miles when I run the circuit round Prospect Park, in Brooklyn.
Today’s race was a lot of fun. I had a quick twinge of claustrophobia at the beginning. (So many other runners!) After that, it was great: beautiful weather, the hills not steep at all, beautiful views of the Blue Ridge foothills, and lots of great female athletic energy all around.
I remember reading on Yvette’s Taste of Africa blog about how hard they’ve had to work to build one small indoor sports hall there in Hargeisa (Somaliland), for women and girls to play some sports in. It had to be indoors because it wouldn’t be “proper” for women to be seen playing sports outside.
What a crying shame for the women of Somaliland! I love being outdoors and being able to run outdoors. So do hundreds and hundreds of the other women here in Charlottesville. There were all shapes, sizes, and ages of females out participating today. How much better for our physical and mental wellbeing for us to be doing that rather than sitting at home watching Fox TV or whatever!
I think my time was around 40 minutes. But they’ll have a listing of all our times in the local paper tomorrow. I’ll let you know.
Update, Sept. 6: Our local newspaper logged my time at 40 mins. 18 secs. Personally, I think it was less, since the Finish Line clock read 40:11 as I ran under it. Oh well, better luck next time at busting that 40-minute barrier.
I came in #550 out of 1,850 runners, of whom 1,509 finished the race. In the 50-54 age-group I was 35th out of 155.
Please note that I closed the Comments here because I was getting only spam there.

A week of politics in Iraq

It must have been a fascinating week for politics in Iraq… Wish I were there! I guess everyone’s still dealing with the fallout from Sistani’s dramatic return last week, and tryng to figure out the new parameters of the political game.
That was kind of an embarrassing step-back by Allawi on Tuesday or so when he said, “Oops, sorry, I can’t make a deal over Sadr City because the Americans won’t let me.”
Well, those weren’t exactly his words. But that sure as heck was the gist of the thing. Anyway, Allawi’s been continuing to try to project himself as a master political manipulator, out there fine-tuning deals with tribal leaders here or there…. Let’s see what comes of it all, eh?
Which reminds me: there’s been a noticeable change of style with Negropontra in charge there now in place of Bremer, hasn’t there? You never hear of Negropontra making those kind of showy public gestures that Bremer used to make. Of course, that’s not to say that he’s not just as active–perhaps even more so!–behind the scenes. But he’s smart enough not to grandstand publicly while doing it.
And then– Chalabi’s back in the game, too. Whoa. This Iraqi politics business moves extraordinarily fast. How did that happen, I wonder? Was it that, (1) Sistani insisted Chala be let back into the game, or (2) that Chala bought his way back in? A bit of both, I suspect.
Anyway, since Juan Cole’s been paying quite a lot of attention elsewhere this week, I thought I’d run quickly through the three available issues of the Institute on War and Peace Reporting’s Iraqi Press Monitor to glean some more info about what’s been happening there this week that you might not have read about elsewhere.
Mainly to bring myself up to speed, since I’ve been writing about South Africa all week. But also, to share with y’all. Here it is, then:

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Iranian nukes: are we scared yet?

Hands up anyone who is not terrified that “Iran might be on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons”.
[She looks around her.]
Am I the only person sitting here with my hand up? Sometimes, it sure seems that way. The entire tone of the public discourse here in the United States is to stress two things:
(1) Iran really is about to acquire these things, and
(2) It would be a disaster for the whole world, and a real and present threat to the United States, if it managed to do so.
I disagree, on both counts. Let me tell you why:

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