So, as I have said elsewhere, I have been feeling guilty about not posting about the goings on Iran of late, and I am beginning to formulate some posts I’d like to write, but this news article caught my eye. No matter how much I might disagree with and oppose the government in Iran, there is no way that the Iranian embassy is wrong about establishing a scholarship in the name of Neda Agha-Soltan. It is, by definition, political:

Iran has criticised Oxford University after one of its colleges established a scholarship in honour of a woman killed during post-election unrest in June.

The Iranian embassy in London denounced the £4,000 ($6,600) Neda Agha-Soltan Graduate Scholarship offered by Queen’s College as “politically motivated”.

Queen’s said the award would help impoverished Iranians study at Oxford.

Ms Soltan became a symbol of the opposition after she was shot dead at an anti-government protest in Tehran.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran denounces Oxford scholarship

For me, even though I agree with the politics, or at least what the politics behind the scholarship are perceived to be–since we don’t know who endowed the scholarship or why–the question is whether or not that is a good thing. I am still made uneasy by the way Neda’s image, and the idea of Neda, is exploited as a symbol of opposition to the government of the Islamic Republic, and, as an academic, I wonder about the degree to which a scholarship like this cannot help but be part of that exploitation, no matter how academically sound, impartial, etc. Queen’s College is in administering and awarding the money.

I wonder what others think.

The Cold War was a fact of life.

My parents had grown up during it; I had grown up during it. And I had little doubt my children would grow up during it. From before my parents were born, the Soviet Union and the United States of America were the premier powers on two sides of a chessboard. On America’s side, we had friends like France and Britain. The Soviets had allies like Poland and Czechoslovakia. China was off doing its own thing, Soviet in policy, but more on America’s side than not. Still, the chess pieces were controlled by the Americans and the Soviets, and smack dab in the center of the board were the twins — West and East Germany.

Yes, I know that is a simplistic, America-centric view of what was a difficult, confusing, and dangerous time in human history. But it was the view we were sold — not for nothing was the president referred to, as far back as my memory goes, as “Leader of the Free World.” And while America’s NATO allies were far more independent than was suggested at the time, America played an outsized role in the alliance for the same reason the Soviets did. We were armed to the teeth, armed with weapons that could destroy humanity a dozen times over, in a myriad of horrific ways.

It was these weapons that transformed the Cold War from a mere struggle for national prestige to the potentially suicidal confrontation it was. Some have suggested that nuclear weapons, perversely, may have saved lives, by making the cost of direct conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact too dire for sane leaders ever to comprehend. But if they did so, they did so at a very high price, for every man, woman, and child in the world knew that if ever west or east found itself with a truly unhinged leader, one willing to destroy the world to save it, that all of us could be dead within minutes — if we were lucky. The unlucky — those would be survivors, forced to live in a world where burning wood for fires would unleash radioactive toxins, a world where what few humans survived would be faced with a cataclysmic nuclear winter, followed by several millennia of radioactive poison slowly killing us off, as we descended from our pinnacle to, at best, a stone-age existence. As Albert Einstein once noted, he didn’t know what weapons World War III would be fought with, but World War IV would be fought with sticks and stones.

This was our world, a world in which two sides were constantly jockeying for position, two sides that could end my life and the lives of everyone I loved in an instant. A world in which the Eastern Bloc might as well have been located on Mars. A world in which an Iron Curtain divided Us from Them.

The Iron Curtain was not just a clever metaphor coined by Winston Churchill. It had a real-world counterpart: the Berlin Wall.

The Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans from escaping to the democratic West, as 3.5 million did between the end of World War II and the start of construction. This outflow had both direct negative affects — it cost East Germany 20 percent of its citizens — and indirect ones, as the constant movement from East to West was a propaganda coup for NATO and democratic Western Europe. It could not continue.

And so the wall was built, beginning on August 13, 1961. It began as a haphazard barrier, made up of barbed wire, chain-link fences, mine fields and unfortified areas patrolled by soldiers. It was still just a wire fence when John F. Kennedy delivered his famous Ich bin ein Berliner¹ speech in 1963, albeit a completed one. The wall was built up over time, with concrete walls added in the late 1960s. By the time I was born, in 1974, that wall was complete, and the upgraded Grenzmauer 75 was being installed, 12 feet high and four feet thick, with significant reinforcements on the Eastern side. It is that wall that is remembered best, and the first thing I think of when the words “Iron Curtain” are mentioned.

That wall was the symbol of the Cold War, the unending, unyielding, potentially lethal war that had my parents hiding under their school desks, and that had me lying awake some nights, wondering if my home in suburban Minneapolis would be destroyed in the initial blast wave, or if I might live long enough to see the misery afterward. That massive concrete wall — the one Ronald Reagan urged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down, as if that could happen — was a permanent fixture. It would stand throughout my lifetime. Because countries don’t simply decide one day to let their citizens be free. It doesn’t happen — even if the Soviets are mouthing pretty words like Перестройка and Гла́сность.

And yet, in the fall of my sophomore year in High School, that appeared to be exactly what was happening. In August, Hungary had opened its border crossings with neutral, democratic Austria, and quickly, 13,000 East Germans booked tours to Hungary, and didn’t return. Czechoslovakia soon followed suit, forcing East Germany to seal its border with an ostensibly aligned country. Those East Germans who hadn’t left began to agitate for their freedom. They first chanted “Wir wollen raus! — “We want out!” Then, as weeks went by, sensing that more than freedom to travel may be afoot, the protesters began to chant, “Wir bleiben hier!” — we are staying here.

On October 18, Erich Honecker, who had served as General Secretary of the DDR for eighteen years, abruptly resigned. Egon Krenz was elected to replace him, in a split vote by the People’s Chamber. Krenz said he would institute democratic reforms, but events had overtaken him. Krenz re-opened the Czechoslovak-East German border. The Politburo formally began to discuss lifting travel restrictions with the West, as they weren’t enforceable at that point.

On November 9, 1989, twenty years ago today, Günter Schabowski, First Secretary of the East Berlin Chapter of the Socialist Unity Party, was given the news that travel restrictions with West Germany were to be lifted. They were not to be lifted that day; however, the information Schabowski had did not contain the date they were to end. And so Schabowski, asked when the rules were to be lifted, replied “sofort, unverzüglich” — immediately, without delay.

East Berliners streamed to the border, and realizing that they had nothing to gain from killing people for trying to cross the border over a miscommunication, the East German government ordered its troops to let them through, unencumbered. On November 9, 1989, for all intents and purposes, the Berlin Wall fell.

The Ossis were greeted by the Wessis with open arms, and a jubilant celebration began. Within days, people on both sides of the wall arrived with sledgehammers to knock it down, piece by piece, crumbling rock by crumbling rock.

Krenz’s government did not last another month, and East Germany did not last another year. By December 6, Mannfred Gerlach, who had split with the ruling Communist Party in early October, was elected as head of the Council of State and de facto Head of State; he would be replaced when the Council of State was abolished the following April, and Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, the President of the Volkskammer, replaced him. Her government would last until October 2, 1990, the date on which East and West Germany ceased to exist, as all territory belonging to the DDR was brought into the Bundesrepublik. A nation went directly from being part of the Warsaw Pact to part of a NATO ally. And the Cold War began to end.

There were many other milestones on the way to the liberating of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia all joined East Germany in shedding their Communist legacies in 1989. In August of 1991, an attempted coup would fail in the USSR, leading to the dissolution of the empire and the freeing of nations like the Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

It did not bring about, as Francis Fukuyama said it would, the “End of History.” Yugoslavia would implode spectacularly, leading to genocidal violence. In a number of former Soviet states, border disputes and ethnic divisions would foment wars and create breakaway, failed states. And while parts of the east, like the Baltic Republics and the Czech Republic, are thriving, others — including East Germany — continue to struggle with the transition from a command economy to Eurocapitalism.

But the end of the Cold War did end a period of political repression in much of Europe, and it ended the threat of global cataclysm that two generations of humans took as an enduring part of life. The worst al Qaeda can dish out today is kids playing with pop-guns next to the threat of an all-out nuclear war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

That threat died over several years. But symbolically, it died twenty years ago today, when people who wanted the freedom to visit their cousins, to speak their minds, and to chart their own destinies abruptly found themselves able to do so. I still remember sitting in my sophomore German class, unable to believe what we were seeing on the television that had been wheeled in for the day. Twenty years later, I have trouble believing it. But I am grateful beyond words that my daughter is not growing up in the world I did, and that throughout Eastern Europe a whole generation is growing up free.

1. As a former German student, I would be remiss if I failed to note what you probably already know: that ein Berliner is not a resident of Berlin, but rather a hot, fried pastry similar to a donut. Thus, Kennedy was saying, “I am a donut.” The crowd clapped anyhow; even then, the inability of Americans to speak anything other than English was well-known. (back)

I don’t have anything to say right now. Awful is awful, and we’ll have time to dissect which particular flavor of awful this is soon enough. For now, keep the dead and wounded in your thoughts.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mike Doughty.

Mike Doughty, “Fort Hood” - More free videos are here

Zahhak: We’d Need To Hear His Mother’s Story, an excerpt from my translation of parts of the Shahnameh, the Iranian national epic, was published recently on Ekleksographia. I hope you’ll go check it out.

I don’t know if Barack Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize quite yet, and I’m actually serious when I say he won it in no small part for simply not being George W. Bush — for seeking to reengage with the world in the sort of way that decent, non-rogue countries do. That said, who cares? What’s fun is that this sets up the sort of massive, overwhelming, out-of-control right-wing freakout that money can’t buy. I mean, what’s the over/under on the first wingnut claiming that the selection of the sitting American president is proof that the Nobel committee hates America? Or the first one to claim that Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize proves he’s a communist? 7 AM? 6? They certainly won’t wait ’til 8, will they? Who will complain that Dubya should have won, for his success in invading foreign countries? Who will congratulate Kenya on their second winner in six years? And how will they tie this to ACORN?

It should be glorious. Even better than when Paul Krugman won the Economics Prize. Start popping the popcorn. Phone the neighbors, wake the kids. This is going to be a good day.

I take back any bad thing I’ve ever said about Sen. Al Franken, DFL-Minn.

Why do I do this? Because in his brief tenure in office, Franken has shown himself to be exactly the kind of senator we need more of — bright, driven, and possessed of a sense of justice. He’s not getting things done by grandstanding or being a comedian; he’s getting things done by writing good legislation and getting it passed.

Take the case of Jamie Leigh Jones. Please.

You probably remember the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman who was raped while working for KBR in Iraq. After reporting the rape, KBR responded to this grievous act by imprisoning her in a shipping container, so that she couldn’t tell anyone. When she finally convinced a guard to give her a cell phone, she managed to get a call to her dad in Texas, who worked with Rep. Ted Poe, R-Tex., to get her home. KBR responded to the actions of its employees by banning cell-phones.

Jones was unable to prosecute her assailants, so she attempted instead to sue KBR. But because her contract provided for arbitration for any workplace disputes, she was unable to; her only route for compensation was arbitration, a process that is a) better used for minor contract disputes, as opposed to cases of rape and false imprisonment, and b) decidedly tilted in favor of employers. She’s made some headway — the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that her case should be handled outside of arbitration — but that’s headway for her, and it’s only come after four years of legal fighting. Any woman — or man — who lives outside the 5th circuit who is similarly treated will have to start from scratch.

On Monday, Franken worked to extend those protections, when he successfully attached an amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill that would defund contractors “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”

Franken’s speech on the floor was spot on:

Theres a lot of horrible in there, but the nut graf (which I ganked from ThinkProgress) is as follows:

The constitution gives everybody the right to due process of law … And today, defense contractors are using fine print in their contracts do deny women like Jamie Leigh Jones their day in court. … The victims of rape and discrimination deserve their day in court [and] Congress plainly has the constitutional power to make that happen.

It would be nice to think that this sensible amendment was simply passed on a voice vote, all members of the Senate opposing the idea that someone who was raped and imprisoned would be prevented from seeking justice. Alas, that was not the case; the amendment passed 68-30, with all Democrats (save Robert Byrd and Arlen Specter, who did not vote) and 10 Republicans voting in favor, and 30 Republicans — 75 percent of the caucus — opposed.

The list of pro-rape Republican senators is as follows: Alexander (R-TN), Barrasso (R-WY), Bond (R-MO), Brownback (R-KS), Bunning (R-KY), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Coburn (R-OK), Cochran (R-MS), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Crapo (R-ID), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Graham (R-SC), Gregg (R-NH), Inhofe (R-OK), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), McCain (R-AZ), McConnell (R-KY), Risch (R-ID), Roberts (R-KS), Sessions (R-AL), Shelby (R-AL), Thune (R-SD), Vitter (R-LA), Wicker (R-MS).

Obviously, the amendment still has to go through conference committee, but one suspects its future is bright; certainly, the House is unlikely to water this down. And for most people, that’s a good thing; justice demands that those who are egregiously wronged are able to sue for redress. Yes, most Senate Republicans may view the idea of allowing lawsuits to be quaint, especially when compared to corporate profits. But most humans recognize what happened to Jamie Leigh Jones to be an unconscionable crime, and there is nothing quaint about making sure it never happens again.

Krista at Muslimah Media Watch, in the first of a series reviewing the Globe and Mail’s “Behind the Veil” series (about about women in Kandahar, Afghanistan), begins by objecting to the title:

They could not have come up with a more clichéd title if they had tried, and there is absolutely no excuse for such a lack of creativity at such a big newspaper. To illustrate just how overdone this title is, a Google search of “behind the veil” (in quotes) gives about 569,000 results, including articles and books on women in Iran, “Western” journalists’ encounters with “women in conservative Islamic societies”, representations of Muslim women in Indian writings, an Australian woman’s experiences as a nurse in Saudi Arabia, prostitution in Iran, HIV/AIDS in Muslim countries, and even a BBC report from 2001 that also focused on Afghan women. The point is, it’s been done, ad nauseam, especially (but not exclusively) with regards to Muslim women, and “behind the veil” as a name is just plain lazy. Maybe that sounds harsh, but my frustration comes from having seen titles like this time and time again, and the implication that the only reason to pay attention to Muslim women is in order to de-veil them.

In addition to the lack of creativity is the message that this title sends, particularly to Afghan women: “The veil is the only thing that comes to mind when we think of you. It takes us a whole lot of effort to consider that, behind the clothing you wear, there might actually be real people worth talking to.” [...]

Listening to the journalist’s introduction, available in video form from the series’ website, and reading the foreign editor’s note explaining the rationale behind the series, I was struck by just how formulaic it all sounded. Afghan women are to be pitied, and Afghan men and/or culture are at the root of all of their problems. Oppression can be measured by how many layers of clothing women wear. Not that there aren’t problems for Afghan women, but the lack of complexity anywhere in the introduction surprised me.

There’s lots more at Krista’s post (including praising the Globe & Mail for being unusually open about their methodology); I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this series.

This is something I’ve read again and again; women’s activists in Afghanistan, and many other places, are sick of westerners focusing on what women wear as the leading indicator of Muslim women’s oppression. From an article about Sakena Yacoobi, an incredible women’s activist in Afghanistan:

Afghan women “wear hijab because they want to,” she stated. “Yes, there was a time during the Taliban that they had it wear [it], but now if they don’t want to, they don’t have it wear it.” When those outside of Afghanistan see the garb as oppressive and “want to teach us human rights, when they want to teach us democracy, when they want to teach us all these things, [it is] according to Western culture. And that is not right.”

There’s a lot Naomi Wolf says that I disagree with, but this statement (from Wolf’s Facebook) seems on target:

When you travel throughout the Muslim world, listening to women there, you often hear FROM WOMEN THEMSELVES more nuanced views of the headscarf, and of modest clothing, than you hear in the West; and — a point I cannot make often enough — when you actually listen to Muslim feminist or women’s leaders, many of them wish the West, with all its resources and potential for positive dialogue with the Muslim world, would focus its attention more on the life-and-death or survival-level challenges women and girls often face in Muslim countries - and in the developing world generally — from bride killings to legal subjugaton to lack of access to clean water and safety for their kids – than on what women are wearing, as if that is the only possible measure of their wellbeing.

I’m against anyone being forced to dress in a certain way — including using the government to force women and girls not to veil (1 2 3)– but this is not the primary issue facing Muslim women today.

(Many links via Fatemah’s link round-up.)

This review was originally posted on a literary blog that no longer exists called The Great American Pinup. My understanding is that the blog was hacked and that attempts by the people who ran the blog to resolve things using Google’s help screens were unsuccessful. I am reposting the review here because I think the books are important enough that the review should continue to be available.

Talk about two very different books by two very different poets, but there are connections, and since I read the books back to back, I want to talk about them side by side. I first met Suheir Hammad some years ago when she came to Nassau Community College (NCC), where I teach in the English Department, to give a reading as part of a day-long program on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The program was sponsored by NCC’s International Studies Committee and it generated, even in the planning, a lot of controversy. I was not involved in putting the day together, so I do not know the specifics of went on, but I do know that the college administration voiced concerns about adequate security, about who the panelists would be and whether a balanced view of the conflict would be presented. What they meant by “balanced,” however, at least as I understand it, was that no one who spoke for the Palestinian side should express views that were overtly hostile to Israel. It did not seem to bother them that people representing the Israeli side might express views overtly hostile to Palestinians and/or Arabs, and, sure enough, one of the speakers was a woman representing a far-right Jewish organization—not Israeli, but Jewish—who spoke quite forcefully about the Arab/Muslim plot to take over the world. It was almost as if she were quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, except that all the references to Jews had been changed to Arabs.

During lunch that day—her reading was in the evening—Suheir and I spoke about “One Stop (Hebron Revisited)” a poem from her first book, Born Palestinian, Born Black, that I had used in a class I’d taught the previous semester called Introduction to World Jewish Studies. The poem is a response to Baruch Goldstein’s February 1994 massacre of 29 Muslims—approximately 100 were injured—in which the speaker, a woman, imagines the violence she would have done to a Jewish man she sees had she “caught [him] on the train/on an empty car into flatbush.” The poem is painful to read, not only for the specific details of the violence it describes, but also for the nakedness of the rage it expresses. The speaker is in pain, and it is hard not to feel implicit in the details of what the woman describes how much she hates herself for even imagining that she would perform those acts.

When I taught the poem, I asked my students, all of whom happened to be Jewish and most of whom came from conservative and orthodox religious backgrounds, if they thought it was anti-Semitic. I was truly surprised when they said no, that if they were in the writer’s shoes, they would have felt a similar anger and that Suheir Hammad therefore had every right to express herself in the way that she did. I told Suheir this and she also was shocked and then she told me that “One Stop” was a poem she never read when she gave readings. I don’t remember her precise words, but I think she told me she was afraid to. It was so angry and so violent that she was not sure how her audiences would react. I told her I thought it was a poem that people needed to hear, that she owed it to herself and to her audiences to read it, precisely because the pain and the violence in the poem are so deeply embedded in the emotional center of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and no one should be spared a confrontation with that center.

My own opinion is that, to the extent the speaker in “One Stop” holds the Jewish man she sees on the train in New York City responsible for the views of Baruch Goldstein and, by extension, the policies of the State of Israel, the poem is anti-Semitic, or, to be more precise, the speaker expresses her rage in anti-Semitic terms. Because her rage is comprehensible, however, it is also an excusable moment of Jew-hatred, no different than the way, say, the rage of a Black South African during apartheid might be directed at all South African whites, despite the fact that there were many whites in South Africa who opposed apartheid. What matters is whether the speaker, once she has calmed down, takes responsibility for that moment. In “One Stop,” she does not, nor do I remember, frankly, whether Hammad takes on the question of that responsibility in any of the other poems in Born Palestinian, Born Black, and since I do not have the book handy, I can’t go back and check. My overall recollection of the book, though, is that it is more angry than it is about coming to terms with anger. I remember a couple of withering poems protesting the way Middle Eastern women are exoticized in the US, and I remember poems that were clearly intended to confront the reader with the physical horrors of occupation. (It occurs to me as I write this that I also should state explicitly that I am not accusing Suheir Hammad of Jew-hatred in any form. Not only is it a mistake to confuse a poet with the speakers of her poems, but I have met her and talked to her, and I just don’t think she harbors that kind of hatred for anyone.) Read the rest of this entry »

At Obsidian Wings, Eric Martin discusses how the recent, blatantly fraudulent Afghanistan election effects the prospects of U.S. success there.

Due to the complexity and tenacity of the multi-layered, multi-faceted conflict that we are seeking to address as an outside presence with limited resources and staying power, we are forced to bank on a miraculous combination of luck, good fortune and skill in order to pull off an outcome that, if all goes well, might come to fruition some 15 years and a couple trillion dollars down the road (with many thousands of NATO soldiers lost in the interim). But all is not going well, far from it. One of the most crucial political watersheds has played out in worst-case scenario terms. COIN will not fix this. It’s well past time we abandoned what George Kennan called the “stubborn pursuit of extravagant and unpromising objectives.”

In addition to the other (in my opinion, extremely unpersuasive) reasons for maintaining a huge U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Democrats may also be motivated to stay in Afghanistan because they’re afraid of the worst-case scenario for future US elections.

Our strategy in Afghanistan cannot prevent future terrorist attacks against the U.S.; there are many failed states in the world other than Afghanistan, which al Qaeda or other terrorists could use as a base while attacking the U.S.. Our presence in Afghanistan doesn’t prevent future terrorist attacks; it just relocates the people planning the attacks, from Afghanistan to other locations.

From the point of view of the Obama administration, however, that prospect must be a pretty big elephant in the room. Suppose the US greatly reduces its presence in Afghanistan, and then there’s a terrorist attack in early 2011, organized by an al Qaeda group which — had we not pulled out of Afghanistan — would have organized the exact same attack from one of the ungoverned areas of Pakistan?

The US wouldn’t be any worse off a result — the US civilians killed in such an attack would be just as dead in either case. But the Democratic Party would be much, much worse off. Any terrorist attack is bad — but a terrorist attack that can be directly blamed on a specific policy decision by a Democratic prescient, would wipe out the Democrats electorally. I honestly can’t imagine a bigger boon to Republicans.

I’m not saying that the Obama people aren’t sincere about their reasons for wanting to maintain our huge military commitment to Afghanistan. But I wonder if the worst-case scenario for the Democratic party isn’t biasing Obama’s people towards thinking the case for war is stronger than it actually is.

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Latter on when I got back to the BAYAN office, after the noise barrage (and after having lunch with the Secretary-General of Bayan, Nato Reyes, in where I had a soft drink, rice, curry chicken, and a banana for P85; that’s US$1.77 !), there was a lot of activity in the anticipation that a political prisoner would be released that night from jail.

As I stated in the previous post she wasn’t released that night, but was released latter due to pressure on the government inside the prison (form the prisoners) and outside the prison.

As people were preparing to take off toward the jail (we were on the bottom floor, an open area beneath the four story Bayan building and enclosed by a large gate) I saw a young man walk in with the cutest damned baby you ever saw (she was only around six months old and had chubby cheeks). As we were introduced and after acting like a fool around the baby (you know how it is, all talking in a squeaky voice and such) I was told by one of the Bayan officers that the father of the child had actually been captured by the military and was heavily tortured during his one year of capture. They had accused him of being a communist and a member of the New People’s Army (the communist guerrilla insurgency). He was able to escape from the place and later ended up going to the UN and successfully petitioned the Court of Appeals in the Philippines for a Writ of Amparo (which forces the government to give protection to a person seeking the Writ of Amparo).

After talking to the father for a bit the same officer pointed to the security guard (an unarmed man wearing no uniform who mainly watches the gate and lets people in or keeps folks out) and said, “He lost his father under Marcos.”

Then she pointed to someone else and said, “Her daughter disappeared under [the current president] Arroyo even though [her daughter] wasn’t an activist.”

She then turned to me and said, “So you are surrounded by victims, torture victims, and people on hit lists.” She too is on a hit list as well. Obviously, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed.

Back in February, Dave Kilcullen said this in his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

All this suggests that the most appropriate diplomatic strategy is to identify, within Pakistan, our friends and allies (civilian democratic political leaders, some officials, and much of the Pakistani people)….

Kilcullen is an actual expert who has been to the region, so it’s likely he knows something I don’t. But I find that claim more than a little odd. Contrast what Kilcullen is saying to this news story:

After Ms. McHale, the Obama administration’s new under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, gave her initial polite presentation about building bridges between America and the Muslim world, Mr. Abbasi thanked her politely for meeting with him. Then he told her that he hated her.

“You should know that we hate all Americans,” Ms. McHale said Mr. Abbasi told her. “From the bottom of our souls, we hate you.”

According to a Pew poll, 68% of Pakistanis have an unfavorable view of the United States. In fact, of the countries Pew surveyed, there are only four where the US is more hated. If our strategy in Pakistan depends on much of the Pakistani people being our “friends and allies,” then we’re in deep trouble.

(Don’t get me wrong, I’d like ordinary Pakistanis to be friends with America. But for the most part, they’re not.)

That’s a minor point, but it ties into my growing impression that the folks who favor an continued, and expanded, US war in Afghanistan aren’t being entirely realistic. In that same testimony, Kilcullen wrote:

We need to prevent the re-emergence of an Al Qaeda sanctuary that could lead to another 9/11.

That’s just ludicrous. There’s nothing unique about Afghanistan that means that Al Qaeda can plot attacks from Afghanistan and no where else in the world. (Indeed, a significant portion of 9/11 seems to have been plotted in Germany). Even Stephen Biddle — who strongly advocates for the US to remain at war in Afghanistan — admits that preventing Al Qaeda from having a sanctuary in Afghanistan isn’t a very sensible argument.

I’ve been reading about the US presence in Afghanistan — this weekend in particular, with the election going on, it’s been on my mind.

Over the years I’ve read a lot about the human rights situation in Afghanistan, especially for women, but this week I’m trying to read more about the US war in Afghanistan — and in particular, arguments for and against Obama’s planned escalation of the US presence there,and basically our entire strategy.

1. Rory Stewart, “The Irresistible Illusion” The London Review of Books.
2. Gilles Dorronsoro, “The Taliban’s Winning Strategy in Afghanistan” for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
3. Andrew Exum and Nathaniel Fick, “Triage: The Next Twelve Months in Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
4. David Kilcullen’s February congressional testimony.
5. Bernard Finel, “An Alternative Strategy for Afghanistan” at the Flash Point Blog
6. Stephen Biddle, “Is It Worth It? The Difficult Case for War in Afghanistan,” in The American Interest.
7. Bernard Finnel, “The Incoherence of COIN Advocates” (a response to Biddle).
8. Stephen Walt, “Safe Haven (2): A response to Peter Bergen“

I’d also recommend this post by Matt Ygelsias. An excerpt:

This is a map of Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups that abstracts away from the reality that actual populations aren’t homogeneous. The biggest ethnic group is the Pashto. The Taliban is also an overwhelmingly Pashto-based movement. Historically, Afghanistan’s Uzbeks and its small Turkmen community have been very hostile to the Taliban. What’s more, the Hazara are Shiites so they don’t really have any choice but to be anti-Taliban. The Tajiks aren’t necessarily as hostile, but pro-Taliban sentiment is relatively rare among Tajiks, and since the Tajiks are the second-largest group the main leaders of the anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan have generally been Tajik.

All of which is to say that waging war against the Taliban means something quite different in the brown-colored Pashto belt than it does in the rainbow of non-Pashto areas.

As well as any Afghanistan-related discussion, please feel free to post any links on this subject you’ve found especially helpful.

(Many links via Matt.)

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Today is the day I start my series on how my experience was in the Philippines. Basically I’ll be digging through my notebook and photos and will be posting a post or two a day on what I had done for that day and my general feelings of the whole situation. So, naturally, I’ll start at day one, which I blogged about for a bit while I was in the Philippines.

My first day was quite busy, my flight arrived at MNL (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) at around 4 am on Monday, July 20th. When I got to the BAYAN office (after arriving at the Kilusang Mayo Uno office in Project 3 in Quezon City on Narra St.) on the corner of Maaralin St. and Matatag St. it was around noon and I was informed that I would be going on a four day march with workers, peasants, and youth all the way from Calamba, Southern Tagalog to Makati City, Manila.

Latter on there was a press conference at the BAYAN office condemning the fact that there are BAYAN officers and organizers that are on military hit lists and watch lists. Then I went to a “noise barrage” were around 50 people or so from different BAYAN organizations held up signs and chanted along the street (I think it was Quezon Blvd.) in Quezon City to essentially “advertise” the upcoming protest of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address the following week. During the noise barrage I bumped into two amazing organizers from FOCUS from San Jose, California, Melissa and Noemi (whom I latter went on an incredible three day trip to Isabella, Bulacan to see what the local KilusangMagbubukid ng Pilipinas chapters were doing to organize the peasants).

Later that night I arrived back at the BAYAN office where many folks were in a celebratory mood because one of their comrades and friends was being released from prison after two years (after she was originally kidnapped by the Armed Forces of the Philippines and then resurfaced after four days). The daughter of the prisoner was there getting ready to hop into a van with a group of eight or so people to greet her mother as she was to be released from prison. I was told she was originally jailed because she is an adviser for the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF) and the government had trumped up charges that she had murdered people (this was to make sure she couldn’t get bail) but she was being released because the NDF and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) are going to restore peace talks between themselves. However, I was informed the next day, despite government orders to release her, the military refused to release her (however she was eventually released I believe two days latter, after initiating a hunger strike and coordinating protests with other prisoners).

This, of course, was only day one of twenty-one, I was just beginning.

Top photo: Afghan women protest an earlier version of this law, in April 2009, from the New York Times. Second photo, also from April: Hazara women in Europe protest the Afghan law. From Hazaritan Times.

From Human Rights Watch:

“Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “So much for any credentials he claimed as a moderate on women’s issues.” [...]

The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying “blood money” to a girl who was injured when he raped her. [...]

The law regulates the personal affairs of Shia Muslims - who make up between 10 and 20 percent of the population - including divorce, separation, inheritance, and the minimum age for marriage.

Amazingly, the earlier version of the law was even harsher on Shia women’s rights, and was softened in response to internal protests and international pressure (including protests by Hazaras women of many nations):

The initial version of the law included articles that imposed drastic restrictions on Shia women, including a requirement to ask permission to leave the house except on urgent business, and a requirement that a wife have sex with her husband at least once every four days. [...]

In a rare move, Afghan women took to the streets in April to protest, braving threats and violence. President Barack Obama of the United States, Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, and many other world leaders condemned the legislation. As a result of pressure, Karzai submitted the law to a consultation process with civil society groups in May, which resulted in some improvements. The legislation still contains some of its most repressive measures, though.

Remember back when we first invaded Afghanistan, when hawks were criticizing feminists for not favoring a war that was, we were told, going to free the women of Afghanistan from misogynistic oppression?

I’m genuinely sorry the hawks were wrong — but not surprised. The problem with hawks in the US is that they think of the US army as a magic wishing lamp, which can be waved at any problem to produce good results. But the truth is, you can’t invade a culture into accepting women’s rights, or — I suspect — into genuine democracy.

I’m also genuinely amazed at the enormous courage of women in Afghanistan who took to the streets to protest in April. I hope that if there are further protests, in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we’ll hear about in the US.

See also: The Czech, Tennessee Guerrilla Women, Gullibility is Bad for You.

Mendiola St., Manila, Philippines: Protesters apart of BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan) gather at Mendiola in Manila to oppose the president’s plans to change the constitution to allow her to become Prime Minister and hold power after 2010 (Photo by Jack Stephens)

So I got back from the Philippines on Sunday night and the trip was one of the more amazing experiences in my life. So over the next month I will be going through my notebook and pictures and will be posting some pics and reactions to my days in the Philippines on my blog.

Plenty of these happened during my trip, a four day march from Calamba, Southern Tagalog to Makiti City, Manila, the death of former President Cory Aquino, and me being accused by local militia of being a communist rebel.

Hope you all look forward to the posts.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting at the trial Tuesday of a female journalist who faces a flogging for wearing trousers in public.

Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein could receive 40 lashes if found guilty of violating the country’s indecency law which follows a strict interpretation of Islam. The 43-year-old says the law is un-Islamic and ”oppressive,” and she’s trying to use her trial to rally support to change it.

”I am not afraid of flogging. … It’s about changing the law,” Hussein said, speaking to The Associated Press after a hearing Tuesday.

Hussein said she would take the issue all the way to Sudan’s constitutional court if necessary, but that if the court rules against her and orders the flogging, she’s ready ”to receive (even) 40,000 lashes” if that what it takes to abolish the law.

Hussein was among 13 women arrested July 3 in a raid by the public order police on a popular cafe in Khartoum. Ten of the women were fined and flogged two days later. But Hussein and two others decided to go to trial.

In an attempt to rally support, Hussein printed invitations to diplomats, international media, and activists to attend her trial which opened last week. She also resigned from her job in the U.N.’s public information office in Khartoum, declining the immunity that went along with the job to challenge the law.

Around 100 supporters, including many women in trousers as well as others in traditional dress, protested outside the court Tuesday.

And from another article:

Police have also cracked down on another woman journalist, Amal Habbani, who published an article in Ajrass al-Horreya newspaper (Bells of Freedom) entitled: “Lubna, a case of subduing a woman’s body.”

I am awed by Ms. Hussein’s courage and determination. She’s now been banned from leaving the country, either out of pure vindictiveness, or to make it harder for her to appear in the media.

Anne of Carversville (whose blog is all over this story) has posted an English-language translation of an interview with Lubna Hussein. In the interview, Ms. Hussein claims that three of the women lashed for wearing pants were teenagers, one as young as 16.

(The photos came from this AP photo gallery. The blog title quote came from this article.)

UPDATE: More commentary on this case:

• Katha Pollitt at The Nation
• The F Word
• Earwicga
• Feministing
• Woman’s Media Center
• Cruella-Blog

SECOND UPDATE: Here’s a petition you can sign in support of Lubna Hussein.

From Antiwar.com:

“We don’t have a police state here in Palestine. We have two police states. One in Gaza and one in the West Bank,” says Rabie Latifah from the Palestinian human rights organization Al Haq.

“The abuse of Palestinian civilians by both Fatah and Hamas security forces has become systematic and is no longer the exception to the rule,” Latifah told IPS.

Mysterious bomb blasts, assassinations by masked gunmen, detainees denied access to their lawyers, torture and death in detention, the random arrest of critical journalists, and the banning of peaceful demonstrations are but a few of the human rights violations sweeping the Palestinian territories.

While armed men are being arrested, politically motivated arrest campaigns are also targeting citizens suspected of merely sympathizing with the opposition.

“We have endured over 40 years of occupation and human rights abuses by the Israelis, and now we are doing it to ourselves,” says Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).

Stories like this make me feel that even if a two-state solution leads to a genuinely independent Palestine being created, the civil rights outlook for ordinary Palestinians is not bright. (Via.)

The following advertisement aired on Israeli TV:

The following clip was filmed in Palestine:

Fantasy is a strange thing. (via Lenin’s Tomb)

I’d highly recommend reading “The Real Struggle In Iran,” George Friedman’s analysis the recent events in Iran. I have no way of knowing if Friedman’s analysis is accurate or not; but it seems a good deal more plausible to me than the narrative I’ve seen from much of the major media.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. By the end of the week, Khamenei decided to end the situation. In essence, he tried to hold things together by ordering the demonstrations to halt while throwing a bone to Rafsanjani and Mousavi by extending a probe into the election irregularities and postponing a partial recount by five days.

The key to understanding the situation in Iran is realizing that the past weeks have seen not an uprising against the regime, but a struggle within the regime. Ahmadinejad is not part of the establishment, but rather has been struggling against it, accusing it of having betrayed the principles of the Islamic Revolution. The post-election unrest in Iran therefore was not a matter of a repressive regime suppressing liberals (as in Prague in 1989), but a struggle between two Islamist factions that are each committed to the regime, but opposed to each other.

The demonstrators certainly included Western-style liberalizing elements, but they also included adherents of senior clerics who wanted to block Ahmadinejad’s re-election. And while Ahmadinejad undoubtedly committed electoral fraud to bulk up his numbers, his ability to commit unlimited fraud was blocked, because very powerful people looking for a chance to bring him down were arrayed against him.

The situation is even more complex because it is not simply a fight between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, but also a fight among the clerical elite regarding perks and privileges — and Ahmadinejad is himself being used within this infighting.

Friedman argues that in terms of foreign policy, there is likely to be no difference to the US, no matter which faction comes out on top.

We do not believe that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, a point we have made frequently. Iran understands that the actual acquisition of a nuclear weapon would lead to immediate U.S. or Israeli attacks. Accordingly, Iran’s ideal position is to be seen as developing nuclear weapons, but not close to having them. This gives Tehran a platform for bargaining without triggering Iran’s destruction, a task at which it has proved sure-footed.

In addition, Iran has maintained capabilities in Iraq and Lebanon. Should the United States or Israel attack, Iran would thus be able to counter by doing everything possible to destabilize Iraq — bogging down U.S. forces there — while simultaneously using Hezbollah’s global reach to carry out terror attacks. After all, Hezbollah is today’s al Qaeda on steroids. The radical Shiite group’s ability, coupled with that of Iranian intelligence, is substantial.

We see no likelihood that any Iranian government would abandon this two-pronged strategy without substantial guarantees and concessions from the West. Those would have to include guarantees of noninterference in Iranian affairs. Obama, of course, has been aware of this bedrock condition, which is why he went out of his way before the election to assure Khamenei in a letter that the United States had no intention of interfering.

I’d recommend reading the whole thing, as well as this earlier piece by Friedman.

This moved me:

Here is the copy from the website:

“Stand by Me” On June 24, Iranian Superstar Andy Madadian went into an LA recording studio with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and American record producers Don Was and John Shanks to record a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran. This version of the old Ben E. King classic is not for sale - it was not meant to be on the Billboard charts or even manufactured as a CD…..it’s intended to be downloaded and shared by the Iranian people…to give voice to the sentiment that all people of the world stand together….the handwritten Farsi sign in the video translates to “we are one”. If you know someone in Iran - or someone who knows someone in Iran - please share this link CREDITS: STAND BY ME Andy - Vocals Jon Bon Jovi - Vocals Richie Sambora - Electric Guitar and Vocals John Shanks - Acoustic Guitar Don Was - Bass Patrick Leonard - Keyboards Jeff Rothchild - Drums Tiffany Madadian and Nikki Lund - Background Vocals Produced by Don Was & John Shanks Recorded and Mixed by Jeff Rothchild at Henson Studio C, Hollywood, CA June 24, 2009 Thanks to Faryal Ganjehei Written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller Farsi lyric by Paksima Zakipour Video Edited by Gemma Corfield Mastered by Stephen Marcussen