February 2012. Tahrir Square. Cairo, Eygpt.
Christians form a circle around Muslims to protect them during prayer.
Photo Credit: Nevine Zaki
Category Archives: World
Momentus
{repost from The New York Times}
U.S. War in Iraq Declared Officially Over
Michael Kamber for The New York Times
Flag bearers carried the colors out at the end of the ceremony marking the end of the United States’ military involvement in Iraq. More Photos »
By THOM SHANKER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: December 15, 2011
BAGHDAD — The United States military officially declared an end to its mission in Iraq on Thursday even as violence continues to plague the country and the Muslim world remains distrustful of American power.
In a fortified concrete courtyard at the airport in Baghdad, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta thanked the more than one million American service members who have served in Iraq for “the remarkable progress” made over the past nine years but acknowledged the severe challenges that face the struggling democracy.
“Let me be clear: Iraq will be tested in the days ahead — by terrorism, and by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues, by the demands of democracy itself,” Mr. Panetta said. “Challenges remain, but the U.S. will be there to stand by the Iraqi people as they navigate those challenges to build a stronger and more prosperous nation.”
The muted ceremony stood in contrast to the start of the war in 2003 when an America both frightened and emboldened by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, sent columns of tanks north from Kuwait to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
As of last Friday, the war in Iraq had claimed 4,487 American lives, with another 32,226 Americans wounded in action, according to Pentagon statistics.
The tenor of the hour-long farewell ceremony, officially called “Casing the Colors,” was likely to sound an uncertain trumpet for a war that was started to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction it did not have. It now ends without the sizable, enduring American military presence for which many military officers had hoped.
Although Thursday’s ceremony marked the end of the war, the military still has two bases in Iraq and roughly 4,000 troops, including several hundred who attended the ceremony. At the height of the war in 2007, there were 505 bases and more than 170,000 troops.
According to military officials, the remaining troops are still being attacked on a daily basis, mainly by indirect fire attacks on the bases and road side bomb explosions against convoys heading south through Iraq to bases in Kuwait.
Even after the last two bases are closed and the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, under rules of an agreement with the government in Baghdad, a few hundred military personnel and Pentagon civilians will remain, working within the American Embassy as part of an Office of Security Cooperation to assist in arms sales and training.
But negotiations could resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to further assist their Iraqi counterparts.
Senior American military officers have made no secret that they see crucial gaps in Iraq’s ability to defend its sovereign soil and even to secure its oil platforms offshore in the Persian Gulf. Air defenses are seen as a critical gap in Iraqi capabilities, but American military officers also see significant shortcomings in Iraq’s ability to sustain a military, whether moving food and fuel or servicing the armored vehicles it is inheriting from Americans or the fighter jets it is buying, and has shortfalls in military engineers, artillery and intelligence, as well.
”From a standpoint of being able to defend against an external threat, they have very limited to little capability, quite frankly,” Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the outgoing American commander in Iraq, said in an interview after the ceremony. “In order to defend against a determined enemy, they will need to do some work.”
The tenuous security atmosphere in Iraq was underscored by helicopters that hovered over the ceremony, scanning the ground for rocket attacks. Although there is far less violence across Iraq than at the height of the sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, there are bombings on a nearly daily basis and Americans remain a target of Shiite militants.
Mr. Panetta acknowledged that “the cost was high — in blood and treasure of the United States, and also for the Iraqi people. But those lives have not been lost in vain — they gave birth to an independent, free and sovereign Iraq.”
The war was started by the Bush administration in March 2003 on arguments that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and had ties to Al Qaeda that might grow to an alliance threatening the United States with a mass-casualty terrorist attack.
As the absence of unconventional weapons proved a humiliation for the administration and the intelligence community, the war effort was reframed as being about bringing democracy to the Middle East.
And, indeed, there was euphoria among many Iraqis at an American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But the support soon soured amid a growing sense of heavy-handed occupation fueled by the unleashing of bloody sectarian and religious rivalries. The American presence also proved a magnet for militant fighters and an Al Qaeda-affiliated group took root among the Sunni minority population in Iraq.
While the terrorist group has been rendered ineffective by a punishing series of Special Operations raids that have killed or captured several Qaeda leaders, intelligence specialists fear that it is in resurgence. The American military presence in Iraq, viewed as an occupation across the Muslim world, also hampered Washington’s ability to cast a narrative from the United States in support of the Arab Spring uprisings this year.
Even handing bases over to the Iraqi government over recent months proved vexing for the military. In the spring, commanders halted large formal ceremonies with Iraqi officials for base closings because insurgents were using the events as opportunities to attack troops. “We were having ceremonies and announcing it publicly and having a little formal process but a couple of days before the base was to close we would start to receive significant indirect fire attacks on the location,” said Col. Barry Johnson, a spokesman for the military in Iraq. “We were suffering attacks so we stopped.”
Across the country, the closing of bases has been marked by a quiet closed-door meeting where American and Iraqi military officials signed documents that legally gave the Iraqis control of the bases, exchanged handshakes and turned over keys.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey of the Army, has served two command tours in Iraq since the invasion in 2003, and he noted during the ceremony that the next time he comes to Iraq he will have to be invited.
”We will stand with you against terrorists and others that threaten to undo what we have accomplished together,” General Dempsey said during the ceremony. “We will work with you to secure our common interests in a more peaceful and prosperous region.”
Confucius Peace Prize Year Two
Last year when I was living in Shanghai, I posted about the advent of the Confucius Peace Prize in response to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Well, ladies and gentleman, it’s been a year since then and so the Chinese government has named the second recipient of the prize. I’ll let this NY TIMES article explain… drum roll please…
By EDWARD WONG
Published: November 15, 2011
BEIJING — The Chinese committee that awarded this year’s Confucius Peace Prize minced no words in honoring the winner, Vladimir V. Putin, prime minister of Russia.
It praised his decision to go to war in Chechnyain 1999.
“His iron hand and toughness revealed in this war impressed the Russians a lot, and he was regarded to be capable of bringing safety and stability to Russia,” read an English version of the committee’s statement. “He became the antiterrorist No. 1 and the national hero.”
Not only that, it applauded him for “acting as the propagandist of current political events” while still in high school, and for being selected to join the K.G.B. while in college, “which made true his teenage dream of joining the K.G.B.” Much later, of course, came the “large-scale military action towards the illegal armed forces in Grozny, Chechnya.”
So went the announcement by a group of 16 patriotic scholars awarding what they call their second annual “grass-roots” peace prize. Four members of the group, the China International Peace Studies Center, held a news conference on Sunday in the Fragrant Hills Park west of central Beijing, but there was curiously little reporting in the Chinese news media about the award. Then word spread over Twitter on Tuesday that Mr. Putin, who had engaged in wars in Chechnya and Georgia, had won the prize, which has been steeped in political intrigue in recent months.
“Those wars were righteous wars,” Qiao Damo, the self-described co-founder and president of the Confucius Peace Prize committee, said in a telephone interview. “Mr. Putin fought for the unification of his country.”
In fact, the campaign in Chechnya led to a stream of human rights abuses by Russian and pro-Russian Chechen security forces, including rape, torture and murder, numerous human rights organizations found at the time.
Mr. Qiao also said that the committee, which had voted for Mr. Putin from among eight nominees, valued his opposition to war. “He was against the NATO bombing of Libya,” Mr. Qiao said.
The award was first given out last year as a rejoinder to the Nobel committee’s decision to give the Peace Prize toLiu Xiaobo, an imprisoned dissident writer. Mr. Qiao said this year’s ceremony would be held on Dec. 9, and organizers hoped to hand a gilded statuette of Confucius, the Chinese sage, to Mr. Putin, along with a certificate. The award announcement did not mention any cash prize.
The winner last year, Lien Chan, a Taiwanese politician, said he had never heard of the award when contacted by foreign journalists. He did not show up at the ceremony, even though the prize came with the equivalent of $15,000 in cash. Instead, a young girl with no relation to Mr. Lien accepted a statuette and a bundle of bills.
When asked about the award on Tuesday, Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, told a reporter in Moscow: “We have only heard about the award from the press. We do not know much about the prize.”
Besides Mr. Putin, candidates for this year’s Confucius Peace Prize included Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft; Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor; Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president; Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations; Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist; Soong Chu-yu, a Taiwanese politician; and a Tibetan boy named by Chinese officials as the Panchen Lama after the abduction of a candidate supported by the exiled Dalai Lama.
Mr. Putin received nine of the 16 votes cast, Mr. Yuan six and Ms. Merkel one, Mr. Qiao said.
Among the 16 voting committee members was Kong Qingdong, a professor of Chinese literature at Peking University who has boasted widely that he is in the 73rd generation of Confucius’ lineage. Mr. Kong is also famously known for cursing at a Chinese journalist on Nov. 7, which has prompted editors at Xinhua, the state news agency, and students at Peking University to demand Mr. Kong’s resignation.
Meanwhile, a founding member of the committee, Liu Haofeng, said in a telephone interview that he had split off from the group and planned to start a new award with the help of Americans, the World Harmony Prize.
The Culture Ministry has berated the original prize committee for claiming to hand out last year’s award in the name of the ministry.
As for a new competing prize associated with the Culture Ministry, the Confucius World Peace Prize, an announcement posted last month on the ministry’s Web site said the group that had proposed the award had decided not to distribute it.
Nikolay Khalip contributed reporting from Moscow, and Mia Li contributed research from Beijing.
Giles Duley Exhibit
I found myself in London on Thanksgiving day, blissfully wandering the city I inhabited for far too short a time. My dear friend suggested we head to an exhibit of Giles Duley photography at the KKOutlet. Giles is a photojournalist from London who began working in the entertainment industry and now focuses his work on humanitarian themes particularly in conflict states. While in Afghanistan, Duley stepped on an IED and had to have both legs and one arm amputated. He is a miraculous example of survival and openness. A New York Times piece quoted him saying: “I thought, ‘Right hand? Eyes?’ ” — he realized that all of these were intact — “and I thought, ‘I can work.’ ” That’s passion.
I’ve been sitting here trying to sum up my feelings on Duley’s work. My words don’t seem to do it justice. It’s incredibly real, alive, haunting, hopeful, tragic. I went to search his website in an attempt to express myself better. There is a quote at the very beginning of Duley’s bio. This, I think, encapsulates very clearly why his work is indeed renowned:
“These photographs remind us of our humanity and of the need for understanding and compassion if we want a peaceful world and a just one. The great English poet John Donne once wrote, ‘No man is an island…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ What he said in words, Duley’s compelling photographs tell us in pictures. They are a must for anyone who values the unity, tragedy and potential of the human condition.”
Giles Duley Self Portrait
To support Giles and his work, check out The Giles Duley Fund.
Yemen Leader Signs a Deal to End His 33-Year Rule
{repost from The New York Times}
By KAREEM FAHIM and LAURA KASINOF
Published: November 23, 2011
SANA, Yemen — After months of street protests calling for his resignation, President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed an agreement Wednesday immediately transferring power to his vice president.
The agreement effectively ends Mr. Saleh’s 33 years of authoritarian rule, making him the fourth leader forced from power by the Arab Spring revolts that have roiled the Middle East and North Africa. But it is unlikely to restore calm anytime soon to a country that has become increasingly important to the United States as Islamist militants have gained a stronger hold there.
The unity government that is expected to take over in the coming days or weeks will face not only those insurgencies, which have grown only more entrenched during months of turmoil, but also festering tribal divisions and the likelihood of continued protests from young demonstrators unsatisfied with Wednesday’s deal.
The deal allows Mr. Saleh to retain his title and certain privileges until new elections are held in three months and grants him immunity from prosecution. It was unclear when, and if, the president intended to return to Yemen.
Mr. Saleh had resisted signing similar agreements to step down in the last several months, sometimes appearing close and then backing off at the last minute.
Although the signing was the first time he actually agreed to give up formal authority, it is unclear how big a political presence Mr. Saleh hopes to maintain or how Yemen might overcome its many divisions. His family members retain powerful posts in the military and intelligence service, and Mr. Saleh, a wily political survivor, has figured out ways to hang on to control when he has been threatened in the past.
Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani, a Yemeni political analyst and the head of a nonpartisan group that campaigns for democracy, said few people thought the agreement signaled the end of Mr. Saleh’s political ambitions. “He figures the rest of the maneuvering can be kept for after the signing,” Mr. Iryani said.
Mr. Saleh’s opponents and Yemen’s foreign allies, including the United States, have put increasing pressure on Mr. Saleh to sign a deal, warning that the country, stalled by protests and wracked by successive rounds of bloody factional fighting, is on the brink of collapse. The fighting has crippled the country’s already sputtering economy.
Mr. Saleh was also facing the threat of international sanctions. “There was no more room for him to maneuver,” Mr. Iryani said.
The sanctions, he said “would end up suffocating his regime and even maybe put him behind bars.”
The president’s surprise trip to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, had been rumored for days but was not announced beforehand. It came after several days of intense negotiations between opposition politicians and the president’s representatives, brokered by a visiting United Nations envoy.
Yemeni opposition leaders, who are expected to join members of Mr. Saleh’s party in the new unity government, flew to Riyadh later on Wednesday for the signing of the agreement, which was brokered by several Persian Gulf states.
Youth activists have said the agreement, and in particular the immunity clauses, would not satisfy thousands of demonstrators still camped in city squares throughout the country, demanding trials for Mr. Saleh and members of his government in connection with the killings of scores of demonstrators.
The youth activists framed the agreement as a deal between political elites, rather than a step forward for their revolt. April Longley Alley, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group who studies Yemen, said that while the agreement would facilitated Mr. Saleh’s exit, “Yemenis from across the political spectrum are looking for much broader and deeper political change.”
Previous agreements have been derailed by violence in Sana, the capital, between government forces, and defecting army units and tribal fighters loyal to Mr. Saleh’s rivals. There were reports on Wednesday of sporadic shelling in Hasaba, a district in northern Sana.
The military remains divided between supporters of the Saleh family and loyalists of a powerful commander, Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsin al-Ahmar. General Ahmar, once a close ally of the president and frequently called the second most powerful man in the country, announced his support for the antigovernment protest movement in March. His heavily armed troops have controlled a large portion of the northern half of Sana.
General Ahmar, who has repeatedly said he that he is willing to leave the country if Mr. Saleh will, did not immediately release a statement reacting to the news of a possible agreement.
Yassin Saeed Noman, a socialist politician and the leader of Yemen’s opposition coalition, said the agreement would not quickly pull the country from its malaise but added that he remained optimistic.
“If there is a willingness from the government, it will end the crisis,” Mr. Noman said.
Kareem Fahim reported from Sana, and Laura Kasinof from Greencastle, Pa.
Watch: Love Crimes of Kabul
Of the over one-hundred prisoners in Badam Bagh Women’s Prison in Kabul, Afghanistan, half are there for “moral crimes” including premarital sex and running away from home. Love Crimes of Kabul focuses on the stories of three of those women (or girls!) and how modern ideas of love and marriage in traditional Afghan society landed them in jail.
In a society dictated by strict Sharia Law, the access alone that was granted for this filming is remarkable and unprecedented. Written and directed by Iranian-American filmmaker Tanaz Eshaghian, Love Crimes of Kabul sheds light on the human side of the female story in Afghanistan. Often we see war on the news and hear of female oppression, but rarely do we see women unveiled, speaking up and so candidly as they are in Eshaghian’s film. She does a remarkable job of transforming what one would assume to be a very heavy, depressing piece into a lively, relatable and moving film. Eshaghian and the crew found working in Afghanistan and the prison intensely taxing, but, fortunately for the viewer, presented a subject that is so inaccurately and under reported.
“Some of the young women’s modern ideas about attraction and relationships conflict with more traditional Afghan ways. They giddily describe their boyfriends as having desirable attributes (good looks, intelligence, etc.), yet marriage in Afghanistan is traditionally a set of financial agreements and transactions between families or tribes. Since marriage is the only way to avoid prolonged jail time, much pre-trial time is spent negotiating terms of marriage between their otherwise reluctant families.
Kareema, 20, is a tenacious and fearless Hazara whose striking beauty belies a strong survival streak. When her boyfriend Firuz got her pregnant and refused to marry her, Kareema voluntarily confessed their behavior to authorities, knowing her only hope of avoiding ruin as an unwed mother was to leverage conservative laws to her advantage. By getting Firuz as well as herself imprisoned, she has more chance of securing him as a husband, as marriage is his only chance of release. If he won’t comply, she faces years behind bars.
Aleema, 22, a fiercely independent woman with a quick temper and acid tongue, ran away from an abusive home and took refuge with a stranger named Zia. When Zia tried to sell Aleema to an undercover cop, both women were arrested. Forced to share a trial, they’re now involved in a bitter power struggle. Zia demands Aleema marry her son as retribution for getting her locked up. Aleema knows Zia could never afford the dowry of a virgin bride, and only wants her because a “shamed” woman like Aleema will be the ultimate cheap deal.
Sabereh, 18, is a wide-eyed, innocent young woman who was turned in by her father, who found her in a closet with a 17-year-old boy. Though her virginity is proven intact by court doctors, accusations against Sabereh build in intensity, and it is obvious that her boyfriend’s resistance to marriage will consign her to the cruelest fate.
A female guard at the Badam Bagh Women’s Prison in Kabul observes disdainfully that the prison is full “because these days women are given too much freedom.” The reality of women’s rights in the country is much different. With courtship, marriage and sex strictly controlled by an ideology of honor, a young girl can be arrested and jailed simply for falling in love, or running away from home, both of which are seen as akin to adultery.
Though transgression can bring ruin to an entire family, and both men and women can be arrested, women are seen as particular threats to the fabric of society, and must be punished if they stray. As a social worker explains to Aleema, “A bad husband is better than no husband…None of this would have happened if you had a husband and a nice home.”
LOVE CRIMES OF KABUL concludes as the three subjects receive Afghan justice for their “crimes,” along with explanations for the rulings. Asked what will happen if people in Afghanistan are allowed to act on their desires, one judge replies, “Society’s order will be ruined.” (repost from Robert Seidman)
