The Shisha Haze

Stonewall

2005-11-03T22:28:00.000-05:00

King Abdullah and his brother Ali

A Royal Consultation

2005-11-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

The leaders of the Emirates welcome King Abdullah of Jordan

U.S. steps up attack on Syria over 'hit list'

2005-06-11T03:42:00.000-04:00

White House accuses Damascus of creating climate of fear during Lebanon's parliamentary elections

BEIRUT: President George W. Bush stepped up his attacks on Syria last night, after a U.S. official said Damascus had compiled an "assassination hit list" targeting Lebanese political leaders. The accusation comes a week after the assassination of anti-Syrian Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir which has fueled speculation that Syrian intelligence units are still operating in Lebanon."

Bush said: "Our message to Syria - and it's not just the message of the United States, the United Nations has said the same thing - is that in order for Lebanon to be free, Syria needs to not only remove its military, but to remove intelligence officers as well."

Commenting on the assassination list, Bush said: "Obviously we're going to follow up on these troubling reports, and we expect the Syrian government to follow up on these troubling reports

The anonymous U.S. official said the information came from "a variety of credible Lebanese sources."

In the latest escalation of tensions between Damascus and Washington, the White House accused Syria of creating a climate of fear during Lebanon's parliamentary elections in what will be seen as a scarcely veiled allusion to the murder of Kassir.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "We are deeply concerned about Syria's interference and intimidation inside Lebanon."

He added: "We are concerned intelligence operatives are interfering in Lebanon's internal affairs. We have all called on the UN to send the verification teams back to Lebanon."

Washington's attack follows earlier comments from UN chief Kofi Annan who said on Thursday night that he was considering sending a second verification team to Lebanon because of reports that Syrian intelligence is still operating in the country.

Damascus has strenuously denied any involvement in the Kassir murder, and insists it has fully complied with UN Resolution 1559 which ordered Syria to withdraw its troops and intelligence agencies from its smaller neighbor.

The new accusations against Syria came as Lebanon prepares to hold its third phase of four-stage parliamentary elections on Sunday, in Mount Lebanon, and the Bekaa districts.

Jumblatt accused the former Syrian military intelligence chief in Lebanon, General Rustom Ghazaleh, of meddling in the election through his agents.

So, I was sitting...

2005-06-10T14:40:00.000-04:00

...on a mountain in Yemen chewing some qat. I went on a day trip from Sana'a to two villages about an hour away with a Yemeni army captain. We ended up climbing a mountain with a village on top that overlooks the village we started from. The air was really thin and it was quite the adventure. Here are my favorite photos. I'll be back in the States on the 22nd.

--
Don Amboyer
amboyer@gmail.com
+971-050-8894656

News from Sana'a

2005-06-06T08:55:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone,

I flew into Sana'a, Yemen on Monday 31 May. My plan is to spend three weeks here studying Arabic with a private tutor at the Sana'a Institute for Arabic Language. My Arabic abilities are still not great and Yemen is a good place to practice because, unlike other places in the Middle East, most people don't speak English. Yemen is also cheap. It's costing just a few hundred dollars to study privately and live in a traditional Yemeni house. The student housing is on the edge of the Old City in central Sana'a. The walk to Bab al Yemen is only about a kilometer.

Sana'a is an amazing place. In many ways it's like stepping back into history. The traditional souks and street markets thrive and are the main supply of food and goods for the people. Poverty is rampant here; most people live on less than $2 per day. However, things are comparatively less expensive than the States or other countries in the region. My first three days in Sana'a I lived on less than $5 per day while eating at decent restaurants. My diet has consisted mainly of bread, foul and some chicken. The foul is much better than the Sudanese variety but I still have an aversion to it.

The Institute is a pretty cool place. It's a decent sized building about 300 meters from the student housing. There are probably about 25 people studying there. Most all have private tutors and schedule their time in 3 or 4 hour blocks throughout the day. I've had sessions inside and outside and really like the relaxed atmosphere. My instructor and I agreed to work primarily on conversational items but also to work on a subset of politically specific language. Each day I bring the day's newspaper and we review articles that cover politics in the Middle East. This should really help to expand my vocabulary when speaking about current issues.

One of the first people I met here was a Canadian guy who came for a month to get a quick introduction to Arabic. He and I were talking and discovered we both shared a passion for diving. He had planned a weekend away at Kamaran Island in the Red Sea off the western coast of Yemen. I agreed to join him and we would set off on Friday and return on Sunday. Friday and Sunday would be travel days and we would dive on Saturday. Thursday evening we stayed up late with some students and it made a rough start for Friday morning. Our bus left from Bab al Yemen at 6:15 AM and I was feeling a little sickly. The bus trip took six hours and ended in Houdida, a city near the port of Asslif. I continued to get worse during the trip, but I hoped it would go away after a few hours off the bus.

The bus trips here a bit of an adventure. Arabic music and/or movies blare from overhead speakers throughout the trip. It's a challenge at first to follow along but after about three hours it just gets obnoxious. There are also several stops during a six hour trip. On average every hour and half the bus stops in a village to offload passengers for twenty minutes to buy food and drink and also the all important qat. Qat is the national pastime of Yemen. Most men and women chew the leaf and it acts as a stimulant. I don't Yemenis could survive a bus trip without qat. The other charming part of my bus trips seems to be my ability to choose a seat next to the on-board toilets. Not nice.

Houdida and the surrounding area was a bit Wild West meets Sudan. The coastal populations of Yemen have mixed African and Arab ancestry; most of the north is dominated by Arabs. The temperature in Houdida mixed with humidity was stifling, 42°C with 85-90% humidity. There was almost no breeze which made standing outside nearly unbearable. Our hotel hosts arrived quickly to collect us and let us sit in an air conditioned room for about an hour before we went to lunch. The hour in A/C was the second best part of the entire trip.

For lunch our group of ten headed to a local mendi restaurant. Mendi is a style of food popular in Yemen and the greater Gulf region. It consists of a base of rice topped with meat (mutton, chicken, or fish) served on a communal plate. Its eaten with your hands, but you mix yogurt and sauce with the rice and meat to solidify a mound that you scoop into your mouth. It may sound terrible but it actually is great once you get the hang of it. The meat is perfectly seasoned and cooked underground and the flavor really comes out with the yogurt and sauce.

After lunch ended we left via the hotels delivery trucks. We had to make a quick stop at the qat market to pick up a supply of qat for the workers. It was an eye opening experience to wander around market and witness the shouting, haggling and general chaos of the qat scene. The drive to the port of Asslif took about an hour through a desolate arid/desert peninsula. I was expecting the ferry to the island to be a drive-on heavy duty type. Er, wrong. Workers unpacked the bus and put our things into a 15 foot rowboat with a motor. It was starting to get interesting.

The ride across the strait to Kamaran took about twenty five minutes. The "hotel" didn't come into view until we almost reached the shore. It consists of a main lodge type area with dining tables and six separate huts for guest quarters. The owner doesn't believe in air conditioning so it was a bit hot. No, really; it was hot. The hotel is separated from Kamaran village by at least fifteen kilometers. The total island size is 80 square kilometers inhabited by less than three thousand people. The terrain is basically a mixture of rock and desert. Wide white sandy beaches are not in abundance.

We had dinner, played dominos and I settled in for the night. It was defiantley one of the most uncomfortable nights of my life. Air couldn't circulate in the hut and the humidity was intense. I eventually passed out. The next morning came early thanks to the rather rude rooster who began crowing at 5:30 am. We had breakfast and got ready to dive. Jason, the Canadian, and I suited up and took our equipment to the boat with Ahmad the divemaster. We were joined by two locals who work for the hotel; they are fishermen and provide security for us.

The first dive spot was about twenty minutes from the hotel dock. It was an amazing dive. It was fairly shallow at on 10 meters but we stayed under water for more than an hour. I saw all kinds of amazing fish, lobster, and even a few stingrays among the coral. Awesome dive. The second dive wasn't as interesting. We dove to about 30 meters but couldn't stay down long because of the diminished oxygen supply due to depth. There was a lot of silt kicked up on the bottom and the current was strong. All in all not a great dive. The good part was that I gained confidence in my diving abilities. I used less air than usual and controlled bouncy better. I think it had a lot to do with being in salt water instead of fresh.

I had hoped for more diving later in the afternoon but it wasn't to be. This wasn't too bad because sunburn was starting to set in. That afternoon I sat around and finished a good book. I was still feeling sick and I think I became dehydrated. I lay down and only got up briefly for a dinner I didn't eat. Sunday morning came early again and I was still feeling sick. We saw some dolphins that morning in the bay near the hotel. That was cool and reminded me of a few summers ago in South Carolina. We said our goodbyes around 9:30 and boarded the boat for the return trip to Asslif.

Jason and I had decided to skip the bus ride and instead travel back to Sana'a with Sultan in his Landcrusier. Did I mention I love Landcruisers? I do. He has an 80s model FJ62 and the thing is a tank. We couldn't wait to get out the flat costal area and into the mountains where the temperature drops. Along the way we were stopped at every police checkpoint. The police are not used to Westerners traveling in the area and made sure to take all of our details before releasing us. At one checkpoint near the mountains it was decided that this wasn't enough. The army manned the checkpoint and insisted on giving us an armed escort through the region. An army Landcruiser bushanab loaded with six men and a mounted fifty caliber machine gun stuck close to us for about half an hour before pulling off. Rural Yemenis are notorious for capturing Westerners and holding them for ransom to force the government to build infrastructure in their villages. The government figures it cheaper to prevent abductions than to continue building roads and powerlines to the middle of nowhere.

The ride back through the mountains took about six hours. I was still sick and dehydrated. I was starting to feel a bit delirious. We only stopped once so that Jason and Sultan could take lunch. I began feeling better once the climate cooled. The mountains are beautiful. The houses are built into the sides and tops of cliffs. It is the exact same style of building and decoration that I saw in the mountains between Dibba and al Fujariah at the southern end of Musandam. I have no doubt that the occupants of those mountains were orginially Yemenis who migrated to the far eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. We had one small traffic incident on the way back but no big ordeals. It was an interesting trip that I would rather have taken about three months back. I am hoping that the sick leaves me soon so that I can get back to full strength.

Talk to you ya'll soon.

--
Don Amboyer
amboyer@gmail.com
+971-050-8894656

Hizb Allah chief: We will keep our arms

2005-05-26T08:25:00.000-04:00

The interesting bit is that Jumblatt has sided with Hizballah against the political pressure being exerted by Aoun and the Christians. Jumblatt has taken an anti-Syria position. Hizballah has recieved substantial financial and military support from Syria. Hizballah has been on the retreat since the Syrian withdrawl. This alliance seems to based on the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle. From Al Jazeera.

"Any hand that reaches out to our weapons is an Israeli hand that will be cut off," Hizb Allah chief Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah told tens of thousands of supporters on Wednesday - the fifth anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

"We do not want to attack anyone and will not allow anyone to attack Lebanon, but if anyone, anyone, thinks of disarming the resistance, we will fight them like the martyrs of Karbala," he said, referring to a battle in Islamic history pivotal to Shias.

Druze leader Walid Jumblatt also spoke at the rally, defending Hizb Allah's right to keep arms. The prominent opposition leader told the thousands of Hizb Allah supporters that "We must not allow international interference to undermine Lebanon's principles".

Jumblatt recently forged an alliance with Hizb Allah in Mount Lebanon for the crucial parliamentary elections, due to kick off this Sunday.

Jumblatt, one of the most vocal critics of Syria's interference in Lebanese politics, said that Hizb Allah had to be protected "out of loyalty to slain premier Rafik al-Hariri".

Notes from Usama bin Laden's November 04 speech

2005-05-26T06:42:00.000-04:00

Some of you may never have read the actual unedited versions of bin Laden's speeches. The news reports don't do justice to the full weight of his words. Much like our government has a National Security Strategy so does Al Qai'da and it is largely laid out in this speech. I've copied a few excerpts but the full translation is at Al Jazeera.

No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours.

No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.

I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind.

The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced.

I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy.

The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond.

And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance.

Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us.

You can observe it practically, if you wish, in Kenya and Tanzania and in Aden. And you can read it in my interview with Abdul Bari Atwan, as well as my interviews with Robert Fisk.

The latter is one of your compatriots and co-religionists and I consider him to be neutral. So are the pretenders of freedom at the White House and the channels controlled by them able to run an interview with him? So that he may relay to the American people what he has understood from us to be the reasons for our fight against you?

It's slightly disconcerting to see that I agree with bin Laden that Fisk is unbiased.

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.

This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.

Sudan forces surround southerners

2005-05-24T07:41:00.000-04:00

Massive trouble. I've been through this area and the camps that the government wants to move these people to along the Kosti highway. From the BBC.

Several thousand armed Sudanese security forces have surrounded an illegal shanty town full of southerners displaced by two decades of civil war.

Machine guns mounted on pick-up vehicles are pointing at the ramshackle houses in Soba Aradi which is in a suburb of the capital, Khartoum.

Several lorry loads of men and women have been arrested, beaten with sticks and taken to a local police station.

Last week, 14 policemen died during an attempt to resettle residents.

At least three other people also died in the violence, which officials say happened as crowds surrounded a police station and burnt it down.

A spokesman for the residents said no-one was being allowed out of Soba Aradi.

"They have cordoned off all areas and have taken tough measures to stop people leaving," Mohamed Ahmed Abdel Gader Arbab told Reuters news agency.

Resettle

Some 50 people were arrested in connection with the police killings and 200 held on lesser charges, the BBC's Jonah Fisher reports from Khartoum.

He says 6,400 police officers and military were involved in the operation.

Some two million southerners squat illegally around Khartoum.

It's All Newsweek's Fault

2005-05-24T02:53:00.000-04:00

Hot damn! Op-ed from the Times.
---

IN the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Fareed Zakaria wrote a 6,791-word cover story for Newsweek titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" Think how much effort he could have saved if he'd waited a few years. As we learned last week, the question of why they hate us can now be answered in just one word: Newsweek.

"Our United States military personnel go out of their way to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care," said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, as he eagerly made the magazine the scapegoat for lethal anti-American riots in Afghanistan. Indeed, Mr. McClellan was so fixated on destroying Newsweek - and on mouthing his own phony P.C. pieties about the Koran - that by omission he whitewashed the rioters themselves, Islamic extremists who routinely misuse that holy book as a pretext for murder.

That's how absurdly over-the-top the assault on Newsweek has been. The administration has been so successful at bullying the news media in order to cover up its own fictions and failings in Iraq that it now believes it can get away with pinning some 17 deaths on an errant single sentence in a 10-sentence Periscope item that few noticed until days after its publication. Coming just as the latest CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll finds that only 41 percent of Americans think the war in Iraq is "worth fighting" and only 42 percent think it's going well, this smells like desperation. In its war on the press, this hubristic administration may finally have crossed a bridge too far.

Let's stipulate flatly that Newsweek made a serious error. For the sake of argument, let's even posit that the many other similar accounts of Koran desecration (with and without toilets) by American interrogators over the past two years are fantasy - even though they've been given credence by the International Committee of the Red Cross and have turned up repeatedly in legal depositions by torture victims and in newspapers as various as The Denver Post and The Financial Times. Let's also ignore the May 1 New York Times report that a former American interrogator at Guantánamo has corroborated a detainee's account of guards tossing Korans into a pile and stepping on them, thereby prompting a hunger strike. Why don't we just go all the way and erase those photographs of female guards sexually humiliating Muslims (among other heinous crimes) at Abu Ghraib?

Even with all that evidence off the table, there is still an overwhelming record, much of it in government documents, that American interrogators have abused Muslim detainees with methods specifically chosen to hit their religious hot buttons. A Defense Department memo of October 2002 (published in full in Mark Danner's book "Torture and Truth") authorized such Muslim-baiting practices as depriving prisoners of "published religious items or materials" and forcing the removal of beards and clothing. A cable signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez called for interrogators to "exploit Arab fear of dogs." (Muslims view them as unclean.) Even a weak-kneed government investigation of prison abuses (and deaths) in Iraq and Afghanistan issued in March by Vice Adm. Albert T. Church III of the Navy authenticated two cases in which female interrogators "touched and spoke to detainees in a sexually suggestive manner in order to incur stress based on the detainees' religious beliefs."

About the Newsweek matter Donald Rumsfeld had a moral to bequeath the land. "People need to be careful what they say," he said, channeling Ari Fleischer, and added, "just as people need to be careful what they do." How true. If one of his right-hand men, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, hadn't been barnstorming American churches making internationally publicized pronouncements that his own Christian God is "a real god" and Islam's god is "an idol," maybe anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, at record highs even before the Newsweek incident, would have been a shade less lethal. If higher-ups had been called to account for the abuses of Abu Ghraib, maybe Newsweek might have had as little traction in the Arab world as The Onion.

Then again, even the administration's touchy-feely proactive outreach to Muslims in the Middle East is baloney: Karen Hughes, appointed with great fanfare by the president in March as our latest under secretary of state for public diplomacy (the third since 9/11), runs a shop with no Muslims at the top - or would, if she were there. As The Washington Post reported, she doesn't intend to assume her duties until the fall and the paperwork for her confirmation has yet to be sent to the Senate. Why rush? It's not as if there's a war on.

Given this context, the administration's attempt to pass the entire buck to Newsweek for our ill odor among Muslims, including those Muslims who abhor jihadists committing murder, is laughable. Yet there's something weirdly self-incriminating about the language it uses to do it. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman whose previous boss, Colin Powell, delivered a fictional recitation of Saddam Hussein's weapon capabilities before the United Nations Security Council, said it's "shocking" that Newsweek used "facts that have not been substantiated." Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, attacked Newsweek for hiding "behind anonymous sources," yet it was an anonymous source, an Iraqi defector known as Curveball, who fed the fictions that Mr. Powell spouted to gin up America for war. Psychological displacement of this magnitude might give even Freud pause.

The only thing more ridiculous is the spectacle of the White House's various knee-jerk flacks on cable news shoutfests and in the blogosphere characterizing Newsweek as representative of a supposedly anti-American, military-hating "mainstream media." It wasn't long ago that the magazine and the co-author of the Periscope item, Michael Isikoff, were being cheered by the same crowd for their pursuit of Monica Lewinsky and Kathleen Willey.

As for the supposed antimilitary agenda of the so-called mainstream media, the right should look first at itself. In its eagerness to parrot the administration line, it's as ready to sell out the military as any clichéd leftist. For starters, it thought nothing of dismissing the judgment of Gen. Carl Eichenberry, our top commander in Afghanistan, who, according to Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the riots were "not at all tied to the article in the magazine."

The right's rage at Newsweek is all too reminiscent of the contempt it heaped on Specialist Thomas Wilson, the soldier who dared to ask Mr. Rumsfeld at a town hall meeting in Kuwait in December about the shortage of armored vehicles. Mr. Wilson was guilty of "near-insubordination," said Rush Limbaugh; the embedded reporter who helped him frame his question was reviled by bloggers as a traitor. Yet Mr. Wilson's question was legitimate, and Mr. Rumsfeld's answer (that the shortage was only "a matter of production and capability") was a lie. As USA Today reported in March, the Pentagon has known for nearly two years that it didn't have enough armored Humvees but let the problem fester until that insubordinate questioner gave the defense secretary no choice but to act.

It's also because of incompetent Pentagon planning that other troops may now be victims of weapons looted from Saddam's munitions depots after the fall of Baghdad. Yet when The New York Times reported one such looting incident, in Al Qaqaa, before the election, the administration and many in the blogosphere reflexively branded the story fraudulent. But the story was true. It was later corroborated not only by United States Army reservists and national guardsmen who spoke to The Los Angeles Times but also by Iraq's own deputy minister of industry, who told The New York Times two months ago that Al Qaqaa was only one of many such weapon caches hijacked on America's undermanned post-invasion watch.

IT is terrible that Newsweek was wrong, though it's worth noting, as John Donvan of ABC News did, that the Defense Department's claim that its story was "demonstrably" false is also an overreach. Almost nothing that happens in the sealed prison at Guantánamo is as demonstrable as, say, Saddam's underwear. But if something good can come out of something bad, the administration's overkill of Newsweek may focus greater public attention on just how much it is using press-bashing to deflect attention from the fictions spun by its own propaganda machine.

Just since the election, we've witnessed the unmasking of Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon. We've learned - thanks to Newsweek's parent publication, The Washington Post - that the Pentagon went so far as to deliberately hide the circumstances of Pat Tillman's friendly-fire death from his own family for weeks, lest the truth mar the P.R. advantages to be reaped from his memorial service. Even as Scott McClellan instructs Newsweek on just what stories it should write to atone for its sins, a professional propagandist sits as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Kenneth Tomlinson, who also runs the board supervising Voice of America and other government-run media outlets. He's been hard at work meddling in the journalism on NPR and PBS.

This steady drip of subterfuge and news manipulation increasingly tells a more compelling story than the old news that Newsweek so egregiously botched.

Is the U.S. retarding Arab reform?

2005-05-18T02:18:00.000-04:00

from Daily Star:

Two related and important issues that are widely debated these days among analysts, citizens and foreign military invaders of the Middle East are: Why has the pace of democratic reform been so inconsistent over the years, and what is the impact of the new American policy of promoting reforms in this region? It is critically important that the political debate, and the related diplomatic and cultural negotiations between Arabs, Americans and Europeans over these issues, be conducted with much more honesty than was the case, for example, with the thin debate over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before that country was attacked.

This trend has been driven by three related forces: homegrown demands for dignity and better governance by the citizens of the Middle East; increasingly vulnerable and more thinly legitimate Arab regimes that find it difficult to maintain the existing political and economic order; and external pressures to reform and modernize (mainly from the U.S., but also from Europe and other industrialized democracies).

In private conversations and public lectures here in Beirut this week, Hudson has outlined the strengths and weaknesses of the Arab democratic reform movement, and the role of the United States in it. Among the significant points he makes is that Arab liberalism has moved erratically in the past few decades, largely due to four factors: the strength of the authoritarian modern Arab security state, the fear of Islamists taking over political space that is opened up, the impact of economic stresses and imbalances, and the distorting effect of regional conflicts.

On the positive side, however, he points to several other trends now driving Arab reforms: the activism of a dynamic and democratic civil society, the mass media's capacity to inspire activists in one country by showing the breakthroughs of their colleagues in other Arab or foreign countries, and the structural changes required of governments if they wish to join global trading systems such as the World Trade Organization or bilateral free-trade agreements. On top of this, and perhaps most importantly, he says, authoritarian Arab regimes and leaders themselves sense their own growing weakness and inability to maintain their one-party power structures, because they see that their countries simply do not function very well in today's globalized, market-driven world.

Hudson clearly warns against the U.S. embracing Arab democrats and reformers too closely and "contaminating" them, because of the region's widespread deep suspicions of American motives and anger at American policies, especially in Palestine and Iraq. Many Arabs, he notes, fear that Washington's calls for reform hide deeper aims of regime change in other countries in the region.

Arab democratization will also bring in changes that might appear to contradict existing U.S. policies or values, including democratically elected religious leaderships with close links to Iran, governance systems based on sectarian, religious and ethnic sharing of the pie, and Arab state policies that are critical of the U.S.

Syria Heralds Reforms, But Many Have Doubts

2005-05-18T02:04:00.000-04:00

DAMASCUS, Syria, May 17 -- Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts.

Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the last gasp of a government staggering after its hasty and embarrassing troop withdrawal last month from neighboring Lebanon.

The debate over the changes comes during a remarkable surge in what constitutes dissent in this country of 18 million. For the first time in years, opposition figures and even government allies are openly speculating on the fate of a party that, in some fashion, has ruled Syria since 1963 in the name of Arab nationalism, and today faces perhaps its greatest crisis. The debate points to the most pressing questions in the country today: Can Syria truly reform itself and what might follow?

"We understand that democracy is a process -- a historical and political process -- but we are on the right track, and we have begun the mechanisms that will take us forward," said Imad Shueibi, who directs the Data and Strategic Studies Center in Damascus and says he is aligned with reformers within Assad's government. "This will be the first step."

Dissidents are dismissive of the government's capacity to sincerely reform. They see similarities between government moves here and in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, where President Hosni Mubarak has sought to introduce measured but controlled change.

"We have an archaic authoritarian regime, which is now a burden on itself. They want to streamline it and make it more attractive," said Yassin Hajj Saleh, a leftist dissident imprisoned for 16 years and freed in 1996. He calls the moves "the modernization of authoritarianism."

"The old model has ended, it is outdated, its age has passed," he said, "and they want to renew it."

Assad, who seems to remain popular in Syria, has pointed to next month's congress of the Baath Party as the centerpiece of the promised reforms. The congress, which has become the talk of the capital, was last convened in 2000 after Assad inherited power from his father, Hafez Assad. In the wake of the withdrawal from Lebanon, expectations were high that the congress might inaugurate a Syrian equivalent of glasnost. In past weeks, through the state media, those hopes have been steadily ratcheted down.

Clashes with Israel put Hizbullah back in global spotlight

2005-05-17T02:06:00.000-04:00

By Linda Dahdah
Daily Star staff
Monday, May 16, 2005

BEIRUT: As clashes between Hizbullah and Israeli forces continued over the weekend, international reactions brought the disarming of the Lebanese resistance group back into the spotlight only a few weeks before the start of parliamentary elections.

On Saturday, the French Foreign Ministry said France was disturbed by the "resumption of fire over the past three days on the frontier zone between Lebanon and Israel."

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman said: "In this period of preparation ahead of the elections, which will be crucial for Lebanon, we call on all parties involved to show the utmost restraint and to respect the calm needed for this vote to be carried out well."

"We call on all parties to immediately cease all attacks and to exercise calm and restraint," said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher late Friday.

"This is an especially sensitive and critical time for the Lebanese people, who will be voting in parliamentary elections ... This opportunity for reaffirming democracy in Lebanon must not be undermined by militias pursuing their own agendas," Boucher said.

"These incidents highlight the urgent need for full and immediate compliance by all parties with UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1583," he added.

Resolution 1559, adopted early last September, calls for all militias in Lebanon to disarm, targeting Hizbullah and Palestinian factions in refugee camps. Resolution 1583, adopted in January 2005, calls on Lebanon to assert full control over its border with Israel, explicitly stating that the UN sees no merit in Lebanon's claim to Shebaa Farms.

Since Friday, Israeli artillery and aircraft continued to pound the outskirts of Lebanese border villages early Saturday.

These clashes are the fiercest in four months and come after the Shiite group's second drone flight over Northern Israel earlier last month.

On Friday, Hizbullah said it had only opened fire on Israeli positions in the disputed Shebaa Farms district after Israeli machine-gun fire hit the Lebanese village of Kfar Shouba.

Lebanese security forces had added that Israeli air raids also hit the towns of Khiam and Rmeish, further west.

Israeli officials denied the accusations and launched retaliatory shelling saying it had destroyed four Hizbullah bases.

Hizbullah politburo member Rima Fakhry charged Saturday that Israel had cynically provoked the flare-up to intensify Western pressure on the resistance group.

"Lebanon's political elite is preoccupied with the forthcoming parliamentary elections and there's a tacit agreement here to postpone discussion of the question of Hizbullah's weapons. But that's not in Israel's interests, so they provoked this escalation in a bid to reopen the issue," she said.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied the Jewish state was interestd in any escalation on the border, European diplomats based in Beirut thought Israel had deliberately provoked Friday's flare-up.

"Israel wants to raise tension on the border to step up the pressure and secure the implementation of Clause Two of Resolution 1559" on militia disarmament, one diplomat said.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials declared "Hizbullah wants to trap Israel by unleashing a military conflagration in South Lebanon that would justify its continued existence as a militia."

"Having been on the defensive since the departure of the Syrian Army from Lebanon, Hizbullah wants to appear as a guarantor of Lebanese soverignty at Israel's expense in order to win more votes in elections that look bad for them right now," the declaration said.

After three decades of Syrian control, Lebanon is preparing to hold its first general elections without a Syrian military presence.

However, Isrraeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Friday: "We are following events in Lebanon closely. The Syrians continue to play a certain role despite announcing their troops have withdrawn."

As the situation went back to normal Sunday, Israeli aircraft continued their daily violations of Lebanese air space. - With AFP

Shiites in the Arab World

2005-05-14T09:37:00.000-04:00

Overview of Shia populations in the Arab Middle East; notice that Iran is excluded because of Persian ancestory. From a Carnegie Endowment brief.

While changing political conditions in Iraq and Lebanon have allowed for a more assertive political role by Shiites in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, they continue to be subjected to political, social, and economic discrimination. Although reliable statistics are rare, Shiites in Saudi Arabia are believed to constitute between 8 and 10 percent of the population. They are not well represented in official institutions; t here are no Shiite ministers, no Shiite members of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars (the country's highest religious authority), and only two Shiites in the 150-member Majlis Al Shura (consultative council). They also face limited employment opportunities; the government restricts employment of Shiites in the oil and petrochemical industries and in national security-related positions. Shiite candidates won most local council seats in recent municipal elections in the Eastern and Southern provinces, where Shiites are a majority.

Bahrain's Shiites represent around 60 percent of the local population but Sunni Muslims dominate politically and economically (the ruling Al Khalifa family is Sunni). Shiites complain that they are excluded from positions of power. Unemployment—officially estimated at 15 percent although it is probably higher—is concentrated in the Shiite community. Recently, thousands of demonstrators participated in a rally calling for constitutional reform organized by the Al Wefaq National Islamic Society and the Islamic Action Society (Shiite opposition groups; political parties are illegal). Observers are concerned that if not managed properly, these tensions could escalate into a conflict between Shiites and Sunnis.

In Kuwait, Shiites constitute around 25 percent of the population and maintain more cordial relations with the government, but are disadvantaged in representation in upper levels of government. Five Shiites were elected to the 50-seat National Assembly in July 2003 and the prime minister appointed one Shiite to the 16-member cabinet, although he later resigned.

Yemen's Zaidi Shiites, around 30 percent of the population, are concentrated mainly in the north. Since June 18, 2004, government forces have clashed in the mountains of the northwest with followers of Hussein Badreddine Al Houthi, a Shiite cleric who founded a radical group known as Believing Youth. The rebellion is not aimed at spreading Zaydi Shiism but rather is a protest against President Ali Abdullah Salih's pro-U.S. policies.

In Lebanon, the Shiite population is the largest single confessional group (approximately 40 percent). Under the leadership of Musa Al Sadr, it began to mobilize in the 1970s in response to its relative social deprivation. Al Sadr's influence led to the emergence of two major Shiite political parties: the Amal Movement and Hizbollah. Amal's leader Nabih Berri has been Speaker of Parliament (the highest political position that a Shiite can occupy according to the Lebanese Constitution) since 1992 and the party has 11 Shiite MPs in the 128-seat parliament. Hizbollah has 13 Shiite MPs and forms coalitions with other blocs in parliament. There are seven Shiite independent deputies.

The overthrow of the Baathist regime in Iraq resulted in major changes in the political representation of Iraqis. Iraqi Shiites (around 60 percent of the population) moved to the forefront of the political transition in Iraq, setting an agenda that addressed issues of Shiite political participation, the role of religion, and the coalition presence. To ensure their voting power was not diluted in the elections, leading Shiite political parties joined forces in the United Iraqi Alliance, which includes the Islamic Dawa Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Iraqi National Congress, and the Shiite Political Council. The new 32-member Iraqi cabinet is led by Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and includes eighteen Shiite ministers.

After reading the Shia primer there is a piece about politicalization of these traditionally disadvantged populations from the Carnigie Endowment.

Not since the Iranian revolution has the issue of Shiite political development been of such interest to observers of Middle Eastern politics. The success of Shiite candidates in the recent Iraqi elections, the prominent role played by Hizbollah in mobilizing its support base in Lebanon for pro-Syrian rallies, and the success of Shiite candidates in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province during that country's municipal elections have created the impression that there is a new expression of Shiite political identity underway within the region. With the United States' push for democratization in the region, the conditions may be present to alter the Shiites' historically inferior socioeconomic status through political action.

Before hastening to conclude that the recent electoral success of Shiite political parties in Iraq presages a surge in Shiite political activism in the region, observers should look at Shiite political activism in its local context. The diversity of Shiite political interests at play is perhaps best illustrated in Lebanon Here, the pro-Iranian Hizbollah represents some, though by no means all, of the Shiite population. Hizbollah's communal rival Amal was founded by religious scholar Musa Sadr, but is now headed by non-cleric Nabih Berri and looks towards Syria, rather than Iran, for support. The leading Lebanese Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, is capable of exercising political leadership given the size of his following, but he maintains his independence from both Shiite political parties in his country, as well as from the Iranian leadership. The Shiites also maintain a strong presence in the Lebanese Communist Party.

There is an unstated fear of Shiite politicization among Western policy analysts that is, in large part, based on the outcome of the Iranian revolution and a belief that Shiite politicization is always directed by clerics—and hence automatically anti-American. Such a view ignores the fact that Iranian-style theocratic rule is attractive to only a small percentage of Shiite political groups. Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, for instance, moved his elements of the Dawa Party away from Iran to avoid becoming too closely beholden to Iranian views of political leadership. Just as American fears that the Soviet Union was behind all socialist political movements during the Cold War blinded the United States to the real sense of political and economic injustice that spawned many such parties, policy analysts need to look critically at the circumstances that the Shiites find themselves in within each country before they assume that all Shiite political roads lead to Tehran.

All of this is not to deny there is a Shiite ideological construct that is extraterritorial in nature, or that Iran actively influences some Shiite political parties. In Iraq for instance, Iran's historic and educational links with its co-religionists in the south of the country provide a firm basis for cross-border influence-peddling. At the same time, the late Ayatollah Khomeini's notion of wilayat al faqih (governorship of the jurist) provides an ideological bridge that links the Iranian leadership to other Shiites in the region. Lebanon's Hizbollah and Iraq's Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) are two examples in which ultimate authority on issues of political ideology (as opposed to concrete policies) rests with Iran As Hizbollah has found in multireligious Lebanon, however, the conditions that allowed the concept of wilayat al faqih to be implemented in Iran do not exist in Lebanon Hence clerical political leadership for them remains a distant goal, rather than one that is achievable in the short or medium term.

Democratization offers the Shiites a way of overcoming their political disenfranchisement through the use of their demographic strength. The Iraqi election gave the estimated 60 percent of the population who are Shiites the ability to achieve the strong political voice denied them in the past. In Lebanon, both Shiite parties advocate changes to the electoral law that allocates to Shiites far fewer parliamentary seats than their numbers would justify. While the Shiites' attempts to alter the political status quo throughout the region go back over 40 years—from the attraction of leftist parties to the intellectual activity of Najafi scholars in the 1950s and 1960s—what is different now is that there is a more permissive international environment for transforming demographic strength into political power. That does not mean that countries will become clones of Iran if the Shiites attain political power; it will be local conditions and local leaders who determine the political direction of the Shiites.

Hizbollah, Israeli forces clash in border area

2005-05-14T04:45:00.000-04:00

from Reuters:

The clash raised tensions on the Lebanese frontier two days after a rocket fired from south Lebanon landed in a northern Israeli town, damaging a building but causing no casualties.

Hizbollah said it was shelling an Israeli position in the area in response to "Israeli assaults." Minutes earlier, witnesses said Israeli forces had begun shelling a hillside east of the Lebanese border town of Kfar Shouba.

Witnesses said several Hizbollah shells had struck the Israeli Rweisat al-Alam post.

The Israeli military said guerrillas in Lebanon fired six rockets or mortar bombs which fell near an Israeli army post along the border.

Four explosions and gunfire had been heard in the Shebaa Farms, on the border between Lebanon, Israel and Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, earlier on Friday.

Two explosions were also heard in the area overnight.

Picture power: Death of an Iraqi soldier

2005-05-13T08:26:00.000-04:00

Unseen in US

The first Gulf War was done entirely under the US Department of Defense Pool system, which means any press organisation that was a member of that pool had access to everyone else's work.

The film was processed and when the image got to the AP office in New York, they all made copies for themselves to show people but then they pulled it off the wire.

They deemed it was too sensitive, too graphic for the editors of the newspapers that are part of the co-op - too graphic even for the editors to see, not even to let them make the decision of what the market they served could see.

So, basically, it was unseen in the US.

In the UK it was published by the London Observer and I was actually going through Heathrow and I picked up the newspapers and I saw it was quite big, and that was basically the scene I thought I was going to see in all the newspapers around the world, since everybody had access to the image.

It caused quite a controversy in London, which is what images like that are meant to do. They're meant to basically cause a debate in the public: "Is this something we want to be involved in?"

How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed? You need to know what the end result will be, what the middle result will be.

And since then, it's an image that has a life of its own. It's been published hundreds of times, you can find all over the internet, it just keeps going and it's published as much today as it ever has been.

If we are going to engage in war, then we must understand the consquences of those actions regardless if they are just or unjust. It is important that we realize the cost to our soldiers and their families as well as our enemies. The full interview from the BBC.

Hezbollah confident of poll boost

2005-05-12T06:33:00.000-04:00

from BBC:

As elections near in Lebanon, the pro-Syrian and Shia Hezbollah movement can expect to maintain its share of political power and influence.

Mr Mansour believes that there is no reason for Hezbollah to disarm.

"The arms that we have are only directed against the Israelis," he says.

"If they do anything against us, we have to be ready for that. We are a political party and a resistance movement."

For a clear sign of Hezbollah's military role, all you have to do is drive a mile or so from Nazih Mansour's home to the border fence with Israel.

Within seconds, a Hezbollah soldier in camouflage uniform comes out from a bunker. He carries a walkie-talkie but no gun.

It's Hezbollah that runs this border zone, not the Lebanese army.

Captured Al-Qaeda kingpin is case of ‘mistaken identity’

2005-05-11T06:08:00.000-04:00

An article from The Times about confusion between Libbi and Liby. Whoops.

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as "a critical victory in the war on terror". According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists' third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as "among the flotsam and jetsam" of the organisation.

Another Libyan is on the FBI list — Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings — and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.

Although British intelligence has evidence of telephone calls between al-Libbi and operatives in the UK, he is not believed to be Al-Qaeda's commander of operations in Europe, as reported.

The Oz of the Middle East

2005-05-09T01:50:00.000-04:00

This guy nailed Dubai in five days but the most important section of the article is the last paragraph. Truer words cannot be spoken of the fake quality of Dubai except that those of us who live here do care that we essentially live in a giant compound. Read the entire article about what visiting Dubai is really like. Working and living here is a different story.

Down gleaming silvery escalators they glided, eyes afire and credit cards in easy reach. As a warm Tuesday night hung languidly over the Persian Gulf, a multicultural pageant of shoppers, diners and drinkers fanned out into the majestic, wintry-cool shopping mall beneath the Middle East's tallest building, the 1,163-foot Emirates Office Tower in Dubai.

Indian matrons in colorful saris and Middle Eastern women in black veils strolled through the pristine, white marble corridors, pausing to consider the worthiness of Gucci totes, Bottega Veneta shoes and Cartier diamonds. White-robed Middle Eastern businessmen, fat gold watches glittering from the edges of their sleeves, talked into green-glowing cellphones. Three Arab men in baggy jeans, looking like cast members from an Al Jazeera version of "The O.C." chatted warmly with three young European-looking women in spangly tops. Just behind them, boisterous British expatriates in business suits tried to push into the fray of Ladies' Night at an overpacked bar called Scarlett's.

Dubai is a metropolis of bone-white apartment blocks, green palm trees and amazing, odd juxtapositions. Thudding jackhammers mingle with the call to prayer. At Nad al Sheba racetrack, old-world camel racing by day gives way to glitzy thoroughbred action by night (the $6 million purse for one annual race in Dubai is, of course, the world's richest). Cruising the city by taxi on a five-day visit in February, I was reminded of the hot, flat sprawl of Tampa or Houston - until I glimpsed a fully veiled woman driving alongside my cab and saw two men in checkered headdresses pulling their Lamborghinis parallel to chat. Glossy financial magazines share rack space with titles like International Falconer.

In a dark corner nearby, a beanpole-like bald man from Liverpool looked at the odd old-young crowd and ersatz North African décor and made a remark that is probably repeated at least once every day in Dubai. "The whole thing is totally fake," he said to his date, "but no one seems to care."

Al-Jazeera Puts Focus on Reform

2005-05-08T05:05:00.000-04:00

An article from the Post about Jazeera.

The Arab world's most-watched satellite channel has been reviled in Washington since it began airing Osama bin Laden tapes and footage of insurgent strikes on U.S. troops in Iraq. Yet as the Bush administration struggles to design a public diplomacy program for its democracy campaign, al-Jazeera has become a leading vehicle for the region's budding reform movements.

"It's still the enemy. It still does stupid things," a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. When Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick was in Fallujah last month, "al-Jazeera reported his convoy was attacked. There was not a germ of truth. It was sensational, unprofessional and unsubstantiated, and fit into the past pattern of its coverage. Whatever else it's doing, the reaction here was: 'There they go again.' "

"It is the satellite channels that show the greatest potential for ushering in political change in the region . . ." the report says. "Inadvertently or not, they offer a locus for the Arab street to vent, formulate and discuss public affairs. They bring Arabs closer together, breaking taboos and generally competing with each other and their respective governments for the news agenda. All in all, Arab satellite stations have pushed ajar the door of democracy and flanked state monopoly on media."

I have never understood why the Bush administration hates Al Jazeera so. Well, actually I do. Jazeera shows images of dead Americans and that is not conducive to gaining national support at home. The administration has also made Jazeera into a larger entity because of ongoing harping about its broadcasts; they have helped to grow their "monster".

I don't see Jazeera in this light. I think Americans should see more dead from wars around the world; particularly of our own soldiers. We should be reminded of the very real human costs of our wars. Political events that lead to war increase human suffering. We should be reminded of this. When I watch a CBC newscast or documentary I am likely to see a images of those killed in war. That is necessary. War is killing. How can you talk about war in an abstract political way without acknowledging the killing? It's not being honest.

Jazeera may occasionally screw up some coverage, but I've yet to watch a news channel that doesn't at time misreport the facts and have to make corrections. What Jazeera does provide is access to a portion of the political pulse of the region; much more so than enduring the state run broadcasts. Al Jazeera is not an enemy. It is one tool to understand the region and can be a forum for reaching its viewership.

Bomb kills one, wounds 6 in the port city of Jounieh

2005-05-07T05:43:00.000-04:00

Who is behind this bombing? Is it the same bombers as the February and March bombings? Is this in response to Christian rallies of support for Geagea and Auon? Are the Syrians via Lebanese mukhabrat executing these strikes? Friday nights are still a dangerous time in Lebanon. An article from the Daily Star:

Friday, May 06, 2005

BEIRUT - A bomb exploded in a Christian port town north of the Lebanese capital on Friday, killing one Sri Lankan woman, wounding six people and damaging shops and houses, a security source said.

The explosion, the fifth to target the country's Christian heartland in two months, came on the eve of the return of anti-Syrian opposition leader Michel Aoun to Lebanon from 15 years of exile.

Four bombs have killed three people and wounded around 40 in Christian areas since the Feb. 14 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, which plunged the country into its worst political crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

Lebanese eye Palestinian posts

2005-05-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

Will the Lebanese turn attention to Palestinian armed factions and camps in the run-up to the elections? Will this be a way of avoiding the Hizballah question? How will the return of Geagea and Aoun have an effect on the debate? What of the alleged offer made by Abbas to Syria to disarm the Palestinian camps in Lebanon? Will the Palestine elections held yesterday help to solidify credability for Mahmoud Abbas and cement the dominance of Fatah? Do the Paleistinians in Lebanese camps owe allegiance to Abbas after Arafat's death? I didn't see posters of Abu Mazen in Sidon, but rather Arafat.

An article from CS Monitor.

QUSSAYA, LEBANON – On a lonely wind-swept plateau high above Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley, a commander in a militant Palestinian faction defiantly rejects disarming his men and dismantling the outposts scattered along the remote mountainous border with Syria.

The mountaintop position, some 3,000 feet above this village, is one of several in the Bekaa Valley manned by the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC).

Most Palestinians in Lebanon live in crowded refugee camps - some of which are heavily militarized. Although the refugee camps are ringed by Lebanese Army troops, they lie outside the jurisdiction of the Lebanese state.

Lebanese authorities are clearly reluctant to deploy troops in the heavily populated camps to forcefully disarm the Palestinians.

Lebanon: Exiled general to return

2005-05-05T03:36:00.000-04:00

This is bad news, but not unexpected. The support for Geagea is also distressing; he holds radical Christian views and advocates against the Muslim population. It was easy to find posters of Geagea scattered around Beirut, particularly Ashrafi, and I passed several pro-Geagea rallies.

Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian and staunch foe of Syria, was charged in 1990 with assaulting state security, national unity and the constitution, as well as embezzling state funds. But a court ruled on Wednesday that he was exempt from those charges by an amnesty law that cleared the bloody records of Lebanese politicians after the 1975-1990 civil war. Many Maronites say the arrest of Christian former militia leader Samir Geagea and the exile of Aoun symbolise the targeting of their community by the Syrian-dominated order after the war.

In a seperate aticle from the Daily Star protestors in Beirut called for the release of Geagea on Thursday.

BEIRUT: Thousands of opposition supporters gathered in downtown Beirut Wednesday to call for the release of Samir Geagea, leader of the disbanded Lebanese Forces (LF), who has been in jail for the past 11 years. Gathering near Parliament in Beirut, at least 3,000 flag-waving protesters urged MPs and the Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to act on an amnesty bill that would end Geagea's life term in prison.

Al Qaeda's No. 3 a major capture

2005-05-05T01:24:00.000-04:00

Abu Farraj al Libbi.

An article from CS Monitor giving the first public information about a Qaeda capture.

The capture of Abu Farraj al-Libbi, Al Qaeda's new No. 3 leader, in a remote region of Pakistan is a major step forward in the fight against terrorism, according to government officials and terror experts.

"Abu Farraj al-Libbi's one of the hard-core Al Qaeda members," says Bruce Hoffman, a terror expert at the RAND Corp. in Washington. "He's not as well-known to Americans as many of the 9/11-era Al Qaeda leaders. But since Al Qaeda's expulsion from Afghanistan, he has become an increasingly important player - stepping into the role vacated by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."

Robert Fisk

2005-05-04T05:33:00.000-04:00

I'm still reading the Robert Fisk book about Lebanon. I'm enjoying the style of writing and starting to gain a better understanding of Lebanon. I read this interview with him from 1998. I'm really starting to like this guy.

Jihad Crusaders

2005-05-04T02:32:00.000-04:00

Today I read an article from the Times reviewing the new movie Kingdom of Heaven. When I first saw the previews I groaned. I could already envision the conversations that would flow about the historical Western propensity to attack the Arab/Muslim population in their homeland that had been occuring for nearly a thousand years. There is already a buzz about the movie and, I am afraid, it will only re-enforce the existing views of American/Christian/Jewish aggression.

So, the article was good and led me to Crusader expert Professor Johnathon Riley-Scott and a short piece on the modern Islamic interpertation of the Crusades. This explanation jives with the view presented by Michael Scheuer in Imperial Hubris, a book I hold in very high regard. I've decided to include it here because it is short and very worth the read.

---
Jihad Crusaders
What an Osama bin Laden means by "crusade."

By Jonathan Riley-Smith

When Osama bin Laden and his followers refer, as they often do, to crusades and crusaders, they are not using language loosely. They are expressing a historical vision, an article of faith that has helped to provide moral justification for the actions of both Arab nationalists and radical Islamists.

It originated over a century ago, when the Turkish sultan and Sunni caliph, Abdulhamid II, publicized his conviction that the European powers, who had seized much of his territory and had engineered the "liberation" of other parts of his empire, had embarked on a new "crusade." In using this term, he was echoing romantic nonsense that had been washing around Europe, where many writers compared contemporary colonialism to crusading. But his language was taken up by the pan-Islamic press; the first Muslim history of the crusading movement, published in 1899, drew attention to the fact that "our most glorious sultan, Abdulhamid II, has rightly remarked that Europe is now carrying out a crusade against us in the form of a political campaign."

Up to this point, Muslims had looked back on the crusades with indifference and complacency. They felt that they had beaten the crusaders comprehensively, driving them from the Levant and occupying far more territory in the Balkans than the Westerners had ever held in Palestine and Syria. But as they began to take an interest in the historical parallels between contemporary and medieval Christian-Muslim interaction, they were confronted with Western rhetoric portraying contemporary empire builders as quasi-crusaders returning to complete the work their ancestors had begun. It was easy to gloss this with the view that Europe, having lost the first round in the crusades, had embarked on another. This struck a chord in Arab nationalism, which was beginning to emerge in response to the British and French occupations of much of North Africa and the Levant, and the settlement of Jews in Palestine.

Even before the First World War an Arab author, warning against the threat posed by Zionist settlement, had taken as a nom de plume the name of Saladin, who was being adopted as a model counter-crusader. A university named after Saladin was opened in Jerusalem in 1915, and as early as 1920 he was praised for thwarting the first European attempt to subdue the East. In 1934 a writer maintained that "the west is still waging crusading wars against Islam under the guise of political and economic imperialism." By the 1950s the creation of the state of Israel, established on the very ground occupied by the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, was being portrayed as an act of vengeful malice. The Lebanese novelist Mahmoud Darwish, referring to the invasion of Lebanon by the Israelis in 1982, described them as "leftover crusaders" and their siege of Beirut as "revenge for all medieval history."

Since the 1970s Arab nationalism has been challenged by pan-Islamism, an ideology enshrining the unity of all Muslims dedicated to the worship of one God. Islamists anathematize the nationalists, but they have adopted their view of crusading, even though the Islamists recognize its ideological base, and have globalized it. Nationalists, on the other hand, see crusading as colonialist avarice masked by religion, and their vision underwrites an Arab struggle for freedom from colonial oppression. The Islamists maintain that the term "crusading" can be applied to any offensive — including a drive for economic or political hegemony — against Islam anywhere by Christians, and to any aggressive action by their surrogates, like Zionists (which is why the terms "European Crusading" and "Jewish Crusading" are interchangeable), or even Marxists. Indeed, "international Zionism" and "international Communism" are ideologies employed by the imperialism of the outside world to mask its "crusaderism." This explains why Mehmet Ali Agha, the Turk who tried to assassinate the Pope in 1981, could refer to John Paul II as "the supreme commander of the crusades."

Osama bin Laden's militant wing of Islamism is also inspired by a theory of jihad that demands turning inwards to purge Islam of infidels and heretics, renewing individual spirituality and creating a united, triumphant society dedicated to God. This is why Osama appears to be so emotional about infidel penetration, which, he believes, defiles Islam and particularly its holy places:

Our lord, the people of the cross had come with their horses (soldiers) and occupied the land of the two Holy Places (Mecca and Medina) and the Zionist Jews fiddle as they wish with the al-Aqsa mosque.
The Arabian Peninsula has never — since Allah made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas — been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies, spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations.... For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples.

To be found fighting under the sign of the cross are not only Christians, but also their surrogates, Jews, Marxists and secularists. And Afghanistan has been for decades a theatre of crusading warfare in a world-wide conflict.

This is a battle of Muslims against the global crusaders....God, who provided us with his support and kept us steadfast until the Soviet Union was defeated, is able to provide us once more with his support to defeat America on the same
land and with the same people.

In a war of civilizations, our goal is for our nation to unite in the face of the Christian crusade...This is a recurring war. The original crusade brought Richard (Lionheart) from Britain, Louis from France and Barbarossa from Germany. Today the crusading countries rushed as soon as Bush raised the cross. They accepted the rule of the cross.

It is this radical vision of crusade history which has suddenly and spectacularly forced itself on the outside world. Although merely a fantasy to the West, it finds expression in many Muslim societies. It is said that in mosques in Egypt, the word "crusader" has become a synonym for "Christian." In Indonesia last year, local preachers were referring to the dead at Bali in the same terms.

We are therefore confronted by a dangerous view of the past and of the present, moral as well as historical, shared by both Arab nationalists and Islamists. It has been spreading for a century and nothing has been done to counter it. Indeed, over and over again, in words and deeds, Westerners have thoughtlessly reinforced many Muslims' belief in it.