THE ARAB LEAGUE OF SYCOPHANTS

The Arab League Summit has concluded on a note the Arab street has, unfortunately, grown accustomed to: hollow rhetoric of condemnations, recycled resolutions chief of which is an independent Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, and the senselessly obdurate demand that Israel makes land concessions, namely, the territories it occupied after 1967.  

The Arab League, since its inception in 1945, has achieved a few minor successes such as containing the Lebanese civil war of 1958, advancing cultural exchange programs between member states, and improving the status of women in some Arab countries. It has remained largely impotent in addressing serious political, social and economic issues presently hindering the progress of Arab nations. The two biggest conflicts in the Middle East today – the Israeli-Palestinian issue and Iraq – highlight the limitations of the Arab League to affect decisions in Arab issues. In 2004, when Yasser Arafat was sequestered by Israel with the backing of the U.S. as the League was convening, the member states’ response was silence. When Saddam Hussein, a member of the Arab League, was detained by U.S. forces in December of 2003, the Arab League responded by silence. The conflict between Morocco and Algeria’s proxy, Polisario, has proven to be outside of its league. The dire situation of Darfur was not worthy of mention. Lebanon’s presidential quagmire has gone unaddressed mostly because the instigator happens to be the host of the League Summit this year.  Even Qatar’s territorial dispute with Iran and Bahrain is quite challenging for the Arab League. Advancing democracy, challenging human rights violations orchestrated by its member governments, the freedom of press, the alarming prevalence of Islamic radicalism, terrorism, and similar concerns were never pressing issues in the Arab’s consortium.    

The only attempt at establishing a unified economic front started in 1982 – much earlier than the European Union – through the Gulf Cooperation Council. It has been an utter failure; no unified monetary system, no trade tax agreements, no common market, no common labor laws, diverging political agendas; if you travel to Arab countries, you’ll realize that we do not share a common culture, nor do we enjoy a common language. We have been made to think that we have a common history; We don’t. What the majority of “Arabs” have in common is a basic understanding of Islam. Even Islam has been used as a political tool creating discordance among different peoples.   

Amr Moussa, the Secretery General, announced that the league has adopted a Yemani initiative that will end all disputes between Fatah and Hamas. Don’t hold your breath. He was right when he lamented the lack of trust between the League’s members. They are all political and economic backstabbers with drastically divisive loyalties.  

What good is an Arab League whose members – the kings and the presidents – are unrepresentative of their people, advance agendas of international superpowers such as the U.S. and Russia, lack political and economic bargaining chips to be considered seriously in the international arena, and lack – worse, never, since Gamal Abdelnasser, had the political or economic initiative?  

If you don’t have the initiative, you have nothing. What you have is semantic folderol. A parsing of words.  

The only concern the Dictators’ League seems to have is deluding the Arabs about its illusionary relevance.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

CHINA, MOROCCO, AND THE NINI A MOUMOU VERDICT

The Chinese government has taken bold measures to prevent international news media outlets from reporting on the Tibetan uprising. It restricted the journalists’ movement in Tibet and its neighboring regions. It also blocked internet access to CNN, BBC, Youtube, and other websites relaying information from that region. Chinese journalists face callous reprisal if their reporting strays from the government’s editorial line. Such undemocratic measures are to be anticipated in a country where the human rights abuses record makes the holocaust seem like a high school graduation ball. 

On a similar note, the Moroccan government, through its subservient judicial system, has taken measures to rein back independent local news media outlets and prevent them from reporting on government officials and their activities. Thus, Al Masae, a widely popular daily Arabic newspaper, saw its editor, Rachid Nini, stabbed in court … (did I say “stabbed?” It’s getting confusing. He was attacked by a man brandishing a knife in Rabat train station. Nothing to do with trying to silence him and shutting down his paper.) Anyway! He was accused of libel, fined $17,348.59, and ordered to pay the exorbitant amount of $867,350 in damages to the defendants. The defendants are four judges on whom Mr. Nini reported, without mentioning their names, as having attended a gay marriage ceremony in Ksar El Kebir (not that there is anything wrong with that.) Mr. Nini intends to appeal the ruling. If, subsequently to the appeal, the ruling is not overturned, Mr. Nini’s last recourse would be the foolproof redress system Morocco has in place for such high profile cases: the royal pardon. The royal pardon here will highlight the freedom of press we enjoy in Morocco. Paying the fine and the damages will have deleterious consequences on Al Masae (Nini a moumou.) But it’s only then that the four judges will be able to afford the sex change they’ve longed for all their lives. Considering how repressive this political verdict is, the Judge who ruled in the case could have been from China … 

The Moroccan gay community should consider suing Mr. Nini for libel for associating them with four Moroccan judges.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

THE VALUE OF MY WORD

A horde of published poets and others who are not so famous descended on Washington, D.C. this past weekend for a four day celebration of poetry and protest against the war in Iraq. The gathering was titled Split This Rock Poetry Festival. What rock? Sonia Sanchez, the famous Philadelphia based poet explained the title saying: “Any Rock that interferes with progress.” The poets congregated in, among other places, Busboys and Poets, a jazzy restaurant, café shop, bookstore, and gathering place for artists, poets, writers, and students alike, all militants for peace and justice. The owner Andy Shallal, an Iraqi American, is himself a longtime peace militant. The place’s name is a tribute to Langston Hughes who was working at the Wardman Park Hotel in D.C. where famous Russian poet Nicholas Vachel Lindsay stayed. Lindsay informed the world that he discovered a “negro busboy poet.” I have attended many readings in the artistically decorated Langston room. It’s one of my favorite hang outs in the D.C. area.  

One of the main topics discussed by the poets and the attendees is the impact of words in this time of politicized violence. Martin Espada, author of 12 books and an English professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst put it best:  

People in this society are starved for meaning. In a time of war, the government divorces language from meaning … They drain the blood from words. Poets can put the blood back into words.”  

I agree! I think Espada’s words apply just as well to militant bloggers around the world. 

Such should be our mission: to uncover truths, denounce injustices, and relay the voices of those for whom no one stands, brandish the causes of destitute children, women and men, keep the memory of the opinion and political prisoners rotting in a dungeon alive, and nudge those who don’t know any better. Do not cower like those whose minds are strapped in a straightjacket of fear. Believe it that they will come around. Let’s not make the passing of those who perished believing they could change the world with words be vain. Stand against religious and political oppression. Stand for a culture that “values human rights and sanctifies human life.”  

This is why we are here. To instill some sense in this nonsensical world and to stoke the fledgling spark of hope. Is it not?  

Write on, with conviction!

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

LIVE FROM BAGHDAD

I remember a time in Baghdad when the pungent smell of decomposing bodies was pervasive. Dead bodies littered the streets for days, even weeks before Iraqis dared to bury them. “We couldn’t come out, but we had to,” says Ja’ffar, a 26 years old electronics whiz living in Al Yarmouk. “The Americans shot and killed two men in a car not far from our house. Their tanks established a checkpoint where our street intersects with Saddam Hussein International Airport road. They saw and smelled those dead men everyday. It took us a while to realize that it’s become our responsibility to bury the dead.”

When the American forces entered Baghdad in April of 2003, the Saddam Hussein International Airport was one of their primary targets. Now, it is a complex of U.S. military camps. Its name was changed to Baghdad International Airport, BIAP for short.

“The whole neighborhood smelled of death. The smell stayed for a long time after we buried the two men.” Nobody knew who they were.

The smell of death is gone from the streets, but dead bodies still turn up in Baghdad. They are collected everyday and deposited at the Baghdad morgue where the nauseous odor clings to the walls, the gurneys. Often, during power outages, entering the morgue becomes unbearable. But Iraqis are inured to the whiff of death and to its torturous form as bodies with drill and bullet holes, broken bones, and decapitated heads and limbs flood the morgue.

“2005 and 2006 were the worst,” says Abu Rana, a former veterinarian who now owns a cell phone shop in Al Dora. “Everyday, 40 to 50 bodies turn up dead. Some tortured, Some as young as 10.”

Everyday during those years, 40 to 50 people were kidnapped. The reasons varied from the political to the religious and the criminal.

In 2005 and 2006, the insufficient number of U.S. troops on the ground and the lack of a strong counter-insurgency strategy made for a fledgling security posture. Consequently, a significant security vacuum was generated exacerbating the ethnic and religious chasms and violently exposing feuds that had been bubbling vexingly underneath the surface.

The Shiite, under the banner of Jaysh Al Mehdi and its special groups, and the Sunnis, protected by Al Qaeda and its sympathizers, battled for ascendancy in Baghdad neighborhoods. Jaysh Al Mehdi, launching from its strong popular base in Sadr City and supported by a sympathetic Shiite government, swept through Sunni neighborhoods west of Baghdad. The Sunnis were kidnapped and killed; their families violently intimidated and forced to leave; their upscale homes quickly acquired new residents: the Shiite impoverished families from disaffected neighborhoods such as Sadr City. Jaysh Al Mehdi established offices in the newly misappropriated sections of the city and set up roadblock. It garnered a popular base by fomenting against the U.S. occupation. The Shiite militia infiltrated the police force, took control of the hospitals and the gas stations, and used force to impose a de facto control over Baghdad. It’s thus that Moqtada Al Sadr, who never figured in any U.S. intelligence threat assessment or even in the media before 2003, became a political force to reckon with in Iraq.

The situation sent the Sunnis scrambling for protection. The U.S. forces lacked the manpower and understanding to offset the Jaysh Al Mehdi’s plan to wipe out the Sunni population and take Baghdad over. Al Qaeda exploited a strategic military mistake by the U.S. and established itself in Baghdad as a protecting force for the Sunnis. The tit for tat led to the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Taif just turned eighteen when he and two of his friends were hanging out in Bayaa, a middle class neighborhood southwest of the International Zone (IZ). He was born in that neighborhood and his family is well-respected there. A speeding BMW pulled next to them and a large masked man jumped out, snatched Taif, shoved him in the backseat, and jumped in after him. In a blink of an eye, the car was speeding away.

With a hurried and frightened voice he tells me his story. “The man who grabbed me was hammering my head and back with his pistol. I punched wildly and kicked. He was trying to get on top of me and pin me to the floor of the car, but I threw a good punch and got him in the groin. I sat up with my back against the door and started kicking. The man sitting in the passenger seat reached to grab me, but the door I was leaning on opened and I fell as one of them was yelling: “this is not your day.” I don’t know how I was able to get up and run. They still came after me shooting, but I was able to escape.”

Taif’s father sent him to Syria the very next day, where he remained for a year and half until his visa expired. Syria imposed new restrictions on Iraqi visa applicants making it harder for Taif, who was unemployed, to extend his stay.    The day he returned to Baghdad, he was walking to his house when he was stopped by two strangers armed with AK 47s. They identified themselves as Jaysh Al Mehdi members and wanted to know who he was and what he was doing there. “I live here. This is my neighborhood,” he told them.

“How come I have never seen you before?”

He explained that he was in Syria and he just returned. Two of his childhood friends who happened to be Shiite came up to the two men.

“He’s my cousin,” one of them said.

“Do you vouch for him?”

“I do!”

“Don’t ever let me see you here again,” one of the men said to Taif.

Taif’s father, through his connections, was able to find him a job in one of the U.S. military Forward Operating Bases. Taif, once a warm and radiant young man, shuns contact with the outside world until he renews his visa to Syria. His ordeal is not an exception. All the Iraqis I have talked to relate horrific stories of the killings, kidnappings, torture, and displacement of family and friends.

Teachers were assassinated before their students’ eyes by Al Qaeda terrorists who thought the curriculum was not Islamic enough; children were kidnapped for ransom and sometimes killed even if their poverty stricken parents paid; doctors are threatened by Shiite murderers with death and coerced to report on Sunni patients who are then killed in their hospital beds. The accounts are endless.

Both Al Qaeda and Jaysh Al Mehdi overplayed their hands. The sectarian/civil war, although unraveling friendly and familial relationships, did not break the Baghdadis’ resolve to rally against those they now consider an impediment to progress and peace. They grew exceedingly impatient with the austere version of Islamic law Al Qaeda imposed and the murderous bullying of Jaysh Al Mehdi. Internal divisions within the two groups precipitated their breakdown as the U.S. troop surge entered into effect. By August, 07, a relative calm befell the city.

“It’s true that the security situation is much better now than in the past two year, but it’s not as good as before 2003. Saddam was a dictator, but people had security, employment, basic services. Look outside! What do you see?” asked Abbas, a frail looking man with dark bags under his limpid eyes. Outside his foodstuff store, heaps of garbage line the street. Fetid sewage pooled over a large surface and the unpleasant stench of human waste was unrelenting. Even garbage collectors have been killed in the performance of their duties.                       

“It’s been five years now and we haven’t seen anything of what they promised us,” lamented Ammar, a dentist who lives in Palestine street. The country’s archaic power grids are badly damaged and produce less electricity than pre-war era. Baghdadis enjoy no more than two to three hours of electricity a day.

“I pay fifty thousand Dinars to a neighborhood cooperative for a few hours worth of power from their generator. I bought a small generator that can barely sustain the fridge and the television. The fuel is expensive and often unavailable,” Ammar said.

As the hot season approaches, power outages become a nagging challenge. Children and the elderly suffer the brunt of the scorching heat as air conditioners that have surpassed their shelf life conk out and the water trickles.

“The water is undrinkable,” said Ammar. “It’s murky and I have even found worms in it sometimes,” he added his voice dripping with disgust. “But we drink it anyway.”  

The panoply of persistent problems the Iraqis face is staggering. Some of these problems they feel are insurmountable. But there is hope. The majority of the Iraqis I encountered, regular citizens eking out a living by whatever honest means possible, recognize that progress fundamentally depends on security and strongly believe that if the U.S. forces leave, the situation will rapidly deteriorate, civil war will ensue and thousands more will die. A precipitous American withdrawal will create a political and security void that Jaysh Al Mehdi, Al Qaeda and their ilk are willing to fill to the detriment of the Iraqi moderates.

Both Sunni and Shiite unanimously agree that the Al Maliki government is an Iranian puppet and that the U.S. needs to solve the social, economic, and political problems it created. How can a country as rich as Iraq be mired in poverty?

In the past five years, the U.S. has spent in excess of $600 billion; Over four thousand U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have perished. The Iraqis today feel that the current stability is unsustainable; their government’s credibility is bankrupt; their economy is weak.

“But the Arab street wants the Americans to leave Iraq. Don’t you agree with them?” I asked Aamar, the dentist. 

“Not one single Arab demonstrated when the Sunnis and Shiites were killing each other and everyone else around them,” he inveighed.

So what’s next?

“Rinse, spin, and repeat!”           

  

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

                                  

FOUAD EST LIBRE, MAIS…

Yes! Fouad has been freed, but has justice been served?

I think not.

The Royal pardon, while a welcome positive development of the tragic miscarriage of justice that landed Fouad Mourtada in Jail, does not exonerate him. It is not a reform of the judicial system; it does not address the fundamental flaws plaguing it. The police still operate with the same refractory “lead years” mindset that reasoned Fouad’s youth impetuousness into a crime. The overly sycophantic judges and prosecutors are still using the same retrograde principles and approaches in their interpretation of the law and justice. The corrective process through which Moroccans can redress such judicial flaws as they might happen is non-existent. The establishment of a system that will allow the checking and balancing of unfairly rendered judgments is necessary. The quiddity of Justice is a system that fairly serves the people and not obsequiousness to its political masters. And a Royal pardon is not it.

I am overjoyed that Fouad is finally free, but I am saddened his freeing is been used by Moroccan autocrats as a false banner of justice in the Kingdom.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

DRAWING EVIL

I concede that there are a handful of detainees in Gitmo that are die-hard and unrepentant terrorists who deserve the unmitigated impact of the law. As I have indicated in a previous article, the majority of the detainees are innocent individuals who, if due process was granted, could have been freed years ago. My presumption of innocence is grounded in the simple fact that up until this moment, the Pentagon fails to bring charges against them. The Pentagon and the Gitmo military commanders cringe at the thought that these presumably innocent detainees could possibly be set free. “If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off?” asks Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes. It is becoming imperative that they impose the restrictive regulations necessary to grant military prosecutors and judges the upper hand and shield the actions of Gitmo jailers and interrogators from public scrutiny. If they could erase the memories of the detainees to prevent them from relating to the world the gratuitous brutality they have endured in Guantanamo, they would do so.

(Copyright Fernando Bottero)

Today, Gitmo authorities attempted just that; they censored the heart churning drawings of a detainee depicting himself as a skeleton stretched on a gurney, his head double strapped, a hose forcefully slithered through his nose and into his body. It is the force-feeding practice the Gitmo jailers have been practicing. It is standard operating procedure (SOP) vis-à-vis hunger strikers in Guantanamo. The drawings were penciled by no other than the Sudanese Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj who has been on a hunger strike for 432 days.

Guantanamo detention center justifies this abrogation of the law by the fact that al-Qaeda trains its operatives to allege inhumane treatment. Again, Sami Al-Haj has not been charged with anything yet. But the presumption of guilt, just like the force feeding, is a standard practice in Gitmo. I wonder if the Gitmo leadership just lounges around under those royal palm trees brainstorming about the most efficient ways to further entrench international contempt of the U.S and squander the remainder of its reputation.  

Unfortunately, such demarche is not typical of Guantanamo, the Pentagon, or the White House. It is an institutional mindset in the U.S. This refusal to be reminded of the atrocities (Nagasaki and Hiroshima, My Lai, Abu-Ghraib, Guantanamo to cite a few) the administration orchestrated in the name of its constituents stems from a Puritan culture that strives to be portrayed as just, compassionate, and upholding those unalienable rights with which the Creator endowed Man. When Fernando Bottero, the renowned Colombian painter and sculptor whose work was sought by galleries and museums in the U.S. and elsewhere, produced eighty-two paintings as a testimonial to the horrors of Abu Ghraib, he couldn’t find a single American Museum to display them until the last quarter of 2007. 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008        

BAXTER’S “THE SOUL THIEF”, OR FREE FOUAD

Here is a book I would like to recommend to the prosecutor who indicted Fouad Mourtada on charges of identity theft because he created a fake Facebook profile of HRH Prince Moulay Rachid and the Kafkaesque judge who sentenced him to three years of prison. It is Charles Baxter’s latest and by far his best novel since he started publishing in 1987. The title is “THE SOUL THIEF.” The story tackles the issue of identity and its ownership as the life of a tepid protagonist, graduate student Nathaniel Mason, collides with fellow student Jerome Coolberg’s. The latter is described as a psychopathic attention-seeking and disconcerting individual who becomes obsessed by the persona of Nathaniel. He insidiously, yet cunningly, starts incorporating details of Nathaniel’s life into his own life history; with the complicity of a friend named Theresa, he even hired a thief to break into his room and steal his clothes; he would later put them on and strut in front of Nathaniel mimicking his mannerisms not in a comedic way, but rather seriously. Nathaniel finally succumbs to a breakdown. It takes him thirty years to recover his soul which he feels it was “mortgaged.” In those thirty years, he becomes a family man, married with two sons. One day, out of the blue, he receives a call from Coolberg who is now a famous radio personality.

What I liked about this novel is the fact that Baxter crafted the character of Coolberg in such a way that he is the essence of the story. Nathaniel, the identity theft victim, is a pale and unimpressive shadow of a character that blends into the background. Why would Coolberg be interested in such an apathetic man is a mystery. Why would Fouad Mourtada be sentenced to three years is not such a big mystery; I just think the judge and the prosecutor do not know the definition of “identity theft.” I understand they might get queasy just thinking about reading a book that is not in their official reading list which I doubt they ever stray away from without an approval from the temerarious voice in the telephone, but I think it would do them good. It’ll take their minds off the sepulchral gloom pervading their lives … if they have any. The true victim here is Fouad; he is literally robbed of his life.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

“AMULET” BY ROBERTO BOLANO

“Amulet,” coming out this month, is Chilean born Roberto Bolaño’s latest work to be translated into English. Bolaño, who died July 15, 2003, is said to be the most influential Latin American writer of his generation. Like Fante, Bukowski, and Choukri, Bolaño writes in a deceptively simple and stylistically bold style that is deeply rooted in a pragmatism mainstream literature, against which he had an unabated hatred, finds too raw.

“Amulet” is the story of and narrated by Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan poet living illegally in Mexico. Auxilio, who refers to herself as “the mother of Mexican poetry,” was holed up in the university bathroom reading a poetry book for twelve days while Mexican army occupied the National Autonomous University in Mexico; it was 1968, and days before the Tlateloco massacre caused by Mexican president Gustavo Diaz Ordaz when he ordered the army to indiscriminately fire into a large crowd of students protesting at Mexico City’s Plaza of Three Cultures. When she emerges from the Bathroom, she is seen as the surviving embodiment of the revolution. The reader can never be sure about that fact because the “I” narration occludes outside opinions of her. The character of Auxilio is typical of other Bolaño’s novels. She is a convergence of incongruous attributes. She is not attractive – missing her front teeth and challenged in terms of personal hygiene, but she effuses realism. She evokes in the reader sympathy for being illegally in Mexico and trapped in the bathroom of a university overtaken by Mexican soldiers; one can not help but feel the intensity of her fear. The opening passage of Amulet reads: 

“This is going to be a horror story. A story of murder, detection, and horror. But it won’t appear to be, for the simple reason that I am the teller. Told by me, it won’t seem like that. Although, in fact, it’s the story of a terrible crime.”      

Other books of Bolaño I recommend: The Last Evening on Earth,  The Savage Detectives, and By Night in Chile.

 Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

THE GET “MO” POLICY

The royal palm fronds, slowly swayed by the northeastern trade winds against the cloudless blue sky, seem to be untiringly dancing to the vibrant rhythms of the syncopated beat of the rumba. The vast turquoise sea, like a mulata drunk on life, is inviting. The sloshing of the waves as they crawl onto the white sandy beach is rather soothing. As you are facing the bay, the Cuzco Hills, timeless rolling beauties, stand guard behind you, protecting you from a recalcitrant Norther. On John Paul Jones hill, you can’t help but notice the four white wind turbines dominating the landscape.  

But you are not lounging under the speckled shade of a palm tree sipping on a Mojito; you are not in Veradero, or Cayo Coco. The beach does not swell with locals and tourists seeking the refreshing embrace of its crystal water. There is a lingering uneasiness here. The air is saturated with desperation and beset by injustice. The culture is callous to Islam and Arabs. 

Welcome to Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of innocent men, guarded by obdurate and irascible soldiers, lead a precarious existence. 

The U.S. government only pays $4,085 to lease this 45 square miles of paradise converted to middle age era style dungeons. The Castro regime has tried unsuccessfully to break the lease since it took power in 1959 and has refused to cash any of the checks. 

MEET THE TERRORISTS 

It is here where Haji Nasrat Khan, who at 79 is the oldest prisoner at Guantanamo, was brought to die. You could see him hobbling with his walker from the detention wing to the interrogation booth sometimes. He can not hear or see very well. The cool breeze as it sifts through his flowing white beard summons a smile on his furrowed face. Khan became the oldest detainee after the release of a 90 years old Afghani man military guards endearingly called “al-Qaeda Claus.” 

Former Guantanamo commander Gen. Jay Hood, as well as other officers and interrogators who were stationed at the naval base, attested that many of the detainees in Guantanamo have no link to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. They were sold to the U.S. forces for a bounty by Pakistani police and security services and Afghani warlords that allied themselves with the U.S. when it attacked Afghanistan in 2001. One such warlord is Rashid Dostum.  

DOSTUM’S TRAVEL PACKAGE 

Dostum put thousands of heavily armed afghan fighters under his command at the disposal of the U.S. As a warlord, his power is grounded in fear and sheer brutality against his opponents. Being a U.S. ally gave Dotsum added authority in Afghanistan; authority that he promptly abused. During Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), he is believed to have committed war crimes against not just Taliban fighters and their families and villages, but against other Afghanis whose lands and houses he misappropriated. There are accounts of his “soldiers” locking thousands of Afghanis they made prisoners in freight containers and leaving them to die of asphyxiation and dehydration; when some of the detainees, in the troughs of death, cried out for help, Dotsum’s men haphazardly fired their weapons into the containers killing many of them. Later their bodies were ditched into mass graves like unwanted trash. 

Some of the Guantanamo detainees were in those containers. 

The Bush administration feels no compunction at sidestepping the Geneva Convention, justifying detaining these men on the basis they did not obey the rules of war; they did not wear a uniform; they did not sport an insignia, they did not belong to a regular army; they are terrorists. It is the adherence to the rules of war that discerns the U.S. and it allies from the terrorists. Ironically, all of Dotsum’s “soldiers” did not wear a uniform or insignia. Several U.S. units also operated, and still do, in Afghanistan carrying concealed weapons and wearing civilian clothing that bore no unit patches or rank insignia. When Dotsum arbitrarily executed prisoners and sacked Kabul, the U.S. averted its gaze. The Bush administration’s position is, needless to say, riddled by hypocrisy. 

THE UNDUE PROCESS 

I am fully aware that some of the Guantanamo detainees are committed terrorists who reveled in the bloodshed and spread it with rapturous fury. But I have always deprecated the fact that innocent people in Guantanamo are detained for reasons other than judicial. The Guantanamo Bay naval base will go down in history as the symbol that obliterated the U.S. claim to uphold the rule of law. The U.S. government did not extend a modicum of due process to the detainees. In the early stages of the detention, the Pentagon directed the Judge Advocate General (JAG) to appoint military lawyers not to defend the detainees, but to obtain confessions from them. This presumption of guilt is an affront to the U.S constitution and international law.

The military commissions established to try the detainees denied them the basic right to adequately defend their cases. When the Department of Defense reluctantly authorized civilian lawyers to represent detainees, it erected onerous regulations for their work so much so that they are unable to provide a fair and sustainable defense of their clients. They are barred from private meetings with their clients; they are required to turn in to the military all their notes and mail; their clients are not allowed to review classified evidence against them – all evidence is classified; the government as represented by military prosecutors,  citing national security concerns, reserves the right to withhold information on the detainee – no disclosure; correspondence between lawyers and their clients are screened by a Defense Department Privilege Team, whose mission is to confiscate what is deemed not to be “legal mail.”  

When a detainee named Salim Ahmed Hamdan challenged his captivity and petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of habeas corpus, which was designed to thwart arbitrary executive detentions, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Judges ruled in his favor. The Bush administration counteracted by convincing Congress, which was then dominated by the Republicans, to pass the Military Commission Act (MCA.) MCA effectively rescinded the federal ruling and denied the alleged illegal combatants the Great Writ. Congress also passed the Detainee Treatment Act which stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions of Guantanamo detainees. This reprehensible collusion of the U.S. Congress to assist the administration in restoring the military tribunals after the Supreme Court revoked them as being unconstitutional is proof that the government’s case against the majority of Guantanamo detainees is baseless. Indeed, against the majority of those it ostentatiously designated illegal enemy combatants and terrorists, the Bush administration did not adduce an iota of evidence. It stripped them of their rights, holds them indefinitely, but fails to bring charges against them. None could be brought against most of them. Even the label of “illegal enemy combatant” was challenged as erroneous by internal reviews. The military tribunal system the U.S. government proposes is so utterly dysfunctional that the American Bar Association refused to participate.  

To shed a positive light on the military tribunals, the administration emphasized that evidence obtained through torture will not be authorized, but evidence gleaned through treatment considered “cruel, inhumane, and degrading” will be allowed. It is quite a feat of semantic folderol. For added clarity, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartman, the military commissions’ legal advisor, explained that he will not rule out the use of evidence obtained through waterboarding. Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, infamously known for having been instrumental in the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay prison and authorizing what are euphemistically called “coercive interrogation techniques” on terrorism suspects, best describes the U.S. policy vis-à-vis the Gitmo detainees. When Mr. Haynes was told by Col. Morris D. Davis, then the chief military prosecutor in Guantanamo, that there might be some acquittals during the trials, his response was:  “Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We’ve got to have convictions.”  

Such is the Bush administration’s judicial and political logic in combating terrorism. Mr. Haynes response provides a glimpse of what I fear will be the future for the Gitmo detainees. Saddam Hussein couldn’t have justified his absolutist vision better.                          

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

Maalouf’s “Origins” and Maraini’s Interview

This month’s Words Without Borders is a treat. It is titled “Groves of Lebanon” and features contemporary Lebanese writers. You can read excerpts from Amin Maalouf’s “Origins,” Etel Adnan’s “October 27, 2003”, Selim Nassib’s “Dinner Party in Beirut,” Venus Khoury-Ghata’s “Crazy Zarife,” graphic artist Mazen Kerbaj’s “A Short Description of Lebanon,” and many more. The issue also contains an interview with Italian novelist and poet Dacia Maraini, who championed feminist issues in the 60’s and 70’s, and an excerpt from her latest novel “Colomba.” This is what she says about Alberto Moravia and her debut as a novelist: 

“Moravia was for me an example of intellectual honesty and artisanal seriousness. He taught me that the writer is always naked and exposed. When I met him, I had already written my first novel and I couldn’t find a publisher for it. He read it, thought it was good, and wrote a nice preface for the publisher, who in fact published it right away. He was always generous with young writers. Just as today I try to help young people who are starting to write and can’t find publishers.” That was in 1962, when she published “La Vacanza.”

Don’t forget to read the excellent reviews of Robert Buckeye on Hungarian writer Sandor Marai’s “The Rebel,” and Alex Wenger on Andrey Platonov’s “Soul.” Platonov’s “The Return”, by the way, is hailed by Penelope Fitzgerald as one of the “three great works of Russian literature of the millennium.” Read it, you won’t be disappointed.  

WE DO NOT TORTURE, BUT…

The defining element of Bush’s legacy will be his unflinching conviction that in order for his administration to effectively wage the war on terrorism, his executive powers must be unhindered by congressional opposition. His freedom to act should be absolute (never mind checks and balances; it’s cliché.) His veto, this past Saturday, of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using torture techniques on detainees stands as a reaffirmation of that conviction. With this veto, the ninth in his presidency and the eighth in the past ten months, Bush conveys his determination to conserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has gained during his presidency. Passing the bill would have been tantamount to admitting that the administration’s obstinate defense of its interrogation program is wrong. Admitting a wrong is not a character trait of this presidency.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

HELPLESS, DYING CHILDREN

Not in Palestine. Here in Morocco.

Changes in the Moroccan social fabric are easily discernable. One could see how deteriorating the situation of Morocco’s street children is. The poverty is more rampant now than a few years ago. So are unemployment and illiteracy. It has a lot to do with a worsening over-population and inflation. A lot to do with an outrageously incompetent government and a helpless, maybe, but certainly lethargic population.

What’s heart-wrenching is to see teenage boys and girls sometimes as young as ten wasting their lives away, forced to shine shoes, beg, or do whatever it takes to survive just one more day because their parents, who are unemployed, poor, divorced, and prone to domestic violence, can not provide for them. They salvage scraps of rotten fish in the ports of our cities and collect spoiled vegetables in our souks.

The risks are enormous. They are exposed to nefarious influences; they end up doing drugs and being coerced into prostitution rings where they are traumatically sexually abused by people who thrive on their misery and offer them an illusive glimmer of hope. They are exposed to diseases and malnutrition. They steal, mug, and hustle. They get involved in territory and gang fights; they get stabbed and beaten to death. If they get arrested by the police, they estimate themselves lucky; it’s temporary free shelter and food. They are a nuisance to tourists who forget about them the moment they depart the country and a sore sight to avoid for Moroccans who are forced to share the same streets and markets with them. These kids are the pariahs of our society and the victims of a failed system that lacked, and still does, the foresight to plan for their future. I don’t think these kids chose their present; I don’t think they have much control over their future. They are going with the flow, but it’s a tumultuous and unforgiving whitewater flow.

What’s to become of them in a few years? Are these the responsible citizens we are rearing to power the dynamics of the country’s future?

The government is guilty of a horrendous oversight for failing to provide for these children the lodging, food, and education they need to function as citizens. The Moroccans, the majority of whom became desensitized to such issues, are responsible for letting it happen. The situation is such that Mohamed Choukri seems to have written “For Bread Alone”, which was published in 1972, about today’s Morocco and not the one he survived in the 40’s and 50’s. We are all protagonists in Choukri’s autobiography; we are living it now; we are imprisoned in it. The human desperation is staggering, the moral and physical suffering excruciating; the consequences will ineluctably be devastating.

We need more initiatives like Dr. Najat M’jid’s “Bayti” which has now been operational for more than a decade and has helped over twenty thousand children. Unfortunately, such initiative only lessens from the intensity of the problem; it does not eradicate it. The problem of street kids still persists because it is tightly correlated to problems that are the onus of the government. Movies were made about these kids, books written, reports by national and international researchers published. Turn Hassan II mosque into a street children reception center, stop pretending all is well and invite international organizations to help. Stop this policy of eradication by exclusion; Help Morocco’s street children.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008 

HOW DOES MOROCCO FARE?

      (PHOTO BY CANDACE FEIT) 

An Article in the Washington Post reported today that Susan E. Rice, a senior fellow from the Brookings Institution and a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 1997 to 2001, and Stewart Patrick, a research fellow at the Center for Global Development, published the “Index of State Weakness in the Developing World.” The index is described as an empirical tool that will provide U.S. policymakers with a user-friendly interface to identify the specific sources of weakness that stymie the progress of third world countries. The tool will enable policymakers to concentrate their efforts and investments more effectively by highlighting the country’s strengths and weaknesses. It is designed to rank and assess 141 developing countries, each suffering from a unique combination of pathologies, on their performance in fulfilling their functions of statehood. Those functions are divided into four core responsibilities:

·          providing security

·          maintaining legitimate political institutions

·          fostering equitable economic growth

·          meeting their people’s human needs

The effort is aimed at preventing failed and failing states from falling prey to terrorism, despots, neocolonialist regimes, and international criminals, and from being a burden on regional economies. There are ways for Morocco to ace the four requirements the index uses as a measuring standard.

1.       The Moroccan government needs to conduct periodic performance analysis at all levels of the government. It is thus that gaps will be identified and adequate corrective measures could be implemented to enhance performance.

2.       Alleviating poverty should be a priority. To do so, the government needs to cease using poverty as a political tool to coerce the citizenry into compliance. A serious effort needs to be exerted to eradicate the causes of poverty in Morocco: illiteracy, limited access to adequate lodging, the inexistence of local funds for community projects, the unavailability of productive tools the citizens could use to better their situation. The government needs to spearhead social initiatives and encourage them.

3.       Respect human, civil, and political rights as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Arab Charter on Human Rights. The welfare of your constituents should be the driving force behind any political policy, be it internal or external. A true token of democracy is that the government serves the citizen and not vice versa.

4.       Be open to constitutional and institutional democratic reforms and provide political, economic, social, and religious forums through which critical issues could be debated and impediments to progress could be uncovered without fear of retribution. It is only by enacting such reforms that social tensions could be defused.

Morocco needs to take the initiative and lay the groundwork for a prosperous future for its citizens. The way I see it, the individual Moroccan today is ill-equipped to engage in an effort to democratize the political institutions and positively affect the economy. It is the government’s responsibility to equip its constituents with the ability to be a causative force toward the development of Morocco.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008 

LE MABOUL IN ARABIC

The Arabic translation of Fouad Laroui’s collection of short stories LE MABOUL has just been published. The book was translated by Ibrahim El Khatibi, whose initiative I applaud. LE MABOUL, originally written in French, was published by Julliard in 2001. Why did it take seven years to translate into Arabic a book written by a Moroccan author? Who knows?

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

TODAY’S FIGHT, YESTERDAY’S THINKING

The Algerian government, which signed a $1.3 billion armament contract with Russia in 2006 for the delivery of 34 MiG 29 fighter jets, has changed its mind. Bouteflika’s government, citing concerns over the quality of the jets, decided to return 15 of the jets supplied in 2007 and refused the receipt of the reminder of the shipment scheduled to be completed in 2008. Considering its evolving military relationships with the U.S., it is conceivable that Algeria is eying the U.S. as a supplier of its military hardware.  

Morocco, not to be outdone, has also decided to go shopping for war toys. The Moroccan government is buying 24 F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin (the Toys”Я”Us for warmongers) of Bethesda, MD. The contract is valued at $2.4 billion, a U.S. Department of Defense official stated. The deal requires congressional approval. Congress of course will not consent to such a deal unless LM buys them Mc Nuggets. In the world market, F-16 fighter jets cost $40 million a piece - (24 pieces of junk X $40 million = $960 million). This elaborate calculation begs the question: fin essarf (where is the change)? I think these fighter jets come with not only the sophisticated radar, missile firing systems, electronic warfare and communications systems, but also elaborate social and economic plans the success of which LM guarantees. If, after 300 years, these plans prove unsuccessful by a democratic vote of the Moroccan population, we will get our money back (minus all expenses.)

Morocco’s purchase of 24 measly F-16 fighter jets is yet another example of a deleterious and uninformed decision making process our country has been plagued with for decades. LM is liquidating its F-16 stock because it needs to concentrate on the F-35 which the DoD, its number one customer, designated as a Joint Striker Fighter because it will be used by the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines. The F-35 is a level of performance and capability the rest of the world can only dream of; in addition to been much faster and operating with significantly upgraded software and hardware, the F-35 will feature radar that the F-16 will not detect.  

Considering the rest of the world is still using F-16s (or worse, MiG-29s), the U.S. is thus, militarily, but with a strategic flair, paving the way to reinforce its hegemony. The rest of the world (you know who I mean) is the junkyard of U.S. military scrap: Turkey has 240 F-16s and is considering buying 30 more; Israel has 200; the Netherlands has 213; South Korea has 180; Greece has 140 and just ordered 30 more; Morocco is buying 24. 

Is there anything we can do with $2.4 billion to make Morocco a better place to live in? Is the well-being of the Moroccan citizen taken into consideration here? Trust me! Brain storming on this one won’t cause you profuse and rapidly changing ideas, exaggerated sexuality, and insomnia. The best weapon Morocco should invest in today is its citizens and their love for their country. The government should show its love for the people to compound their love for it. I think we need to revive this vision of spreading love and not hate. We need to shield our youths from this jaundiced ideology of extremism and murder and inculcate in them progressist and humanist principles. 

If the most imminent threat to stability in the region is Islamic integrism and terrorism as the government touts, how is an F-16 the solution? How are we going to defend ourselves against suicide bombers? Certainly not with fighter jets?  

The original developer of the F-16 was General Dynamics. In 1993, LM bought GD’s aeronautics business for  … $1.5 billion. LM revenues exceeded $12 billion in 2007. Now! That’s a good example of a competent decision making process that has foresight.

 

 

 Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008 

LIE, MISHA, LIE

She never lived with wolves, never trekked 1900 miles across Nazi occupied Europe in search of her parents, and certainly did not kill a German soldier in self-defense. Misha Defonseca, the Belgian writer of best-selling book, “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years,” made it all up. It’s only now, after her book sold over a million copies, was adapted into film in France (those guys believe anything) and was translated to 18 languages, that Misha, through her lawyers, recanted her book as pure fantasy. Of course, she did not do it out of her own volition. Sharon Sargent, a genealogical researcher specializing in the persecution of Jews in Waltham, blew the whistle after she discovered that Misha is not even … Jewish. What else? oh, yes! … Her real name is Monique De Wael. Did I mention that she was never brought up by wolves? In her defense, she did not know it was pure fantasy when she was writing it. Where is a straight jacket when you need one? Belgian authorities disprove her claim that she is Belgian. 

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008

ILLUSIONARY DEMOCRACY, UNATTAINABLE CHANGE

I was asked by fellow bloggers commenting on my post on the plight of Fouad Mourtada the following hauntingly simple question: why don’t Moroccans, instead of fleeing toward more favorable horizons, change their situation from within Morocco?  

I advocate the idea that Moroccan citizens should be empowered at all levels to implement constructive change consented upon by a majority of the citizenry through legislative and political venues. The process should be outlined and guaranteed by the Moroccan constitution. The concept is not a novelty. Its proponents are not all Western intellectuals and politicians. Moroccan and Arab intellectuals have been promoting the notion that reform should be spawned from within since Gamal Abdelnasser led the Egyptian revolution in 1952. Two of Abdelnasser’s disciples, permeated by his fervent Arab nationalism, also succeeded in drastically changing the political landscape of their countries from within: Saddam, who took over in Iraq in 1979 (the nationalistic Ba’ath party to which he belonged governed since 1968) and Qaddafi, who has been the de facto president of Libya since his coup d’état in 1969. There are other examples of change happening from within in the Arab world; in Sudan for instance, civil disobedience led to the toppling of despotic governments twice: October 21,1964 and April 6, 1985.  Those changes were violent and revolutionary, but never yielded a long lasting democracy; the new leaders’ oppression of their constituents was ruthless and unrelenting. Another politician who was inspired by Abdelnasser’s Pan-Arabism, but aspired to apply those ideas at the African level, and who believed in the idea of “change from within,” was Mehdi Ben Barka.   

In our pursuit of democratic reform in our Arab states, how much change are the governments willing to tolerate before recoiling to their erstwhile despotic selves?  

A “change from within” in Saddam’s Baathist regime was a laughable concept. Syria’s government, thanks to its horrendous secret service, is fairly impervious to internal dissent. Libya’s Popular Committees are an autocratic tool used for political repression. Political opposition is non-existent in the Gulf States. In Egypt, where the government is cracking down on political opposition – religious and secular, Mubarak seems intent on bequeathing power to his son. Jordan and Morocco’s democracies are masqueraded before Western nations while backstage tremendous pressure is exerted on political parties and the opposition is constantly discredited. There is not, nor has there ever been, a single democratic Arab government, ever. The Arab governments do allow, albeit reluctantly, a measure of change, but when that change challenges the very existence of the governing power, the deal is off.  

One of the principle tenets of democracy is the provision of a broader and more open debate to expose myths to scrutiny and extreme ideas to rebuttal. Within Arab countries, such a debate is weighed down by caveats. In Morocco, for instance, the Monarchy and the constitutional principles pertaining to it are not debatable even within the parliament; neither are trade policies, national security, and foreign affairs. Any representative of the people or government official is at risk of being removed, any political party dissolved and banned, any journalist imprisoned and fined. Autocratic Arab governments are challenged by democracy as it manifests itself through different forms. The internet and satellite TV, as vehicles of information, are considered a threat. In a flagrant violation of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and article 32 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to information and freedom of expression, the Arab Ministers of Information convened in Cairo, Egypt, on February 12, 2008, and adopted a charter entitled “Principles for Organizing Satellite TV in the Arab World.” The charter, which was endorsed by all members of the Arab League except for Qatar and Lebanon, calls on the satellite TV broadcasting organizations to, among other things, desist criticizing “the leaders and national and religious symbols in the Arab World.” It urges the signatories to employ all measures in their national legislations to fully enforce its principles. This, in my opinion, should revive within the Arab nations the hoariest of political and intellectual debates.  

The autocratic Arab leaders, who expect the citizen to serve the ruler, justify such brazen encroachments of basic human rights and absolve themselves of responsibility by intensifying the national perception of internal and external threats that may not be, if at all real, as imminent. It is true that successive drought years, wars, and sanctions are serious social, political, and economic setbacks, but the inability to recover is solely the result of deleterious decisions and ostensible policies implemented by the leadership: pure and simple mismanagement and misallocation by corrupt politicians engaging in the conflation of business and politics at the detriment of the people.   

I believe that one of the greatest impediments to progress and democracy in the Arab world is the lack of accountability by the regimes. In fact, a 2002 Arab Development Report by the UN found that the lowest value for “voice and accountability” in the world is in the Arab countries. Throughout contemporary history, the Arab’s misfortunes were never the fault of the leadership, but rather consequences of divine ordinance, internal disloyalty, or foreign plots. Faced with their impotence to hold a failing incumbent to account and a stagnant and corrupt governments whose actions prove that their commitment to liberty and respect for the dignity of human beings is tapering Arabs  have turned toward Islamic radicals. In recent years, candidates associated with Islamic parties have achieved considerable success in parliamentary elections. It is a bad change, but a change nonetheless. The Islamic parties are no better; people understand that once an Islamic party is elected democratically, it will abuse the system to remain in power.      

The rise of Islamic militancy is an undeniable national security concern, but it is not a reason to curtail civil liberties, human rights, and stymie the democratic process. The Arab regimes are doing just that. They peddle to the U.S. and the European Union, which would rather scurry off for the illusory stability only an oppressive regime could provide, the jaundiced notion that the Islamist terrorist threat is a prime reason why the pursuit of political change should be indefinitely put on hold. The Western nations, by backing governments that never benefited from the blessing of their own people, are silent co-conspirators in the aggravation of the Arabs’ quandary.        

If the Moroccan government values its standing with the Moroccan people, its support for democratic reform ought to be unwavering, its openness to debate unrestricted. A functioning democracy requires more than just a free election; it is a framework within which an elected government can operate to serve its constituency while being protected from pressures by internal interests, be them ethnic, religious, or political, and external ones. We should be mindful that in a democracy, Islamist parties will be an integral part in the political dynamics, the extreme right will have its adherents, and that the liberal secularists will have their say. Cultural and social reformations have to be a priority. In a country where citizens are still struggling with the complex vicissitudes of their turbulent times, where inflation is persistent, unemployment rampant, illiteracy high, access to adequate housing and other productive resources restricted, human rights and civil liberties violated, and history whitewashed, a change from within unanswered from without will remain unattainable.

Ahmed T. B. Copyright © 2008