One of the reasons I have put little attention into this site is because it seems to me that many of my concerns are being well expressed elsewhere. Indeed, there are so many useful sites I wonder if mine is worth. At the same time I realize that many people don't know of these sites. Here is an article I just discovered on a site that I should be following and do recommend that others interested in what's going on in the world should be following. In this case, the attention is on a new interest in Central Asia. [Click on the title for the original site.]
FRIDE: THE LAUNCH OF EU CENTRAL ASIA MONITORING - BY PUBLICACIONES FRIDE 22/11/2008 (MaximsNewsNetwork)
UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNewsNetwork / 22 November 2008 -- EUCAM Watch
Following the launch of the EU Strategy for Central Asia in 2007, relations with the countries of the region have at last been acknowledged as a priority for Brussels and an integral part of the Union’s eastern policies.
Its adoption has been seen as the ‘final piece’ in the jigsaw of EU policies toward the former states of the Soviet Union: the European Neighbourhood Policy, the Black Sea Synergy, the Baku Initiative, the Eastern Partnership (currently under development) and now the Strategy for Central Asia.
Together, this complex of policy initiatives marks a strong commitment to strengthening the role of the EU in Eurasia at a time of growing political and economic uncertainty and when the importance of the countries of the region is increasing, both for energy and security reasons.
The adoption of the EU Strategy for Central Asia is the first time that the EU has sought to develop an approach to the region that combines broad political aims with a targeted set of programmatic initiatives.
The growing attention to Central Asia within the institutions of the European Union and on the part of some EU member states is matched by the interest of the European expert community and civil society organisations.
With the aim of drawing upon and strengthening this interest, the FundaciĆ³n para las Relaciones Internacionales y el DiĆ”logo Exterior (FRIDE) and the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) have launched – with the assistance of the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the governments of the Netherlands, Spain, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom – the European Union Central Asian Monitoring Project (EUCAM) (see article on the next page).
Over the course of its operations, the EUCAM project will scrutinise the EU Strategy for Central Asia and its implementation and through such scrutiny help ensure that the emerging relationship is forged in accord with the Union’s fundamental and strategic interests – inter alia progress in furthering democratic politics, strengthening the rule of law and protecting and enhancing human rights.
Whereas the EU Strategy has focused on working with officials, EUCAM will seek to build cooperation and networks between the civil societies and expert communities of Europe and Central Asia.
While the recent set of initiatives promoted through and by Brussels has put Central Asia on the policy agenda of the EU, many of these initiatives have their deficiencies.
In the first publication of the EUCAM project, The EU Strategy for Central Asia @ One Year, the co-chairs of the project (Jos Boonstra of FRIDE and myself) argue that if the EU is to have a significant impact in the region, it will be vital to engage where there is a genuine prospect of achieving positive and strategic cooperation.
As is noted elsewhere in this, the first, newsletter of the EUCAM project, the Kazakhstani authorities have recently adopted a state programme entitled "The Path to Europe" following an initiative by President Nazarbaev.
This together with Kazakhstan’s forthcoming Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2010 offers a clear opening for Europe to engage with a political regime that has committed itself to European standards and values as a means to modernise the country.
The strong interest within the European Union as regards Central Asia was evident at the launch event for the EUCAM project at the European Parliament on 8 October 2008.
The event highlighted the important steps forward in strengthening EU-Central Asia ties, while also pointing to the considerable challenges in the relationship.
The meeting also highlighted the important role that the EU could play across a range of issues in Central Asia.
The EUCAM project aims through a future series of events and publications to promote better informed analysis about the EU-Central Asia relationship as well as to propose practical steps to improve the relationship.
This Newsletter will serve as a means to raise awareness of the policies of the European Union toward this important region.
The Newsletter will be published six times a year and is designed to highlight significant developments and news concerning the EU’s Central Asia policies.
We hope that this initiative, along with the other activities to be held under the EUCAM umbrella, will serve as a useful resource for the wide community interested in this area and we look forward to hearing from our readers with ideas, suggestions and comments about how to enhance the work of the project.
On 24 June 2008, one year after the launch of the Strategy, the Council and the European Commission released an official assessment of the achievements of the Strategy during its first 12 months in the form of a progress report.
The report notes that "a new quality of cooperation" has evolved over the first year.
Other successes are indicated, notably the increased number of visits of EU politicians and officials to Central Asia and vice versa, the human rights dialogues that were established with all five countries, the EU’s commitment to border management (the BOMCA programme) and the efforts at combatting drug-trafficking in the region.
Also the report notes the development of a joint education and a rule of law initiative and the conclusion of (for now non-public) bilateral priority papers with the five states.
[Extracts]
This joint Progress Report takes stock of the progress made towards implementation of the EU Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia, which was adopted by the European Council on 21–22 June 2007 in recognition of the increasing importance of Central Asia for EU interests in terms of security, stability, governance and energy diversification.
The Strategy provides an overall framework for EU relations with Central Asia and builds on the results in the implementation of various agreements, EU assistance programmes and other initiatives taken by the EU to engage with countries of Central Asia.
The Strategy defines EU priorities for its cooperation with the region as a whole, including in the fields of human rights, rule of law, good governance and democracy, education, economic development, trade and investment, energy and transport, environmental
policies, common threats and inter–cultural dialogue, but states that implementation of these should be tailored to the specific requirements and performance of each Central Asian country.
The Strategy also calls for intensification of political dialogue with all five countries of Central Asia, including holding of regular meetings at Foreign Minister level and convening annual meetings of EU Heads of Mission in the region.
The European Council asked the Council and the Commission to regularly review progress in implementing this Strategy and to submit a first progress report to the European Council by the middle of 2008.
Overall Assessment
This progress report is not a routine exercise.
It reflects an unprecedented approach.
For the first time in the history of EU relations with Central Asia, an ambitious framework combining strategic political goals with a joint working programme is in place, transforming strategic aims into operational working tasks.
Its sustainable and consistent implementation will be a key indicator for the EU’s and Central Asia’s political resolve to upgrade their relations.
The EU is fully engaged in implementing the Strategy, building on a broad array of assistance programmes and other initiatives taken by the EU to engage with countries of Central Asia.
The implementation of the Strategy is a long term endeavour that requires patience and sustained efforts by both the EU and Central Asian states.
Overall, progress on implementing the EU Central Asia Strategy has been encouraging. After the lapse of only a year, a new quality of cooperation has evolved between Central Asia and the EU. The EU-Central Asia new partnership for the 21st century is making a difference.
On the side of the Central Asian countries there is a strongly increased interest in enhanced cooperation with the EU at all levels and in practically all areas.
Concrete actions have been mutually agreed upon and are being implemented or are under preparation, both bilaterally with the five Central Asian republics, and with all on key regional issues as education, Rule of Law, water and environment.
All Central Asian states have agreed to engage in or continue a structured Human Rights Dialogue with the EU. National Coordinators for the Strategy have been appointed by all Central Asian states, demonstrating that Central Asian partners assume ownership and fully engage in cooperation.
High-level political dialogue has visibly intensified. All actors, especially the Commission, the EU Special Representative for Central Asia, the German, Portuguese, Slovenian, and upcoming French Presidencies as well as Member States have contributed to keeping up the momentum of the EU Strategy.
Among them, lead coordinators have been identified for the regional initiatives.
The EU remains committed to continue and strengthen its current efforts to implement visible and ambitious projects exercising a sustainable impact on key areas of cooperation.
On 18 September 2008, the EU Central Asia Forum on Security Issues was convened in Paris.
The aim of the Paris Security Forum was to reaffirm the EU’s commitment to strengthening relations between the EU and Central Asia and to establish lasting cooperation between the two regions on security issues.
The meeting was hosted by the French Presidency of the EU and was attended by many politicians and officials including the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the five Central Asian countries, the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero Waldner, and the Council Secretary-General of the Council/High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana. Discussions focused on three main issues: terrorist threats, the fight against human and drug trafficking, and energy and environmental security.
[Extracts]
Driven by a shared commitment to developing and organising our long-term partnership on the basis of common objectives and undertakings to strengthen peace and stability in Central Asia, respect for human rights and the development of the rule of law and democracy, we met on the occasion of the First European Union-Central Asia Forum on Security Issues in Paris on 18 September 2008.
With the contribution of the international and regional organisations concerned, we have analysed security issues in Central Asia and defined concrete policy lines for our joint action in the following areas: combating illicit trafficking in arms, sensitive material, narcotics and human beings; combating terrorism and extremism; and cooperation in energy and the environment.
In line with the European Union’s Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia and on the basis of documents on the bilateral priorities of cooperation and of the regional initiatives, we agreed on the following points:
1. Strengthening political dialogue in all its forms
Convinced that socio-economic development, human rights, stability, peace and security are inseparable and mutually reinforcing, we intend to examine together the principal factors of tension and their consequences in the world today.
It is our responsibility to create, through our exchanges and our joint initiatives, the conditions required to develop the potential of Central Asian countries.
Political dialogue helps to lay the foundations for future action and shared work with a view to ensuring the political and socio-economic security and stability of the countries in the region.
We underline the importance of the EU Rule of Law Initiative in Central Asia. We will continue the dialogue on human rights with the EU, as well as in the framework of bilateral relations and multilateral organisations such as the UN and the OSCE, of which Kazakhstan will hold the chairmanship in 2010.
2. Strengthening regional stability
Broadening cooperation among the region’s countries, particularly on border security, is key to regional stability and security in Central Asia and to setting up cooperative management of regional risks and threats. Our joint efforts will help to combat new risks and threats more effectively.
It is essential to reinforce regular exchanges of information and analyses to take into account possible risks of a political and military nature, especially through collaboration between analysis and research centres working on security, strategy and international relations issues in the Central Asian countries and in the EU.
The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery represents a particular threat to peace and international stability.
We reaffirm our support for the multilateral treaties and agreements as well as international initiatives on non-proliferation, and we agree to step up our efforts with a view to their full implementation.
The commitment of the Central Asian countries to non-proliferation and disarmament was confirmed by the signing of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia on 8 September 2006 in Semipalatinsk.
The creation of a nuclear weapon free zone will help to maintain and strengthen peace and stability internationally and regionally and promote non-proliferation in all its aspects.
We intend to pool our experience and cooperate in establishing effective export control systems, including conventional arms exports, strengthening border controls and securing sensitive facilities and sources of nuclear, radioactive, biological and chemical material, in order to prevent any risk of proliferation and procurement by terrorist groups.
We express our grave concern about growing nuclear proliferation crises and the risk of destabilisation to the non-proliferation regime, and we are in favour of compliance with international non-proliferation obligations, particularly the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and those issued by IAEA Board of Governors.
We underline the importance of boosting the role of the IAEA in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.
3. Stepping up the fight against terrorism
Combating terrorism in all its forms and expressions must be conducted within the framework of the international treaties and relevant United Nations Resolutions while respecting human rights, which guarantees its effectiveness.
We agree to continuously fight the financing of terrorism, in accordance with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
We consider that enhanced cooperation at all levels among the countries concerned, in both Central Asia and Europe, is a condition necessary to the successful achievement of our objective.
We believe it important to adopt measures to prevent the action of terrorist organisations that are engaged in illicit activities and that are banned by Central Asian and EU countries.
4. Developing cooperation between Central Asia and the European Union in rebuilding Afghanistan and stabilising its situation
We are mindful of the stabilisation and development of Afghanistan, factors which contribute to consolidating regional and global security.
In referring to the conclusions of the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan held in Paris on 12 June, we reaffirm our determination to actively contributing to their implementation, particularly by reinforcing our political exchanges and economic cooperation with this country, as well as our cooperation with the relevant international organisations, especially the United Nations and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
5. Joining forces to fight illicit trafficking in arms, sensitive materials, narcotics and human beings
The EU will increase cooperation with Central Asian countries to strengthen and implement legal measures to more effectively combat all forms of illicit trafficking: arms, sensitive materials, narcotics, psychotropic substances and their precursors, and human beings.
The adoption of national strategies on integrated border management could be an effective means of ensuring internal stability in Central Asia. The Dushanbe Conference on 21 and 22 October 2008 will review the mechanisms for enhancing international coordination.
Concerned by persistently high drug production levels in Afghanistan and by the development of opium-to-heroin conversion activities, we welcome the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1817 on the fight against the trade in precursors.
We are committed to implementing its provisions, particularly those aimed at increasing international control of precursors.
We undertake to enhance cooperation within the framework of the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and the Paris Pact Initiative.
A meeting of experts based on an enlarged troika format is planned on 1 October 2008 in Brussels and will help to strengthen the control of these products at a regional level. On this occasion, discussion focusing on updating the drug action plan will begin.
We believe that it is essential to develop and implement projects/programmes to improve, in their fight against narcotics trafficking, the law enforcement capacities of the countries bordering Afghanistan which are most at risk from the trafficking in narcotics originating from Afghanistan.
We are thoroughly convinced that the development of cooperation among Central Asian countries, with the participation of international organisations and donor countries, will ensure the adoption of effective measures to fight this common scourge.
In this connection, we welcome the creation of the Central Asia Regional Information and Coordination Centre (CARICC) for the fight against narcotics trafficking.
6. Strengthening cooperation in energy, the use of natural resources and the environment
We will reinforce our cooperation in energy without prejudice to current cooperation.
We consider that the harmonisation of the interests of energy consumers and suppliers, transit states and transnational companies is a guarantee of international energy stability.
Energy security in Central Asia and the EU presupposes common rules and a reasoned choice of new transport options involving all the countries concerned.
We reaffirm the importance of active cooperation in the development of different hydrocarbon transport corridors that aim to ensure a guaranteed and reliable supply for European markets and other international markets.
In light of the conclusions of the energy ministers’ conference in Baku in November 2004, our cooperation will focus on the development of regional energy markets and strengthening the financing capacities for new infrastructure; implementation of open, forward-looking and proactive energy policies; setting up an investor-friendly environment by according an appropriate role to market mechanisms; and lastly improving energy efficiency in the various uses of primary energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lessen the cost to economic growth and free up additional capacity.
We also note the necessity of enhancing our cooperation in renewable and alternative energies as well as in reliable, sustainable, low-carbon technologies.
We will achieve this by comparing energy scenarios and ensuring cooperation among energy industries, particularly upstream and downstream of the hydrocarbons industry.
We are in favour of developing cooperation to jointly exploit hydro-energy resources, taking the interests of all the region’s countries into consideration.
The European Union will provide support to the development of hydraulic energy in Central Asia that will also help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without prejudice to the region’s environmental security.
Conscious of the security implications of climate change, we are in favour of adopting longterm strategies to prevent the climate effects of human activities and in favour of the accession to multilateral instruments related thereto.
We suggest that a dialogue be launched on how to address the threats posed by climate change in Central Asia in order to strengthen EU and Central Asian cooperation on this issue.
The European Union will pay particular attention to regional cooperation in Central Asia on the rational, efficient and sustainable use of hydraulic, hydro-energy and fuel resources and the environment.
The EU is ready to use its study and cooperation capabilities to facilitate the implementation of best practices, availability of drinking water and sanitation, as well as fighting climate change, inter alia, by increasing energy and hydraulic efficiency while safeguarding the ecological balance in the region. We support the European Union’s Water Initiative (EUWI).
7. Helping to prepare a comprehensive approach to security in Central Asia
In a world marked by recurrent instability, we will strengthen our partnership and encourage the efforts of countries and regional organisations that can help to create a genuine area of cooperative security in Central Asia.
In this respect, we welcome the creation of the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia.
In August 2008, Kazakhstan published "The Path to Europe 2009-2011", drafted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs following the commitment to develop such a programme made by President Nazarbaev in his annual national address in February.
The ostensible aim of the state programme is to "promote economic cooperation, the attraction of technologies and managerial experience, the improvement of our laws, and the development of our own agenda and strategic priorities for the OSCE chairmanship".
The Programme is a concise document listing the aims, main areas of cooperation, and the expected results.
According to the Kazakhstani authorities, the development of "The Path to Europe" was triggered by the need to strengthen cooperation with Europe in a number of spheres and to benefit from the experience of European integration and reforms in order to solve "pressing issues of the country’s internal development".
Read at face value, the document suggests Soviet-style affection for technocratic grand planning for rather distant and ambiguous aims, but the Programme is more significant than such a reading might suggest.
The Path to Europe has been developed at the highest level in Kazakhstan following the President’s initiative – civil society was not engaged in the preparation process and there were no public discussions or consultations at any stage.
As such, the Programme is a political document as much as a bureaucratic one. Indeed, it is likely that many of the initiatives outlined in the Programme are unlikely to ever see the light of day, but read as a statement of political ambition, and perhaps even commitment, it represents a significant development in Kazakhstan’s domestic and international evolution.
For some years the Kazakhstani leadership has been seeking
to strengthen its European credentials – starting with the shift of the national football team to play in the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), through to the campaign to gain the OSCE Chairmanship and to attain observer status at the Council of Europe.
The Programme is, thus, not a bolt from the blue but rather a further consolidation of the European element of Kazakhstan’s Eurasian identity.
Most significantly, the Programme makes clear that closer integration with Europe and the adoption of European standards in a range of areas are viewed in Astana as vital elements for achieving the future modernisation of the country, which the President has backed as a central element of his administration.
The Programme identifies the following areas for intensified cooperation: technology transfer, energy, transport, technical control and metrology, trade, small and medium enterprise (SME) development, quality of life and the humanitarian dimension.
Cooperation in the area of technology transfer will involve inviting European specialists to train local personnel (managers and engineers) to work in Kazakhstani technology parks, transport hubs and the agricultural sector.
Energy cooperation will have three aspects.
Firstly, Kazakhstan will continue to acquire energy infrastructure (ports, terminals, refineries and other assets in neighbouring countries and in Europe) in order to provide for its long-term presence in the European energy market.
Secondly, it will aim to absorb European experience in regulating the energy market.
Thirdly, Kazakhstan wants to cooperate in the spheres of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The transport section of the Programme envisions building Eurasian transcontinental transport corridors.
It also contains plans for special training to introduce European standards in civil aviation, the exchange of experience in the area of seafaring safety provision and expert meetings on harmonisation of the international civil liability insurance system of motor transport owners.
Cooperation in the area of technical regulation and metrology aims at approximation to European standards and joining international standardisation and accreditation agencies, including the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), the International Accreditation Forum and the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC).
This move is designed to create a fast track for Kazakhstan’s export promotion. To improve trade, the government also wants to set up a trade delegation network in Europe, with branches in a number of European countries.
The goal is to diversify Kazakhstan’s exports to Europe.
The quality of life section is the most comprehensive.
It includes environmental protection, public healthcare, education and social welfare.
Environmental cooperation, apart from biodiversity, pollution and other transboundary issues, includes the reform of national environmental legislation to approximate European standards.
The education section envisions cooperation for the improvement of all levels – from primary to higher education.
European experts will be invited to educational institutions in Kazakhstan to teach, train and help with the development of programmes.
Interestingly, military training is also on the agenda. Cooperation in the sphere of social welfare includes studying the experience of European states in dealing with the challenges of unemployment, labour migration, support of low-income and disabled citizens and provision of social services.
Since the programme is a way for Kazakhstan to prepare for the
OSCE chairmanship, the ‘humanitarian basket’ of the organisation has not been ignored.
It features the development of partnerships between civil society actors from Kazakhstan and European countries, sharing experience in the area of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional harmony, and the promotion of enhanced gender policies.
Another area that intersects with Kazakhstan’s OSCE commitments concerns institutional and legal reforms.
Cooperation with European states is seen as important for the improvement of legislation regulating elections, political parties and mass media, and also for carrying out reforms of the civil service, judiciary and other public sectors.
The introduction of the programme points to a number of conclusions about Kazakhstan’s approach to future cooperation with the EU.
Firstly, the very fact of the adoption of such a programme highlights the growing importance of Europe for Kazakhstan, and testifies that this Eurasian country is increasingly looking westwards for a variety of reasons.
Secondly, it shows that the attitude to Europe is special. It is seen as a source of inspiration and know-how.
There is no other document of its kind, no comparable "Path to Asia", although the Singaporean experience is being examined closely.
European models are seen as advanced and attractive, and therefore worth emulating.
In this regard, the quality of life section of the programme is revealing.
The Kazakhstan government seeks to attain European standards of environmental protection, healthcare and social welfare provision.
Clearly, the adoption of the Programme has a number of purposes.
In part the document is designed to head off European criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor record in fulfilling its OSCE human dimension commitments.
It is also designed to strengthen the western dimension of Astana’s fluid ‘multivector’ foreign policy.
But this does not detract from the clear ambition to build stronger relations with Europe and to take the EU Strategy for Central Asia seriously as a vehicle for achieving this aim.
Both the EU and Kazakhstan are interested in the intensification of political dialogue (one of the aims of the programme is to organise at least five official visits per year at the level of European heads of state and governments), building transport corridors, energy cooperation and expanded trade. Kazakhstan wants to learn from Europe and improve its education and healthcare, environmental legislation and market regulation.
Differences arise between the Programme and the EU Strategy with regard to the weight allocated to human rights, rule of law and democratisation.
In the EU Strategy these issues are identified as priorities, whereas in the "Path to Europe", human rights are not directly mentioned, and the ‘humanitarian basket’ is rather light – it doesn’t go much beyond Kazakhstan’s favourite slogans of achieving inter-ethnic and inter-confessional accord.
The counterpoint to the rule of law in the EU Strategy is reform of the judiciary, implying the improvement of its efficiency rather than building a genuinely independent judiciary.
Nevertheless, there is sufficient scope within the Programme and willingness for dialogue amongst the Kazakhstani leadership for the EU to challenge Astana to live up to the bold commitments outlined in the Path to Europe.
prepare for the OSCE chairmanship, the ‘humanitarian basket’ of the organisation has not been ignored.
It features the development of partnerships between civil society actors from Kazakhstan and European countries, sharing experience in the area of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional harmony, and the promotion of enhanced gender policies.
Another area that intersects with Kazakhstan’s OSCE commitments concerns institutional and legal reforms.
Cooperation with European states is seen as important for the improvement of legislation regulating elections, political parties and mass media, and also for carrying out reforms of the civil service, judiciary and other public sectors.
The introduction of the programme points to a number of conclusions about Kazakhstan’s approach to future cooperation with the EU.
Firstly, the very fact of the adoption of such a programme highlights the growing importance of Europe for Kazakhstan, and testifies that this Eurasian country is increasingly looking westwards for a variety of reasons.
Secondly, it shows that the attitude to Europe is special. It is seen as a source of inspiration and know-how.
There is no other document of its kind, no comparable "Path to Asia", although the Singaporean experience is being examined closely.
European models are seen as advanced and attractive, and therefore worth emulating. In this regard, the quality of life section of the programme is revealing.
The Kazakhstan government seeks to attain European standards of environmental protection, healthcare and social welfare provision.
Clearly, the adoption of the Programme has a number of purposes.
In part the document is designed to head off European criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor record in fulfilling its OSCE human dimension commitments.
It is also designed to strengthen the western dimension of Astana’s fluid ‘multivector’ foreign policy.
But this does not detract from the clear ambition to build stronger relations with Europe and to take the EU Strategy for Central Asia seriously as a vehicle for achieving this aim.
Both the EU and Kazakhstan are interested in the intensification of political dialogue (one of the aims of the programme is to organise at least five official visits per year at the level of European heads of state and governments), building transport corridors, energy cooperation and expanded trade. Kazakhstan wants to learn from Europe and improve its education and healthcare, environmental legislation and market regulation.
Differences arise between the Programme and the EU Strategy with regard to the weight allocated to human rights, rule of law and democratisation.
In the EU Strategy these issues are identified as priorities, whereas in the "Path to Europe", human rights are not directly mentioned, and the ‘humanitarian basket’ is rather light – it doesn’t go much beyond Kazakhstan’s favourite slogans of achieving inter-ethnic and inter-confessional accord.
The counterpoint to the rule of law in the EU Strategy is reform of the judiciary, implying the improvement of its efficiency rather than building a genuinely independent judiciary.
Nevertheless, there is sufficient scope within the Programme and willingness for dialogue amongst the Kazakhstani leadership for the EU to challenge Astana to live up to the bold commitments outlined in the Path to Europe.
Relations with Uzbekistan have become the centrepiece of the European Union’s efforts to upgrade its relations with Central Asia.
Against this background, the push to remove the EU sanctions placed on Uzbekistan following the Andizhan massacre in 2005 and led by Germany, has been presented as vital to make the broader Strategy a success.
The utility of a political dialogue with Uzbekistan and the significance of good relations with Tashkent in terms of building an EU engagement in the region have been contested by a coalition of civil society organisations and regional experts, together with some EU member states.
After a prolonged struggle, the travel ban imposed on Uzbek officials as part of the sanctions was lifted in October 2008 following the assessment by the EU that there had been "progress achieved in the last year with respect to rule of law and protection of human rights" by Uzbekistan.
Many NGOs greeted this assessment with incredulity, especially since many of them had recently participated in an EU-sponsored seminar on media freedom in Uzbekistan and had seen little evidence of any progress in this area.
Civil society organisations grew even further concerned when Berlin welcomed Uzbekistan’s security chief on a visit days after sanctions were lifted.
Previously, Rustam Inoyatov had been banned from travelling to the EU as a result of his leading role in the Andizhan events. Below are the extracts from the Press Resease of the Council of the European Union:
[Extracts]
The Council adopted the following conclusions:
1. The Council recalls its Conclusions of 29 April 2008 and welcomes the progress achieved in Uzbekistan in the last year with regard to respect for the rule of law and protection of human rights.
In particular, it hails the release of a number of defenders of human rights, notably that of Mrs Mukhtabar Tojibaeva.
The Council welcomes the fact that she was also allowed to travel abroad for medical treatment, but hopes that she will be granted complete freedom of movement.
It takes note with satisfaction of the holding of the second series of consultations on human rights on 5 June 2008 and the holding of a seminar on media freedom in Tashkent on 2 and 3 October.
It also welcomes the implementation of a number of legislative and judicial reforms, in particular the abolition of the death penalty, the introduction of habeas corpus and the ratification of a series of conventions combating child labour.
The Council is pleased that visits by the ICRC to prisons have resumed, and trusts that they will continue.
2. The Council nevertheless remains seriously concerned about the situation of human rights in some domains in Uzbekistan and urges the authorities to implement their international obligations fully in that regard.
It calls on the Uzbek authorities to release all imprisoned human rights defenders and to cease harassment of human rights defenders; to accept the accreditation of the new Country Director of Human Rights Watch and to allow the unhindered operation of that organisation; to cooperate fully and effectively with the UN Special Rapporteurs on torture and on freedom of expression; and to revoke restrictions on the registration and operation of NGOs in Uzbekistan. The judicial reforms and reforms relating to observance of the law must be continued and effectively enforced.
3. The Council encourages Uzbekistan to continue progress in the direction of human rights, democratisation and the rule of law, and it is prepared to assist Uzbekistan in its reforming efforts towards that goal.
The Council welcomes Uzbekistan’s commitment to work with the EU on a range of questions relating
to human rights, by means including an effective dialogue on human rights directed towards achieving practical results.
4. In this context, the Council has decided not to renew the travel restrictions applying to certain individuals referred to in Common Position 2007/734/CFSP, which had been suspended in accordance with the Council’s conclusions of 15-16 October 2007 and 29 April 2008.
The Council has however decided to renew, for a period of 12 months, the arms embargo imposed in Common Position 2007/734/CFSP.
5. The Council will continue, on the basis of regular reports from the Heads of Mission, to monitor and assess the human rights situation in Uzbekistan in the light of the conditions set out above and of any other action that demonstrates the readiness of the Uzbek authorities to adhere to the principles of respect for human rights, the rule of law and fundamental freedoms.»
On 2-3 October 2008, the Uzbek government and the EU hosted an event in Tashkent entitled "Liberalisation of Mass Media - An Important Component of the Democratisation of the Society". Participants in the seminar from European media and civil society organisations welcomed the opportunity to discuss media issues in Tashkent, but did not see the seminar "as an indicator of change of attitude by the Uzbek authorities".
Below are the extracts from a joint statement of the leading international human rights organisations to the October media freedom event in Tashkent.
[Extracts]
The EU must not close its eyes to the harsh realities that journalists face in Uzbekistan.
Our organisations, which took part in the seminar, can attest first-hand that nothing new was heard from the representatives of the government and the state-controlled media who were present.
There was no hint of acknowledgement from the Uzbek side that the country’s media are neither free nor independent, that journalists and others are regularly imprisoned for expressing their opinions, that access to critical external internet sites is blocked, and that foreign journalists are not allowed accreditation to cover the country from within.
Indeed, foreign journalists and independent Uzbek journalists were not allowed to cover last week’s seminar, while journalists from the state-controlled electronic and print media were present in the meeting room.
[T]here have been no positive changes in the area of media freedom in Uzbekistan and […] the authorities [must] demonstrate a real commitment to freedom of expression through concrete actions. Therefore, the EU should call on the Uzbek government to:
• In line with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Uzbekistan is party, guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression:
- end state censorship of all forms of protected expression;
- cease harassment and intimidation of independent journalists working in the country;
- lift reporting restrictions on all domestic and international media outlets;
Uzbekistan
EU Lifts the Sanctions against Uzbekistan
Source: Press Release of the 2897th meeting of the Council, General Affairs and External Relations, Luxembourg, 13 October 2008 (http://www.consilium.europa.eu/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/gena/103371.pdf).
Conference on Media Freedom
- promptly and unconditionally release journalists wrongfully detained for their professional activities and others detained for exercising their freedom of expression;
- allow international media outlets, including those that have been forced to stop working in Uzbekistan, to register their bureaus and grant accreditation to international journalists;
• Require public trials in line with Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, by allowing Uzbek and foreign journalists and other independent monitors to cover criminal proceedings from inside the courtrooms;
• Issue an invitation to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, as well as the Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders.
[A]ny form of open discussion and dialogue, are certainly to be welcomed if they lead to genuine change.
However, the EU must be absolutely clear that a willingness to talk is not the same thing as a commitment to embark on substantive improvements in policy and practice.
The Uzbek government’s past record of engagement with the EU and other international institutions clearly demonstrates that discussions of possible reforms have consistently been used as a substitute for real and measurable progress.
On 12 December 2008, FRIDE and CEPS will host an EUCAM roundtable in Madrid on Defending Human Rights and Promoting Democracy: Euro-Atlantic Approaches Towards Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
This meeting will gather representatives of the EU, OSCE and NATO; activists and journalists from Turkmenistan and
Uzbekistan; and civil society representatives and officials from Spain to examine the current situation regarding democracy and human rights in these two Central Asian countries.
As background for this event, provided below is information on the human rights situation in these countries.
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are among the most repressive authoritarian states in the world. Since their independence, democracy has not been allowed to take root and human rights violations have become the rule instead of the exception.
Meanwhile, both states are attracting increased attention from outside actors due to their energy wealth: both Turkmenistan and, to a lesser extent, Uzbekistan have substantial gas reserves.
Regional and global powers such as Russia (which has strong historic, economic and security ties with both states), China, the United States and the European Union have energy interests in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but at the same time, remain concerned about the internal stability of the two states.
Turkmenistan saw a swift change of leadership when Gurbanguly Berdimukkamadov took over from absolute ruler Saparmurat Niazov, who died at the end of 2006.
Whereas some progress was made initially in terms of legislative reform and opening up the country to the outside world, hopes for an overhaul of the administration and engagement with political reform have now become faint.
What can we expect from Turkmenistan in the short term? Will the country sustain its slow pace of reform, especially in the education sector? Where does the limit to reforms acceptable to the ruling powers lie?
Uzbekistan is ruled by Islom Karimov, who has actively resisted democratic reform and has failed to improve the poor human rights record he gained in May 2005, when Uzbek security forces killed at least 200 protesters in the city of Andjion.
When Uzbek authorities proved unwilling to allow international organisations to investigate the tragic events, the EU and US imposed sanctions. As a result, Uzbekistan increasingly turned to Russia, which avoided criticising Tashkent’s actions, and moved away from engaging with Western countries.
This scenario is currently changing as the United States and the EU, headed by German initiatives, seek to repair ties with Tashkent. What is the logic behind the renewed relations if Uzbekistan’s human rights record has not undergone significant improvement?
Is it better to try and exclude Uzbekistan through sanctions? Or is a policy of engagement and socialisation more productive?
In June 2007, the European Union presented a Strategy for Central Asia.
Since that date, the Union has been following a regional approach to the area, focusing especially on bilateral ties with Central Asian republics.
Brussels concluded ‘bilateral priority agreements’ with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, but also established human rights dialogues with Ashgabat and Tashkent.
Human rights, the rule of law, good governance and democratisation constitute the first priority outlined in the Strategy for Central Asia, though the EU has to balance this interest with an engagement on security and energy issues that might be at odds with it.
What can be accomplished by the EU in seeking to influence the democracy and human rights portfolios in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan?
Are Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan key countries that the EU should focus on through its Strategy (even at the expense of attention focused elsewhere)? How can the EU improve its role in practical democracy promotion and forwarding human rights?
NATO has a longstanding relationship with Central Asia through its Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme that binds all non-NATO members in the Euro-Atlantic area, including Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The Alliance was established to defend democracy, but nowadays it also plays an important role in promoting democracy in general and democratic defence reform in specific PfP countries that seek closer ties with the Alliance.
NATO rarely uses sanctions and normally opts to keep lines of communication open with human rights wrongdoers through PfP.
It did, however, cancel most activities with Uzbekistan after the Andijon events.
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan – which is excluded from most regional international forums – are probably the least active PfP countries.
Does NATO play a role in assisting these countries in democratic defence reform?
And is NATO ready to hold these countries to account on human rights offences?
To what extent does the ISAF Afghanistan mission play a role in NATO’s ties with Turkmenistan and, above all, Uzbekistan?
The OSCE is present in both countries through an OSCE Centre in Ashgabat and a Project Co-ordinator in Uzbekistan (downgraded from a full Centre following the OSCE’s criticism of the actions of the Uzbek authorities in respect to the Andizhan massacre), and both states are members of this troubled organisation.
The members are divided over the purpose and tasks of the OSCE.
A small group of Eastern members, led by Russia, wants the OSCE to be further institutionalised with the main focus of the Organisation to be on narrow notions of security.
This group wants to retain consensus decision-making on most, if not all issues.
The second group, which is led by the US, wants the OSCE institutions to function relatively independently while focusing on the human dimension of democracy and human rights.
The majority of participating-States lie between these two polar perspectives. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan belong to the ‘Russia group’.
The OSCE still has the advantage of including a broad range of members and of its local presence in Central Asia.
How can the Organisation capitalise on these advantages in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan?
How can the OSCE move both countries in a positive direction towards fulfilling the requirements of the OSCE’s politically-binding regime of democracy and human rights agreements?
Are both in-active Central Asian members likely to gain enthusiasm under the upcoming Kazakhstan 2010 Chairmanship?
The conference was hosted by the government of Tajikistan and co-organised by the European Union/European Commission, Finland, the French Presidency of the European Union, Germany, the OSCE, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Experts and senior officials from Austria, China, the Czech Republic, India, Iran, Japan, Poland, the Russian Federation and Turkey, as well as representatives from the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre (CARICC), the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia, the EuroAsian Economic Community (EURASEC) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) also took part.
The Central Asian countries and participating international delegations presented their national and regional priorities, and the conference concluded with an official Partnership Declaration.
[Extracts]
United in their desire to fight illicit trafficking in narcotics, psychotropic substances, chemical precursors, weapons, hazardous materials, human beings, and trans-border crime and international terrorism, whilst promoting the legal movement of goods and people across borders in Central Asia, and upholding international human rights agreements, Ministers, high level officials and representatives of relevant agencies of Central Asian States and of the international community met in Dushanbe on 21- 22 October 2008 to discuss issues related to border management and drug control in the region.
Recognizing that the successful fight against these threats is dependent upon the enhancement of border security and management, we, the participants of this Conference:
Reaffirm our commitment to reinforce regional and international cooperation to provide better border management and drug control, forge closer collaboration between regional and international organizations, and support focused assistance on on-going and future efforts in this field;
Encourage and support all international, regional and bilateral initiatives to strengthen border security and drug control in Central Asia building on international partnerships, such as, inter alia, the EU Strategy on Central Asia, UNODC’s Regional Strategy on Securing Central Asia’s Borders with Afghanistan, as well as activities within the framework of the OSCE, CSTO, CIS, and the SCO;
Encourage the international community to continue its support, assistance and cooperation with the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in its resolve to fight against narcotics and the illegal inflow of precursors for their production;
Encourage and support cross border cooperation between Central Asian states and their border agencies to provide more effective border security in the region;
Recognize our responsibility to uphold relevant international commitments and employ best practices in the fields of border security and management and counter-narcotics;
Call on donors to strengthen coordination of assistance in the field of border management and drug control with a view to creating synergies and avoiding duplications of activities including at the national and regional levels, thus enabling donor cooperation in the early planning stage;
Recognize that there is a requirement for developing and
implementing national border management and national drug strategies that incorporate objectives, priorities and action plans, as well as mechanisms for cross border cooperation, and express readiness to work with one another and with the international community to this end;
Agree on the establishment of, whenever necessary a national coordination structure and the nomination of a national coordinator in the fields of border management and drug control for interaction with national and regional structures and international organizations;
Recognize the importance of the establishment of the Central Asian Regional Information Coordination Centre (CARICC) for the fight against the illegal transport of narcotics, psychotropic substances and precursors welcome the ratification of the agreement on the establishment of the CARICC by two parties and call on the remaining parties to follow their example;
Welcome the planned establishment of the OSCE Border Management Staff College in Dushanbe;
Note the interest of the Republic of Tajikistan to establish in Dushanbe a specialized training centre for the preparation and professional development of law enforcement officers of Tajikistan and Afghanistan involved in the fight against illegal drug trafficking, as well as a national canine training centre;
Consider it necessary to share and disseminate information on border management strategies and best practices through existing coordination and cooperation mechanisms such as, inter alia, the EU BOMCA/CADAP programmes, the OSCE, the Mini Dublin Group and UNODC programmes (Paris Pact Initiative and ADAM), and welcome the extension of the Central Asian Border Systems Initiative (CABSI) as a coordination platform for all stakeholders;
Thank the President, Government and people of the Republic of Tajikistan for extending their hospitality to host this Conference.
New Publications
The EU Strategy for Central Asia @ One Year, Neil Melvin and Jos Boonstra, EUCAM Policy Brief No.1 (October 2008) available at: http://www.eucentralasia.eu/files/1730.pdf
The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in Central Asia: Regional implications of and the International Response to the Crisis in Tajikistan, Matteo Fumagalli, EUCAM Policy Brief No.2 (October 2008), available at: http://www.eucentralasia.eu/files/1731.pdf
Engaging Central Asia: The European Union’s New Strategy in the Heart of Eurasia, Neil Melvin (ed.), CEPS Paperback, (May 2008), available at: http://shop.ceps.eu/BookDetail.php?item_id=1662
Russia and Central Asia. From Disinterest to Eager Leadership, Jos Boonstra, EU Russia Centre Review, No.8 (October 2008), available at: http://www.fride.org/publicacion/519/rusia-y-asia-central-del-desinteres-al-liderazgo-ambicioso
Editorial staff:
Nafisa Hasanova, EUCAM Coordinator
Jos Boonstra, EUCAM Co-chair (FRIDE)
Neil Melvin, EUCAM Co-chair (CEPS)
Anton ARTEMYEV is currently director of the Kazakhstan Revenue Watch Program (KRW) of the Soros Foundation - Kazakhstan. He is an Economics graduate of the Moscow Academy of Labor and Social Relations (2000). Since May 2008 Anton is a member of the international EITI Board.
Sabine FISCHER is a research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies. She deals with domestic and foreign policy in Russia and the other CIS countries and EU policy towards them. Previously she was a research fellow among others at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt.
NicolĆ”s DE PEDRO is the Expert adviser on Central Asia for the Opex (Spanish Observatory on Foreign Policy) from the FundaciĆ³n Alternativas. He is a PhD candidate and researcher in International Relations at the Complutense University in Madrid. In 2006 he was awarded a Diploma of Advanced Studies (DEA) in International Law and International Relations.
Matteo FUMAGALLI is Assistant Professor at the Department of International Relations and European Studies at Central European University in Budapest (Hungary). His current projects concern social activism in authoritarian states, transnational migration across the former Soviet Union, and on EU-Central Asia relations.
AndrƩ GERRITS, historian, is professor of European Studies, University of Amsterdam, and senior research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for International Relations (Clingendael). He studied History and Slavic Studies at the Free University and the University of Amsterdam.
Nargis KASSENOVA is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Sciences of the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research (KIMEP). Her main areas of research are Central Asian Security, Eurasian geopolitics, EU-Central Asia relations and Kazakhstan's foreign policy.
SĆ©bastien PEYROUSE is a Senior Research Fellow at the Central Asia and Caucasus Institute (Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies) in Washington, D.C., and an Associate Scholar at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations (IRIS) in Paris. His research areas are political regimes in Central Asia, Islamism and religious minorities.
Michael DENISON is Lecturer in International Security at the University of Leeds, Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, and senior Central Asia analyst at Control Risks, a leading international investment risk consultancy. His research focuses on politics, security and ecnonomic development in Central Asia.
Anvar Kamoliddinovis director of Tajik Branch of Scientific Information Centre of Interstate Commission Water Coordination of the Central Asian Countries. His research focus is regional integrated water resources management, irrigation, water supply and rural development.
Gulnura TORALIEVA has a Masters degree in International Journalism from Kyrgyz-Russian Slavonic University. She has been working as Programme Director for the Institute for Public Policy (IPP) since May 2007. Mrs. Toralieva has extensive experience in facilitating training, news reporting, writing and editing of handbooks for journalists and video film production.
About EUCAM
The FundaciĆ³n para las Relaciones Internacionales y el DiĆ”logo Exterior (FRIDE), Spain, in co-operation with the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Belgium, has launched a joint project entitled "EU Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM)". The (EUCAM) initiative is an 18-month research and awareness-raising exercise supported by several EU member states and civil society organisations which aims:
- to raise the profile of the EU-Central Asia Strategy;
- to strengthen debate about the EU-Central Asia relationship and the role of the Strategy in that relationship;
- to enhance accountability through the provision of high quality information and analysis;
- to promote mutual understanding by deepening the knowledge within European and Central Asian societies about EU policy in the region; and
- to develop ‘critical’ capacity within the EU and Central Asia through the establishment of a network that links communities concerned with the role of the EU in Central Asia.
EUCAM focuses on four priority areas in order to find a mix between the broad political ambitions of the Strategy and the narrower practical priorities of EU institutions and member state assistance programmes:
• Democracy and Human Rights
• Security and Stability
• Energy and Natural Resources
• Education and Social Relations
EUCAM will produce the following series of publications:
- A bi-monthly newsletter on EU-Central Asia relations will be produced and distributed broadly by means of an email list server using the CEPS and FRIDE networks. The newsletter contains the latest documents on EU-Central Asia relations, up-to-date information on the EU’s progress in implementing the Strategy and developments in Central Asian countries.
- Policy briefs will be written by permanent and ad hoc Working Group members. The majority of the papers examine issues related to the four core themes identified above, with other papers commissioned in response to emerging areas beyond the main themes.
- Commentaries on the evolving partnership between the EU and the states of Central Asia will be commissioned reflecting specific developments in the EU-Central Asian relationship.
- A final monitoring report of the EUCAM Expert Working Group will be produced by the project rapporteurs.
This monitoring exercise is implemented by an Expert Working Group, established by FRIDE and CEPS. The group consists of experts from the Central Asian states and the members countries of the EU. In addition to expert meetings, several public seminars will be organised for a broad audience including EU representatives, national officials and legislators, the local civil society community, media and other stakeholders.
EUCAM is sponsored by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project is also supported by the Czech Republic Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Labels: United Nations, U.N., MaximsNewsNetwork, FRIDE, EU, Central Asia
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse offer wise advice on how to think about our Muslim neighbors
Once in a while, not often, an anthropologist's op-ed comments appear in a major newspaper. What many of those works often usefully offer is perspective, it seems to me. If a discipline that takes form out of the comparative examination of different cultures has anything to offer it must be on how to think about those peoples whose cultural worlds are different from our own. Today the famous French anthropologist, Olivier Roy, along with Justin Vaisse, offers some suggestions to the President-elect. Roy has been writing vitally important works on Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the Muslim world in general, and more recently on the problems of Muslims in Europe. He has earned his reputation through years of talking to many kinds of Muslim peoples in many contexts. I hope the in-coming administration will listen carefully to the perspective these two learned authorities have to offer. But also the body of supporters that stands behind it, that wants to help Obama succeed, needs also to gain a wider, more empathetic perspective on the Muslim peoples. Indeed, the perspective of the administration in the last eight years is not the only possible way to view our Muslim neighbors, as this article indicates.
[Click on the title for a link to the original page.]
New York Times, December 21, 2008
How to Win Islam Over
By OLIVIER ROY and JUSTIN VAISSE
DURING the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would convene a conference of Muslim leaders from around the world within his first year in office. Recently aides have said he may give a speech from a Muslim capital in his first 100 days. His hope, he has said, is to “make clear that we are not at war with Islam,” to describe to Muslims “what our values and our interests are” and to “insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there.”
This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong.
Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.
Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.
This will be an uphill battle, since this view of a monolithic, dangerous Islam has gained wide acceptance. Whether we’re talking about civil war in Iraq, insurgency in Afghanistan, unrest in Kashmir, conflict in Israel-Palestine, nuclear ambitions in Iran, rebellion in the Philippines or urban violence in France, people routinely — but wrongly — single out Islam as the explanation, rather than nationalism or separatism, political ambitions or social ills. This in turn reinforces the idea of a global struggle.
Even the recent attacks in Mumbai, India, cannot be seen primarily under the prism of religion. What the terrorists and supporters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to have carried out the attacks, have achieved is to make normal relations between India and Pakistan impossible for the foreseeable future. Such groups have always used regional conflicts like that in Kashmir to hold on to power.
The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders.”
Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.
And such a conference would have negative effects for Western Muslims. By lending weight to the idea of a natural link between Islam and terrorism, it would reinforce the perception that they constitute a sort of foreign body in Western societies, or even some sort of fifth column. Most Western Muslims want first and foremost to be considered as full citizens of their respective Western country, not part of any diaspora. And most of them share the so-called Western values.
If the idea of a Muslim summit meeting should be dropped as soon as possible, then what should Mr. Obama do? No more — but also no less — than carrying out the ambitious program he put forward during the campaign: closing the prison at GuantĆ”namo Bay, withdrawing from Iraq, banning torture, pushing for peace in the Middle East and so forth. These are not in any sense concessions to “Islam,” but on the contrary a reassertion that American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others.
Barack Obama should also put more faith in the capacity of the rest of the world to recognize that America has turned the page on eight catastrophic years during which its values have often been betrayed. After all, Americans have just elected a president whose middle name is Hussein. That name goes a long way with many Muslims.
Olivier Roy is a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Justin Vaisse is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
[Click on the title for a link to the original page.]
New York Times, December 21, 2008
How to Win Islam Over
By OLIVIER ROY and JUSTIN VAISSE
DURING the presidential campaign, Barack Obama said he would convene a conference of Muslim leaders from around the world within his first year in office. Recently aides have said he may give a speech from a Muslim capital in his first 100 days. His hope, he has said, is to “make clear that we are not at war with Islam,” to describe to Muslims “what our values and our interests are” and to “insist that they need to help us to defeat the terrorist threats that are there.”
This idea of trying to reconcile Islam and the West is well intentioned, of course. But the premise is wrong.
Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.
Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like.
This will be an uphill battle, since this view of a monolithic, dangerous Islam has gained wide acceptance. Whether we’re talking about civil war in Iraq, insurgency in Afghanistan, unrest in Kashmir, conflict in Israel-Palestine, nuclear ambitions in Iran, rebellion in the Philippines or urban violence in France, people routinely — but wrongly — single out Islam as the explanation, rather than nationalism or separatism, political ambitions or social ills. This in turn reinforces the idea of a global struggle.
Even the recent attacks in Mumbai, India, cannot be seen primarily under the prism of religion. What the terrorists and supporters of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to have carried out the attacks, have achieved is to make normal relations between India and Pakistan impossible for the foreseeable future. Such groups have always used regional conflicts like that in Kashmir to hold on to power.
The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders.”
Who are these leaders that President Obama would convene anyway? If he picks heads of state, he will effectively concede Osama bin Laden’s point that Islam is a political reality. If he picks clerics, he will put himself in the awkward position of implicitly representing Christianity — or maybe secularism. In any case, he would meet only self-appointed representatives, most of them probably coming from the Arab world, where a minority of Muslims live.
And such a conference would have negative effects for Western Muslims. By lending weight to the idea of a natural link between Islam and terrorism, it would reinforce the perception that they constitute a sort of foreign body in Western societies, or even some sort of fifth column. Most Western Muslims want first and foremost to be considered as full citizens of their respective Western country, not part of any diaspora. And most of them share the so-called Western values.
If the idea of a Muslim summit meeting should be dropped as soon as possible, then what should Mr. Obama do? No more — but also no less — than carrying out the ambitious program he put forward during the campaign: closing the prison at GuantĆ”namo Bay, withdrawing from Iraq, banning torture, pushing for peace in the Middle East and so forth. These are not in any sense concessions to “Islam,” but on the contrary a reassertion that American values are universal and do not suffer any kind of double standard, and that they could be shared by atheists, Christians, Muslims and others.
Barack Obama should also put more faith in the capacity of the rest of the world to recognize that America has turned the page on eight catastrophic years during which its values have often been betrayed. After all, Americans have just elected a president whose middle name is Hussein. That name goes a long way with many Muslims.
Olivier Roy is a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Justin Vaisse is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Friday, December 19, 2008
Arson of Palin's church: the danger of bitter politics
I was never a fan of Sarah Palin, as several posts have made clear, but I am grieved that her church seems to have been burned down by arsonists. Of course we do not know many details but the news is suggestive. This is the kind of evidence of a serious breach in our country that politicians, in the interest of the public weal, would do well to avoid. The kind of political campaign that the country has just been through could seriously tear a society apart. I don't like calling such campaigns "hard fought," which is the euphemism now in use. The truth is that many misrepresentations of fact were promoted, creating distrust and bitterness on many sides -- and nasty, even criminal, reactions. In the end healing may not come easy.
[Click on the title for a link to a source on the fire.]
[Click on the title for a link to a source on the fire.]
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Vice President admits that he approved of torture
Yesterday the Vice President admitted that he had supported the abuse of prisoners held by the Americans.
According to a news report by David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster Vice President Richard Cheney admited authorizing torture in an interview on ABC with Jonathan Karl. Karl asked him if he approved of interrogation tactics used against a so-called "high value prisoner" at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Mr. Cheney said, "I supported it," in reference to the practice known as "water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and convicted of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding. "I was aware of the program, certainly,” Cheney said. He helped “get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said. "And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."
Again, our troopers have gone to jail for abusing prisoners but Cheney approved it.
Cheney added that he thought the practice was “remarkably successful”.
Not so, said the Senate report on the abuse of prisoners [see my note yesterday].
According to a news report by David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster Vice President Richard Cheney admited authorizing torture in an interview on ABC with Jonathan Karl. Karl asked him if he approved of interrogation tactics used against a so-called "high value prisoner" at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Mr. Cheney said, "I supported it," in reference to the practice known as "water-boarding," a form of simulated drowning. After World War II, Japanese soldiers were tried and convicted of war crimes in US courts for water-boarding. "I was aware of the program, certainly,” Cheney said. He helped “get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do," Cheney said. "And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."
Again, our troopers have gone to jail for abusing prisoners but Cheney approved it.
Cheney added that he thought the practice was “remarkably successful”.
Not so, said the Senate report on the abuse of prisoners [see my note yesterday].
Saturday, December 13, 2008
The Really Bad Apples were at the top
We are all reeling from the news that many in high places have swindled the public. But I am still grieving over the last great swindle, perhaps the greatest in American history, that betrayed America’s stated values and took the lives of thousands of faithful American warriors, all for a lie that was repeated over and over again.
Most of us, I suppose, who were alarmed about the invasion of Iraq without reasonable cause felt so helpless at the time. I at least felt betrayed by my duly elected government. Now the reality of the abuse of power and the misrepresentations of the truth that were promoted in order to justify it are coming out. But I fear that the public may not be able to hear it. Other news occupies the front pages.
The report issued yesterday by the Senate Armed Services committee at least stated for all to see that the lie, having been put into place, had many ramifications. Now Donald Rumsfeld is named for authorizing torture in the report produced by Carl Levin and John McCain on behalf of the Senate; the report is described as “the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody.”
Note that the report “explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.”
“The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse.”
It says that the abuse of prisoners “grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials.”
In a sense, this is not news, as several publications by troopers on the ground made it clear that they were expected to torture prisoners (See, for example, Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian. 2007. Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. New York: New American Library). Those practices in the American military reveal what the military was encouraged to do. The American military is a well trained highly disciplined machine. That such things were taking place indicates that they were known and approved by higher ups. That those same officials denied that they had approved of torture was a betrayal of those under their authority. For them to claim that it was done by merely a few “bad apples” when these soldiers had been given orders to torture was a cowardly escape. It was a way that those in power could absolve themselves while getting things done their way. Pinochet and his generals who absolved themselves of all crimes in Chile was hardly worse.
Such a betrayal can break morale and discipline in an army that has has been trained faithfully to fulfill orders. Those young people who went to jail or were discharged dishonorably for obeying orders were betrayed by their own government. It is the yokels at the top who should have gone to jail. Rumsfeld was named here, but could he have given such orders without higher authority?
How much higher could the culpability go?
Most of us, I suppose, who were alarmed about the invasion of Iraq without reasonable cause felt so helpless at the time. I at least felt betrayed by my duly elected government. Now the reality of the abuse of power and the misrepresentations of the truth that were promoted in order to justify it are coming out. But I fear that the public may not be able to hear it. Other news occupies the front pages.
The report issued yesterday by the Senate Armed Services committee at least stated for all to see that the lie, having been put into place, had many ramifications. Now Donald Rumsfeld is named for authorizing torture in the report produced by Carl Levin and John McCain on behalf of the Senate; the report is described as “the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody.”
Note that the report “explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.”
“The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse.”
It says that the abuse of prisoners “grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials.”
In a sense, this is not news, as several publications by troopers on the ground made it clear that they were expected to torture prisoners (See, for example, Tony Lagouranis and Allen Mikaelian. 2007. Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. New York: New American Library). Those practices in the American military reveal what the military was encouraged to do. The American military is a well trained highly disciplined machine. That such things were taking place indicates that they were known and approved by higher ups. That those same officials denied that they had approved of torture was a betrayal of those under their authority. For them to claim that it was done by merely a few “bad apples” when these soldiers had been given orders to torture was a cowardly escape. It was a way that those in power could absolve themselves while getting things done their way. Pinochet and his generals who absolved themselves of all crimes in Chile was hardly worse.
Such a betrayal can break morale and discipline in an army that has has been trained faithfully to fulfill orders. Those young people who went to jail or were discharged dishonorably for obeying orders were betrayed by their own government. It is the yokels at the top who should have gone to jail. Rumsfeld was named here, but could he have given such orders without higher authority?
How much higher could the culpability go?
Thursday, November 27, 2008
An early sign that the mortgage crisis is ending?
Thanks to McClatchy for directing me to this site.
http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/1431559.html
Homebuyers jump at falling mortgage rates
By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008 | Page 8B
Stuart Stenhouse has been watching the housing market for some time. On Wednesday, lured by a plunge in mortgage rates, the 40-year-old Sacramentan jumped in.
"That's why I'm starting," Stenhouse said as he traipsed around Beazer Homes' Natomas Field development in a cold midday drizzle. He doubted he would buy immediately, but the lower rates prompted him to start looking at town homes in the low-$200,000 range.
Sacramento's troubled housing market, which has been gaining momentum for several months, got a new jolt this week. An $800 billion stimulus plan for the credit markets, unveiled Tuesday by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department, sent fixed-rate mortgages tumbling as much as 1 percentage point.
Almost immediately, homebuyers with deals pending raced to lock in rates. Potential homebuyers called their agents and said they were ready to look in earnest. Homeowners took a fresh look at the refinance market.
It's unlikely this will cure all that ails the real estate market. It won't spell relief for homeowners who've fallen behind on their payments or can't refinance out of an expensive variable-rate mortgage because they owe more than their houses are worth.
Still, the move was seen as helpful. Alan Wagner, president of the Sacramento Association of Realtors, said the lower rates might help firm up the region's housing prices – which have continued to plummet even as the volume of sales has improved. At the very least, the rates will probably bring more buyers out of the woodwork, and soon.
"Where Friday is going to be Black Friday for retail people, it'll be a day for people to start looking for houses," said Wagner, an agent with Re/Max Gold in Elk Grove.
Jeff Tarbell of Comstock Mortgage, with offices in Sacramento and Roseville, said 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to around 5.375 percent. They had been something over 6 percent before the stimulus plan was announced.
This week's average mortgage rate of 5.97 percent was the lowest since the week of Oct. 9, when rates fell to 5.94 percent. Average rates have been below 6 percent 16 weeks this year, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. The year's low was 5.48 percent the week of Jan. 24; the high was 6.63 percent the week of July 24.
Tuesday's news overwhelmed computers at Comstock, and the banks where it places loans, as purchasers moved to take advantage.
"There was so much volume in such a short window of time, I would say probably our own system, and four or five of the big banks that we register loans with, went down or went into some sort of a tizzy," Tarbell said. It quieted Wednesday but was still busy.
One of Tarbell's clients, who's moving from the Bay Area, was about to lock in a $400,000 mortgage at 6 percent. He ended up borrowing at 5.625 percent. Savings: $161 a month.
The government plan includes $500 billion in new cash to buy up mortgage-backed securities, plus another $100 billion to buy debt securities issued by government-affiliated mortgage firms such as Freddie Mac.
Separately, $200 billion will be loaned to institutions that invest in securities backed by auto, credit-card and small-business loans.
By purchasing those securities, the government drives up their price. That drives down the securities' yield, which drives down the interest rates consumers pay.
The plan comes as the Sacramento housing market, one of the first in the country to collapse, is still struggling to find its footing. October marked the seventh straight month with higher sales, but prices are still falling off a cliff.
MDA DataQuick said Sacramento County median prices fell to $195,000 in October, a 35 percent drop from a year ago. Placer County's median of $320,000 was 21 percent below last year and 39 percent below the 2005 peak.
Moreover, the new-home market remains weak. Housing starts in greater Sacramento are down 34 percent this year, says the Construction Industry Research Board.
That means, at least for now, downward pressure on prices. "The buyers are out there looking for really good deals, and they're getting really good deals," said Patti Smith of Patti Smith Timberline Realty in Georgetown.
Lower rates will help, though. "We will see an increase in sales," said Kathryn Boyce with the Sacramento office of researcher Hanley Wood Market Intelligence. "People who were on the edge, who stopped looking because interest rates went up, will now want to jump back in quickly."
Steve Galster, co-owner of the Galster Group real estate firm in Fair Oaks, has a client who began looking at properties in September but then stopped, frightened that home values hadn't hit bottom. Despite nudging from Galster the past two months, the client wouldn't resume searching.
But when the interest rates fell, the client called Galster. "He's been watching things, and all of a sudden he says, 'Why not now?'" according to Galster.
The two are going house-hunting Saturday morning.
Call The Bee's Dale Kasler, (916) 321-1066. Read his blog on the economy, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.
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* [@Nyx.AdditionalAuthorInfo@]
Jack520 wrote on 11/27/2008 06:29:29 AM:
Home prices do what home prices do. I have always said this and it is so true. When they go up, people rush in cause they dont want to be priced out. When they go down, they are afraid to buy. This keeps the trend going. You all saw what kept them going up, I do not need to refresh you on this trend. Why do they start to go up? Well, first, if you can buy a home for roughly the same price as renting, why rent? You have to take into consideration the tax savings, with the state taxes at 9 % and federal roughly 26% combined, that makes around 34 % ( they do not add). If you are paying 1200 a month for rent, then you can pay 1800 for your house payment ( do you taxes yourself and find out, dont trust my number ). Then determine what you can buy for that amount....When the market gets close to making it more cost effective to buy versus rent, is when the market begins to turn up. Are we there....you do the math. As more people buy, so do their friends. I am glad young families can buy.
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http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/1431559.html
Homebuyers jump at falling mortgage rates
By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com
Published: Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008 | Page 8B
Stuart Stenhouse has been watching the housing market for some time. On Wednesday, lured by a plunge in mortgage rates, the 40-year-old Sacramentan jumped in.
"That's why I'm starting," Stenhouse said as he traipsed around Beazer Homes' Natomas Field development in a cold midday drizzle. He doubted he would buy immediately, but the lower rates prompted him to start looking at town homes in the low-$200,000 range.
Sacramento's troubled housing market, which has been gaining momentum for several months, got a new jolt this week. An $800 billion stimulus plan for the credit markets, unveiled Tuesday by the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department, sent fixed-rate mortgages tumbling as much as 1 percentage point.
Almost immediately, homebuyers with deals pending raced to lock in rates. Potential homebuyers called their agents and said they were ready to look in earnest. Homeowners took a fresh look at the refinance market.
It's unlikely this will cure all that ails the real estate market. It won't spell relief for homeowners who've fallen behind on their payments or can't refinance out of an expensive variable-rate mortgage because they owe more than their houses are worth.
Still, the move was seen as helpful. Alan Wagner, president of the Sacramento Association of Realtors, said the lower rates might help firm up the region's housing prices – which have continued to plummet even as the volume of sales has improved. At the very least, the rates will probably bring more buyers out of the woodwork, and soon.
"Where Friday is going to be Black Friday for retail people, it'll be a day for people to start looking for houses," said Wagner, an agent with Re/Max Gold in Elk Grove.
Jeff Tarbell of Comstock Mortgage, with offices in Sacramento and Roseville, said 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to around 5.375 percent. They had been something over 6 percent before the stimulus plan was announced.
This week's average mortgage rate of 5.97 percent was the lowest since the week of Oct. 9, when rates fell to 5.94 percent. Average rates have been below 6 percent 16 weeks this year, according to mortgage giant Freddie Mac. The year's low was 5.48 percent the week of Jan. 24; the high was 6.63 percent the week of July 24.
Tuesday's news overwhelmed computers at Comstock, and the banks where it places loans, as purchasers moved to take advantage.
"There was so much volume in such a short window of time, I would say probably our own system, and four or five of the big banks that we register loans with, went down or went into some sort of a tizzy," Tarbell said. It quieted Wednesday but was still busy.
One of Tarbell's clients, who's moving from the Bay Area, was about to lock in a $400,000 mortgage at 6 percent. He ended up borrowing at 5.625 percent. Savings: $161 a month.
The government plan includes $500 billion in new cash to buy up mortgage-backed securities, plus another $100 billion to buy debt securities issued by government-affiliated mortgage firms such as Freddie Mac.
Separately, $200 billion will be loaned to institutions that invest in securities backed by auto, credit-card and small-business loans.
By purchasing those securities, the government drives up their price. That drives down the securities' yield, which drives down the interest rates consumers pay.
The plan comes as the Sacramento housing market, one of the first in the country to collapse, is still struggling to find its footing. October marked the seventh straight month with higher sales, but prices are still falling off a cliff.
MDA DataQuick said Sacramento County median prices fell to $195,000 in October, a 35 percent drop from a year ago. Placer County's median of $320,000 was 21 percent below last year and 39 percent below the 2005 peak.
Moreover, the new-home market remains weak. Housing starts in greater Sacramento are down 34 percent this year, says the Construction Industry Research Board.
That means, at least for now, downward pressure on prices. "The buyers are out there looking for really good deals, and they're getting really good deals," said Patti Smith of Patti Smith Timberline Realty in Georgetown.
Lower rates will help, though. "We will see an increase in sales," said Kathryn Boyce with the Sacramento office of researcher Hanley Wood Market Intelligence. "People who were on the edge, who stopped looking because interest rates went up, will now want to jump back in quickly."
Steve Galster, co-owner of the Galster Group real estate firm in Fair Oaks, has a client who began looking at properties in September but then stopped, frightened that home values hadn't hit bottom. Despite nudging from Galster the past two months, the client wouldn't resume searching.
But when the interest rates fell, the client called Galster. "He's been watching things, and all of a sudden he says, 'Why not now?'" according to Galster.
The two are going house-hunting Saturday morning.
Call The Bee's Dale Kasler, (916) 321-1066. Read his blog on the economy, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.
Comment Guidelines
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming to sacbee.com. We welcome your participation in our commenting boards and forums, but we ask that you follow a few simple rules to keep the boards open and the discourse civil.
We reserve the right to delete comments that contain inappropriate links, obscenities or vulgarities, spam, hate speech, personal attacks, plagiarism or copyright violations. You can help notify us of potential abuses by flagging comments that you find offensive. Action will be taken against users who repeatedly or flagrantly violate the rules. Keep it clean and you should have no problems.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Login | Register
Comments: 2 Showing:
* [@Nyx.AdditionalAuthorInfo@]
Jack520 wrote on 11/27/2008 06:29:29 AM:
Home prices do what home prices do. I have always said this and it is so true. When they go up, people rush in cause they dont want to be priced out. When they go down, they are afraid to buy. This keeps the trend going. You all saw what kept them going up, I do not need to refresh you on this trend. Why do they start to go up? Well, first, if you can buy a home for roughly the same price as renting, why rent? You have to take into consideration the tax savings, with the state taxes at 9 % and federal roughly 26% combined, that makes around 34 % ( they do not add). If you are paying 1200 a month for rent, then you can pay 1800 for your house payment ( do you taxes yourself and find out, dont trust my number ). Then determine what you can buy for that amount....When the market gets close to making it more cost effective to buy versus rent, is when the market begins to turn up. Are we there....you do the math. As more people buy, so do their friends. I am glad young families can buy.
Recommend (0) Report abuse
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Saudi Aid and Fatwas to Calm Pakistani Militants?
Atlantic-Community.org has a note, referenced to Asia Times Online [but I can’t find it] stating that
“General Petraeus has given Saudi Arabia control over aid to Pakistan. ++ It is hoped that a series of religious decrees against terrorism and a continued debate on inter-religious dialogue with Saudi support will reach troubled areas in Pakistan. ++ Saudi involvement risks pulling them into a quagmire of politics and military action. ++ However, the US, Saudis and Pakistanis engaging militants individually can have results.”
I cannot internalize how a general so reputedly intelligent could do something so transparently unwise. Yes, Pakistan has, as the article says, “failed” to produce the kind of results we want on “the war on terror”, but to make use of Saudi Arabia to remedy the situation is folly beyond measure. If the Pakistanis are conflicted about how they want to make use of Islamic ideals to motivate their citizenry, Saudi Arabia has to be at least as conflicted. Indeed, they admit to carrying on a low-grace civil war against their own “jehadists.” Can Petraeus be unaware of the many times in Saudi history that various extreme Islamist groups have become major problems for government control? How can Saudi theologians, wahhabi theologians at that, develop the kinds of theological decrees that would rein in extremists in “troubled areas” of Pakistan?
I am dumbfounded and horrified. Dear Lord, save us.
[click on the title for a link to the source]
“General Petraeus has given Saudi Arabia control over aid to Pakistan. ++ It is hoped that a series of religious decrees against terrorism and a continued debate on inter-religious dialogue with Saudi support will reach troubled areas in Pakistan. ++ Saudi involvement risks pulling them into a quagmire of politics and military action. ++ However, the US, Saudis and Pakistanis engaging militants individually can have results.”
I cannot internalize how a general so reputedly intelligent could do something so transparently unwise. Yes, Pakistan has, as the article says, “failed” to produce the kind of results we want on “the war on terror”, but to make use of Saudi Arabia to remedy the situation is folly beyond measure. If the Pakistanis are conflicted about how they want to make use of Islamic ideals to motivate their citizenry, Saudi Arabia has to be at least as conflicted. Indeed, they admit to carrying on a low-grace civil war against their own “jehadists.” Can Petraeus be unaware of the many times in Saudi history that various extreme Islamist groups have become major problems for government control? How can Saudi theologians, wahhabi theologians at that, develop the kinds of theological decrees that would rein in extremists in “troubled areas” of Pakistan?
I am dumbfounded and horrified. Dear Lord, save us.
[click on the title for a link to the source]
Monday, November 03, 2008
Preparing for the outcome
It is now the night before the election and, even though the pundits claim to know how it will come out, many of us are anxious. Now is the time to prepare to accept the result, whatever it is.
Our country is dangerously polarized. When this election is over we must all be prepared to join in making the best of the result, even if we disagree with it. What makes democracy work is the universal commitment to consent to the will of the majority and to protect the right of the minority to retain their own voice, even in defeat.
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech, brief as it was, delivered in the rain, captured the spirit that must prevail among us after a bitter contest.
The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” … Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue … still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Our country is dangerously polarized. When this election is over we must all be prepared to join in making the best of the result, even if we disagree with it. What makes democracy work is the universal commitment to consent to the will of the majority and to protect the right of the minority to retain their own voice, even in defeat.
Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech, brief as it was, delivered in the rain, captured the spirit that must prevail among us after a bitter contest.
The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” … Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue … still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, … to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The terrorist rhetoric of McCain and Palin is dangerous
It is unnerving to turn from narratives about how brutal wars take form elsewhere, as in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or Darfur, to American politics. Most Americans are unaware that those wars took form in what was supposed to be, or claimed to be, a democratic process. But through the skillful use of innuendo political leaders created doubt, suspicion, and fear and so were able to put in motion ignoble even inhuman acts.
• It was after Franjo Tudjman was elected in Croatia that the Serbs and Croats broke into conflict, involving people who knew each other, neighbor taking up arms against neighbor. The context was Tudjman’s declaration that Croatia was for the Croats and his deployment of Ustashe symbols – symbols used by criminal Croats allied with Hitler during World War II who systematically sought to exterminate Jews, Serbs, Roma and other minorities in the area. The minority Serbs in the new state of Croatia feared that they would again suffer as their parents and grandparents had in World War II. [Denich, Bette. 1994. "Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide." American Ethnologist 21(2):367-390].
• Early after Sudan became independent, as political parties formed, they did not carry on gentlemen’s disputes about power. Within the Umma party, for instance, there was a bitter division among the leaders: One leader began to appeal to the “African” tribes while his opponent appealed to the “Arabs” – a distinction in DarFur that scarcely constituted a difference. But as the two sides exaggerated the racial-cultural rhetoric they established a context for the creation of intense hostilities that would [along with many other factors however] lead to the fighting that is now described as genocide in Darfur. [Prunier, Gerard. 2005. The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca: Cornel University.]
• In Rwanda a notable Hutu declared in 1960 that Rwanda's new freedom meant that “Democracy has vanquished feudalism.” The truth was otherwise. In fact, it enabled the dominant Hutus to put in motion an attempt to exterminate their Tutsi neighbors. Deploying newspapers and radio they promoted the idea that the Tutsis were the source of national problems, describing them as “cockroaches.” They needed to be exterminated for the public good. It was not merely a matter of propaganda, as they also established organizations through which the process of extermination could begin and through which pressure might be exerted on the rest of the population to conform. So it was that the day came when it was possible to induce many ordinary Hutus to take up machetes against their neighbors. Such is the power of public myth and rhetoric fabricated and promoted for political ends. [Gourevitch, Philip. 1998. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We are to be Killed with our Families. New York: Farrar, Strauss.]
Many of us have been uneasy about the way that McCain and Palin – and many others in the Republican propaganda network – have characterized Barak Obama. Many persist in calling him a Muslim [by implication a terrorist], and a socialist. These are not mistakes: they are deliberate and pointed. But it is more dangerous to the American public than may be supposed.
Take what happened today in Miami, Florida. From Fivethirtyeight.com
“After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.
The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.
"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."
Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."
The claims that politicians make matter. Politicians, if they are properly situated, can create an unbridgeable chasm in a society. Wasn't it Goering who said that propaganda needs to be simple and repeated many times until people come think there is something to it? Surely if freedom is to work, the pursuit of public office should entail the obligation to speak fairly and truthfully in making public claims.
I pray that our country will be spared what many other countries have experienced. It is easier than we think to poison the democratic process.
• It was after Franjo Tudjman was elected in Croatia that the Serbs and Croats broke into conflict, involving people who knew each other, neighbor taking up arms against neighbor. The context was Tudjman’s declaration that Croatia was for the Croats and his deployment of Ustashe symbols – symbols used by criminal Croats allied with Hitler during World War II who systematically sought to exterminate Jews, Serbs, Roma and other minorities in the area. The minority Serbs in the new state of Croatia feared that they would again suffer as their parents and grandparents had in World War II. [Denich, Bette. 1994. "Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide." American Ethnologist 21(2):367-390].
• Early after Sudan became independent, as political parties formed, they did not carry on gentlemen’s disputes about power. Within the Umma party, for instance, there was a bitter division among the leaders: One leader began to appeal to the “African” tribes while his opponent appealed to the “Arabs” – a distinction in DarFur that scarcely constituted a difference. But as the two sides exaggerated the racial-cultural rhetoric they established a context for the creation of intense hostilities that would [along with many other factors however] lead to the fighting that is now described as genocide in Darfur. [Prunier, Gerard. 2005. The Ambiguous Genocide. Ithaca: Cornel University.]
• In Rwanda a notable Hutu declared in 1960 that Rwanda's new freedom meant that “Democracy has vanquished feudalism.” The truth was otherwise. In fact, it enabled the dominant Hutus to put in motion an attempt to exterminate their Tutsi neighbors. Deploying newspapers and radio they promoted the idea that the Tutsis were the source of national problems, describing them as “cockroaches.” They needed to be exterminated for the public good. It was not merely a matter of propaganda, as they also established organizations through which the process of extermination could begin and through which pressure might be exerted on the rest of the population to conform. So it was that the day came when it was possible to induce many ordinary Hutus to take up machetes against their neighbors. Such is the power of public myth and rhetoric fabricated and promoted for political ends. [Gourevitch, Philip. 1998. We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We are to be Killed with our Families. New York: Farrar, Strauss.]
Many of us have been uneasy about the way that McCain and Palin – and many others in the Republican propaganda network – have characterized Barak Obama. Many persist in calling him a Muslim [by implication a terrorist], and a socialist. These are not mistakes: they are deliberate and pointed. But it is more dangerous to the American public than may be supposed.
Take what happened today in Miami, Florida. From Fivethirtyeight.com
“After the rally, we witnessed a near-street riot involving the exiting McCain crowd and two Cuban-American Obama supporters. Tony Garcia, 63, and Raul Sorando, 31, were suddenly surrounded by an angry mob. There is a moment in a crowd when something goes from mere yelling to a feeling of danger, and that's what we witnessed. As photographers and police raced to the scene, the crowd elevated from stable to fast-moving scrum, and the two men were surrounded on all sides as we raced to the circle.
The event maybe lasted a minute, two at the most, before police competently managed to hustle the two away from the scene and out of the danger zone. Only FiveThirtyEight tracked the two men down for comment, a quarter mile down the street.
"People were screaming 'Terrorist!' 'Communist!' 'Socialist!'" Sorando said when we caught up with him. "I had a guy tell me he was gonna kill me."
Asked what had precipitated the event, "We were just chanting 'Obama!' and holding our signs. That was it. And the crowd suddenly got crazy."
The claims that politicians make matter. Politicians, if they are properly situated, can create an unbridgeable chasm in a society. Wasn't it Goering who said that propaganda needs to be simple and repeated many times until people come think there is something to it? Surely if freedom is to work, the pursuit of public office should entail the obligation to speak fairly and truthfully in making public claims.
I pray that our country will be spared what many other countries have experienced. It is easier than we think to poison the democratic process.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sarah Palin is pro-choice
As far as I can tell, Sarah Palin’s position on abortion is the pro-choice position. In the extended quotation below, from her interview with Katie Couric, I have placed some key terms in italics, to emphasize how compatible her position is with pro-choice.
"Palin: I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic about my position there on pro-life. And I understand good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion and when it should be allowed. So … I respect people's opinion on this.
Now, I would counsel to choose life. I would like to see a culture of life in this country. But I would also like to see taking it one step further. Not just saying I am pro-life, and I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country. But I want, then, those women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal, for them to be supported for adoptions to be made easier. For more support given to foster parents and adoptive families. That is my personal opinion on this.
Couric: But, ideally, you think it should be illegal …
Palin: If you …
Couric: …for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?
Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support.
Then, now, some may characterize my position as being extreme, because I am pro-life … and I want women empowered to know that, you know, we can help them. They can be strong enough, and they can have the resources provided them to give that child life.
Notice the language: She would counsel against abortion. That is not the pro-life position; the pro-life position is that abortion should be criminalized. She would personally advise against it. Many of those who are pro-choice would likewise advise against abortion in some cases. I suspect that some would advise against abortion even in the most egregious situations. The issue is not whether one is for or against abortion: it is whether abortion should be criminalized. Palin believes it should not be: she is pro-choice, whatever she calls herself.
Pro-choice is not “pro-abortion,” a term that masks the real nature of the debate. No one is “for” abortion. It is always an act of erasure, an acknowledgment of, to use the mildest of terms, a mistake. It is always a tragedy, a loss. It is an acknowledgment of something gone wrong: No one is for that. Those of us who are pro-choice are not for abortion. Many of us would, like Palin, counsel against abortion, and like Palin, if the people involved decide otherwise, however grieved we might be by their decision, we would not have them be treated as criminals. The debate has so far veiled the fact that one can be “against abortion” in principle and at the same time against criminalizing abortion.
Sarah Palin’s position is to “counsel a person to choose life …”. She would "not want anyone to go to jail." She is pro-choice.
"Palin: I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic about my position there on pro-life. And I understand good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion and when it should be allowed. So … I respect people's opinion on this.
Now, I would counsel to choose life. I would like to see a culture of life in this country. But I would also like to see taking it one step further. Not just saying I am pro-life, and I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country. But I want, then, those women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal, for them to be supported for adoptions to be made easier. For more support given to foster parents and adoptive families. That is my personal opinion on this.
Couric: But, ideally, you think it should be illegal …
Palin: If you …
Couric: …for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?
Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an … abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support.
Then, now, some may characterize my position as being extreme, because I am pro-life … and I want women empowered to know that, you know, we can help them. They can be strong enough, and they can have the resources provided them to give that child life.
Notice the language: She would counsel against abortion. That is not the pro-life position; the pro-life position is that abortion should be criminalized. She would personally advise against it. Many of those who are pro-choice would likewise advise against abortion in some cases. I suspect that some would advise against abortion even in the most egregious situations. The issue is not whether one is for or against abortion: it is whether abortion should be criminalized. Palin believes it should not be: she is pro-choice, whatever she calls herself.
Pro-choice is not “pro-abortion,” a term that masks the real nature of the debate. No one is “for” abortion. It is always an act of erasure, an acknowledgment of, to use the mildest of terms, a mistake. It is always a tragedy, a loss. It is an acknowledgment of something gone wrong: No one is for that. Those of us who are pro-choice are not for abortion. Many of us would, like Palin, counsel against abortion, and like Palin, if the people involved decide otherwise, however grieved we might be by their decision, we would not have them be treated as criminals. The debate has so far veiled the fact that one can be “against abortion” in principle and at the same time against criminalizing abortion.
Sarah Palin’s position is to “counsel a person to choose life …”. She would "not want anyone to go to jail." She is pro-choice.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Another tragic loss to the Afghanistan peoples, for spurious reasons
From the point of view of the Taliban virtually everyone bringing aid to Afghanistan can be regarded as subversive. Perhaps this woman was singled out because she was a Christian but if she had been working for any other aid organization -- UN, USAID, etc. -- she would have been a target. And the Taliban are right: such people are undermining the social world they stand for. But we are seeing more signs that the Taliban are no longer a purely Afghan organization: The practice of beheading, what took place only yesterday also, is a horrific practice broadly connected to radical Arabs.
10/20/08
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban gunmen on a motorbike killed a Christian aid worker in the Afghan capital on Monday, and the militant group said it had targeted the woman because she was proselytizing.
The woman, a British national, worked with handicapped Afghans and was killed in the western part of Kabul as she was walking alone around 8 a.m., police said. Najib Samsoor, a district police chief, originally said the woman was from South Africa, but the British government later said she was British.
The gunmen shot the victim in the body and leg with a pistol, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. Officials did not release her name.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the slaying, saying the woman was killed because she was spreading Christianity.
"This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to people of Afghanistan," Mujahid told the Associated Press. "Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman. This morning our people killed her in Kabul."
The woman's organization — SERVE, Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational enterprises — describes itself as a Christian charity registered in Britain. The group's Web page says the charity has been working with Afghan refugees since 1980 in Pakistan.
"SERVE Afghanistan's purpose is to express God's love and bring hope by serving the people of Afghanistan, especially the needy, as we seek to address personal, social and environmental needs," SERVE's Web page says.
Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic nation and has little tolerance for outside religious interference. Proselytizing is prohibited by law, and other Christian missionaries or charities have faced severe hostilities.
Last summer a group of 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan. Two were killed and the rest were released.
In 2001, eight international aid workers, including two Americans, were imprisoned and charged with preaching Christianity. The eight were freed by Afghan mujahedeen fighters attacking the Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion.
In 2006, an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity was sentenced to death by an Afghan court. Following an international outcry Afghan authorities declared the man insane and he was granted asylum in Italy, where he now lives.
Monday's attack adds to a growing sense of insecurity in Kabul. The capital is now blanketed in police checkpoints. Embassies, military bases and the U.N. are erecting cement wall barriers to guard against suicide bombings.
Kidnappings targeting wealthy Afghans have long been a problem in Kabul, but attacks against Westerners in the city and surrounding provinces have also increased recently. In mid-August, Taliban militants killed three women working for the U.S. aid group International Rescue Committee while they were driving in Logar, a province south of Kabul.
Meanwhile, assault helicopters dropped NATO troops into Jalrez district of Wardak province on Thursday, leading to a two-day battle involving airstrikes in which more than 20 militants were killed, the military alliance said in a statement Monday.
Wardak province, just 40 miles west of Kabul, has become an insurgent stronghold on the doorsteps of the capital.
Militants have expanded their traditional bases in the country's south and east — on the border with Pakistan — and have gained territory in the provinces surrounding Kabul, a worrying development for Afghan and NATO troops.
Those advances are part of the reason that top U.S. military officials have warned that the international mission to defeat the Taliban is in peril, and why NATO generals have called for a sharp increase in the number of troops here.
Some 65,000 international troops now operate in Afghanistan, including around 32,000 Americans.
10/20/08
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban gunmen on a motorbike killed a Christian aid worker in the Afghan capital on Monday, and the militant group said it had targeted the woman because she was proselytizing.
The woman, a British national, worked with handicapped Afghans and was killed in the western part of Kabul as she was walking alone around 8 a.m., police said. Najib Samsoor, a district police chief, originally said the woman was from South Africa, but the British government later said she was British.
The gunmen shot the victim in the body and leg with a pistol, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. Officials did not release her name.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, claimed responsibility for the slaying, saying the woman was killed because she was spreading Christianity.
"This woman came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to people of Afghanistan," Mujahid told the Associated Press. "Our (leaders) issued a decree to kill this woman. This morning our people killed her in Kabul."
The woman's organization — SERVE, Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational enterprises — describes itself as a Christian charity registered in Britain. The group's Web page says the charity has been working with Afghan refugees since 1980 in Pakistan.
"SERVE Afghanistan's purpose is to express God's love and bring hope by serving the people of Afghanistan, especially the needy, as we seek to address personal, social and environmental needs," SERVE's Web page says.
Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic nation and has little tolerance for outside religious interference. Proselytizing is prohibited by law, and other Christian missionaries or charities have faced severe hostilities.
Last summer a group of 23 South Korean aid workers from a church group were taken hostage in southern Afghanistan. Two were killed and the rest were released.
In 2001, eight international aid workers, including two Americans, were imprisoned and charged with preaching Christianity. The eight were freed by Afghan mujahedeen fighters attacking the Taliban after the U.S.-led invasion.
In 2006, an Afghan man who converted from Islam to Christianity was sentenced to death by an Afghan court. Following an international outcry Afghan authorities declared the man insane and he was granted asylum in Italy, where he now lives.
Monday's attack adds to a growing sense of insecurity in Kabul. The capital is now blanketed in police checkpoints. Embassies, military bases and the U.N. are erecting cement wall barriers to guard against suicide bombings.
Kidnappings targeting wealthy Afghans have long been a problem in Kabul, but attacks against Westerners in the city and surrounding provinces have also increased recently. In mid-August, Taliban militants killed three women working for the U.S. aid group International Rescue Committee while they were driving in Logar, a province south of Kabul.
Meanwhile, assault helicopters dropped NATO troops into Jalrez district of Wardak province on Thursday, leading to a two-day battle involving airstrikes in which more than 20 militants were killed, the military alliance said in a statement Monday.
Wardak province, just 40 miles west of Kabul, has become an insurgent stronghold on the doorsteps of the capital.
Militants have expanded their traditional bases in the country's south and east — on the border with Pakistan — and have gained territory in the provinces surrounding Kabul, a worrying development for Afghan and NATO troops.
Those advances are part of the reason that top U.S. military officials have warned that the international mission to defeat the Taliban is in peril, and why NATO generals have called for a sharp increase in the number of troops here.
Some 65,000 international troops now operate in Afghanistan, including around 32,000 Americans.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
More bad news on Pakistan
Today's McClatchy papers are saying there is a new intelligence estimate of the situation in Pakistan that paints a bleak picture. The Al Qaeda-backed insurgency is growing, the Pakistan army is reluctant to take firm action, food and energy are getting short, and the government is paralyzed by infighting. This is supposed to be "top secret". The report comes after a request to consider "the U S presence in the region can be effective." A growing issue is the economy: "The Pakistani public is clamoring for relief as the crisis pushes millions more into poverty, giving insurgent groups more opportunities to recruit young Pakistanis."
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Black, Muslim, Arab, Socialist, Whatever.
The emails going out about Obama have been crafty. The gossip is not that he is black – that’s obvious enough – but that he is dangerous for other reasons. You can’t say a man’s unacceptable because he’s black these days; no one wants to admit to being racist. You have to invent something else.
I have heard several phony reasons. The most widely circulated one is that he is a secret Muslim. Someone called in on a TV program last week who had supposed that Obama openly admitted to being a Muslim: the caller was asking which sect Obama belonged to, Shia or Sunni. Fortunately, the panelist on the program corrected him: Obama is not a Muslim, he is a Christian. A woman in Florida told a television reporter that she could not trust Obama because he would socialize the country [somehow she was missing the government buyout taking place as she spoke; it's now too late for Obama to do it, Bush and company have just done it]. And yesterday a woman in a suburb of Minneapolis told John McCain that she could not trust Obama because he was an “Arab.”
Whatever the reason, we know Obama can’t be trusted, these people are saying. As Sarah Palin keeps putting it, “he’s different from us.” The nuance is clear: Black, Muslim, Arab, socialist: whatever he is, he different. And dangerous.
I have heard several phony reasons. The most widely circulated one is that he is a secret Muslim. Someone called in on a TV program last week who had supposed that Obama openly admitted to being a Muslim: the caller was asking which sect Obama belonged to, Shia or Sunni. Fortunately, the panelist on the program corrected him: Obama is not a Muslim, he is a Christian. A woman in Florida told a television reporter that she could not trust Obama because he would socialize the country [somehow she was missing the government buyout taking place as she spoke; it's now too late for Obama to do it, Bush and company have just done it]. And yesterday a woman in a suburb of Minneapolis told John McCain that she could not trust Obama because he was an “Arab.”
Whatever the reason, we know Obama can’t be trusted, these people are saying. As Sarah Palin keeps putting it, “he’s different from us.” The nuance is clear: Black, Muslim, Arab, socialist: whatever he is, he different. And dangerous.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Incindiary politics can get out of control
The rhetoric of the presidential race in the US has become insidious and incendiary. There could be more danger in the rhetoric of character assassination than we suppose. Somehow until I reached a mature age I failed to see how dangerously influential the ideological activity of leaders including the learned elite can be. The educated professional elite, leaders in thought and public education, at least many of them, joined in Hitler’s Third Reich, for transparently self-serving reasons. The professional elite in South Africa aided and abetted those figures who conceived of and operationalized apartheid; without the involvement of the educated elite the fifteen percent could never have controlled the other eighty-five percent. Even more troubling to me is the role of the learned elites in formulating the ideas that eventually would rend apart the country of Yugoslavia, breaking it into Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia (and so on). It was the ideas of the intelligentsia that created the movements of fear that became genocidal among these populations. It was fear, joined with hate, that trashed personal friendships among the Yugoslavs that had existed for decades. Eventually fear as well as the arrogance of racism drove ethnic cleansing.
So I wonder about what could come out of the incendiary speeches being given by the contestants for the presidency now. Our country has been intensely divided for years and the strategic decisions of politicians to deploy “wedge issues” in election campaigns has had much to do with hardening these divisions. Leaders matter. Good leadership matters. What we have had in our country is such intense partisanship among our leaders that inevitably the public has similarly formed into two irreconcilable blocs; it is as if the two sides live in different worlds. No matter how outrageous are the accusations, some people will fail to see them as calculated measures to gain advantage, to win public support for specific agendas. For them the assertions are not metaphorical but real. Some people will take the extreme attacks on character literally. If any of them were to act on the claims being made, someone could die. Society could become even more dangerously polarized. At some point we have to beg the two sides to be civil. We are trying to choose a president: the process simply cannot become a knife fight in a phone booth.
Let us pray for statesmen who will avoid the character assassinations of the past and seek to treat their opponents with ordinary courtesy.
So I wonder about what could come out of the incendiary speeches being given by the contestants for the presidency now. Our country has been intensely divided for years and the strategic decisions of politicians to deploy “wedge issues” in election campaigns has had much to do with hardening these divisions. Leaders matter. Good leadership matters. What we have had in our country is such intense partisanship among our leaders that inevitably the public has similarly formed into two irreconcilable blocs; it is as if the two sides live in different worlds. No matter how outrageous are the accusations, some people will fail to see them as calculated measures to gain advantage, to win public support for specific agendas. For them the assertions are not metaphorical but real. Some people will take the extreme attacks on character literally. If any of them were to act on the claims being made, someone could die. Society could become even more dangerously polarized. At some point we have to beg the two sides to be civil. We are trying to choose a president: the process simply cannot become a knife fight in a phone booth.
Let us pray for statesmen who will avoid the character assassinations of the past and seek to treat their opponents with ordinary courtesy.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Mythical inspiration for a new "flood" of Jihadis into Afghanistan
The Guardian [10/2/08] says that General David McKiernan, the top US commander in Afghanistan , “warned yesterday that militant Islamist jihadis were flooding into the country from all corners of the Muslim world to join the Taliban's fight against the Nato alliance, mostly via Pakistan
If this is so, then it appears thatAfghanistan
Behind this is the oft-quoted aphorism that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, an observation that now enjoys the authority of myth. Of such myths social affairs are made. It was true enough of the British experience, and the Russian, but not of the Mongols and other Central Asian invaders, nor in fact of the Arabs. But those "graveyard experiences" for the empires were no less devastating for the Afghanistan peoples themselves; after the Second Afghan war, for instance, Afghanistan was a shambles.
The jehadis are as alien to this country as the Americans, but like the Pakistanis and the Iranians they seem unable to internalize it. We grieve for the Afghanistan peoples who have to put up with yet another intrusion of foreign interests, to add yet one more complication to their own already richly complicated society.
The Guardian also says that the US is trying to “improve cooperation with the Pakistani military and intelligence services to halt the flow of jihadis.” This is of course crucial for the success of the western powers -- and in my opinion for the Afghans. Whether it really works is to be seen.
If this is so, then it appears that
Behind this is the oft-quoted aphorism that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, an observation that now enjoys the authority of myth. Of such myths social affairs are made. It was true enough of the British experience, and the Russian, but not of the Mongols and other Central Asian invaders, nor in fact of the Arabs. But those "graveyard experiences" for the empires were no less devastating for the Afghanistan peoples themselves; after the Second Afghan war, for instance, Afghanistan was a shambles.
The jehadis are as alien to this country as the Americans, but like the Pakistanis and the Iranians they seem unable to internalize it. We grieve for the Afghanistan peoples who have to put up with yet another intrusion of foreign interests, to add yet one more complication to their own already richly complicated society.
The Guardian also says that the US is trying to “improve cooperation with the Pakistani military and intelligence services to halt the flow of jihadis.” This is of course crucial for the success of the western powers -- and in my opinion for the Afghans. Whether it really works is to be seen.
[Click on the title above for a link to the article.]
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