Paddling

The Wallcrack Atheist

By John Weldon, director of the animated classic Spinnolio.

The real dead, and the imagined dead

John Rentoul points to an error by BBC journalist and presenter Andrew Marr in attributing a figure of 600,000 dead in the Iraq war to the UN. It comes of course from The Lancet*. Andrew Marr has made this mistake before, as you can read in a feverish post by a blogger who thinks that Marr is soft on imperialists because he quotes this ‘low’ figure.

Amnesty International shoots the messenger

Terry Glavin has it covered: No Support For Amnesty International Until It Reinstates Gita Sahgal, Cuts Jihadist Ties.

Or go direct to today’s Sunday Times story which led to Amnesty suspending Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, and longtime active member of Women Against Fundamentalisms and Southall Black Sisters. Here is her statement following the suspension:

Amnesty International and Cageprisoners
Statement by Gita Sahgal
7 February 2010

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

See also Harry’s Place, who’ve been covering the story in great detail for some time now. And Flesh is Grass includes some sharp comment in her account. More reactions linked to here.

Amnesty’s statement on the subject is fascinating for what it does and doesn’t talk about: it does talk about the legitimate and necessary task of tackling US human rights abuses, it utterly fails to address the problem in so extensively promoting Moazzam Begg given his current extremist politics.

This seems to be another example of certain kitsch-leftists in the West being prepared to sacrifice women’s rights, and the human rights of all victims of radical Islamism, in the cause of a rather selective anti-imperialism. (On which there is more, and more.)

Maybe I should try to break into the postage stamp business . . .

. . . if there still is a postage stamp business.

Not our dead, but our allies’ dead

There was an unusual article in The New York Times earlier this week. It reported on a ceremony to honour the Afghan policemen who fought Taliban attackers in Kabul on January 18th.

What I found unusual was seeing the names of Afghan National Police casualties in print, in a Western newspaper. UK papers rightly give proper coverage to individual British dead, and the US papers report US dead, but Afghan police and military who die alongside them normally remain anonymous to us.

There is a problem here, not just of giving proper respect to fallen allies, but of understanding the scale of commitment and sacrifice by Afghans in this fight. An anonymous death does not register in the same way as seeing a named individual, pictured, accompanied by an account of a bereaved family. And so it becomes too easy to feel that it’s just Western forces in the fight, that the only Afghans fighting are the Taliban enemy, that we are alone in a hopeless struggle, in a hostile land.

I recently engaged in a dialogue with illustrator Steve Brodner on his blog. In response to my pointing to this year’s BBC poll of public opinion in Afghanistan showing, amongst other things, increased support for US troops, he wrote: “All of the history in this suggests this is a fool’s errand. We need to get the Afghan forces to show up for work and then be willing to lay down their lives for their country. This poll may suggest that there are areas of support for anti-Taliban forces. But we don't see this on the ground.”

ANA and ANP casualties are not widely published, but here’s what I found for Steve, to counter this image of them as work-shy and unpatriotic:

Afghan National Army killed in action
in 2007: 278
In 2008: 259
In the first 6 months of 2009: 114

source: csis.org (PDF)

US killed in action
in 2007: 111
in 2008: 153
in the first 6 months of 2009: 84

Source: Wikipedia

On Afghan National Police casualties, from the UN Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan and on the achievements of technical assistance in the field of human rights, 21 February 2008:

“The Ministry of Interior registered around 900 insurgency-related deaths of police officers in the last nine months of 2007, which is significantly higher than the number of Afghan army casualties in the same period.”

Source: afghanconflictmonitor.org (PDF)

And now to add to that, the NYT article that initiated this post gives a figure of 646 ANP officers killed last year.

Building up Afghanistan’s army and police is at the core of the ISAF strategy for Afghanistan. A post by British infantry commander Lieutenant Colonel Nick Ilic for The Helmand Blog gives some idea of the scale of effort. But numbers are not enough to give a strong impression. We need to learn about individuals. Here then, from The New York Times, two policemen killed fighting the Taliban:

One young policeman from Nangarhar, Hafizullah, who like many Afghans uses only one name, was killed. He was 21 years old, married and had three children. The family breadwinner because his father had died, he left behind an extended family of 13.

Mr. Nangahari, as well as Hafizullah’s uncle and his 18-year old brother, Asadullah, came to the ceremony from the family’s home near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. His brother described the slain policeman as a tall, natural volleyball player who loved to read, a rarity in a force where the vast majority of officers are illiterate.

“My mother is very sad,” he said. “But she is full of courage now and she will let her other sons join the police.”

The families of the two policemen who died received a death payment totaling $3,600 and food. In addition, a Kabul trader and businessmen anonymously donated an additional $1,000 to each of the families of the policemen who were killed.

The other officer honored for his death during the fighting was Shir Agha, 27, a first lieutenant from a family of policemen in Parwan, a province northeast of Kabul. He had gone to officer school and was serving in Kabul. His father, Mohammed Rajed, a tall, thin man and a former member of the mujahedeen who fought the Russians during the Soviet occupation, stood very straight when his son’s name was read; nearby stood three of his nephews, also police officers, their faces somber.

“We are mainly interested in serving our country and the only organ that is honestly serving the people is the police,” said Mr. Rajed.

Read more.

Iraq policy, past, present, and future

No, I haven’t watched Tony Blair’s testimony to the UK’s Iraq Inquiry yesterday, though I did hear snippets on the radio. I’ve been working my way through all the oral evidence videos from the start, as time allows, and am just coming to the end of December, so I expect I’ll get round to hearing Blair’s account in early March.

Others have remarked on the obsessively narrow focus of most UK news organisations in covering the inquiry, concerned almost exclusively with political and legal issues leading up to the invasion, and particularly on the desire to find evidence of some kind of illegality, or even criminality, in the actions of Tony Blair. In the process an enormous amount of very interesting and important testimony on wider issues through a longer timeframe of several years’ UK military and political engagement in Iraq is distorted and even ignored.

This is important, because these wider issues being covered by the Chilcot Inquiry are relevant right now with regard to Afghanistan, and are also immediately relevant in ensuring preparedness for future events.

They are also relevant for the UK’s future relationship with Iraq.

Looking then to much more recent events in Iraq, and on to Iraq’s future, may I recommend some additional viewing, Withdrawal and Beyond in Iraq: A Discussion with General Caslen, an event at the United States Institute of Peace from December 9th. About the talk:

Major General Robert Caslen recently returned from Iraq, where he served as commanding general of Multinational Division – North. This area of operations includes Ninewa, Kirkuk and other volatile areas along the Arab-Kurd fault line.

He discussed the security implications of the impending U.S. withdrawal, prospects for peaceful resolution of the Arab-Kurd conflict, and what the strategic relationship between the U.S. and Iraq looks like post-2011.

Notable in what he said was how, despite his strong reservations on the risks of withdrawing troops from cities last year, particularly in Mosul, he became convinced of the huge strategic benefit of implementing the SOFA on time. Also prominent in his comments is his view on the necessity for the US to build up civilian State Department involvement in Iraqi regional development now, prior to the completion of the military pullout, in order to ensure a strong future relationship between Iraq and the US.

In all of the above viewing, something is missing of course. On BBC Radio 4’s World at One yesterday, a reporter commented on how little notice the Chilcot Inquiry had received in Iraq. Might he not have realised that this was not so remarkable, given how little notice the Inquiry has taken to date of Iraqi views? It’s primarily an inquiry into British political and military effectiveness, rather than an inquiry into Iraq and its people. Missing are the voices of the Iraqis at the centre of these events.

“His sister was brought to the interrogation room”

Nasrin Sotoudeh, attorney of Arash Rahmani Pour, one of two Iranian political prisoners executed yesterday, speaks to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran:

“As Arash Rahmani Pour’s attorney, I was shocked to hear of his sudden execution. According to the law, no verdict can be carried out prior to its being served to the defendant. This verdict was issued in secrecy and and it was sent forward in secrecy from those who should have been informed about it, and it was only announced by the judiciary’s web site after it had been carried out. Arash’s sentence had no reason other than to create fear and intimidation. Despite what has been announced on the Revolutionary Court’s web site, Arash was not arrested in the post-elections events. He had been arrested in April, two months before the [June 15] elections at his home and at the time of his arrest, he was only 19. Many of the charges made against him pertained to the time when he was not yet 18. To be sure, Arash’s case is a juvenile crime execution, only this time a political prisoner was executed because of what he did before he was 18. During his entire arrest, imprisonment, and trial, there was a lot of pressure and many promises. First Arash’s sister was arrested. She was in prison for two months. She was then acquitted and released, but pressures she had endured during her detention caused her miscarriage. In the only meeting I was allowed to have with Arash for 15 minutes, he told me that during two of his interrogation sessions, his sister was brought to the interrogation room and seated opposite him. He was then told that if he wanted to be released he had to confess to the things that he was told. I was Arash’s attorney, but I was never allowed to participate in his trial. I insisted to be allowed to attend a trial session in August. Security Officers threatened to arrest me and took away my attorney license, which they returned to me later.”

Read the rest. Via Naj.

See also Potkin Azarmehr: What I didn’t know yesterday.

There will be a protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London this evening, 18:00-20:00, 16 Prince's Gate, London SW7.

Earlier post here.

Bigotry and pomposity

Holy Blimpishness! In the continuing unravelling around the Seismic Shock affair, in which a priest and a theologian called in the police when a blog commented on their politics, Francis Sedgemore runs into another theologian with repressive views on what constitutes legitimate comment.

Earlier post here.

Hanged: Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour

From the BBC: Iran ‘executes two over post-election unrest’

“Following the riots and anti-revolutionary measures in recent months, particularly on the day of Ashura, a Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court branch considered the cases of a number of accused and handed down death sentences against 11 of those,” Isna said, quoting a statement from the Tehran prosecutor's office.

“The sentences against two of these people... were carried out today at dawn and the accused were hanged,” the semi-official agency said, adding that the sentences had been confirmed by an appeal court.

It named them as Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani and Arash Rahmanipour.

_

Some recent Iran posts from Potkin Azarmehr: What Karroubi Really Said, and Mossadegh was a Kaffir.

Naj on dysfunction and corruption in the Iranian economy: Oil for Orange!

Pedestrian on massive unemployment, inflation and more: This Didn’t Turn Out so Bad for Everybody.

Via Forever Under Construction, a documentary on Iran’s Taekwondo women: Kick in Iran.

From before the Islamic Revolution at Belog: the last film of Albert Lamorisse. (Related: Piet Schreuders revisits locations of The Red Balloon.)