Raqqa: to appease Iran, Obama gives Assad’s air force a free pass for slaughter

Cross-posted from NFZSyria.org.

Along with barrel bombings in towns and cities across Syria, this last week saw a series of attacks by Assad’s air force on civilian targets in the northern town of Raqqa. These regime air attacks were sandwiched between two weekends of airstrikes by the US-led coalition on ISIS targets in Raqqa.

When US and allied air forces first began strikes in Syria, there was speculation that their presence would deter attacks by Assad’s air force against civilians, at least in the US area of operations. This past week’s events demonstrates that any such deterrent effect is fading if not over. The taking of turns in Raqqa’s airspace by Assad’s air force and US-led forces further undermines US claims of concern for the fate of Syrian civilians.

RAQQA AIRSTRIKES 23-29 NOVEMBER

On Sunday 23 November, US warplanes carried out two strikes against an ISIS-occupied building in the city of Raqqa in north-eastern Syria. No civilian casualties were reported.

On Tuesday 25 November, Assad’s air force carried out ten air attacks on Raqqa, reportedly killing as many as 209 people, most if not all civilians. Targets were reported to include a busy marketplace, a bus depot, and a mosque where dozens of people were gathered for prayers.

On Thursday 27 November, Assad’s air force carried out between seven and ten further attacks, including one at the city’s National Hospital, reportedly killing at least seven more people.

On Friday 28 November, Assad’s air force carried out three attacks in Raqqa, killing at least five people including three children.

On Saturday 29 November, Assad’s air force again attacked Raqqa’s National Hospital. LCC Syria named five people killed.

In the evening of Saturday 29 November, US-led coalition aircraft were reported to have carried out at least 15 airstrikes. Later reports said the total had exceeded 30 airstrikes. The activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently reported that all the targets of the US-led coalition were ISIS bases, hitting a high number of ISIS fighters.

CASUALTY REPORTS

The following are press reports of casualties from Tuesday’s attacks in Raqqa. Numbers given for people killed rose over time. No press reports gave precise numbers for people maimed and injured.

• Activists: Syrian strikes kill 60 in IS-held city, Associated Press, 25 November.
  Cites initial counts of number killed – SOHR: over 60, LCC: at least 70, Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently: over 80 killed.
• Syria conflict: Raqqa air strikes death toll rises, BBC News, updated 26 November.
  Cites LCC as documenting 87 deaths and warning of more injured likely to die due to lack of medical facilities. Cites SOHR saying at least 95 killed, of whom at least 52 have been confirmed as civilians.
• ‘Scores dead’ in air strikes on Syria’s Raqaa, Al Jazeera, updated 26 November.
  Updated to cite activists as saying 135 people were killed.
• By Friday 28 November, the activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said they had documented 209 people killed in Tuesday’s air attacks.

RESPONSES

Government in #Syria has launched airstrikes designed to hit #ISIS in #Raqqa; civilians caught in the crossfire: http://t.co/dPIKrMWay8
— StateCSO (@StateCSO) November 25, 2014

The above tweet from the US Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations was widely retweeted, reproduced, and criticised for characterising the Assad air force attacks as a misfired attempt to target ISIS when there was no evidence given in the linked story or elsewhere that the intended target was ISIS rather than the civilian victims.

The next day State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki did her best to convince the world that the US opposed the strikes:

• US ‘horrified’ by Syrian raids on Raqqa, AFP, 27 November.

Unsurprisingly, words without action did little to stem criticism.

• Syrian National Coalition Demands Use of Force Against Syrian Regime Aircraft Targeting Civilians from US Area of Operations, Syrian Coalition statement, 26 November.
• Syrian Coalition Decries the US-led Alliance’s Silence over Al Raqqa Massacre, Syrian Coalition statement, 27 November.
• Conflicting Policies on Syria and Islamic State Erode U.S. Standing in Mideast, Anne Barnard, The New York Times, 27 November.
• Syria, U.S. attack same Syrian city, then trade barbs, Hugh Naylor, The Washington Post, 28 November.
• The exchange of roles between the Alliance and Assad freak out US State Department, Hamoud Al-Mousa, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, 28 November.
  This post from Friday put the number killed in Tuesday’s attacks at 209. It said that with further regime air attacks on Thursday the week’s total had reached 232 people killed and hundreds injured.

BACKGROUND

Officials note, for example, that the American-led coalition, with its heavy rotation of flights and airstrikes, has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over northern Syria already…

New York Times, 7 October 2014

The above assertion by un-named Obama administration officials reported October 7th was refuted the following day by New York Times journalist Anne Barnard in an article titled US Focus on ISIS Frees Syria to Battle Rebels, where she gave a taste of the ongoing air attacks being carried out by Assad’s air force from the same air space being flown by US and allied air forces.

There is some evidence that Assad scaled back air attacks following the start of US strikes within Syria. According to the Violations Documentation Center in Syria, recorded numbers of people confirmed killed by air attacks in the first twelve days from 23 September showed a dramatic drop compared to the period before US strikes began. In the weeks following the recorded numbers of daily deaths rose again, but the number confirmed killed in October was still lower than in September.

It should be noted that VDC figures are minimum counts of confirmed violent deaths, and are by their nature most likely to be an undercount of the true total killed. For details see two posts by @lopforum:

• Impact of Coalition Airstrikes: Civilian Deaths due to Airstrikes Since September 1
• Syrian Civilian Casualties in October

Numbers of people recorded killed by ground forces (shelling and shooting) also fell in this period, suggesting that the drop in killing by Assad’s air force wasn’t purely because of it operating in a restricted space to avoid US and allied air forces, but may have been part of a wider strategic decision by the Assad regime to reduce the level of violence following the start of the US-led intervention.

It’s hard to draw clear conclusions on regime intentions from numbers of violent deaths alone. Since the peak number for violent deaths recorded in August 2012, vast numbers of Syrians have fled the country, consequently reducing the number at risk of being killed in any attack. Also, since that 2012 peak in killing, Syrian ground forces and militia have been reinforced by Iranian and Hezbollah forces, who may be more professional and militarily focused in their approach.

Chart by @lopforum based on VDC Syria data

However, looking just at deaths from air attacks, one can see that a rise up to August 2013 seems to have been interrupted by the threat of an international response to the Ghouta chemical weapons attack, only to be resumed with increased ferocity once that threat had clearly passed in December 2013. Killings by air attacks peaked in February 2014, but dropped following the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 2139 which explicitly demanded an end to barrel bombing and threatened further action in the event of non-compliance. As that threat of UN Security Council action faded, the rate of killing by air was again rising in September 2014 before the US-led Coalition action against ISIS in Syria began.

It was reasonable then to expect the post-intervention lull in killing to be short-lived—for it to be followed by a tentative escalation to test the risk of a US response, then greater escalation as no US substantial response came—and short-lived it now seems to have been.

Targeting civilians is the rule rather than the exception for Assad’s air force. Most attacks are too inaccurate for the regime to risk striking front-line rebel fighters as they could just as easily hit Assad’s own forces, so instead air attacks are used to terrorise, destabilise, and depopulate areas outside of regime control. Historically Assad’s air force has focused these attacks on areas under rebel control, not areas under ISIS control, as the regime apparently sees ISIS as less of a threat to its rule, and according to many reports actively colludes with ISIS to weaken rebel forces. As ISIS in Raqqa has come under US attack, it may be that the Assad regime sees a danger of Raqqa again becoming independent of both ISIS and the regime, and has therefore decided to target the city with increased ferocity.

For an analysis of the Assad regime’s air bombardment strategy see Barrel Bombs: A tool to force displacement in Eastern Aleppo, by Ryan O’Farrell, Tahrir Souri, via EA WorldView.

APPEASING IRAN

Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to President Obama, points to two reasons the Obama Administration does not want to strike Assad’s air force, both related to Iran. One reason is the fear, voiced to him by “a senior administration official” that any direct attack on Assad by the US would be met with retaliation by Iran’s militia proxies against US forces in Iraq. The other reason is Obama’s desire to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran.

According to leaked accounts, a recent letter from President Obama to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the nuclear negotiations included an assurance that the US didn’t intend to strike Assad’s forces in Syria. When those negotiations, supposed to conclude on Monday 24 November, were instead extended to a completion deadline of 1 June 2015, Assad would have had good reason to believe that Obama’s assurance not to use direct military force against him was now similarly extended.

Such a belief would no doubt have been reinforced by the dismissal of Chuck Hagel, US Defense Secretary, which also came on Monday 24 November. This was generally believed to be linked to Hagel’s criticism of Obama’s hands-off policy towards Assad. With the reassurance of these two events, it seems Assad felt safe to proceed the next day with his wave of attacks against Raqqa’s population.

The term appeasement is often overused. To negotiate with an enemy, to try and reach a peaceful settlement, is not in itself appeasement. But to trade the life and liberty of another country’s citizens in the pursuit of a hoped-for settlement that doesn’t serve their interests, that is a trade-off that deserves the name appeasement.

Obama’s free pass to Assad’s air force in exchange for a hoped-for nuclear deal with Iran is appeasement, and no form of public relations statement from the State Department’s spokesperson can alter that harsh fact.

Israel plays Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza

This link will serve, a news story from The Globe and Mail yesterday, on how Hamas is armed by Iran with Syrian and Iranian-made rockets, particularly the Syrian-made M-302 Khaibar and Iranian Fajr-5 missiles. It cites Colonel Richard Kemp an analyst with London’s Royal United Services Institute, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Iran is … sending deadly weapons to terrorist organizations – via an elaborate network of secret operations around that world that aim to funnel rockets, missiles and other deadly weapons to be used to harm innocent civilians,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding: “Hamas will pay a heavy price for firing toward Israeli citizens.”

In other words, Mr. Netanyahu makes clear that Gazans are pawns of Khamenei and Assad, but despite knowing this his retaliation will be limited to the pawns, with all the killing of civilians that comes with carrying out such an operation in Gaza.

This is a repeat of the stubborn stupidity of Israel’s conduct of war in Lebanon in 2006, where it targeted civilian infrastructure and held a fragile Lebanese government responsible for the actions of Hezbollah, rather than attacking Hezbollah’s actual backers, the tyrant rulers of Syria and Iran.

The foolishness of this was highlighted at the time by the strategically smartest American president of the 21st Century (not a big claim) GW Bush:

You see the irony is what they need to do is get Syria, to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s all over…

When Israel’s government declares the Iranian and Syrian regimes responsible for arming Hamas, and when it accuses Hamas of deliberately putting civilians in harm’s way, they make it clear that when they then go on to hit only targets in Gaza, and continue to contain Gaza’s population together with a Hamas regime that by the Israel government’s own account is happy to see them bleed, then Israel is playing Assad and Khamenei’s game in Gaza.

Assad and Khamenei are blessed to have an enemy like Israel, an enemy who will draw the world’s outrage while Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s militias get on with slaughtering Syrians across the border. And though Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that they have the ability to hit inside Syria, they’ll let Assad’s helicopters and Khamenei’s supply planes carry on flying.

Syria still needs a No-Fly Zone. It would serve the Israelis’ interests too, but they don’t seem to have the wit to see it.

At +972, Nobody should be a number: Names of those killed in Gaza, via Peter Beaumont.

Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah’s friends in London

Above: cartoon by protesters in Kafranbel, Syria. They see Obama trading away Syria under the table in order to get his Iran deal. Read more on Kafranbel’s history of protest in Rising Up and Rising Down, Amal Hanano’s October article for Foreign Policy.

A suspicion similar to the one expressed in the above cartoon appears in an article by Politico editor Susan B Glasser, The Price of Smart Power: Will Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran come at the cost of Syrian lives?

At Now Lebanon, Michael Weiss gives his version of this analysis, The Invisible Rider on the Deal: Syria has been ceded to Iran in exchange for a six-month pause on Tehran’s nuclear program.

The core of the analysis is this:

1. Obama’s aim is to keep the US out of any major war. This requires avoiding direct involvement in the war in Syria, and avoiding war with Iran.
   
   
2. The greatest risks that might lead the US into war are WMD proliferation in Syria or Iran, or an outright Al Qaeda victory in Syria.
   
   
3. The deal to contain and remove chemical weapons in Syria requires the survival of the Assad regime, and the deal to contain nuclear development in Iran requires the co-operation of the Iranian regime. Both of those factors weigh against a strategy of building up non-Al Qaeda rebel forces in Syria in order to counter Al Qaeda, instead they weigh in favour of allowing Iran to continue to support the Assad regime in order to contain Al Qaeda and force the rest of the Syrian opposition to negotiate a settlement.

In essence Obama’s strategy seems to seek a cold peace by allowing Iran to consolidate a Tehran Bloc from Lebanon to.. Afghanistan? The eastern limit is not yet clear. What is clear is that while Iran negotiates on its nuclear program, its proxy force Hezbollah, along with other forces armed and trained by Iran, has a relatively free hand to keep Assad in power in Syria.

Twit Archive 1-15 November 2011

Above, John Dog sings Imperfect Strangers.

Below the fold, tweets on Iran, Bahrain, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Cuba, Afghanistan, and on comics, children’s books, film, and music.

Twit Archive 13-31 July 2011

Above, issue 56 of De Poezenkrant, a magazine by Piet Schreuders. It’s available to buy here, a bargain!

In its paper pages you’ll find a story also mentioned in a tweet below, Anne Billson’s study of the several stand-in cats appearing in Carol Reed’s The Third Man. The link in the tweet is broken as her Cats on Film blog has since moved, but here it is, Cat of the Day 078, or as it’s titled in the magazine, The Third Cat.

Below the fold, more tweets on films, books, music, comics and cartoons. And Libya, Iran, Gaza, Breivik.

Twit Archive 12-21 June 2011

Below the fold: tweets on Syria, Iran, Lybia, Afghanistan, Bahrain, and in the UK, Brian Haw and alternative medicine.

Also Danish silent comedians, Swedish cinema, and quite a bit of animation, including Otto Messmer, creator of Felix the Cat.

Above, Otto lends Felix a hand in Comicalamities, (1928) to the sound of The Real Tuesday Weld covering Abba’s The Day Before You Came.

Prison

Pelican Bay State Prison - Crescent City, CA, by Sandow Birk, one of his series of California prison landscapes, Prisonation: Visions of California in the 21st Century.

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Shane Bauer was one of three American hikers imprisoned by Iran in 2009. Along with Sarah Shourd, and Josh Fattal, he was effectively held ransom by the regime, which eventually released all three on payment of about half a million dollars bail each.

Recently he visited Pelican Bay in California as part of a story on the use of solitary confinement in US prisons. He presents evidence that it is expensive, is often overused and unfair, is arbitrarily and secretively administered, and is ineffective or even counter-productive in reducing prison violence.

In his article, Shane Bauer looks at the case of Dietrich Pennington, serving a life sentence for robbery, kidnapping, and attempted murder. These crimes aren’t the reason he’s in solitary; he’s there because he’s accused of being an associate of a prison gang.

Pennington is not accused of giving or carrying out orders on behalf of any gang. In fact, there is no evidence that he's ever communicated with a member of a gang in his entire life. “I’ve never been, never want to be a part of no gang,” he wrote me. (He is currently trying to challenge his validation in court.)

To validate an inmate as a gang member, the state requires at least three pieces of evidence, which must be “indicative of actual membership” or association with a prison gang in the last six years. At least one item must show a “direct link,” like a note or other communication, to a validated gang member or associate. Once the prison’s gang investigator has gathered this evidence, it is reviewed in an administrative hearing and then sent to CDCR headquarters in Sacramento.

In Pennington’s file, the “direct link” is his possession of an article published in the San Francisco Bay View, an African American newspaper with a circulation of around 15,000. The paper is approved for distribution in California prisons, and Pennington’s right to receive it is protected under state law. In the op-ed style article he had in his cell, titled “Guards confiscate ‘revolutionary’ materials at Pelican Bay,” a validated member of the Black Guerilla Family prison gang complains about the seizure of literature and pictures from his cell and accuses the prison of pursuing “racist policy.” In Pennington’s validation documents, the gang investigator contends that, by naming the confiscated materials, the author “communicates to associates of the BGF... as to which material needs to be studied.” No one alleges that Pennington ever attempted to contact the author. It is enough that he possessed the article.

According to Bauer, other prisoners in solitary have been accused of gang membership on similarly tenuous evidence.

Gang evidence comes in countless forms. Possession of Machiavelli’s The Prince, Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power, or Sun Tzu’s The Art of War has been invoked as evidence. One inmate’s validation includes a Christmas card with stars drawn on it - alleged gang symbols - among Hershey’s Kisses and a candy cane. Another included a poetry booklet the inmate had coauthored with a validated BGF member. One poem reflected on what it was like to feel human touch after 14 years and another warned against spreading HIV. The only reference to violence was the line, “this senseless dying gotta end.”

“Direct links” that appear in inmates’ case files are often things they have no control over, like having their names found in the cells of validated gang members or associates or having a validated gang affiliate send them a letter, even if they never received it or knew of its existence. Appearing in a group picture with one validated gang associate counts as a direct link, even if that person wasn’t validated at the time.

In the course of my investigation, I obtained CDCR’s confidential validation manual. It teaches investigators that use of the words tío or hermano, Spanish for uncle and brother, can indicate gang activity, as can señor. Validation files on Latino inmates have included drawings of the ancient Aztec jaguar knight and Aztec war shields, and anything in the indigenous Nahuatl language, spoken by an estimated 1.4 million people in central Mexico.

Read the whole article at Mother Jones.

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In the UK, the most prominent argument over prisoners’ rights is currently on voting rights for convicted prisoners. The European Court of Human Rights, which rules on matters covered by the European Convention on Human Rights, ruled in 2005 that the UK’s indiscriminate denial of voting rights to convicted prisoners contravened the Convention.

As a party to the Convention treaty, the UK government has bound itself to abide by Court decisions, but UK politicians continue to pitch a dodgy nationalist argument about Parliamentary sovereignty as justification for not complying with an agreement freely entered into by the UK’s democratically elected government. Buyer’s remorse? Tough, caveat emptor! Voters should avoid sympathy for Parliament on this; the ECHR is intended for the protection of all citizens, not for the convenience of a particular state institution, nor for the comfort of the government of the day.

Human rights are a form of insurance policy, a legal instrument based on the idea that by allowing others to be abused, we leave ourselves open to be abused in future.

At the UK Human Rights Blog, Adam Wagner writes about More shenanigans on prisoner votes. And a year ago at the same place, an interesting discussion on the role of the Strasbourg Court in two posts and attendant comments, Why have a European Court of Human Rights? and Is the Attorney General right on prisoner votes and subsidiarity?

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Yesterday, David Black, a Northern Ireland Prison Service officer was murdered by Nationalist Republicans opposed to the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

The murder was linked to an ongoing dispute over treatment of Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. Arguing for the protection of prisoners’ rights is politically problematic when some of those prisoners are themselves convicted of gross human rights abuses such as assault, kidnapping, and murder. Even more difficult to navigate are the cases where supporters of anti-democratic murderously violent groups use the arguments of human rights as a political weapon.

Ross Frenett steers a narrow course on the Human Rights in Ireland blog, writing on Why they killed David Black.

Checking my prejudices - 2

In the earlier post, I spent some time on a single paragraph of a recent Simon Jenkins column from The Guardian on the subject of Afghanistan. The column was titled Vanity, machismo and greed have blinded us to the folly of Afghanistan, and the first paragraph was as follows:

Ten years of western occupation of Afghanistan led the UN this week to plead that half the country's drought-ridden provinces face winter starvation. The World Food Programme calls for £92m to be urgently dispatched. This is incredible. Afghanistan is the world's greatest recipient of aid, some $20bn in the past decade, plus a hundred times more in military spending. So much cash pours through its doors that $3m a day is said to leave Kabul airport corruptly to buy property in Dubai.

I spent some effort looking at the issue of hunger in Afghanistan. You can read the full post here, but the short of it is that directly contrary to Simon Jenkins’s claim that “western occupation of Afghanistan” has led to starvation, wheat production (the central issue in Afghanistan’s food shortages) has never been as low since the 2001 defeat of the Taliban as it was before. This is despite drought, primitive agricultural practices, the absence of a viable milling industry, and the underfunding of the WFP. I hadn’t originally intended to spend so much effort on that one claim, but the subject is a serious one.

That earlier post also includes a passage from Terry Glavin’s excellent new book, Come from the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan, to demonstrate why Simon Jenkins’s phrase “western occupation of Afghanistan” is the exact opposite of truth.

Now I’d like to go through the rest of the column. A lot of it is just abuse, which is pointless to argue with, but as well as looking for clear falsehoods like the ‘western occupation causes hunger’ claim, I’d like to clarify the argument behind the abuse and lies.

Here’s another lie to make clear that my use of the word isn’t just rhetoric: he writes of “the decade-long punishment of Afghanistan for harbouring Osama bin Laden.” To believe that the US or NATO has been punishing Afghanistan is to disbelieve the opinion of the majority of Afghans. The graph below is taken from the December 2010 ABC/BBC/ARD/Washington Post poll, Afghanistan: Where Things Stand (ABC story here and full PDF here) and it shows support for the presence of US forces amongst Afghans surveyed ranged between 78% and 62% in the years from 2006 to 2010.

The graph also shows satisfaction with US efforts dropping faster than support for their presence, suggesting that while the majority of Afghans want the US military presence, they also want them to do a better job. But for all the dissatisfaction, this is clearly not a nation that believes it is undergoing “punishment” by the US as Simon Jenkins claims.

Another Jenkins quote: “The demand that [Afghanistan] also abandons the habits of history and adopt democracy, capitalism and gender equality was imperial arrogance.” On capitalism, a 1999 article, The Life of a 102 year-old Afghan Entrepreneur: An Economic Perspective, by Mir Hekmatullah Sadat, gives an interesting view of 20th century developments in Afghan capitalism. On gender equality, the struggle for women’s rights in Afghanistan didn’t begin with the fall of the Taliban; here’s a short chronology. As for democracy, in every democratic country, the struggle for democracy has been a struggle against the habits of history.

And this, his opposition to democracy’s struggle against the habits of history, can be the key to unwrapping Simon Jenkins’s argument, and showing how perverse it is that he has become a resident favourite in the pages of The Guardian, supposedly a paper of the liberal left.

Simon Jenkins is on the side of of tradition against change, Tory against Whig, Lords against Commons, feudalism against democracy.

His anti-war argument is not the same as that of the anti-West anti-imperialist kitsch left, though it sounds it at times. His stand against British imperialism is rooted in nationalist isolationism rather than second-campism. He claims that the West’s Afghanistan policy will likely benefit “those who lost the cold war, Russia and China”. Similarly in a more recent column, Why is Britain ramping up sanctions against Iran? he writes that it seems as if “every utterance from Washington and London at present is scripted to bolster the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on his insecure throne,” and laments that:

The attempt to set up pro-west regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan led the west to upset the balance of power established by the Iran-Iraq war and the Taliban-Pakistan regime in Kabul. Now the Iraq occupation has secured for Tehran unprecedented influence in Baghdad. Its influence also penetrates deep into western Afghanistan, and its support for resistance movements in the Gulf sheikhdoms is said to be growing by the year.

Be very clear about what he’s saying in the quote above. He laments the loss of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and of Pakistan’s domination of Afghanistan via the Taliban, because these regimes helped contain Iran, a greater enemy in his view. This is the brutal talk of a right wing ‘Realist’ rather than a second campist hoping for the overthrow of Western hegemony. I don’t like the latter any more than the former, but I do find it extraordinary that The Guardian gives regular space to the kind of reactionary views I remember seeing in The Sunday Telegraph in the 1990s.

I’ll have mercy and stop there. If I can suppress the nausea, I might do a third post on the bigotry of Mr Jenkins, but I’m not promising.

Twit Archive - 1-16 February 2011

Tweets below the fold on Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, and Libya . . . with a short musical interlude from Gonzo the Great, via Kevin Gendreau.

Twit Archive - December 2010

Tweets below the fold. Lots of Wikileaks blather. Plus links to TV in North Korea, the imprisonment of Iranian film maker Jafar Pahani, Dirk Deppey’s last Journalista post, Terry Glavin on the women of the Afghan National Security Forces, more detentions in Iran, Abu Muqawama on Joe Biden, Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers killed in Christmas Island wreck, how to survive a nuclear terror attack, Dave Barno, Andrew Exum, and Bob Woodward discussing Afghanistan beyond 2014, and Love and Death:

Where the blogging action is . . .

On Syria. on Libya, on the wide revolution that rose in Iran and continues across the Middle East and North Africa, my first stops are the tweeters gathered here, and also EA WorldView.

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Terry Glavin’s keyboard is taking a pounding these days. Here he is on Syria, on how “the regime of Bashar al-Assad is waging an all-out war on the Syrian people”.

And here on Libya, “long live the revolution”.

On solidarity and internationalism, and the ongoing confusions of the anti-imperialist Stopper Left. On Paul Berman, “magisterial”.

On Julian Assange, his victims in Zimbabwe, Belarus and Cuba, and his “enablers in the mainstream media.”

On truth and fiction, and on stone walls and brambles.

He has a book coming out. Come From the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan. And you can read more about it on his blog, and via the twittergrams.

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Some more places worth a visit: Mick Hartley on the forgotten history of the Jews of Baghdad.

Harry’s Place has a number of posts on some of those having difficulty reconciling with reality in Libya, including nostalgic Communists, Americans both ‘anti-war’ and otherwise , and the governments of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

The undefeated: Potkin Azarmehr, Iraqi American Mojo, Norman Geras.

More excellent links are supplied by Bob from Brockley.

The law is for the protection of the people

On EA WorldView last monday, a post marking the second anniversary of a bloody day of protests in Iran, the 20th of June 2009:

Iran Flashback Video: "Neda: An Iranian Martyr" (PBS/BBC)

Two years ago today, dozens of protesters were killed when Iranian security forces cracked down on public marches challenging the legitimacy of the 2009 Presidential election.

One of those slain was a philosophy student named Neda Agha Soltan.

This is the PBS/BBC documentary, from November 2009, on her death and on the post-election conflict in Iran.

June at Tehran Bureau, Hamid Farokhina writes of a day to remember:

Every generation in Iran seems to have key events etched in its collective memory, an ensemble of milestone dates and shared experiences that define its national identity and sense of selfhood.

An older generation had September 1941 and the 1953 coup. The following generation had February 1979. And now the new generation has June 12 and June 15 - the dates, respectively, of the 2009 presidential election and the peaceful march by more than a million people on Azadi Square that followed. The latter, in particular, seems to resonate deeply with many. For it was on that day when millions of mostly young people came out to the streets for the first time in their lives to make a keenly felt statement to themselves and the world at large. And since the march went unmolested for its first few hours, it gave an extra sense of liberation and catharsis both to its participants and those who heard about the remarkable event. For a few rare hours, millions of Iranians actually felt as if they owned their own country.

Unfortunately, though, as day gave way to dusk and as the armed enforcers of the status quo came out onto the streets, violent attacks against peaceful protesters broke out with a ferocity that left dozens killed and injured, along with hundreds arrested.

I happened to be there from the very start and witnessed much that transpired - including organized attacks against the protesters - firsthand.

Read the rest.

Also, Pedestrian on the anniversary of the stolen election and its brutal aftermath: Searching...

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The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran gives a thorough account of current abuses by the regime. From their site:

New Report on Iran’s Prison Deaths Raises Concern for the Lives of 18 Prisoners of Conscience on Hunger Strike
Iran’s pattern of prison abuse and neglect demonstrates that the lives of prisoners of conscience are at risk, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today, with the publication of a new report, Death in Prison: No One Held Accountable.

[...]

The Persian-language report documents the deaths of 17 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience who have died while in custody in Iranian prisons since 2003, allegedly due to torture, medical neglect, and misconduct of prison authorities. (English Summary)

Six of the prisoners were detained and died after the 2009 election and the ensuing crackdown on government critics and political opponents.

[...]

The Campaign’s report comes out five days after twelve prominent prisoners of conscience commenced a hunger strike protesting the recent deaths of two prisoners, women’s rights activist Haleh Sahabi, and dissident journalist, Hoda Saber. On 23 of June, six more prominent prisoners of conscience have joined the protest bring the number of hunger striking prisoners to eighteen. These men are journalist Kayvan Samimi, journalist Issa Saharkhiz, journalist Massoud Bastani, political activist Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, human rights defender Jafar Eghdami, and student activist Ali Ajami.

Sahabi died from a heart attack while on furlough, when security forces raided the funeral of her father. Saber died of a heart attack while on a hunger strike. Family members and other prisoners have alleged his death was linked to physical abuse and the failure of prison officials to transfer him to a hospital in a timely manner.

Read the rest.

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ADDED: From The Guardian, Iran giving out condoms for criminals to rape us, say jailed activists.

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Now 2009’s events in Iran are replayed in Syria. Accusations that Iranian forces have been joining the Syrian regime in its murderous attacks on protesters have increased over the past two weeks, and are continuing.

Today is the 100th day since the current protests in Syria began, and the daily updates at EA WorldView have more on Syria than I can digest. The video below is from friday of last week, showing Syrian forces firing on protesters in the Khalidiya neighbourhood of Homs.

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The law is for the protection of the people.

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Syria, Bahrain, and strategic interest.

On the White House blog, Obama’s statement about yesterday’s attacks on protesters by Syrian government forces, in which between 70 and 100 were killed. More on events there in EA World View’s posts from yesterday and today.

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From ABC News Australia, Kingdom Undercover, a 24 minute film about the ongoing brutal suppression of dissent in Bahrain, by Trevor Bormann, via @weddady. An excerpt on the regime’s crackdown inside Salmaniya Hospital:

BORMANN: Inside masked and heavily armed soldiers roam the corridors. They have tight control of a place that became a central feature of the power struggle here.

They were nights of utter chaos as the injured arrived with supporters and family in tow, medical staff could barely cope with the sheer number of casualties. One doctor it seems revealed a little too much.

DR BASSEM DEIF: “Definitely live ammunition because the femur, the bone, is completely shattered”.

BORMANN: For his candid diagnosis – exposing the government’s use of live rounds – orthopaedic surgeon Bassem Deif was arrested – his family have not heard of him since. Six other doctors are in prison for apparently sympathising with protesters.

Later parts of the film provide evidence of indiscriminate attacks against villages by security forces.

BORMANN: The protest movement broken and dispersed, the Bahraini Royal family is now obliterating all of its opponents once and for all. In Shiite villages, internal security forces sweep through night and day, terrorising and taking men away to an uncertain fate.

They linger for no apparent reason but to menace and destroy property at random. Neighbours who cower in fear can still manage to record the event to feed to the outside world. This village leader asked us to obscure his identity and change his voice.

VILLAGE LEADER: “If they want to get some specific people, they come at night - say three… four o’clock - and then they know that people are in their houses and they attack their houses with a big group. And then they walk around and around the whole area and whenever they capture anybody they just knock him down, hit him badly with their shoes and their hands and then they try to steal their money”.

BORMANN: The security forces have free reign here. They target and intimidate mainly the young men of the village. Anyone identified in our story is very likely to be jailed but filming this man’s back was enough to tell his story. He’d been hit with a shotgun blast. It’s a painful and disfiguring wound.

MAN (Describing incident): He was sitting opposite my home... he was sitting outside... and they have... a policeman came and he shot him. He was just sitting outside at home. That’s it.

BORMANN: I was ushered to a house to meet other young men. They too had been shot in the back. It’s dangerous to be seen in a group anywhere in this neighbourhood. The injuries should have been treated in hospital but they know that’s where they can be found.

Film and transcript here.

From ModernityBlog, Bahrain ruling elite attack doctors, pointing to a report by The Independent, and giving some links on Britain’s history with Bahrain.

Also from Modernity, CNN on Bahrain, a report by Amber Lyon featuring Richard Sollom of Physicians for Human Rights, and Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch.

Richard Sollom describes abuses by Bahrain forces as horrific, widespread and systematic, and says that more than 30 doctors and medics have been arrested, and believes they are targeted because they are the ones who have “specific evidence of the atrocities by the Bahraini government.”

Joe Stork on international reaction to Bahrain: “I think it has definitely been put on the back burner, but I think it’s because of the involvement of Saudi Arabia, and the strategic importance that the United States, the UK, other governments, see with Bahrain. And I think that’s the reason they are being treated very much with kid gloves.”

Later in the video, he goes on to say, “We do know that the Obama administration has been raising these issues with Bahraini authorities behind the scenes.”

Elliot Abrams, Bahrain Heads for Disaster, via @abuaardvark. An excerpt:

It is difficult to understand why the King believes this path leads anywhere but exile in London for him and his family. Bahrain has a Shia majority (once estimated at 70 percent, but probably lower than that now due to a campaign of naturalization of foreign-born Sunnis, especially those who serve in the army and police). The current actions against the Shia community will embitter all its members and decapitate its moderate political, economic, religious, and moral leadership. Future compromises will be far more difficult, and are perhaps already impossible.

Read more.

White House blog posts on Bahrain.

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The conventional Realist argument is that the alliance with the Bahrain government serves US and UK national interests, protecting oil supplies and countering Iranian influence. But as I argued earlier, an alliance can only be regarded as stable if it is based on an alignment of interests with all parties acting in their own national interest. Clearly the Bahrain government, by making an enemy of its own population, is not serving its own national interest.

Western interests in Bahrain lie in an alignment with the population of Bahrain. The perception, promoted by Iran, that the West is aligned with the interests of the Bahrain government against the interests of the population risks severe long term strategic damage to Western interests. Merely “raising these issues with Bahraini authorities behind the scenes” is not enough as this fuels the negative perception and further risks making an enemy of the population, as happened in Iran under the Shah.

Active public solidarity with the people of Bahrain is the only way to properly serve US and UK interests. A policy on Bahrain more clearly consistent with policy on Syria and Iran would also better serve the cause of democracy in those countries.

Ofcom’s Adam Baxter . . .

. . . should consider the fate of the LSE’s Howard Davies.

From The Guardian, Ofcom clears Iranian TV station over woman's murder reconstruction:

Ofcom has ruled that Iran’s state-run Press TV station, which has offices in London, did not breach the UK’s broadcasting rules in transmitting a programme that showed an Iranian woman participating in the reconstruction of her alleged part in the murder of her husband.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, whose sentence of death by stoning for adultery triggered an international outcry, was taken from prison to her home in Osku, in Iran's East Azarbaijan province, last December. She appeared in front of a camera for Press TV recounting how she rendered her husband unconscious before the killer electrocuted him.

Ashtiani’s 22-year-old son, Sajad Ghaderzadeh, played the part of her husband in the broadcast. Human rights campaigners described it as a forced confession aimed at collecting new evidence against her and distracting world attention from Iran's embarrassment over the case.

The incredible thing is that reportedly the decision is justified solely on assurances given to Ofcom by Press TV, a station wholly owned by the Iranian regime notorious for its appalling human rights abuses.

In response to a complaint made by the Iranian human rights campaigner Fazel Hawramy, who asked whether it was ethical for Press TV to make the imprisoned son play his murdered father, Ofcom said in a letter, seen by the Guardian, that the broadcaster had not breached its code.

“Given the broadcaster’s assurances that both Sakineh Ashtiani and her son willingly participated in this programme, we considered that the context was not materially misleading so as to cause harm and offence,” Adam Baxter, standards executive of the media regulator, wrote to Hawramy.

Adam Baxter’s words completely discredit Ofcom. He should go now, as should anyone else complicit in this grotesque decision. Otherwise Ofcom will be deserving of a quango bonfire all of its own.

Via Potkin Azarmehr.

Revolution Overload

in Libya, Bahrain, and Iran, Iran, Iran.

Above, Bahrain roses in bloom, photo by Amira Al Hussaini of Global Voices, via Twitter.

For breadth and depth of coverage, EA WorldView continues to stand out, with live blogging today on Libya, Bahrain and beyond, and a dedicated live blog on 1 Esfand protests in Iran.

Specialist blogs well worth your time include The Arabist and Tehran Bureau.

Amongst Iranian expatriates, I recommend Pedestrian, Neo-Resistance, and Azarmehr’s blog.

In case it needs saying, I don’t agree all the time with everything in all the above blogs, but then it wouldn’t be very interesting if I did.

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Some recent posts by favourites of this blog:

Terry Glavin, “Do not kill your brothers and sisters. Stop the massacre now” and Day of Reckoning In Iran?
ModernityBlog, Meanwhile in Iran, Live Ammo, 1969, and Libya, and Iran and Bahrain, What Do They Have in Common?
Bob from Brockley, Mid-week miscellany, and not unrelated, “Progressive London”: A Popular Front for reactionaries.
Shiraz Socialist, Solidarity with workers in Egypt and across the Middle East, and When some on the UK “left” supported Gaddafi – and accepted his money.

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For the total revolution overload experience, follow some of the people I’m following on Twitter.

On non-violence, and on what is possible

Iranian blogger Pedestrian writes today in reaction to a TV report on how Egyptian demonstrators organised and prepared for protest:

Of course, I couldn’t help but compare their situation to Iran, when actions of this sort would never be possible. (Ahmed would have been imprisoned and tortured for attending the workshops, for “treason and attempting to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran” long before he could put what he learned to use).

But the very interesting methods they employ during protest: they set up first aid centers, they give out food, they prepare eye drops for the tear gas, they hug militias, they have a functional group which stands strong even when one or two of them are taken into custody, etc, etc, … none of this would ever be barely imaginable in Iran or in any place where the state killing machine is leagues more lethal and vicious.

You see, it’s not just the protesters who were nonviolent, the militias stopped attacking during prayer. Fighting, like shopping in a bazaar or a first date, is a social negotiation first and foremost where conflicting worldviews translate to physical maneuvers.

This isn’t to say that outright violence is going to get anyone anywhere. But rather, quite the opposite, in what sort of setting does nonviolence as a strategy even make sense? Does it in the case of Iran?

More.

Related, The New York Times on Gene Sharp, Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution. See also comments at the Small Wars Journal.

Earlier on this blog, a post on John Runnings, an American peace activist strongly influenced by him, and a second post also mentioning Gene Sharp.

As the SWJ is paying attention to Gene Sharp, will the next big thing after COIN for the US military be training in use of non-violent strategy and tactics? It surely has a place if a force is to have full spectrum capability.

Non-violence does not necessarily indicate virtue. It is possible for organisations to adopt tactical non-violence without signing up to to a pure non-violence strategy, just as it’s possible for organisations like Hamas or previously the IRA to use both democratic and terrorist methods. From John Runnings’ writing:

There is a form of non-military strife that can register outrage that is no physical threat to the opponent. This means is overlooked by those who assume that resistance must be passive when applied to resistance to the military. This form of non-military strife was used by Tshombe in 1962 when he was trying to secede Katanga from the Congo, as reported by U. Thant in his book, VIEW FROM THE U.N. (pg. 140).

“It was in Finland, where I arrived on the night of July 11, 1962, that I received the most disturbing news from the Congo. The message was to the effect that Mr. Tshombe had changed his tactics.

On that day, a planned and viciously conceived assault by thousands of Katangese women and children was made on Indian troops at a roadblock in Elisabethville. These troops - cursed, abused and spat upon by the Tshombe-organized women and children - displayed a most remarkable restraint and discipline under extreme provocation, and never fired on the mob. I also received report from Robert Gardener, United Nations representative in the Congo, that Mr. Tshombe had informed him that he would employ civilian demonstrations, especially women and children, instead of troops, to provoke the United Nations force, in cynical contempt for the safety and well-being of his own people. This change of tactics posed new problems for the force and put a very great strain on the troops.”

I was disappointed in U. Thant that he failed to admire the courage displayed by the women and children that were able to stand up to armed threat of the United Nations of the world and defy them. He later spoke of Tshombe and his colleagues as “a bunch of clowns”. (I would propose that some of the attributes of the clown might be encouraged in anti-warriors. The charm of the clown is that they do the unconventional with elan, to make people laugh, in contrast to the military whose efforts are seldom amusing.)

And suppose Saddam Hussein had withdrawn his military, and sent women and children to occupy the Iraq-Kuwait border to get in the way and to spit upon the American tanks and soldiers. Would Clinton have had the political climate to fire on them? What fun the world media could then have had, showing the United States military in confrontation with little boys trying to spit on the tanks, though they had not yet learned to spit over their chin?

This is not to play down the many virtues of Gandhi’s more pacifist approach. But it is important to know that vulnerable challenge may be successfully used by people who are not saints(...)

Added: Nonviolence in the Arab streets, with Gene Sharp, Sherif Mansour & Mubarak Awad, from Radio Times on WHYY. Mubarak Awad is a Palestinian campaigner promoting non-violent methods. He’s also a supporter of Iran’s Green Movement: see this earlier post for more.

25 Bahman in Iran, 14 Feb in Bahrain

Iran

Live blog at Tehran Bureau and EA WorldView.

Comment from Gene at HP. More from that quarter on selective solidarity.

More from Azarmehr on Egyptian solidarity.

Committee to Protect Journalists on Iran’s imprisonment of journalists.


Bahrain

Today’s Egypt and Beyond live blog at EA WorldView turns to Bahrain.

Glen Carey at Bloomberg, Bahrain Human-Rights Organization Urges King to Free Detainees, and Omar Al-Shehabi at CIF on Bahrain, both via Iraqi American Mojo.

From Foreign Policy magazine last December, Why the Bahrain elections matter, by Kristin Smith Diwan, and from September, Bahrain's Shia crackdown, by Steven Sotloff, and The Internet in Bahrain: breaking the monopoly of information, by Fahad Desmukh.

Ali Abdulemam, blogger and Global Voices contributor, imprisoned in Bahrain since 5 September.


Meanwhile . . .

 . . . in Yemen (more), in Algeria (more), in Libya, in Morocco . . . and what now in Gaza? Also, more from Mojo on why democracy in Iraq has been difficult.

Old fellow you’d best step away

From Victorian valentines you haven’t seen, at Uncle Eddie’s Theory Corner.

Gone. Next?

Four weeks after, and Mubarak follows Ben Ali*. Next up, the revolution comes home?

At International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Egyptian Activist’s Message to Iranians: Learn From Egyptians, And We Learned From You.

Comment from Potkin Azarmehr and Alan A. at HP.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reports, Group of Egyptian protesters call on Iranians to revolt against Tehran govt.

Pedestrian on Iranian state media coverage of Egypt.

Iran’s Green Movement plans to rally on February 14th/25 Bahman in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia. More at Tehran Bureau and EA WorldView.

*Caution from Max Fisher at The Atlantic, After Mubarak, Egypt’s Revolution Is Far From Over, and at Global Voices, Egypt: A List of Demands from Tahrir Square.

Poetry cornered

There are mere days to go ’til the close of the great Philosophy Poetry Challenge over at The Poor Mouth, the challenge being to explain to blogger Jams O’Donnell those philosophical concepts that elude his understanding, and to do so in verse so they might be more amenable to his artistic mind. But not for nothing, mind, there are worthy prizes!

My favourite entry so far is by H. insciens:

Mind is just matter
having a natter

Proceeding to the wireless, and a BBC World Service programme from November last that Jams might enjoy, The Great Palace of Verse, on the Shahnameh, the epic Persian poem written by Ferdowski in the eleventh century AD. Beyond its literary importance, it has also been a central subject for painting, as seen over here where the pictures improve with clicking.

The photo above is of a copy of the Shahnameh from Iran, Shiraz, dated 973 H / 1565-1566, from The David Collection, reproduced in For the Privileged Few, Islamic Miniature Painting from The David Collection, by Kjeld von Folsach.

Having had the very short and the very long, now a choice in-between-sized from Flesh is Grass, Mending Wall by Robert Frost, with a little on how the poem has been selectively quoted to make political points one way and the other. A little of that contest can be found in the comments to a recent post at Z-Word, Bob From Brockley Goes One State. That post is just part of a continuing conversation on borders and nations and more, beginning with Bob’s post here, and still going on elsewhere.

Finally some verse voiced to music, A Worm is at Work, sung by Dagmar Krause, tune by Anthony Moore, words by Peter Blegvad, More about them from Mick Hartley. Here’s a snip and a clip:

Like tempter’s hoof
my mind is cleft,
divided I fall,
nothing’s left -

The video was cut together by Suburbanbatherson, seen earlier on this blog with Tico Tico.

UPDATE: Suburbanbatherson gone from YouTube. More.

Turbulent

Shirin Neshat’s Turbulent, featuring Shoja Azari and Sussan Deyhim, via Naj.

More: Sussan Deyhim with the Poznan Philharmonic, Poland, on the 50th anniversary of Solidarity, part one and part two.

Terry Glavin on the long arm of the regime, and earlier, on union struggles in Iran.

Jams on jailed Iranian film director Jafar Panahi. More at the New York Times blog The Carpetbagger: Sundance gets a taste of Iranian politics.