Mid-East Meets Midwest

Iraq is certainly exercising its sovereignty over the last week.

With a new reading for the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement (the same document which set a deadline for the American troop withdrawal from Iraqi cities) the Iraqi government has sharply restricted the movement and activities of American forces. This control has rubbed many U.S. commanders the wrong way, who have become increasingly concerned with the safety of their men and women.

The Washington Post reports:

In a curt missive issued by the Baghdad Operations Command on July 2 — the day after Iraqis celebrated the withdrawal of U.S. troops to bases outside city centers — Iraq’s top commanders told their U.S. counterparts to “stop all joint patrols” in Baghdad. It said U.S. resupply convoys could travel only at night and ordered the Americans to “notify us immediately of any violations of the agreement.”

In an e-mail obtained by the Post, Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, commander of the Baghdad division, wrote “Maybe something was ‘lost in translation.” He continued, writing, “We are not going to hide our support role in the city. I’m sorry the Iraqi politicians lied/dissembled/spun, but we are not invisible nor should we be.” He indicated that U.S. troops intend to continue to engage in combat operations, even in urban areas, in order to avert or respond to threats, with or without help from the Iraqis.

“This is a broad right and it demands that we patrol, raid and secure routes as necessary to keep our forces safe,” he wrote. “We’ll do that, preferably partnered.”

These new guidelines are a reflection of rising tensions between the American and Iraqi governments. Iraqi leaders are using this agreement as an opportunity to show their countrymen that the are in charge and that Iraq’s dependence on the U.S. is decreasing.

Governor Pat Quinn made a surprise visit to Iraq this weekend, visiting Illinoisan troops at bases around the country.

On Sunday, Quinn held a town hall meeting at Tallil Air Base, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, which has a large concentration of members of the Illinois National Guard.

Describing his trip, Quinn said he “received a lot of sympathy” from troops who had followed his rise to governorship after the shambles of former Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this year. He also indicted that troops were very curious about the educational opportunities for them after they return home.

Compared to his visit in 2004, Quinn said he was impressed with the increased security and stabilization of the country overall. Known for attending the funerals of service members killed in combat, Quinn said the major changes that have taken place in Iraq since his previous visit prove that their lives weren’t given in vain.

“I was in awe, really, of the men and women here,” Quinn told reporters via conference call from Kuwait. “I think it’s important that the governor of the fifth-largest state in the Union personally thank special Illinoisans. They are the best of the best, and I said at every gathering I was at that ‘you are the pride of our nation.’ ”

Quinn was joined by the governors of Missouri, Minnesota, Nevada and Texas.

Israel extradited a suspected Klansman to the United States on firearms charges today. After his arrest in Tel Aviv last week, Micky Mayon denied any affiliation with the KKK.

According to Reuters, Mayon fled the United States under suspicion of burning the car of a judge who had ordered he stand trial on the firearms charges.

Mayon was being sought by U.S. marshals on two arrest warrants. Charges included illegal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment and flight to avoid apprehension.

Mayon was not winning any charm points at the Tel Aviv airport.

Addressing the reporters covering his extradition at the Tel Aviv airport he said he had enjoyed his stay in Israel — especially “the Israeli girls” — and wanted to “come back.”

The Israeli Interior Ministry said Mayon arrived in Israel as a tourist in January 2008 on a one-month visa and stayed on illegally, according to Reuters.

The Taliban released a video over the internet yesterday of a U.S. soldier who was kidnapped outside his U.S. base in Afghanistan nearly three weeks ago.

The soldier, who the Pentagon confirmed today, is Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl of Idaho. Just 23-years old, Bergdahl is very emotional, pleading for American troops to return home. At the prompting of his captors, he says, “To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home.”

He later continues, saying, “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home.”

According to Britain’s The Guardian, Captain Jon Stock, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul condemned the video as propaganda and a breach of the rules of war (because the Taliban obviously abide by those rules).

“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” Stock told Reuters. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”

Stock also confirmed Bergdahl was the US soldier who went missing outside a US base in southern Paktika province on June 30.

However, the circumstances of Bergdahl’s abduction remain unclear. American military sources have said he was snatched from outside the base perimeter along with three Afghan nationals. But, in the video, Bergdahl said he was captured after falling behind on a patrol.

Britian’s Daily Mail reports that Obama administration officials ordered the military to “pull out all the stops to win the safe return of the soldier last night amid fears the propaganda coup could have a devastating effect on US morale and hurt Mr Obama’s new strategy focusing on Afghanistan rather than Iraq.”

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama administration is looking to overhaul the way America interrogates terror suspects.

The new plan would call for a small team of professionals, from both spy services and law-enforcement agencies, to be used for “high-value” detainees. Under this new system the CIA would get the boot, no longer running the show like the last eight years. However, the Journal’s source did not specify who might be in charge of this new program.

One of the team’s first tasks would be to form a new set of interrogation methods drawing from scientific and academic studies, a notable break from the brutality permitted by the Bush administration. These new non-coercive procedures may differ from the 19 permitted in the Army Field Manual (lawmakers’ and human rights groups’ golden standard of interrogation) to include providing rewards for information and playing on a detainee’s anxiety or other emotions.

The interrogation unit would include people assigned to research, master and conduct non-coercive interrogations. The team would most likely be drawn agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CIA and Pentagon.

If adopted, the new interrogation team would signify an attempt by the Obama administration to wipe the slate clean of the counterterrorism issues that have plagued the CIA and Justice Department since a U.S. network of secret prisons was exposed in 2005.

But don’t get your hopes up just yet. There could still be some similarities to the approach of the Bush administration. For starters, the team’s efforts will still focus more on gathering intelligence than on assembling evidence for use in a criminal trial. (Because all of those studies saying interrogation leads to unreliable evidence are wrong. Oh, and all of those people who were acquitted by a military tribunal because of insufficient evidence… well, that was just bad luck. Keep on doing what you’re doing!)

For the full story: U.S. Weighs Special Team of Terrorism Interrogators

While President Obama’s visit to Ghana was well recieved by the local population, it is easy to say that his approach toward Africa is very different than that of the Middle East.   Compared to his June speech in Cairo, Obama’s address in Accra, the capital of Ghana, this weekend was harsh to say the least.  Unlike the showers of accolades Obama rained on Muslims in the Arab world, Saturday’s speech to Africans became a lecture on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability.

In an opinion piece featured in Forbes, Anne Bayefsky addressed this contrast:

Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the “prison at Guantanamo Bay,” “rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation,” impediments to the “choice” of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: “It’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption.”

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: “It’s easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews–albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world–but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries.” But he did not.

You’re alone in an old building/hotel/highrise (name any other building-type noun).  You hear strange noises coming from the boiler room/guest bedroom (fill in the blank) and find a ghost.

Nearly every American knows some sort of story like this, a haunted building.  In the U.S., if you find that your house is haunted, you might call in some sort of ghost hunter or move out immediately in terror.

But one family in Saudi Arabia is handling the situation differently.

The family has filed suit in a religious court against their unnamed genie, or jinn, claiming it steals cellphones, whispers threats and occasionally flings stones.

According to the Koran and Arab mythology, jinns and genies are spirits born out of fire that have supernatural powers, living between humanity and the elements.

The L.A. Times reports:

“We began to hear strange sounds,” a family member who requested anonymity told the Saudi daily Al Watan. “At first we did not take it seriously, but then stranger things started to happen, and the children got particularly scared when the genie started throwing stones.”

The genie – or genies — had demands: “A woman spoke to me first, and then a man. They said we should get out of the house,” said the family member, adding that his clan fled their home near the city of Medina.

Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, head of the local Sharia court, said he will investigate the family’s claims that it has been harassed for two years: “We have to look into this case and verify its truthfulness despite the difficulty of
its consideration,” he told the Saudi daily. “What is interesting is that the complaint has come from every member of the family, and not just one.”

I was browsing the news on this lazy Sunday and came across an excellent breakdown of what George Mitchell, U.S. envoy to the Middle East, is looking to achieve on his upcoming trip regarding lasting peace between Israel, Palestine and their Arab neighbors.  Pushing to resume peace talks, Mitchell will focus on Israeli settlement activities in the occupied West Bank.

Q+A: Waiting for Mitchell: What divides U.S., Israel is a straight-to-the-point look at what the U.S, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are respectively hoping to see in a path to peace.

In 2003, a Raed Jarrar watched American planes drop bombs on building after building near his home in Baghdad.  Now Jarrar is in Washington D.C. serving as the Iraq consultant for the American Friends Service Committee, as well as facilitating communication between Americans on Capitol Hill and Iraqi politicians and citizens.  When I spoke with Jarrar last week, he said he was frustrated by the misinformation being disseminated by the media about the violence on conflict in Iraq.

He said, “When I hear the U.S. coverage on Iraq, it’s similar to, for example, an Iraqi saying that the US Civil War was a religious civil war, or that it was a racial civil war that put some white people against some black people.”

He acknowledged that the Civil War was full of political intricacies like the desire to keep a central government and the question of whether individuals in newly inducted states should be allowed to hold slaves.  He emphasized that just as Americans would not stand for misinformation about our past, Iraqis should not have to hear misinformation about the present situation, saying “I think that the same way that Americans understand the Civil War with its complexity, and they will not buy any argument about it being a religious civil war or some other descriptions, I think Iraqis, including myself, think the US understanding of the current Iraqi conflict is really wrong.”

“It’s not a war based on ancient hatreds between Sunnis and Shiites,” Jarrar said. “It’s not a religious war.  It’s way more political and economic.  It has way more complicated layers than we hear in covered in the U.S.”

There’s no doubt that the history behind the Arab-Israeli conflict is shrouded in “he said, she said’s” and each side tells the story a little differently.  But as President Obama and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair look to foster a lasting peace between Israelis, Palestinians and the neighboring Arab nations within the next two years, finding a starting point may be one of the biggest struggles.

The Obama administration seems to be pointing to 1967 (The Six Day War) as the root of the conflict, while the Israeli government and soon-to-be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continually hark back to the events of 1948 (The Arab-Israeli War) as the base of the problem.

Because of these views, Obama has placed Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank at the heart of his campaign for a lasting peace in the region, insisting that Israel immediately stop all settlement activity.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu contends that settlements are a peripheral issue, being used to divert attention from the real problems of the Middle East.  In his view, the problems stem from the events of 1948, when the Jewish state was founded by the United Nations, only to be immediately plunged into war with surrounding Arab nations.

“Even before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza, the animosity toward Israel nonetheless existed,” said Dore Gold, ex-Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and now an adviser to Netanyahu in an interview with the Toronto Star. “There were no settlements before 1967.”

Therefore from the perspective of Netanyahu, the fundamental problem is the failure of most Arab countries to accept Israel’s existence (the exceptions being Egypt and Jordan).

This understanding partly explains Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinian leaders acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state before they can sit down to find a lasting peace.

For those interested in learning more about the history behind the Arab-Israeli conflict, I recommend Palestine and the Arab Israeli Conflict by Charles Smith. I found this book to be a fair, objective look at the history of the conflict and the attempts toward achieving peace.