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Human Rights Watch: Join the World in Embracing Children's Rights

2009-11-21T10:37:02Z

The most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history is 20 years old. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was shaped by the United States, which drafted more of its provisions than any other government. Only two countries in the world have failed to ratify the convention: war-torn Somalia - and the United States.

Negotiated during the Reagan administration, the Convention reflects basic American values and the conditions that children need to thrive. The United States influenced virtually all of the treaty's substantive provisions, including the rights of children to survival, to education, and to protection from sexual and economic exploitation and other forms of abuse.

In a presidential debate last year, President Obama acknowledged the US' awkward outlier status. "It's embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land," he said. Perhaps more troubling than its association with Somalia is that the US' failure to ratify the Convention significantly undermines US leadership internationally on children's issues and the president's goal to re-engage with the international community.

Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have made issues affecting girls and women a high priority for the US administration. Secretary Clinton has spoken out powerfully against the epidemic of sexual violence against girls in war zones and the power of education to lift children out of poverty. This fall she will initiate a fund to help empower women across the globe to combat violence against girls and promote girls' education.

As important as these initiatives are, how can the United States persuasively convince other governments to address sexual exploitation of children or hazardous child labor when those same governments can point to the US' failure to ratify the Convention as evidence of US hypocrisy.

The US signed the Convention in 1995, the same year I became executive director of UNICEF. Over the next ten years, as virtually every country in the world ratified the Convention, I was repeatedly asked why the US had not done so.

At the United Nations, the US position on children's rights had become a joke. For the past seven years, the US had been virtually the only UN member state to vote against the General Assembly's annual resolution on the rights of the child, primarily because of its references to the Convention. In 2002 and 2004, it recruited one other ally to join the vote against the resolution: the Marshall Islands.

But there is good news today on two fronts. First, Somalia said it intends to ratify the treaty. Then, in the annual vote today in the General Assembly, for the first time in eight years, the US did not vote against the resolution on the rights of the child. It was adopted by consensus.

US law is already largely in compliance with the Convention. One notable exception--the use of the death penalty against persons for crimes committed before the age of 18--is no longer an issue following a 2005 Supreme Court case that found the execution of juvenile offenders unconstitutional.

US ratification has been derailed by critics who contend that the Convention will somehow damage the American family and undermine the rights of parents. These claims don't hold up. The Convention repeatedly emphasizes the importance and authority of parents in raising their children.

Some argue that the US already has some of the best laws in the world protecting children and that ratifying the Convention isn't necessary. But many American children still lack adequate health care or education, and face risks to their safety and well-being. The Convention would require the US to review its laws and policies regularly and to keep taking new steps to improve children's lives.

In other countries over the last two decades, the Convention has contributed to law reform, improvements in the access to and quality of programs and services for children and their families (particularly in health and education), and stronger national institutions for children.

President Obama made a commitment during his campaign to review the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other treaties to ensure that the United States "resumes its global leadership in human rights." His administration moved quickly to embrace a treaty on the rights of people with disabilities. The twentieth anniversary of the Convention is a good time to make good on that pledge for the sake of the world's children. Today's General Assembly vote is a hopeful sign that the administration is moving in that direction. Both the administration and Congress should act to make the US a credible international leader for children by ratifying the treaty.

Carol Bellamy, the author, was the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) from 1995 to 2005.

Operation Atalanta: Hunting The Pirates (VIDEO)

2009-11-18T11:27:27Z

NORTHWOOD, U.K. -- Almost every day now come reminders of why the European Union made a landmark decision a year ago that Somali piracy was a problem it had to fight.

Afghanistan, Iraq Among The World's Most Corrupt Countries

2009-11-17T09:46:26Z

BERLIN — Afghanistan has slipped three places to become the world's second most-corrupt country despite billions in aid meant to bolster the government against a rising insurgency, according to an annual survey of perceived levels of corruption.

Only lawless Somalia, whose weak U.N.-backed government controls just a few blocks of the capital, was perceived as more corrupt than Afghanistan in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

Somali Pirates Hijack Ship With North Korean Crew

2009-11-17T09:00:43Z

(AP)NAIROBI, Kenya - Pirates off the coast of Somalia have attacked two vessels, and at least one of those has been captured.

The European Union's anti-piracy force says pirates hijacked a chemical tanker on Monday named the MV Theresa with 28 North Koreans on board.

In a second incident, pirates attacked a Ukrainian cargo ship. Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU force, says that private security guards on board fired on the pirates, wounding two. Harbour says the Ukrainian ship was not hijacked.

A Somali man who claims to be a spokesman for the pirates, Gedi Ali, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that pirates had captured the Ukrainian ship. Ali also says two pirates were wounded in the attack

Kenya Recruits Somali Refugees To Fight Islamists Back Home In Somalia

2009-11-10T08:36:00Z

by Letta Tayler and Chris Albin-Lackey, Human Rights Watch

Hagadera Refugee Camp, Kenya--For months, 18-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi had dodged the mortar shells that whizz daily through Mogadishu, the war-ravaged capital of Somalia. The one that finally drove him from Somalia tore though his family's house and ripped a cousin to bits, splattering Ahmed with blood and body parts.

Dodging bullets and bandits, Ahmed fled with his mother across Somalia's southern border to Hagadera, one of three refugee camps in the deserts of Dadaab, in northeast Kenya. Ahmed obediently fetched firewood and water for his mother but couldn't find a job. Then one day in early October, he vanished. Friends said a recruiter had lured him into a covert force of Somali refugees that the Kenyan government is training to help Somalia's internationally backed transitional government fight the extremist Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

In recent weeks hundreds of young men and boys from the Dadaab refugee camps have been secretly recruited for the force, lured with false promises of lavish pay and claims of backing from the United Nations and the United States. By the time the refugees learn their pay will be a fraction of what they were promised, and that they will be hastily trained for frontline combat, their cell phones and identity papers have been confiscated.

The recruitment drive is being organized by Kenyan government officials--who have issued numerous but contradictory denials about their role--as well as exiled Somalis living in Kenya. Many western and regional governments share the goal of routing Al-Shabaab, a group with some links to Al-Qaeda. But in addition to luring recruits through deception, the covert program directly contravenes principles of international law that bar military activity in refugee camps. Such camps are meant to be purely humanitarian spaces where refugees can escape the violence that drove them to flee. And some recruits said children under 15 appear to be among the ranks, which would be a war crime. The covert recruitment drive also targets Kenyans of Somali heritage in marginalized, northeast Kenyan Somali communities such as Dadaab town, located near the refugee camps.

Who is funding the secret force remains a mystery. What is clear is that some of the world's most vulnerable and traumatized refugees are being lured back to the very conflict they narrowly escaped.

"After all that we went through in Somalia, I never thought that that my son would come to a peaceful country like Kenya only to face the same dangers here," said Ahmed's mother, Miryama. (As with all refugees in this article, we have changed her name to protect her from possible reprisal). "This is the same as kidnapping our sons," said Miryama's friend Fatima, whose son also joined the force.

What is also clear is that the drive could backfire and broaden the already significant regional and international dimensions of the conflict in Somalia, where 18 years of conflict have killed thousands of civilians, displaced millions of others and left the country stateless and ravaged. Al-Shabaab has already threatened retaliation if Kenya recruits Somalis to fight against it. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab and other Islamist insurgent groups are also recruiting in refugee camps and in other Somali immigrant communities in Kenya.

Al-Shabaab, which the United States has designated a terrorist organization, is importing fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chechnya, and even young Somali-Americans from Minnesota and Washington State to bolster its forces. Along with other Islamist insurgent groups such as Hisbul Islam, it has trapped the country's UN- and US-backed Transitional Federal Government into a tiny sliver of Mogadishu. The Transitional Federal Government would probably lose even that scrap of turf within days if it weren't protected by a UN-sponsored force of African Union peacekeepers called AMISOM, which sometimes fires indiscriminately at opposition-controlled northern Mogadishu, killing civilians, when Al-Shabaab attacks it.

In recent years the US has stepped up involvement in Somalia, using drones and helicopters to conduct targeted killings of alleged terrorists, including a key Al-Qaeda suspect in September. In what it called a reprisal, Al-Shabaab days later staged a suicide bombing at the AMISOM base in Mogadishu, killing 21 people. The Obama administration also has shipped arms to the transitional government's beleaguered soldiers, obtaining a UN exemption from an international ban on weapons sales to Somalia, despite questions as to how the weapons are being used and evidence that many of them end up on the open market. Ethiopia, Somalia's most powerful neighbor, carried out a bloody, two-year military intervention in Somalia in a failed effort to entrench the Transitional Federal Government. Its forces withdrew from Somalia in late 2008 but still cross the border.

Kenya has been the victim of Al-Qaeda attacks in the past and its government has become increasingly fearful of Shabaab incursions across its porous northeast border. But as one worried UN official put it to Human Rights Watch, "Recruiting Somali refugees and sending them back to Somalia to fight Al-Shabaab is an open invitation for reprisal."

Recruiting for the Transitional Federal Government is difficult inside Somalia because its forces are poorly organized and rarely paid. But pickings are plentiful in the sand-swept desolation of the Dadaab refugee camps, which contain the largest single concentration of refugees in the world. Built to house 90,000 refugees in the early 1990s, the camps overflow with more than triple that number. Most are Somalis. More than two-thirds are younger than 35. The overwhelming majority are unemployed.

Children, restless teens, pregnant women, war wounded, the elderly and the mentally impaired spill from houses of mud, tin, and sticks that are ringed by fences of thorn. While many are fleeing indiscriminate bombardments by all sides, as well as drought, forced recruitment and lawlessness, large numbers say they left because of Al-Shabaab.

Bras, along with television, western music, unusual haircuts and Scrabble, are prohibited in many swaths of south-central Somalia that Shabaab has grabbed in the last few years. But those taboos, punishable by jail time and public floggings, are the least of Somalis' fears. In interviews at Dadaab, one mother said Shabaab forces had snatched her 12-year-old son and nephew from a madrasa and killed her brother when he tried to find them. A wife said Shabaab had murdered her husband because they suspected he supported the Ethiopian military intervention that ended in late 2008. A teenage girl said the group had shot dead an octogenarian grandmother as a transitional government sympathizer after she visited an ailing granddaughter in an AMISOM hospital.

Recruiters for the secret transitional government force capitalize on fears of al-Shabaab, along with many young Somalis' idealism about rebuilding their country.

"They said the fighting is meant for you to kill the dirt and the mess that is in the country right now, the Al-Shabaab," said Daud, an 18-year-old refugee who initially jumped at the offer but later changed his mind.

Speaking warily for fear he would be forced back into recruitment, Daud said a recruiter had approached him inside the Dadaab camps and promised him $400 a month--a fortune in his eyes--and said he would be a policeman, not a soldier. An hour later, Daud said, he boarded a private shuttle van that dumped recruits in a remote desert clearing where scores of other enlistees were already waiting. Late that night, the recruits were placed on Kenyan military and National Youth Service trucks headed for a remote government paramilitary training camp outside the eastern coastal city of Mombasa.

En route, Daud and other recruits heard a different story. They would only receive $200 a month, a portly man who identified himself as an exiled Somali general told them, adding that after just three weeks of training they would head to the front lines.

"At that point my wish to go to Mombasa totally disappeared," Daud said. "The message was totally different from what I first heard." But since recruiters had confiscated all the conscripts' cell phones, along with their identity cards or ration papers (often the only identification refugees possess), he had no way to call for help.

Finally, when the truck slowed at a town, Daud and three friends cut through the canvas siding with a razor and escaped. They walked through the night until Daud was able to borrow a cell phone to call his father, who hired a car to fetch him miles away in the desert.

"I found him lying under a tree. He was tired and starving and traumatized," the father, Ahmed, told Human Rights Watch. "These boys are vulnerable and it is easy for anyone to overcome them psychologically."

Ahmed is among the few refugees who have "movement passes" allowing them to leave the camps. Lacking such papers, most parents whose sons went missing in the recruitment drive can't even try search for them.

Some conscripts looked 15 or younger but recruiters encouraged them to lie about their age, according to several defectors and a driver. "If somebody said, 'I am 15,' they said, 'No, from now on you are 20 years old,'" one recruit said.

Several recruiters also told the refugees they would be joining a force that was backed by the United Nations, the United States or the European Commission. That supposed seal of approval proved highly persuasive among not only recruits but some parents. "My son is educated and he told me that the UN is recruiting an army, so I gave him my blessings and he has my total support," one ethnic Somali father in the town of Dadaab told us. "Please tell the world what he is doing."

Officials from the UN Political Office for Somalia, the US government and the European Commission have strongly denied any role in interviews or statements to Human Rights Watch.

Publicly, nearly all top Kenyan and Somali government officials, including Kenya's foreign minister and defense minister and Somalia's transitional president, have denied involvement in the program as well. "We are not involved in any such operation--it is propaganda," the Kenyan military spokesman, Bogita Ongeri claimed, saying that only Somali militia groups such as Al-Shabaab are recruiting in Kenya. But last week, Transitional Federal Government Gen. Yusuf Dhumal, the group's top military commander, held a press conference in Mogadishu to "confirm" that Kenya and Somalia "had agreed" to recruit 1,500 young soldiers from northeast Kenya, the heartland of ethnic Somali communities. and were training most of them outside of Mombasa. The Kenyan defense minister then admitted a training program existed but said it was actually for Somali police, contradicting what numerous recruits and one recruiter told Human Rights Watch.

No Kenyan or Somali official has admitted to recruiting in refugee camps, which contravenes fundamental principles of refugee law. Both UN Security Council resolutions and the UN refugee agency's governing body have repeatedly stated that refugee camps should be free from any military recruitment and "exclusively civilian and humanitarian in character," to avoid placing an already vulnerable population at increased risk. Refugees who join armed groups also risk losing their refugee status.

One Kenyan government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said both governments were not only scouting for recruits in Northeast Kenya but were telling conscripts to pretend they had been recruited from specific areas of Somalia.

Parents, deserters and community leaders in the refugee camps said the recruiters were operating brazenly from tea kiosks and public squares. "I was told that the Kenyan government was aware of this and I did not have any problem with the police," one recruiter told Human Rights Watch. "Our biggest problem was the parents of the recruits, not the police."

Many parents said both recruiters and police appeared unwilling to help find their sons. "I know who one of the recruiters is here. I went to him and I was wailing and crying; I could not stand the news," said Saadiya, the mother of a 20-year-old who went missing. "But he said, 'Your son is gone and he is not coming back.' "

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Abas Hussein Abdirahman: Somali Adulterer Stoned To Death, Pregnant Girlfriend Spared "Until She Gives Birth"

2009-11-07T09:56:30Z

Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka.

Rachel Chandler: Pirates "Very Hospitable"

2009-10-30T12:30:09Z

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The BBC said Friday that Somali pirates called the broadcaster to demand $7 million for the release of a British couple whose yacht was hijacked off the coast of Africa.

The British broadcaster cited an unidentified caller as saying the size of the ransom was justified because NATO forces in the area had arrested Somali fishermen and destroyed their equipment.

K'naan: Somalia's True Colors

2009-10-29T13:02:02Z

This essay was originally published in Vogue Italy, November 2008.

When I was a boy, growing up in Mogadishu Somalia, I was not aware of the opinion discrepancy created by the heart's colors. Since the many hearts of the world contain various feelings about whatever the object or subject may be, there could not be a unanimous agreement on the color best suited to paint an object or subject.

My subject is Mogadishu, an ancient port city in Eastern Africa. The name Mogadishu is a corrupt pronunciation of Muqdisho, which itself is a corrupt pronunciation of something else. Since Muqdisho is not a Somali word, there are a few opinions on the origin of the name. The most popular explanation is Maqadul Shah, Arabic for "The Imperial Seat of the Shah," suggestive of the old Persian/Somali trade, which has been said to predate the 9th century. But Maqadul Shah also means "The House of Tea" and that's suggestive of, well, a bunch of tea-drinking Mogadishonians.

The latter explanation is something I can attest to.

As a child the colors of this place intrigued me. The sky was sapphire, a leaking sort of blue impregnating the wind, and turning it to a murk of purple hue. Purple is what you get when you mix our exhibitionist blue sky and the fire red earth. The sun was often a beastly yellow, which when sucked down by the dirt produces an orange contrast against the Blackness of our skin.
A tangerine moon connived with the thieves in the night, encircling their skinny ankles like a hand clutching a flash light. In this place the stillness had color, and so did the motion. The motion of the planet is not subtle. Here you can feel yourself stirring in the pot of the world. The liquid measure of this vast spinning is white, pearl white, as in the threatening vomit of the ocean. When the war happened it was draped in the color of mud, as in the beginning.

During this period one could see bickering sparks of bronze, the color of anguish.
The hours of the day too, had their own distinct colors. The morning spew of misty chartreuse only lasts from about 5:30 a.m. till 6:05 a.m. That is the laziest color of the day, taking a shift leave only a few minutes after a half hour. Some say it was granted special privileges in honor of its bullying beauty. It is then followed by the color of the learning hours. This is a warm chalcedony yellow, the underrated jewel of the day, lasting several hours. Everyone knows the color of midday, as they are usually the same all over, so I won't
waste your time with it. But have you ever seen an aqua sea evening?

Later, when I was about 16 years of age and living in North America, I started to read the accounts published in the English language about the city that I knew. The disbelief plundered my eyes. Not one single mention in the newspapers, not one photograph, nothing at all was said about the colors that I've known.

This is a tall disappointment. It can span the distance between two hearts which will never fall in love. Why do they call this place grainy, ugly and hellish? True, it is a difficult place, where war is tattooed on hands and tongues. For if it is not being fought it is being talked about. True, it is a place of thirst, belly aches and unforgivable remembrance. But what about the colors? What the hell have they done with my colors?

It was much later in life that I began to realize, that these newspaper men and women were not conspiring and concealing. That in fact they were colorblind in the worst way. That they could not see the beauty I grew up seeing.

You have to have loved a place to see its true colors.

Somali Man, 112, Marries Girl, 17

2009-10-29T11:59:53Z

Hundreds of people have attended a wedding in central Somalia between a man who says he is 112 years old, and his teenage wife.

Pirates Take British Couple To Base, Empty Yacht Found By British Navy

2009-10-29T08:20:32Z

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Paul and Rachel Chandler, a retired British couple who sailed to exotic locales aboard their 38-foot yacht, said in one of their last cheery messages they would likely be "out of touch for some time."

After disappearing for a week, a somber Paul Chandler is back in contact, saying by telephone Thursday that he and his wife are being held captive by gun-toting pirates who stripped their vessel of everything of value.

Diane Tucker: Mr. and Ms. Gates Go To Washington, Host Roundtable On Global Health Funding

2009-10-27T15:31:36Z

"We're here to thank the U.S. taxpayers. Your investment in global health is working."

That's the "official" reason Melinda French Gates and Bill Gates are in Washington, D.C., today.

As spin goes, it's a nice line. But obviously the Gateses didn't go to all the trouble and expense of launching a multimedia experience that debuts tonight at 7 p.m. at Washington's uber-chic Harman Center For The Arts (with simultaneous Webcast) simply to thank lil' ol' taxpayin' me. (Couldn't they have just sent a card?)

The Gateses are visiting our nation's capital to reframe the conversation about global health aid. We should spend more time talking about what works, and how to measure it, they said. All too often, the gotcha-obsessed media focuses instead on what Melinda called "slippage."

We've been traveling in the developing world for over a decade. It's so different than it used to be. We're seeing a lot of hope on the ground. It's palatable. And yet so many reports focus on the negative -- people using malaria nets for fishing, or for a wedding dress. Of course you're going to get some slippage on the end. But what about the story that indoor residual spraying and malaria nets are saving lives...lots and lots of lives?

The Gateses met with about a dozen reporters this morning at the Monaco Hotel for a short roundtable discussion about global health funding. Currently, the U.S. budget is roughly $8 billion. The Obama Administration is looking at possibly increasing this aid, which means knowledge of what works is essential.

"Some things, like education funding, are tough to track because of all the management issues. Vaccinations are a lot easier to track, even in a place like Somalia," Bill told our roundtable group. He would like to see the U.S. budget increased, but has no particular number in mind.

Just think about the $8 billion very differently than you might. It's been wildly successful. It shows that if you make these investments early, it has a transformative effect. Hopefully, this will lead people to want to do more, even at a time when there are tough budget trade-offs.

Italy came up during the discussion because that country recently cut its AIDS budget dramatically without much outcry. "It's a terrible thing to have happen," said Bill. "And when a few governments go backwards, it makes it easier for other governments to do the same thing."

The Gateses argue that the further away you are from funding recipients, the less you may know about whether or not your money was well spent. Since the Gates Foundation team goes back and examines whether their programs worked or not, they are able to share this data.

At this morning's roundtable discussion, Melinda was visibly passionate about finding ways to spread the word about success stories. A few weeks ago, she began posting short videos on the Gates Foundation Web site.

But honestly, our talent isn't storytelling. Hopefully our talent is biotechnology, and creation of delivery systems for vaccinations and other life-saving tools. We hope to draw more filmmakers and storytellers into this work, to make sure the budgets for these programs aren't cut just because people don't have an understanding of the difference they can make.

No developing nation has become self-sufficient without first improving their health care delivery system. Often a little aid goes a long way -- for example, vaccinations save millions of lives each year. But according to Melinda, we've still made very little progress on the preventable deaths of newborns in underdeveloped countries. "Nearly four million infants die in that first 30 days. And a half-million mothers die in childbirth every year. We need more American investment in this area."

The world's poor are fortunate to have Melinda and Bill Gates as advocates. Whether or not you agree with the couple's priority list, the Gateses are serious about measuring and duplicating success. Now if only another billionaire philanthropist would come along and create a multimedia experience showing how health care reform could improve the lives of millions of Americans, and create a healthier climate for small business in the United States.

* * *

Melinda Gates speaking at the reporters' roundtable in Washington, D.C. on 10.27.09
(Photo: Diane Tucker)

British Couple, Paul And Rachel Chandler, Missing Off Coast Of Somalia

2009-10-27T07:48:24Z

MOGADISHU, Somalia — International naval forces hunted on Tuesday for a British couple feared taken by Somali pirates while sailing from the Seychelles islands, and as night fell units were trailing three suspicious vessels.

Cmdr. John Harbour of the European Union Naval Force said one of its helicopters spotted a yacht towing two skiffs about 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the pirate stronghold of Haradhere. He said it was too dark to read the vessel's name but its location suggested it could be the Chandlers' yacht.

Climate Change Displacing Thousands

2009-10-25T04:19:47Z

Africa is already home to one-third of the 42 million people worldwide uprooted by ethnic slaughter, despots and war. But experts say climate change is quietly driving Africa's displacement crisis to new heights. Ibrahim is one of an estimated 10 million people worldwide who have been driven out of their homes by rising seas, failing rain, desertification or other climate-driven factors.

Somalia: Al Shabab Threatens Uganda And Burundi

2009-10-23T09:16:02Z

Somalia's al-Shabab fighters have said they will attack the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks by peacekeepers from the two countries.

The threat follows the killing on Thursday of at least 30 people in Mogadishu, the capital, by Amisom, the African Union's peacekeeping force to which Uganda and Burundi contribute troops.

Speaking late on Thursday, Sheikh Ali Mohamed Hussein, a senior al-Shabab commander, said: "We shall make their people cry. We'll attack Bujumbura and Kampala ... We will move our fighting to those two cities and we shall destroy them."

Burundi and Uganda have each 2,500 peacekeepers for Amisom.

Witnesses said Amisom fired at least 35 rockets into the capital's Bakara market area on Thursday after al-Shabab fighters there launched mortar shells at the aircraft of Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the Somali president, as he left the airport for a summit in Uganda.

Somalia: President's Plane Shelled, Fighting Kills 20

2009-10-22T08:33:45Z

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Mortars fired by Islamic militants slammed into Somalia's airport as the president was boarding a plane Thursday, sparking battles that killed at least 24 people when return fire hit residential areas and a market, officials said.

A militant leader vowed to avenge the civilian deaths and threatened retaliatory attacks in two African countries that supply troops to the African Union peacekeeping mission stationed in Mogadishu.

William Bradley: Obama in the Thicket of "Afghaniranistan"

2009-10-21T16:12:09Z

Considering that he is the most recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Barack Obama is in a seemingly curious set of positions. He's spurred major military offensives in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has been deeply enmeshed in a tense stand-off with Iran.

There are many complex things to be said about each of these situations, which are all interrelated with not only one another, but also US relations with such challenging countries as Israel and Russia. But let's start with the basic versions.

Afghanistan. There's much to be said on the question of how best to go about securing Afghanistan for a democratic, modernizing future, free from the influences of a Dark Ages theocracy which oppresses women and closes the minds of children. But two fundamental things are true. First, America cannot be the world's crusader rabbit, seeking to rush about and right all wrongs. Second, re-making Afghanistan is not why we are there in the first place. We're there to disrupt Al Qaeda and keep jihadists from using the country as a training and staging area for attacks on the US and its allies.

After complaining about the killings over the weekend of top Revolutionary Guards commanders and recent abductions of individuals involved with its nuclear program, Iran has agreed to a deal pushed by the US to have most of its uranium enriched by Russia.

Iran. I don't know if the fundamentalist theocrats who run Iran have intended to develop nuclear weapons. I do know that if they have not, they've done an awfully good job of acting as though they are. Constant delays in international negotiations. And no new inspections have taken place yet in Iran in the wake of last month's revelation of a previously secret underground facility next to a Revolutionary Guard base. Last month, the Iranian regime said it wouldn't even discuss this nuclear program. Yet now there is an apparent breakthrough in Vienna, with Iran agreeing with America, France, and Russia to send most of its nuclear fuel to Russia for enrichment.

Pakistan. This is the ongoing success story of Obama's anti-jihadist strategies. After conning the Bush/Cheney Administration out of many billions of dollars, all the while turning a blind eye to the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda cadre it harbored in its midst -- with jihadists extending their grip over much of the country in the process -- Pakistan has, at Obama's strong urgings this year, pushed back hard. Pakistani Taliban gains have been reversed and the Pakistani Army is now engaged in a ground offensive in the longtime jihadist stronghold of South Waziristan, which it launched over the past weekend. During the Bush/Cheney days, the old Pakistani government had a formal truce allowing jihadists free reign in that region. But much can still go wrong there.

Afghan officials are scrambling to organize a November 7th run-off election after months of wrangling over the largely fraudulent re-election victory of George W. Bush's man in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is in the thicket of "Afghaniranistan," a multi-faceted complex of geopolitical crises. He is actively using military force in two of the countries, and has threatened, at the least, tough sanctions in the third. (The Obama Administration also recently accelerated the development of advanced bunker-buster bombs, suitable for use against, say, underground nuclear facilities.)

Which is a seemingly odd place for the most recent Nobel Peace Prize winner to be.

Many on the right have convinced themselves that Obama is a peacenik, a man who won't stand up to the forces that attacked America on 9/11 and have carried out attacks around the world. Many on the left have convinced themselves -- or say they convinced themselves -- of much the same thing, albeit with a very different cast on the same set of facts.

But both are wrong. Obama is a politician of the center/left. While as a college student he wrote approvingly of disarmament and disapprovingly of intervention, as a mature political figure he has not eschewed the use of force. In fact, in the speech that helped him win the Democratic presidential nomination -- his October 2002 speech as a U.S. Senate candidate opposing the invasion of Iraq -- he did not oppose the war because of any pacifism on his part. Instead, he opposed it as a dumb war.

Still, Obama, in large part due to his soaring speeches, leads many to project upon him what they will. For example, he is an abolitionist when it comes to nuclear weapons. In the long run. Just as his idol, Abraham Lincoln, a famous man of peace, was an abolitionist when it came to slavery. Lincoln, however, came along at a time when slavery could actually be abolished. And yet it took a war to do it. A paradox of politics.

Lincoln was a profound idealist, and a profound pragmatist. Obama also blends idealism and realpolitik in his political technique. He is blending a high-profile program of reaching out to the Muslim world as a whole -- evidenced by his brilliant Cairo address of June -- while lethally targeting jihadist cadre.

This is why aerial drone strikes against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and cadre in Pakistan have actually increased under Obama. He authorized a daring special forces mission to kill a top Al Qaeda leader deep inside Somalia, as well as the highly publicized rescue of an American freighter captain (and execution of his captors) by Navy Seals off the coast of Somalia. And this is what we know.

Following the killings on Sunday of much of its top leadership, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard claimed that the US, Britain, and Pakistan instigated the action.

With Iran sending signals that it would not budge on the question of further enriching its own uranium, rather than send it to Russia or France, top leaders and cadre of the Revolutionary Guards -- the military organization with a base next to the previously secret underground nuclear facility revealed last month -- were killed in terrorist bombings apparently carried out by an Iranian Sunni militant group on Sunday. The surviving Revolutionary Guards commander claimed that the killings were instigated by British, Pakistani ... and American intelligence. All three governments denied any role.

Intriguingly, Iran did not claim that operatives from Israel's Mossad or Sayeret had a hand in the deadly strikes. This is a serious blow to Revolutionary Guard prestige. After all, if they can't protect their leaders, how can they protect, and intimidate, the nation?

Just before the apparent breakthrough in nuclear negotiations in Vienna, Iran's foreign minister accused the US of being behind the abduction of three Iranians involved with the nuclear program. (Though one of the apparent abductions took place before Obama became president.)

If the Iranian nuclear deal is approved, it looks to be a good step forward. After refusing yesterday to deal at all with France, stalling yesterday's talks, Iran today agreed in negotiations with the US, France, and Russia to send 75% of its nuclear fuel for further enrichment to Russia.

Obama, in what was no doubt a lovely conversation, congratulated Karzai for "accepting the certification" of the Afghan election.

The other 25% is deemed insufficient to start a nuclear weapons program. I'm not sure of the status of international inspections in Iran with regard to being sure that it is only 25%, or whether the delayed inspection of the previously secret underground facility will take place this weekend.

The governments of Iran, Russia, France, and the US must all approve the deal. Israel, which is not a party to the negotiations but a more than interested bystander, to say the least, had a deputy defense minister say today on Israeli Army Radio that, "It shows that the international pressure is working, but it must continue so that Teheran will not have an atomic bomb."

Then there is the question of Russia, which wants more sway over the post-Soviet space around it. For the obvious great power reasons, and for its own historic sense of self-defense, which is often missed in discussions of Moscow's intentions.

Assuming that the deal is implemented and appropriate inspections are carried out, Obama looks at least to have delayed the Iranian crisis, if not eliminated it entirely.

Which leaves the eternal AfPak question, and Obama's latest coming course correction in Afghanistan.

A UN-backed elections commission found massive fraud in the claimed August 20th re-election of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, leading to a long-delayed November 7th run-off election.

Obama is taking his time with this decision, as he should. It's merely one of the most momentous of his presidency.

It took a lot to get this November 7th run-off between a very reluctant President Hamid Karzai and former Foreign Minister and Northern Alliance spokesman Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. You can't have a strategy for a country if you don't have an at least moderately credible government.

Incidentally, major kudos are called for Senator John Kerry, with whom Obama met today in the Oval Office. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, has returned from Afghanistan where he played a key role in effecting a run-off presidential election upon a recalcitrant Karzai, who proclaimed himself a landslide winner, only for the UN-backed elections commission to find evidence of massive fraud in his vote. Half the local registrars for the original August 20th election have been fired.

Kerry, incidentally, personally picked Obama to deliver his famed 2004 Democratic national convention address, which vaulted Obama into the political stratosphere. He's known to be an advocate of caution on Afghanistan, having served in Vietnam himself.

There's just one thing about having a better government in Kabul, assuming one emerges through a variety of means after November 7th. It might convince Obama to slide down the old nation-building skids.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Somalia: Islamists Order Radio Stations To Shut Down

2009-10-21T10:18:18Z

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A powerful Islamist group linked to al-Qaida on Wednesday ordered two radio stations in southwestern Somalia to stop broadcasts indefinitely.

Al-Shabab delivered letters to Jubba and Warsan Radio stations early Wednesday ordering the shut down without giving any reasons, said Mohamed Adawe, a journalist with Jubba Radio.

Boston Terror Arrest: Tarek Mehanna Arrested For Planning Attacks On Shopping Malls

2009-10-21T10:00:28Z

BOSTON — A Massachusetts man and two friends tried and failed to get into terrorist training camps and then plotted to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and randomly shoot people at American shopping malls, authorities said Wednesday.

Tarek Mehanna, who recently taught at a Muslim school in Worcester, was arrested early Wednesday at his parents' suburban Boston home. Mehanna was charged with conspiring with two other men – an American now in Syria and another man who is cooperating with authorities – to provide support to terrorists.

Compelling Video Shows Rare Images Inside Somali Hospital

2009-10-19T12:52:10Z

Javier Roldan, a 35-year-old nurse from Spain, has just returned from Somalia where he has captured the situation of the population in one rural hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders.

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Somalia: Islamists Whip Women For Wearing Bras

2009-10-16T16:20:12Z

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline Islamist group al Shabaab has publicly whipped women for wearing bras they say violate Islam by constituting a deception, north Mogadishu residents said Friday.

Abukar Arman: Shariah in Lawless Somalia

2009-10-13T15:30:33Z

Nowhere in the world is Shariah more contested (yet seldom debated) than in war-weary, Somalia where each of the entities competing for power claims to have embraced it while condemning its detractor, or rather, its enemy, as a dangerous imposter.

All the colorful politics motivating each contender aside, the most pressing question begging an answer is: Can lawless Somalia be governed by Shariah?

Short answer: It depends!

If by Shariah we mean the Talibanesque, self-righteous, and unjust brand currently being practiced by the Somali Neo-Islamists known as al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam, the answer is: No.

As these two groups have been asserting their authority through violence-driven territorial expansion, they have been rapidly loosing the public confidence necessary for them to sustain any gains. Horrific accounts attesting to their ignorance and to the cruelty of their method have been stirring panic and cultivating hate. Stories such as the two Neo-Islamist assassins who followed their victim-to-be into a mosque and prayed alongside him only to shoot him in the head after he stepped outside the mosque raise serious questions regarding these groups' understanding of Islam and Shariah.

Theirs is an obtuse, if not dysfunctional, interpretation of Shariah. They are oblivious to the education-based societal transformation that the classic Shariah seeks to achieve. To them, Shariah is a purposeless, uncompassionate, punishment-driven set of laws that are arbitrarily implemented without consideration of time, circumstances or objectives.

Therefore, it is a matter of time before the masses would conquer their collective fear and revolt against this accountable to no one, selectively oppressive, and entirely alien brand of Shariah.

If, however, by Shariah we mean the classic concept of Islamic governance adapted to address contemporary political, social, economic, and spiritual challenges in a just way, the answer is: Yes.

As a country whose national institutions have been utterly destroyed and almost all threads that once wove its society together have been unraveled, Islam is the only thread that remains intact. Therefore, adopting Shariah as a set of rules, regulations, and values to govern Somalia is not only feasible but perhaps the only sensible means to resuscitate that dying state.

Granted, the name "Shariah" connotes a politically radioactive concept in the West and that there are those who believe that Shariah and governance are mutually exclusive; however, that is hardly a fair estimation of this profoundly misconstrued system. [One might gain a broader perspective of this concept by reading Noah Feldman of Harvard's article "Why Shariah?" published by N.Y. Times March 16, 2008]

The Somali people are desperate for a government and indeed a system of governance (any for that matter) that they can invest their trust in; a system that protects them against injustices and guards their God-given right to life, to own property, to enjoy basic freedoms and to exercise their freewill.

Therefore, President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and his government would have to identify the most crucial needs of the people.

Granted, in a number of his speeches while visiting the Somali Diaspora in the United States, he highlighted security, humanitarian needs, and capacity building as being his top priorities. While no one would dispute the importance of these three, some question 'why is peace and reconciliation not part of the top three priorities?' They argue that there should be an ongoing process that resists any temptation to give up prematurely.

That being said, the model of Shariah that is likely to succeed is the one that genuinely addresses the following categories of needs:

First: Preserving the sanctity of life and the provision of a secure environment in which the average Somali could reach his/her optimum potential. Within this, protecting the lives of civilians and addressing the humanitarian crisis reign high.

Second: Instituting a peace and reconciliation policy that would keep the door open and the peace process in motion.

Third: Protecting individual properties against any abuses including nationalization, and state properties by establishing a transparent system of accountability.

Fourth: Instituting policies that guarantee equality before the law and protect the rights of women and minorities.

Fifth: Protecting individuals from power abuse and preserving individual's honor by protecting him or her against false accusations, imprisonment, slander, and character assassination.

Sixth: Protecting freedom of assembly, conscience, and thought.

Seventh: Promoting education and protecting the God-given right of the individual citizen to question and scrutinize their leaders by protecting their right to elect their representatives.

Eighth: Enacting policies promoting ethical and moral conduct that, among other things, criminalize favoritism and other corruptions such as bribery and nepotism.

Ninth: Paving the way for the development of independent institutions that, on one hand, ensure a system of checks and balances, and on the other, enhance the overall function of the government.

Tenth: Instituting policies that protect the sovereignty of the nation and promote neighborly coexistence with neighboring states and with the rest of the international community.

President Ahmed must succeed in persuading people to accept the legitimacy of his government and to trust the individuals appointed to exercise that authority. And, in order to achieve that, those entrusted to lead must resort to taking tangible actions that would restore law and order and improve the lives of people. They must do away with the clan-based quota system that by and large appoints incompetent demagogues who neither serve the nation nor the clans in whose name they were appointed. More importantly, they must streamline all the militias led by shrouded warlords who are now considered government allies into a disciplined army that is accountable.

Somali Pirates Accidentally Attack French Navy

2009-10-07T13:05:39Z

PARIS — Somali pirates in two skiffs fired on a French navy vessel early Wednesday after apparently mistaking it for a commercial boat, the French military said. The French ship gave chase and captured five suspected pirates.

No one was wounded by the volleys from the Kalashnikov rifles directed at La Somme, a 3,800-ton refueling ship, French military spokesman Rear Adm. Christophe Prazuck said.