the human province

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.

There has been much talk of a possible Iraqi descent into internecine warfare; many commentators have talked of staving off the possibility of a civil war between Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni forces in Iraq. In this Washington Post article, via &c., David Ignatius tries to convince us that "Iraq can survive this":

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Ackerman at &c. correctly sizes this view: "In this blithe description, fifteen years of carnage and atrocity followed by a further fifteen years of foreign domination was merely a prelude to the hopeful scenes of Martyrs' Square." The truth of the matter is that Lebanon was a mess during the civil war, and although there was technically a central government, sectarian militias ruled, and countless war crimes were committed.

But even this seems to be missing the point, because for all intents and purposes, Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Without going all the way, former Prime Minister Allawi, while speaking in Amman last month, said, "[American] policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak." Watching wave after wave of Sunni suicide attacks, now aimed at Shi'ite clerics and children and Shi'ite death squads roaming Sunni villages looking for revenge, it should be clear that just because there is a foreign occupation, which is also being combatted, does not mean that there is not already a civil war raging in Mesopotamia.

In Patrick Cockburn's interesting piece in this issue of the London Review of Books, he reports from Baghdad on the violence between the different groups all vying, in one way or another, for power in Iraq:

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.

The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. 'I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.

The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.

So to summarize, there is the Sunni insurgency, linked with al Qaeda, which is reported to be forming another paramilitary group called the Omar Brigade; there is the predominately Sunni counter-insurgency force, the Special Police Commandos (5,000 troops); there are also Shi'ite government commandos (similar to the death squads of El Salvadoran fame) linked to and perhaps commanded by the Badr Brigade; and finally there is the Kurdish army, Pesh Merga (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 strong).

What we appear to have in Iraq is a weak central government, incapable of providing security to its citizens but allied with foreign soldiers, fighting an insurgency, made up largely of a different sect that has its own militias, while a third group has secured its own territory and voted overwhelmingly (98 percent) for independence from the rest of the country. While the names and other particulars are of course different, the situation is not too dissimilar to that in the DRC today or Lebanon in the 1980s.

In the New York Review of Books, Galbraith's account of Iraq shows us to what extent things are fractured in Iraq and is worth quoting at length:

On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq--the country Talabani heads--was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." ...

Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masood Barzani as the first president of Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but then specifically prohibiting him from deploying Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly approved by the assembly. ... The assembly also banned the entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are mindful that their people are even more militant in their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January referendum on independence held simultaneously with the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the independence option. ...

When he swore in his cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq" from the statutory oath of office; this so angered Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in ceremony.

It seems unlikely that these three groups will be able to cease their fighting and come to a federal agreement any time soon. The points of conflict, most of which will need to be dealt with in any future constitution, include the strength of the central government and the autonomy of federal regions, the ownership of oil, the status of the governorate of Kirkuk, the role that Islam (and what brand of Islam) will play in the government, the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the military, what rights women will have, and what sort of relationship the state will have with the US and Iran. These are all complicated issues, which will require a fine balancing act, like the Taif agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon, if Iraq wants to resolve its problems and steer away from internecine warfare. But in the meantime, Iraqi politics are being settled by bullets rather than ballots.

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.

There has been much talk of a possible Iraqi descent into internecine warfare; many commentators have talked of staving off the possibility of a civil war between Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni forces in Iraq. In this Washington Post article, via &c., David Ignatius tries to convince us that "Iraq can survive this":

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Ackerman at &c. correctly sizes this view: "In this blithe description, fifteen years of carnage and atrocity followed by a further fifteen years of foreign domination was merely a prelude to the hopeful scenes of Martyrs' Square." The truth of the matter is that Lebanon was a mess during the civil war, and although there was technically a central government, sectarian militias ruled, and countless war crimes were committed.

But even this seems to be missing the point, because for all intents and purposes, Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Without going all the way, former Prime Minister Allawi, while speaking in Amman last month, said, "[American] policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak." Watching wave after wave of Sunni suicide attacks, now aimed at Shi'ite clerics and children and Shi'ite death squads roaming Sunni villages looking for revenge, it should be clear that just because there is a foreign occupation, which is also being combatted, does not mean that there is not already a civil war raging in Mesopotamia.

In Patrick Cockburn's interesting piece in this issue of the London Review of Books, he reports from Baghdad on the violence between the different groups all vying, in one way or another, for power in Iraq:

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.

The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. 'I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.

The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.

So to summarize, there is the Sunni insurgency, linked with al Qaeda, which is reported to be forming another paramilitary group called the Omar Brigade; there is the predominately Sunni counter-insurgency force, the Special Police Commandos (5,000 troops); there are also Shi'ite government commandos (similar to the death squads of El Salvadoran fame) linked to and perhaps commanded by the Badr Brigade; and finally there is the Kurdish army, Pesh Merga (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 strong).

What we appear to have in Iraq is a weak central government, incapable of providing security to its citizens but allied with foreign soldiers, fighting an insurgency, made up largely of a different sect that has its own militias, while a third group has secured its own territory and voted overwhelmingly (98 percent) for independence from the rest of the country. While the names and other particulars are of course different, the situation is not too dissimilar to that in the DRC today or Lebanon in the 1980s.

In the New York Review of Books, Galbraith's account of Iraq shows us to what extent things are fractured in Iraq and is worth quoting at length:

On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq--the country Talabani heads--was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." ...

Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masood Barzani as the first president of Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but then specifically prohibiting him from deploying Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly approved by the assembly. ... The assembly also banned the entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are mindful that their people are even more militant in their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January referendum on independence held simultaneously with the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the independence option. ...

When he swore in his cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq" from the statutory oath of office; this so angered Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in ceremony.

It seems unlikely that these three groups will be able to cease their fighting and come to a federal agreement any time soon. The points of conflict, most of which will need to be dealt with in any future constitution, include the strength of the central government and the autonomy of federal regions, the ownership of oil, the status of the governorate of Kirkuk, the role that Islam (and what brand of Islam) will play in the government, the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the military, what rights women will have, and what sort of relationship the state will have with the US and Iran. These are all complicated issues, which will require a fine balancing act, like the Taif agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon, if Iraq wants to resolve its problems and steer away from internecine warfare. But in the meantime, Iraqi politics are being settled by bullets rather than ballots.

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.

There has been much talk of a possible Iraqi descent into internecine warfare; many commentators have talked of staving off the possibility of a civil war between Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni forces in Iraq. In this Washington Post article, via &c., David Ignatius tries to convince us that "Iraq can survive this":

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Ackerman at &c. correctly sizes this view: "In this blithe description, fifteen years of carnage and atrocity followed by a further fifteen years of foreign domination was merely a prelude to the hopeful scenes of Martyrs' Square." The truth of the matter is that Lebanon was a mess during the civil war, and although there was technically a central government, sectarian militias ruled, and countless war crimes were committed.

But even this seems to be missing the point, because for all intents and purposes, Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Without going all the way, former Prime Minister Allawi, while speaking in Amman last month, said, "[American] policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak." Watching wave after wave of Sunni suicide attacks, now aimed at Shi'ite clerics and children and Shi'ite death squads roaming Sunni villages looking for revenge, it should be clear that just because there is a foreign occupation, which is also being combatted, does not mean that there is not already a civil war raging in Mesopotamia.

In Patrick Cockburn's interesting piece in this issue of the London Review of Books, he reports from Baghdad on the violence between the different groups all vying, in one way or another, for power in Iraq:

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.

The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. 'I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.

The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.

So to summarize, there is the Sunni insurgency, linked with al Qaeda, which is reported to be forming another paramilitary group called the Omar Brigade; there is the predominately Sunni counter-insurgency force, the Special Police Commandos (5,000 troops); there are also Shi'ite government commandos (similar to the death squads of El Salvadoran fame) linked to and perhaps commanded by the Badr Brigade; and finally there is the Kurdish army, Pesh Merga (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 strong).

What we appear to have in Iraq is a weak central government, incapable of providing security to its citizens but allied with foreign soldiers, fighting an insurgency, made up largely of a different sect that has its own militias, while a third group has secured its own territory and voted overwhelmingly (98 percent) for independence from the rest of the country. While the names and other particulars are of course different, the situation is not too dissimilar to that in the DRC today or Lebanon in the 1980s.

In the New York Review of Books, Galbraith's account of Iraq shows us to what extent things are fractured in Iraq and is worth quoting at length:

On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq--the country Talabani heads--was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." ...

Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masood Barzani as the first president of Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but then specifically prohibiting him from deploying Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly approved by the assembly. ... The assembly also banned the entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are mindful that their people are even more militant in their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January referendum on independence held simultaneously with the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the independence option. ...

When he swore in his cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq" from the statutory oath of office; this so angered Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in ceremony.

It seems unlikely that these three groups will be able to cease their fighting and come to a federal agreement any time soon. The points of conflict, most of which will need to be dealt with in any future constitution, include the strength of the central government and the autonomy of federal regions, the ownership of oil, the status of the governorate of Kirkuk, the role that Islam (and what brand of Islam) will play in the government, the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the military, what rights women will have, and what sort of relationship the state will have with the US and Iran. These are all complicated issues, which will require a fine balancing act, like the Taif agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon, if Iraq wants to resolve its problems and steer away from internecine warfare. But in the meantime, Iraqi politics are being settled by bullets rather than ballots.

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.

There has been much talk of a possible Iraqi descent into internecine warfare; many commentators have talked of staving off the possibility of a civil war between Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni forces in Iraq. In this Washington Post article, via &c., David Ignatius tries to convince us that "Iraq can survive this":

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Ackerman at &c. correctly sizes this view: "In this blithe description, fifteen years of carnage and atrocity followed by a further fifteen years of foreign domination was merely a prelude to the hopeful scenes of Martyrs' Square." The truth of the matter is that Lebanon was a mess during the civil war, and although there was technically a central government, sectarian militias ruled, and countless war crimes were committed.

But even this seems to be missing the point, because for all intents and purposes, Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Without going all the way, former Prime Minister Allawi, while speaking in Amman last month, said, "[American] policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak." Watching wave after wave of Sunni suicide attacks, now aimed at Shi'ite clerics and children and Shi'ite death squads roaming Sunni villages looking for revenge, it should be clear that just because there is a foreign occupation, which is also being combatted, does not mean that there is not already a civil war raging in Mesopotamia.

In Patrick Cockburn's interesting piece in this issue of the London Review of Books, he reports from Baghdad on the violence between the different groups all vying, in one way or another, for power in Iraq:

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.

The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. 'I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.

The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.

So to summarize, there is the Sunni insurgency, linked with al Qaeda, which is reported to be forming another paramilitary group called the Omar Brigade; there is the predominately Sunni counter-insurgency force, the Special Police Commandos (5,000 troops); there are also Shi'ite government commandos (similar to the death squads of El Salvadoran fame) linked to and perhaps commanded by the Badr Brigade; and finally there is the Kurdish army, Pesh Merga (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 strong).

What we appear to have in Iraq is a weak central government, incapable of providing security to its citizens but allied with foreign soldiers, fighting an insurgency, made up largely of a different sect that has its own militias, while a third group has secured its own territory and voted overwhelmingly (98 percent) for independence from the rest of the country. While the names and other particulars are of course different, the situation is not too dissimilar to that in the DRC today or Lebanon in the 1980s.

In the New York Review of Books, Galbraith's account of Iraq shows us to what extent things are fractured in Iraq and is worth quoting at length:

On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq--the country Talabani heads--was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." ...

Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masood Barzani as the first president of Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but then specifically prohibiting him from deploying Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly approved by the assembly. ... The assembly also banned the entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are mindful that their people are even more militant in their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January referendum on independence held simultaneously with the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the independence option. ...

When he swore in his cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq" from the statutory oath of office; this so angered Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in ceremony.

It seems unlikely that these three groups will be able to cease their fighting and come to a federal agreement any time soon. The points of conflict, most of which will need to be dealt with in any future constitution, include the strength of the central government and the autonomy of federal regions, the ownership of oil, the status of the governorate of Kirkuk, the role that Islam (and what brand of Islam) will play in the government, the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the military, what rights women will have, and what sort of relationship the state will have with the US and Iran. These are all complicated issues, which will require a fine balancing act, like the Taif agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon, if Iraq wants to resolve its problems and steer away from internecine warfare. But in the meantime, Iraqi politics are being settled by bullets rather than ballots.

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.

There has been much talk of a possible Iraqi descent into internecine warfare; many commentators have talked of staving off the possibility of a civil war between Kurdish, Shi'ite and Sunni forces in Iraq. In this Washington Post article, via &c., David Ignatius tries to convince us that "Iraq can survive this":

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

Ackerman at &c. correctly sizes this view: "In this blithe description, fifteen years of carnage and atrocity followed by a further fifteen years of foreign domination was merely a prelude to the hopeful scenes of Martyrs' Square." The truth of the matter is that Lebanon was a mess during the civil war, and although there was technically a central government, sectarian militias ruled, and countless war crimes were committed.

But even this seems to be missing the point, because for all intents and purposes, Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Without going all the way, former Prime Minister Allawi, while speaking in Amman last month, said, "[American] policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak." Watching wave after wave of Sunni suicide attacks, now aimed at Shi'ite clerics and children and Shi'ite death squads roaming Sunni villages looking for revenge, it should be clear that just because there is a foreign occupation, which is also being combatted, does not mean that there is not already a civil war raging in Mesopotamia.

In Patrick Cockburn's interesting piece in this issue of the London Review of Books, he reports from Baghdad on the violence between the different groups all vying, in one way or another, for power in Iraq:

Hatred between Sunni and Shia Arabs has been intensifying over the past few months. Iraqis used to claim that sectarianism had been fomented or exacerbated by Saddam. In reality the tension between Sunni, Shia and Kurd has always shaped Iraqi politics. All the exiled parties returning after the fall of Saddam had a sectarian or ethnic base. The Sunnis opposed the US invasion, the Kurds supported it and the Shias, 60 per cent of the population, hoped to use it to give their community a share of power at last.

The army and police recruits killed by the suicide bombers are mostly Shia. Al-Qaida in Iraq, the shadowy group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, denounces the Shia as apostates. There are also near daily massacres of working-class Shias. Now the Shias have started to strike back. The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad. 'I was told in Najaf by senior leaders that they have killed upwards of a thousand Sunnis,' an Iraqi official said. Often the killers belong, at least nominally, to the government's paramilitary forces, including the police commandos. These commandos seem increasingly to be operating under the control of certain Shias, who may be members of the Badr Brigade, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country's largest militia, with up to seventy thousand men.

The commandos, whose units have macho names such as Wolf Brigade and Lion Brigade, certainly look and act like a militia. They drive around in pick-up trucks, shooting into the air to clear the traffic, and are regarded with terror in Sunni districts. In one raid the commandos arrested nine Sunni Arabs who had taken a friend with a bullet wound in his leg to hospital. (The commandos claimed they were suspected insurgents, even though wounded resistance fighters generally keep away from hospitals.) The men were left in the back of a police vehicle which was parked in the sun with the air conditioning switched off: all were asphyxiated. Zarqawi has announced that he is setting up a group called the Omar Brigade specifically to target the Badr militia.

So to summarize, there is the Sunni insurgency, linked with al Qaeda, which is reported to be forming another paramilitary group called the Omar Brigade; there is the predominately Sunni counter-insurgency force, the Special Police Commandos (5,000 troops); there are also Shi'ite government commandos (similar to the death squads of El Salvadoran fame) linked to and perhaps commanded by the Badr Brigade; and finally there is the Kurdish army, Pesh Merga (somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 strong).

What we appear to have in Iraq is a weak central government, incapable of providing security to its citizens but allied with foreign soldiers, fighting an insurgency, made up largely of a different sect that has its own militias, while a third group has secured its own territory and voted overwhelmingly (98 percent) for independence from the rest of the country. While the names and other particulars are of course different, the situation is not too dissimilar to that in the DRC today or Lebanon in the 1980s.

In the New York Review of Books, Galbraith's account of Iraq shows us to what extent things are fractured in Iraq and is worth quoting at length:

On June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not only the first-ever democratically elected head of state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag of Iraq--the country Talabani heads--was noticeably absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US commitment to an Iraq that is, she said, "democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq." ...

Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Masood Barzani as the first president of Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but then specifically prohibiting him from deploying Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly approved by the assembly. ... The assembly also banned the entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are mindful that their people are even more militant in their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January referendum on independence held simultaneously with the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the independence option. ...

When he swore in his cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq" from the statutory oath of office; this so angered Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in ceremony.

It seems unlikely that these three groups will be able to cease their fighting and come to a federal agreement any time soon. The points of conflict, most of which will need to be dealt with in any future constitution, include the strength of the central government and the autonomy of federal regions, the ownership of oil, the status of the governorate of Kirkuk, the role that Islam (and what brand of Islam) will play in the government, the sectarian and ethnic make-up of the military, what rights women will have, and what sort of relationship the state will have with the US and Iran. These are all complicated issues, which will require a fine balancing act, like the Taif agreement that ended the civil war in Lebanon, if Iraq wants to resolve its problems and steer away from internecine warfare. But in the meantime, Iraqi politics are being settled by bullets rather than ballots.

In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.

It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.

Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Via Kristof's column today, I found a blog by an aid worker in Darfur, who is giving uncensored information from Sudan and who, for fear of being kicked out of the country, is remaining anonymous.

In case you can't access the Kristof article, he's not really saying anything new: the African Union peacekeepers don't have enough people, money or matériel; the US isn't doing anything; things are getting worse, not better.

But at least Kristof keeps writing about Darfur. He may, at times, sound like a slightly annoying record that keeps skipping, particularly if you listen to the multimedia pieces on the Times website, but he is one of the only people from a large American media outlet who has been struggling to keep Darfur ingrained in his public's fickle short-term memory. And for that, he deserves respect.

I just received a package from my family with some Christmas presents and the last three months of Harper's. There was a "reading" in there that I had never heard about. It is an exerpt from a March 2004 email in which Air Force Captain John Carr, one of the military prosecuters in the cases at Guantanamo Bay who has since then been transferred, complained to Army Colonel Fred Borch about the way the Office of Military Commissions was being carried out.

The Australian Broadcast Service seems to be the first to report that the trials were to be rigged.

I can't seem to find a transcript of the email on the internet, so I'm retyping the exerpt published in the November issue of Harper's (emphasis mine):

Sir,

I feel a responsibility to emphasize a few issues. Our cases are not even close to being adequately investigated or prepared for trial. There are many reasons why we find ourselves in this unfortunate position--the starkest being that we have had little or no leadership or direction for the last eight months. It appears that instead of pausing, conducting an honest appraisal of our current preparation plan for the future, we have invested substantial time and effort in concealing our deficiencies and misleading not only each other but also those outside our office who are either directly responsible for or asked to endorse our efforts. My fears are not insignificant that the inadequate preparation of the cases and misrepresentation related thereto may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements, and other criminal conduct.

You asked in our meeting last week what else you could do but lead by example. In regards to the environment of secrecy, deceit, and dishonesty in this office, the attorneys appear merely to be following the example that you have set.

A few examples include:

You continue to make statements to the office that you admit in private are not true. You have stated for months that we are ready to go immediately with the first four cases. At the same time, emails are being sent out admitting that we don't have the evidence to prove the general conspiracy, let alone the specific accused's culpability.

You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees, and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel. In private you stated that we are really concerned with review by academicians ten years from now, who will go back and pick the cases apart.

The fact that we did not approach the FBI for assistance prior to December 17 is not only indefensible but an example of how this office and others have misled outsiders by pretending that interagency cooperation has been alive and well for some time, when in fact the opposite is true.

It is my opinion that the primary objective of the office has been the advancement of the process for personal motivations--not the proper preparation of cases or the interests of the American people. The posturing of our prosecution team chiefs to maneuver onto the first case is overshadowed only by the zeal with which they hide the specific facts of their case from review or scrutiny. The evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of our accused, or the sustainability of our efforts.

If the appropriate decision-makers are provided with the accurate information and determine that we must go forward on our current path, then all would be very committed to accomplishing this task. It instead appears, however, that the decision-makers are being provided false information to get them to make the key decisions, only to learn the truth after a point of no return.

When I volunteered to assist with this process, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged. It is difficult to believe that the White House has approved this situation, and I fully expect that one day, soon, someone will be called to answer for what our office has been doing for the last fourteen months.

While many may simply be concerned with a moment of fame and the ability in the future to engage in small-time practice, that is neither what I aspire to do not what I have been trained to do. I cannot morally, ethically, or professionally continue to be a part of this process.

According to the ABC article, prosecutor Major Robert Preston feels the same way: "After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was finally indicted yesterday in a criminal court. Padilla, who has been held as an "unlawful enemy combatant" in a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, was arrested in Chicago and accused of planning a "dirty bomb" attack on American soil. His indictment makes no mention of a "dirty bomb," perhaps because any evidence gained while he was detained without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus would be inadmissable in court.

According to I. Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official who teaches law at the University of Maryland,

The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.

The US government had until today to turn in its legal arguments for a pending Supreme Court case, which was to examine Padilla's status. Attorney General Gonzales claims, "Since he has now been charged in a grand jury in Florida, we believe that the petition is moot and that the petition should not be granted." But this is not at all certain, since the change to the US criminal court system did not address his status as an "unlawful enemy combatant," (a designation that is being used to hold other people indefinitely) and in a government request in 2002 to suspend a petition to habeas corpus, government lawyers make the following claim in a footnote:

There has never been an obligation under the laws and customs of war to charge an enemy combatant with an offense (whether under the laws of war or under domestic law). Indeed, in the usual case, the vast majority of those seized in war are never charged with an offense but are simply detained during the conflict. Nor is there any general right of access to counsel for enemy combatants under the laws and customs of war.

This implies that the government is talking about the "war on terror" and not the war in Afghanistan, because if they were talking about the latter, Padilla would have been released before now. Needless to say, this is disconcerting, because if the "war on terror" were to last as long as another metaphorical war, say the "war on drugs," the "unlawful enemy combatant" designation would give the president the power to imprison anyone, even US citizens, for the rest of their lives without having to ever charge them with a crime.

As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court decision handed down by O'Conner in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (Hamdi is an American citizen who was apprehended in Afghanistan during the war there) explicitly makes this point:

Hamdi objects, nevertheless, that Congress has not authorized the indefinite detention to which he is now subject. The Government responds that "the detention of enemy combatants during World War II was just as 'indefinite' while that war was being fought." Id., at 16. We take Hamdi's objection to be not to the lack of certainty regarding the date on which the conflict will end, but to the substantial prospect of perpetual detention. We recognize that the national security underpinnings of the "war on terror," although crucially important, are broad and malleable. As the Government concedes, "given its unconventional nature, the current conflict is unlikely to end with a formal cease-fire agreement." Ibid. The prospect Hamdi raises is therefore not far-fetched. If the Government does not consider this unconventional war won for two generations, and if it maintains during that time that Hamdi might, if released, rejoin forces fighting against the United States, then the position it has taken throughout the litigation of this case suggests that Hamdi's detention could last for the rest of his life.

O'Conner then goes on to speak of the "constitutional balance" needed when weighing freedom and security:

Striking the proper constitutional balance here is of great importance to the Nation during this period of ongoing combat. But it is equally vital that our calculus not give short shrift to the values that this country holds dear or to the privilege that is American citizenship. It is during our most challenging and uncertain moments that our Nation's commitment to due process is most severely tested; and it is in those times that we must preserve our commitment at home to the principles for which we fight abroad. See Kennedy v. Mendoza&nbhyph;Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164?165 (1963) ("The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit government action"); see also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 264 (1967) ("It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties ... which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile").

I've talked about this idea on a few occasions (here and here), and the prospect of an executive branch that has the power to indefinitely detain its citizens is indeed a frightening one. This is why it is important that the Supreme Court go ahead and hear the case, instead of letting the government cop out at the last minute. This is not unexpected, however, since rather than actually try Hamdi, the government agreed to let him go back to Saudi Arabia on the condition that he give up his American nationality.

So the government's behavior in both of these cases is not only unconstitutional and contrary to the tule of law in general, it seems contradictory and counterproductive. If Padilla was really trying to build a "dirty bomb," the prosecuter in his case cannot make that claim due to his unlawful detention. Likewise, if Hamdi is so dangerous, why let him go back to Saudi Arabia (of all places!) rather than give him a fair criminal trial? It's important that the Supreme Court hear Padilla's case regardless of the government's last minute cop-out, if only to stress Justice O'Connor's assertion that "...a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Last night, I began reading Mark Danner's book, The Massacre at El Mozote , which descibes the brutal murder of hundreds of people in a sacristy in a small Salvadoran village by American-backed government forces fighting a dirty war against leftist rebels. As coincidence would have it, I saw (via Christopher Dickey's blog) that the Salvadoran former colonel, Nicolas Carranza, had been found responsible for crimes against humanity in a court in Memphis. Carranza, who moved to Memphis in 1985 and then became an American citizen, was the Vice Minister of Defense in El Salvador from 1979 to 1981 and then head of the Treasury Police in 1983. The latter was reputed to be the most violent of the country's security forces.

For more information on the Salvadoran civil war, see the report by the Truth Commission.

The massacre in El Mozote is interesting to me in and of itself, but it does have some relevance to the situation in Iraq. Earlier this year, Christopher Dickey briefly explored the prospect of employing the "Salvador Option" in Iraq. Presumably, these dirty war tactics would entail not only assassination and kidnapping, but also torture. The recent discovery of the Iraqi Interior Ministry's secret interrogation center -- where many Sunnis were apparently tortured, perhaps by members of the Shia paramilitary forces of the Sadr Brigade, who have reportedly become deeply embedded in the Ministry -- should bring up questions about torture carried out by the US and its allies in Iraq.

We have known for a long time what US proxy forces did in Central America, so why should we be suprised when the same thing happens in Iraq, particularly since the Bush administration was reported to have been debating the "Salvador option" only 10 months ago?

In any case, those who are committing torture in Iraq, be they American or Iraqi, should take note of Carranza's trial, because, as Hissène Habré and Joseph Kony will find out soon enough, they are not above the law.

Last week, Vietnam veteran and Pennsylvania Congressman Murtha, who is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, gave a speech in which he outlined the reasoning behind his proposed motion to redeploy all American forces out of Iraq "at the earliest praticable date..." maintaining "a quick-reaction U.S. force and an over-the-horizon presence of U.S. Marines...in the region."

The reasons he gives, which are stated in his proposal, are as follows:

...Congress and the American People have not been shown clear, measurable progress toward establishment of stable and improving security in Iraq or of a stable and improving economy in Iraq, both of which are essential to "promote the emergence of a democratic government";

...additional stabilization in Iraq by U, S. military forces cannot be achieved without the deployment of hundreds of thousands of additional U S. troops, which in turn cannot be achieved without a military draft;

...more than $277 billion has been appropriated by the United States Congress to prosecute U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan;

...as of the drafting of this resolution, 2,079 U.S. troops have been killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom;

...U.S. forces have become the target of the insurgency,

...according to recent polls, over 80% of the Iraqi people want U.S. forces out of Iraq;

...polls also indicate that 45% of the Iraqi people feel that the attacks on U.S. forces are justified;

...due to the foregoing, Congress finds it evident that continuing U.S. military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the people of Iraq, or the Persian Gulf Region, which were cited in Public Law 107-243 as justification for undertaking such action;

I won't even go into the Republican response to his motion, which was childish and counterproductive, but probably smart politics; however, Murtha's reasoning deserves to be looked at honestly.

It has long been argued that a premature withdrawal of American troops would lead to an all out civil war in Iraq. It is hard to say, however, how accurate this idea is. It is entirely possible that the only thing holding the Iraqi people together is a common enemy: the Americans. (I am immediately reminded of the Syrian forces that stopped the war in Lebanon and then subsequently occupied the country for a decade and a half, as well as the comment made to me by a Palestinian born and raised in Lebanon, who said she hoped the Syrians wouls stay, because she didn't want another civil war to break out.) However, there is also the distinct possibility that Murtha is correct and US forces are the destabilizing force in the region. If there were no coalition forces to resist, there would be no need for a nationalist Iraqi insurgency, and those who continued to fight the Iraqi government would be seen as sectarian belligerents or religious zealots instead of nationalist freedom fighters.

But I'm not really sure that that's the real question we should be looking at. The important question is that of security versus democracy. If what we are really interested in is Iraqi stability, then we should have left Saddam Hussein in charge. But we purport to be interested in more than just security; the post-invasion rhetoric has been largely about liberating Iraqis and fostering democracy in the Middle East. Granted, there is a certain moral responsiblity inherent in the pottery barn motto of "you break it, you bought it," which would suggest that we have an obligation to clean up the mess we made. But there comes a time when even if it is our fault, we have to ask ourselves if we are only making matters worse by trying to clean up our mess.

And besides, to go back to the idea of democracy, if Iraq is, in fact, a sovereign nation, that decision is not really ours to make in the first place. To my mind, there ought to be a national referendum during the December elections that asks each Iraqi voter, "should the coalition forces withdraw from Iraq?" If the answer is "yes," then we should respect the Iraqi people's wishes and withdraw as soon as possible. However, we should still offer to train Iraqi police and military forces in addition to teachers, engineers, and anyone else needed to help rebuild Iraq's demolished infrastructure. This could be in somewhere like Kuwait or Qatar.

In the end, perhaps we should stand down, so the Iraqis can stand up.

In order to understand the motions to be voted on later today about habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, it is useful to step back, with the help of Human Rights Watch's overview, and review the whole process in motion there.

President Bush declared in November 2001 that non-US citizens accused of terrorism could be tried by an ad-hoc military commission, instead of by a court martial or a federal civilian court. The justification was that the people being detained were not prisoners of war, but rather "enemy combatants," who have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. There are about 550 people being detained at Guantanamo Bay, detained sometimes by US forces, sometimes by foreign services or turned over to the US by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in exchange for a $5,000 bounty. Some have been released, mostly because of deals with their home governments, who have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposed ad-hoc military commissions. The British Attorny-General described them as "not ... the type of process which we would afford British nationals."


Military Commissions

The purpose of military commissions is to try non-US citizens who are charged with having participated in international terrorism against the United States. Authorized in November 2001, their panels are made up of 3-7 members, all of whom must be current or retired members of the US military and only one of which must have a law degree. The detainee must be assigned military defense council, but can hire a civilian lawyer at his own expense. According to HRW,

The normal rules of procedure in a court martial do not apply in the military commissions. Hearsay evidence can be admissible. Decisions are based on a majority of commission members, except in death penalty cases, where a unanimous verdict is required. Cases are reviewed by a military review panel, but there is no appeal to a civilian court as is the case with courts martial. Final review rests with either the Secretary of Defense or the President.

To date, only 4 detainees have been formally charged with offences in odrer to be tried in a military commission.


Combatant Status Review Tribunals

In the meantime, while many detainees will begin their 5th year of detention at Guantanamo Bay this year, the Department of Defense has set up these tribunals for detainees to challenge their status as a "enemy combatants." They were introduced in response to the supreme court decision in Rasul v. Bush, in which the Court ruled that federal courts had the jurisdiction to hear claims made by Guantanamo detainees challenging their imprisonment.

Each detainee is assigned a "personal representative," who is a military officer and not a lawyer, to assist him in the process. He then appears before 3 military officers, who decide whether or not he has been correctly labeled as an "enemy combatant."

According to the Washington Post, the DOD has stated that 558 Tribunals have taken place. Of these, the tribunal have decided on 509 cases, of which 33 detainees were found not to be "enemy combatants," but only 4 have been released. The same article, takes a look at the first case in which classified evidence used in the tribunal has become public.

The case, decided in 2004, is about Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, who was seized in Pakistan in 2001. According to the Tribunal, Kurnaz was a member of al Qaida and an "enemy combatant" and as such, could be detained indefinitely in Guantanamo Bay. This is what was found:

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. The Command Intelligence Task Force, the investigative arm of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo Bay facility, repeatedly suggested that it may have been a mistake to take Kurnaz off a bus of Islamic missionaries traveling through Pakistan in October 2001.

"CITF has no definite link/evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaida or making any specific threat against the U.S.," one document says. "CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of Al Quaeda."

Another newly declassified document reports that the "Germans confirmed this detainee has no connection to an al-Qaida cell in Germany."

Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member. It says he was working with German terrorists and trying in the fall of 2001 to reach Afghanistan to help fight U.S. forces.

In recently declassified portions of her January [2005] ruling, [US District Judge Joyce Hens] Green wrote that the panel's decision appeared to be based on a single document, labeled "R-19." She said she found that to be one of the most troubling military abuses of due process among the many cases of Guantanamo detainees that she has reviewed.

The R-19 memo, she wrote, "fails to provide significant details to support its conclusory allegations, does not reveal the sources for its information and is contradicted by other evidence in the record." Green reviewed all the classified and unclassified evidence in the case.

So to summarize, the one case in which we have the evidence used to decide whether someone was an "enemy combatant" shows that the process is a show trial and fundamentally unfair. Both the German government and the US Command Intelligence Task Force found that Kurnaz was innocent, but 3 US military officers decided otherwise. So an innocent man has been languishing in prison, where he has most likely been abused and tortured for 4 years.


Habeas Corpus

So that is the context that we find ourselves in when the US Senate is trying to strip detainees of their right (decided on by the Supreme Court) to habeas corpus. To bring us back up to speed, there has been a "compromise" amendment to the original motion proposed by Senator Graham (R-SC) as well as a new version of the Bingaman amendment (D-NM). Thanks to Obsidian Wings, copies of those two amendments are available here and here (both are in pdf format).

The new "compromise" amendment states that if found guilty by a Military Commission and sentenced to the death penalty or 10 years or more in prison, the case would automatically be sent to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or at the court's discretion for any other case. However, we must remember that since these people have been detained, only 4 have actually been charged with any offence. The rest are being held indefinitely without being charged, and it was for these cases that the Supreme Court said federal courts could hear habeas corpus cases.

As for the judicial review of the detention of enemy combatants, the new amendment still states,

No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien outside the United States ... who is detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It then goes on to state,

...the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction to determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant.

The language of the competing Bingaman amendment, on the other hand, states that the court of appeals would have jurisdiction to consider an application for writ of habeas corpus, provided that the detainee has been subjected to a Combat Status Review Tribunal but is not yet charged with an offense before a military commission (the case of most of the detainees). There is, however, another exemption for any "individual not designated as an enemy combatant following a combatant status review, but who continues to be held by the United States Government." This would presumably include the 29 detainees who were found not to be "enemy combatants," but who have not been released yet.

Under the Bingaman amendment, the court could review the following things:

(A) whether the status determination of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal ... was consistent with the procedures and standards specified by the Secretary of Defense for Combatant Status Review Tribunals;

(B) whether such status determination was supported by sufficient evidence and reached in accordance with due process of law, provided that statements obtained through undue coercion, torture, or cruel or inhuman treatment may not be used as a basis for the determination; and

(C) the lawfulness of the detention of such alien.

However, in contrast to his first proposal, the new Bingaman amendment says that the appeals court may not "consider claims based on living conditions."

To be honest, I don't quite understand the distinction made in the Graham amendment between the appeals court's jurisdiction to hear an application for a writ of habeas corpus and its jurisdiction to "determine the validity of any decision ... that an alien is properly detained as an enemy combatant." The only difference that I can tell would be that the former would seem to be reviewing the case from scratch (although this doesn't seem to be the case in the Bingaman amendment either), whereas the second would be reviewing the decision of another body based on the rules of that body, the criteria being much more stringent in a civilian court of appeals reviewing a writ of habeas corpus than the stated criteria of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. This would seem correct from the Kurnaz case, which is the only example we have of these tribunals so far.

This certainly does seem to be a "compromise," but not necessarily in the good sense of the term. While better than the original motion, it still compromises the rule of law by letting flawed tribunals take the place of an experienced civil legal system or even military courts martial.

As for the Bingaman amendment, it seems less likely to pass, but is much better than the Graham amendment, particularly since it explicitly says that evidence gained from torture is off limits for deciding a detainees status, even if it does soften its stance on the living conditions of detainees. And one shouldn't mistake the question of living conditions with halal meat or air conditioning. Living conditions is a euphemism used to not say outright "whether or not detainees are being tortured."

For more information, there was an op-ed in the Times today, as well as an article in the Post on the subject today.

Via Kevin Drum's Political Animal, Obsidian Wings have a pretty thorough 13-part account of the measure, which explains and debunks Lindsey Graham's rhetoric point by point.

There is also an amendment by NM Senator Bingaman (S. AMDT 2517 to bill S. 1042.), which would defeat the Graham amendment. I'm not sure exactly when it will be voted on (I think tomorrow), but you can use this site or this one to contact your senators to get them to vote for the Bingaman amendment.

Last week, the American Senate voted 49 to 42 to strip detained "enemy combattants" in Guantanamo Bay of their right to habeas corpus, which was won in the 2004 Supreme Court case of Rasul v. Bush decision. That decsision found that federal courts had the jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' cases when suing for habeas corpus. Justice Stevens delivered the Court's decision and quoted an 1953 opinion by Justice Jackson:

Executive imprisonment has been considered oppressive and lawless since John, at Runnymede, pledged that no free man should be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, or exiled save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. The judges of England developed the writ of habeas corpus largely to preserve these immunities from executive restraint.

According to the Times, Senator Graham, who sponsored the measure, said that it is necessary, because the detainees' blizzard of legal claims was tying up the Department of Justice's resources.

This comes nearly 2 years after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published their report on the prisoners being held in Iraq, which stated that:

Certain CF [Coalition Forces] military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Of course, prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay are not necessarily the same thing, although the US practice of offering bounties to Northern Alliance forces for bringing them supposed members of the Taliban gives us no real reason to suspect otherwise. This article in the Guardian gives us an idea of what is happening in Guantanamo Bay.

There are about 500 prisoners there, who have been held for almost 4 years without being charged with a crime. Of these, 200 have filed habeas corpus motions. One such person is Adel, represented pro bono by P. Sabin Willett, who writes in today's Washington Post that detainees deserve court trials:

Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist. The whole thing was a mistake: The Pentagon paid $5,000 to a bounty hunter, and it got taken.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

Only habeas corpus got Adel a chance to tell a federal judge what had happened. Only habeas corpus revealed that it wasn't just Adel who was innocent -- it was Abu Bakker and Ahmet and Ayoub and Zakerjain and Sadiq -- all Guantanamo "terrorists" whom the military has found innocent.

At a the Tehran Conference in 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed what to do with the Nazis after the war was over. Stalin, true to form, suggested that 50,000 or maybe even 100,000 nazis should be summarily executed instead of having any sort of a trial. Roosevelt did not seem entirely against the idea, but Churchill left the room in disgust. In the end, there was no mass killing of nazis; the Nuremburg trials were conducted instead. The decision between mass killings/mass imprisonment and the rule of law is what seperates civilized nations from uncivilized ones; the writ of habeas corpus is older than the American constitution and was later enshrined in that document.

It has become apparent that many people being held by the US are completely innoccent. Either the US is a civilized state governed by the rule of law and fair trials as its constitution would lead us to believe, or it decides to forfeit the very ideas of freedom and justice that the "war on terror" purports to be protecting. In the first case, the people being held indefinitely should have the chance to prove their innocence in a court of law. In the second, the US will have bridged much of the distance that seperates police states and democracies.

Because I've been spending so much time on the riots here, I haven't put anyhting up on the recent discovery of CIA "black sites," which make up a system of covert prisons located at various times in 8 different coutries, including Afghanistan, Thailand, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Poland and Romania.

The story was first broken by the Washington Post, which declined to name the "several democracies in Eastern Europe" that have been accused of hosting these prisons, which would be illegal under US and international law, because of the torture techniques used there and the prisoner's lack of recourse to any legal system.

It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.

Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.

According to the Post Article, the black sites are the highest level of the covert prison network, which includes a second tier for detainees deemed less important who are then "rendered" to other countries.

More than 100 suspected terrorists have been sent by the CIA into the covert system, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and foreign sources. This figure, a rough estimate based on information from sources who said their knowledge of the numbers was incomplete, does not include prisoners picked up in Iraq.

The detainees break down roughly into two classes, the sources said.

About 30 are considered major terrorism suspects and have been held under the highest level of secrecy at black sites financed by the CIA and managed by agency personnel, including those in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, according to current and former intelligence officers and two other U.S. government officials. Two locations in this category -- in Thailand and on the grounds of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay -- were closed in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Morocco, Egypt and Jordan have said that they do not torture detainees, although years of State Department human rights reports accuse all three of chronic prisoner abuse.

The top 30 al Qaeda prisoners exist in complete isolation from the outside world. Kept in dark, sometimes underground cells, they have no recognized legal rights, and no one outside the CIA is allowed to talk with or even see them, or to otherwise verify their well-being, said current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials.

After this piece, the Financial Times picked up the ball and published the names of Romania and Poland as two of the eastern European coutries that have hosted covert CIA prisons. Poland was recently accepted into the EU and Romania is scheduled to become a member in 2007. Apparently, there has been a fair ammount of eastern European cooperation during the CIA practice of rendiditon, in which countries in the region allow the CIA to refuel and transfer prisoners in transit to Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Syria and Jordan, where they are then "interrogated" by local intelligence agencies.

All of this comes when Vice President Dick Cheney has been lobbying Congress to exempt the CIA from an explicit ban on torture proposed by Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, however, seemed to have been convinced by Cheney.

According to the Financial Times article, Deborah Pearlstein, director of the US law and security programme at Human Rights First, has attacked the VP's actions.

Ms Pearlstein attacked efforts by Dick Cheney, vice-president, to have the CIA exempted from legislation proposed by Senator John McCain that would reaffirm the illegality of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners held by the US.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently released details of autopsy and death reports it obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. It said 21 deaths were listed as homicides. Eight people appeared to have died during or after interrogation by Navy Seals, military intelligence and "OGA" ? Other Governmental Agency, which is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

Today I'd like to look at three very different ways of covering the riots in the French suburbs. I'll go in the order prescribed by Clint Eastwood.

The Good
On the more assuring side of the coverage of the riots, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Olivier Roy from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is a specialist of Islamist movements as well as Central Asia, and while his conclusions are common sense to most people living here in Paris, they are desperately needed in the Anlgophone, and particularly the American, press (thanks to Josh for the link):

The rioting in Paris and other French cities has led to a lot of interpretations and comments, most of them irrelevant. Many see the violence as religiously motivated, the inevitable result of unchecked immigration from Muslim countries; for others the rioters are simply acting out of vengeance at being denied their cultural heritage or a fair share in French society. But the reality is that there is nothing particularly Muslim, or even French, about the violence. Rather, we are witnessing the temporary rising up of one small part of a Western underclass culture that reaches from Paris to London to Los Angeles and beyond. ...

Most of the rioters are from the second generation of immigrants, they have French citizenship, and they see themselves more as part of a modern Western urban subculture than of any Arab or African heritage.

Just look at the newspaper photographs: the young men wear the same hooded sweatshirts, listen to similar music and use slang in the same way as their counterparts in Los Angeles or Washington. (It is no accident that in French-dubbed versions of Hollywood films, African-American characters usually speak with the accent heard in the Paris banlieues). ...

In the end, we are dealing here with problems found by any culture in which inequities and cultural differences come in conflict with high ideals. Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony - the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world.

The Bad
On the bad side and in the blogosphere, I've run across a site called Oxblog, in which an Irish student, who came to Paris obstentibly to cover the riots, has decided to don a turtleneck and a leather jacket to blend into his surroundings:

As assiduously as I donned turtleneck and leather jacket to simulate a Frenchman and, it was hoped, a not too out of place banluisard [sic], I still perhaps didn't quite fit in, whatever diversified portfolio of national identities in which I might traffic, French maghrebian [sic] being decidedly not among them.

I'm not not making this up. You can see the entry for yourself here. Somehow this guy has gotten on a Public Radio International show about blogging, called Open Source.

But before you reassure yourself by remembering that anyone can make a blog, it's worth taking a look at this Notre Dame and Yale graduate's bio, in which he explains his "current book projects." One of them is a book called "In the Way of the Prophet" and is about "Muslim communities in the United States, Britain, and France."

I'm not really sure whether to laugh or to cry. But then again, maybe this description is as inflated as his claim of being fluent in French: his latest blog entry begins with "ESCUSEZ MONSIEUR, JE CHERCHE RACAILLE," which ought to be "Excusez-moi, Monsieur, je cherche des racailles" but instead translates to something like, "Escuse sir, I look for gangsta."

Scanning through his posts will show you that according to him, these riots are the "the handiwork of determined criminal gangs," instead of teenagers who are turning their hate into the sport of burning things. He also reports that all of Paris is suffering from a sense of malaise, which I suspect has more to do with wanting to slip French words into his account that anything he's actually seen or heard here. Other mistakes include things like saying that somone has been "assaulting the Marais's Jews" and mentioning "postgraduate degree holders working as postmen," the latter of which makes me think that he has a weak spot for hyperbole and alliteration.

But say what you will about this guy, he certainly is ambitious, and I almost feel bad poking fun at him knowing that he was apparently mugged in Aulney-sous-Bois recently. But only almost. That last post's pun left me feeling fairly pitiless.


And the Ugly
Finally, last night at a friend's birthday dinner, another friend told me about what she saw on le Zapping, a segment on the French cable channel, Canal +, which shows ridiculous, funny or just plain silly clips found that day on television. Yesterday's zapping shows American cable news coverage of the riots, in which CNN shows a map of France where Toulouse is in the Alps, Cannes is on the border of Spain and even Paris is not really in its correct place. They then cut to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who says that France deserves its "Muslim riots," mostly because they didn't support the US in the invasion of Iraq.

According to an article this morning in the free daily, Metro, Jean-Pierre Dupois, president of the League of Human Rights claimed that Sarkozy's proposition to deport all foreigners involved in the riots is "totally illegal, because it is a collective expulsion and this sort of expulsion is forbidden by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even as the Council of State is concerned, it is illegal."

In other news, the Parisian municipal government showed its support yesterday for a campaign called Tous Parisiens, tous citoyens (All Parisians, all citizens), which would give Paris's foreigners (14% of the local population) the right to vote in local elections. As a foreigner living in Paris for five years now, I have to say that this decision would be more than welcome.

First off, I'm glad to see that there is someone in the US who actually has a fairly good idea of what's happening here now. It's not surprising that it's Juan Cole (thanks to Norm for the link).

Cole attacks the idea that many Americans (and the likes of Le Pen here in France) have about the Frenchness, or lack thereof, of the rioters, which can be seen in Mark Steyn's idiotic piece about the "Eurabian civil war" in the Chicago Sun-Times. Steyn complains about the media's use of the term "French youth":

"French youths," huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as "French": They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive "Arab street," but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois.

Cole sees this for what it is: the same sort of bullshit that has fueled the racism that's largely responsible for the situation in the first place:

The French youth who are burning automobiles are as French as Jennifer Lopez and Christopher Walken are American. Perhaps the Steyns came before the Revolutionary War, but a very large number of us have not. The US brings 10 million immigrants every decade and one in 10 Americans is now foreign-born. Their children, born and bred here, have never known another home. All US citizens are Americans, including the present governor of California. "The immigrant" is always a political category. Proud Californio families (think "Zorro") who can trace themselves back to the 18th century Spanish empire in California are often coded as "Mexican immigrants" by "white" Californians whose parents were Okies.

It is refreshing to see such a piece come out of the US, instead of the ignorant chest-beating xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric of the lieks of Steyn.


In other news, Sarkozy has made the obviously asinine decision to ask for the immediate deportation of any foreigners, legal or illegal, found guilty of participating in the riots:

When one has the honor of having a titre de séjour [a visa that lasts anywhere from 1-10 years], the least we can say is that one should not get arrested provoking urban violence.

While this sort of macho rhetoric might work for the "France for the French" fools (who will probably vote for Le Pen in 2007 anyway), it certainly isn't likely to help stop the rioting any time soon. If anything, it will only make the situation even worse, if that's possible.

After another night of rioting, which has spread to cities all over France and even to Belgium and Germany, and as the government is implementing a state of emergency and a curfew , it is important to take a serious look at the incidents instead of listening to news outlets that can't get their geography right or those who are calling this the intifada in France based on a two hour layover at the Charles de Gaulle airport.

First of all, Paris is not burning. Certain suburbs throughout the country are at night, but if I didn't read the newspaper or listen to the radio, I wouldn't even know that there were any riots, because, for the most part, nothing has changed in the actual city limits of Paris.

Second, this is not a religious conflict. This is a socio-economic and a racial problem, much like the LA riots in 1992 (58 dead) and the Watts riots in 1965 (32 dead). Neither is it a question of one country occupying another, so the parallels of the Palestinian intifada are ludicrous at best.

The events of the last 11 nights are complicated and seemingly contradictory, but no more so than any other instance of collective violence: there is no real ideological underpinning, but the riots are more than just senseless violence; people are angry at a country that has provided poorly for them and put up barriers against their pursuit of happiness, so they burn their own neighborhoods; the state will punish those it catches in acts of lawlessness, but its attention has been grabbed in a way that peaceful protests and letter writing campaigns have not been able to accomplish.

Robert Darnton wrote an article called Reading a riot in the New York Review of Books shortly after the LA riots, in which he discussed a book about the Paris riots of 1750.

Despite their obvious differences, one can pick out plenty of similarities between Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750: the previous histories of rioting, the settings of poverty, the influx of immigration, the prevalence of homelessness, the influence of gangs, the resentment of oppression, and the provocation of police, who made a show of force and then, with the threat of confrontation, withdrew. If George Bush will not do as Louis XV, Daryl Gates would make a credible Berryer. And the folklore of the blood bath is no more extravagant than the myth about AIDS as an epidemic unleashed by whites to destroy blacks.

But even if they run parallel, the comparisons do not lead anywhere, because the past does not provide pre-packaged lessons for the present. The rioters of Paris inhabited a mental world that differed completely from that of the rioters in Los Angeles; and the history of rioting demonstrates the need to understand mentalités in all their specificity rather than to search for general models. Riots have meanings as well as causes. To discover what they mean, we must learn to read them, scanning across centuries for patterns of behavior and looking for order in the apparent anarchy that explodes under our noses. We have a long way to go; but if we ever get there, we may be able to make sense of what has seemed to be the most irrational ingredient of our civilization: "popular emotion."

Likewise in Paris today, there are parallels to be seen. Nicolas Sarkozy, the current French Minister of the Interior, would probably empathize with Gates and Berryer (the chiefs of police in Los Angeles in 1992 and Paris in 1750, respectively). But we must be careful about blindly applying one historical event upon another similar one, and avoid at all costs forcing two dissimilar ones together to suit an ideology or a strained narrative, like so many American bloggers seem intent on doing with their imaginary clash of civilizations.

The problem here is a complex one, and it has no easy solutions. Second and third generation children of immigrants from Africa and Asia have not been integrated into French society, and many opportunities remain out of their reach, due to a vicious cycle of a lack of governmental integration efforts and communautarisme or ghettoization. At this point, it's not really important which came first; they both feed on each other. This is illustrated in a lack of representation of a group of people that is French and makes up around 12% of France's population. There are very few minority politicians and, besides comics and rappers, I can only think of one Arab who is regularly on television: Rachid Arhab, who is often referred to as Rachid l'Arabe.

France, like many other countries, has not done a good job of integrating the immigrants who were necessary for the country's development and their French children. And in order to prevent things like this from happening again, it's going to take more than quick fixes and band-aids. But in the end, that's the problem: no one pays attention to these people until it's too late; no one talks very seriously about reforming state housing, fighting against discrimination, bettering education and raising employment in these areas until they're already ablaze.

So while the electrocution of the two boys in Clichy-sous-Bois and Sarkozy's televised comments about taking out the trash probably ignited the riots, the fuel for them has been laying around dormant for a while.

In his article about the incidents in Aulnay-sous-Bois, Alex Duval Smith of The Observer quotes a youth of Algerian descent whose opinions are lucid and, unfortunately have a certain logic about them:

'He [Sarkozy] should go and fuck himself,' says HB, who was born in France of Algerian parents. 'We are not germs. He said he wants to clean us up. He called us louts. He provoked us on television. He should have said sorry for showing us disrespect, but now it is too late.'

HB's views are clear. 'The only way to get the police here is to set fire to something. The fire brigade does not come here without the police, and the police are Sarkozy's men so they are the ones we want to see.'

All the dustbins were burnt long ago. 'Cars make good barricades and they burn nicely, and the cameras like them. How else are we going to get our message across to Sarkozy? It is not as if people like us can just turn up at his office.' ...

Jobs? 'There are a few at the airport and at the Citroën plant, but it's not even worth trying if your name is Mohamed or Abdelaoui.' ...

When asked if he considers himself integrated in France, HB claims that is not his aspiration. 'I am not sure what the word means. I am part of Mille-Mille and Seine-Saint-Denis, but I am not part of Sarkozy's France, or even the France of our local mayor whom we never see. At the same time, I realise I am French, because when I visit my parents' village in Algeria that doesn't feel like home either.'

Today's Times includes a very misleading account of the riots in the Parisian region. It says that rue Dupuis, where some cars were burned Saturday night, is in the Marais and makes a point of saying that it is the old Jewish district:

On Sunday, a gaping hole exposed a charred wooden staircase of a smoke-blackened building in the historic Marais district of Paris, where a car was set ablaze the previous night. Florent Besnard, 24, said he and a friend had just turned into the quiet Rue Dupuis when they were passed by two running youths. Within seconds, a car farther up the street was engulfed in flames, its windows popping and tires exploding as the fire spread to the building and surrounding vehicles.

"I think it's going to continue," said Mr. Besnard, who is unemployed.

The attack angered people in the neighborhood, which includes the old Jewish quarter and is still a center of Jewish life in the city. "We escaped from Romania with nothing and came here and worked our fingers to the bone and never asked for anything, never complained," said Liliane Zump, a woman in her 70's, shaking with fury on the street outside the scarred building.

A quick look at a map of Paris, however, shows that rue Dupuis is not in the Marais; it is very close to Place de la République and is in the 3rd arrondissement, whereas the Marais is mostly in the 4th by the métro station St. Paul:



When the Times incorrectly insinuates that Paris's historically Jewish neighborhood, which is coincidently its homosexual neighborhood as well, has been targeted by rioters, their mistake gives a purely social problem a false air of religious conflict. But I suppose sensationalism sells.

Earlier this month, the UN released the outcome of the 2005 World Summit, whose goal was to reform the Organization in several different domains. The main issues were development, terrorism, the peace-building commission, genocide prevention, human rights, Secretariat reform, Security Council reform and disarmament and non-proliferation.

Many nations, and the Secretariat itself, seemed disappointed with the final document (pdf), which, as any document agreed upon by nearly 200 countries, was necessarily a compromise. The 40-page document spent only half a page on genocide, but one could be forgiven for thinking that those two paragraphs made a big difference after listening to Kofi Annan's address (text or video) to the General Assembly:

For the first time, you will accept, clearly and unambiguously, that you have a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. You will make clear your willingness to take timely and decisive collective action through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their own populations. Excellencies, you will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms.

When reading the final document, however, one is much less optimistic. Mr. Annan expressed satisfaction and seems convinced that the problem of the international community's chronic inaction when faced with genocide has been solved. The actual text, however, tells another story altogether:

Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

These two paragraphs were born from a Canadian initiative, called The Responsibility to Protect. In his speech before the General Assembly, Canadian Prime Minister Martin said (text or video), "Too often, we have debated the finer points of language while innocent people continue to die. Darfur is only the latest example."

However, the final text from the World Summit differs in no small degree from the conclusions of its parent document, the 2001 Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which, on the initiative of the of the Government of Canada, was charged with addressing the thorny issues implicated by "military intervention for human protection purposes."

The report concluded that "state sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility for the protection of its people lies with the state itself," and that when a state is either unable or unwilling to stop "serious harm" suffered by its population, "the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect." The report then goes on to describe this responsibility to protect as being threefold, comprised of the responsibilities to prevent, react and rebuild. The responsibility to react includes "coercive measures like sanctions and international prosecution, and in extreme cases military intervention."

ICISS's 90-page report went much further than this month's World Summit, under pressure from states like Zimbabwe, Cuba, the U.S., Iran, Syria and Venezuela, was prepared to go. Granted, the ICISS document has its faults, which are inextricably linked to fundamental problems of the U.N. in general and the Security Council in particular. The main problem being that it relies on the five permanent members of the Security Council to agree not to use their veto power to block military interventions in cases of genocide. It does, however, offer an often overlooked alternative to the Security Council: the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace procedure, which was adopted in 1950 by the Security Council as Resolution 377 and resolves,

that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

In any case, the Summit's final text falls very short of the ICISS report's conclusions. First of all, the Summit text sets up a state's responsibility to protect its own population without taking the second and crucial step of making a state's sovereignty conditional on its fulfilling that responsibility. Stressing a state's responsibility without agreeing that a failure to live up to that responsibility will necessarily result in a loss of sovereignty means nothing at all. It is essentially the same as telling a murderer that it is his responsibility to not kill without asserting that his freedom as a citizen will be suspended if he chooses not to live up to this responsibility.

Second, the Summit text implies that the international community's responsibility to protect ceases at the exhaustion of peaceful means. Beyond "appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means," stopping genocide ceases to be an obligation. There is a stark language shift, which says that the international community is

prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council ... on a case-by-case basis ... should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Concretely, this means that once the international community has exhausted peaceful means, it is no longer responsible for intervening in order to stop genocide. This is a far cry from ICISS's responsibility to react and Mr. Annan's claim that the international community "will be pledged to act if another Rwanda looms."

There is a fair amount of debate about whether or not the 1948 Genocide Convention legally binds signatory states to stop genocide. And while the UN Secretariat's commentary on the first draft of that convention stated that the Convention "should bind the States to do everything in their power to support any action by the United Nations intended to prevent or stop these crimes," in the end, negotiations by the signatory states softened the language and deleted references like the obligation to report acts of genocide to the Security Council.

It is a disgrace that nearly 60 years later, after having experienced the shame of watching silently as 800,000 Rwandans were mercilessly slaughtered, we have yet to make any progress on keeping our oft repeated promise of "never again." If anything, after this month's UN 2005 World Summit, we seem to have taken a step backward.

Uzbekistan is a strange and mysterious country that most people cannot find on a map. And it has been playing a fairly big role in international events for an isolated and remote central Asian former Soviet Republic in the last year or so. The US described the government of President Karimov, a former Sovier apparatchik who ran the KGB in Uzbekistan until independence, as an ally in the global war on terror, and according to Craig Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, both British and American intelligence agencies have been outsourcing torture there. As a matter of fact, UN Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Theo van Boven, wrote a 64-page addendum (pdf), to his report to the Commission on Human Rights, on torture in Uzbekistan.

Furthermore, until recently, Uzbekistan allowed the US to use the Karshi-Khanabad (K2) airbase in southern Uzbekistan for its missions in Afghanistan.

So it's surprising and disappointing that there has been so little media coverage and diplomatic indignation about the massacre that happened in Andijan last May. In a Guardian article by Ed Vulliamy yesterday, the massacre and the survivors' plight as refugees is pieced together from eye witness accounts.

The night of May 12 there was a jailbreak to release 23 businessmen who had been arrested for "religious extremism" (see Human Rights Watch's report on religious persecution in Uzbekistan). This was then followed the next morning at 7 by a big demonstration the next day in Bobur Square. Estimates say that there were around 10,000 people at the demonstration, including some armed oppositionists near a government building and women and children, who had gone expecting "speeches, not bullets." According to survivors, the shooting began an hour later with the arrival of cars and jeeps full of government militiamen, who proceeded to open fire on the crowd.

Naively, the protesters expected government forced to stop the slaughter: "we were expecting people from the government to arrive and stop it, to save us. Someone said Karimov was on his way, and people started cheering." Instead, armored government vehicles arrived on the scene, and Uzbek forces starting firing indiscriminately on the protestors, apparently not targeting either the militiamen or the armed oppositionists. The shooting continued off and on until 5, when Uzbek armed personnel carriers arrived, which immediately carried on where the first column of vehicles had left off. The government then proceeded to use these vehicles, snipers, foot soldiers and perhaps even anti-aircraft weapons against the unarmed crowd. "The dead were lying in front of me piled three-thick," said one survivor. To get out, "I had to climb over the bodies. There were dead women and children; I saw one woman lying dead with a small baby in her arms."

The official death count was initially 9 people, but that figure was increased to 169 a few days later. Estimates from NGOs and opposition parties range from 500 to over 700. Tashkent claims that all of the casualties, except the 32 Uzbek troops killed, were armed fundamentalists; the survivors and eye-witnesses beg to differ. (According to a source of mine who is a specialist in the region, this story is more complex than suspected. There may have been a clash between the government militiamen and regular government forces, which would account for such a high casualty rate for the well armed Uzbek soldiers as they fired on a mostly unarmed crowd.) At least 439 refugees escaped to neighboring Kyrgyzstan, from where they were then transported to Romania. Amnesty International estimates that as many as 1,000 refugees are still in hiding in Kyrgyzstan, and there have been reports that those who were caught or went back to Uzbekistan have been imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases, killed. In addition to this, the family members of those who escaped and human rights and opposition activists have been arrested, beaten and intimidated.

After all this, the "international community" has done nothing.

Uzbekistan is a beautiful country with rich artisanal and musical traditions and very hospitable people. It is peopled by Uzbeks, Tajiks, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Tatars, amongst others, to form a rich mixture of different languages and traditions. I saw many amazing things and met many amazing people while I was there this month, and I came back with many good memories and made some really good friends. But I also saw the surveillance apparatus of a police state, and the number of police and armed forces it takes to maintain autocratic rule. Uzbekistan has a lot of potential, and it's currently going to waste, because of a totalitarian despot and his strangle hold on the country and its people. As the "international community," we should be doing something to help these people breathe free for the first time in centuries.

From my hotel room in Samarkand, I saw on BBC World and TV5 that a force four or five hurricane had hit the gulf coast of my childhood. It looked pretty bad, but most of the news seemed aimed at oil investors and insurance companies. Crude was up to an all time high of over 70 dollars a drum, and the dollar value of Katrina's destruction was to be higher than ever seen before.

No one was mentioning the people, not yet. Then I started hearing short reports of human suffering and a breakdown of civil society. There was price gouging, violence and looting. The first always happens, during every single hurricane, but the last two were new to my ears. I called my father and he assured me that they had been untouched on the Alabama coast and that there were few problems there. Mississippi and Louisiana, however, were another matter altogether. When I got back home, I started seeing the newspaper pictures and some others on the internet, which was re-broadcasting television images.

There were masses of poor and black people who had stayed behind. People, like my father, were complaining about these people, saying that they were stupid to have stayed behind when there was a mandatory evacuation. I couldn't help but wonder where they would have gone and how they would have gotten there. For the 100,000 citizens of New Orleans who are dirt poor, how mandatory is a mandatory evacuation without free buses taking them to free Ramada Inns stocked with free food and running water?

And so once again, the victims are to be blamed. Old women in wheelchairs perched upon their rooftop with saltine crackers and warm Coca Cola are being lectured about fiscal responsibility and preparedness four days after their last meal, while we tut-tut from our comfortable lazyboy recliners and try to ignore that a third of Mississippi's National Guard and half of its equipment is in Iraq or Afghanistan instead of Biloxi or New Orleans. The media shows us what we knew to be true all along: white people find food, and black people loot for it.

But then I saw one man on television, during his fourth day in the convention center with no food or water, who said, "My family is not going to starve to death. I will do what I have to do to feed them." I don't see why we shouldn't make a distinction between taking food from a grocery store and taking flat screen televisions from an electronics store. If the first is looting just like the second, then I'm afraid any sensible person should be looting, seeing as how the government has proven itself incapable or unwilling to help these people.

Leon Wynter has done a piece on the poor black people we see on our television screens, which can be heard here (in an edited form) and read here in its entirety:

Last Saturday the "official" evacuation looked like nothing more than the start of a very long weekend--people with available credit, mostly white, stuck in traffic. Or was that the 60's white flight to the suburbs. No, no, it was the stampede of white Dixiecrats into the party of small government and big oil, AFTER they got to the suburbs. But where is THAT video?

Instead, we've got talking heads. The FEMA director insisted to CNN that he makes "no judgement" as to the reason why Auntie and nephew stayed sadly behind. He didn't want to "second guess" them. That's a euphemism for saying they had no good reason at all. Not when tax cuts have brought so many new jobs and so much prosperity. [...]

In my metaphor, what we are seeing is the SS Deep Dixie. It has been gored by an iceberg that everyone saw coming. It's poorest blackest passengers are trapped in the steerage of political minority, going down slowly, but not without putting up a dirty fight. And sometimes they come up, treading water, like rats in an oil-slicked sea.