the human province

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003

I've been hearing a bit about Iraqi refugees lately, and when I was in Amman, Jordan last year, they were impossible to ignore. And even if they're less visible in Syria, it seems that there are also many Iraqis who have taken refuge in Damascus as well. The numbers are alarming: 1.8 million internally displaced Iraqis and 2 million who have sought refuge abroad.

So what has the US's response been? To take in fewer than 500 Iraqis and to set up a program that allows Afghans and Iraqis who have worked with the American military to immigrate to the US. The maximum limit of people accepted into this program each year: 50 people.

There has not been enough media coverage of this problem, which is why I am glad to see that the Times has an op-ed today about our responsibility to Iraqi refugees:

To calculate the price that Iraqis have paid for the American misadventure in their country, you have to deal in big, round, horrifying numbers. Civilians killed last year: 34,000. Driven from their homes within Iraq: 1.8 million. Fled to other countries: an additional 2 million, and growing. The number of Iraqis who have found refuge in the United States is easier to pin down. This country has admitted a grand total of 466 Iraqi refugees since 2003.

However President Bush tries to manage the endgame of his dismal war, America has an obligation to the Iraqis whose lives it has upended. It owes a particular debt to those who have faced incredible dangers working with American forces as interpreters, guides and contractors. These allies -- and their families -- have become a haunted and hunted group, branded as traitors and targeted for kidnapping and assassination by insurgents and militias.

By any measure, the Bush administration is failing them. The current price tag for the war is $8 billion a month, yet the State Department plans to spend only $20 million in the coming fiscal year to help shelter Iraqi refugees overseas and to resettle them here. A special visa program to resettle Iraqi and Afghan military translators has been capped at 50 people a year and has a six-year waiting list.

NPR has had some good coverage of the refugee issue, as well as on congressional hearings on ameliorating the situation and the individual faces of the crisis, as seen in the story of an Iraqi translator forced to flee after working with the Americans. NPR also has a segment on the differences between the policies toward Vietnamese and Iraqi refugees.

According to an interview with Ropert Green, UN High Commission for Refugees representative in Jordan (most UN Iraq offices are in Amman since Iraq is too dangerous), based on an agreement with the Government of Jordan, they are "restricted in how we can actually apply that refugee title" to Iraqis. The Jordanian agreement requires UNHCR to find a third country of resettlement willing to host each Iraqi who has been labeled a refugee, which is why only 600 out of the over 700,000 refugees in Iraq have been officially designated as refugees.

The Onion has the scoop on the surge deployment of the 325th Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Kandahar province:

In an effort to display his administration's willingness to fight on all fronts in the War on Terror, President Bush said at a press conference Monday that American ground forces in Afghanistan will be aided by the immediate deployment of Marine Pfc. Tim Ekenberg of Camp Lejeune, NC.

...The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, 2nd Lt. Jon Pinard, said that Ekenberg will be a valuable addition to his existing military assets.

"Our Marines are the best-equipped and best-trained in the world, and I have it on good authority that Tim is an especially well-trained Marine," Pinard said. "We have requested that he receive full logistical support while deployed in this theater. We've been told that his body armor will be arriving within six months of his reporting for duty, budget permitting."

According to Reuters, Bush has authorized the killing or capturing of Iranians in Iraq. This goes for intelligence agents or members of the Revolutionary Guard, but not, apparently, for diplomats or civilians.

First of all, this seems like an obvious escalation in the conflict between Iran and the US, and I think if something comes of it, then Washington will see that Tehran can be very, very nasty: look for the capture of American contractors or soldiers as a reaction. Furthermore, the problem with the distinction between civilians/diplomats and intelligence/revolutionary guards is that it is standard practice for countries to give intelligence officers diplomatic or civilian cover. For example, many CIA operations are run from American embassies abroad.

Mark my words: The first Iranian that gets killed in Iraq will mean bad news for everyone. I can't help but wonder if this is not just a tactic by the Bush administration to goad Tehran into doing something that will give the US an "excuse" to bomb Iranian nuclear plants.

The Moon and Murdoch media outlets have been in a frenzy about claims that Barack Obama went to a "madrasa" when he was a child in Indonesia. CNN investigated the claim and showed it to be another case of attempted character assassination. The latter says that Obama did not got to a madrasa, which is both true and false.

You see, in Arabic, the word madrasa (مدرسة) comes from the three-letter root "d-r-s" (درس) which means to study. In Arabic, most words are derived from adding prefixes, infixes and suffixes to an original three-letter root verb. For example, when you add the prefix "ma," to a root verb, you get the place where that verb is done. In the case of "d-r-s," this gets you the place where one studies, or madrasa.

In Arabic, any school from elementary to high school is called a madrasa. Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim country, which means that it has a lot of Arabic loan words. Madrasa is one of them.

The confusion arises because of the media's use of the word madrasa to describe a madrasat al-ulum, which is a religious seminary, the likes of which we've heard about so much in coverage of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

So did Obama go to a madrasa? If by that you mean elementary or high school, then yes, of course he did. If by that you mean a deobandi or wahhabi religious seminary, then no. And of course, the latter charge is patently absurd, seeing as how he was six when he lived in Indonesia.

This stems from the media's ignorance of all things Arab or Muslim. So we get people throwing around words like shaheed, madrasa and jihad in order to give their writing a veneer of credibility, when in most cases, these words are used incorrectly. Likewise, I often laugh when I see American writers, "haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones," throw in French phrases to make themselves seem more intellectual or better read.

All this makes me think of George Orwell's little essay, Politics and the English Language. I think more people ought to follow his simple advice on this subject: "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent."

UPDATE: According to Chad in comments, in Indonesia, only a religious school, like a Catholic school in the US, is called a madrasa in Indonesia. He says that some are normal public-funded schools, like the public school Obama went to, whereas others are private. I'll double check this with an Indonesian colleague, in any case.

The opposition led by Hezbollah and General Aoun held a general strike yesterday that included blocking the road to the airport and degenerated into street clashes between pro-government and opposition supporters. What this means is that Sunni and Shia groups have been clashing, as well as Christian supporters of Geagea (pro-government) and Aoun (opposition):

Violent clashes erupted across the country, with two areas witnessing the return of old "fault lines" from the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War.

The Shiite supporters of Hizbullah and Amal clashed with the Future Movement's Sunni supporters in the predominantly Sunni area of Corniche al-Mazraa. Stone-throwing and fistfights injured dozens of people and wreaked damage on cars and private property.

At the same time, supporters of Christian opposition leader Michel Aoun clashed with followers of Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea in several predominantly Christian areas, in fights recalling the leaders' bitter rivalry in the late 1980s.

Lebanese officials were quoted as warning that the Aoun-Geagea struggle may turn into "a war of elimination."

This is obviously bad news for Lebanon, and I'm surprised that it's taking so long to come up with a compromise package deal that would get the government up and running again as national unity government. Of course there are a lot of things to be settled, including the presidency, expanding the cabinet, the Hariri tribunal and the Paris III economic deal, but I don't think that these are unbridgeable gaps.

Hezbollah has said that yesterday was a taste of what it's capable of, and I don't think anyone doubts their resolve or power.

The Times has an op-ed today by Michael Oren, the Israeli author of a new book on American involvement in the Middle East, about the possibility of an peace between Israel and Syria.

I mentioned these secret talks earlier and maintain that the smartest move the US could make would be to broker a settlement between Syria and Israel (but not at the expense of Lebanon). Oren seems to think, however, that the US is against these talks and that a peace between Syria and Israel would be opposed by Washington:

The last thing Washington wants is a Syrian-Israeli treaty that would transform Mr. Assad from pariah to peacemaker and lend him greater latitude in promoting terrorism and quashing Lebanon’s freedom. Some Israeli officials, by contrast, see substantive benefits in ending their nation's 60-year conflict with Syria. An accord would invariably provide for the cessation of Syrian aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, which endanger Israel’s northern and southern sectors.

More crucial still, by detaching Syria from Iran's orbit, Israel will be able to address the Iranian nuclear threat -- perhaps by military means -- without fear of retribution from Syrian ground forces and missiles. Forfeiting the Golan Heights, for these Israelis, seems to be a sufferable price to pay to avoid conventional and ballistic attacks across most of Israel’s borders.

The potentially disparate positions of Israel and the United States on the question of peace with Syria could trigger a significant crisis between the two countries — the first of Mr. Bush's expressly pro-Israel presidency. And yet, facing opposition from a peace-minded Democratic Congress and from members of his own party who have advocated a more robust American role in Middle East mediation, Mr. Bush would have difficulty in withholding approval from a comprehensive Syrian-Israeli agreement.

I tend to believe that the Assad regime wants first and foremost to stay in power and regain the Golan Heights. Yes, Damascus has been bruised by being thrown out of Lebanon, but it's entirely possible that Assad wanted to leave and is fighting an internal battle with the remnants of his father's security regime. The problem is that the decision-making process is so opaque in Damascus that it's very difficult to see who's making which calls.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

The tragic assassination of Hrant Dink seems to be leading to somesmall but symbolic conciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

Meanwhile, the BBC has an excerpt of Dink's last column about his trial for "insulting Turkishness," published the day he was shot dead in the streets of Istanbul:

The memory of my computer is filled with angry, threatening lines sent by citizens from this sector...

How real are these threats? To be honest, it is impossible for me to know for sure.

What is truly threatening and unbearable for me is the psychological torture I place myself in. The question that really gets to me, is: 'What are these people thinking about me?'

Unfortunately I am now better-known than before and I feel people looking at me, thinking: 'Oh, look, isn't he that Armenian guy?'

I am just like a pigeon, equally obsessed by what goes-on on my left and right, front and back. My head is just as mobile and fast.

... Do you ministers know the price of making someone as scared as a pigeon?

What my family and I have been through has not been easy. I have considered leaving this country at times...

But leaving a 'boiling hell' to run to a 'heaven' is not for me. I wanted to turn this hell into heaven.

We stayed in Turkey because that was what we wanted - and out of respect for the thousands of people here who supported me in my fight for democracy...

I am now applying to the European Court of Human Rights. I don't know how long the case will take, but what I do know is that I will continue living here in Turkey until the case is finalised.

And if the court rules in my favour I will be very happy and will never have to leave my country.

2007 will probably be an even harder year for me. The court cases will continue, new ones will be initiated and God knows what kind of additional injustices I will have to face.

I may see myself as frightened as a pigeon, but I know that in this country people do not touch pigeons.

Pigeons can live in cities, even in crowds. A little scared perhaps, but free.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I finished reading Vali Nasr's The Shia Revival the other day. It was a pretty good introduction on Shia and Sunni relations in the region, and while most of the Lebanese, Iranian and Iraqi parts were review for me, the sections on Bahrain and Pakistan made for new and interesting reading. Nasr does a good job of explaining the specifics of situations in various countries and then using them to draw a bigger picture of the direction that Shia politics are heading in the Middle East.

Otherwise, I've just stared reading Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire. I'm only about 40 pages in, but the quotes that open chapter two were particularly interesting:

Oh ye Egyptians, they may say to you that I have not made an expedition hither for any other object than that of abolishing your religion ... but tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors.
--Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexandria, July 2, 1798

Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators....It is the hope and desire of the British people and the nations in alliance with them that the Arab race may rise once more to greatness and renown among the peoples of the earth.
--General F.S. Maude, Commander of British Forces, Baghdad, March 19, 1917

Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.
--Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Baghdad, April 29, 2003