NEWSHOUR BOOKSHELF - "The Lovers" a Lesson on Theocracy

"A chronicle of Afghanistan's modern-day Romeo and Juliet" PBS NewsHour 3/7/2016

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SUMMARY:  Zakia and Ali are Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet -- with all the heartache that description implies.  Separated by religion, ethnicity and their own families, the young couple defied them all by eloping.  Rod Nordland of the New York Times chronicles their remarkable odyssey in his book, “The Lovers,” and joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the intersection of romance and religion in the Muslim world.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Zakia and Ali first came to the world’s attention in the pages of The New York Times in 2014.  Later, the paper would capture their story on video.

They had grown up on adjacent potato farms in Afghanistan’s remote mountain province of Bamiyan, playing together as children, and, as teenagers, falling in love.

ZAKIA (through interpreter):  At first, I wasn’t aware of my feelings, because I didn’t know him.  I was very young and didn’t understand these things.  When I was out in the farm fields, he wrote his cell phone number and gave it to me.  Then we talked on the phone and he said, “I love you,” and we got to know each other and started to love each other.

ALI (through interpreter):  It looked to me that it wasn’t possible for us to get together.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Indeed, it was prohibited because of the Afghan custom of arranged marriages and by Islamic law.  The two were separated by religion and ethnicity, she a Sunni and Tajik, he a Shiite and Hazara.

When their love became known, the couple, especially Zakia, faced condemnation, beatings and later the threat of death from her family.

ROD NORDLAND, Author, “The Lovers”:  Her family were not wealthy, but they were big and they were numerous.  And they — on their side, in their quest to kill her, they had a very powerful weapon, and that was the knowledge that nobody has ever been successfully prosecuted for an honor killing in Afghanistan.

JEFFREY BROWN:  A new book tells the story.

It’s called “The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet,” by New York Times Kabul bureau chief Rod Nordland.  Nordland wrote the original article and a number of follow-ups.

We met recently at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., as a new exhibition on Afghanistan art, Turquoise Mountain, was being installed.

Nordland told me he'd been looking for a way to report on so-called honor killings, the murder of young women by their own families for causing them shame.
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ROD NORDLAND:  When it comes to a lot of these abusive customary practices, that’s right.  They’re still as prevalent as they once were.

Honor killing, child brides, the practice of baad, when a little girl is sold to pay a family debt, often a debt for some moral crime that a male relative has carried out.  It would be unfair to say there hasn’t been improvement, because there are millions of girls in schools that didn’t exist during the Taliban time.

Still, when you look at the metrics, Afghanistan still remains the worst place in the world to be born a woman, in life expectancy, maternal mortality, anything.  And you look at it, and that’s pretty shocking, considering the investment that we have tried to make in bettering women’s lives.

COMMENT:  This should be a warning against the extreme Christian Conservative movement to force everyone to abide by their beliefs (gay marriage, abortion, etc).

YEMEN - Escalating Violence

"Why violence is on the rise in Yemen" PBS NewsHour 3/20/2015

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SUMMARY:  Yemen’s deadliest terror attack in decades left hundreds of casualties.  Judy Woodruff talks to Nabeel Khoury, a former State Department official in Yemen, about rising violence, ethnic tensions and power struggles in that country.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  We want to take a closer look at today’s violence in Yemen and what it says about the state of that region.

Joining me now is Nabeel Khoury.  He had a career in the Foreign Service and was the deputy chief of mission in Yemen for the State Department from 2004 to 2007.

Welcome to the program.

NABEEL KHOURY, Former State Department Official in Yemen:  Happy to be here.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, a terrible situation today.  Over a hundred and, what is it, 30 were killed, over 300 wounded, worst violence in decades.  How do you explain this?

NABEEL KHOURY:  Well, this attack was perpetrated against the Houthi in principal, who are in charge in Sanaa.

But, unfortunately, a soft target was chosen, meaning a mosque, where Zaidi Yemenis go.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Zaidi, a particular group.

NABEEL KHOURY:  Zaidism is a part of Shia Islam.  It broke off Shia Islam centuries ago.  But it’s closer to Shia Islam than it is to Sunni Islam.

IRAQ - Shia vs Sunni Conflict, Spillover on Neighbors

The results of two U.S. Administrations getting it wrong.

"What Iraq’s violent sectarian split means for its neighbors" PBS NewsHour 6/17/2014

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GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  Late this evening in Baghdad, Reuters reports that Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni political leaders, including the prime minister, made a joint call for national unity.

Tonight, we take a closer look at what the Iraq crisis and its sectarian divisions mean for an already volatile region.

I’m joined by Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya News channel, and Mary-Jane Deeb, chief of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress.  But the views she expresses here are her own.

What is the dangerous, Hisham, that the Sunni-Shiite split, which we have become so familiar with now, is going to spread beyond the borders of Iraq throughout the entire region?

HISHAM MELHEM, Al Arabiya News:  What we see now in terms of Shia-Sunni rivalry is unprecedented in the history of Islam.

This is the first time we see bloodletting on a continuum front from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon.  And if you add to it occasional flare-ups in Bahrain and Yemen, you will get an idea.

This has never happened in modern history, or even any time throughout the history of Islam.  That’s why it’s extremely dangerous.  When you add to that the fact that you have major Arab countries that are literally unraveling along sectarian ethnic lines, fault lines, Syria and Iraq, you add to that refugee problems in two brittle countries, Lebanon and Jordan, you add to that dearth of leadership in the region, you add to that dearth of leadership in Europe, which makes American leadership extremely important, unfortunately, American leadership also was absent in the last two years.

MIDDLE EAST - Iraqi Prison Escapees Join Islamic Militants

"Escaped Inmates From Iraq Fuel Syrian Insurgency" by TIM ARANGO and ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times 2/12/2014

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A series of daring but little noticed breakouts from Iraqi prisons has freed hundreds of hardened militants who are now among the leaders and foot soldiers of the radical Sunni groups operating in neighboring Syria and, increasingly, in Iraq itself.

The role of the former inmates in fueling a new wave of Sunni jihad across the region is an unfortunate reminder of the breakdown of authority in Iraq since the United States departed in 2011, of the security vacuum that has spread around the region and of the continuing threat of Sunni-led terrorist groups that the United States said it was fighting during its occupation of Iraq.

The prison breaks also reflect the surging demand for experienced fighters, which led to a concerted effort by militant groups, particularly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, to seek them in the one place where they were held en masse — Iraq’s prison cells.

That group even had a name for its prison strategy, “Operation Breaking the Walls,” which unfolded during a 12-month campaign from July 2012 until a major break at Abu Ghraib, the main Iraqi prison, on the western outskirts of the capital, in July 2013.  In all, American officials estimate, a few hundred of the escapees have joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, several in senior leadership roles.

While the group was already gaining strength in this period, an American counterterrorism official said, “The influx of these terrorists, who collectively have decades of battlefield experience, probably has strengthened the group and deepened its leadership bench.”

OPINION - Islamic World as Seen by an American

"The Islamic World Presently Being Torn Asunder By Civil War Mainly In Egypt, Syria and Iraq" from Seneca, NEWSNET Post 8/16/2013

There appears to be three distinct factions in this war, the Sunnis, the Shiites and the secular Muslims.  For example in Egypt the fundamentalist Muslims, mainly Saudi, (al Qaeda is Sunni) and led by the Muslim brotherhood are in a life-and-death struggle with the army which, appears to be secularist.

Obama has kept America out of this and that is good.  It still sending Egypt aid but that aid is presumably going to the Egyptian government now under control of the secular army.

However, America's aid to the Egyptian army is dwarfed by the $12 billion annual aid being provided by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates.  Now Saudi Arabia is a very fundamentalist Islamic state (Sunni) but its government ironically is secular.  Therefore, American politicians calling for the termination of aid to Egypt at this time are dead wrong.  Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both fatuous Republican RINOs, have stupidly been advocating that.

In Syria the civil war is between Shiites and Sunnis also.  But the Shiite side is led by a secular despot, Bashar Assad who is actually a Sunni, but is really a secular Muslim.   The so-called rebels in Syria are led by fundamentalist jihadists and that is why the Saudi government is against them and is aiding Hassan.

Ironically we also have Shiite Iran allied with Bashar Assad.  That is because they see Assad as an enemy to Sunni jihadists who control the rebel forces.

Confusing, is it not?  Again it is the right policy for Americans, and Europeans to stay completely uninvoleved in this conflict no matter how many civilians are killed.  The West has no dog in this fight.

In Iraq it is again Sunni versus Shiite.  The West should stay clear and have no involvement whatsoever, either military or humanitarian.

PAKISTAN - Sectarian Violence

"Pakistan Reels With Violence Against Shiites" by DECLAN WALSH, New York Times 12/3/2012

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QUETTA, Pakistan - Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these streets.

For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside.

The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday, shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not, the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces.

The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year — the worst toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the Pakistani state cannot — or will not — protect them.

“After every killing, there are no arrests,” said Muzaffar Ali Changezi, a retired Hazara engineer. “So if the government is not supporting these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way to explain how they operate so openly.”

The government, already battling Taliban insurgents, insists it is taking the threat seriously. During the recent Mourning of Muhurram, when Shiites parade through the streets over 10 days, the Interior Ministry imposed stringent security measures such as blocking cellphone signals for up to 12 hours — to try to prevent remote bomb detonations — and banning doubled-up motorcycle riding. Even so, Sunni bombers struck at least five times, killing at least 50 Shiites and wounding several hundred. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the biggest attacks, highlighting an emerging link between that group and traditional sectarian militants that has worried many.

Yet the unchecked killings have also raised wider questions about Pakistani society: about the spread of a cancerous sectarian ideology in a public that even just a decade ago seemed more tolerant, and about what might be spurring the growing audacity of the killers, some of whom are believed to have links to the country’s security services.

The murders in Quetta, for instance, involve remarkably little mystery. By wide consensus, the gunmen are based in Mastung, a dusty agricultural village 18 miles to the south that is the bustling local hub of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the country’s most notorious sectarian militant group.

Like so many Pakistani groups that combine guns with zealotry, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi thrives in a wink-and-nod netherworld: it is officially banned, but its leader, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail last year amid showers of rose petals thrown by supporters. Now Mr. Malik lives openly in southern Punjab Province, protected by armed men who loiter outside his door, allowing him to deliver hate-laced statements to visitors. Shiites are “the greatest infidels on earth,” he told a Reuters reporter last month.

In Quetta, his followers are similarly unfettered. In targeting the Hazara — who, with their distinctive Central Asian features, are easy to pick out — Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants block busy highways as they search vehicles for Hazaras and daub walls with hate slogans. “The face is the target,” said Major Nadir Ali, a senior Hazara leader and retired army officer. “They see the face, then they shoot.”

IRAQ - Again, A View From Baghdad

"End of Another Year..." from Baghdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq

I've refereed to this blog before to give Americans a view from "the other side." The following are excerpts from the full article.

1. The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.


2. Above-mentioned branch cannot be run from your country.


3. The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.


4. The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.


5. An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.


6. Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.


7. For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.


8. Politicians who supported the war spend TV time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.


9. People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

Al Qaeda? That's laughable. Bush has effectively created more terrorists in Iraq these last 4 years than Osama could have created in 10 different terrorist camps in the distant hills of Afghanistan. Our children now play games of 'sniper' and 'jihadi', pretending that one hit an American soldier between the eyes and this one overturned a Humvee.

This last year especially has been a turning point. Nearly every Iraqi has lost so much. So much. There's no way to describe the loss we've experienced with this war and occupation. There are no words to relay the feelings that come with the knowledge that daily almost 40 corpses are found in different states of decay and mutilation. There is no compensation for the dense, black cloud of fear that hangs over the head of every Iraqi. Fear of things so out of ones hands, it borders on the ridiculous- like whether your name is 'too Sunni' or 'too Shia'. Fear of the larger things- like the Americans in the tank, the police patrolling your area in black bandannas and green banners, and the Iraqi soldiers wearing black masks at the checkpoint.

What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it's just not safe.

...and she ends with....

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.

The only thing I can say as of this moment, the American people seem to be waking up to the same revelations as this "Girl from Baghdad."

POLITICS - Iraq vs. Vietnam

"Transcript: Bush Interview, President Spoke to 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley At Camp David" CBS News

You can read the complete interview at the above link, but here is my comparison to Vietnam.

INTERVIEW:

PELLEY: You think the whole region could be in play? Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait?

BUSH: Absolutely. No question in my mind. And I know this is hard for some Americans to understand. The operative phrase that I thought made a lot of sense about this war is: if we fail in Iraq, the enemy will follow us here. And the point I make is that what happens in the Middle East matters to the homeland. And that's different than in some past engagements. Secondly, chaos in the Middle East will empower extremists who hate America. And failure in Iraq, defeat of America, in quotes, will then embolden these extremists. They'll be able to recruit more. They'll be able to find more suiciders. They'll have resources at their availability, like energy if they were able to topple modern governments. In other words, these people have a plan. They have a vision of the world. And they intend to use murder to enact their vision. And I fully understand that. You know, some of my buddies in Texas say, “You know, let them fight it out. What business is it of ours? You got rid of Saddam. Just let them slug it out.” And that's a temptation that I know a lot of people feel. But if we do not succeed in Iraq, we will leave behind a Middle East which will endanger America in the future.

PELLEY: Instability in Iraq threatens the entire region?

BUSH: If the government falls apart and there is sectarian enclaves and violence, it'll invite Iran into the Shia neighborhoods, Sunni extremists into the Sunni neighborhoods, Kurdish separatist movements. All of which would threaten moderate people, moderate governments, and all of which will end up creating conditions that could lead to attacks here in America.

This is the equivalent of "the domino theory" used to justify continuance of the Vietnam war.

INTERVIEW:

PELLEY: Could have been a mistake?

BUSH: Yeah. [General] John Abizaid, one of the planners, said in front of Congress, you know, he thought we might have needed more troops. My focus is on how to succeed. And the reason I brought up the mistakes is, one, that's the job of the commander-in-chief, and, two, I don't want people blaming our military. We got a bunch of good military people out there doing what we've asked them to do. And the temptation is gonna find scapegoats. Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me 'cause it's my decisions.

Military not responsible, not to be held responsible for mistakes in judgment?!

INTERVIEW:

PELLEY: Do you believe as commander-in-chief you have the authority to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do?

BUSH: In this situation, I do, yeah. Now, I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I made my decision, and we're going forward.

Shades of Nixon Whitehouse during the Vietnam war.

The President does not have to listen to anyone, including "the people." The Presidential authority to protect America overrides all other sections/clauses of the Constitution. Hail Cesar!