Posts tagged bahrain
The conflict in Bahrain, through children’s drawings. From Max Fisher at The Atlantic:
Human Rights First, a U.S.-based NGO that has worked heavily in Bahrain since the Arab Spring began over a year ago, recently launched a project called Through Children’s Eyes to check in with Bahrain’s children and attempt to understand how the country’s conflict is affecting them. Two local activists who work with Human Rights First — and who are now both in prison on political charges — “asked some children who had been directly affected by the crackdown to draw whatever was in their minds,” according to Brian Dooley, who as director of the NGO’s human rights defenders program has traveled frequently to Bahrain in the last year.
Above: Fatima, age 10 (L), whose father was killed by security forces, and Maryam, age 13 (R), the daughter of a political prisoner. Check out the full slideshow of drawings that accompanies the article.
[via]
This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.
- News today: In Syria on Friday, the day after bombings killed 55, Assad’s government is calling for action on terrorism and the opposition is accusing the government of having ties with al-Qaeda forces.
- On Tuesday, the UN released numbers stating that more than 80 Libyan refugees have died so far this year in their attempts to reach Europe.
- Libya quietly passed a controversial amnesty law, offering a blanket pardon to any crimes committed by pro-revolution rebels.
- Egypt seized dozens of heavy weapons bound for the Sinai peninsula at the Libyan border on Thursday.
- Panetta has promised that no troops will be deployed to Yemen.
- The story of the double agent sent by Saudi Arabia to disrupt and foil an Al-Qaeda suicide bomber plot and his successful infiltration strategy.
- Turkey will not extradite fugitive Iraqi VP Tareq al-Hashemi.
- Joost Hiltermann had a longreads piece on sectarian conflict in Bahrain up on NY Books. In Manama, protesters blocked roads with burning tires, demanding the release of female activist prisoners, some of whom have been being held for a year.
- US Ambassador to Pakistan Cameron Munter is leaving his post after not even two years on the job.
- The Red Cross is suspending its work in Pakistan pending a review after a ICRC health program manager was abducted and later killed in Balochistan.
- Pakistan has successfully tested another short-range nuclear capable missile, the Hatf III Ghaznavi, and the second such in two weeks.
- A cabinet of Pakistani officials will meet next week to consider reopening the NATO supply routes.
- Monday, the Pentagon Inspector General released a report expressing concern over the Afghan National Army’s pharmaceutical distribution.
- An AP-GfK poll puts public support in the US for the Afghan war at a record low of 27 percent.
- The US is continuing to search for a Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by insurgents in Afghanistan in 2009.
- A rare bright news report out of A’stan: the UN is reporting that civilian deaths fell by 20 percent in the first four months of this year.
- Russia is claiming to have foiled a terrorist plot against the Sochi Winter Olympic games in 2014.
- In Honduras, days after the kidnapping and killing of journalist and gay rights activist Erick Martinez, another journalist named Alfredo Villatoro of HRN Radio was kidnapped on his way to work in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.
- The GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee voted to include a provision in the new FY2013 defense budget that would ban same-sex marriage on military bases. HASC’s draft also failed to include mention of sequestration cuts.
- Fearing Iranian nuclear capability, the GOP are pushing an East Coast missile defense shield.
- The prospect of war with Iran is dividing the Israeli defense community, with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak leading a hawkish charge and numerous former intel chiefs publicly opposing them.
- Reporting by Noah Schachtman and Spencer Ackerman for Wired reveals that the US military held a course (now cancelled) at the Joint Forces Staff College taught officers that “total war” need to be waged on global Islam. The professor’s presentation includes quotes like: “This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”
- On Wednesday, the FBI Chief said the recently thwarted bomb plot was a good reason to renew surveillance policies set to expire soon, extending the FBI’s abilities to spy on people abroad without a warrant.
- Here’s your new to-be Chief of Staff of the Air Force: General Mark Welsh.
- The Pentagon ceased cooperation with Marvel Studios on The Avengers because it did not treat military bureaucracy realistically (!).
- Sgt. Major Teresa King, the first female commandant of the Army’s elite drill sergeant school, has been fighting for her job amidst a mix of accusations that she set unfair standards. The Army has now said these accusations aren’t substantiated. King is asserting that her gender was a cause for mistreatment at the hands of her superiors, whom she says actively campaigned against her.
Photo: Dover Air Base, Delaware. An Army carry team transports the body of Master Sgt. Gregory L. Childs of Warren, Arkansas, killed in Afghanistan. Steve Ruark/AP.
Bahrain, Gender Equality and Ed Husain’s Latest Op-Ed
Ed Husain of CFR has a really disappointing little op-ed piece in today’s New York Times about Bahrain and why the US really ought to work with the monarchy to get true reform (no, really). Others more qualified than me, like Issandr El Amrani at The Arabist and Gregg Carlstrom at The Majlis, have already weighed in in response to his piece, titled “The Prince and the Ayatollah.”
Husain entreats us, throughout the article, to look at the members of the Bahraini monarchy, whom he visited, as sympathetic. This is my first problem with the article: his attempt to humanize and liberalize the individuals who belong to the Bahraini monarchy, glossing over the utterly inhumane and undemocratic system of repression they’ve got going on. He refers to Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa as a “liberal’s liberal” and that he appeared “appeared genuinely contrite about the excesses of the government in Bahrain.” Husain also minimizes the opposition and utterly simplifies the entire dynamic of the Bahraini opposition, something which Carlstrom explains and responds to with great authority in this really informative post.
These points are all ones others have brought up, but I want to elaborate more fully on some of the very serious issues I take with Husain’s discussion of gender in the context of his opinions on the monarchy and the opposition.
Husain, in his concluding statements, commits a rhetorical crime that I consider unforgivable: the “do it for the women” argument. I’ve talked about the “do it for the women” argument before on here in the context of the Afghan war, where we are constantly reminded that we’re supposedly waging war on some level for the sake of gender equality. I consider it utterly false and offensive to use gender equality as a reason to support extended war in Afghanistan and I feel exactly the same way about the argument that gender equality is somehow a reason that I should in any way support or feel sympathetic to the repressive Bahraini monarchy. Furthering gender equality is a serious and fundamental consideration in the process of any political transition, and the opposition in Bahrain certainly ought to include it in their goals. Husain, however, writes as if it’s the opposition who have stood in the way of genuine progress in Bahrain, stymying the monarchy in its attempts at reform. I highly doubt that the Bahraini opposition has a sparkling and unassailable record on the matter of gender equality, but turning to a broadly oppressive monarchy to safeguard the rights of anyone but those in power is obviously no answer. As El Amrani writes: “So the idea is that Bahraini women should have equality but still be subject to late-night arrests, detention, torture, etc. ” Bahrain’s rhetorical moves toward support for women’s rights are as much a smokescreen to fool the West as Morocco’s democratization measures have been.
Husain gives some prescriptions for the West on dealing with the situation in Bahrain…”They [the West] should be using every pressure point to strengthen the reformist strands within the monarchy in support of political change, equal rights for women and an end to the language of Shiite sectarianism in Bahrain.” I don’t even have words for how silly it is to assume that the best way to reform anything is through trying to work with the status quo of repression and monarchical control.
I suppose it’s unsurprising to see this kind of article crop up about the supposedly enlightened, reformist dictatorship of Bahrain, a kind of dictatorship we can believe in. We’ve seen this before in older writing about Syria, back in the days when Bashar al-Assad was still considered cool by the international community. It’s still incredibly disappointing to see this kind of rhetoric pop up.
Picture of the Day: Manama, Bahrain. A young boy wears his gas mask amidst demonstrations which took place against the Formula One grand prix race set for next weekend and the continued imprisonment of hunger striker Abdul Hadi Al-Khawaja.
The latest on Al-Khawaja: The human rights activist has been on hunger strike for eight weeks and tells the press he prefers a dignified death to a life of humiliation.
Read: Kelly McEvers for the Washington Monthly: “The Crackdown: How the United States looked the other way while Bahrain crushed the Arab Spring’s most ill-fated uprising.”
Credit: AFP/Getty. Via.
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Pictures of the Day: Flames in Mid-Air Edition. Salmabad and Bilad al-Qadeem, Bahrain. In the top photo, a protester throws a Molotov cocktail at security forces. In the second, a member of the riot police fires tear gas at protesters rallying in solidarity with imprisoned opposition members
The must-read: A ProPublica piece by Justin Elliott, “Meet Bahrain’s Best Friend in Congress.” How did Democratic Representative Eni Faleomavaega of American Samoa become the Congressional champion of Bahrain and their crackdown on opposition? (Hint: there was a lobbying firm involved.)
Photo Credit: Hamad I Muhammad/Reuters (both photos). Via/Via.
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This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.
- News this morning: Asma Al-Assad will be hit with EU sanctioning.
- The female members of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council say they are being sidelined.
- A two-part assessment of the past few months of the Afghan transitional process from the Afghan Analysts Network. (1, 2)
- There were two notable longreads pieces this week on Afghanistan, the massacre and the future of US involvement. One, by Neil Shea in The American Scholar, examines how his experiences on embed with US soldiers give insight into how the massacre happened. The other, by Matt Gallagher in the Boston Review, focuses on soldiers looking to the post-massacre political and military future.
- Here are the names of the sixteen victims of the massacre.
- I made a vision board for the Afghan war on Pinterest.
- Ahmed Rashid was interviewed about crisis and politics in Pakistan for NPR Fresh Air.
- An article on the powerful part women have played in the Libyan revolution in the Smithsonian.
- Brookings’ Saban Center has released a report that estimates the various costs of a Syrian intervention in order to be “executed properly.”
- This week marked the nine-year anniversary since the US dropped bombs over Baghdad during the now-infamous shock and awe. CNAS fellow Dr. Colin Kahl testified this week before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
- The Khawajas, a prominent revolutionary family, are under siege by the government of Bahrain.
- Some really cool crisis-mapping work: mapping the mainstream media coverage of election violence in Kenya in comparison with citizen journalist coverage.
- The International Crisis Group has warned that militarized post-war policies in Sri Lanka could re-ignite violence.
- Soldiers overthrew President Touré in a successful military coup in the West African country of Mali, previously considered a quality example of African democratic leadership.
- A really fabulous look at some climate security policy dilemmas over at Duck of Minerva.
- NPR’s Morning Edition looks at cybersecurity legislation.
- The US is boosting its cyberweapons and cyberdefense research: $500m has gone to DARPA over the past 5 years for this purpose.
- A nuclear security summit is set to start in Seoul on Monday.
- Sebastian Junger has begun an organizaton called Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues that provides freelance journalists with three-day training sessions in emergency medical skills.
- The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has updated its information on international arms transfers. Here’s a fact sheet assessing the trends and data from the 2007-11 period.
- Four female veterans are running for Congress this year!
- According to the GAO, the Army has serious problems with its payroll system that are causing serious delays in paychecks and could prevent the Army from being audit-ready.
- Katy Perry pretended to be a Marine in her latest music video and I don’t so much know how I feel about this. Come to your own conclusions.
Photo: A Black Hawk takes off after unloading a team of Pathfinders and an Afghan patrol in Kandahar. US Army Flickr Stream.
Picture of the Day. Shahrakan, Bahrain. Riot police stand shoulder to shoulder, ready to disperse protesters at the funeral of Sabri Mahfoudh, who activists and his family say died from teargas.
News: The government of Bahrain has claimed that it has implemented extensive reforms, but the opposition is having none of that argument (and neither should you).
Photo Credit: Hasan Jamali/AP . Via.
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This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.
- News this morning:A NATO helicopter crash in Kabul killed 12 in the helicopter and 4 civilians on the ground. A previously unreported shooting last month has been revealed in which an Afghan shot and killed a Marine.
- Jeremy Scahill wrote an excellent piece for the Nation on why President Obama has been behind the continued detention of a Yemeni journalist.
- Syria marks the one-year anniversary of its revolution’s beginnings.
- The Guardian has obtained several thousand of the private emails of Bashar and Asma al-Assad.
- Human Rights Watch reports that Syria is laying landmines along its borders with Lebanon and Turkey.
- Clashes have erupted once more in Bahrainon the one-year anniversary of a government crackdown on the revolution.
- Bahrain plans to retry 20 medics who were originally convicted and sentenced to prison terms for assisting protesters, among a number of charges of anti-state activity.
- Israel saw its latest flare-up with Gaza as a warm-up act, or practice run, for an impending war with Iran.
- The US eyes former NSC official Brett McGurk for the position of US ambassador to Iraq.
- The Afghan who crashed his pick-up truck near Secretary Panetta’s plane has died of his injuries.
- Matthieu Aikins examines a confidential NATO report on the Taliban in Afghanistan for GQ.
- The Taliban have pulled out of preliminary peace talks with the US and called off plans to establish an office in Doha.
- The suspect in the massacre of Afghan civilians has been flown to Kuwait.
- New poll numbers show that the American public’s confidence in US military power has declined, as has specific support for the Afghan war.
- Pakistan has told the US that it may no longer make use of its airspace for drone strikes.
- Lt. Gen. Zaheerul Islam will replace ISI Chief Shuja Pasha as Pakistan’s spymaster on March 18th.
- The ICC has handed down its first ruling: Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga is convicted of conscripting child soldiers.
- A secret squadron of Australian special forces have been at large in Africa performing spy operations in a number of countries.
- Houston plans to honor the returned Iraq war veterans with a parade next month.
- Female soldiers stationed in the US prove their mettle against their male counterparts in cagefighting tournaments.
- Army mental health workers are discouraged from official diagnoses of mental health problems in war zones.
- Back injuries and chronic back pain are troubling veterans.
Photo: Diraz, a village west of Manama, Bahrain. March 10th. Protesters are silhouetted by a flaming barricade they’ve set up as they clash with riot police after Fadhel Mirza’s funeral procession. Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters
This Week in War. A Friday round-up of what happened and what’s been written in the world of war and military/security affairs this week. It’s a mix of news reports, policy briefs, blog posts and longform journalism.
- Last night, veteran foreign correspondent and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid of the New York Times died of an apparent asthma attack while on assignment inside Syria. The genuine outpouring of grief on social media has been a testament to how much of an inspiration and a model for journalism and reporting he has been to so many, myself included. This is a great loss. Read his work for the NYT here.
- Rolling Stone got its hands on a draft copy of LTC Daniel Davis’s report, “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leaders’ Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort.”
- Civilian contractor deaths outnumbered US military deaths in Afghanistan this year. The risks to them highlight the minimal attention paid to them in casualty counts and the actions of private contracting companies toward their employees.
- The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan released its assessment report on civilians in the Afghan conflict for 2011.
- NPR interviewed former Army Sgt Kayla Williams about the status of women in the military and she had very wise things to say.
- On a similar note, I have a deconstruction of Rick Santorum’s position on women in the military up over at The Risky Shift.
- The Joint IED Defense Organization released a Counter-IED Strategic Plan, which essentially paints a grim and expensive picture of the future of the fight against these weapons.
- An NPR discussion on Syria asks if it’s time for military intervention.
- Obama’s 2013 budget request calls for defense cuts, which Lieberman called a risk to national security.
- Defense Sec’y Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Dempsey testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday and were grilled over the budget (particularly base closures and nuclear cuts). Chairman of HASC, Buck McKeon, called the Obama defense cuts a “strategy founded on hope.”
- The Tunisian defense minister looks to foster a military relationship with the US, calling for US support after a Wednesday meeting of a joint Tunisian-American military commission.
- Bahrain and Libya both marked the anniversaries of the births of their protest movements and revolutions (February 14th and February 17th, respectively).
- The Pakistani military has rejected Human Rights Watch’s criticisms of a judicial commission set up to investigate the death of journalist Saleem Shahzad, calling HRW’s statements ‘derogatory, biased and contradictory.”
Photo: Rangers from 1st Bn, 75th Ranger Regiment in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan await extraction by a CH-47. US Army Pfc. Pedro Almodovar. Via the US Army Flickr.
Picture of the Day. Manama, Bahrain. A protester in a mask to protect herself from teargas continues to mark the anniversary of the Bahraini uprising’s birth, on Febraury 14th.
The Read: “Suppressing the Narrative in Bahrain” by Matthew Cassel at Al Jazeera.
Photo Credit: Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters. Via.
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Bahrain. Tens of thousands of protesters have gathered near Manama to start a week-long sit in (#MeqshaSitIn) to call for human rights and release of political prisoners.
Speaking to a crowd outside the capital, Bahraini dissident poet Ayat al-Qormozi said:
This is a dress rehearsal for the return. We will return! We will return! Soon our sit-in will not be here but at the Pearl Roundabout
Photo from @BahrainPictures, via Enduring America.
- الشعب يريد اسقاط النظام/Asha’ab yurīd isqāt anizām
“The people want the fall of the regime” and it’s variations (The people want the fall of the Makhzen (ruling elite in Morocco), or the Field Marshal) is probably the most classic and well-known of all the chants. Its simplicity and versatility and its place in 2011’s incredible politics make it the shoo-in for first place on this list
- We are the 99%
This has been an inescapable slogan, and has resonated very powerfully with people’s experiences of economic injustice around the world, becoming a rallying cry and a point of unification for Occupiers.
- ارحل/Irhal!
The command, Leave!, is directed at despots, from Ali Abdullah Saleh to Field Marshal Tantawi. Another versatile protest chant that has been heard in revolutionary music, painted on faces and walls and shouted in the streets countless times over thecourse of 2011.
- يمكنك ان تدهس الورود، لكنك لا تستطيع ان تؤخر الربيع
“You can trample the roses but you cannot delay the spring” hardly has the ubiquity of “Asha’ab yurīd isqāt anizzām,” but happens to be one of my personal favorites.
- Strike like an Egyptian.
An expression of admiration and solidarity, playing on “Walk like an Egyptian,” acknowledging the incredible influence of the North African revolutions.
- The people are too big to fail.
The play on the famous phrase said about banks captures perfectly the intentions of the Occupiers and the potency of the Occupy movement.
- كن مع الثورة/Kun ma’ athawra
A beautiful sentiment: be with the revolution. Based on the saying “Be with Allah.”
- We are the power!
One of the more popular ones heard in recent Russian protests against Putin’s governance and rigged parliamentary elections.
- هو يمشي مش هنمشي/”Huwa yimshī mish hanimshī.”
This very catchy phrase, in Egyptian dialect, means “he will leave and we will not!”
Extras: Watch the teaser clip of director Stephen Savona’s documentary “Tahrir,” featuring footage of Egyptian protest chants. And watch Egyptian singer Ramy Essam perform his song “Irhal,” featuring a number of popular chants.
(Thanks to @ArabRevRap for input on this post!)
Any slogans in particular that you felt were amazing or influential in global protests this year?
Picture of the Day. Diraz, Bahrain. Anti-government protesters are backlit by the riot police laser beams.
Photo Credit: Hamad I Muhammad/Reuters. Via.
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Bahrain. A police officer talks to activist Zainab al-Khawaja (@angryarabiya), then arrests her and drags her away for demonstrating at a roundabout on Budaiya Highway, Manama. Police dispersed hundreds of protesters along the highway in the capital today with tear gas and stun grenades.
Photo Credit (first photo for sure, probably both photos): Hamad I Muhammad/Reuters
Picture of the Day. Isa, south of the capital, Manama, Bahrain. Women demonstrate against the government on the streets, many of them the wives and mothers of detained and hunger striking opposition activists, arrested Tuesday at Pearl Roundabout.
Photo Credit: Hamad I Muhammad/Reuters. Via.
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