Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

A teddy on sale in Sudan

Teacher charged over teddy row, BBC, November 28, 2007

A British teacher has been charged in Sudan with insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that charges have been laid against Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool.

She was arrested in Khartoum after allowing her class of primary school pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said he will summon the Sudanese ambassador “as a matter of urgency”.

In a statement, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “surprised and disappointed” at the charges.

A spokesman said the first step was to “understand the rationale behind the charge”, something which would be discussed by Mr Miliband and the ambassador as soon as possible.

‘Shameful ordeal’

“We will consider our response in the light of that,” he added.

Lawyers say Mrs Gibbons faces six months in jail, 40 lashes or a fine if convicted.

Sudanese state media said prosecutors had completed their investigation and decided to charge Mrs Gibbons under Article 125 of the Sudanese criminal code.

Female suicide bomber hits Sri Lankan capital | csmonitor.com, Nov. 29, 2007

A female suicide bomber struck Wednesday in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, killing herself and one other person, but not the government minister who was the intended target. Authorities blamed the attack on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, whose long-running separatist war flared up last year after the collapse of a Norwegian-brokered 2002 cease-fire.

The suicide bombing came one day after Sri Lanka warplanes bombed a LTTE radio station to stop the broadcast of an annual speech by rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. The group separately accused the military of planting a roadside bomb that killed 13 people, mostly students. In his speech, which was carried by other rebel media, Mr. Prabhakaran said it was impossible to make peace with the ethnic Sinhalese majority. For its part, the Sinhalese-dominated government has said it can defeat the LTTE in its northern stronghold and vowed Monday to kill Prabhakaran.

The suicide bombing took place near the office of Welfare Minister Douglas Devananda, reports Reuters. The minister’s personal secretary died and two other people were wounded in the blast, according to hospital officials. An officer of the elite police Special Task Force told Reuters that it was a suicide mission….

The LTTE has fought since 1983 for an independent Tamil homeland in northern Sri Lanka, in a war that has killed around 70,000 people. Tamils make up 11.9 percent of the island’s 20 million people, and almost 74 percent are Sinhalese, reports Bloomberg.

In July, Sri Lanka’s Army flushed the LTTE out of the island’s multiethnic east. Earlier this month, President Mahinda Rajapakse vowed in parliament to “eradicate” terrorism from the country and said that the LTTE had “demonstrated that they will never be ready to surrender arms and agree to a democratic political settlement.”

Unsurprisingly, the renewed conflict has driven away foreign tourists, reports Agence France-Presse. Arrivals fell 20 percent in the first 10 months of the year to 387,790. Tourism is the island fourth-biggest industry.

In an analysis last month in Asia Times Online, security consultant James Voortman said that having taken back the eastern region Sri Lanka now has the upper hand over the LTTE. But the cost of a military victory, if attainable, could be prohibitive.

Defense analysts are divided on whether or not the military can drive the Tigers from their northern stronghold. The proponents of an assault argue that the Tigers are currently weak. There is an element of truth in this, as is seen with the loss of the east and subsequent battles on the northern fringes…However, other defense analysts see this lack of activity as exactly what makes the Tigers even more dangerous. This theory claims that the rebel leadership has dedicated all of its manpower to defending the north. With the Tigers stronghold being heavily fortified, it will not fall easily, and the military is likely to suffer high casualties.

Daniel Levy, Keep the cynics at bay, Guardian, November 27, 2007

Olmert’s political problems must look like a cakewalk from the window of the presidential compound in Ramallah. President Abbas arrives at Annapolis as the head of a divided Palestinian polity and unable to even set foot in Gaza, where 1.4 million Palestinians live under siege and the threat of further punitive measures (their Israeli neighbours face daily, if largely ineffective, rocket strikes). Abbas needs political concessions from the folks in Jerusalem and Washington and, in particular, a prospect for the end of occupation in order to revive the fortunes of his Fatah movement and the path of negotiated non-violent conflict resolution. The Palestinians will be showered with kind words at Annapolis; three weeks later they will likely receive pledges of hard cash at a donor’s conference in Paris. Even if the Palestinians are presented with a horizon of real independence and statehood, it will likely be preconditioned on an unrealistic set of Palestinian security measures.

To really be credible, the Annapolis process will have to overcome two remaining taboos: that Palestinians can deliver ongoing security to Israel under conditions of occupation and that a divided Palestine can midwife a sustainable peace. The Hamas spoiler potential is not solely or even principally about its ability to deploy violence. It is also about the credibility and legitimacy of a process that excludes the party that polled most votes in Palestinian elections.

Which brings us back to our American friends. The Bush administration continues to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of a global war on terrorism and as part of the momentous struggle of good against evil. The great irony of the Annapolis conference is that the framing narrative of its convener is the one thing that most undermines its chances of success. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is grievance-driven and its resolution is all about ending the occupation. Israel needs and deserves security and peace but those things don’t coexist cozily with occupation. Violent al-Qaidists and their copycat crews use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to rally and mobilise support, to vilify America and to undermine America’s allies in the region.

Reporters say Baghdad too dangerous despite surge, Reuters, November 28, 2007

WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.

A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq.

But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures.

Much of the danger for journalists is faced by local Iraqis, who often do most of the reporting outside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the data showed.

Fifty-eight percent of U.S. news organizations have had local Iraqi staff killed or kidnapped within the past year, the survey said. About two-thirds of news outlets said local staff face physical or verbal threats at least several times a month.

“Above all, the journalists — most of them veteran war correspondents — describe conditions in Iraq as the most perilous they have ever encountered, and this above everything else is influencing the reporting,” the authors said in a report that accompanied the data.

Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism surveyed 111 journalists who have worked in Iraq for 29 news organizations, all but one of them U.S.-based. The poll was conducted Sept. 28 through Nov. 7, Pew said….

But 87 percent of respondents said at least half of Baghdad remains too dangerous for a Western journalist to visit, with the capital’s Shi’ite-dominated Sadr City enclave rated the most dangerous spot in Iraq. Eighteen percent said the entire city of Baghdad is too dangerous for travel.

Conn Hallinan, The Algebra of Occupation, Foreign Policy In Focus, November 27, 2007In 1805, the French army out maneuvered, outsmarted, and outfought the combined armies of Russia and Austria at Austerlitz. Three years later it would flounder against a rag-tag collection of Spanish guerrillas.

In 1967, it took six days for the Israeli army to smash Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 2006, a Shiite militia fought the mightiest army in the Middle East to a bloody standstill in Lebanon.

In 1991, it took four days of ground combat for the United States to crush Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War. U.S. losses were 148 dead and 647 wounded. After more than five years of war in Iraq, U.S. losses are approaching 4,000, with over 50,000 wounded; 2007 is already the deadliest year of the war for the United States.

In each case, a great army won a decisive victory only to see that victory canceled out by what T.E. Lawrence once called the “algebra of occupation.” Writing about the British occupation of Iraq following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I, Lawrence put his finger on the formula that has doomed virtually every military force that has tried to quell a restive population.

Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has cited Lawrence to this effect: “Rebellion must have an unassailable base…it must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form a disciplined army of occupation too small to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts. It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy. Rebellions can be made by 2 percent active in a striking force, and 98 percent passive sympathy. Granted mobility, security…time and doctrine…victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive.”