Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Uganda and Rebels Agree to Third Phase of Five-Stage Peace Deal, Reuters, New York Times, July 1, 2007

KAMPALA, Uganda, June 30 (Reuters) — Uganda’s government and the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have signed an agreement on how to deal with war crimes in the third phase of talks to end one of Africa’s worst conflicts, the rebels said Saturday.

The signing, at negotiations in southern Sudan, was a major development in an intended five-stage peace deal aiming to end two decades of violence in northern Uganda.

“We signed the agreement on reconciliation and accountability late last night, which moves us one step closer to a final peace agreement,” Martin Ojul, the leader of the rebel delegation in Sudan, said by phone.

Talks between the sides started last July, which raised hopes of an end to a war that has caused tens of thousands of deaths and forced nearly two million refugees into camps that aid workers say are among most squalid in the world.

Progress had been slow since a truce was signed last August. But last month the sides signed the second stage of the deal, breaking months of deadlock.

The third phase is supposed to set principles for dealing with war criminals — a thorny subject for a rebel group notorious for beating civilians to death, mutilating victims and abducting children.

The rebel leader, Joseph Kony, and three other top commanders are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and have vowed never to leave their Congolese jungle hide-outs unless the court drops the indictments.

One of a series of photos by Francine Orr presented in Flash sequence with narration

Francine Orr, Horror in Uganda - Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2005

The Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, has been terrorizing villagers. It kidnaps adults to haul heavy loads over long distances. But it also steals children, some as young as 8. The LRA forces the boys to become soldiers; the girls become sex slaves.

It also compels its victims to victimize others. Reports abound of youngsters torturing or killing peers who had tried to escape or displeased their captors. Hundreds of youths have shared details of their ordeals with aid workers who have set up live-in trauma counseling centers.

The LRA is led by Joseph Kony, who claims to be acting under divine instruction. It says it is fighting for political recognition, and it denies brutality toward civilians. In one day last month, however, the rebels hacked at least 16 people to death with the victims’ own farming tools. The government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has tried to conduct negotiations with Korny, but there have been no firm results. Officials say that Kony is nothing more than a bandit and that it would be out of the question to give him either amnesty or a political office.

So the cruelty persists. International aid groups estimate that 30,000 children have been abducted in the slow-burning conflict. Although hundreds have escaped, they rarely find peace.

Villages across northern Uganda have been uprooted. The former residents languish in camps, which are cramped and unsanitary. Food, clean water and medical care are scarce. Malnutrition and diseases such as malaria, scabies and tuberculosis afflict many. Those who leave camp to look for work, firewood or edible plants risk being attacked by the rebels, captured in shootouts or blown up by mines that litter the landscape. The rebels often storm the camps to loot supplies and kidnap more victims.

George F. Will - None of The Below - washingtonpost.com, December 2, 2007

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee’s candidacy rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore I am a conservative, therefore whatever I have done or propose to do with “compassionate,” meaning enlarged, government is conservatism. And by the way, anything I denote as a “moral” issue is beyond debate other than by the uncaring forces of greed. His is a moralist’s version of the intellectual vanity once ascribed to Oxford’s Benjamin Jowett:

My name is Jowett

Of Balliol College;

If I don’t know it,

It is not knowledge.

Many Iowans think it would be wise to nominate a candidate who, when the Republicans were asked during a debate to raise their hands if they do not believe in evolution, raised his. But, then, Huckabee believes America can be energy-independent in 10 years, so he has peculiar views about more than paleontology.

Huckabee combines pure moralism with incoherent populism: He wants Washington to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public, show more solicitude for Americans of modest means and impose more protectionism, thereby raising the cost of living for Americans of modest means.

Although Huckabee is considered affable, two subliminal but clear enough premises of his Iowa attack on Mitt Romney are unpleasant: The almost 6 million American Mormons who consider themselves Christians are mistaken about that. And — 55 million non-Christian Americans should take note — America must have a Christian president.

Another pious populist who was annoyed by Darwin — William Jennings Bryan — argued that William Howard Taft, his opponent in the 1908 presidential election, was unfit to be president because he was a Unitarian, a persuasion sometimes defined as the belief that there is at most one God. The electorate chose to run the risk of entrusting the presidency to someone skeptical about the doctrine of the Trinity.

If Huckabee succeeds in derailing Romney’s campaign by raising a religious test for presidential eligibility, that will be clarifying: In one particular, America was more enlightened a century ago.

People For the American Way - Texas: “Patriot Pastors” for Perry, 2006

Texas is home to a pioneer of pulpit-based politics, Rick Scarborough, the former minister of First Baptist Church in Pearland and a long-time ally of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Scarborough’s efforts to “mobilize” pastors in politics go back at least as far as 1996, when he ran an ultraconservative-insurgency campaign for president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. (He lost.) In his book that year, Enough Is Enough, Scarborough described his success in creating a local political machine around his church, strongly urging his congregants to run for office at all levels: “At this writing, three members of our church serve on the city council. . . Four of our members serve on the school board. The city manager is a member of our church. The police chief is a member of our church. The assistant district attorney of Brazoria County is a member of our church. . .”[27]…

By 2004, Scarborough created his own network of “Patriot Pastors” to lead evangelicals to the polls for the 2004 election, and expanded it to at least 5,000 by the time Texas voters ratified a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in 2005. “One of my goals in life is to give the Republican Party courage,” he told The Washington Post during the debate over the “nuclear option” to push through Bush’s extremist judicial nominees.[29] At the same time, Scarborough’s Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration worked in Washington to push Bush’s judicial nominees, organizing a conference timed around the death of Terri Schiavo at which DeLay urged the impeachment of judges, and other speakers suggested execution.[30]

Court approves Gaza fuel cutbacks, BBC, November 30, 2007

The Supreme Court in Israel has ruled that the government can continue its cutbacks of fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, but must delay electricity cuts.

Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups had challenged the move, calling it an illegal collective punishment.

The Israeli government argues the cutbacks are used as economic sanctions in retaliation for rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Adnan al-Dulaimi

Iraq MP’s son held over bomb find, BBC, November 30, 2007

The son of a key Iraqi Sunni politician and up to 50 other people have been held by security forces who say they found a car bomb in the MP’s compound.

The MP, Adnan al-Dulaimi, insists the car was not in the compound and he strongly denies any links to terrorism.

Controlled explosions were carried out after the find late on Thursday. Some reports say two car bombs were found.

Mr Dulaimi heads Iraq’s main Sunni political bloc, which pulled out of the Shia-led government in August.

Son of Sunni Leader Arrested in Iraq, AP, November 30, 2007

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi troops arrested the son of a leading Sunni politician and dozens of his associates after a car bomb was discovered near his compound and keys to the vehicle were found on one of his bodyguards, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Friday.

Five U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were injured when they detonated the car bomb near the compound of Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the biggest Sunni bloc in parliament, the U.S. military said.

The arrests threaten to inflame sectarian tensions at a time when U.S. officials are pushing Iraqi politicians to take advantage of a decline in violence to forge power-sharing agreements among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

Al-Dulaimi’s bloc, the Iraqi Accordance Front, accused Shiite-dominated security forces of “creating and marketing this crisis” to undermine U.S. efforts to organize Sunni tribes against al-Qaida.