Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

They scrawled the words "Fuck yeah" on the pages of the Holy Koran and then they shot it full of holes. Last week a few American soldiers in Iraq thought it would be cool to use the Koran for target practice. The US commander on the ground, Major General Jeffery Hammond, has quickly apologized to try to repair the damage. I hope it will be enough, but I seriously doubt that fallout from this act of stupidity by a few soldiers can be contained.

I am a Muslim. I am an American. I am deeply offended. Those who know me know that I am not easily offended in these matters.

Muslims consider the words in the Koran to be the literal word of God. Korans in Muslim homes are kept in a place of honor, usually displayed on a stand made to hold the book on a mantle or another prominent place. Muslims consider it a grave insult if the Koran comes into contact with one’s feet or is desecrated in any other way. Every Muslim understands this. It is instinctive to protect the Koran.

So when an American soldier desecrates a Koran and riddles it with bullets, the message is clear: it does not need any translation. This isn’t the "cartoon controversy" where a bunch of radical Islamists thumped their chests in response. This will hit home with the moderate Muslims around the world. Moderate Muslims are not going to go out on the streets and march in protest. But they will understand the message coming from America. At a time when America needs the moderates in the Muslim world to rally to the cause and isolate the extremists, this kind of act will cause the moderates to sit on their hands.  I doubt very many Muslims around the world will care to make the distinction between the act of a few American soldiers and the policy of the United States. That kind of nuance is likely not going to translate well.

This kind of action is a victory for the hatemongers on both sides. It makes my conversations with Muslims in the country of my birth - Bangladesh - that much more difficult. I will trot out the standard line about how this was an act of a few and does not represent the attitude of the United States government toward the Muslims of the world. I will get a polite hearing, but I doubt anyone will believe me. Already I am confronted with Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay when I speak out against human rights violations in the Muslim world. At least in those cases I can make the admittedly weak case that those abuses were carried out in the overzealous response to terrorists acts - that those acts were targetted at who the United States thought posed a security threat to itself. In this case, however, there is no getting around the fact that the target is the over one billion Muslims around the world.

I am not so worried that this particular act will increase the level of terrorism against the United States. Those who would act in violence don’t particularly need this as an excuse to do their acts - if it wasn’t this, they would find another justification. But I do worry that the long-term goal of winning "hearts and minds" just took a major blow. I don’t know how many more such blows can be absorbed before the divide between the Muslim world and the West is irretrievably made permanent.

Those of us who stand with a foot in each culture have a responsibility to try the bridge the gaps of misunderstanding and mutual fear that have hightened since the September 11th attacks. But our voices are drowned out, along with the voices of the majority of those in the West and in the Muslim world who simply want to live in peace to raise their families, when this kind of act is carried out by a "strategic corporal" . This must stop.

UPDATE:  I crossposted this on Daily Kos last night. It has reached the recommended list and launched a vigorous debate in the comments. Now there are over 700 comments on the post and the debate continues. The diary has elicited strong opinions on all sides and quite a lot of insightful commentary.

A P P E A S E M E N T - This morning I appeased my car by driving it. What and who did you appease today?

If you missed it, this morning the village idiot was in Israel saving the world from the Nazis again.

Hillary Clinton did not bring peace to Northern Ireland, but she may have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

Hillary Clinton did not negotiate to open borders in Kosovo (with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow at her side), but she may have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

Hillary Clinton did make a speech in China, and that is the only thing her campaign advisors could think of to demonstrate her foreign policy experience.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisors of course could not point to the biggest foreign policy decision she has had to make as an example of her experience, because to do so would raise uncomfortable questions about her judgment or her competence. That experience is Iraq.

Since Hillary Clinton voted to give George W Bush authority to wage war in Iraq she has wavered from saying she had no regrets about her vote to recently saying that she regretted the vote. Her regret for the vote has increased in inverse proportion to the time left to the Democratic nomination.

However, Hillary Clinton has always claimed that she voted not to take the country to war, but instead to avert war by making it easier for the President to wage war. Mrs. Clinton stated on the floor of the Senate that:

Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely, and therefore, war less likely, and because a good faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause, I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation.

Barack Obama often points out that the resolution Hillary Clinton voted for was titled "A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq". So her claim that she wasn’t voting for war is on its face absurd. Further, the resolution that Mrs. Clinton voted for and defended gave the President explicit authority to wage war in Iraq in Section 3(a) and reinforced the point by covering the War Powers Resolution requirements in Section 3(c):

(c) WAR POWERS RESOLUTION REQUIREMENTS.—
(1) SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION.—Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.
(2) APPLICABILITY OF OTHER REQUIREMENTS.—Nothing in this joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution.

With Section 3(c), Congress gave the President specific statutory authorization under the War Powers Resolution. Without this authority, Congress could have required George W Bush to get authorization before launching any attack on Iraq. Sections 8(a)(1) and 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution together require the President to terminate "any use of United States armed forces" unless Congress "has declared war or has enacted a specific authorization for such use of United States Armed Forces". The Resolution Mrs. Clinton voted for was just such a specific authorization. Mrs. Clinton was not giving diplomacy a chance, she had just authorized the President of the United States to wage war. She gave George W Bush a loaded pistol and is now surprised that he used it.

In case Mrs. Clinton was under some other illusion at the time, she could have simply listened to the public statements coming from the end of Pennsylvania Avenue she now claims her foreign policy experience qualifies her to take up residence in. On the day Mrs. Clinton voted, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher was already talking about what the occupation of Iraq would look like:

Today the White House altered its explanation of the current thinking. Ari Fleischer, the president’s press secretary, said that while ‘’there will certainly be a role for the military'’ in Iraq if Saddam Hussein is dislodged, he expected that Iraqis would not be treated as a former enemy, but rather as a liberated people.

‘’I dispute that notion'’ of occupation, he said. Japan, he noted, ‘’actively fought the United States'’ during World War II, before its postwar occupation. In Iraq in 1991, he noted, many in the Iraqi military surrendered, and he expected that would happen again. ‘’My point is, the likelihood is much more like Afghanistan, where the people who live right now under a brutal dictator will view America as liberators, not conquerors.'’

On the failure of her major foray into domestic policy as First Lady, Hillary Clinton described her performance as "naive and dumb". On her most important foreign policy decision as a United States Senator, it is baffling to think that she would not realize that she had voted to take the United States to war with Iraq.

Hillary Clinton needs to clearly explainto the Democratic voters  whether she voted to take the United States to war in Iraq or whether she did not realize what she was voting for.

As most of the world probably knows, Samantha Power has resigned as Barack Obama’s senior foreign policy advisor after a Scottish newspaper published that she called Mrs. Clinton a "monster" during an interview. The Clinton campaign is salivating at this "victory". I am not sure how removing a tireless voice against genocide from a potential Democratic administration can be considered a victory by anyone seriously concerned about the continuing evil of genocide. It is my hope that after Barack Obama has inevitably dispatched the slash and burn campaign of Hillary Clinton, he will bring Samantha Power into his administration.

And for the record, Hillary Clinton is not a monster…as far as I know.

A remarkable woman has written a book on a remarkable man who lived an extraordinary life. Tonight I went to hear Samantha Power speak at Politics and Prose on her new book Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World. Samantha Power, who is a senior advisor for Barack Obama, currently teaches at the Kennedy School of Government. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. I am a big fan.

Sergio Vieira de Mello was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights when he was sent to Iraq as the UN special representative in the aftermath of the American invasion in 2003. On August 19, 2003 he died after a truck bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad. With his death the world lost an extraordinary diplomat, a humanitarian and a man who spent over three decades working to resolve conflicts all around the world, from Bangladesh to Bosnia, from Sudan to Lebanon, from Kosovo to Iraq, and many other conflicts. Sergio began his career in Bangladesh, helping distribute food and resettle returning refugees as a new nation emerged from the ashes of a united Pakistan. He went on to become one of the most widely respected diplomats in world. At the time of his death he was on the short list to become the next UN Secretary General.

A biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello is also the story of the major world crises in the last three decades. Its a story of delicate peacemaking,  false steps, dealing with ethnic struggles, negotiating with dictators and bringing hope to refugees and those in need. I have been waiting for this book for a long time. I am thrilled that Samantha Power has brought the story of this fascinating life to a wider audience.

The newspapers in Bangladesh fed us the party line. They declared that a "foreign body" had been provoking labor unrest in Bangladesh’s garment industry. Never mind that rising food prices and unpaid back wages have driven those who already live on the edge over the edge. The military government, faced with the fruits of its incompetence, has found the convenient foreign bogey man. The Daily Star tells us about this foreign hand:

Law enforcement agencies have confirmed that a foreign organisation and leaders of a section of garment workers were involved in provoking the recent unrest in garment factories in the city’s Mirpur area.

After investigation, an intelligence agency arrested Mehedi Hasan, Bangladesh representative of the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), at the Zia International Airport prior to his departure for Bangkok on January 24.

…

Court sources said Mehedi reportedly confessed to interrogators that he used to collect information about workers’ problems and send it by email to the WRC headquarters in Washington DC in the USA. He was also learnt to have disclosed that he incited garment workers to press for their demands and held several secret meetings with the leaders of a section of garment workers.

The Bangladesh military has arrested Mehedi Hasan, a man who works for Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). The job of WRC is to collect information about worker’s problems and report it to its affiliate schools. You see, WRC represents 178 American colleges and universities (including my alma mater, Vassar College) who buy garments from brands with factories in countries like Bangladesh. WRC defends the rights of garment workers against abuse. Its reports hold the garment factories’ feet to the fire. WRC’s affiliated colleges and universities use these reports to pressure garments companies to protect workers’ rights.

In short, the Bangladesh military has arrested a man and have accused him of doing his job. The Bangladesh military has discovered that a "foreign body" is working to improve the working conditions in Bangladesh’s garment industry. So they have put a stop to it.

Bangladesh generates much needed income from the garments business. According to the Associated Press, the garments industry brings in more than $10 billion a year from exports to mainly the United States and Europe. Arresting a worker who represents WRC for doing his job can only raise concerns amongst American buyers of Bangladeshi garments. There are reports already in the American media of such concerns:

A labor rights investigator was arrested by the Bangladeshi government, prompting U.S. companies to lobby for his release.

Mehedi Hasan, an employee of the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), was arrested Thursday, according to the organization. The WRC said yesterday that he was arrested in retaliation for his efforts to protect the rights of workers in factories that sell U.S. brands.

Gap Inc. spokeswoman Melissa Swanson said the company is "looking into this situation, working with appropriate authorities and local organizations, and we are hopeful for a prompt and just resolution," she said.

Kazi Shamsul Alam, commerce counselor at the Bangladeshi Embassy, said yesterday that he received calls from the WRC, Nike and Gap expressing concern, but did not know the charges on which Mr. Hasan was being held.

The report further adds that Mehedi Hasan had been under surveillance by Bangladesh’ military intelligence and one of his colleagues was also harassed at the airport:

WRC Executive Director Scott Nova said, "There have been thousands of political arrests [in Bangladesh] and numerous reports of physical mistreatment of prisoners. We just hope that the attention the arrest has got will provide Mr. Hasan with a level of protection."

Mr. Hasan’s role was to scrutinize factories and their treatment of workers in Dhaka, ensuring that clothing was not produced under sweatshop conditions. WRC monitors conditions for 178 universities and colleges that lend their brands to Nike and Gap.

The WRC said yesterday that another employee was detained at the airport and subjected to "aggressive interrogation" earlier this month, during which his interrogators made clear that both he and Mr. Hasan were under surveillance by the security forces.

Tonight Human Rights Watch issued a press release citing Mehedi Hasan’s arrest and calling on the Bangladesh military to stop harassing labor rights activists. According to the press release:

“The interim government is abusing its emergency powers to target individuals who are trying to protect workers’ rights in Bangladesh’s most important export industry,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This should set off alarm bells among donors and governments who don’t seem to understand or care how the authorities are using the state of emergency to systematically suppress basic rights.”  

UK-based Labour Behind The Label has also called for his immediate and unconditional release.

In one year of emergency rule the Bangladesh military has presided over spiraling food prices, has tortured and killed its own citizens, has jailed nearly half a million people, has jailed students and professors, has created a climate of fear in the business community, and has now seen labor unrest in a key sector of the economy. Its fix to almost all problems has been to pull out the gun.

Today that gun points at Mehedi Hasan. However, behind him stand the millions in Bangladesh and around the world who say no to exploitation of workers, who believe in the right to a living wage, and who believe in humane working conditions. Behind him stand the foreign apparel brands that purchase Bangladeshi garments, the colleges and universities that buy those brands, and the organizations that ensure that human beings are not being treated inhumanely along the way. It seems to me that the Bangladesh military would serve Bangladesh, its people, and its economy best by putting down the gun.

Someone please explain to me why we bombed into the Stone Age the most secular Arab country in the Middle East while kissing and holding hands with the most backward ruling elite in perhaps the entire world.

Please justify this Mr. Bush:

A court in Saudi Arabia increased the punishment for a gang-rape victim after her lawyer won an appeal of the sentence for the rapists, the lawyer told CNN.

The 19-year-old victim was sentenced last year to 90 lashes for meeting with an unrelated male, a former friend from whom she was retrieving photographs. The seven rapists, who abducted the pair and raped both, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.

The victim’s attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, contested the rapists’ sentence, contending there is a fatwa, or edict under Islamic law, that considers such crimes Hiraba (sinful violent crime) and the punishment should be death.

"After a year, the preliminary court changed the punishment and made it two to nine years for the defendants," al-Lahim said of the new decision handed down Wednesday. "However, we were shocked that they also changed the victim’s sentence to be six months in prison and 200 lashes."

The judges more than doubled the punishment for the victim because of "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," according to a source quoted by Arab News, an English-language Middle Eastern daily newspaper.

Judge Saad al-Muhanna from the Qatif General Court also barred al-Lahim from defending his client and revoked his law license, al-Lahim said. The attorney has been ordered to attend a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Justice next month.

"Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world" - Archimedes, 220 BC

On November 10, 1987 a young Bangladeshi man named Nur Hossain was shot and killed by the forces of Bangladesh’s part-time poet and full time dictator General Hossain Mohammad Ershad. On that day Nur Hossain had joined thousands of other Bangladeshis in protesting the dictator’s rule. The protesters demanded a return to democracy. Nur Hossain stood out amongst the protesters. He had the Bengali words "Sairachar nipat jak" painted in bright white letters on his bare chest, and the words "Ganatantra mukti pak" painted on his back. "Down with autocracy" on his chest; "Let there be democracy" on his back. He died for those demands and became a martyr for the democracy movement in Bangladesh.

Today, two decades after his death, we remember and honor him.

The dictator Ershad did not fall that day. Instead he talked tough:

President H. M. Ershad, declaring he would no longer tolerate anti-Government riots, vowed today that arsonists and looters would be shot on sight.

‘’So far I have not used any of my weapons,'’ President Ershad told foreign reporters in an interview after four days of sporadic unrest in this capital and other cities. ‘’I can be tough. Everyone in this country is asking me to be really tough. We are not going to tolerate any more of this nonsense.'’

But Nur Hossain’s death had galvanized the people of Bangladesh. The long march to democracy had begun.

A little over five years before Nur Hossain was murdered, General Ershad seized power in a coup in Bangladesh and declared he would "end corruption in public life.":

The nation’s new military ruler announced today that special courts would be set up to punish all guilty of corruption, with the power to impose heavy prison terms or even the death penalty.

Lieut. Gen. Hussain Mohammed Ershad, the army chief of staff, who seized power Wednesday to ‘’end corruption in public life,'’ issued martial-law regulations that said those facing prosecution could include former presidents, former Government ministers and members of the defense and police forces.

…

The regulations announced by the general as part of his drive to root out what he called the ‘’cancer'’ of official corruption said the courts would punish those found guilty of engaging in criminal misconduct.

The general said Wednesday that strikes, political meetings and processions would be banned, and today it was announced that the ban would apply to the parade that had been scheduled for tomorrow to mark the 11th anniversary of the independence of Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan.

General Ershad launched his "anti-corruption" drive and banned political activity so that he could remove the "cancer" of public corruption. Ershad promised to restore democracy within two years. He also declared that he had the support of the United States:

The army general who Wednesday imposed martial law in Bangladesh said tonight that he hoped democracy could be restored within two years and that political activity might be permitted again in six months.

This country’s new chief martial law administrator, Lieut. Gen. H.M. Ershad, said also that the United States had changed its stand since Wednesday, when the State Department said it regretted the coup. ‘’They changed their attitude later on,'’ General Ershad said without elaborating.

At a news conference tonight for foreign reporters he again said the coup had been in response to insufferable political corruption, bickering, lawlessness and ‘’confusion in the minds of the people.'’

He said the mostly Western aid donors that have helped keep Bangladesh afloat since the famine of the mid-1970’s ‘’will understand the situation'’ and continue the aid.

The General was right about the United States.

The General survived in power a little over three years after Nur Hossain’s death. At the end of November 1990, as the pro-democracy movement flared all around him, General Ershad’s forces once again fired upon pro-democracy demonstrators. This time they killed 50 Bangladeshi citizens. To retain his grip on power, the dictator again declared a state of emergency. But to no avail. Less then one week later the dictator was forced to resign.

About three months later, in February of 1991, the people of Bangladesh went to the polls to elect their next prime minister in a free and fair democratic election. General Ershad, the man on whose orders Nur Hossain was murdered, was charged and convicted of corruption and other related crimes and sent to prison.

Now, two decades after Nur Hossain paid with his life for a democracy he envisioned, Bangladesh is once again under a General’s grip. The story is the same. The new General, Moeen U Ahmed, is also fighting "corruption". The new administration in Washington supports him. Meanwhile the democracy that Nur Hossain earned with his blood lies beneath the boot of another usurper.

Sairachar nipat jak! Ganatantra mukti pak!

[Image inspired by and post via ShadaKalo]

Bangladesh’s military ruler, General Moeen U Ahmed, has dropped out of sight since returning to Bangladesh on October 28th. However, today the Harvard Crimson once again reported on him. This time the Crimson wrote about Senator Kennedy’s letter to the Bangladeshi military government protesting the detention of leading academics:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy ’54-’56 protested the arrests of 12 Bangladeshi academics in a letter to the nation’s government last Friday, just days after the chief of Bangladesh’s military spoke at Harvard and drew criticism for his regime’s crackdown on academic freedom.

Gen. Moeen U Ahmed, who participated in a Kennedy School of Government executive education course in 2002, has sent troops to quell protests and arrest professors at Rajshahi University and at the country’s flagship institution, the University of Dhaka. A military-backed provisional government has led Bangladesh since January 2007.

“I’m writing to express my deep concern about twelve prominent intellectuals from Dhaka and Rajshahi University who have been detained without charges,” Kennedy wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Bangladesh’s ambassador to the United States.

“I’m especially troubled by accusations that they have been tortured,” Kennedy added. “Holding these twelve men without charge for political reasons is a major assault on the integrity and independence of the academic community of your nation and calls into question your government’s commitment to human rights and the law.”

Moeen spoke at the Kennedy School—an institution named after the senator’s older brother—in a two-day session last week.

[Click to read the rest of the article]

It is safe to say that General Moeen’s recent trip to Harvard did not result in positive propaganda value for the military government. Instead it has focused attention at Harvard and in the United States Senate on the human rights abuses of the military government.