Drummer Lee Rigby, Ministry of Defence

A colorful mosaic of flower petals brightens an otherwise grim corner in the Woolwich section of London.  Its mirror image rests outside a quiet home in Middleton, Greater Manchester.  Each bouquet serves as a worthy tribute to both the beautifully adorned uniform of an Army Drummer and the character of a young man who filled it out.  Lee Rigby wished to be a soldier from boyhood – a dream realized seven years ago when he completed his course at the Infantry Training Centre in Yorkshire’s Catterick garrison.  Tours of duty in Cyprus, Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand Province and Germany followed, dotted in between by stints with the Corps of Drums outside royal palaces and the Tower of London.  He married and had a son, Jack, now two years old.  His family and comrades of 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers describe him as witty, an adoring father and a protective brother to his sisters.

Now a police guard stands outside of that Manchester home, watching that mosaic at the curb of the Rigby family residence grow as his identity is more widely acknowledged.

Sometimes, in the course of dissecting an act of terror, the names and faces of the fallen slip away as suspects are pursued and profiled, with motives peeled away like onions by a feverish media and a counterterrorism community searching for the preventative lessons to learn.  It’s times like these when it’s important to start with the story of a decent young man rather than leap straight away into a discussion of the accused and the implications of their mania.

The gruesome death of Drummer Rigby on a mid-day London street has, with good reason, startled Britain and the world in equal measure.  The image of Michael Adebolajo shouting down the lens of a mobile phone camera, pacing with bloodied hands, a cleaver and knife swinging loosely from one of them, has sufficiently made the viral rounds.  Almost instantly, U.K. newspaper online discussion forums were flooded with angry commentaries on the underbelly of British immigration policy – only to discover in short order that Adebolajo was in fact British-born and Christian-raised.  His radical Islamist views were fostered in-country, not on foreign soil.

What happened in Woolwich brings into focus an area of growing alarm in Britain’s national security dialogue – a second generation of fanatical youth.  The U.K. has long harbored enormous pride in its embrace of human rights and civil liberties protections. This, coupled with the gates of human mobility opened by the European Union, made London and other large cities in Britain multicultural hubs.  But pride can often be tinged with pain.  In the decades before the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, London became a beacon of refuge for Middle Eastern and North African extremist groups fleeing the oppression of home governments.  Radical preachers exploited law to create high-profile platforms for anti-Western hate speech.  In 2010, a rash of jihadist groups were banned from operating in Britain, but MI5 is still overwhelmed by the volume of potential terrorists on its radar.

Image Credit: The Mirror (UK)

Adebolajo was on that radar long before he and an alleged on-site accomplice, Michael Adebowale, struck Rigby down in such a horrendous manner on Wednesday.  Adebolajo has an extensive history of participation in jihadist rallies and sought mentorship under controversial cleric Anjem Choudary.  Fearing he’d join al-Shabaab, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, police intercepted him before a planned trip to Somalia.  In the days before the attack, he wailed about his own call to jihad not far from the scene of Rigby’s devastating murder.

His shift toward fanaticism seems rooted in his teens.  Now a man of nearly thirty, he is a shadow of the person his family and friends once knew – well-seasoned, and by now swallowed, by dangerous and misleading religious rhetoric.  So much of the conversation on immigration reform in Britain looks to extremist groups as examples of who to be wary of and who Britons don’t want to be responsible for accommodating.  Broadly, it’s a conversation questioning who’s allowed in rather than asking how the decades-old waves of problematic characters who are already there may have effectively contorted the minds of an impressionable crop of young people born on British lands.

Domestic terrorism is not unfamiliar to the U.K., nor is the concept of lone-wolf or small-pack terror cells.  But Abedolajo has reignited a national conversation about the contemporary profile of a potential terrorist.  The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, comprised of officers from MI5, MI6, the Government Communications Headquarters (commonly known as GCHQ, another intelligence agency) and the Ministry of Defence will meet to discuss a topic they may have little power to stop: the random, unsophisticated actions of untracked Britons on other Britons in the name of the collapse of the West.  There will probably be talks on how to manage any message related to the prevention of the unknown and how to placate undue pressure that places on Muslim enclaves in the capital, already unkindly slapped with the pejorative nickname, “Londonistan.” The Muslim Council of Britain rushed to condemn the killing and contain its potential damage to community relations.

How security agencies handle the next few weeks is critical.  As this post was written, two additional arrests had been made in rural England in connection with Rigby’s death.  There may be more.  A dutiful soldier mere feet from the safety of his barracks, clothed in a shirt bearing the logo of a wounded veterans charity was set upon in front of dozens by a caricature of anti-British radicalism basking in the attention of the internet era with a tell-tale South London accent.  It’s an event brimming with symbols for Britons to attach themselves to if the wider answers to a young man’s death go unsatisfactorily answered.

Ambassador Susan Rice on Face the Nation (photo: cbsnews.com)

On Friday, ABC News published all 11 versions of the Benghazi talking points that were written by the CIA at the request of Congress and used by Ambassador Susan Rice on several TV talk shows on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2012. It was widely reported for months that the original talking points had been edited and that the changes included the deletion of references to the terrorist group al-Qa’ida and to Ansar al-Shari’ah, a local Islamist group with suspected ties to an al-Qa’ida affiliate called al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Republicans have used this to assert that the administration changed the talking points in order to cover up the terrorist nature of the incident that occurred in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. They have also suggested that the administration introduced the notion that a demonstration preceded the attack and that this notion was intended somehow to distract the public’s attention from the fact that a terrorist attack had occurred, apparently unimpressed by the fact that President Obama had already referred to it as “an act of terror” on Sept. 12 and that the public often rallies around an administration after an attack. We now know that there was no such demonstration, although several published reports at the time suggested that there had been.

We still know relatively little about the actual editing of the talking points, other than that the final version was written by an interagency deputies’ group (that is, a meeting of the deputy heads of several agencies, such meetings are a common coordinating mechanism within the bureaucracy). Now that we have the texts of all the versions, we know that the original talking points grew but then shrank again and in the end, at the deputies’ meeting, were severely cut. These cuts, however, are not what we were led to believe.

It is notable that the “spontaneous demonstration” is included in every version of the document, including the original. This was wrong, but it was believed by many at the time and there was no particular reason to assume that it would be important or controversial. (People on the scene would have known that there was no demonstration, but they presumably would have had no reason to mention that fact at least until they had heard the claim made on television.) It is also notable that, although al-Qa’ida and Ansar al-Shari’ah were mentioned in the original talking points, the document did not claim that they were responsible for the event. Rather, it said that the attack was carried out by “a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society,” including “Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida.” It goes on to say that “initial press reporting” linked Ansar al-Shari’ah to the attack but that the group denied organizing it. It is worth mentioning that Ambassador Rice, speaking on CBS on Sept. 16, also allowed that local extremists, al-Qa’ida-affiliated groups, or al-Qa’ida itself could have been involved but that further investigation was necessary to determine that. This was true, and in my modest opinion, a more responsible way of handling the issue than making unsubstantiated public claims of responsibility. Another item cut was actually supportive of the notion that the attack might have been spontaneous, pointing out that weapons and experienced fighters were widely available in Libya.

As mentioned above, we still do not know who, or which agency, made specific cuts or why. Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post has suggested, however, that the various agencies (the State Department and the CIA, in particular, based on the leaks so far) appeared wary of their attempts to blame each other for the incident. The State Department, for example, reportedly claimed that the mention of previous attacks (1) exceeded what State had been permitted to say in its effort to avoid undermining the FBI investigation and (2) was an attempt by the CIA to shift blame and cause trouble for State in Congress. (This probably referred to an intermediate version that stated more explicitly that the CIA had warned of the extremist threat in the area.) In any event, in the end they managed to eliminate just about everything from the talking points that any agency objected to, leaving a document that was short, bland, safe, and—well—bureaucratic. It is not really necessary to assume White House manipulation to explain this outcome, nor is it clear that the White House benefited from it.

Here, in full, are the original talking points (grammatical peculiarities and all) as provided by the CIA on the morning of Sept. 14, 2012:

• We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.
• The crowd almost certainly was a mix of individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.
• Initial press reporting linked the attack to Ansar al-Sharia. The group has since released a statement that its leadership did not order the attacks, but did not deny that some of its members were involved. Ansar al-Sharia’s Facebook page aims to spread Sharia in Libya and emphasizes the need for jihad to counter what it views as false interpretations of Islam, according to an open source study.
• The wide availability of weapons and experienced fighters in Libya almost certainly contribute to the lethality of the attacks.
• Since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.
• We are working w/ Libyan authorities and intelligence partners in an effort to help bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.

Update: David Brooks at the New York Times reports that the deputies’ committee barely discussed the talking points. His sources tell him that the CIA rewrote the document taking the other agencies’ objections into account.

This documentary is all over the place.

It is in part a history of modern Afghanistan and also a film about independent journalists – some of whom were killed – trying to report on the situation on the ground.

Afghanistan is called “The Graveyard of Empires” for good reason: Every country or empire that has tried to possess it gets mired down and loses its way.

What Shadow of Afghanistan does a good job of showing is how so many people have been uprooted and living in refugee camps, most on the border with Pakistan.

Another issue addressed is the landmines left behind by the retreating Soviets. The fact that they either never kept records of where they planted those mines or intentionally withheld such knowledge is barbaric.
Many Afghans – a good many children – have died or been maimed by the mines that lay scattered across the country.

Also, the makers of the film claim the CIA inadvertently supported the Taliban before 9/11 because it was funding the Pakistani ISI (the nation’s largest intelligence service) who supported the radical religious group.
What Shadow of Afghanistan does show in some detail is the number of people and parties vying for power, mostly in the 1990s. Also, the situation average Afghans face every day is explored.

This film could have been much longer or could have been divided into shorter pieces. It should be watched, however, as a primer of modern Afghanistan.

Shadow of Afghanistan is available to rent.

Murphy can be reached at: Lojano@comcast.net

A few days before the “Somalia Conference 2013” held in London on May 7, a foreign journalist friend of mine sent me an e-mail asking what my thoughts were regarding the upcoming conference hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron. I replied: “My heart’s belief in miracles outweighed my mind’s interest in the pursuit of objective analysis.”

I am as optimistic as I was then, but hardly quixotic.

While the conference’s Final Communique outlines specific acknowledgements and directives that could have various effects on various actors, the most important messages were asserted in the implicit, or by way of omission.

The communique acknowledges improved conditions such as security sector, drastic reduction in the number of pirate attacks, receding famine, and the large number of the diaspora returning home. Likewise, it acknowledges challenges such as al-Shabaab’s hit-and-run campaign of terror and the fact that the provisional constitution is an incomplete document that fails to address some of the most serious issues of contention.

On the political front, the communique welcomes the Federal Government’s plans “to resolve outstanding constitutional issues, including the sharing of power, resources and revenues between the Federal Government and the regions.” It continues to state, “We welcomed the dialogue on the future structure of Somalia that has begun between the Federal Government and the regions. We welcomed progress on forming regional administrations and looked forward to the completion of that process. We encouraged the regions to work closely with the Federal Government to form a cohesive national polity consistent with the provisional constitution.”

The message seems clear; however, there is one thing missing — the term “federal state.” Though the concept is prominently established in the constitution, oddly it is replaced with terms such as “regions” and “regional administrations” in the communique. Throughout the communique the term is sidestepped seven times.

Was this the result of collective amnesia, or was it a deliberate action articulated in a carefully crafted language? If I were a betting person, I’d go with the latter.

As a newly rebranded coalition mandated by a new resolution, the international community has a new plan and initiative that will most likely to be much different than the discredited version outsourced to the hegemon of the Horn- Ethiopia. Hegemons tend to grant themselves the right to roam around freely and randomly exploit any ventures they deem expedient to their perceived unilateral self-interest.

Despite the fact the U.S. dual-track policy still has a de facto presence on the ground, this new language seems to have been injected to indicate rejection of the prevalent domestic clan-centric political order. Who can ignore the stubborn fact that, in current day Somalia, “federalism” means nothing other than legalized clan domination? The Alfa Clan, or the most armed, mainly gets the lion’s share and subjugates others while crying wolf.

The writing is on the wall: Somalis must renegotiate the form of government and indeed governance in a way that decentralizes power, leaves space to accommodate Somaliland, and brings the nation back together. The international community has been receiving earful of grievances from various clans, such as those from Sol, Sanaag, Ein and Awdal who inhabit Somaliland and say they are facing existentialist threat from the current arrangement, and, as such, are invoking their rights to stay in the union.

However mortifying this may be to some actors, reason should prevail. Staying the old course is a recipe for renewed civil war and perpetual instability. Somalia is too war-weary and too important to let it drift back into chaos again.

Contrary to the common perception, Somalia is perhaps the most important political theatre in the 21^st century as it is where geopolitics, geoeconomic and georeligious dynamics intersect and interplay. And it is where two old empires (British and Turkish) are positioning themselves for global influence. Meanwhile, the curtains are slowly opening to unveil the covert rivalry of civilizations, instead of the clichéd “clash.”

According to Jamal Osman of U.K. Channel 4, “Western nations are uneasy about the rapid growth of Turkish influence in Somalia, and the UK government’s initiative is seen as part of the West’s agenda to counter it.”

Whether or not this latest high profile conference would prove “a pivotal moment for Somalia” would depend on two particular factors. First, it depends on how soon the Somali leadership comes to understand that without reconciliation, improved security, public services and development cannot be sustained. Second, it would depend on how key international partners avoid the political temptation of zero-sum gains.

Competition of civilizations can be healthy so long as the key actors cooperate, collaborate and negotiate ways that would not take away from each other and the others. However, it’s no secret that the difference between pre-Erdogan (Turkish Prime Minister) and post-Erdogan visit of Somalia is day and night, and that Turkey has been quite humble about the life-changing provisions it has made available for the Somali people and nation.

At the end of the day, what tips the scale and wins the hearts and minds of people are the tangible direct services provided to them at their most dire moment. Everything else is considered a costly symbolism. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit;” said the late Indira Gandhi. “Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there,” she added. This, of course, is even more pertinent to the Somali government.

While improvement of security apparatus, finance system and rule of law are indeed issues of high priority, the federal government would have to provide substantive public services far beyond Mogadishu. More importantly, the government must strategically balance the ways, means and ends at its discretion to achieve its objective of secure, reconciled and cohesively functioning Somalia. That is what Somalis yearn for, and that is what the international community wishes to assist Somalia with.

Image Credit: PA

The single band of light slashed across the shelves catches the metallic detailing on the spines of the neatly lined books set upon them.  The shine creates what looks to be the only source of real illumination in an otherwise darkened room, perhaps an intentional set up to reflect the gravity of the interview.  Seated in front of the bookshelf, hands clasped and monotone in presentation, sits controversial preacher and accused Al-Qaeda spiritual leader Abu Qatada.  It’s a month since the 9/11 terror attacks in the U.S. and Qatada is facing down the cameras of long-running British newsmagazine Panorama to argue the strength of Osama bin Laden’s convictions and the validity of jihad to preserve Islam.  In the two decades since his arrival in the U.K., the British government has wrangled with what to do with him and how to expel him from the country.  Last week, the government lost its latest bid for deportation and talk swirled about what options remain, including a potential suspension of the U.K.’s adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights.

BBC News – Abu Qatada: Timeline

The course of Qatada’s clash with the British government is a master class in frustrating legal theater.  The case against him has boomeranged between courts, woefully pockmarked by insufficient evidence and an absence of charges.  The Palestinian-Jordanian cleric and his family entered Britain in 1993 on a forged passport, accusing Jordan of torture and religious persecution.  He was granted asylum, and they settled in Acton, West London.  Qatada’s influence grew rapidly amidst the influx of radical Islamists who found their way to Britain after fleeing despotic Arab states, many serving in groups looking to overthrow these regimes from abroad.  In an attempt to better understand this emerging landscape, Britain’s intelligence agency, MI-5, approached Qatada for information while it rallied to procure assets within the movement.

Qatada called for the installation of sharia law in Muslim lands and justified violence against detractors as lawful fallout in support of the cause.  Eighteen months after his arrival he issued a fatwa, or Islamic edict, condoning the killing of Algerian former Muslims and their families.  His pull amongst extreme Algerian and Egyptian followers was particularly strong, and such speechifying carried compelling weight, using his words as justification for violence inflicted on civilians.

In 1999, he was convicted by a Jordanian court in absentia of conspiracy to commit terrorism and given a life sentence for his alleged role in a series of bombings.  That same year he gave a speech in London calling for the killing of Jews and saluting violence against Americans.  The cleric’s views became increasingly severe and widespread, with one Spanish judge deeming him the “spiritual leader of the mujahedeen in Britain.” For its part, MI-5 retreated from its earlier approach to the preacher, formally characterizing Qatada as a threat to the state and western partners.  A year later another Jordanian trial extended Qatada’s sentence by a further fifteen years for his alleged role in a plan to target millennial tourists.

In early 2001, he is arrested by U.K. law enforcement and questioned about links to a German terror cell.  While searching his home, investigators find an envelope containing £805 with “for the Mujahedeen in Chechnya” absurdly scrolled across the front.  No charges were ever filed.

The perspective afforded by history now tells us that the events forever scarring that September were closing in fast.  In the shadow of the attacks, the imposition of new counterterrorism laws allowing for the detention of terror suspects without charge or trial took form just as quickly.

The ensuing investigation revealed advisory conversations between Qatada, 9/11 ringleader Mohamad Atta and would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid.  Copies of his sermons were found in an apartment used by some of the 9/11 suspects in Hamburg.  Two months after the attack, the U.K. government moved to use the new anti-terror laws to make an arrest.  Qatada disappeared.

He was found two months later in South London and sent to Belmarsh prison.  He spent five months at the maximum-security facility until being granted conditional bail, only to be re-arrested in August 2002 under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001 (ATCSA) – a section of which allows for the detention of immigrants suspected of terrorist activity.  With Qatada in custody, the government made its first in a litany of attempts to deport him back to Jordan.  In what would constitute Qatada’s first appeals loss, an immigration commission rejected his request for release.  He remained in Belmarsh until 2005 — held without formally filed charges and unable to hear the evidence against him.  The immigration provision of ATCSA was revised that year to allow house arrest in place of detention.  Qatada was released under a strict control order, and in 2007 a British court ruled he may be deported.

In 2008, the Court of Appeal ruled against the decision, saying such action would be in violation of the cleric’s human rights as the evidence used against him in his Jordanian trial was collected through the use of torture and would constitute a direct breach of Article Six of the European Convention on Human Rights, protecting fair trial.  Again, Qatada made conditional bail only to be re-arrested when the Immigration commission deemed him too great a flight risk.  The following year, the Law Lords, then the U.K.’s highest appeals body in parliament’s upper House of Lords before the establishment of the Supreme Court, voted in favor of the government’s motion for deportation so long as it could produce solid assurances from Jordan about the legality of his retrial.

Theresa May, UK Home Secretary (Image Credit: The Guardian)

The European Court on Human Rights awarded Qatada compensation for his time spent in prison without due process.  At the start of 2012, the body ruled that the U.K. and Jordanian governments had not yet met the standard of assurance over torture and fair trial, blocking his deportation. Prime Minister David Cameron and King Abdullah of Jordan agree on the “importance of finding an effective solution” — but not before, as you may guess, Qatada is released on bail.  In April, his penultimate arrest takes place with a fresh agreement hammered out by Home Secretary Theresa May and King Abdullah.

Qatada appeals to the ECHR, which refuses his efforts.  A thrilled May joyfully declares the nearness of his final removal from Britain.  The Immigration commission denies bail, citing the threat posed to the London Olympic Games that year if he were released, and he loses a further appeal before the High Court.  But in November of last year, the immigration commission rejects the idea that Qatada would receive fair retrial in Jordan, leaving May utterly incensed.  Once more Qatada is bailed and re-arrested by the U.K. Border Agency over conditions violations.  In March of this year, the Court of Appeal refused the Home Secretary’s bid to have the deportation stay lifted.

Bringing us finally to last week, when the Court of Appeal denied May its permission to bring the case to the Supreme Court despite her protestations that a new agreement with Jordan had been reached.

Are you thoroughly exhausted?  So is Britain.  The intention of this lumbering recounting of events is not to numb the mind with the alphabet soup of official acronyms or test the number of times “re-arrest” can be used before a discussion degenerates into madness.  It’s meant to capture the very real dilemma created by the intersection of law, politics and fear.  When the Court of Appeal shared its latest ruling, May took the “all options on the table” approach to suggestions for a next step, including a temporary withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.  It’s a dangerous assertion, even if it comes swaddled in earlier set precedence and is actually hugely unlikely.  Part of the purpose of law, and more specific to this case human rights law, is to preserve the execution of justice even when the subject under examination is repugnant.  To say a solution to this problem may lie in removing law just long enough to achieve desired ends, undermines law entirely.

It could technically be done.  The U.K. already did so in the 1970s with internments in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, while Article Fifteen of the Convention denies the possibility of suspension where a subject faces a real potential for facing torture (or Article Three), Qatada is not thought to be in this position.  Those who made statements against him may have been exposed to this, but the Convention doesn’t express a denial of withdrawal on those grounds.

It’s also unlikely to happen as the U.K. looks to distance itself from War on Terror policies thought to raise questions about Britain’s human rights record.  The most damning of which was the use of U.K. airspace in the process of extraordinary rendition, the practice of sending terror suspects to states known to utilize torture, including Jordan, as an interrogation technique for intelligence-gathering without direct accountability for unlawful harm.  The image projected by a suspension of the Convention followed by a swift reinstatement would fall too closely in line with the controversial jostling of rights and liberties after 9/11.  This course of thinking might provide something in the way of understanding about why the government hasn’t just chosen the option of secret trial to draw a line under it.

So even if a suspension isn’t a real threat, and little is thought in the way of acceptable systemic change in Jordanian investigative procedures and judicial proceedings, where does it leave the question of what to do with Qatada?  This case is not simply a story of a failed legal system, or one that is so sensitive to the rights of the accused that it dismisses those of their victims.  Options do remain.  The most glaring of which is to finally charge him with something in open court.  That has yet to happen in all of this back and forth.  The robustness or true absence of undisclosed evidence isn’t known, but even if it truly cannot be proven that he had direct impact on terror plotting, his actions could well constitute Incitement under anti-terror laws.

Perhaps much remains unknown about the “whens and hows” of the intelligence service’s knowledge of Qatada’s early activities and its relationship with him.  Perhaps a domestic pursuit of charges will require an embarrassing purge of government disclosures.  But on some level it is just as shaming to bounce between “catch and release” as it would be to take the black eye.

To be frank, the Qatada case doesn’t enjoy the relative anonymity of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, a facility still housing terror suspects without charge or trial.  His is a public face on a public stage.  If the government isn’t willing to free him once and for all given their convictions about the crimes of his past and the potential danger he poses to the future, and they aren’t in a position to prosecute him, they’ll need to come up with something better than to skirt around accepted legal conventions when that is exactly what Jordan is accused of doing.

Tamerlan-Tsarnaev-Dzhokhar -Boston Bombing

The recent terrorist attacks that took place in Mogadishu and Boston were not just intended to kill and mutilate many civilians, but to create widespread terror, disarray, and insecurity that would last far beyond the initial shock of these bloody events. It goes without saying — anyone who takes part of such acts of indiscriminate violence should face justice.

On Sunday, April 14, Mogadishu’s main courthouse was attacked by nine gunmen who killed 35 people and wounded 50 more. Immediately, officials declared that the perpetrators were “foreign elements within al-Shabaab” or Al Qaida. They said the attacks were carried out by nine men who had bombs strapped around their waists, and that one of the nine was a Somali-Canadian youth who recently moved to Mogadishu. The finding was delivered much faster than any first class counter-terrorism experts and forensic investigators anywhere could.

This is not the first time that the media has implicated a “radicalized youth” from the Somali diaspora. In fact, most, if not all, of the most gruesome terrorist acts carried out in Somalia — including the Hargeisa and Bosaso bombings and the Hotel Shamo bombing – were credited to diaspora youth, all within hours from the tragedy.

Here, of course, is where diligent journalism driven by reasoned skepticism is needed — journalists who are willing to press authorities and various counter-intelligence professionals with the right questions: Has there been a thorough forensic investigation? Why would Al Shabaab assign their presumably most important terrorist operations to youth from abroad when there are local ones (willing to commit anything) in abundance? As a group that is suspicious of anything Western, what has been compelling them to this new pattern of trusting youth from the West whom they otherwise considered corrupt and potential moles?

Now it could very well be that these express narratives were not in any way intended for political or security expedience and that they were all evidence-based, but the culture of passively accepting such narratives without any scrutiny is counterproductive if not outright dangerous. After all, there are many internal and external elements that stand to benefit out of certain assassinations and terrorist acts.

Somalia still remains as one of the most dangerous places for journalists to operate. It is ranked 175 in the 2013 World Press Freedom Index out of 179 countries reviewed by Reporters Without Boarders. Somali journalists continue being systematically eliminated. In 2012, 18 journalists were assassinated; and this year, five more were assassinated. Not surprisingly, on each of these cold-blooded murders an official narrative that points the finger at the usual suspect was offered.

This relentless pattern of express narratives that gets away with minimum or no scrutiny neither helps the victims nor serves the overall public interest.

On April 15, two bombs were set off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killing at least three — including an eight-year-old  child — and wounding more than 260 people. The alleged perpetrators were two brothers from Chechnya — a 26 and a 19-year-old.

Unlike the ones in Somalia, this horrific event was unique as it was globally monitored by the media and digital savvy activists from around the world. The official narrative of the case and the chorological sequence of events have changed a number of times; and some argue that it cannot stand thorough scrutiny.

The mainstream media had its own marathon, or rather sprint (for “exclusives”), to win. Fact or fiction did not matter; who reported first did. Since the alleged perpetrators matched the usual suspect profile and there was a video clip showing they were carrying backpacks, the media was more interested on whether or not there was a foreign connection, namely Al Qaida. Never mind that in Boston — the city with perhaps the highest per capita colleges and universities in the world — there are more people carrying backpacks than not.

When All Hate Broke Loose    

While most of the mainstream media refrained from its past flagrant wide brush strokes of “Islamic terrorism” some, along with other Islamophobic elements, could not resist the opportunity.

Here is an excerpt from Earl Cox’s diatribe showcased on the Jerusalem Post – a man appointed by Prime Minister Netanyahu as a Goodwill Ambassador from Israel to the Jewish and Christian communities around the world:

“Can you believe it? Catholic Bishop O’Malley tells the crowd at a hastily arranged interfaith service in Boston that Islam is not to be blamed for the Marathon massacre. He repeats the politically correct lie that Islam is really a peaceful religion.” Cox concludes, “It is time that Israeli and U.S. government and religious leaders stand up and face Islam for what it really is.”

Consolidating the collective guilt argument, Congressman Peter King, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, told the following to the National Review:

“Police have to be in the (Muslim) community, they have to build up as many sources as they can, and they have to realize that the threat is coming from one community and increase surveillance there…We can’t be bound by political correctness.”

In that same spirit, though more vicious, columnist Erik Rush who regularly appears on Fox News posted this for a tweet: “Muslims are evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Perilous Media Groupthink

If this was to offend our collective conscience, it was hard to tell through media reports. Other than superficial mention here and there, there was no significant scrutiny against such hate speech. But this should not surprise anyone as most media groups go into the “us against them” mode after each terrorist act.

Pavlovian reaction or conditioned reflex is a phenomenon made famous by Ivon Pavlov. Unlike knee-jerk reaction which is often random, the aforementioned is triggered by controllable conditioning. Pavlov taught his dogs to associate the ringing of the bell with the sight and smell of food thus inducing them to salivate more in expectation upon hearing the bell. Terrorism has inculcated media to behave in a certain jingoistic manner.

Media should diligently and ethically uphold their journalistic responsibilities without worrying about whether or not their deliberate pursuit of truth is or isn’t popular. Popularity contests should not be their game.  Unfortunately, since the media nowadays is owned by big corporations and its actions and inactions are often driven by their respective bottom lines, profiling audiences and feeding them steady diets of selective exposure and tailored narratives is the name of the game. And that could be the core problem.

When the media is numbed by complaisance and groupthink, two critical bulwarks against abuse of power are compromised — checks and balances and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Regardless of how politically unpopular these words might be nowadays, suspects are merely suspects until proven otherwise. That is to say presumption of innocence until proven guilty is not a subjective privilege; it is a fundamental constitutional and moral right.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Arrott/VOA

by Abul-Hasanat Siddique and Casper Wuite

Abul-Hasanat Siddique and Casper Wuite, co-authors of The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction, talk about the political unrest in the Middle East, the Syrian Civil War, the globalization of media, and the future prospects for the region.

Is the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa homegrown or a Western-sponsored revolution for change?

Abul-Hasanat Siddique: Home-grown. Seeing the uprisings in the region as Western-sponsored “revolutions” is far from reality. Firstly, that view sees the populations in the region as passive recipients. It also negates the Arab people, particularly its youth populations, in their moment when they called or are still calling for freedom and dignity. That would also not do justice to the way foreign governments and local populations have acted on the ground.

In fact, Arab youth movements and political activists have been mobilizing for many years. The April 6th Movement in Egypt has been on the scene since 2008. Autocratic regimes in the region, most of whom are backed by the West, have long ignored their disgruntled people. Revolts were bound to happen at some point in the Arab world; a region which has seen poor economic growth, atrocious human rights records, and a growing youth population with high unemployment. Such issues have boiled up and created restive societies throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Casper Wuite: What is true is that in some countries, particularly Libya, home grown revolutions with enough critical mass could simply not to be ignored by the West. The action the West subsequently undertook, however, was never part of a Cold War-type strategy to sponsor certain elements in the region.

Is the Middle East in a phase of transition from “dictatorship to democracy”? If so, will the Arab Uprisings pave the way for transitions in Syria, Jordan, and then Saudi Arabia as well?

Siddique: The plenitude of elections held in the wake of the Arab Uprisings in no way signifies a democracy, but merely a first step. True democratic reform takes a substantial amount of time to achieve; the history of Europe is a key example. Some parts of the region are in this long transitional period. The transitions occurring in countries like Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have been rather complicated. However, in time, these countries will make (some) shifts towards democratic reform. This may take several years or even decades to achieve and it will not be easy.

Wuite: The Arab Uprisings are less likely to pave the way for transitions in Jordan and Saudi Arabia although incremental changes have been made particularly in Jordan. Yes, they face the same challenges: a demographic youth bulge and an economic reality that is increasingly at odds with the regime’s existing policies and practices. However, calls for reform are diluted by political and fiscal co-optation in both countries. On the other hand, in Syria the question is not so much whether we will see a transition soon, but rather whether a stable democracy will be its endpoint.

In your view, is Morsi capable of keeping a balance between Islamists and liberal forces within Egypt? Does Egypt dream of becoming a regional power under Morsi, as was the case during the Gamal Abdul Nasser era?

Siddique: At present, the president is clearly failing to keep the balance between the Islamist bloc and the liberal and secular forces. Post-Mubarak Egypt has further highlighted political polarization in the country. The political unrest over Morsi’s rather inexperienced and poor strategic move with his presidential decree and the ensuing referendum over the new constitution, has further deepened this polarization. Indeed, Egypt’s transition is very complicated and the judiciary is full of former Mubarak-era officials. But there are undoubtedly many within Egypt who are disengaged with Morsi, as they simply see him as a stooge for the Muslim Brotherhood’s policies. What he needs to do is truly engage all groups within Egypt, including secularists, liberals, women, and religious minorities. Indeed, he is the president for all Egyptian people and not one portion of society; he needs to realize this if Egypt is to move forward. Unilateral steps like initiating presidential decrees will not help Egypt; it will simply evoke more and more unrest and resentment within the country.

He also needs to reform the police and security forces. The unrest over the Port Said trials was a reaction against Morsi’s presidency, but also at the corrupt police and security forces. Whether or not Morsi made a deal with the military is up for question, but he very much needs to pursue those responsible for the death of protestors in 2011, and those still unaccounted for. The people want justice to be served.

Wuite: Indeed, many have argued that the current riots are a sign that the standoff between Morsi and the opposition is spiralling out of control. However, not every rioter is a member of either two groups. Many rioters are hooligans upset with the Port Said trials, or are youth settling scores with the police. Yet, one cannot deny that the political polarization is increasingly paralysing the country. What is thus instrumental in understanding the crisis, is that it is not simply that the political arena has lost its primacy of settling disputes to the streets. What has been crucial to the current standoff has been the extent to which democratic procedures and the rule of law have lost their primacy and how the remaining institutions, most notably the judiciary, have been politicized and turned into political fiefdoms.

Siddique: As for Nasser. Domestically, Morsi falls far short of living up to Nasser’s legacy within Egypt despite the late leader having been a dictator himself. Nasser is still held high within the country but also within the wider Arab world. With regards to being a regional power once again: Morsi clearly sees that Qatar and Turkey are making advances in becoming the regional hegemon. Saudi Arabia is shifting away from the fore-front of regional affairs, and Egypt has been in a complicated transitional period for over two years. However, it is highly unlikely that Egypt will return to the heights of Nasser’s pan-Arab dream. Simply put, pan-Arabism, as Nasser dreamed of it, is dead — it has been dead for decades.

That said, Morsi wants to develop further foreign ties. If his domestic policy fails, he at least wants his foreign policy to be worth something. If his foreign policy is to be deemed a “success,” however, a drastic development needs to be made with the Israeli-Palestinian peace-process. Pressure will need to put on the Palestinians, namely Hamas, while the U.S. will finally need to act as a genuine peace broker.

Did the Syrian conflict begin as a genuine uprising or a proxy-war? Will Bashar al-Assad fall to the opposition as with Libya?

Siddique: A genuine uprising that has turned into a proxy-war. There is a belief by some that the Syrian Civil War was instigated by a Western-led conspiracy to overthrow the Ba’athist regime in a bid to derail its ally in Iran. Notably, this is the same view held by Bashar al-Assad and his aides. The problem with that belief is it completely negates the start of the unrest in Syria and the history of the country under the Assad family. Let us not forget that the Syrian people rose up peacefully in a bid for genuine reforms as their counterparts had done so in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and so on. But they were met with force from the state. As time went by, some in the opposition took up arms to defend themselves. At the same time, however, some radical and extremist elements (with an affiliation to Al-Qaeda) in the Syrian opposition (some foreign) have capitalised on the conflict and begun calling for an Islamic state.

The Syrian people, those opposing the Ba’athist government, be they secular or Islamist, have genuine grievances against the Assad family which has been in power for over 40 years. Viewing the whole war, from the initial peaceful uprising, as a Western conspiracy ignores those grievances and sees the Syrian people as passive bystanders. The Syrian people should not be seen as a pawn for the U.S., Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel, and Iran, but instead as people who want their freedom and dignity.

As for Assad falling like Qaddafi did in Libya: the situation is different. The opposition in Libya had a base of “operations” in Benghazi. From there, they made advances westwards and were then backed by NATO airstrikes. That isn’t the case in Syria, as the armed opposition have only seized fragments across the country. There are also divisions within their ranks. In addition, while the Syrian Uprising did not begin as a sectarian battle, sections of the protagonists on the ground now see the civil war as a conflict between Sunnis and Alawites (and the wider Shi’a region). If Assad does fall, there is a genuine fear that the Alawite community could be targeted by extremists. Unlike Libya, the sectarian nature of the Syrian conflict today has meant that sections within Assad’s ranks are reluctant to defect to the opposition, and will continue to be reluctant unless genuine security promises are made. With the current stalemate, the civil war could last for a substantial amount of time. As with the Algerian and Lebanese civil wars, a negotiated settlement seems to be the only way forward. Whether the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition agree to any settlement is highly questionable.

How do you view the role of media coverage in “bridging the gaps” or “widening the gulf” in the Middle East?

Siddique: News media coverage and social media has been quite key in the Arab Uprisings, and with modern conflicts in general. A cousin of Mohammed Bouazizi — the Tunisian street seller whose self-immolation ignited the uprising in Sidi Bouzid — highlighted this very well. The cousin had sent mobile phone footage of the aftermath of Bouazizi’s self-immolation to Al Jazeera, who broadcasted it. Subsequent videos were sent to the broadcaster of the unrest in Sidi Bouzid. But as the cousin highlighted: protests in the Arab world are not unheard of, at least in the country (in question) itself. However, if the footage of the unrest hadn’t been shown on the news, it would have been as if protests hadn’t happened. It’s the whole “tree falling in the woods” issue: If no one hears about a protest, did it really happen?

And it is due to this, the globalization of media and its technological developments, that coverage of what is happening on the ground can be disseminated on an astonishing scale. Social media, and the wide-availability of satellite television, has allowed for videos, messages, and so, to be distributed to wide-spanning audiences much faster. This didn’t happen in the 1977 Bread Riots, or even in the Gulf War; the Gulf War was CNN’s moment to shine — there was no pan-Arab broadcaster like Al Jazeera. However, today, the biggest factor is that autocratic regimes can’t control these media developments. They have been hit by the reality of globalisation. Media is indeed helping to “bridge the gaps” between what the state allows and what its people want; the people who are getting the message out by whatever means necessary. Protests or conflict, no matter how big or small they are, will now always be “heard.”

How do you see the future scenario of the Middle East? Will stability be reached or will anarchy prevail?

Wuite: I agree with Stephen Waltz who argues that future scenarios of the Middle East can roughly be divided into three situations. Optimists will argue that the road will be bumpy for a while, but that the Arab Uprisings mark the end of an era of regional stagnation and will give way for economic development and liberal democracy. Others exercise more caution and argue that as political dynamism returns to the region, we should be careful of what we wish for. In other words, under the influence of popular sentiment, more capable and competent Arab regimes will not necessarily be more compliant. Lastly, pessimists will argue that although the Arab Uprisings will succeed in overturning a number of regimes, stable governance will not replace them everywhere. Instead, extremism and sectarianism will be rife in some countries.

Personally, I believe that any positive change will only be incremental and that given the state of the economy, social and regional polarization, and continued fiscal and political co-optation in the region, we should be cautious when it comes to the outcomes of the Arab Uprisings in most countries and flatly pessimistic when it comes to some others.

(The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction is available to purchase at Amazon. A paperback version is available at the SlimBooks store.)

Abul-Hasanat Siddique is the Managing Editor/Middle East Editor at Fair Observer. Having co-authored his first book called The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction, Abul-Hasanat’s main research interests lie in the upheaval sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, and the rise of political Islam. His other research interests lie in the history and future of the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Previously, Abul-Hasanat worked as a News Editor for the Gorkana Group. He is currently completing his thesis for his MSc in Middle East Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), exploring the notion of post-Islamism and the Arab Uprisings. He also holds a BSc (Hons) in Sociology and Media Studies from the City University London.

Having worked at Fair Observer since May 2011, Abul-Hasanat has been a pivotal figure with the growth and success of the company.

Casper Wuite is a Contributing Editor (Middle East) at Fair Observer. Currently based in Cairo, he writes on politics and development in the Arab world. Casper co-authored his first book called The Arab Uprisings: An Introduction.

As a contributing editor, Casper draws on a wide range of experiences in the region. He has worked as a policy officer for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lebanon, a development consultant for NGO’s in Egypt, and an international election observer for the National Democratic Institute in both Algeria (2012) and Egypt (2011).

Casper holds an MSc in Politics and Government from the London School of Economics (University of London).

This article has been published in full with the permission of the authors. The original article can be found here at Fair Observer. 

DHS Secretary Napolitano sued by ICE agents

Been on the road, folks. Lots of airports, long security lines, plastic bins — shoes, coat, watch, laptop, any liquids? Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“What do you do?” the fellow at U.S. immigration asks.

“Write about you guys.”

He looks up.

“How’s it going?” I ask. “You know, with the new boss. Napolitano?”

One look is still worth a thousand words.

“Watch out,” he says, his eyes moving over my right shoulder. “She’s standing right over there…”

I jump. Look. He smiles and stamps my passport.

“You know the worst thing?” he says. “We’re making it up as we go along. Everyday there’s something new we’re supposed to be on the lookout for. It’s all arbitrary.”

I know what he means, and I know why I jumped. Staying alive at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a full-time occupation. One slip-up, the chain quivers, the blame starts its downward flow, and if you’re an agent, you’re pulling duty in Pembina, ND, or spending the rest of your working life doodling on a yellow legal pad in an empty room at HQ/DC.

So believe me when I tell you that it takes more than a fit of pique to file a legal complaint against DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, as the National Ice Council has done on behalf of eleven agents who believe that recent policy directives on prosecutorial discretion and the DREAM directive on deferred action are forcing them to choose between enforcing immigration and deportation laws passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 and their professional careers.

Christopher Crane, head of the council, reports that agents who continue to enforce laws currently on the books — ignoring policy directives from the top instructing them neither to apprehend, arrest, or depart aliens who’ve entered the U.S. illegally or who’ve overstayed their visas (even illegals serving time in U.S. prisons for felonies and misdemeanors) — are targets for disciplinary action.

From the complaint filed by the National Ice Council against Napolitano, August 23, 2012 in U.S. District Court for Northern District of Texas Dallas Division:

ICE Plaintiffs reasonably fear, based upon official communications to them, their knowledge of communications to Plaintiff Doebler, Plaintiff Martin, and Plaintiff Crane from their superiors, past events, and public sources, that if they follow the requirements of federal law, contrary to the “Directive,” and arrest an alien or issue an alien an Notice to Appear (NTA) in removal proceedings, they will be disciplined or suffer other adverse employment consequences. Plaintiff James D. Doebler arrested an alien who was unlawfully present in the United States and issued the alien an NTA, contrary to the general directions of his supervisors that he should decline to issue NTAs to certain illegal aliens. Plaintiff Doebler was issued a Notice of Proposed Suspension. Plaintiff Doebler is facing a three-day suspension for arresting and processing the alien for a hearing rather than exercising the “prosecutorial discretion” commanded by his supervisors. Plaintiff Doebler requested a written directive ordering him not to issue the NTA. His supervisors have refused to give him a written directive and would not sign any paperwork authorizing the use of “prosecutorial discretion.” Plaintiff Doebler reasonably fears, based on his past experience, that if he follows the requirements of federal law, contrary to the “Directive,” and arrests an alien or issues the alien an NTA, he will be disciplined again. He reasonably fears that a second disciplinary action will result in the loss of his job.

There’s more:

On July 17, 2012, Plaintiff Samuel Martin, along with another immigration enforcement agent, picked up an illegal alien from the El Paso County Jail. While the agents were trying to place the alien in the vehicle, the alien attempted to escape, and resisted and assaulted Plaintiff Martin and his colleague. The agents regained custody of the alien and transported him to the El Paso Criminal Alien Program office for processing. Plaintiff Martin’s supervisors ordered him to release the alien without any charges being filed against the alien and ordered Plaintiff Martin not to issue an NTA. The agents who were present protested the release of the alien; but they were told “it was a management decision, based on the President’s new immigration policies.” No supervisor ever asked the agents if they were injured or if they needed assistance. It is the understanding of Plaintiff Martin, reflected in his signed statement concerning the incident, that his supervisors gave him these orders based on the Directive.

This is a big deal. Why? Because the backlash against Crane and his colleagues tells me the other side is worried.

From David Leopold, past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, published August 3, 2012, in the Huffington Post:

The last I checked federal bureaucrats are supposed to implement the administration’s policies, not publicly obstruct them. So why is Christopher Crane, President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council — the union of 7,000 immigration agents, officers, and employees — engaging in a pattern of open insubordination designed to thwart the president’s effort to deport dangerous criminal aliens and national security risks?

And Leopold’s not finished,

But where does Crane come off attempting to set administration policy? Since when does the soldier tell the general what to do?

Is this how the president sees himself? As a “general” issuing unquestionable orders to subordinates?

Last time I looked at the U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 1, it seemed to say something pretty important about the separation of powers:

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

It’s what we call a “vesting clause,” and it means that Congress, not the President of the United States, enacts federal law as Congress did in 1996 when it passed the immigration laws currently on the books.

Now, Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the same constitution is another vesting clause, again meant to clarify the separation of powers:

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

What does this mean? That it’s the president’s job to ensure that the laws enacted by Congress are enforced.

And here, my friends, is where we run into an argument neither Crane nor Judge Reed O’Connor, the federal judge who just ruled the ICE agents “have standing” in this matter, is ready to abandon: Does the executive or its representatives, Napolitano and Morton, have the constitutional authority to issue directives designed to reinterpret the letter of federal laws enacted by Congress? Are our elected representatives in the House and Senate expected to play “soldiers” — as David Leopold suggests — to Obama’s “general”?

Pay attention.

The argument isn’t ideological. It isn’t about whether it’s “moral” or “practical” to deport or apprehend the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. It isn’t about taking children away from parents or uprooting folks who’ve become hardworking, churchgoing members of the community. The majority of Americans (who, according to the polls, value border security as much as they do a sensible approach to immigration) believe that aliens who’ve made decent, honest lives for themselves should be offered a path to citizenship.

No, the argument is much larger and much more important.

It’s about who has the power to turn laws passed by Congress inside out, to gut statutes still on the books with an eye toward rendering them unenforceable, feeble, token homage to the free will of the citizenry as opposed to the political will of the president.

The ICE agents suing their boss say it’s their job to enforce the law as it is currently and unambiguously set down. If Americans want to change immigration laws, they should communicate that desire to their elected representatives, the men and women they’ve voted into office to speak for them, and Congress should get it done.

But let’s say Congress is not ready to agree on this issue. Frustration reigns. The loyal opposition shouts “Obstruction!”

It’s still not the president’s job to step in, a political Jacques Derrida, deconstructing statutory language on the basis of its inherent “unreliability” — its inability to adequately or actually reflect what he and his constituents believe are the “true” beliefs, values, and desires of America’s citizens.

Sensitive or insensitive, right or wrong, the people have spoken through the U.S. Congress; the DREAM Act has been proposed in Congress two dozen times, and has been voted on by both the House and the Senate.

This is how democracy in the United States works. Not always pretty. Not always fast. And not always, as history has demonstrated, “on the right moral track.” Think slavery. Think suffrage. Think civil rights.

But don’t forget — champs fight fair. Because we understand that when the law goes, when the Constitution becomes irrelevant, America, with all its unresolved problems and promise, will go under as well.

If you lose, shake hands. Don’t change the rules of the game, especially when you think no one is looking.

The DREAM Act has never been passed by both houses of Congress, but its frequent introduction is a clear indication that both Congress and the White House understand that federal legislation, as opposed to the issuance of an executive order or policy directives that aim to reshape the implementation of immigration laws, is required to achieve the act’s objectives.

ICE agents Chris Crane, David Engle, Anastasia Carroll, Ricardo Diaz, Lorenzo Garza, Tre Rebstock, Fernando Silva, Samuel Martin and James Doebler — plaintiffs in Civil Action No. 3:12-ev-03247-O, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division have testified, under oath, that their superiors have ordered them to break the laws they have sworn to uphold.

No one, they say, not the Secretary of DHS or the President of the United States, according to the U.S. Constitution, can twist or bend those laws to prop up an ideological imperative, not matter how high-minded, or a political agenda, no matter how opportune.

Let’s look at some background provided by the complaint filed on behalf of the ICE agents–skip it if the weeds get too high:

• In 1996 (during the Clinton administration), Congress sought to reduce executive discretion in the enforcement of federal immigration laws — i.e., “Immigration law enforcement is as high a priority as other aspects of Federal law enforcement, and illegal aliens do not have the right to remain in the US undetected and unapprehended.” H.R. Rep. 104-725 (19916), at 383.
• Enacted in 1996, 8 U.S.C. 1225 (a)(1) provides that “an alien who has not been admitted…shall be deemed for purposes of this chapter an applicant for admission.”
• 8 U.S.C. 1225(a)(c) provides that all applicants “shall be inspected by immigration officers.”
• 8 U.S.C. 1225(b)(2)(A) mandates that “if the examining immigration officer determines that an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted, the alien shall be detained for a proceeding under `229a of this title.”
• Deferred action [mandated by policy directive under DACA and the DREAM Act] is not specifically authorized anywhere in federal law. Historically, deferred action has been utilized sparsely for small numbers of aliens in discrete distress pending statutory or foreign policy-mandated regulatory changes. No group of aliens has been granted deferred action in the past 15 years that approaches a fraction of the size of the class of aliens subject to the June 15, 2012 DHS directive, “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children.”
• Federal regulations do not authorize the Secretary to grant deferred action wholesale to a large number of aliens.
• Deferred action, which the attorney for the plaintiffs claims is “a substantive immigration benefit,” may not be conferred as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, but only by regulations promulgated under authority delegated by Congress.
• By definition, “prosecutorial discretion” cannot be used to confer a substantive benefit.
• U.S. Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) is not a law enforcement agency and has no prosecutorial authority.
• ICE plaintiffs have each sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the laws of the United States.
• ICE plaintiffs believe that if they follow the Directive, they will be violating their oath of office, as well as violating several laws of the United States.
• Finally, ICE plaintiffs reasonably fear, based upon official communications to them, from communications directed toward Agents Doebler, Martin and Crane, from superiors, past events, and public sources, that if they follow the requirements of federal law, contrary to the “directive,” and arrest an alien or issue an alien a Notice to Appear (NTA) in removal proceedings, they will be disciplined or suffer other adverse employment consequences.

A lot of legal jargon. But Federal Judge Reed O’Connor seems persuaded.

Not so with DHS and supporters like David Leopold, who contend that Janet Napolitano’s directive does not stop ICE agents from stopping and questioning aliens considered to be suspicious or intent on undermining security. Decide for yourself; Napolitano’s memo is here.

It sounds okay, doesn’t it, with all that talk about “background checks” and deferred action an option only on “a case-by-case basis”?

But ICE agents, as well as Kris W. Kobach, the secretary of state in Kansas, who’s representing them in their lawsuit, have a different and very frightening tale to tell: In the complaint, the agents state they’ve been ordered to ignore an entire category of illegal aliens.

The agents allege they were told to stop requesting proof of citizenship or immigration status.

“Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and her underlings want their agents and officers to just take the word of an illegal alien without verifying his or her statement,” said former police commander David Scher. “It’s as ridiculous as releasing a suspected bank robber who states he didn’t commit the robbery without any verification by police officers,” he said.

New Immigration Policies: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?

Now I don’t know about you, but denying agents or cops the right to question people who strike them as suspicious doesn’t seem to jive with David Leopold’s accusation that ICE agent Chris Crane is “engaging in a pattern of insubordination to thwart the President’s effort to deport dangerous criminal aliens and national security risks.”

If you can’t question anyone, if your boss tells you the word of an illegal alien is all you need (scout’s honor), how do you distinguish between the young fellow pursuing a degree in social work at the community college and the 20-something chemistry student mixing up the next big assault on the American people? Or the 19-year-old “mule” covered with gang tattoos who understands that as long as the cocaine isn’t spilling out of his pockets, you can’t touch him — no arrest, no deportation.

Really, tell me. Years ago, I reported on the work of an astute customs agent, Jose Melendez Perez, whose “instincts” told him something was wrong about a passenger trying to enter the U.S. on 8/4/01 with one-way ticket with no luggage. Turns out the authorities believe the passenger was the twentieth 9/11 hijacker on his way to join the gang that tried to commandeer Flight 93, bound, some say, for the capitol. More on him in a bit.

And then there’s this — another “Hail Mary” pass on the part of a customs inspector on our border with Canada in 1999:

In 1999, customs officers in Port Angeles spotted a nervous Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national who later was convicted on multiple counts for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Custom agents found explosives in the trunk of his car when he drove off a ferry from Canada.

Two years earlier, Border Patrol agents arrested Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer in Bellingham. Later on, after a federal judge reduced his bail, Abu Mezer went to New York where he tried to plot an attack on the subway system.

Clearly officials will continue to exercise more initiative on our borders and at U.S. ports, but the question is what do you do when these characters manage to get over the border and through our ports?

Hardball

There are critics who say DHS and the admininstration is not only making a grab to extend executive power at the expense of the legislative branch, but that the consequences of a “kinder, gentler” approach to immigration, yes, at least 11 million votes — an endgame in this “no questions asked, no proof required” attempt to reach out to so many good guys — could be an open invitation to some very bad guys.

The under-thirty kind who promise an inquisitive ICE agent they’re here as students — maybe they overstayed their visas, or maybe they entered the United States under dodgy circumstances — but no criminal priors, no red flags in any of our data banks, and no reason, as the DREAM Act would have us believe, not to believe them.

What they might not be telling us is that they’re in the U.S. enrolled in an aviation school, an outfit that needs the tuition, the kind that let’s you acquire enough hours to take off but not to land.

Enforcement insiders report that under Napolitano’s Directive, Ziad Jarrah, who piloted Boeing 757-222 on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, could not have been arrested or deported—even if he’d been apprehended before the event.

True story.

In 2013, DHS border control policies, including the policies governing immigration and deportation, prohibit U.S. federal agents from arresting/deporting an alien solely on the grounds that he or she has entered the U.S. illegally or that he or she has overstayed his or her visa.

Federal agents working for the U.S. government (DHS) may only arrest an illegal alien if that individual has been convicted of committing a crime, a single felony or three misdemeanors.

And here’s the rest of the tale.

The U.S. government (DHS) has told their agents that even the commission of a crime by the alien, the single felony or three misdemeanors, doesn’t automatically sanction deportation—that there are “significant” and “insignificant” crimes, and deportation of an alien convicted of a criminal offense is tied to its definition as one or the other.

Who decides which crimes are significant and which are not?

Murder and rape, says DHS, would most likely be considered significant crimes, but who makes the final determination in each individual case — and how — is unclear.

“Prosecutorial discretion.”

What this means is that federal agents now visit, on a routine basis, illegal aliens doing time in U.S. jails and prisons, only to discover that in too many cases, they are still prohibited by current U.S. (DHS) policy from deporting these lawbreakers and sending them back to their own countries, whether Mexico, Central-South America, Europe or the Mideast.

We know that Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda operatives are living and working in Mexico and points south, cooperating and collaborating with the cartels, money launderers, arms manufacturers and traffickers of every ilk.

We know the southwest border is riddled with drug tunnels, and that ports across the southern U.S., particularly Miami and Los Angeles, are overwhelmed not just by cargo, but by arbitrary policy directives whose priorities — what to look for, what/who to detain — seem to change daily. There are whispers and rumblings about close calls leaking out of these ports, and frustration about risking one’s career for national security or risking security to protect one’s career.

And we know that if even one or two, or let’s say even 19 (the number of 9/11 terrorists), would-be terrorists are currently living in the U.S., even if they entered illegally or they’re here on expired visas, and unless they’re convicted of committing a significant crime, ICE agents can’t do much about it.

You don’t have to be Einstein to figure the odds.

Let’s scroll back to the U.S. before 911, and come at this from a different angle.

Yes, it’s that important

There are Feds who tell me that if the same immigration/deportation policies ICE agents are told they must observe today had been in place when the 9/11 terrorists were living, training and planning the attack in the United States, on student or expired visas — even if one had been apprehended during an attempt to pass through a U.S. port illegally, as authorities believe was the case on August 4, 2001, with Muhammed al-Kahtani, the suspected ‘20th 911 hijacker’ I mentioned earlier — ICE or Customs/Immigration agents would not have been permitted to arrest or deport them.

They had not yet committed any crimes.

Don’t believe me?

You’re not alone.

U.S. Immigration Policies and Mexico

Let’s agree on this: The majority of illegal aliens living in the United States are from Mexico and other countries in Central and South America.

On Jan. 29, NPR aired an upbeat “All Things Considered” interview with reporter Ted Robbins.

Topic? The Border Security Index, a quantitative tool conjured into being not long ago by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.

According to Robbins, the index has brought glad tidings to DHS and the country, countering the concerns of those worrywarts within and without the agency who suggest that the administration’s extensive “reach out” policies to groups and states hostile to the U.S. may be costing us not just the proverbial hand, but the arm as well.

If it ever comes to a showdown, the reasoning goes, armless men are at a disadvantage.

“Histrionics,” say defenders of the Administration’s border control policies.

But the doubt, the tiny pinch at the back of the national neck, is hard to ignore, particularly when one recalls the calm, bucolic skyscape overhead on 9/11, minutes before two hijacked U.S. aircraft ripped through the Twin Towers and a third, reportedly heading for Washington, D.C., cratered into a field in Pennsylvania.

Critics, who point to the security failure in Benghazi and the increasing mobility and geographic reach — 67 countries and five continents — of al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, say another attack on the U.S. is inevitable and not far off.

And they say that lax, uncoordinated and politically driven border control policies along U.S. borders and at U.S. ports is an open invitation.

The rebuttal

No, no, no, says NPR reporter Robbins. According to the Border Security Index, arrests of illegal aliens have dropped from a million plus a decade ago to roughly 300,000 today.

Robbins outlines several reasons for this success. First, beefed up border security is working — ICE and Border Patrol Agents are better trained and better equipped to stop the flow, and new technologies, cameras, infrared equipment and a new detection devices/strategies that are too sensitive to explain in detail are making illegal border crossing a riskier proposition than ever before.

Second, this same beefed-up security is making it more difficult for illegal aliens inside the U.S. to exit, meaning the back and forth traffic of temporary illegal workers has come to a halt. Now, once inside, they tend to stay.

Third, the economy of Mexico is improving — stronger economic growth last year than the U.S. — so the incentive to blast on through to the other side of the border decreases as Mexico’s GDP rises.

Sounds good. Real good.

Time to get serious

There was a time when U.S. Customs and Border agents had the legal clout, authority, plus the intelligence and sources they needed to get the job done.

In 1985, when Mexican cartel thugs kidnapped and tortured DEA Agent Kiki Camarena, U.S. law enforcement — allowed at that time to operate 26 kilometers south of the U.S. border into Mexico — instantly tapped into their network of sources within Mexico and the cartels, teasing out the names of perpetrators within days. The Mexican authorities, cartel chiefs, assassins, informers and nearly all their friends and family were put on high alert: The U.S. wanted the men who tortured and killed Camarena and our agents wanted them fast.

Customs shut down the U.S.-Mexico border, blocking millions in trade, backing up traffic for hundreds of miles, and he swore the ports would remain closed until Mexico delivered. Very soon after, some very anxious individuals on the Mexican side of the border began “throwing the bodies over the fence” to feds waiting on the other side. U.S. law enforcement still had the executive and agency backing it needed to protect its own and U.S. citizens on our side of the line.

In 1992, when the U.S. and Mexico agreed on preliminary plans for the implementation of a free trade zone between the two countries, border agencies began to pull agents back toward the U.S. border. NAFTA, which U.S. policymakers believed then was too important to the nation’s economic growth to jeopardize, a view later tagged as overly optimistic, the balance of political power began to shift.

U.S. manufacturers, especially automakers and electronic outfits, were benefitting significantly from the construction of parts in Mexico (cheap labor and huge tariff reduction/elimination), and these campaign contributing corporations, as well as the American Bankers Association, became advocates for harmonious U.S.-Mexico relations.

President Clinton and Mexico’s President Salinas finalized NAFTA in 1994, and U.S. policymakers passed the word down: Mexico, whose cartels and cartel supporters continue to divvy up roughly 39 billion a year, was our new best friend. And Mexico, reason dictated, would not want to jeopardize its new trade relationship with the U.S. any more than we did — the same kind of logic that told Alan Greenspan, prior to 2008, that the banking community would never entertain any risk that might invite its own self-destruction.

Mistake.

In post-NAFTA Mexico, more than 50,000 men, women, and children (a number roughly equal to fatalities in Syria, a slaughter that triggered outcries from Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus to send combat ordnance to opposition forces there) have died in the drug wars Mexico’s government tells us it is winning.

It’s not about drugs—it’s about money

Criminal cartels move drugs into the U.S. because it’s profitable — everyone in the chain gets a taste, not cocaine, not heroin, not meth but cold hard cash. Drug kingpins want to expand the U.S. market via legal or illegal means, not because they’re ahead of the curve and understand we cannot and should not interfere with the morally-neutral demands of eight million addicts and their left-of-center supporters (their rationale is neither ideological nor “socially progressive”), but because it means money in their bank accounts.

And many of the banks are with them, barnacles on a drug blight ingenuous wealth managers prefer to ignore.

Look at HSBC. The recent scandal revealed the bank’s Mexican branches have laundering as much as 70 billion over the past few years — money on which brokers and account managers earn huge under and over-the-counter commissions.

Did HSBC know the money was dirty?

Duckwatchers I’m betting HSBC execs are not, but the fact that the bank moved tons of dirty dollars in the form of bulk cash via bank-to-bank transfers suggests someone may have understood the value of flying-under-the-radar.

Every day, millions in old-fashioned American greenbacks moved by air across the friendly skies between HSBC/Mexico to HSBC’s cash collection center in New York City.

The repatriation of cash from the HSBC Mexico City Bank averaged between 500 million to one billion every 22 business days. Bank-to-bank transactions are exempt from CMIR (Cash and Monetary Instrument Reports), a requirement for anyone who tries to cross the border carrying more than 10 thousand dollars, so there were no reports to the Treasury Department when the Mexican bank branches returned the cash to the U.S.

Drug cash crossing the border into Mexico is never counted. Banks, the venerable establishments at the core of U.S. economic growth, are exempted from CMIR reporting because bank to bank transactions are not considered “a risk.”

It’s assumed that the banks’ honest brokers have already vetted their customers.

The problem is that no one, not Financial Action Task Force (FATF), not Treasury, not ICE or DHS, vets the bank and its account managers. Not really. The civil fines, what bankers call “the price of doing business,” generally come after the fact.

And that’s too bad because the CMIR is the only instrument in place that could, if properly employed, measure the tons of drug dollars that spill out of the Mexican and Colombian cartels. CMIR is the only reliable scale we have to estimate the actual volume of drug money smuggled out of the U.S. and into Mexico, cash that is daily deposited, placed, layered and integrated back into the world economy through Mexico’s financial institutions.

Once bulk cash is returned to the U.S. or “repatriated” — almost every US bank, and every Mexican bank, benefits from what’s called “correspondent banking,” a sibling relationship between branches in both countries — the cash is placed on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States as the asset of the depositing bank.

This is where the money is finally reckoned and how investigators in the U.S. have arrived at the 39 billion dollar figure as a rough estimate of cross-border cartel drug profits.

An ingenious scam, those bank-to-bank transfers and the CMIR exemptions — no counting at the border, no records, no delay.

The Feds also figure that over the past several years, Mexican cash traveling into and back out of the Federal Reserve vault in Brooklyn, NY, has weighed in at roughly 500 million to one billion every 22 days.

My point? There are some who say that NAFTA, designed to make the United States a productive trade partner with Mexico, may have merely made us, in many cases, its partner in crime.

News reports, too many to count, tell the same story about U.S. banking, including the criminal allegations and fines levied in recent years against HSBC, Wachovia, Citibank, Bank of America and other institutions in search of big accounts whose origins, to their shock and surprise, are discovered to be uncertain.

The pre-NAFTA clout enjoyed by U.S. law enforcement on the southwest border before 1994 quickly began to deteriorate.

Customs and DEA agents operating in Mexico had, for 30 years prior, been able to obtain credentials from Mexican authorities that permitted them to carry weapons within the Mexican states — an amenity also extended to Mexico’s police officers in the United States. Now that option disappeared, and in recent years, American  agents like Jaime Zapata, traveling unarmed in a government vehicle and ambushed at a checkpoint in northern Mexico, have paid the price.

In 1995, when it was revealed that U.S. law enforcement had, unknown to Mexican authorities, conducted a three-year money-laundering laundering investigation tagged Casablanca — the largest in U.S. history — and was about to confirm the involvement of General Enrique Cervantes, Mexico’s Secretary of Defense, in an one of the largest and most complicated money laundering schemes ever devised. Nearly every bank in Mexico was implicated, scores of bankers, brokers and traffickers identified and charged. Three of Mexico’s largest banks were indicted and convicted of money laundering.

Mexican authorities were outraged by what they saw as a breach of their national sovereignty, and the Clinton administration sent Attorney Janet Reno to Brownsville, TX, to sign an agreement with her Mexican counterpart that not only prohibited the U.S. from launching unilateral law enforcement investigations involving Mexico. The Brownsville Agreement also requires the U.S. to obtain concurrence, permission from the Mexican authorities before implementing such investigations in the future. It also compels U.S. law enforcement to work hand-in-hand with Mexican federal and state police, and forces U.S. law enforcement to brief government officials in Mexico on proposed strategies before they can be implemented.

No more finger-pointing at Mexico’s top dogs.

Which brings us back to ICE Agent Chris Crane and his colleagues who continue in their attempt to convince Congress, the courts, and the media that the U.S. has, in many ways, abandoned our borders. To highlight the fact that U.S. law enforcement personnel, once allowed to operate 26 kilometers south of the U.S. border, are now stationed in district offices located 60 or 80 miles inland. To disabuse us of the notion that jet skiers on Falcon Lake in U.S. territory and killed by cartel thugs in 2009, brought it on themselves. To counter the idea that Jesus Diaz, a Border Patrol agent doing time in a U.S. prison, deserves to be there because he forced an illegal alien — young, uncooperative and covered with gang tattoos — into a kneeling position in an attempt to restrain and search him — verboten, one suspects, under new DHS policies. The young Mexican, who was returned soon after unharmed to Mexico by bus, complained of “rough treatment” to the Mexican consulate, which complained to the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Diaz’s district. Our guy, Diaz, went to jail, not the kid with the strap marks canyoned into his shoulders, standing a few hundred feet from an abandoned backpack filled with cocaine.

So when NPR’s Ted Robbins ticks off the “probable” reasons that the arrests and deportations of illegal aliens have declined significantly, it might be prudent to give the devil his due and suggest that law enforcement personnel — ICE, DEA and Border Patrol agents who’ve seen colleagues lose their jobs, their lives and their freedom in the exercise of what they believed was their sworn duty — might merely be acquiescing to policies that preclude the apprehension, arrest and/or deportation of illegal aliens.

The border policies that fail to keep out the drugs and the dirty money are now joined by immigration policies that may fail to keep out even larger threats.

We’ll just have to wait, I suppose, along with ICE, for a crime “significant” enough to get our laws (the ones passed by Congress) working again.

Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins presenting the Benghazi report in Washington on Dec. 31, 2012. (photo credit: AP/Susan Walsh)

Hillary Clinton’s testimony before Congress the other week brought the country’s attention back to the Benghazi attack of Sept. 11, 2012. It is a topic that I find fascinating, less for what it says about U.S. foreign policy than for what it says about domestic politics and the processes of perception and interpretation. In this case, however, rather than examine the Clinton testimony, I would like to focus on a less-noticed report.

Another official report, “Flashing Red: A Special Report on the Terrorist Attack at Benghazi,” was issued just before New Year’s Day. This one came out of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and was attributed specifically to Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan M. Collins (R-Me.), the chairman and the ranking minority member of that committee. This was one of Lieberman’s last official acts, as he retired from the Senate a few days later.

Most of the report deals with the inadequacies of the security arrangements at the diplomatic mission at Benghazi, and how these might be remedied in the future. Obviously, this is a valid concern and a useful exercise. The report brings renewed attention to some things we have already known and also shines a light on some aspects that are new, at least to me. For instance, it emphasizes the difficulties of getting adequate provisions and staffing for a diplomatic mission that was small and temporary. (The entire mission consisted of one diplomat and three Diplomatic Security agents, all on temporary assignment—elevated to two diplomats and five D.S. agents on the day of the attack—and the lease on the property was to run out at the end of 2012.) It was also difficult to fit into the budget when Congress had not passed a new appropriations bill for foreign affairs since before the mission was established. Still, it seems unlikely that the report’s recommendations will be fully implemented. In some cases, this may be due to shortcomings of the report itself, but more often it is due to the nature of the beast.

The report, for example, repeatedly notes that the security arrangements were not adequate and calls for providing adequate security at such sites in the future. Yet there is no real definition of “adequate.” After the fact, you can say you need enough security to defend against the attack that occurred, but the report concedes that the magnitude of the attack was unprecedented. The report does make a couple of specific recommendations for pedestrian barriers and “mantraps” and mentions some incidents in which the absence of these was associated with problems, but it would have been more convincing if it could have cited episodes in which their presence had prevented problems. Moreover, the discussion never mentions the fact that the U.S. embassy in Tripoli—a two-year-old, state-of-the-art facility—had been rendered useless by a pro-Qadhafi mob the just the year before, despite preparations that must have appeared adequate at the time. (It is also worth noting that the security arrangements for the embassy in Kabul, which—along with Embassy Baghdad and Embassy Islamabad—is infamous for siphoning off the State Department’s security resources, were also being denounced as inadequate that summer.)

The report repeats the list of security incidents in the Benghazi area that preceded the attack. Lieberman and Collins acknowledge that there was no specific intelligence regarding this attack, and even note that it might have been impossible to acquire specific intelligence because the attack apparently involved little or no advance planning, but they recommend that in the future such diplomatic missions should not wait for specific warnings. It would be unfair to say that this amounts to saying “Just know what’s going to happen before it happens,” but it is not a lot better. It might have been helpful if for comparative purposes they had compiled similar lists of escalating security incidents for the other two dozen facilities that were attacked that day—and for similar facilities that were not attacked—so that we could see if and how they actually differed. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested that the deteriorating situation in Benghazi did not necessarily distinguish it from a lot of other places at the time. In her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23, Secretary Clinton pointed out that the department’s attention that day was focused on Cairo and Tunis, where embassies were also under attack. How many of those other outposts also requested security that they could not get? Which ones should have had their security reduced in order build up Benghazi’s? A comparative approach, taking real costs and trade-offs into account, might ultimately produce a way to measure rising risk or tell us if the signs are random, which would also be good to know. Perhaps this would be an appropriate topic for a future report or academic study.

Based on their evaluation of the deteriorating situation, Lieberman and Collins conclude that the State Department’s worst mistake was not to shut the mission down, as the British had done with theirs. Again, this is a valid argument, but it overlooks the costs involved. Securing the personnel’s safety is an important goal, but it is not the department’s only goal. Benghazi, the birthplace of the Libyan revolution and the political center of a still-disgruntled region of the country, was, so to speak, a powder keg within the larger Libyan power keg. It was precisely the city’s volatility that made it important to know what was happening there. Far from trying to leave, Ambassador Stevens, who knew conditions in Benghazi better than anyone in the U.S. government, was trying to find a way to extend the U.S. presence there. No doubt, the British decision to leave was made easier by an assumption that the Americans would stay and keep them informed.

Lieberman and Collins also look at the unarmed private security guards hired by the State Department and the local militia assigned by the Libyan government to provide security for the mission. The report finds that these arrangements were inadequate and recommends that the State Department rely on its own resources or the U.S. military. That makes sense, of course, but the report does not say what to do if the host country objects to the presence of armed private security guards or foreign troops. This appears to have been a problem in Libya (as Kafkaesque as that may seem in a country that necessarily relies on amorphous self-proclaimed militias for national security).

Finally, nearly a third of the report is devoted to the controversy over whether and when the administration described the incident as a “terrorist attack.” In connection with this, let me note that Lieberman was supportive of Ambassador Susan Rice with regard to her remarks about Benghazi in televised interviews on September 16. Collins was not supportive, but neither did she press the issue in the manner of senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte. Let me also note that the report appropriately separates this question from the “issues” of whether the attack was preceded by a demonstration or protest and whether the infamous Internet video played a role. There are numerous other commentators who seem to believe that any reference to a demonstration (there was none) or any mention of a possible role played by the video (still not ruled out) constitutes an effort to deny the existence of a terrorist attack. In fact, none of these things are mutually exclusive.

The report, however, sends mixed messages on the “terrorist attack” issue. While it does not follow the lead of critics who assert that Rice should have ignored her talking points and declared the “truth” of what happened, it is critical of her failure to state explicitly on September 16 that the incident was a terrorist attack. On the other hand, it acknowledges that on that same day the FBI was still debriefing U.S. personnel who had witnessed the attack. The report also concedes that the talking points provided to Rice and to Congress included references to a demonstration and that the intelligence community took these references from open news sources that were wrong. (The intelligence community apparently still considers the talking points to have been basically correct apart from the reference to a demonstration.) Then, at least from my perspective, the report basically castigates the intelligence community for wasting its time on more important issues (like trying to find out what actually happened and who had done it) when people in Washington were still confused about the “terrorist” and “demonstration” controversies. Evidently, the intelligence community did not consider these controversies worthy of attention or, more likely, did not consider them issues at all. (One might also add that the intelligence community generally avoids commenting on public political debates, which frequently involve questionable facts and interpretations and sometimes involve politicians who, for reasons of their own, would prefer not to be corrected.)

Lieberman and Collins seem to consider a public statement by the Office of the Director of National Security, issued 17 days after the incident, to be an example that gets the story right. What does that statement say?

“As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qa’ida.”

So, there you have it. Some of the people were linked to groups, and those groups were affiliated with al-Qa’ida, or maybe they were just sympathetic, and the group leaders may or may not have actually told them to participate. Rice, on the other hand, speaking before the assessment had been revised to reflect new information, had said that the facility was attacked by extremists and that al-Qa’ida may have played a role but we don’t know for sure yet. The revisions in the assessment concern whether there was a demonstration first, which is irrelevant; the degree of spontaneity, which remains a question of degree; and some firming up of a possible role for al-Qa’ida-related groups, but it seems we still don’t know for sure. If there is a fundamental contradiction between the ODNI’s version and Rice’s version, it is difficult to ferret out.

The report goes on to conclude this section with two recommendations that, to my mind, are themselves contradictory. First, it says that in such cases administration officials must speak clearly and consistently about what happened. The problem is that the administration will not know what happened in a clear and consistent manner, and when facts emerge slowly, consistency can then be the enemy of truth. Pressure to give early explanations of what happened in a sudden, chaotic, and confusing situation is precisely what gives rise to misinformation and controversies like this one. (Remember, practically everything we learned from the press and public officials on the day of the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, turned out to be wrong.) Rather than demanding consistency, we should learn to recognize that the world is not consistent, that the collection and evaluation of evidence take time, and that explanations of events like this are going to evolve.

Perhaps realizing this at some subconscious level, the report’s authors issue a second recommendation that seemingly negates the first. The intelligence community’s talking points caused “confusion and division,” so the intelligence community should avoid issuing talking points for public discussion. This leaves it rather up in the air as to how the administration is supposed to come up with its clear and consistent story line. And after all, it was Congress’s request for information to use in public—not anything the CIA forced on people—that led to the issuing of the Benghazi talking points. Regardless of what this report recommends, when the next situation arises, political leaders are going to demand answers about what happened and why, they are going to demand to have them immediately, and they are going to use them (or some of them) in public. They will not appreciate it if the intelligence community, taking a page from the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, responds with “You can’t handle the truth!” They will simply have to accept, and point out to the public (as Ambassador Rice did), that the story is incomplete and subject to change.

Investigating incidents like Benghazi is important, and I do not mean to dismiss Lieberman’s and Collins’s contribution out of hand. They have valuable things to say. At the same time, investigators should be aware of the danger of hindsight. There will be facts and interpretations that appear to be so true after the fact that people will forget that they were not obvious before the fact. As sociologist Duncan J. Watts says in the title of a recent book, Everything Is Obvious . . . Once You Know the Answer. I would add that in some cases, despite being obvious to many people after the fact, they may still not be true. Finding out if they are true is what the investigating process is about.

John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, prepares to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. [J. Scott Applewhite/AP]

If They Build It, Will the Kardashians Come?
By Peter Savodnik
The New York Times Magazine

Azerbaijan is rich — oil rich — pushing one million barrels of crude oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipepline per day. Perched on the Caspian and with a massive energy sector, it’s no wonder it was the fastest growing economy between 2006 to 2008. These days, however, it wants to be famous.

Twitter Devolutions
By Marc Lynch
Foreign Policy

Former Great Decisions in Foreign Policy panelist and George Washington University political science professor Marc Lynch weighs in on the role of social media in the Arab Spring. With all the hype surrounding “Facebook revolutions” and “Twitter revolutions” — perhaps soon we’ll have “Vine revolutions” — Lynch demonstrates it really hasn’t been as beneficial as we want to believe to the Arab Spring.

Escape from Iran
By Vahid Pour Ostad
The Atlantic

Hooman Mousavi, an Iranian dissident born in a political prison to a family killed for their opposition activities, was arrested for participating in the protests against the 2009 vote that handed the incumbent Ahmadinejad a 62 percent win. Ostad tells his story a few months after his release in August 2012.

The Evolution of Irregular War
By Max Boot
Foreign Affairs

With all the recent “droning” about drones in Washington, Max Boot — a CFR fellow and Great Decisions 2013 guest — reminds us that terrorism and guerrilla tactics are not really anything new; it’s conventional warfare that’s new. And even though it’s been belittled since Greco-Roman times, it remains as deadly as ever, only this time with a political scheme that may have been lacking among the tribal warriors of the past.

Hillary Clinton: The Most Powerful Woman in American Politics
by Michael Tomasky
Newsweek

If there’s one thing the buzz surrounding Hillary’s (temporarily?) nonexistent 2016 presidential bid, it’s that Hillary Clinton as a “private citizen” has become hard to imagine. Tomasky discusses her legacy, her diplomacy and her impact on politics in general.

Blogs:

Shades of Grey in U.S. Policy Towards North Africa by Calvin Dark
“Hillz” Highlights: Reflections on Hillary Clinton’s Four Years as SecState by Hannah Gais
How Secretary Clinton Got It All Wrong by Oliver Barrett
First African Billionaire a Testament in Corruption Not Success by Daniel Donovan
The Long Road Back by Melissa Lockhart Fortner

Copyright: BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21293598

On February 1, U.S. Embassy in Ankara – in a calm, residential and business neighborhood — was bombed. At the time of writing this, police statements indicate that it is believed to be a suicide attack and the attacker(s) detonated the bomb inside the security checkpoint bunker, killing at least one security guard. Growing up in the nice and pleasant middle-class neighborhood around the embassy, the attack was of particular shock to me.

Who attacked the embassy or what their motives were, will definitely be clear as the investigation continues, however the timing of the attack was of particular importance. Most specifically, CNN-Turk’s Nevsin Mengu has brought several important factors into consideration:

1. Earlier in the morning on February 1, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law Suleiman M., was captured by a joint CIA – MIT (Turkish National Intelligence Agency). The police statement indicates that Suleiman M. had entered Turkey as a political asylum-seeker, with the final goal of traveling to Saudi Arabia to reunite with his wife.
2. Israeli airstrike on Syria – and the fact that Israel had contacted Washington before the strike – infuriated not only Syria, but also Iran and Russia. A preemptive Israeli airstrike is not new in the region, but the consent and knowledge of Washington at this political juncture is seen as a very serious act of indirect hostility by the Syria-Iran-Russia axis.
3. Turkey had requested NATO Patriot-missile protection on its Syrian border later in 2012 – NATO had responded positively and a number of Patriot missile sites were established with a group of American, German and Dutch military oversight mission. The final shipment of Patriot missiles and launcher system had arrived several days earlier and the full system went operational earlier on February 1.

***

One, or a combination of these factors have possibly caused the attack today – U.S.-Turkish relations have recovered significantly from its 2003-2008 “low” and both countries have been cooperating extensively in a number of very critical strategic policy issues. U.S. Embassy bombing in Ankara may be an indicator of how this cooperation is seen as a threat, as the attack probably sought to punish both Washington and Ankara.

U.S. Senator John Kerry signs an autograph for Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff member Bertie Bowman during Kerry’s confirmation hearing for Secretary of State. [Reuters/Gary Cameron]

Articles From Around the Web

The Force
By Jill Lepore
The New Yorker

Once a country that regarded a large standing army as a form of tyranny, the United State’s has now become one of the largest spenders on defense — and its military spending exceeds all of the nation’s in the world combined. When does a large military become “too much”?

Could Cyril Ramaphosa Be the Best Leader South Africa Has Not Yet Had?
By Bill Keller
New York Times Magazine

Once a powerful figure in the struggle against apartheid, Ramaphosa has become a promenant figure in the business community. Yet his election to Deputy President of the African National Congress has brought him back into politics, and “we may find out whether he is, as many South Africans have long believed, the best president South Africa has not yet had.”

The Egyptian Revolution Through Mubarak’s Eyes
By Dan Kenner
Foreign Policy

Two years after the January 25th protests in Egypt, some of Mubarak’s closest confidants are going public about the discussions within the upper echelons of the Egyptian government after initial the outbreak of protests. By all accounts, he seems to have been more of a passive figure.

The Danger in the Desert
The Economist

With the escalating war in Mali and the recent battle between the Algerian special forces and Islamic extremists, the specter of a “new jihadism” seems to be hanging over the continent. But is the fear of these jihadists bringing the mayhem to the West as well-founded as the danger to the African countries themselves?

The Mirage of the Arab Spring
By Seth G. Jones
Foreign Affairs

The Arab Spring — once perceived as a sign of hope and freedom — has yet to lead the Middle East to throw aside its authoritarian yolk. Instead leaping into an idealistic quagmire, the United States needs a policy to deal with the region as it is.

FPB Posts

Syrian Predictions 2013, Look North
By Alexander Corbeil

Trend of Trophy Hunting Ban is Promising for African Wildlife
By Daniel Donovan

A Long Road Ahead for France in Mali
By Julia Knight

When People Vanish
By Tim LaRocco

McDonough’s Elevation and the Obamians’ Ascent
By David J. Karl

Photo Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IRIN

With the opening of “Zero Dark Thirty” this week, many have condemned the depiction of torture in the film — and debates have resurfaced about the “enhanced interrogation” of suspected terrorists by the United States to find Osama bin Laden. What gets left out of these discussions is the role that a deplorable espionage tactic played in the manhunt and the wide-reaching effects that this tactic has had in global health.

I’m talking about the use of a fake vaccination program in Pakistan, run by the C.I.A., that drew blood samples from children in Abbottabad to check their DNA against relatives of bin Laden’s, a story I covered more than a year ago and again this July when the Taliban banned polio vaccinators from operating in Northern Pakistan. Now, nine health workers who were administering polio vaccines have been killed across Pakistan. These coordinated attacks have forced the WHO to suspend a major vaccination drive in the country.

Pakistan is one of three countries in which polio is still endemic (the other two are Afghanistan and Nigeria), although there were resurgences found in Angola, Chad, and the DRC this year. In one of the greatest public health near-victories of the past century, we’ve almost eradicated this devastating disease, reducing cases by 99 percent in 25 years. You rarely see numbers like that in global health efforts — smallpox is the only disease affecting humans that we’ve managed to eradicate. We’ve made these incredible gains through preventative measures:  by vaccinating 2 billion children in the past quarter-century.

When news about the fake vaccine program (which was for hepatitis B, not polio) surfaced, I wrote that it was an unacceptable ruse that undermined global health efforts and took away the ability to trust doctors. As I wrote in July, polio vaccinations are a particularly fraught issue in some parts of the Muslim world, where the drives are seen as a Western conspiracy to infect Muslim children with HIV or conduct espionage, which is why objections to polio programs grew instead of objections to hepatitis prevention. The New Yorker pointed out that in 2004, we nearly wiped out polio, but condemnations from mullahs in northern Nigeria about the programs meant that people refused vaccinations, contracted the disease, and traveled to Mecca for the hajj, where they spread polio to other pilgrims.

According to the AP, the Pakistani Taliban — the prime suspect in the attacks — have distanced themselves from the killings, and there is no confirmation of who organized the two-man motorcycle teams who shot and killed five female health workers on December 17 within the span of an hour, adding four more victims in the following days, some of whom were teenagers. It’s probable that the C.I.A. program is not directly responsible for these deaths, since there are a number of other cultural factors, such as suspicion of polio programs in general, as well as the liberation of women, that could have added motivation for the violence. At the same time, it added fuel to a very volatile fire. As Michael Specter wrote in the New Yorker last week, “There is a history here, and somebody in the American intelligence community should have known it.” Unfortunately, that ignorance, or willful disregard, has potentially contributed to the deaths of nine people and put the great progress we have made against polio in serious jeopardy.

Saudi Arabia is perhaps the only remaining country in the world that takes its name from a ruling family — the Al Saud.  It has vast hydrocarbon resources that feed the world’s insatiable hunger for energy.  It also is an absolute monarchy founded upon religious principles of Wahhabi Islam.  The alliance of the Al Saud with a Wahhabi religious elite largely precludes freedom of thought and individualism. Saudi Arabia is a kingdom where gender segregation permeates every aspect of social life with women looked upon as de facto sexual bombs who, if not contained by male relatives, could explode and send society into disarray.  Saudi Arabia also is unique in its reaction to regional revolts known as the Arab Spring, doling out billions of its petrodollars to preclude its citizenry from any thought of taking to the streets. But, according to Karen Elliott House, things in this shrouded kingdom could well change.

Ms. House sat down with Reza Akhlaghi of Foreign Policy Association to talk about her new book  “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines – and Future.” 

Karen Elliott House is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who spent thirty years writing about Saudi Arabia as diplomatic correspondent and foreign editor at The Wall Street Journal. Later she served as President of Dow Jones International and then publisher of The Wall Street Journal. A former board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Ms. House is Vice Chair of the RAND Corporation.

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For over three decades you reported on Saudi Arabia as The Wall Street Journal’s diplomatic correspondent. What made you decide to write this book? What fascinates you most about Saudi Arabia?  

As diplomatic correspondent, I had spent much time interviewing Saudi government officials on oil, security and geopolitical events but I wanted to understand the Saudi people, society and culture and then understand what was changing in society and why,  and what was not changing and why.    What fascinates me is how very different are Saudi Arabia and the U.S.  Yet there also are similarities between today’s conservative Saudi life and the cloistered life I led in a tiny town in Texas half a century ago growing up in a fundamentalist Christian family with no TV, no alcohol, no musical instruments in my church, and no shorts or pants on the women of the household.  It was a life focused on religion and moral living, and that made Saudi Arabia somewhat more familiar to me. 

You start your book by painting a very gloomy picture of socio-economic as well as religious life in Saudi Arabia. Under the surface of perceived stability in Saudi Arabia, there seems to be a simmering discontent against what appears to be a political order that may have run its course given the tectonic changes in the region and explosion in modern communication technologies. Given its current domestic environment, how is the Saudi power structure coping with an increasingly changing and connected world?

The Saudi power structure—the royal and the religious—have come to understand and to make use of modern technology.  The religious use the internet to spread the official Wahhabi version of Islam.  The royals, who run the government use technology very effectively to seek out terrorists and to spy on their own people.  What neither the royals nor the religious fully appreciate is the degree to which the Saudi citizenry, and particularly the youth, are now wired into the wider world of the Internet and thus much better informed and thus much less inclined than their parents to follow the dictates of the power structure.  Thus, modern communication is a double-edged sword.

The political stability in Saudi Arabia, as you assert in your book, has been assured based on a three-hundred-year old social contract binding the people to their Saudi rulers. This social contract appears to be challenged from multiple fronts. Can you elaborate on some of the key challenges that are contributing to the erosion of this social contract?

The original social contract—loyalty for stability—also became loyalty for prosperity after the discovery of oil.  But as the population of Saudi Arabia has exploded (there now are 19.6 million Saudis some 60% of whom are under the age of 20) government services have deteriorated.  Given satellite television and social media, Saudis know much more about huge wealth disparities and government inefficiencies and this is undermining loyalty to the regime.  Additionally, the Al Saud’s legitimacy has always derived from the support it receives from the kingdom’s religious establishment led by the Council of Senior Ulama.  But as the religious establishment has become increasingly and visibly subservient to the political needs of the Al Saud, its legitimacy is eroding and with it the legitimacy of the Al Saud.  In short, the longstanding partnership between the Al Saud and the religious ulama which benefited both is now providing fewer benefits to either.

“On Saudi Arabia”, Random House, 320 pages

Your book illustrates the omnipresence of Saudi princes in every aspect of life and their control over all economic levers in the country,  so much so that “Saudis of all sorts resent having to beg princes for favors to secure services that should be a public right”. What are some of the key required mechanisms that can lead to the deconstruction of this notion of “privilege” (favor) and possibly lead to a discourse around the notion of “right”?

So long as princes seek to retain influence and power, those in government and their many thousands of cousins outside government prefer dispensing privileges to people to receive persona credit rather than creating an efficient government that provides these benefits—good health care, good education, justice—because they are owed to citizens.  To change this, would require the royal family, beginning with the King, to emphasize accountability and transparency of government so that officials who didn’t deliver services were held accountable, removed and replaced.   Now, when government fails, a new bureaucracy is simply created or some new entity funded by a prince steps in to provide partial services on an ad hoc basis.  Even when people benefit from some service or favor bestowed by a prince, many say they resent what they regard as begging for services that should be theirs by right as a citizen.

Let’s turn our attention to women. In Wahhabi Islamic thought women are objects, potentially dangerous that need to be controlled. Therefore, the chief concern in Wahhabi thinking is women’s presence in social life. With the reforms being adopted under the rule of the current King Abdullah, how could the increasing participation of Saudi women in social life, however at glacial pace, impact the alliance between the Saudi Royals and the Wahhabi religious establishment?  

King Abdullah has instituted some gradual reforms—allowing women to have an identity card separate from their male family members, to check into a hotel without a male family member, and encouraging creation of more jobs for women.   So far he has kept the reforms modest so that his religious establishment (he appoints the senior Ulama) has continued to support the Al Saud.  Given the importance of retaining this ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval’ from the religious establishment, the Al Saud aren’t likely to move at a pace that breaks the bond of mutual self-interest that holds the royals and Wahhabi religious establishment together.   So holding this tandem power structure together is the overriding aim of the Al Saud, but the links are fraying as both religious conservatives and more liberal modernizers among the citizenry pull in opposite directions.

The level of corruption in Saudi Arabia and the increasing gap between the poor and the rich are in parallel with a growing gap between Islamic teachings and the exercise of those teachings and values by the ruling royals. What, in your opinion, are the implications of these two parallel lines on how Saudis, the youth in particular, view the royal family and the religious elite?

Yes, the growing awareness of young Saudis of the gap between the way Wahhabi Islam is preached and practiced is a threat to both the Al Saud and its religious partners. Young Saudis—even very religious ones—are losing respect the religious establishment whom they see as more eager to do the bidding of the Al Saud than of Allah.  How youth translate their cynicism about two of the three key pillars of stability in Saudi Arabia (oil wealth being the third) into action for change isn’t clear given that this is a kingdom without any political or even social organizations.  Still, thanks to social media, youth definitely are communicating to each other their distaste for the growing gap between the religion of the Prophet Muhammad and the Islam preached but not always practiced in modern Saudi.

Given the religious establishment’s grip on the Saudi education system, the near total ban on humanities and philosophy, and the slow pace of educational reforms, are there efforts outside of Saudi Arabia that offer education online on these banned subjects to inquiring Saudi minds with the goal of breaking the status quo on the subject of ‘thought’?  

Young Saudis can access all kinds of worldwide websites that provide Islamic teaching ranging from modern and moderate to fundamentalist and even jihadist.  In whatever form, religious websites are a powerful influence in the kingdom.  At the same time, the Saudi King also has sent 100,000 Saudis abroad for non-religious higher education.  Some Saudi students, however, also argue that foreign universities should be able to open branches inside the kingdom to allow a far greater number of young Saudis to get a modern education.   A growing number of universities including prominent ones like Princeton and Stanford, however, are providing online classes that anyone around the world can join.  These are so new I do not know if many or any young Saudis are participating.  Undeniably, the potential surely exists for more young Saudis to access education if they have the curiosity to do so.  But the Saudi religious establishment will surely continue to teach that obedience–not curiosity or questioning–is the right course for young Saudis and that religious education is sufficient for Saudis.

On the future of Saudi Arabia you outline four options, one of which is civil strife. Should the latter become reality, you anticipate that there could be a call for “the agonizing choice of military intervention to safeguard global oil supplies”. Of the four scenarios, which one do you anticipate to be the most likely to unfold?

Of the several scenarios I outline in my book, the least likely, I believe, is that the kingdom can transform itself into a more liberal, even if not fully democratic, society of the sort Saudi modernizers wish for.  The most likely, I suspect, is a perpetuation of the status quo in which the Al Saud minimal reforms will not keep pace with public pressures for more individual dignity and social justice.  As I write in my book there is little chance for real reform unless or until the crown passes to one of the scores of grandsons of the founder who might have the energy, inclination and longevity to make substantial changes.  That jump to a new generation, however, entails its own high risks of dividing the royal family and setting off a divisive power struggle.

The regional revolts known as the Arab Spring have pushed the U.S.-Saudi relations into a new and complex phase. The Saudi leadership was seriously jolted after the Obama administration essentially pulled the plug on Mubarak’s regime, an event you call in your book as “a double disaster” for the Saudis. What do you expect to be the key determining factors in U.S.-Saudi relations over the next five years? And should the Saudi leadership decide to make an about-face in its strategic and security calculus, do you believe they would be guaranteed the same level of security from potentially new allies like China, Pakistan, and India?

In the region as a whole, the U.S. clearly needs to restrain Iran, protect Israel and ensure global oil supplies for the foreseeable future.    Spreading democracy to Saudi Arabia is not an American policy priority.   But Saudi stability is.  Absent greater commitment by the Al Saud to reforms that offer citizens more individual liberty that stability is threatened.  Moreover,  U.S. friendship with an absolute monarchy that denies its citizens any real voice in governance, will become more politically costly to U.S. administrations.   Questions about a close relationship with Riyadh will become more pressing as the U.S. edges closer to energy independence in coming years through production of shale oil and the logic of security for oil erodes in American minds.   Meantime, U.S. support for Israel and for the Saudi royal family makes the U.S. government unpopular with many Saudis.   The growing trend in the Arab world to replace dictators with governments that claim to be Islamic will, in the short term at least,  further erode U.S. influence and standing in the region.  The Saudi regime already has begun to hedge its bets by reaching out to China, Russia, Western Europe and Pakistan.  As the Saudi foreign minister likes to say, the U.S. and Saudi used to have a catholic marriage but now it is a Muslim marriage—meaning Saudi has multiple partners, not just the U.S.  While Pakistan might be able to provide Saudi with a porous nuclear umbrella to counter Iranian nuclear weapons, it is still the U.S. on whom the Saudis would have to rely for protection against external threats, particularly from Iran.  Saudi Arabia’s other “marriage partners” such as China, Russia and Europe do not have the capability or inclination to mount major military operations to protect the Al Saud family.  So, for the foreseeable future, the Saudi-U.S. marriage, whatever its growing tensions and resentments, remains a useful one for both partners.

Editor’s Note: 

The following is a guest opinion piece by Roz Rothstein and Roberta P. Seid. Roz Rothstein  is the CEO of StandWithUs and Roberta P. Seid, PhD is Director of Research at StandWithUs. It is an op-ed response to Ms. Ayesha Vahidy’s recent op-ed piece. 

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Ms. Vahidy’s outrage should be with Hamas, not Israel.  Hamas, not Israel, is guilty of the sins that Vahidy details.

Hamas is guilty of the very extremism Vahidy criticizes. The Hamas charter and Hamas preachers and spokespeople clearly state that their goal is the murder of Jews, the “obliteration” of Israel and its replacement with a Taliban-like theocracy.  Its media, founding documents, and statements are permeated with borrowings from traditional anti-Semitism.  An Iranian proxy, Hamas is identified as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU, Japan, Canada, and Israel, and is banned in Jordan, the U.K., and Australia.  If Vahidy’s concern is the Palestinians in Gaza, she should be even more opposed to Hamas.  It oppresses Palestinians, murders and tortures political rivals, and holds ordinary Gaza residents hostage to its violent, extremist policies.

Israel did not want this recent battle.  It has sought peaceful coexistence since its founding, offering to give up some of its homeland for peace with the Palestinians in 1937, 1947, 1967, 1979, 2000 and 2008. It has offered the Palestinians independence, something Jordan and Egypt never did when they controlled the West Bank and Gaza between 1949 and 1967. Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005 hoping for peace.  Instead, Hamas and its allies seized control, and proceeded to fire over 9,000 rockets and mortars at Israel’s southern communities, sometimes, during escalations, launching them every three hours.

This latest round of fighting occurred because beginning in October, Hamas had escalated its rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Between Nov. 10th and 12th, Hamas attacks escalated further, with 120 rockets and mortars aimed at southern Israeli communities.  Israel had sent 20 letters to the UN asking it to condemn this escalation.  The U.N. remained silent.  Amnesty International also remained silent even as daily life turned into a lethal game of Russian roulette for over one million Israeli men, women and children in rocket range who had only seconds to reach bomb shelters when the warning sirens sounded.  Israel had practiced restraint, but it was left with no choice but to attempt, as it repeatedly stated, to protect its citizens and restore normal life by disabling Hamas’ capacity to fire rockets.

Vahidy argues that Israel shouldn’t have responded because the streets of Gaza are crowded with innocent Palestinians. This is exactly what Hamas counts on.  Indeed, Hamas systematically commits double war crimes.  It uses human shields. It embeds its terrorist infrastructure, launching sites, and terrorist leaders in civilian centers—mosques, schools, residential areas—precisely because it knows  Israel’s high ethical standards about avoiding civilian casualties  and because it callously uses any resulting casualties for propaganda against Israel.  In addition, Hamas and its allies indiscriminately target Israeli civilians, not military infrastructure, which is also a war crime.  During this round, Hamas launched 1500 rockets and mortars in an attempt to murder Israelis and celebrated each civilian death. That only five died is a tribute to Israel’s extreme efforts to protect its citizens. Its infrastructure of bomb shelters, warning sirens, closure of schools, and its “Iron Dome” saved countless lives.

In contrast, Israel went to great lengths not only to protect its citizens, but also to protect Palestinian civilians. While some Israelis were understandably enraged by the incessant rocket attacks and celebration of Israeli deaths and called for an extreme response, the Israeli leadership made it clear that its battle was against Hamas, not ordinary Palestinians.  Israel aborted military operations when many civilians were near the target.  Israel also distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets and made tens of thousands of phone calls before an operation, advising civilians in Gaza where to go to avoid danger.  It continued to transport humanitarian goods into Gaza until Hamas attacks on the crossings made the continuation impossible.  It treated wounded Gazans at Israeli hospitals. The low number of deaths (177) despite Israel’s 1500 strikes is testament to Israel’s effort to avoid civilian casualties. Every inadvertent civilian casualty is a tragedy, but two thirds of the casualties were combatants, a ratio unsurpassed by any modern democracy.  In comparison, only one fourth of the dead were combatants in Afghanistan, and only 1/5 were combatants in Iraq in NATO and U.S. operations.

British Col. (ret.) Kemp observed that no nation in the history of warfare has gone to the lengths Israel does to protect civilians.  Israel should be celebrated as a model to emulate when fighting enemies who systematically use human shields, not castigated.  In ignoring context and distorting facts to denounce Israel, Amnesty International discredits itself and disqualifies itself as an organization that seeks to uphold human rights.

This latest round of fighting is just the most recent episode in Hamas’ ongoing rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and its ongoing effort to destroy it.  We can only hope that this ceasefire will not be another case in which Israel ceases and Hamas continues to fire.  Imagine what Gaza could be if Hamas stopped inciting its people to hate and kill Israelis, if they began investing in state building instead of rocket building.  Gaza is on the same kind of beautiful beach that Tel Aviv has.  Gaza could become a flourishing destination for tourists; it could produce the same high quality produce that Israelis produced when they lived in Gaza.

It is yet another tragedy for the citizens of Gaza and for Israelis that there are people who defend the self-destructive policies and human rights abuses of Hamas instead of advocating policies that will bring peace and prosperity for Palestinians and Israelis alike.