Informed Comment is on hiatus until after New Year's Day. Enjoy the holidays!



In the meantime, enjoy the following sites (the underlined parts are clickable):



http://www.jerusalem.indymedia.org/ (Palestine Independent Media Center);



http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/index.php3?language=en (Israel Independent Media Center)



and



http://www.iraqjournal.org/ Iraq Journal (Alternative views on the Iraq issue).



Informed Comment does not necessarily endorse any particular report at any of these sites, but thinks alternative, peace-oriented views on these subjects should get a hearing, at least. And it is that sort of season around here.

India almost went to war with Pakistan twice in the last year, according to India Today. Last winter, Indian forces prepared to attack the Pakistani line of control in Kashmir, but were dissuaded by the US and by the relocation of Pakistani terrorist camps from Kashmir to Pakistan itself. The war plans in the summer were dampened by fears of the approaching monsoons (heavy rains are no weather in which to fight) and by uncertainty about the exact nuclear capabilities of Pakistan (Delhi feared a nuclear reprisal and could not rule one out). This Indian war mobilization was, as Clausewitz would have foreseen, also a form of politics. It was a way of pressuring the US to pressure Pakistan to stop cross-border infiltration of Kashmir by terrorists.



The world dodged a bullet twice here, since two South Asian nuclear powers going to war with one another would be unpleasant for us all. But we are clearly not yet out of the woods.

From a discussion of so-called Koranic "belligerancy" in the Medinan chapters



In general, theological explanations by themselves do little to explain foreign policy, while foreign policy debates tend to distort the meaning and history of theology. In Islam, the difference between the Medina chapters of the Koran (c. 622-632 A.D.) and the Meccan chapters of the Koran (610-622 A.D.) can be explained with proper reference to historical context. The two sections are not different because the former are "tolerant" and the latter are "belligerent", but because the political situation had changed.



The pagan Meccan leadership in Mecca deeply disliked Islam and Muhammad from the time (c. 613?) he started denouncing polytheism. They harassed the Muslims, punished the weak among them, boycotted them, even chased away some to Ethiopia, for being monotheists. But the Meccans did not take really drastic action in the teens. In response, the Koran instructs Muhammad that he is only a 'warner' and has no sovereignty or political power.



Around 621-622 the Meccan leadership became so threatened by the continued spread of Islam in the city that they decided to assassinate Muhammad and to try to wipe Islam out. He knew that the city was becoming dangerous for him and when the notables of nearby Medina came to him seeking a "sheriff" figure to put their own town in order, he decided to leave his hometown. He escaped with a companion to Medina in 622, avoiding assassination, and was joined there by the Muslims.



The Meccan elite found the idea of Muhammad in charge of a rival city-state to be unacceptable, and it was clear there would be hostilities between the two. Muhammad's forces fought three wars and several bedouin-style "raids" with the Meccan pagans, who wanted to wipe them out and kill their prophet. By 629 Muhammad and the Muslims had prevailed. Had the war gone the other way, they would have been slaughtered or enslaved by the Meccans. As it was, Muhammad announced a general amnesty and showed impressive generosity to his defeated foes, some of whom later emerged as leaders of Islam.



Even at the time that the Muslims were defending themselves from Meccan aggression, the Koran urges that peace be made if it can be, and forbids naked aggression. It is the Medinan chapters that assure pious Jews and Christians that they have nothing to fear in the afterlife and which praise the Hebrew Bible (Torah) and the New Testament (Injil) as full of "guidance and light."



The odd sectarian enterprise of Mahmud Muhammad Taha (d. 1985) of Sudan, which aimed at discarding the Medinan chapters and creating a Meccan reading of the Koran, is not likely ever to be more than a minor heresy in Islam. It is in any case perfectly possible to construct a moderate Islamic modernism that eschews aggression on the basis of the entire Koran, and this has been done over and over again in the modern Middle East by scholars from Muhammad Abduh (d. 1905) to Abdul Karim Soroush and Muhammad Sa`id `Ashmawi in the present. Indeed, violent radical Muslims can only make their case by neglecting to quote key Koranic verses (Bin Laden typically quotes only half a verse, completely skewing its meaning).



Where serious pacifist activists have arisen among the Palestinians, as with Mubarak Awad, they have been summarily expelled from the Occupied Territories by the Israeli authorities. See Mubarak's profile at: http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/awad.htm



Ultimately, theology is not much related to foreign policy. Theology does little to explain the foreign policy of Christians and Jews, who have behaved with enormous aggressiveness toward the Muslim world in the past two centuries, invading, colonizing, displacing, and invading again. Episodes such as the French tenure in Algeria (1830-1962), the British in the Suez (1882-1956), or the Israelis in the West Bank and Gaza (1967-present) are not in any way related to the Bible. After all, the Bible contains both rather bloodthirsty works like the Book of Joshua as well as more irenic passages. As for Muslims, the most aggressive and expansionist power in the Middle East, the Baath Party of Iraq, is a secular nationalist organization that has little to do with Islam.

A letter by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden's right-hand man, has been published by Asharq al-Awsat. Dated February 1998, the letter speaks of Americans as "the foreign investors" who "must be hit." The term "investor" is part of a code in the letter, where everything is referred to as a "company" and an economic transaction. This sort of language is presumably something al-Qaeda learned from the CIA ("the Company") during the period when the two were cooperating against the Soviets.



Al-Zawahiri complains that "The Upper Egyptian Company" has ceased its commerce, a reference to the decision of the jailed leadership of the Islamic Grouping (al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya) to give up armed struggle after the disastrous 1997 shooting of dozens of tourists at Luxor. The Gamaa is famed for being disproportionately drawn from Asyut and other areas of Upper Egypt. He says that since both "firms" (the Gamaa and his own al-Jihad al-Islami) are facing international monopoly capital (sharikat al-ihtikar ad-dawliyya), it is counterproductive to fight internally. At this point the commercial code seems to be more than just code, echoing Marxist ideas.



His correspondent seems to have been Egyptian; he expresses at the beginning of the letter his hope that they will meet again in "our country" (i.e. that the Islamists will overthrow Hosni Mubarak, which is the only way such a meeting could take place).



He says, however, that the Omar Brothers Company is open for business, referring to the Taliban/al-Qaeda. He thus seems to implicate Mulla Omar in al-Qaeda terrorism, the exact details of which are still murky. He also refers to Mulla Omar as "Amir al-Mu'minin," or "Commander of the Believers," a title of the Caliph.



Using the same sort of code, he refers to the joining of his al-Jihad al-Islami terrorist organization with al-Qaeda, producing the new improved "Qa`idat al-Jihad" or "Base for Holy War." (Al-Qaeda means base in Arabic, and actually refers to Bin Laden's earliest data base of graduates of his terror training camps in 1986-88). His correspondent is apparently a contributor to the Taliban cause and is assured that under Mulla Omar, the Omar Brothers Company is flourishing.



Al-Zawahiri hopes for success in an operation in "the Village" (Egypt) and urges sympathizers to come to Afghanistan for training. He said that his organization could not bear the travel expenses, and that volunteers would have to pay for the ticket out of their own pockets or take a small loan for that purpose.

In response to a question raised about the request Paul Wolfowitz made to put 100,000 US troops into eastern Turkey on the Iraq border, and whether there was a prospect of Turkish troops going into Iraq in case a war broke out:



The whole point of asking permission to put US troops into Turkey on the border with Iraq is to *forestall* Turkish military interference in the Iraq campaign. My own view is that it is unlikely that the American force striking from the north is actually necessary militarily or perhaps even wise. It is rugged territory and in any case is held by Kurdish U.S. allies. Rather than being aimed at Baghdad, such a force may well be envisioned as securing the Kirkuk oil fields. The Kurds have pretty openly announced that they will try to take them in the fog of war, and the Turks have been equally clear that they would find such a development unacceptable to the point of intervening themselves. Putting US troops in the north could forestall a Kurdish-Turkish side-war. But of course it risks the possibility of a US-Kurdish confrontation during the early stages of the war.



The US is not seeking to inject Turkish troops into Iraq. I think the wording is simply that there are two actions that require parliamentary approval--putting US troops into Turkey, and sending Turkish troops abroad. Although it has long been likely that the Turkish National Security Council would cooperate with a US war on Iraq, despite public opposition, it is not clear that the Islamist Ak party representatives in Parliament will go along with thousands of US troops being put on Turkish soil to fight a Muslim neighbor. But, $5 bn. (which is what is being asked for by the Turks in aid as a quid pro quo) is quite an incentive.

A number of Iraqi expatriate groups will boycott the forthcoming dissident summit in London, according to Asharq al-Awsat. Al-Hizb al-Islami al-Iraqi, a Sunni Islamist party, complains that Sunni representation at the summit is weak. He says that two-thirds of the delegates are Shiites. (He does not say that about 2/3s of Iraqis are Shiites; that is, the sort of representation he is complaining about is just proportional to the population. In the past, the Shiite minority has usually been taken advantage of and treated as a functional minority.)



Dr. Mubaddir al-Ways of the Socialist Party criticized the conference as funded and organized by the US rather than springing from the Iraqi people. He said the aim was to detach the Iraqis from the Arab nation and to deliver them into a (primary) relationship with Israel. He maintained that the US would not join up with any indigenous Iraqi fighting force, and that it had put pressure on Iran to prevent the Shiite al-Badr Brigade (based in Iran) from being allowed into Iraq in case of a war. (Iran yesterday announced that it would not allow Iraq to be attacked from Iranian soil, which would make it difficult for the 10,000 to 15,000 fighters commanded by the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq to move its forces into support of the US advance from the south. Al-Ways is claiming that this prohibition was announced at US insistence. I find this allegation highly unlikely; Rumsfeld at least seems to want to hook up with SCIRI fighters.)



The Communist Party of Iraq has similar qualms about participating in a primarily US-fueled conference that has no Iraqi grass roots.



Keeping the Sunni Arabs and Shiite Arabs happy with one another in a post-Saddam Iraq is obviously not going to be easy.

Al-Qaeda has launched a campaign against Usama Rushdi, a former publicist in Holland for the Islamic Grouping (al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah), he says. The Islamic Grouping was implicated in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat in 1981, and in the 1990s launched a series of terrorist attacks and challenges to the Egyptian government. Rushdi gained asylum in the Netherlands on the grounds that he would be persecuted for his beliefs in Egypt. He says he is now the target of three forces--the Dutch extreme Right, who wants him deported to Egypt; al-Qaeda, which is angry that he published criticisms of Usama Bin Laden; and "the outside."



Rushdi's newspaper, al-Mahrusa, has been accused of being a mouthpiece for Bin Ladin by the Dutch Right, but he says that it has been critical of al-Qaeda, thereby making him a target of that organization.



Rushdi represents himself as part of a reform movement within the Islamic Grouping that has broken with the blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, and has sought a way of interpreting Islam as essentially pacifist. I append a comment I made on Rushdi at Gulf2000 earlier this year. (- Asharq al-Awsat).



---

Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 07:16:44 -0500 (EST)

To: gulf2000 list



An "Islamic indictment"



Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 02:22:22 -0500

From: Juan Cole



A leader of the al-Jama`ah (al-Gamaa) al-Islamiyyah in exile, Osama Rushdi, has given an interview in al-Sharq al-Awsat in which he strongly condemns the attack on the United States of September 11, appealing to the strictures of Islamic law and the principles enunciated by classical jurists like Ibn Qudama. He excoriates Ayman al-Zawahiri's principle of "taking the battle to the enemy" and Bin Ladin's of "praiseworthy terrorism." He is careful to say that he does think U.S. foreign policy makes it an enemy of Islamists, and that he strongly opposed the war in Afghanistan. But he says the fault is not all on one side (sic) and that it is time for Islamists openly to reassess the movement in the light of the grievous errors that have been made.



Rushdi is wanted in Egypt (though apparently unindicted) for terrorism but is seeking asylum in the Netherlands. He is said to have been among the leaders of the organization who arranged a cease-fire with the Egyptian government after the shooting of tourists in Luxor in 1997.



The interview is on the Web at:



http://www.asharqalawsat.com/pc/

news/25,1,2002,012.html



An informative artlce about Rushdi is at:



http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/

539/eg10.htm



It would be easy to be rather cynical about all this, as, perhaps, an attempt by a man who could easily be extradited to life imprisonment at any moment to rehabilitate himself and strengthen his asylum case in Europe.



On the other hand, I personally believe that terrorist groups like al-Gamaa al-Islamiyyah do have a powerful ideology that helps drive them to act as they do, and its ideologues are therefore not insignificant.

The trial of suspected al-Qaeda member Mounir El Motassadeq for having been part of the Hamburg cell that planned and carried out September 11, now being held in Germany, may be transferred to the United States. This move is contemplated because it would allow prosecutors to call to the stand Ahmad Ressam, now in Federal penitentiary in Washington state for his role in the "Millennium Plot" to blow up the Los Angeles Airport in 2000.



Ressam has shown increasing remorse for his actions since September 11, especially as it finally dawned on him that he was in prison for life. My guess is that he, an Algerian, has information about El Motassadeq (a Moroccan) that would ensure the latter's conviction. Maybe in return he'll become eligible for parole at some distant point in the future. The change of venue may also be necessary because the German defense team has filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that they have been denied access to a key witness, Ramzi Binalshibh, who was arrested in Pakistan last summer and also played a key role in the Hamburg cell.



In the meantime, an FBI agent testified at the trial that Muhammad Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi received as much as $200,000 from sources in the Persian Gulf in the months before September 11. Atta sent a large sum back to the UAE shortly before that date. El Motassadeq had signing authority over al-Shehhi's bank account.

A summit has been set up between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for the initialling of a deal to build a $3.2 bn. pipeline from Turkmenistan down to South Asia. It is scheduled for Dec. 26-27 in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashkabad (Ashgebot). The pipeline would stretch from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Gwadar, and will be funded in part by the World Bank. Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will be there but it is unclear who will represent Pakistan.



India in particular is an emerging market for this gas, and Pakistan has already waived any objections to the pipeline going over to India, as well. Afghanistan and Pakistan would collect substantial tolls on the gas, and desperately poor Turkmenistan would get some much needed income.



Dawn reports that "The project has seven stages including feasibility, survey, design and engineering, construction, commissioning, operation and maintenance and installation of gas processing plant in Gwadar."



The obstacles to this pipeline plan are formidable. There has been heavy fighting for months around Shindand between Herat warlord Ismail Khan's forces and those of a rival. Gas pipelines are especially vulnerable to terrorism and sabotage, in which the Taliban and al-Qaeda specialized. Given that the US has not yet provided order to Afghanistan and that fair numbers of Taliban and al-Qaeda are still in the country, it seems to many observers that this pipeline project is no more than a pipe dream.



Certainly, Afghanistan will need a lot more order and security before it will become feasible, and achieving that goal seems to me at least a decade or perhaps more into the future.

     The more the Kuwaiti government thinks about it the less it likes the speech Saddam Hussein gave the day before yesterday. All though it appeared to contain an grudging apology for the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it also contained lots of other, more sinister language.



     The Kuwaiti officials now read it as a series of threats against them, and they have therefore sent a memo of protest to the United Nations. They see it as accusing them of treason against the Arab world for hosting US troops, and they read it as a threat against Westerners in Kuwait.



     They also worry that it was meant to create a division between the Kuwaiti people (many of whom, while they despise Saddam, are uneasy about cooperating in an attack on a fellow Arab country launched unilaterally by the US, a Western power). As a result, the Kuwaitis are setting up popular demonstrations against Saddam's letter. Even the Islamic party will join in this endeavor (since Saddam is a secular nationalist, they have reason to despise him, but surely are also torn by their dislike of the US and any projection of its power in the region.

     Stinger shoulder-launched missiles are being sold in the bazaars of Kabul for $200,000 according to foreign observers in that city. The geniuses in the Reagan administration (who we now have with us at the top of the government, like Paul Wolfowitz) gave Islamic extremists about 400 stingers in the 1980s to use against Soviet helicopter gunships.



     While this move may have been brilliant militarily, it was highly problematic with regard to long-term U.S. security. These deadly weapons have floated around arms markets ever since. Kuwait bought a fair number before 1990, so presumably some of those were confiscated by the Iraqis when they invaded. That's what we needed, Saddam with stingers. (Though it is not as if the original warlord recipients of this Reagan largesse were much better).



     The recent use of old Soviet SA-7s by al-Qaeda terrorists to attempt to shoot down a US fighter jet in Saudi Arabia (last winter) and now an Israeli airliner taking off from Mombasa reminds us of how absolutely devastating those weapons could be in the wrong hands.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim has been freed from prison by an Egyptian appeals court, which nullified his earlier sentence of seven years of hard labor. But, it ordered a retrial rather than simply freeing him. (He was out for `Id al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan). A human rights activist, Saad has been an inspiration to us all. President Bush had complained about his treatment in a letter to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, which is something of a milestone in the evolution of US-Egyptian relations. The reaction of prickly Egyptian parliamentarians was that they would not accept foreign meddling. One thing they did not seem to grasp was the in a globalizing world we are all open to influences from abroad. The European Union puts pressure in various ways on the US to abolish the death penalty, e.g. The other is that a gross injustice had been done, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been violated. As a member of the UN, Egypt is signatory to covenants enshrining freedom of speech, and so was in violation of its own law. Why should other UN members not say so?



The thing that worries me is the prospect of another trial. Saad's health is not good, and he may not be able to take it. I think the notion of a retrial is a broad hint to him to leave Egypt and go abroad, but so far he has been too stubborn and principled to take such hints. For all we know he will be convicted again in the new trial. It reminds me of the ending of the Bonfire of the Vanities, where the protagonist had become a perpetual defendant even though he had never been shown to have committed an actionable crime. On the other hand, his poor health may be a cause for the courts not to go forward with the retrial. Let us hope they have this sense and decency.



The defense demonstrated that the Ibn Khaldun Center had not illegally received donations from abroad, since the funding from the European Union had been awarded as a sort of contract, and had not consisted of donations in the legal sense at all. Likewise they demonstrated that the military court had misconstrued the law forbidding the besmirching of Egypt's honor. (This is a ridiculous law to have on the books in any case. A country, the honor of which is so fragile that it needs such a law has already lost its reputation; and jailing its foremost thinkers is calculated to strip it of any honor it has left.)



Congratulations to Saad for this great victory, and let us all hope Egypt has taken a step toward becoming a more humane and democratic society.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim's case will be decided today by the appeals court, which can set aside or confirm his sentence of seven years of hard labor. If the appeal is turned down and Saad Eddin serves that sentence, there is some question about whether his health will collapse altogether long before he is released. Hosni Mubarak will then be guilty of judicial murder, and I don't think he realizes how little the world community and those of us concerned with human rights will forgive him for it.



Saad Eddin, a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo, was railroaded from beginning to end, and is basically in jail for helping peasants learn how to vote intelligently and for criticizing Hosni's plan of turning the country over to his son in a dynastic manner. I studied with Saad Eddin, and have long admired him. If this is what happens to people who work peacefully for democracy and human rights, Mubarak is only inviting the extremists into the arena. The wind is blowing against authoritarian military regimes in the Middle East, and Egypt's ruling elite should stop being so complacent. Giving Saad Eddin his liberty would be a first step in the sort of reforms that might save their necks.

It's "Not Back to School" for Palestinian Children





Children continue to be among the chief victims of the continuing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Although it is natural to concentrate on the toll in lives taken by the struggle, among its biggest impacts have been psychological and educational.



Over a million and a half Palestinian children live under harsh Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Months into the school year, most still cannot move about freely or attend school. Over a fifth of them are acutely or chronically malnourished, in large part as a result of the Israeli lockdown. UNICEF estimated last summer that 317,000 Palestinian children were in "desperate need of assistance due to financial hardship."



All this is not to deny the real impact of violence. In the past two years, about 250 Palestinian children and 72 Israeli children have been killed in the conflict, according to Amnesty International. Literally thousands more have been traumatized by the direct experience of violence and by the loss of loved ones.



Palestinian suicide bombers have in some cases clearly chosen targets, such as dance clubs or pizzerias, where they knew many of their Israeli victims would be children. For their part, the Israeli armed forces have begun throwing caution to the wind in their pursuit of Palestinian fighters, injuring many civilians, and have responded with excessive force to the rock-throwing of protesting children.



UNICEF special representative to the Occupied Territories, Pierre Poupard, is worried about another dimension of the conflict. He says that, in contravention of international law, "a generation of Palestinian children is being denied its right to an education." His organization recently estimated that over 226,000 children and more than 9,300 teachers cannot get to their regular classrooms.



Under the tight Israeli curfew, about 580 schools have been closed. The United Nations noted last summer that "Checkpoints, closures and curfews severely impede access to medical care, education and employment."



In the first week of October, Palestinian children in Nablus defied the 24-hour curfew imposed by the Israelis last summer to go to school. They risked life and limb to do so. Just before they opened their schools, a 12-year-old boy was critically wounded when Israeli troops opened fire at a taxi-driver who was driving around when he should not have been. A 15-year-old boy was shot dead October 4 in a similar incident.



Curfews have long formed a key part of the repertoire of colonial states attempting to keep local populations under control. Curfews, checkpoints and restrictions on movement were routinely employed by the South African government in application of its racist Apartheid policies. Rhodesia imposed two major curfews in the early 1980s, in its attempt to continue to monopolize the country's wealth and resources for a small class of white colonialists. Ominously, these curfews served to prevent news from leaking out, of massacres of local populations. Although Israeli policies within Israel are largely democratic, its behavior in the West Bank and Gaza is increasingly that of a colonial power.



Israeli incursions, as at Khan Yunis on October 6, which killed 13 Palestinian civilians, including four children, have been on a much smaller scale and come in response to acts of terrorism. But Israel has violated the Fourth Geneva Convention on the treatment of civilians in occupied territories, as well as the United Nations convention on the rights of the child.



Strict Israeli control of media reporting from the Occupied Territories has had the effect of keeping the full horror of life under curfew from public awareness in the West. It is not hidden to Arabs and Muslims, however. The Kuwaiti men who shot American marines there in October gave as one reason for their rage the loss of innocent life in the Israeli attack at Khan Yunis.



Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorists, by police work. But collective punishment of a whole people, especially of innocent children, is wrong. Can anyone imagine the outcry if the British government had attempted to place the entire Irish population under such a curfew because of terrorist attacks in Belfast?



Now that the Labor Party in Israel has ended its national unity coalition with the far rightwing Likud, its leaders should make every effort to end the policy of military re-occupation and harsh curfews.



Israel cannot hope to win peace by such policies nor by fostering ignorance and poverty in the next generation of its Palestinian neighbors. Nor can the United States government hope to achieve important diplomatic goals in the region if it continues to treat the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with benign neglect.

At the request of a number of friends, I'm reprinting this piece here.



-----



Chronicle of Higher Education



Tuesday, July 16, 2002



OPINION



Why We Should Not Boycott Israeli Academics

By JUAN COLE



I thought the divestiture movement and the boycott of academic institutions in the old racist South Africa a good idea, and was cheered to see students at the University of

Michigan demonstrating against apartheid in the 1980s. I do not feel the same way about boycotting Israeli academics, as has been called for by hundreds of European scholars since April. Nor is this a matter on which I have the luxury of not taking a stand. As a historian of the modern Middle East, I am sometimes invited to conferences hosted at least in part by Israeli institutions. I edit the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the flagship publication of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, which receives large numbers of submissions from academics in Israel and sometimes has Israeli scholars on its editorial board.



In April, I was happily making airplane reservations for an Istanbul conference, which had partial Israeli sponsorship, on the 20th-century historiography of the Middle East. Despite the sound of the topic, dull as antique scissors, it promised to be an intellectually engaging experience. And I would hate to miss Istanbul's Ottoman architecture, the priceless museums, the chance to practice my Turkish, and the play of spring light on the Golden Horn. Then one of the invited conference participants, himself an Israeli living in the United States, sent out an e-mail message saying that he would avoid the conference and urging others to do so, too. He cited the European boycott of Israeli academic institutions, and said he could not in good conscience participate in the wake of the early April Israeli army actions at Jenin and elsewhere in the West Bank.



For many faculty members in the United States, where the political culture is strongly pro-Israel, this question would provoke no soul-searching. Indeed, a petition against the boycott idea has garnered thousands of signatures from intellectual luminaries here. While I strongly support Israel's right to exist within secure and peaceful borders, I reached my decision about the Istanbul conference only after days of hard thinking and consultation with conscientious and progressive friends.



Unlike most Americans, I find the political and military behavior of the Israeli government in the West Bank and Gaza appalling and contrary to the Geneva Conventions and other instruments of international law. The United Nations charter, to which Israel is a signatory, forbids the acquisition of territory by military conquest. Some Israelis argue that they may do as they please with the West Bank and Gaza because of the territories' unclear status, but this position ignores the rights of the Palestinian residents.



The massive usurpation of land and water resources since the Israeli capture of the territories in 1967, the illegal settling of about 200,000 colonists there, and the harsh and humiliating treatment of an essentially colonized population has provoked a good deal of Israel's problems with the Palestinians. Although much of the Palestinian population has now been nominally put under the Palestinian Authority, the major roads remain under Israeli control, the often-armed colonists remain in place, and the Israeli army frequently reoccupies the territories, destroying PA infrastructure and imposing curfews and other harsh measures in response to the terrorist actions of a few. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears to envision annexing large swaths of the West Bank.



Like any human being with a heart, I too feel the helpless rage, the sickened despair, at seeing the serial murders by pitiless bombers who take the lives of innocent Israeli victims as well as their own. I understand the Israeli public's demand for an end to these monstrosities, and the willingness to use force for that purpose. Still, the Geneva Conventions were enacted with precisely such heated situations in mind, and Israel is not exempt from them by grief.



The second Palestinian uprising that began in October of 2000 and Israeli attempts to put it down have tragically claimed the lives of more than 525 Israelis and more than 1,450 Palestinians, according to the Israel-based International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. The institute calculates that more than 420 of the Israeli dead were noncombatants, whereas about 568 of the Palestinians were. It is clear that the radical Palestinian forces are guilty of actively targeting civilians -- which is morally heinous -- and that the Israeli army has, at best, been careless in avoiding the deaths of Palestinian civilians. More likely, Israel has been cavalier in taking the lives of innocents in its narrow pursuit of enemies. This behavior, on both sides, is a grave violation of the Geneva Conventions, which were formulated to apply to wars of national liberation as well as to conventional warfare.



The Human Rights Watch report on Israeli-government actions at Jenin described how Israeli forces bulldozed buildings to make way for tanks in the labyrinthine refugee camp, sometimes giving insufficient notice to residents or refusing to wait when informed that a civilian (in one case a paralytic) was still inside the building.



When a group of Palestinian guerrillas put up a fight that killed 13 Israeli soldiers in the Hawashin district, the Israelis riposted and most residents fled. The Israeli army bulldozed 140 buildings and extensively damaged 200 others, leaving as many as 4,000 camp residents homeless. That action was a form of collective punishment. Throughout the West Bank, civilians who have inadvertently, or because of an emergency, gone outside during curfews have sometimes been shot dead by Israeli soldiers -- again, a violation of the Geneva Conventions.



That isn't the narrative put forth by the Likud Party, but it is, more or less, the way the European news media presented the situation. If some European academics thought international law was being consistently flouted by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, then it is not hard to understand why they proposed a boycott in early April. The European Union treats Israel as a European country for the purposes of scientific and academic exchange, a practice that the European academics sought to end as long as Sharon continued his hard-line policies.



While I understand the impulse, the shunning of Israeli academic institutions seems to me entirely the wrong place to begin. The supporters of the European academic boycott often make an analogy to South Africa and its apartheid policies. Yet while Arab Israelis are discriminated against in many ways in Israeli society, there is nothing like apartheid. Baruch Kimmerling, an anthropology professor at Hebrew University, wrote in a piece for the Independent Media Center that not "all the members of the Israeli academy are great humanists or support the idea of self-determination of the Palestinian people. We are a highly heterogeneous community." He points out, however, that while South African academic institutions generally gave vigorous support to the apartheid government and sanctioned dissident faculty members, the Israeli academy, on the whole, shows great independence. Israeli universities have Arab-Israeli students and have conducted hundreds of joint projects with their counterparts in the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia.



Israeli academics tend to be left of center, and finding one who expresses something other than deep distaste for Sharon is no easy task. It seems especially inappropriate to punish academics for the actions of a government they largely oppose. Many Israeli academics have been involved in the peace movement, which, although badly damaged by the suicide bombings, struggles on.



It is surely that movement which, however dark its prospects now seem, holds the greatest hope for a better future. Kimmerling says that an increasingly chauvinistic Israeli public militates against the independence of journalists, whereas tenured faculty retain the ability to speak out on human-rights abuses.



Hillel Shuval, a professor of environmental sciences, also at Hebrew University, was quoted in The Chronicle warning that the boycott would harm projects in which he has been involved that get Europeans, Israelis, and Palestinians to work together. It should be remembered that the Oslo peace process itself originated with back-channel meetings of Israelis and Palestinians at a university in Norway. The current boycott call would forestall important new developments deriving from such exchanges.



As for the recent sacking of Miriam Shlesinger of Bar-Ilan University and Gideon Toury of Tel Aviv University from the editorial boards of the British journals The Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts, respectively, here individuals are being sanctioned for the policies of their government, and that is wrong. Ironically, Shlesinger is a prominent Amnesty International activist who has been highly critical of Israeli government policies in the West Bank. In contrast, I could support the divestment campaign at some American campuses, aimed at university investments in Israeli firms, because the business elite in Israel is both more powerful and more entangled in government policy than the academics.



I am not unaware, of course, that in some circles such a position would immediately raise the question of anti-Semitism. For those of us actually involved in the Middle East, that reaction is simply unhelpful. Israel is a state -- just as Egypt, Syria, and Jordan are -- and it is not exempt from censure for illegal or unethical behavior because it is Jewish. I would argue that treating the Sharon government with kid gloves in order to tiptoe around the issue of anti-Semitism would itself be a form of anti-Semitism, a way of cordoning off all Jews as somehow unlike other human beings. In any case, this non-issue was irrelevant to my own thinking, which was more pragmatic. An academic boycott is a political act with a political goal, and if it is unsuited to the purpose then it is bad politics.



I recently appointed an Israeli academic at Hebrew University to the editorial board of the journal I edit. At the Istanbul conference I attended with my Israeli academic colleagues, they promptly led others in working up a petition to protest the policies of the Sharon government in the West Bank and Gaza. I signed it in solidarity with them. Refusing to meet and talk with a concerned party to an epochal set of political and cultural negotiations is the farthest thing from a progressive act.



Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and is the author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I.B. Tauris, 2002).



-----------



Lawrence Davidson has written an interesting rebuttal of my piece at:



http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0248.html

At a conference in South Africa, State Minister Ronny Kasrils, himself a Jew, condemned Israel's treatment of Palestinians and said it was actually worse than the Apartheid government's treatment of blacks in South Africa had been. He said Israel actively discriminated against the Palestinian people. The conference was focused on solidarity with the Palestinians and discussed their future. (In other news reports Kasrils is described as minister for water and forestry). ( - Asharq al-Awsat ).

Terrorism against Israelis in Kenya



The attack on the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa, Kenya (which killed 9 Kenyans and two Israeli children) and the firing of shoulder-launched missiles at an Israeli airliner leaving Mombasa airport both smacked of al-Qaeda tactics. They like at least two big explosions to go off around the same time.



Because Israel is isolated from most markets in the Arab world, it has tried to develop extensive ties with East and South Africa to offset this liability. The attack in Kenya targeted the Israeli tourist economy and Israeli investments in Kenya. It is part of al-Qaeda's continued attempts to harm the economies of those it perceives as enemies and 'invaders' of the Middle East.



In an interview on al-Jazeerah tv, Omar Bakri of the Jama`at al-Muhajirin in London said that last week al-Qaeda supporters had boasted that there would be a big operation in East Africa.



East Africa is a battleground in Christian-Muslim and East-West clashes. Some 20 percent of Kenyans are Muslim, especially along the Red Sea littoral, as well as, of course, in Somalia, and from there north Muslim and Christian groups both exist in Ethiopia and the Sudan. Muslim Eritrea won its independence from Christian Ethiopia in 1991, and Ethiopia and Somalia have had bad relations. A subdued Christian East African alliance with Israel has drawn the ire of radical Muslim fundamentalists, and combatting such an alliance lay behind Thursday's operations, in part.



East Africa is also a key site for resistance to terrorism. Kenya is an ally of the US in the war on terror. There are 160 German naval personnel in Mombasa monitoring the Horn of Africa, presumably for al-Qaeda skiffs and pirate ships.



An obscure and never before heard from Palestinian organization claimed credit in Beirut. But al-Qaeda is an umbrella organization with many Palestinian members, so that really means very little.



The US had a fair amount of success in tracking down the perpetrators of the embassy bombings by al-Qaeda in this region, and there is every hope this success will be replicated in this case.

Saudi Minister Denounces Muslim Fundamentalists (!)



Saudi Interior Minister Naef bin Abdul Aziz has denied in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that there are al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Saudi Arabia. He said there might be individuals under suspicion of having terrorist links. He said Islam requires social order, and lamented that some young radicals had had their brains washed such that they had appointed themselves Muslim 'jurists' and issued rulings (fatwas) to the contrary, which were not reflective of true Islam.



He complained bitterly that hardline Muslim clerics and thinkers supported Iraq in its aggression on Kuwait in 1990, including Hasan al-Turabi of Sudan, Rachid Ghanouchi of Tunisia, Abdul Rahman Khalifa, Abdul Majid Zindani (of Yemen's Islah Party), and Islamist Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey. He said they came to Riyadh for consultations, then went off to Baghdad and supported Saddam. Remarkably, he condemned the Muslim Brotherhood (of Egypt) for all its mistakes, and for producing offshoots like Excommunication and Holy Flight, which considers any Muslim less radical than itself an infidel and orders him divorced from his wife.



Since Saudi Arabia has secretly given the Muslim Brotherhood a great deal of monetary and other support over the years, and has helped radicalize Islamists through the influence of its own puritan "Wahhabi" sect, this diatribe against the major Islamist thinkers and against the Muslim Brotherhood on the part of a Saudi Interior Minister strikes me as quite remarkable.



Has the Saudi royal family finally decided that fomenting hardline Islam throughout the world is a bad idea? Are they worried for their own security in the wake of 9/11? Or does this diatribe have something to do with the pressure the neoconservatives in Washington are putting on the Saudis? Since the Saudi state began openly supporting the Palestinians, and since its leaders balked at helping in a US war against Iraq, the kingdom has been the victim of a strident smear campaign in Washington and in the press. Its enemies have even gone so far as to attempt to implicate Princess Haifa, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the US, Bandar Bin Sultan, in having giving money that ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda (actually she just bestowed charity on a poor Jordanian woman with 6 kids, whose husband was in the San Diego circle of Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar, 2 of the 9/11 hijackers; this is mere guilt by distant association).



Was Prince Naef's interview a response to all this? And, how sincere could it all possibly be?

Note: "Informed Comment" has just posted a new article on the Aghajari case below, but is on hiatus until Wednesday November 27 because Cole will be busy with conferences, including the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association conference in Washington, D.C.



While I'm gone there are a number of interesting new articles at



History News Network



also check out:



Afghanistan News Net (covers more than just Afghanistan in fact)



For the Gulf see Arab News



For Iran, try The Iranian



and for Arab-Israeli things visit:



The Mideast Gateway



Enjoy, and I'll see you all shortly before Thanksgiving.











History News Network



11-18-02: Historians & History



The Historian Who Has Been Sentenced to Death



By Juan Cole



Mr. Cole is professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Sacred Space and Holy War (I.B. Tauris, 2002). His web site is www.juancole.com.





The death sentence passed against a professor of history at Tehran's Tarbiyat Mudarris University has provoked justified rage and indignation throughout the world and even in Iran itself. Hashem Aghajari stands accused of advocating disrespect for religious figures.



Since the death sentence was confirmed in early November, student demonstrations have been held daily, not just in Tehran but also at provincial universities such as Hamedan. The student slogans have included, "Execution of Aghajari is execution of thought in Iran!" "Political prisoners should be released!" "Freedom of thought forever!" "Our problem is the judiciary!" Twenty of his colleagues on the faculty have tendered their resignations in solidarity with him.



Aghajari's case gathers up a number of important strands in modern Iranian history. He did not, of course, actually blaspheme against Islam. What he did was call for an end to blind obedience (taqlid) on the part of the laity.



The prevailing school of jurisprudence in Shiite Islam demands that laypersons without any formal seminary training in the law defer to experts on its meaning. They are to choose a family cleric in the same way that one might choose a family physician. They abide unquestioningly by his rulings. Is it all right for a Shiite man to wear Western cologne? The cleric will decide.



This traditional authority over the details of the law has dovetailed with a new and broader political authority since Ruhullah Khomeini's Islamic Republic was established in 1979. The whole country must now defer to the rulings of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei. If the laity does not owe blind obedience to the clerics, the reasoning of the hardline judiciary goes, then the very foundations of the Iranian theocracy would be shaken.



Aghajari's dilemma recalls several important episodes in Iranian reformism. The great nineteenth-century Iranian thinker, Sayyid Jamal al-Din "al-Afghani" (d. 1897) gave a similarly controversial talk in Istanbul in 1870. There he praised philosophy and suggested that prophets are a kind of philosopher who employ images and emotionally laden rhetoric to convey truths to the masses. (This view had been put forward by medieval thinkers such as Avicenna and Averrroes.) Al-Afghani was summarily expelled from the Ottoman capital.



Aghajari himself edited a new Persian edition of the Travel Diary of Ibrahim Beg, a late nineteenth century imaginary account of the travels through Iran of a reformer critical of what he sees.



The speech that Aghajari gave in late June commemorated the death of the revolutionary thinker Ali Shariati, an opponent of the shah trained in France in the 1960s, who was inspired by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, Islamics specialist Henri Massignon, and the Algerian Revolution. Shariati (d. 1977) also advocated an end to blind obedience to religious authority. He believed that every Shiite had the right to engage in his or her own independent jurisprudential reasoning about the meaning of the holy law. Shariati represented a leftist strand of thinking within reformist Shiism that was brutally suppressed after the 1979 revolution. Aghajari's speech was thus very much a tribute to Shariati.



Aghajari, a war veteran who lost a leg fighting Saddam Hussein's forces, is himself a member of the left-wing Mujahidin of the Islamic Revolution Organization. He has been critical of the right in Iran for idolizing the Chinese model of economic development that allows capitalism but retains authoritarian government. Aghajari dreams of a political opening and of social democracy. He foresees the "accumulation of small but social capital, management, expertise, innovative job creation and the workforce of the entire society. In such a model, the prospect of our economy and politics can be a democratic one or in other words democracy in economy and democracy in politics."



Many believe that the death sentence passed on Aghajari is actually an attempt to make sure that the left remains dead in Iran, and that it cannot form a social democratic party that might appeal to Iran's youth. Although Khamenei has ordered a judicial review of the case, Aghajari's health remains in danger because his leg has become infected while in prison.



The death sentence has had the opposite effect of the one intended by the hardliners. Aghajari has declined to appeal it, and has refused to be silenced. His case has brought angry students out onto the streets for the first time in two years. It has also put Iran back in the international spotlight as a repressive regime rather than as a liberalizing one. It may well be that Iranians have had their fill of heresy trials, and of the ayatollahs who prosecute them. Nor should the rest of the world let this outrage pass.

More on the Aghajari Case



The case of the history professor at Tarbiat-Modarres University in Tehran who was sentenced to death for a talk he gave continues to roil Iran. There are daily substantial student demonstrations in support of him, and boycotts of class. He is scheduled to be executed (I would say judicially murdered) on Dec. 2, and has refused to appeal the sentence. Over the weekend 20 professors at his university tendered their resignations in support of him.



In his talk of last June, he just called for a more Protestant sort of Islam where the non-clerics did not have to give blind obedience to the clerics.



Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's supreme jurisprudent, wrote a letter to the Hamedan court that issued the ruling, appearing to chastise them for forgetting the value of human life, and some take this as a sign he will intervene to stop the execution. Aghajari lost a leg fighting in Iraq, though, and it has become infected in prison, so he is not well and unless released is in danger of his life anyway.



The students are calling the death sentence for the expression of individual conscience "barbaric" and "medieval." From the mouths of babes.



(For information on how to protest the sentence to the Iranian authorities, see below.)

Pakistani Intelligence aiding Taliban revival?



The Pakistani newspaper, Jang ("The News") says it was told by a member of the Taliban that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence is attempting to broker an alliance of the Taliban remnants with the forces of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hikmatyar. The ISI denies it and says it is cooperating with the US CIA and FBI.



The ISI is the Pakistani military intelligence division the functions like a combined FBI/ CIA for that country. It created the Taliban beginning in 1994 and supplied them with weapons, training, materiel and even adjunct troops, helping them come to power in in Afghanistan in 1996 and conquer all but 10 percent or so of the country. Former ISI chief Hamid Gul has been a big supporter of the Taliban and of al-Qaeda.



Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, who headed the ISI in September of 2001, had to be dismissed by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, it is rumored because he was consulting with Taliban leader Mullah Omar on how to avoid turning over Bin Laden. The ISI supplied weapons to the Taliban as late as early October, 2001, in contravention of Pakistani undertakings with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, though thereafter Pakistan did cut off the Taliban.



If rogue elements within the ISI are in fact working to get Hikmatyar and the Taliban remnants together, this is a bad sign for stability in Pakistan. The fundamentalist intelligence officers may have been emboldened by the fact that the civilian fundamentalist politicians now control the Northwest Frontier Province, with its capital of Peshawar, where any such alliance would be forged.



Neither I nor Jang can vouch for the truth of what the talib said about the ISI, but it is, at the least, interesting.

Bush speaks out against Islamophobia



Since President Bush had earlier been criticized for not speaking out about the slurs being cast on Islam in the US by the Christian Right--most recently Jimmy Swaggart--(and by settler-linked extremists like Daniel Pipes), it is only right that some mention be made here of his remarks today, and those of Colin Powell. Both insisted that the slanders being uttered by some about Islam do not represent either the views of his government or those of the American people.



AP's Scott Lindlaw reported that Bush said, "Some of the comments that have been uttered about Islam do not reflect the sentiments of my government or the sentiments of most Americans," Bush told reporters as he met with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday. "Islam, as practiced by the vast majority of people, is a peaceful religion, a religion that respects others." . . . "Ours is a country based upon tolerance, Mr. Secretary-General," Bush said. "And we respect the faith and we welcome people of all faiths in America, and we're not going to let the war on terror or terrorists cause us to change our values." Lindlaw added, "Though Bush never mentioned their names, his remarks came in response to recent comments by Christian leaders Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the administration said…"



I continue to find Bush's stance on this matter (which has been consistent) extremely admirable, and shudder to think what would happen if a different view prevailed in the White House during this crisis.



In other news, Bush's niece Lauren is dating Tammer Qaddumi, a Yalie from Austin who is from a prominent Palestinian family. Her father Neil, George's youngest brother, created a stir last winter when he spoke in Saudi Arabia about how the Arab world could do better PR for its cause than it does.



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/33153p-31405c.html

Is it Bin Laden Again?



I believe the recently released Bin Ladin tape is authentic.

I could only hear snippets in the background of the CNN report, but it

certainly sounded like Bin Laden to me. He has a slightly strange

diction, with vague threats always implied, and I heard what I thought

were some characteristic idiosyncrasies.



Why audio rather than video? It is possible that Bin Ladin was disfigured at

Tora Bora. There have been rumors for some time that he was wounded

there but managed to escape. Some say he lost his voice for months as a

result of his wounds, and only regained it in September while recuperating

in Lahore, Pakistan. If he suffered facial burns, he could not now

appear on videotape without disheartening his followers. Hence the resort to

audio only.



I have for some time argued that al-Qaeda continues to be highly dangerous

to the U.S. (demonstrably moreso than Iraq), and that we should redouble our

efforts to find Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other high-level leaders of

the organization. As long as they are alive, they continue to inspire potential

followers, to devastating effect.

Now the rumors are that the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (which is loyal to General Pervez Musharraf) along with several smaller parties, may make a coalition with the fundamentalist United Action Council to form a government. Earlier attempts to work something out with the Pakistan People's Party fell through, perhaps because Musharraf is unwilling to amnesty Benazir Bhutto and cohabit with her as prime minister.



The alternative, of bringing the Islamists into the government, seems to me far worse, and if true this development cannot be good for the U.S.



In the meantime, a tape of Bin Laden has surfaced that may indicate he is still alive and plotting further destruction against the US. It is entirely possible that he is hiding out in the Northwest Frontier Province, controlled by the United Action Council, which in the past has denied that al-Qaida is responsible for 9/11 and tried to defend the Taliban and Bin Laden.



Then, the Iraqi parliament really did reject the UN Security Council resolution requiring further weapons inspections.



Not a day full of good news.

Iraqi Parliamentarians condemn UN Security Council Resolution in Opening Debate



Asharq al-Awsat says that the foreign affairs committee of the Iraqi parliament has recommended against accepting the UN Security Council resolution 1441 passed last Friday, insisting on the resumption of weapons inspections.



Yesterday, Saadoun Hammadi, the Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, threw into doubt whether Iraq would accept the demands in the UN Security council resolution 1441 passed last Friday, calling many of them "impracticable." He maintained that Iraq had complied with the past UN Security Council resolutions. (This is not in fact clear to us outside observers). He added, "Every fair observer sees this resolution as contravening the terms of international law. The ill intention of this resolution is loud and clear. There are many inciteful clauses that threaten the dignity of our people." This in a report by James Drummond from Cairo for the Financial Times. Asharq al-Awsat says Hammadi charged that the resolution contained "lies" about Iraq.



The 250-seat National Assembly anyway would only make a recommendation to Saddam Hussein's 8-member Revolutionary Command Council, which would make the final decision. Drummond wonders if Hammadi's outburst signals that Iraq might reject the resolution. The report of the foreign affairs committee reinforces such a question. But this outcome seems unlikely to me, since surely the Baath high command knows that such a move would immediately embroil them in a war with the U.S. It is true that the Iraqi leadership is unpredictable.

Iraq is complaining about repeated Turkish incursions into its airspace, and is taking the matter to the Arab league.



Given that there is a no-fly zone in the northern, Kurdish areas near Turkey and that Iraq does not even control its airspace up there, this particular complaint seems bizarre on the face of it. But presumably it is part of a campaign to paint the pressure being applied to Iraq to comply with international weapons inspections as a non-Arab plot against the land of an Arab nation. The implication from the Iraq side is that Turkey may be planning to invade or to claim Iraqi territory. Of course, this implication is meant to scare Iraqi Kurds into not cooperating with the US invasion plans, either.

Amnesty International Appeal for Dr. Aghajari



PUBLIC

AI Index:MDE 13/022/2002; UA 330/02 - 7 November 2002

Threat of execution/medical concern



IRAN - Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari (m), aged 45, writer and academic



Prisoner of conscience Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari, a history professor at Tehran's Tarbiat Modares University, is at threat of execution.



He was arrested on 8 August following a speech he gave on 19 June in Hamedan, western Iran. His speech, entitled "Islamic Protestantism" reportedly called for a "religious renewal" in which Muslims should not "blindly follow religious leaders".



According to media reports on 7 November, Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari was sentenced to 74 lashes, eight years' imprisonment - to be served in "internal exile" - and death following a closed trial in Hamedan, on 6 November. He faced vaguely worded accusations consisting of defamation and insult charges, notably of religious figures and leaders. Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari's lawyer has indicated that he will appeal against the death penalty; he has 21 days in which to do so.



According to his family, Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari is in urgent need of medical attention to his right leg, amputated at the knee during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. His leg is apparently bruised and infected and he is reportedly unable to stand up, walk or use the prison's hygiene facilities.



BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Vaguely worded laws, open to abuse, restrict freedom of expression and opinion and frequently do not amount to recognizably criminal offences. Prisoner of conscience, Hojjatoleslam Hassan Yousefi Eshkevari was sentenced to death in 2001 on similar charges following an unfair trial in a special court. It was reduced to two and a half years (please see Amnesty International's Annual Report 2002 and UAs MDE 13/22/00, 9 August 2000 and MDE 13/016/2001, 21 May 2001); in October 2002, a sentence of seven years' imprisonment was handed down in connection with separate charges.



To date, Amnesty International has recorded 97 executions in 2002, although the true figure may be much higher. In 2001 Amnesty International urged the authorities to urgently consider a moratorium on executions in line with UN recommendations (AI Index MDE 13/031/2001, 17 August 2001).



Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 6 (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Iran is a state party. It states that "Anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence."



RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible, in English or your own language:

- urging the death sentence and all other penalties passed on Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari be suspended immediately or commuted on appeal;

- urging the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to commute the death sentence passed, in line with Article 6 of the ICCPR;

- calling on the authorities to allow Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari to receive medical treatment;

- urging the judicial authorities to implement a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which is a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment prohibited under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Iran is a state party, with a view to its eventual abolition;

- calling for Dr Seyyed Hashem Aghajari's conviction to be overturned and that, if he is charged with recognizably criminal offences, he be tried according to internationally accepted standards for fair trial;



APPEALS TO:

Leader of the Islamic Republic

His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed 'Ali Khamenei,

The Presidency, Palestine Avenue,

Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Salutation: Your Excellency

Email: webmaster@wilayah.org; (on the subject line write: For the attention of the office of His Excellency, Ayatollah al Udhma Khamenei, Qom)



President

His Excellency Hojjatoleslam val Moslemin Sayed Mohammad Khatami

The Presidency, Palestine Avenue

Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

E-mail: khatami@president.ir

Salutation: Your Excellency



Head of the Judiciary

His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi

Ministry of Justice, Park-e Shahr, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Faxes: + 98 21 879 6671 (unreliable; please mark "care of Director of International Affairs, Judiciary")

Salutation: Your Excellency



COPIES TO:

Minister of Foreign Affairs,

His Excellency Kamal Kharrazi

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Abdolmajid Keshk-e Mesri Av

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran

Faxes: + 98 21 390 1999 (unreliable; please mark "care of the Human Rights Department, Foreign Ministry)

Salutation: Your Excellency



Influential Religious Leaders:



Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarani

Fax: +98 251 772 3098

E-Mail: Fazel@Lankarani.com



Grand Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Sistani

Office of Grand Ayatollah Sistani

P.O.Box No. 3514\37185

Muallim Street, Qom

Islamic Republic of Iran

Fax: +98 251 222 3239 (please try +98 511 222 3239 if that does not work)

E-mail: Sistani@Sistani.org

Grand Ayatollah Saafi Golpayegani

Email: Saafi@Saafi.net



Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei

Email: Saanei@Saanei.org



and to diplomatic representatives of Iran accredited to your country.



PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the International Secretariat, or your section office, if sending appeals after 19 December 2002.

Jordan declines to Join in Iraq War (Again)



Jordan's Foreign Minister Marwan al-Mu`ashir continued to maintain today that its territory could not be used in any U.S. attack on Iraq. He said that the US understands he constraints on his government.



He may have been referring to the anti-American fatwas issued at a recent gathering of Jordanian Muslim clerics in the capital of Amman, of the Islamic Action Front. This organization is a branch of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. The clerics called for jihad or holy war against the United States, which they branded an "enemy of God."



Some splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood is suspected in the recent assassination of Laurence Foley, a US AID diplomat in Amman.



Jordan is still extremely worried about the potential for massive disturbances throughout the Middle East that might ensue from a US Iraq campaign.



On other fronts, al-Mu`ashir called on the Palestinians to cease suicide bombings, so as to avoid strengthening the Israeli Likud party in the run-up to a new election early next year. He also expressed confidence that the Israelis would not, as some have feared, use a looming Iraq war as a cover to engage in ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, pushing them en masse into Jordan. He said American pressure was sufficient to forestall such a development.

Deal struck for Government in Pakistan?



Rumors are swirling in the Pakistani press ("informed sources say . . .") that a deal has finally been struck under U.S. pressure that will allow the formation of a national unity government including both the Pakistan People's Party and the Muslim League (QA) along with a number of smaller parties and groups. The PPP's Amin Fahim would be prime minister, while the Muslim League (QA)'s Zafaru'llah Jamali would be Speaker of the House.



This arrangement would keep the fundamentalist United Action Council (MMA) out of power at the center (it controls the Northwest Frontier Province provincial government). The PPP had earlier been threatening to make a coalition with the MMA, which might have brought pro-Taliban figure Fazlur Rahman of the Jami`at Ulama Islam in as prime minister of the country (!).



Mayed Ali and Ziaullah Niazi of Jang/ The Nation maintain that the new coalition was announced after US Under Secretary of State Christina Rocca met with PPP leader Benazir Bhutto in Washington early this week, in which she conveyed the strong displeasure of the US with her party's dalliance with the fundamentalists.



Bhutto clearly wanted a quid pro quo, and apparently part of it will be the release of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, from prison (he has been in jail several years on corruption and other charges. When his wife was PM they used to call him 'Mr. Ten Percent' because he was alleged to take a cut of big gov't contracts).



My guess is that the quid pro quo won't stop there. All along, the PPP has wanted a political amnesty for Benazir herself (she is also facing corruption charges), and has wanted to bring her back to the country. It seems to me likely Gen. Musharraf will have to give in on this matter (he has been adamant in rejecting the idea of her return, representing himself as 'cleaning house' of the old corrupt civilian leadership).



If it is true that the US intervened, the situation reminds me of how the Italian Parliament used to go through contortions to keep the Communist Party from being in any coalition with the governing party there.



In the end, Musharraf's attempt to permanently sideline the older, powerful parties such as the PPP has failed, since they appear likely to get the prime ministership. Whether he can retain his power and prerogatives in the face of an elected prime minister from such a party remains to be seen.



I continue to maintain that Musharraf's high-handed amendments of the constitution last summer and the restrictions he put on campaigning had the effect of damaging the process of return to democracy, not to mention helping the fundamentalists take the Northwest Frontier. A national unity government will be extremely weak, could fall at any moment, and may well come into a fateful confrontation with Musharraf over issues like the fate of Benazir Bhutto.



Still, in the short term at least, the exclusion of the fundamentalists from a key role in the national government is a victory for the US and will help the war on terror continue to be prosecuted vigorously in the badlands and cities of Pakistan. The US, by the way, has also announced a billion dollars in debt relief for Pakistan.

Predator strike against al-Qaeda in Yemen



The strike on Abu `Ali al-Harithi and his companions near Marib was carried out by a Predator controlled from Langley because past attempts to use conventional forces in this regard had failed. Last December, the Yemeni government sent in its special forces to search for al-Harithi and others. The local tribesmen allied with him put up fierce resistance, killing 18 soldiers. Al-Harithi and his colleagues escaped in the confusion.



Although the government now has 80 tribal sheikhs working for it ("Sheikhs against Terrorism") against al-Qaeda, the complexities of these clans and of local politics are such that I very much doubt that they can be trusted with information about a strike against someone like al-Harithi without it leaking. But if you don't alert the sheikhs to an operation in Marib, you face the possibility of having to fight tribesmen guarding their turf. Moreover, al-Qaeda is trying to intimidate the sheikhs who are cooperating with the government. The leader of the Bakil had two of his mansions come under rocket fire last weekend.



The Yemeni government had the farm at which al-Harithi was staying under surveillance by agents on the ground, who tracked his movements in the Rub` al-Khali. They (perhaps in cooperation with US special forces personnel also on the ground) presumably called down the Predator strike on his vehicle. The Predator probably took off from Djibouti. They thus risked no Yemeni or US conventional forces, avoided possible further firefights with local tribesmen, and sent a very powerful message to the re-grouping al-Qaeda leadership that they cannot hide and could die at any moment.

Are Arabs Anti-American?

On a list I am on, we have been discussing Barry Rubin's article on the roots of Arab anti-Americanism in the current Foreign Affairs.

Several of us feel his arguments are vitiated by recent polling data that demonstrates the love Arabs and Muslims have for American values such as democracy and freedom of speech. These are the results of the recent Zogby poll and those of social science research carried out by my colleague Ron Inglehart and by Pippa Norris [pdf] as part of the world values survey.

I am surprised that Barry Rubin did not refer to this research, though perhaps he wrote before its conclusions became widely known.

All the evidence is that most Muslims strongly support core American values such a
democracy, freedom of expression, and so forth. (They have *more* faith in democracy than do Americans!) They disagree with US society mainly on lifestyle issues--the gay issue, women's state of what they see as undress, sexual promiscuity, etc. In short, Muslims have a quite a lot in common with US Baptists, from all accounts.

Just an anecdotal piece of support for all this. As far back as the late 1970s, the Egyptian government did an opinion poll among Egyptians about what sort of television programming they would like to see more of. Al-Ahram reported the results, and it was clear that there was overwhelming support for having more "American action dramas." The peasants of Upper Egypt included, they wanted the A Team and Charlie's Angels! And, we all know how wildly popular soap operas like Falcon's Crest and Dynasty were in Cairo, as well.

The resentments against US foreign policy are variable and many of the issues change over time. There was anger over US inaction in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but then the US appears to have gotten no points for finally intervening and saving the Bosnian Muslims (I think Barry Rubin makes this sort of point). The US seems to get part of the blame for the Russian actions in Chechnya, which is bewildering. The way the Gulf War saved Kuwaitis and very possibly others from Baathist oppression was only briefly and grudgingly acknowledged, and then soon the sanctions regime on Iraq was configured into a US-led plot to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraq babies (as though Saddam's policies had nothing to do with it).

The bad press the US gets no matter what it does strikes me as analogous to almost a party spirit. We all know that pro-Republican newspapers in the US never cut the Clinton Administration any slack, and dwelled on the negatives. Human beings seem to have, as Dawkins has recently argued, an innate tendency to map their social boundaries in binary terms, with insiders you trust and are willing to give the benefit of the doubt, and outsiders you hold in greater suspicion and of whom you tend to be critical.

Much of the Muslim world seems to see the US as the "opposing party," not in the sense of disagreeing with core values (in the US Democrats and Republicans are devoted to the same constitution) but in the sense of being marked as the political "Other." This way of seeing the US is not limited to Muslims, after all. The SDP/green alliance in Germany seem to increasingly feel the same way, as does what is left of the left in Italy. (One thing Barry is wrong about is that Middle Easterners were not the only ones who expressed ambivalence about 9/11. I saw an Italian poll
where about a quarter of respondents said they could understand why it was done! Presumably these people were former Communists or maybe also on the far right. Likewise there was apparently elation over the attacks among some in China.)

I think it would be foolish not to factor in the US support for Israel into this equation, but we would need more research to determine how much of the whole it actually explains. (It would presumably explain little of the anti-Americanism in Italy or China).

Moreover, there is a remarkable amnesia in the region about episodes like the Jordanian Civil War of 1970-71 (which destroyed the PLO there and killed thousands of civilian Palestinians); the Phalangist massacres of Palestinians in 1976; the Syrian attack on the PLO in 1976 to save the rightwing Christian Phalangists (with Syrian military presence in Lebanon later funded by the Saudis); the elation of the Shi`ite Lebanese about the Israeli attack on the PLO in 1982; the Kuwaiti mass expulsion of the Palestinians after the Gulf War, and other rather Draconian actions against Palestinian interests by Arabs that are arguably far worse by an order of magnitude than anything the US ever did to them.

Perhaps the Arab-Israeli issue acts in the Middle East as a "premise" that casts the US as part of the "opposing party" in the first place, in people's minds. Once you are the "political other," you would constantly be being sniped at. I don't know. It should be possible to find out. I think we've moved in US political science beyond the point where punditry on these things is sufficient. Why not just do some sophisticated scientific polling and analysis and see?

I should also think that such social science work would be important in Charlotte Beers' current advertising campaign. Who can we know how to pitch the ads if we haven't figured out why exactly we are unpopular?

Election Trouble for US: Turkey and Pakistan



Electoral politics in the Muslim world continue to produce results troubling to the policies of the Bush administration. On Monday it was announced in Pakistan that the Pakistan People's Party and the United Islamic Council had reached an accord allowing them to attempt to form a government. The PPP ceded the prime ministership to Fazlur Rahman, a notorious far-right fundamentalist who supports the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Other major posts would go to the PPP.



It is not clear that a PPP/MMA government will really come to be. The rival Muslim League (QA) also claims that it can form a government, and is wooing the semi-fascist party for Urdu speakers, the MQM (United National Movement) as a junior partner in government to shore up its claims. Presumably Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the military dictator, will ask the Muslim League (QA) to form a government rather than the PPP. Any such government, however, would have a razor thin parliamentary majority, would depend on the good will of a gaggle of independents, and could easily fall, requiring new elections or a return to martial law. If the PPP/MMA coalition did come to power, it would be very bad news for the US.



In Turkey, with 18% of precincts reporting as of this writing, the Islamist Justice and Development Party (Ak) was getting 35 percent of the vote. The current ruling party is doing poorly and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit may not even be reelected to his parliamentary seat. The JDP is opposed to a US war on Iraq, though it says it will respect United Nations Security Council resolutions.



The glib rhetoric about spreading democracy in the Middle East coming out of the hawkish corners of the Bush administration has painted a world in which more Muslim democracy would equal less anti-Americanism. Such a principle has not even held in Germany, and is obviously even less valid in the Muslim world. The lesson is not that democracy is bad, or that Muslims should be denied it. It is that unilateralist American wars in the region will be unpopular, and that unpopularity will show up at the polls whenever it is allowed to. People in the Middle East know what colonialism looks like, and they recognize the Wolfowitz plan for them as neocolonialism.

Fighting broke out again near Shindand in Afghanistan between the forces of Ismail Khan of Herat and those of his Pushtun foe Amanu'llah Khan. Five were killed and nine wounded in the battle. This struggle has flared into violence intermittently, as have similar conflicts among warlords near Mazar-i Sharif in the north and in Paktia province in the east.



Since the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan down to Karachi is going to have to pass through the region in which the new fighting occurred, it is a bad sign for the stability of the country and its future revenues. I thought last summer was too soon to begin to reign in the warlords, who after helped overthrow the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But this faction fighting is getting old and beginning to hurt the country's prospects. President Karzai is helpless to intervene, and the US appears to think having a good talk with the warlords from time to time is enough.

Bahrain Elections: Islamists Win



Now that the second round in the Bahrain elections has been completed, it appears that the Sunni Islamists have a bare majority in the lower house of parliament. They have 22 of the 40 seats. Of the victors in the second round, only three are liberals (one Sunni and a Shiite). Seven are Salafi Sunnis, and seven belong to the Muslim Brotherhood's National Islamic Forum. Another Sunni cleric won as an independent. Two Shiite Islamists won, though the Shiites (the country's majority) were woefully underrepresented because they boycotted the elections. The other 20 seats were won by independents, but several of them were backed by the Islamists, so that apparently they contribute to the emergent Sunni fundamentalist majority.



All the women who ran were defeated.



Although some outside observers are touting the elections as a big breakthrough for democracy in the Arab world, I fear it is difficult for me to see it that way. The majority Shiite community boycotted the elections in protest against the fact that the upper chamber of parliament will be appointed, and will be able to over-rule the lower chamber.



So, in the end, we once again have been given a Duma by an Arab ruler. Worse, this ineffectual debating society is wholly unrepresentative. Most Bahrainis are Shiites, and most are more worried about social issues than about some Islamist utopia. Having the lower house dominated by Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood in Bahrain is like having the Southern Baptists dominate the US Congress. (Most Americans are not Baptists, much less Southern Baptists, though it is a significant denomination).



Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood are the spectrum of the Gulf population from which al-Qaeda sympathizers have come, though by no means all Islamists are violent. To have them be voted the majority in a parliament that presides over the Gulf naval base for the US fleet is a little worrisome. Of course, it may not matter much since they can be over-ruled by the appointed upper house.



But then why is all this a good thing, exactly?

Safwat al-Sharif, the Minister of Culture in Egypt, insists that a television serial that depends on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for plot elements will be shown during the fasting month of Ramadan despite Israeli protests. The "Protocols" are a forgery cooked up by the tsarist police in the early 20th century and depict Jews as engaged in a powerful conspiracy to control the world. The television serial applies this scenario to the Middle East.



Al-Sharif says the serial is not anti-semitic, but what he appears to mean to say is that it is not anti-Judaic. That is, it casts no slurs on the Jewish religion. Blasphemy against any of the "heavenly" religions is forbidden in Egypt. From all accounts the serial is in fact antisemitic, and there is a danger of it spreading European-style hatred of Jews to the Arab masses.



Muslim culture did not have the same sort of racially based antisemitism as arose in Europe. Indeed, on the whole and by and large Muslims treated Jews much better than Europeans did in the medieval period (there were unfortunate lapses of course, but Islam recognized Judaism as a legitimate religion in a way that Christendom did not). Before the 19th century the blood libel was unknown in the Middle East, and even then it mainly was introduced among Middle Eastern Christians and on a small scale.



To any extent that contemporary Muslims have a problem with Jews, it is largely driven by what they see as injustices done by Zionists to the Palestinians. Most Muslims when pressed would insist that there is a difference between criticizing Zionism and criticizing Jews per se.



But this television serial, in ascribing unsavory conspiracies aimed a regional domination to the Jewish people partakes of a new sort of antisemitism in the Arab world, which self-consciously draws on the European traditions.



Egypt is better than this, and it is a sad thing to see the government license the fostering of hatred toward a people on whom the Koran bestows much praise, whose religion is recognized in Islam as "heavenly." The demonization of any people is always wrong. Beyond the ethics of it, the Middle East is such a powder keg that it is just plain dangerous to give a mass audience the idea that Jews want to take over their governments and rule them. Someday some terrorist is going to do something truly horrible out of such motivations, and Safwat al-Sharif will bear part of the blame.



On the other hand, the increasing respectability within Israel of talking about the "transfer" (i.e. ethnic cleansing) of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is an even more alarming development on the other side. There can be no "voluntary" Palestinian exodus, only one attended with great bloodshed and violence. Israelis who contemplate such a thing, and Ariel Sharon may be among them, appear not to realize that such an action would throw the Middle East into turmoil and endanger Israeli security. Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, and the fairly good relations with Jordan, are not written in stone. Arabs are already angry about the lack of progress toward a Palestinian state. Ethnic cleansing would produce massive protests and change the face of the region permanently, and not in a way that would enhance Israeli security in the long run.

Iranian President Khatami attacked the idea of a US war against Iraq forcefully while in Spain this week.



Officially, Iran has all along loudly denounced the idea of a US invasion of Iraq. . The ruling ayatollahs are afraid, I think of having the US in place on both major borders--in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They would be surrounded! And, Bush after all named them as part of an axis of evil and they have reason to be afraid that they are next on his hit list.



On the other hand, the expatriate Iraqi group, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, headed by the Hakim family, is hosted by Tehran and has been in close contact with the Pentagon about cooperating with an American attack. SCIRI has 10,000 troops in its al-Badr Brigade, which could come across from Iran into Iraq to support a US invasion. Although SCIRI has been criticized for these contacts by some ayatollahs, to my knowledge it has not been stopped from exploring them.



The idea of a Shi`ite-dominated Iraq, which is what would develop if Iraq had a parliamentary democracy (they are 60-65% of the population) must be appealing to Tehran.



So, I think they are of two minds about it.

The Jordanian officials are conducting interrogations of Muslim fundamentalists in Jordan concering the assassination of Laurence Foley, the head of US AID in Amman. An al-Qaeda link is suspected, but it is also admitted that in the current atmosphere it could have been the act of a local group. A group called Honest People of Jordan has taken responsibility, according to UPI. The group's statement on a web site indicated they had acted because of US support for Israeli actions in the West Bank. They appear to be radical Islamists.



This brutal murder will set back, not aid their cause. Foley, 60, had devoted his life to development efforts, and was trying to help Jordanians, who, God knows, need economic development aid. It is to weep.



In the meantime, two mansions belonging to a major tribal leader in Yemen were blown up, and an al-Qaeda connection is suspected there, too. This tribal leader had cooperated with Yemeni government attempts to curb al-Qaeda activities in that country.

Feuding in Northern Afghanistan



US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Finn met with warlords in Mazar-i Sharif Monday. The factional fighting between soldiers loyal to Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum and Tajik commander Muhammad Atta has roiled the hinterlands of Mazar in the past few months. The fighting is local, and often appears to break out with no order from the commander. But it is interfering in the development of the north and the return of security.



Northern Afghanistan has the mineral wealth and the infrastructure to help lead the rest of the country back to economic health if its leaders can get their act together. It is not clear, however, that just having high-level meetings with the warlords will resolve the problems. They are warlords. This is what they do--fight for territory and perks. Until the US can train a national army and can demobilize or incorporate these militias, they will likely go on fighting with one another. I suppose they can be kept partially in check by the threat of the US use of air forces against them if they get out of hand. But actually attacking Afghans now is politically difficult and could create a backlash, especially in the Pushtun south where a lot of people do not like the Americans to begin with.



The other possibility is to withhold international aid disbursements as a way of influencing the warlords. This seems to be being tried. I am not sure it can succeed.



Down the road there may be a showdown. President Karzai is already talking of sacking regional governors who can't keep the peace. This is mainly bravado, since Dostum and his forces, and Atta and his, could at the moment wipe the mat with Karzai and his tiny armed force in Kabul.



The brilliant strategy the US employed to overthrow the Taliban, of enlisting the old Mujahidin warlords in the effort, has now come back to haunt us. With Afghanistanis again in danger of starving in large numbers this winter and in desperate need of development aid, the feuds of the warlords are too costly to be borne. But there are few good options for stopping them.



Khalilzad expressed himself sanguine about the recent elections in Pakistan, which put the fundamentalist parties in charge of the Northwest Frontier, where al-Qaeda and Taliban elements are still hiding out. The parties say they want to expel US armed forces and FBI agents tracking down the terrorists. Khalilzad says that security is a Federal responsibility and that fundamentalist control of the provinces is irrelevant. This point is probably true, since the army will decide these things. But the problem is that there are many sympathizers in the army with the fundamentalists. And, moreover, the fundamentalists may well be a swing vote or a coalition partner in the Federal parliament, so they aren't just a problem in the provinces.