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After decades of suffering under brutal Soviet occupation and no less brutal Taliban rule, the people of Afghanistan deserve freedom, dignity and prosperity. We should do all we can to help them build a stable democratic system and a modern market economy. But we need a serious debate about the right means to achieve these goals – and we need it now!
Watch these two equally impressive, informative and important documentaries about war and everday life in the graveyard of empires:
Watch political scientist Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, explain why he is convinced that they do not hate us for what we ARE, bot for what we DO:
I don’t know, nobody does. But Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is convinced that he is pretty close to knowing. Watch him explain at the Ted Talks how mathematics and game theory can be used to predict the most likely outcome of a political power struggle like the one in Iran:
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predicts Iran’s future
Let’s hope and pray that his computer is right about the bomb!
I am glad the Washington Post is so clear on this:
“What’s happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn’t guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs. This is politics in the raw — unarmed people defying soldiers with guns — and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on the ropes.”
An Iranian student tries to put into words how this latest freedom movement started:
New York Times: A Different Iranian Revolution
“The truth is, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The open-air parties that, for one week, turned Tehran at night into a large-scale civic disco, were an accident. People gathered by the tens of thousands in public squares, circling around one another on foot, on motorcycle, in their cars. They showed up around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and stayed together well into the next day, at least 3 or 4 in the morning, laughing, cheering, breaking off to debate, then returning to the fray. A girl hung off the edge of a car window “Dukes of Hazzard” style. Four boys parked their cars in a circle, the headlights illuminating an impromptu dance floor for them to show off their moves.
Everyone watched everyone else and we wondered how all of this could be happening. Who were all of these people? Where did they come from? These were the same people we pass by unknowingly every day. We saw one another, it feels, for the first time. Now in the second week, we continue to look at one another as we walk together, in marches and in silent gatherings, toward our common goal of having our vote respected. No one knew that it would come to this.”
Watch Ted Galen Carpenter and Ian Vásquez of the Cato Institute explain why we should end the international War on Drugs as soon as possible:
Is It Time to End the International War on Drugs?
“Since President Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971, its escalating direct and indirect costs have become increasingly apparent. As we have seen over the decades in Colombia, Mexico, Afghanistan, and other drug-source countries, banning the drug trade creates economic distortions and an opportunity for some of the most unsavory elements to gain tenacious footholds. Drug prohibition inevitably leads to an orgy of corruption and violence.”
Walid Shoebat became a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a young man, commited acts of terror and violence against Israelis and was imprisoned in an Israeli jail. Today he is an outspoken critic of any sort of antisemitism, antizionism, terrorism and religious extremism. Watch him speak at the University of California:
Feminist Muslim Irshad Manji supported the military intervention in Afghanistan from the beginning – and she did so mainly because of one simple reason: human rights. But now she has doubts, if the West will really be able to bring liberal democracy to Afghanistan: Tribalism triumphs in Afghanistan
Listen to her debate the issue with Nelofer Pazira, an Afghan Canadian journalist, who defends the war as necessary and moral:
Paul Collier is Professor of Economics at Oxford University and Department Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies.
Watch him speak about his book “The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It”, in which he “outlines four traps that the poorest countries in the world can find themselves in: the trap of civil war, the trap of being landlocked, the trap of having abundant natural resouces, and the trap of having a bad government” and explains how they can escape these traps:
Watch Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy, debate his book The Spirit of Democracy – The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World, which I very strongly recommend to anyone interested in the science of democracy and democracy movements, with some researchers from Freedom House at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs:
Watch Daoud Sultanzoy, Chairman of the Economic Committee of the Afghan Parliament, talk about “the current economic and business conditions in Afghanistan and the links between sustained economic growth and democratic institutions” at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE):
Building Democracy and a Market Economy in Afghanistan Part 1 /2
Also watch this short, but very interesting documentary about Tashabos (the Dari and Pashto word for “entrepreneur”), a CIPE program “to teach high school students the basics of economics and finance. Tashabos tells the story of a married couple that capitalize on the weaving and design skills of the wife to establish a knitwear business that – by the course’s completion – expands into a full-scale manufacturing enterprise”:
Salman Rushdie is an atheist, Irshad Manji a muslim. But they have a lot in common. They both have tons of courage, are open minded and freedom loving. And they both haven’t lost their sense of humour…
Enjoy watching them debate the importance of free speech and the power of fear over people’s minds:
Watch Phyllis Chesler, Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York and author of The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom, speak out against gender apartheid in the islamic world and the silence of feminism at the Barnes & Noble Booksellers in New York:
Watch Amal Elsana Alh’jooj, director of the Arab-Jewish Center for Equality, Empowerment and Cooperation, explain at the World Affairs Council how she got to be the first bedouine feminist – and what feminism is or should be all about:
Amal Elsana Alh’jooj at the WAC
“Amal was born in Laqiya, an Arab Bedouin village in the northeastern Negev, to a family with 13 children. At the age of 17 she established the first Arab Bedouin women’s organization. Amal is one of the key shapers of public opinion in the Arab community regarding the status of the Arab minority and the status of women in Israel.”
…it’s a good time to remember why and how it was used to torture and mistreat people:
Targeting civilians – like most terrorist groups do – is of course one of the very worst human rights violations. And every state has the right and the duty to defend its citizens. In fact, defending human life is every state’s most important right and duty.
But overreaction to terrorism not only leads to human rights violations – making us more like them! -, but plays directly into the hands of terrorists by giving them the special attention they crave for and creating the grievances they can use for propaganda purposes.
This is always important to keep in mind, even if you believe that a tough response may sometimes be necessary.
Watch and listen to some of the leading terrorism and counterterrorism experts debate these issues at a special two-day conference at the Cato Institute:
Shaping the Obama Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy
“With a new administration in the White House, January 2009 will be the starting point for a new approach to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. This conference presents solid, immensely practical analyses of strategic counterterrorism policies based on the lessons and experiences of the past eight years and earlier, and on what proven strategies will yield the most beneficial results for the United States. In addition, the conference focuses on defining realistic objectives and allocating military, federal and state government expenditures according to these goals. To accomplish this, an outstanding group of national and global experts has been assembled to share their insights, accomplishments, and strategic recommendations for the coming administration.”
It’s really hard to explain what the Copenhagen Consensus Center is trying to do. In their own words: “Through the commissioning and conveying of research, we work to improve the prioritizing between various efforts to mitigate the consequences of the world’s biggest challenges. In particular we focus on the international community’s effort to solve the world’s biggest challenges and on how to do this in the most cost-efficient manner.”
Sounds weird? In a way it is. But if you give it a chance, you will learn a lot about our world’s biggest problems and what to do about them.
But you better be open minded…
Watch the Copenhagen Consensus 2008 Opening Speech and the Final Results Presentation by its founder Björn Lomborg.
Also watch videos of all the presentations, in which experts present “the latest research on every challenge and also put forward solutions to the challenge, including benefit and cost estimates”. It’s really worth it!
WADI asks for your help:
Stop Female Genital Mutilation in Iraqi-Kurdistan: Appeal for Donations
“We invite you to take part in social change in the making. Over the past four years, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Iraqi-Kurdistan has ceased to be a practice protected by the silence of strict social taboo. FGM is now the topic of open public debate, with growing active support to ban it by law and combat against it through social, medical and educational action. This remarkable change has been made possible by a group of local activists, working across Iraqi-Kurdistan in WADI’s various projects and initiatives for women’s rights and equality.”
Watch this new documentary on the struggle for an uncensored internet in Egypt.
Irshad Manji is a faithful muslim and a radical - a radical supporter of secularism, individualism, pluralism, reason, science, modernity, universalism, liberal democracy, private property… and mocca coffee!
Watch her speak her free mind at the GoogleTalks:
God bless this brave woman!
Torture is not just a human rights violation. It is in many ways the human rights violation. If a government can torture its enemies and get away with it, it can get away with almost anything. So now that – thank heavens! – the end of U.S. torture is finally drawing close, let’s not just forget what neoconservative zealots did to our country, our values, our constitution! They are still around. And they will keep trying to sell their lies to the American people and to stigmatize their critics as “anti-american traitors” and “enemies of freedom”, as if there was anything more anti-american and less freedom-loving than torture.
Don’t believe their lies and petty excuses. Don’t fall for their rationalizations. They did not just use “enhanced interrogation techniques”. They did not “just” use psychological torture. Psychological torture is not a form of “mild” torture. And there is no such thing as “mild” torture. Torture was not only used against evil terrorists. And it was not only used by “a few bad apples”. It was no accident, no minor mistake, no just loosing patience every now and then under extreme stress conditions. And there never was any ticking bomb scenario.
It was torture. It was systemic. In some cases it was murder. And it must never happen again.
Watch this sober, well-researched, but deeply disturbing indictment of the Bush administration’s war on human rights:
Oh say, does that star-spangled banner still wave… ?
Right wing ideologues know only three ways to fight terrorism: be quick, be tough, be strong! Left wing ideologues also know only three ways to fight terrorism: talk, concede, negotiate! What they have in common is that they don’t care very much about the unintended consequences of their policies, but stick to their preconceived ideas no matter what. So what’s the best way to fight terrorism? Well, one thing is for sure: there is no one way of doing it.
Seth Jones and Martin Libicki “compiled and analyzed a data set of all terrorist groups between 1968 and 2006″ for a report published by the Rand Corporation :
How Terrorist Groups End – Implications for Countering al Qa’ida
Watch them talk about their findings at the Middle East Institute :
Seth Jones and Martin Libicki on Antiterrorism Strategies
Figure:
How 268 Terrorist Groups Worldwide Ended, 1968–2006, Rand Corporation
“Of the 648 groups that were active at some point between 1968 and 2006, a total of 268 ended during that period. Another 136 groups splintered, and 244 remained active. The authors found that most ended for one of two reasons: They were penetrated and eliminated by local police and intelligence agencies (40 percent), or they reached a peaceful political accommodation with their government (43 percent). Most terrorist groups that ended because of politics sought narrow policy goals. The narrower the goals, the more likely the group was to achieve them through political accommodation — and thus the more likely the government and terrorists were to reach a negotiated settlement.
In 10 percent of cases, terrorist groups ended because they achieved victory. Military force led to the end of terrorist groups in 7 percent of cases. The authors found that militaries tended to be most effective when used against terrorist groups engaged in insurgencies in which the groups were large, well armed, and well organized. But against most terrorist groups, military force was usually too blunt an instrument.”
What bothers me about most discussions on military interventions is that they focus far too much on our goals, when the means should matter just as much to us and maybe even more.
Two months ago, Human Rights Watch protested: “Civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and NATO airstrikes nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007, with recent deadly airstrikes exacerbating the problem and fuelling a public backlash.” – Afghanistan: Civilian Deaths From Airstrikes
Since then, many more civilians have lost their lives, because those responsible didn’t listen and didn’t care enough. And, today, just another tragedy underlined the necessity to reconsider current strategies: “An airstrike by United States-led forces killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 others at a wedding party in Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Wednesday. The casualties included women and children, the officials said”.
I am not a pacifist. And I am not naive. I know that there never was or will be a war without civilian casualties. But I don’t see that we care enough about minimizing them.
40 people were just killed by bombs dropped from U.S. planes! Why is there no outcry? Why isn’t it on top of the agenda? Why aren’t our politicians flying to Afghanistan to voice their concerns and regrets? Why don’t our flags fly on half mast? Why don’t we ever stand in silence for just a minute to remember the people who were accidentally killed in our wars?
People in the West need to show their compassion for the people they are trying to help. If we don’t win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, we will never win the war against the Taliban or Al Qaida. And this should not even be the No.1 reason why we have to try even harder!
In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about how much radical islamists are influenced by national socialist ideologies like antisemitism and conspiracy thinking. And some similarities are striking. But if you listen to what they are really saying, you will see that they are just as close or maybe even closer to socialist totalitarianism, even though they hate the socialists for their atheism.
The Middle East Media Research Institute has a very interesting video clip of the Egyptian cleric Zaghloul Al-Naggar in which he talks about what he believes to be the downfall of the capitalist system of usury and oppression and his conception of an islamic economy:
Yes, it is hilarious! But don’t forget that he is very serious about it. People like him are a threat to economic development and political liberalisation in the Arab world.
Watch Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today, and Dalia Mogahed, author of Who Speaks For Islam? – What a Billion Muslims Really Think, debate this question at the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival:
Watch Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak at the American Jewish Committee about her long journey from Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethopia and Kenya to the Netherlands and finally the U.S. – and her inner journey from collectivism to individualism, from dogmatism to reason, from submission to freedom:
Genital mutilation is one of the most cruel and widespread forms of violence against girls around the world. Now some women (and men) in Iraqi-Kurdistan have finally broken the silence:
Debate about Female Genital Mutilation in Kurdish Newspaper
“The independent Kurdish Newspaper Hawlati published recently some articles debating Female Genital Mutilation in Iraqi-Kurdistan. This debate shows that a taboo was broken and now people do publicly criticize and defend this practice, which was before done secretly.”
Stop FGM in Kurdistan – Campaign against Female Genital Mutilation in Iraqi-Kurdistan
“In 2005, reports stated a cutting rate of nearly 60 % in several rural areas. Activists and physicians reported similar rates from other parts of the Kurdish region in Northern Iraq. As a consequence of the findings, Womens Groups and Human Rights Organizations initiated a broad public debate on FGM in the region.
»Stop FGM in Kurdistan« is a result of the debate. The campaign is initiated and supported by various local and international organizations and aims on and effective ban on FGM through:
- a representative study on the appearance of FGM in the Kurdish region of Northern Iraq;
- a public awareness campaign and an educational program on the physical and psychological consequences of FGM
- the coordination of local organizations to work on a legal ban on FGM.”
Saad Eddin Ibrahim is an Egyptian dissident and scientist, and founder of the Ibn Khaldun Center For Development Studies. Watch him speak at the Woodrow Wilson International Center about the democracy movement in his home country and Western support for the regime, which he believes has to be stopped:
Freedom “After” Speech: Speaking up and paying the price in Egypt
Download a free report on Civil Society and Democratization in the Arab World 2007, edited by Moheb Zaki for the Ibn Khaldun Center.
