Profiles in Courage

September 11, 2001 had been a turning point for almost all people in the world. As regards me, I remember filling packing cases after a hard work’s day in the preparation of a significant move: to the Middle East; my departure scheduled only some ten days later. I was about to join a brand new faculty at Kuwait University when I switched on the TV and saw, again and again, Manhattan’s Twin Towers hit by airplane, and hit again, then collapsing. Only thirty minutes later I had received the first telephone call of a friend who tried to convince me that Kuwait would be safe and I certainly would not change my stance.

Well, I didn’t loose my courage although none of my new and most curious colleagues really expected me to come after 9/11. The new beginning was cumbersome but overall quite interesting. I met people from all over the world, a true international faculty. They had, though, very different profiles of courage. I learned to know rather anxious people who never really understood that Islam was a great cultural achievement and worth of being studied in detail. I met greedy people who were there for the money only. As usual in Academia, you always also meet people with highly problematic personalities, preventing any real collaboration.

The Kuwaitis were friendly and in essence very helpful. Some of my new colleagues from the West who had been there for some time complained, though, that they were snobby, considering themselves very special. Some allegedly even looked down to us, the western expats, coming for the money, the infidels.  

As I settled, I became aware of a would-be colleague from the Ministry of Health who was somehow a relative of our Dean. Dr. I. presented himself as a VIP within Kuwait’s health system, a former MP, even a journalist; in fact a multitalented member of Kuwait’s closed society. He arduously tried to get into the faculty. When having been seconded, he quickly demanded giving lectures on topics he could hardly be considered to be an expert of. When finally appointed as assistant professor, he managed to serve in two independent departments.

The first Arabic word I learned in this context was wasta, or insider relationship, old boys’ network. Dr. I. represented wasta. Asking him a favor, one almost immediately got satisfied. He knew people and places. In his own private clinic he had employed numerous humble and subservient domestics. He could always count on their slavish obedience.

While his remote relative, the Dean, knew about Dr. I. but could not prevent him from joining the faculty, problems with him quickly emerged. Absurd criticism of expats led to early cessation of contracts. Then he attacked his Kuwaiti colleagues. There is a highly questionable rule at Kuwait University that a permanent appointment does not depend on scientific publications but rather on passing the American board examination or an equivalent qualification. Dr. I. had dozens of publications (which have to be considered worthless from a scientific point of view) and he was a specialist who had passed an equivalent board exam in Ireland. But some of his rivals among the Kuwaiti colleagues had not. If they were too close to his arch enemy, the Dean, he liked to question their qualifications. He usually involved the media and even the University President, who received dozens of letters of complaint.

On an especially revealing and even instructional occasion Dr. I. sent a pages-long email to the culprit, a very likeable young colleague with certain talents as a University teacher, where he referred to a certain hadith which is well-known among adherents of Shi’a Islam: mubahala. He updated this email, in which he accused his colleague of lying about the assumed expiration of his part II board exam, on a daily basis and sent copies of it to the President’s office, the Ministry and all faculty members. He even sent copies to students.

Mubahala reminds the pious believer of an incident in 631 CE (9 AH) when a group of Arabic Christians argued with the Prophet Muhammad which of the two parties erred in its doctrine concerning the nature of Jesus. Muhammad, after likening Jesus’ miraculous birth to Adam’s creation, called the Christians to mubahala, or cursing, where each party should ask God to destroy the lying party and their families. He then covered himself and his family (Ahl al-Bayt), i.e., his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali and their two boys Hasan and Husayn with a cloak. The Christian envoy declined taking part in mubahala and chose instead to pay tribute.

As far as I know, I was the only western expat who recognized the tremendous impact of Dr. I.’s curse on our young Kuwaiti colleague. Muslims, who read through all the baseless accusations which were sent day after day to dozens of people, were deeply shocked. Mubahala is definitely exceeding the limits. Dr. I. did not fear any consequences for his ruthless defamation. But the young colleague eventually resigned and left the faculty for good.

Years later, I learned that Dr. I. is a pretty prominent liar himself. In 1990, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny but oil-rich country in the corner of the Persian Gulf. A 15-year-old Kuwaiti nurse, who had only been introduced as Nayirah and who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti US ambassador’s daughter, testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 that she herself had witnessed babies being taken out of incubators and being left on cold floors to die. The incubators were then taken to Baghdad. After the war, it became clear that another alleged witness, who had testified before the UN Security Council and the Congress that he had supervised the burial of 120 infants and personally buried 40 newborn babies who had died after taken from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers, had used false names and identities. This witness later revoked and admitted that he had never seen these atrocities. The alleged Dr. Issah Ibrahim was in fact our Dr. I., not a surgeon but rather a dentist. The notorious story is still remembered as the “incubator lie” which essentially served in motivating the World public to support America’s actions of throwing the Iraqi troops out of the Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. More information can be found in L. May’s Crimes against Humanity: A Normative Account, Cambridge University Press 2004.

A notorious liar is suffering from a habit. A Kuwaiti lawyer who I once had asked for some support in a libel case, in which Dr. I. was involved, was very hesitant to accept the job. “Is it about libel?” he asked me. “But that’s the way how we do it in this society.”

I recently got to know that Dr. I. has lost a lawsuit in court against his faculty chairman and has now sued the University President.

 

Note: Profiles in Courage is the title of the 1955 Pulitzer-Prize-winning bestseller by John F. Kennedy, which describes the integrity and bravery of eight US senators. It profiles moral courage of highly reputed men in the history of the Unites States. Despite overall enthusiastic reception the later 35^th US president was quickly blamed that he was the only man who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book which had been ghostwritten for him. The book has actually been written by his speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

Polygons

“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, shun him. And he who knows not and knows that he knows not, awaken him. And he who knows and knows that he knows, follow him.”

Arabic saying

The swastika has nowadays a bad reputation but it has of course not been invented by German Nazis. Rather it is a positively connoted, sacred symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, such as lucky charm. It is interesting to see that it has also found its way into Islamic Art, even as a sign of blessing. A famous square panel on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque dating from the 17^th century (Shi’ite Safavid) resembles a Swastika, and its calligraphy mentions Ali [1]. It might be a beautiful example of “a simple design rotated 45 degrees which acquires two separate values, one as a carrier of geometric forms filled with (by the time of the panel) antiquarian writing, the other one as a violator of the sequence of both writing and architecture by forcing one into rare contortions to read the writing” [2]. The southern iwan which had got additional decorations by Sayyid Mahmud-e Naqash in 1475/76 sports a similar but definitely Timurid swastika-like panel, with its ample arabesque and floral motifs [3].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Square from Five Squares

These examples are not strict swastikas. Rather, they represent a popular Islamic geometric pattern, a square composed of three squares. In the 10^th century, artisans were thoroughly taught in a distinct academic context by mathematicians in geometry. Alpay Özdural (d. 2003) describes [4] how, for instance, Abu’l-Wafā’ al-Būzjāni (940- ca. 998), in his famous treatise Kitāb fīmā yahtāju ilayhi al-sani’ min al-a’māl al-handasiya (On the Geometric Constructions Necessary for the Artisan) teaches the right way of constructing this very combination of squares and avoid often made mistakes of the carpenter whose job involved cutting single pieces of material into parts and arranging them skillfully in attractive patterns in mosaics. Abul’l-Wāfa explains that artisans and even geometers (muhandis) often err in the assembling of the pieces, the former since they do not know the scientific proof, the latter due to lack of practice. As Özural writes, Abu’l-Wāfa’s book on Geometric Constructions was apparently motivated by meetings with practitioners and aimed in the proper advancement of Islamic Art. As a true academic, he displayed, in his book “pure geometry, familiarity with practical applications, and skill in teaching theoretical subjects to practical-minded people.”  

The figure below (from Özdural’s article) shows how, by cutting and pasting two, five and nine squares, according to Abu’l Wāfa’s theoretical solutions [5], pretty attractive patterns are created. The earliest “square from five squares” can be seen on the wooden door of the mosque of Imām Ibrāhīm in Mosul which is dated 1104 CE. And Abu’l-Wāfa also explains patiently why some popular ‘practical solutions’ were essentially wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While between the 11^th and 15^th centuries in Iran and Central Asia, Spain and elsewhere in the Islamic World, geometric tessellations became more and more ambitious, dazzling, breakneck artistic, it is not clear how much artisans actually knew about geometry and mathematics. Özdural’s paper convincingly shows how academics such as Abu’l-Wāfa in Baghdad or later Omar Khayyām in Esfahan and Jamshīd al-Kāshī in Samarqand frequently met with artisans, architects, masons and carpenters in what he calls conversazione, i.e., seminars and practical sessions, where the then popular cut and paste technique of dividing larger material into smaller pieces was exercised and got a sound theoretical foundation. While the Golden Age of Islamic Science and Art before and around 1000 CE, in particular Persia, was brutally brought to an end by Mongol invasions after 1220, with catastrophic destruction and by and large architectural inactivity for several decades, later-on, during Ilkhanid, Timurid, and even Ottoman periods, scholars again took over in assisting those who created the most incredible geometric and arabesque tessellations. But they still noted lack of knowledge and unwillingness of master-builders to entirely rely on geometric proof but rather dealt “with geometry in their unmethodological and incorrect way three centuries after Abu’l-Wāfa.” “Yes, we have heard of it, but in essence we have not heard how science of geometry works and what it deals with.”

 

Pentagons and Decagons

Especially fascinating may be the way, artisans had tried to use pentagons and decagons in their tessellations. There have even been speculations, at least since the late 1980s, whether medieval Islamic artists had been able to create aperiodic tiling, such as those which had been described by Roger Penrose in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In studying the probably 13^th century manuscript by an anonymous author, Fī tadhākul al-ashkāl al-mutashābihah aw al-mutawāfiqa (On Interlocking Similar or Congruent Figures), which is now located in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Wasma’a K. Chorbachi and Arthur L. Loeb [6] point to the similarity of the here described problem of interlocking convex decagons and pentagonal stars (the Islamic Pentagonal Seal) with those being now popularly known as aperiodic Penrose Tiling [7].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this manuscript one may find an interesting ‘practical’, albeit incorrect, solution for creating regular decagons and pentagons by cutting and pasting the kunya-5 triangle, a right-angled triangle with one angle equal to 36°. The approximation differs from 36° by only 12’22’’, i.e., 0.5% [8].

 

 

 

 

 

In particular in the 13^th century, the golden triangle (an isosceles triangle having angles of 36°, 72° and 72°; its base length equals f times its side-length, where f is the golden fraction defined by the equation phi = 1/(1+phi)), was used by Muslim scientists for the construction of regular pentagons and decagons [9]. The golden triangle can be subdivided in such a way that another golden triangle and a golden gnomon results, i.e., a isosceles triangle having angles 108°, 36° and 36°. As Chorbachi and Loeb write, artisans may actually have created the 36° angle using the (incorrect) method of constructing kunya-5.

The construction of the Pentagonal Seal in the Paris manuscript is, according to Chorbachi and Loeb, a very particular one, with its five-pointed star constituted by ten golden gnomons which exactly match the ten golden triangles which constitute the decagon. “It is historically significant that as early as the thirteenth century A.D., it was known that what we presently call the golden triangle and golden gnomon are together capable of tessellating the Euclidean plane, and that during the Middle Ages, Islamic design continued in the tradition of the Alexandrian and other eastern Mediterranean schools of mathematics. The use of this five-pointed star appears to have stimulated mathematicians to work on these practical problems in design. The importance of this problem to the Muslim scientists may be inferred by the fact that they tried over the course of several centuries to find the perfect solution.”

According to Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in “The Tower of Babel” [5], “[t]he true patron of the scientists who wrote these ancient manuscript was art. It was the artisans and the architects who called for the services of science and scientists to assist them solving the design problems that they were facing. And as in the case of Islamic art in the past, science must come to the service of the arts, whether we are talking today of Islamic art, of Western art or of art generally, today more than ever before […].” “[I]slamic tradition is so strong that, if we are in touch with the language of the present time and ground ourselves in this strong old tradition, we can arrive at an expression that is not only contemporary but could be meaningful and valid in the coming century.”

 

Notes

[1] According to Oleg Grabar in his fine book The Great Mosque of Isfahan (New York University Press 1990, p. 34) it contains in the four corners the pious quatrain: “As the letter of our crime became entwined [i.e., grew so long], [they] took it and weighed it in the balance against action. Our sin was greater than that of anyone else, but we were forgiven out of the kindness of Ali.” Grabar notes that the central part of the panel is nothing else than the plug of the artisan who was diligently involved in restoring the mosque in the 17^th century, Muhammad ibn Mu’min Muhammad Amin.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Decorative brickwork on the northern iwan of the mosques also shows clockwise and counterclockwise swastikas in one of the circumferential bands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[4] Özdural A. Mathematics and Arts: Connections between Theory and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World. Historia Mathematica 2000; 27: 171-201.

[5] Ibid. It is the Islamic proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, which is closer to the Indian method of Bhāskara Achārya (d. 1185) than to the Greek method in Euclid’s Propositions, as is beautifully explained by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in her eye-opening article “In the Tower of Babel: Beyond Symmetry in Islamic Design. Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789.

[6] Chorbachi WK, Loeb AL. An Islamic pentagonal seal (from scientific manuscripts of the geometry of design). In Hargittai I (ed) Fivefold symmetry. World Scientific, Singapore 1992, pp. 283-305

[7] Ibid., p. 284: “Although the approach to the generation of this pattern in the Paris manuscript is quite different from that taken by Penrose, it is notable that these ‘quasi-periodic’ patterns were already of interest at least in the thirteenth century A.D. The manuscript stresses the uniqueness of the fivefold center of rotational symmetry in the pentagonal seal, thus implying the lack of translational symmetry in the pattern, but does not explicitly deal with the matter of non-periodicity.”

[8] Ibid., p. 286f: “The construction was therefore remarkably accurate, though not correct. Kamal ad-Din Musa Ibn Yunus Ibn Man’a in his thirteenth-century commentary on Abu’l Wafa’ al Buzjani’s book on the geometry of construction, with whom this construction may well have originated, actually was quite explicit in cautioning that some of his constructions, in particular of the heptagon, were practical, but not mathematically exact. They can be used in small-scale designs without noticeable discrepancies, which however become manifest on a larger scale.” 

[9] Ibid., p. 293: “[I]n the second half of the thirteenth century (ca. 1259) in the town of Marāgha, which became a center of scientific activities and contained the famous observatory, another illustrious mathematician, Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi, wrote commentaries on Euclid, in which he made obvious use of the golden triangle. … [H]is commentaries on Euclid included a short treatise dealing with the inscription and circumscription of polygons within the circle: Sittat Maqalat min Kitab Tahrir Uqlidis: Six Books/Articles from Euclid’s Book of Elements.” As an example, see the construction below, which had been created with some guidance from Eric Broug’s booklet Islamic Geometric Patterns, Thames & Hudson, New York 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also on this blog

About difficulties of the Western perception of Islamic abstraction which might easily result in fundamental misconceptions

About decagonal tessellations on the west iwan of Esfahan’s famous Friday Mosque

About Alpay Özdural’s proof that the mysterious North Dome of Esfahan’s Great Mosque is based on Omar Khayyām’s triangle

A review of a booklet which makes complicated Islamic geometric patterns easy to reproduce

Euphemisms

Only minutes after President Obama’s speech at the U.S. National Archives in Washington on closing down Guantánamo prison camp what he called a “misguided experiment”, former vice president Dick Cheney denounced the decision saying it came “without deliberation and no plan.” A large part of Cheney’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a neocon think tank, deals with recent euphemisms used in the Global War on Terror, a term, the Obama administration has abandoned. The now prescribed terminology is “overseas contingency operations”.

“In the event of another attack on America, the Homeland Security Department assures us it will be ready for this, quote, ‘man-made disaster’ – never mind that the whole Department was created for the purpose of protecting Americans from terrorist attack.

“In the category of euphemisms, the prizewinning entry would be a recent editorial in a familiar newspaper that referred to terrorists we’ve captured as, quote, ‘abducted.’ Here we have ruthless enemies of this country, stopped in their tracks by brave operatives in the service of America, and a major editorial page makes them sound like they were kidnap victims at random on their way to the movies.

“Another term out there that slipped into the discussion is the notion that American interrogation practices were a ‘recruitment tool’ for the enemy. On this theory, by the questioning of killers, we supposedly fallen short of our own values. This recruitment theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the President himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”

It was, of course, the former Bush administration, where Cheney had been the vice president, which had introduced some of the most unjustified euphemisms and exaggerations after 9-11. Has there ever been a Global War on Terrorism? Or had it rather been a modern crusade? Enhanced interrogation techniques are torture, what else? Enemy combatants? A term coined to deprive prisoners of war of their Geneva Conventions rights. The use of these euphemisms has destroyed America’s reputation as a democracy, and that might be more devastating and longer lasting than the 9-11 attacks eight years ago.

Cheney mentions also alleged effectiveness of CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.

“Maybe you’ve heard that when we captured KSM [Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, reportedly the principal architect of the 9-11 attacks], he said he would talk as soon as he got to New York City and saw his lawyer. But like many critics of interrogations, he clearly misunderstood the business at hand. American personnel were not there to commence an elaborate legal proceeding, but to extract information from him before al-Qaeda could strike again and kill more of our people.”

Khaled Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded 183 times. A list of his confessions can be found at Wikipedia:

• The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City

• A failed “shoe bomber” operation

• The October 2003 attack in Kuwait

• The nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia

• A plan for a “second wave” of attacks on major U.S. landmarks after the 9-11 attacks, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank Building in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York

• Plots to attack oil tankers and U.S. naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and Singapore

• A plan to blow up the Panama Canal

• Plans to assassinate Jimmy Carter

• A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York City

• A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago with burning fuel trucks

• Plans to “destroy” Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London

• A planned attack on “many” nightclubs in Thailand

• A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets

• A plan to destroy buildings in Eilat, Israel

• Plans to destroy U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan in 2002

• Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia

• Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok

• Sending several “mujahideen” into Israel to survey “strategic targets” with the intention of attacking them

• The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya

• The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport in Kenya

• Plans to attack U.S. targets in South Korea

• Providing financial support for a plan to attack U.S., British and Jewish targets in Turkey

• Surveillance of U.S. nuclear power plants in order to attack them

• A plot to attack NATO’s headquarters in Europe

• Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the “Bojinka Operation”) to bomb 12 American passenger jets

• The planned assassination attempt against then-U.S. President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines

• “Shared responsibility” for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II

• Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf

• An attempt to attack a U.S. oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, “owned by the Jewish former [U.S.] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger”

• The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl

As regards the final item on this very long list, Kahlid’s confession led lawyers of Daniel Pearl’s alleged killer, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (the man who, according to Benazir Bhutto in her infamous interview with David Frost in November 2007 “had murdered Osama bin Laden”) appeal of their client’s death sentence.

Did Cheney ever read George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four? Did it inspire him? Does he remember the character Emmanuel Goldstein?

President Obama’s U-turn

One of the few Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto is Germany’s main literary critic, or “Pope of German letters”, Marcel Reich-Ranicki. In his remarkable biography “The Author of Himself: The Life of Marcel Reich-Ranicki” (Princeton University Press 2001), he described in his own unpretentious way the incredible situation of the people in the Ghetto and his and his young wife Tosia’s miraculous escape from hell (Umschlagplatz) only minutes before being deported to the gas chambers of Treblinka’s extermination camp. Reading this is both thrilling and mortifying. The industrial perfection of genocide, the Holocaust of Jews and others will forever, at least for the coming generations, be the inhumane stain on Germany and Germans. The crime of the century (the 20^th) is not comparable with anything else although I painfully remember anti-Semitic sentiments of former colleagues in the Middle East that it is; I respect their opinion but do not share: Gaza must not yet be compared with the Warsaw Ghetto, of course [1].

What is more amazing with Marcel Reich-Ranicki’s biography is his deep love for his and all the Jews’ German tormentors’ literature and composed music . Is it a sort of love-and-hate relationship? Does he want to prove that human bestiality and striving for the highest cultural achievements does not exclude each other? Has he forgiven “the” (or some) Germans or is he paying back when publicly delivering his often harsh judgments on hopefuls in the literature business [2]?

What does this have to do with hope and change and yes we can? President Obama has slipped up a second time yesterday, after pardoning CIA agents last month for having applied torture-like, so-called enhanced, interrogation techniques to detainees in the war on terror. In a 180-degree U-turn he now tries to prevent the release of dozens of photographs taken in prison and camps outside Abu Ghuraib which might show the world public the notorious abuse of detainees. His generals in Afghanistan and Iraq may have convinced him that further anti-American sentiments may cost U.S. citizens their lives. 

The last culprits of Nazi Germany, such as notorious John Demjanjuk, will vanish soon. It sometimes takes many decades, but it is hoped that truth will be unearthed sooner or later anyway. Even as regards the crimes or alleged crimes by the former U.S. administration.

 

Notes

[1] The reality of the Warsaw Ghetto, as described by Reich-Ranicki, is not even comparable with the description of a world falling apart in Paul Auster’s “In the Country of Last Things”, an author who had rightfully been praised by Reich-Ranicki.

[2] I have met Professor Reich-Ranicki once, so far. It must have been about at that time when he was correcting the page proofs of his biography. He was a patient in the hospital where I was working at that time, but I had not been his doctor. It was interesting that he mistook me as “his” doctor, and so I had the opportunity to chat a bit with him until he noticed his misconception. He won’t remember the short encounter but for me it was moment I won’t forget easily: his strong and unbroken personality, but a bit different from his sometimes, well, arguable televised appearances.

 

See also on this blog

Schicksalstag. How Germans try to deal with November 9.

What Next?

In response to a lawsuit and exactly five years after the Abu Ghuraib prison scandal the Pentagon is now going to release dozens if not hundred of photos which have been taken to document abuse or alleged abuse of terror suspects by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the Washington Post reports today. What do we have to expect and, honestly, why have they been taken if not for reasons of pure sadism? Did the abuse of detainees go on despite former President Bush’s claim of being “un-American”?

 

Amrit Singh, an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) staff attorney involved in the 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that led to the promise to release the photos, said:

 

“[The photos] show[s] that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was not aberrational but was systemic and widespread.

 

“This will underscore calls for accountability for that abuse.”

 

It is in fact not clear what will finally be shown. An anonymous Pentagon official disputes that the photographs would prove systematic abuse in prisons run by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The images in questions have been investigated in 60(!) of the military’s own investigations of abuse allegations.  

                                                                             

“What it demonstrates is that when we find credible allegations of abuse, we investigate them.”

 

This claim is once more not very trustworthy. According to the Washington Post, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has said yesterday:

 

“There is a certain inevitability, I believe, that much of this (!) will eventually come out. Much has already come out.”

 

Mr. Gates also expressed concern that the release of photos and interrogation memos may cause unrest and create further problems for U.S. troops serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

 

The former Bush administration has argued a section of the Geneva Convention might be violated when photos of prisoners are shown to the public. But a three-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 2^nd Circuit had rejected such arguments in September 2008. There is in fact a significant public interest in potential government misconduct.

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques

It is generally hold that the former Bush administration and its allies had lost the war in Iraq on the day when the pictures from the Abu Ghuraib prison in Baghdad had been aired. It was exactly five years ago: detainees in extremely humiliating positions, piled naked bodies forced to almost homosexual practices, interrogation of shackled detainees in front of barking shepherd dogs. Private Lynndie England holding a naked prisoner in a leash and stupidly leering into the camera of her boyfriend Charles A. Graner Jr. Un-American, as G. W. Bush declared with disbelieving disgust. Only one week later, on May 7, 2004, American citizen Nicholas Berg, who had been kidnapped in Baghdad, was beheaded in front of a video camera by the murderer Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His killer claimed that his death was carried out to avenge the abuse of U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghuraib prison.

 

The two culprits at Abu Ghuraib prison, England and Graner, and a handful of others, all at low military ranks, have later been convicted guilty of conspiracy, maltreating and committing “indecent acts”. The term “torture” has not been mentioned, though.

 

Not un-American must then apparently be regarded what has now been released by the Obama administration: four memos detailing “tough interrogation techniques”, including “walling”, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, insects placed in a box confinement, and the notorious water boarding, which have obviously been applied to culprits in Guantánamo Bay and secret CIA camps since at least 2002.

 

The New York Review of Books will publish the International Committee of the Red Cross report on the treatment of fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA custody later this month. A pdf file can be downloaded here.

 

President Barack Obama, who has promised to close down the Guantánamo camp in Cuba within 18 months after taking office on January 20, has banned the use of, for instance, sleep deprivation and simulated drowning but has made clear that he would not prosecute CIA agents who have been involved in the mentioned “enhanced” interrogation procedures. “[T]hose who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice… will not be subject to prosecution.” A grave mistake. Obama’s decree will definitely not prevent others from conducting torture. Torture is to be called torture. It is illegal under both American and international laws. Prosecution is in fact mandatory.

 

 

They’ll Never Forget!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the 2^nd of August 1990, Kuwait, the small country in the corner of the Persian Gulf was invaded by Iraqi troops. The tanks overran the tiny post Abdaly, about 50 km north of the Al Mutlaa ridge. Saddam Hussein was pretty certain that the US would not interfere. He had enjoyed, for many years, a sort of friendship among rogues, and the handshake with Donald Rumsfeld in 1983 is unforgotten, when the first war in the region, against America’s arch-enemy Iran, culminated with poison gas on one side and children with little plastic keys sent into the mine fields on the other. Stunningly, both parties, Iraq and Iran, had been eagerly supported by the West. Israel had even sold arms to Iran. It was a worldwide desire that both bastards, Saddam’s and Khomeini’s regimes, should better bleed to death, and vanish. But dictatorships do not vanish easily. One million had died when this war, which saw battles in trenches and usage of mustard gas, 70 years after WWI, ceased in August 1988.

 

As other Arab states, Kuwait had supported Iraq during the war with Iran. But soon Saddam blamed Kuwait that it had drilled for oil during the war in Iraq’s territory. There were long-standing disputes about the northern borders of Kuwait with Iraq and the tiny Emirate. Britain had configured (apparently with straight edge and compass) the borders in the Middle East. Kuwait’s boundaries were defined in 1922 in the Uqair protocol signed by Percy Cox, the High Commissioner to Baghdad who met his colleague John More, the British Political Agent to Kuwait, and Abdul Aziz ibn Abdur Rahman ibn Saud, the first Saudi monarch.

 

For Saddam a safe access to the Persian Gulf was of strategic importance. Iraq has a coast line of not more than 40 km with the Shatt al-Arab defining the boundary to Iran. But there are two muddy islands, Warbah and Bubiyan, which are just located in the northern offshore sands of the Gulf without providing Iraq with any reasonable harbor. An impressive, 2400 m long concrete girder bridge links the Kuwaiti mainland with Bubiyan Island. It had been constructed in 1983. The wonderful “Bridge to Nowhere” (in fact, the road ends at the small Bubyian post in the swamps of the marshland), spanning the shallow Khawr as Sabiyah, was heavily damaged in the events which follow but quickly restored in the aftermath of the war. The shores are very muddy here. Chalets in small villages are used, as everywhere on Kuwait’s seaside, as getaways. But there is still a lot of rubble, remains from the war.

 

In the beginning of August temperatures usually reach their annual highs, 50 degrees Celsius (122 F). Saddam’s Iraqi Republican Guards came at early in the morning at 2 am. The Amir of Kuwait, HH Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah had fled already to the neighbouring Saudi Arabian deserts. His half-brother Sheikh Fahad, was shot and killed in the Royal residence Dasman Palace by the invaders. Kuwait became what Saddam has always claimed: Iraq;s 19^th province.

                                                        

Tired of the ongoing bad news from the Middle East, the international community at first only shrugged it off. Of course, Saudi Arabia was alarmed. And so were the USA. Saddam was suspected of going ahead with invading the oil fields in the eastern provinces of the weak monarchy, too.

 

How persistent lies and war-time propaganda may lead to a change in the World’s public opinion has been better learned 12 years later, in the preparation of the next, the 3^rd Gulf War. In 1990, after Saddam had ruthlessly invaded the tiny Emirate in the corner of the Persian Gulf, it was not about weapons of mass destruction what finally led to Kuwait’s liberation by a broad coalition force. There was a bizarre story which suddenly found its way to the mass media: the incubator lie. A 15-year old Kuwaiti nurse reported atrocities of Iraqis in hospitals. In verbal testimony to the US Congress she alleged that she had witnessed that infants were taken out of incubators (which were taken to Baghdad later-on). The contentious Californian Representative, Democrat Tom Lantos put forward, as a co-chair of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, this story. Later it turned out that ‘Nurse Nayirah’ was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and her allegations baseless propaganda. Lantos played, by the way, a similar sinister role on the eve of the next Gulf war in 2002.

 

There were other liars involved in the incubator case. A Kuwaiti dentist, Dr. Ibraheem Behbehani, who was at that time head of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent, testified (as a “Dr. Issah Ibrahim”) that he had supervised the burial of 120 newborn babies after the Iraqi invasion, and personally buried 40 newborn babies “that had been taken from their incubators by (Iraqi) soldiers”. He later admitted that he had never seen babies taken from the incubators. Dr. Behbehani is now an Assistant Professor at Kuwait University working in the Department of Diagnostic Sciences.

 

“Truth is always the first casualty”, as Alexander Cockburn wrote in the Los Angeles Times on January 17, 1991.

 

“Just how rapidly this happens can be illustrated by the case of the premature Kuwait babies, supposedly left to die last August by Iraqis who then removed the incubators to Baghdad. It has become the tale used by the Kuwait government in exile, as well as by President Bush, who invoked Iraqi horrors inflicted upon the innocent children of Kuwait in his speech. It should be said right away that there are thousands of examples of such Iraqi brutality and denial of elementary human rights, not just in Kuwait but in Iraq. But the story of baby mass murder is untrue.”

 

Anyway, an international coalition force (of the keen and willing) launched Operation Desert Storm, which lasted from January 17 until February 26, 1991. Iraqi troops were wiped out of Kuwait within a couple of weeks. Kuwait was freed, and the Kuwaiti will never forget, grateful and humble. Saddam then showed the World another unbelievable escalation of war, with finally setting the oil wells on fire, an ecological warfare never having been seen before. He was hanged for his crimes against Humanity on December 30, 2006.

 

The day of Liberation, February 26, is celebrated in Kuwait every year together with its National Day on February 25.

 

Congratulations, people of Kuwait! And God bless you!

 

When I asked one of my students at Kuwait University, what event is celebrated on National Day, she responded: “Oh, we became independent in 1961. But, actually, we have never been dependent!”  

First published at Salmiya.

 

     

Legacy

Documented civilian deaths from violence according to Iraq Body Count.

90,329 – 98,605

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Civilian death toll in Iraq dramatically decreased during the year 2008. Fortunately, the expected overt civil war did not break out in Iraq. Anyway, I have especially expressed my disgust  for several female or even teenage suicide bombings on the occasion of Shi’a festivals here on this blog.

President G. W. Bush’s legacy will be a burden not only for his successor in the White House. His initial statement ‘mission accomplished’  has been attenuated to ‘term accomplished’ with most if not all questions left unanswered and new problems, in particular with Iran’s role in the region, emerging. The proxy war in Gaza insufficiently conceals that the  arch enemies Israel and Iran have lined-up already for new military conflicts in the near future. Coming-in President Barack Obama will have to learn that regional powers may not be kept under control by drastically economically weakened United States which have completely lost their moral reputation (if they ever had it) in the Middle East. 

But that might be a chance as well. Obama may set the stage for confidence-building measures by quickly declaring the end of the ‘War on Terror’, even before closing down Guantanamo Bay. International collaboration and diplomacy even with Iran and Syria is overdue after years of solo actions of the previous US administration and attempts to force allies into ‘coalitions of the willing’. Due to his background, Obama might have much more intercultural competence and an open, not restricted and fundamentalistic, mind as regards to cultural and religious matters.

It is clear that Israel’s new war in Gaza is intended to quickly set the scene in order to prevent Obama from starting his diplomatic initiative. Let’s see what his first steps will be next week.

Ya Husayn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Husayn ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib and his family left Madinah on the 4^th of Rajab in the year 60 AH, and reached Makkah on the 4^th of Shaban. They stayed there for some time, but they did not complete the hajj as they had pretended to do. Instead, on the 8^th of Dhu’l Hijjah a small caravan set out to Kufa in Iraq, Ali’s former Capital. It was on a hopeless mission. The plot against Yazid, the infamous and so much hated Umayyad Caliph, Muawiya’s dissipated and incompetent son in Damascus, had been betrayed. When they reached the Euphrates, the ringleaders had been executed already. Husayn, his family and his men, not more than a few dozens, would have better been advised to surrender. The enemies’ army consisted of thousands. But the brave knights didn’t.

 

The battle on the banks of the Euphrates at Karbala, on the 10^th of Muharram in the year 61 AH, the day of Ashura, didn’t take long. Although Husayn was wearing his grandfather’s cloak and took-up the Dhul’fiqar, Ali’s famous double-bladed sword, it didn’t help. He and all men of his army were killed, and women and children deported to Damascus. Yazid himself ordered the mutilation of Husayn’s body. His severed head was also carried to Damascus. His little daughter Ruqaiyyah, who was desperately asking for her father, was shown the head, and she died on the spot. Her shrine in the old city of Damascus is full of toys; she was only 5 years old when she died in a shock.

 

After the battle, Lady Zaynab, Husayn’s brave sister, became for a short while the leader of the Shi’at Ali and the guardian of the orphans of Ahl al-Bayt, the family of the Prophet. The heads of the martyrs and all womenfolk and children were sent to Yazid in Damascus. When Yazid was presented with Husayn’s head on a gold dish he started to poke his lips and teeth with a cane, to the disgust of a venerable companion. ‘Take your cane from those lips,’ he cried, ‘for by Allah, I have seen the lips of the Prophet (pbuh) kiss those lips!’

 

Lady Zaynab was later sent back to Madinah where she died the following year. Her shrine is in a mosque in the vicinity of Damascus. Another is in Cairo, Egypt. Some people assume her tomb in Madinah.

 

Wilfred Thesiger, an extremely knowledgeable British explorer who in fact lived with the people in the vicinity of the Holy Cities of Karbala and Najaf (the former Kufa) in Iraq, wrote in his famous book Marsh Arabs (1964) on page 53:

 

“Shiism had started as a political movement among the Arabs to advance the claims of Ali and his descendants to the Caliphate. But after the martyrdom of Husain, it established itself as a new religious movement and soon became especially powerful in Iraq and Persia, embodying the social discontent of the indigenous population with the Arab aristocracy. In time, Shiism split Islam as decisively as the Reformation devided the Catholic Church. Whereas the orthodox Sunnis recognize Ali as the fourth of the Caliphs, or successors to Muhammad, the Shias regard the first three Caliphs as usurpers. They believe in an apostolic succession of Imams who followed the Prophet. Most of them believe in twelve of these, of whom Ali, Hasan and Husain were the first three, the others being Husain’s descendants. According to the Shias, the last Imam was Muhammad al Mahdi who mysteriously disappeared at Samarra and whose return they await in the fullness of time as the Mahdi or Expected One.” 

 

The first 9 days of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, are dedicated to intense mourning in any Shi’a community, be it in Iran, Iraq, in the Emirates of the Gulf or in the Eastern regions of Saudi Arabia. The Ashura Festival on the 10^th of Muharram commemorates the events of the Battle at Karbala and the Martyrdom of Husayn with vivid performances, processions, and a shocking brutality of self-flogging of young man and boys. If you won’t believe that there is a close, at least spiritual, relationship between Roman Katholic Church and Shi’a Islam, have a look at (very realistic if not real) crucifixion scenes on the Good Friday in the Philippines.

 

First published at Salmiya. 

 

 

In a Timely Manner

On November 13, the Institute of Science and International Security (ISIS) has published a report about ongoing construction activities at the heavy water reactor site near the city of Arak in western Iran. The report provides, for comparison, satellite pictures from October 2008 and February 2007. Clearly, some buildings around the reactor dome have been finished in the meantime.

 

Heavy water moderated nuclear plants can be fueled with non-enriched uranium, so there might be less risk for nuclear proliferation. On the other hand, plutonium and tritium are produced as by-products which might be used in nuclear weapons. According to ISIS President David Albright and Paul Brannan, the reactor, if eventually operating optimally, could produce nine kilograms plutonium per year, enough for about one or two nuclear weapons. Iran has always denied that it is building a separation and reprocessing facility from the reactor’s irradiated fuel. Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly reported that it would take until 2011 or even 2013 when the reactor in Arak will eventually be completed. Albright and Brannan now suggest that Iran might have decided to speed-up the construction works. An Iranian official has even admitted some time ago that the site might be ready for fuelling in 2009.

 

The ISIS report comes at a time of certain alert. Israel’s attack of a possible nuclear site at Al Kibar in the Syrian desert in September 2007 might in fact have been an exercise and prelude of an air strike at Arak. That Israel might consider such a strike during the transition period between the US American elections on November 4 and President Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20 next year has been a matter of speculation for some time. The satellite pictures of ISIS indeed resemble those published before and after the attack of Al Kibar (and bulldozing by Syrian cleanup efforts).

 

In June 1981, Israel destroyed, in an air strike, for the first time on foreign territory, a heavy water nuclear facility under construction, the Osiraq reactor near Baghdad, Iraq. Ironically, the heavy water Osiraq reactor was of the same type as Israel’s French-designed reactor at the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, which was constructed in 1958 and provided the country with sufficient plutonium for establishing its status as (unofficial) nuclear power.