A mother’s tale of crime and punishment in northern Mali

Aman Sethi writes: There are some decisions that a mother hopes she will never have to make: for instance, would she accept blood money from the man who killed her son?

Hadi Maiga was certain that money would never be able to assuage her grief; and so there she was — a slight woman in a flowing headscarf — in the middle of a vast sun-drenched square on an October evening in Timbuktu watching as the Islamic police led out Moussa Mohammed, the man accused of shooting her son Ibrahim.

Once unshackled, the accused fell to his knees and prayed for what seemed like a long, long time. An Islamic walked up to Ms. Maiga and offered her a gun. She refused to touch it. The gun was handed to her younger son Abdullah who declined as well.

The prisoner stood up from his prayers; an order was given, and a guard from the Islamic police shot him in the back. The prisoner collapsed but staggered back up to his feet so the police shot him again. And to the sand he fell, and there he lay till that night when they brought him to the local hospital.

“Praise the Lord,” said the commander of the Islamic police as the body was wheeled into the morgue. Outside, the rain suddenly pelted down on this town — renowned for its earthen mosques, mausoleums, 333 saints and the solitary djinn.

Before French and Malian forces reclaimed swathes of northern Mali from a ten-month Islamist occupation in January this year, the militants had gained universal notoriety for their radical interpretation and harsh implementation of sharia law.

There is no one universally accepted set of sharia as jurisprudence is drawn from the Koran, the word of God; the Hadith, which describes the way of the Prophet; and fiqh, the human interpretation of divine texts. In the post-colonial period, Muslim communities have tended to adopt aspects of sharia into personal and civil law, rather than criminal law.

In Timbuktu, the militants interpreted the sharia as divine sanction to destroy the medieval mausoleums of venerated Muslim saints, burn rare treatises on religion and science, and impose a regime of flogging, amputations and public executions.

Documents recovered from abandoned Islamist buildings, hospital records, and interviews suggest the 10-month occupation was not a descent into anarchy but a lucidly planned, and often terrifying, attempt at realising a vision of a more just, pure, and orderly society. [Continue reading…]

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The law of war does not shield the CIA and John Brennan’s drone kill list

Morris Davis, a retired U.S. military officer and former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo Bay, writes: The disclosure Tuesday evening of the Department of Justice white paper on targeted killing (pdf) has sparked a lot of debate, much of it focused on the Obama administration’s extraordinarily broad interpretation of what constitutes an “imminent” threat that justifies lethal force as an act of self-defense. As Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) told reporters during a conference call on Wednesday, “only a team of lawyers could define ‘imminent’ to mean the exact opposite” of what the word means in the real world.

There are, no doubt, many Americans alive today who should be thankful their healthcare providers did not apply the administration’s interpretation of “imminent” to decide if they had crossed over the line of imminent death and said pull the plug.

Some people have acquired power and profits in post-9/11 America by pandering to and perpetuating fear. As has been the case on a range of legal issues – torture, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, kill lists – all it takes is for someone to say “terrorism” and “threat to security” in the same breath for the vast majority of the public to handover its principles. Rather than a serious discussion on the proper law/liberty/security balance, too often the public accepts the false syllogism that whatever it takes to stop “them” from hurting “us” is obviously, as White House spokesman Jay Carney might say, “legal, ethical and wise“.

Targeted killing falls into that category. The discussion tends to glom what should be several discrete inquiries – where will the lethal operation take place; who is the imminent threat and why; who will conduct the operation; and what laws apply, among others – into one big ball that slides through with little scrutiny.

The DOJ white paper discusses the right to take military action against a US citizen who is part of the enemy forces, law of war principles that govern application of military power, judicial deference to military judgments in the conduct of warfare, and combatant immunity that gives legal sanction to a deliberate killing by a member of the armed forces acting in compliance with the law of war. In and of themselves, those are all very valid points.

What the white paper ignores, however, is that the US has both a military and a CIA drone program, each one subject to its own rules. The CIA is a civilian agency with civilian employees and civilian contractors. It is not part of the US armed forces and its drone program is not immune from liability by the law of war principles that might apply to the military drone program. [Continue reading…]

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Why Israelis are frightened of the Israel lobby

Chemi Shalev writes: Far more Americans know of the Palestinian BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement today than did a week ago. Many millions of people have been exposed for the first time to the idea that Israel should be boycotted, divested and sanctioned for its occupation of the territories. Many more Americans, one can safely assume, have formed a positive image of the BDS movement than those who have now turned against it.

Tafasta merube lo tafasta, the Talmud teaches us: grasp all, lose all. The heavy-handed, hyperbole heavy, all-guns-blazing campaign against what would have been, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, “a few kids meeting on campus” mushroomed and then boomeranged, giving the hitherto obscure BDS activists priceless public relations that money could never buy.

Rather than focusing attention on what BDS critics describe as the movement’s deceitful veneer over its opposition to the very existence of Israel, the disproportionate onslaught succeeded in casting the BDS speakers who came to the Brooklyn campus as freedom-loving victims being hounded and oppressed by the forces of darkness.

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz’s article about the “hate orgy’ that is being co-sponsored by the College’s Political Science Department may have been tactically ill advised, but Dershowitz is a private citizen and is entitled to free speech, no less than the Israel-baiting speakers invited by the students. The same is true of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman, who took out a large ad in Friday’s New York Times in which he reprimanded Bloomberg for “confusing the issues”, and tried to equate support for the Palestinian “right of return” with anti-Semitism, a point which may have been lost on anyone but the most informed and involved of his readers.

But the true tipping point came when attention-seeking politicians got into the act. When a New York City council member engaged in nuclear overkill by claiming that a meeting of several dozen students in Brooklyn is tantamount to “a second holocaust”. And especially when eager beaver municipal pols – emulating, unfortunately, far too many of their counterparts in Israel – thought it proper to threaten cutting off city funding to a well respected academic institution because of one single student meeting that they found objectionable.

The result of all of this surfeit and excess was a clear-cut, perhaps unprecedented PR coup for BDS and a humiliating defeat for Israel’s interests. When the New York Times and Mayor Bloomberg found it necessary to step in and publicly stand up for a decidedly anti-Israeli movement – whatever one thinks of their true intentions- that only a few had ever heard of before. When the “pro-Israel camp” found itself, not for the first time, portrayed not only as heavy handed but a bit unhinged as well. Continue reading →

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Syria’s secular revolution lives on

Omar Hossino writes: In the town of Azaz, in northern Syria, a trail of destroyed houses, mass graves, tank tracks, and shell casings provides a glimpse of the daily reality for millions of Syrians. At the nearby Bab al-Salameh border crossing with Turkey, children tell of fleeing their homes after being shelled by regime forces and attacked by pro-government militias.

“Why did Bashar have to send his community against us to kill our innocent people?” one man asks, framing the conflict as a war between the Alawite sect, a community to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs, and Syria’s Sunni majority. Another man praises “the true righteous Muslims” of Jabhat al-Nusra, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group known for its vitriol toward Alawites and support for fundamentalist Islamic rule.

Such scenes, which I saw on my recent trip to war-torn northern Syria, point to the worrying growth of jihadi and Salafi groups — but these forces are not the only players emerging in the new Syria. The secular and nationalist spirit that initially sparked the Syrian revolution is also still alive and well. Many grassroots activists and religious leaders are working to forge a country that is built on secular principles, against sectarian revenge, and supportive of equal rights for all its citizens. Even some of the sharia courts that have sprung up to administer justice in areas the Syrian government has abandoned contain surprising, nonsectarian trends.

Whether such a movement can survive as the uprising drags on is not yet clear. For the time being, however, these figures embody the sliver of hope that Syria may avoid an all-out sectarian war.

Among the best-known nonviolent protest movements on the ground is Tajammu’ Nabd, or the Pulse Gathering for Civil Youth, which defines its purpose as to “fight the regime and fight sectarianism.” It is led by Yamen Hussein, an Alawite originally from Homs, who joined the revolution in its earliest days. The relatively small, youth-led movement has served as a vehicle to empower minorities — especially Alawites, the bulk of whom have been hostile to the revolution.

With bases in secular strongholds like Yabrud, Salamiyah, Zabadani, and Homs, Nabd activists have taken on small but unique projects. On Christmas, its activists dressed up as Santa Clauses and gave gifts to the Christians of Homs. In protests throughout the country, Nabd sends minority and secular activists to hold up signs that read: “In Syria there are two sects: the sect of freedom and the sect of the oppressors,” and “Before you call for sectarian revenge, remember that you trembled when you witnessed the massacre.”

“A small proportion of the signs and chants in protests in parts of Syria are growing more radical and sectarian, so we want to be the counterforce and present our movement on the ground,” Hussein told me. “But the hardest work will come after we overthrow the regime, where we will try to keep our country from being torn apart.” [Continue reading…]

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Egypt court suspends YouTube over anti-Islam film

Reuters reports: An Egyptian court ordered the suspension of online video service YouTube for a month on Saturday for broadcasting a film insulting the Prophet Mohammad, state media reported.

The country’s administrative court ordered the ministries of communication and investment to block YouTube, owned by Google, inside Egypt because it had carried the film “Innocence of Muslims”, said state news agency MENA.

The 13-minute video, billed as a film trailer and made in the United States, provoked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries in September.

The video depicts the Prophet as a fool and a sexual deviant. For most Muslims, any portrayal of the Prophet is considered blasphemous.

The court said it was ruling on a case brought about the film several months ago, without going into further detail.

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Mali troops attack rival red beret camp in Bamako

The Guardian reports: Fierce fighting between rival army factions broke out in Mali’s capital Bamako on Friday, in an ominous sign of the military’s weakness and amid further attacks from Islamist rebels.

At least one person was killed and five injured when forces loyal to Mali’s unelected government stormed the camp of the “red beret” presidential guard. Residents fled in panic as heavy gunfire echoed from the Djikoroni-Para paratrooper base on the Niger river.

Witnesses reported smoke rising from the base. The “red berets” are loyal to Mali’s former democratic president Amadou Toumani Touré, who was deposed in a coup last March. The elite paratroopers refused to be redeployed to the north of the country, where French and Malian soldiers have been battling Islamist rebels.

Troops loyal to Mali’s new government – led by interim prime minister Dioncounda Traoré – encircled the base with armoured vehicles early on Friday, witnesses said. The soldiers opened fire on women and children who had gathered near the camp gates, killing one and injuring two children, it was reported.

“Since 6am the soldiers arrived in armored cars and pickup trucks, all of them armed to the teeth to attack our base. The women and children tried to stop them from entering the camp. They shot tear gas at us and started shooting volleys in the air,” Batoma Dicko, a woman who lives in the military camp, told Reuters. The camp includes housing for military families. Doctors said that the dead man, in his 20s, was shot in the face.

The incident bodes badly for Mali’s future after French forces pull out. France and Malian troops have succeeded in swiftly recapturing the northern towns of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, seized last year by al-Qaida allied jihadist fighters. France’s defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, indicated earlier this week that he wants to reduce France’s military presence in Mali, and hand over “in a few weeks” to an African contingent.

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Mali soldiers arrest 2 men with explosives day after suicide bomb attack at checkpoint

The Associated Press reports: Two men with explosives were arrested trying to enter the city of Gao on Saturday, the Malian military said, a day after a suicide bomber blew himself up in an attack that has fueled fears of a militant insurgency in northern Mali.

The two suspected jihadists were in Malian military custody after being arrested at 7 a.m. on a road that leads into northern Mali’s largest city, said military spokesman Modibo Traore.

“The men were stopped at a checkpoint on the road from Bourem,” Traore said of a village that is northwest of Gao.

While Friday’s attack killed only the bomber, it has raised concerns about the future strategy of the militants, who initially appeared to put up little resistance to the French and Malian military advance.

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Obama: the president of perpetual war

Micah Zenko writes: During his second inaugural address, President Obama offered two aspirational statements that struck many observers as incongruous with administration policies: “A decade of war is now ending” and “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.” We should question these observations, not least because of the string of U.S. government plans and activities that increasingly blur the conventional definition of war.

My own list of war-like activities since Obama’s inaugural would include: four drone strikes that killed 16 people (all in Yemen); the acknowledgement by Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta regarding drones, "We’ve done that in Pakistan. We’re doing it in Yemen and elsewhere. I think the reality is its going to be a continuing tool of national defense in the future"; the announcement that the U.S. military would provide intelligence, transportation, and refueling support for the French intervention in Mali; the signing of a U.S.-Niger status of forces agreement that will likely include a drone base for surveillance missions, although U.S. officials "have not ruled out conducting
missile strikes at some point"; the forthcoming expansion (perhaps quintupling) of U.S. Cyber Command, including "combat mission forces" for offensive cyberattacks; the executive branch’s secret legal review determining that Obama "has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad"; the Marine commandant’s announcement of a new "crisis response unit" that would be "rapidly employable" to "address crises"; and the revelation that the United States is negotiating to purchase the Sheraton Hotel in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, to house the growing number of embassy staff, troops, and contractors who implement U.S. security force assistance and counterterrorism operations in that country. (For other examples, see the interesting End of War Timeline that Jack Goldsmith and Lawfare created.)

Using lethal force against other countries — and developing and sustaining the capabilities to do so in perpetuity — are the distinguishing features of a country at war. As Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. James Winnefeld, Jr. remarked in November, "We remain a nation at war." In January, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Ted Koppel that even after 2014, "Our war in Afghanistan will be complete, but no one has ever suggested that that will end the war." Last week, Secretary Panetta reminded policymakers and the press, as he often does: "We are in a war. We’re in a war on terrorism and we’ve been in that war since 9/11." Finally, during his grueling confirmation hearing to become the next secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel stated: "We’re at war in Afghanistan. We’re at war around the world….The fact is we’ve been at war for 12 years."

Most analysts and journalists have focused on President Obama’s expanded scope, intensity, and institutionalization of targeted killings against suspected terrorists and militants. However, perhaps the enduring legacy of the Obama administration will be its sustained, rigorous effort to shape and define-down the idea of war. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. media and public complicit in Obama’s drone doctrine

Neil Macdonald, senior Washington correspondent for CBC News, writes: In 2001, when Israel started killing militant Palestinian enemies (and, often, innocent bystanders) with missiles fired from helicopters hovering so high you could barely see them, foreign reporters were urged by the Israeli government to call the practice “targeted killing.”

Most of us, including many of my American colleagues, preferred the term “extrajudicial assassination.” We felt we were in the news business, not the euphemism business.

Today, 12 years later, the Washington Post carries a front-page headline about the U.S. drone program titled, “Targeted killings face new scrutiny.”

Yet another government document has been leaked, this time a so-called “white paper” in which the U.S. Department of Justice lays out the administration’s justification for killing American citizens it suspects of belonging to Al-Qaeda.

U.S. media outlets, it seems, are perfectly comfortable with the term “targeted killing,” now that it is a major tool for the Pentagon and CIA.

It’s also clear American media outlets are comfortable suppressing news the government does not want published. [Continue reading…]

A PublicMind poll published yesterday declares: “By a two-to-one margin (48%-24%) American voters say they think it is illegal for the U.S. government to target its own citizens living abroad with drone attacks”.

“The public clearly makes an assumption very different from that of the Obama administration or Mr. Brennan: the public thinks targeting American citizens abroad is out of bounds,” said Peter Woolley, professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University and analyst for PublicMind.

The question is, among those who think that targeting Americans is out of bounds, how many are actually aware that Americans have indeed been targeted?

Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that they’ve heard a lot about drones (45% compared to 29%) and overall, by a three-to-one margin, those polled support the CIA’s use of drone attacks abroad.

The way I would interpret these numbers is that they indicate that most Americans are unaware that drones have been used to kill Americans, most assume that these attacks help keep America safe and that on the basis of these two assumptions see no reason to investigate the issue more deeply.

The complicity is not simply between the media and the government; it also involves the broad-based indifference that Americans have for what happens outside this country. This is what makes drone warfare such a politically low-cost option for the Obama administration.

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Obama’s drone leaks: new imminence, old tactics

Noura Erakat writes: The Senate Armed Services Committee did not mention drones a single time during Senator Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings last week. That oversight, however, says a lot more about the politics surrounding the hearings than it does about the enduring salience of drone technology to U.S. national security policy. The Department of Justice’s “white paper” obtained by NBC on Monday affirms that.

The paper, drafted for some members of Congress and a less detailed analysis than the official, still unreleased, legal memo, provides the most robust legal analysis of the Obama administration’s targeted killing policy to date. Although it makes no mention of any particular target, the white paper is clearly responsive toAnwar Al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Muslim cleric killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The 16-paged document explores the lawfulness of killing of a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al-Qaeda or an Associated force on foreign soil in an area outside of active hostilities, who poses an imminent threat, and whose capture is not feasible.

The memo is woefully insufficient as a legal analysis. Even its title, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or an Associated Force,” makes assumptions that merit thorough examination. Who, for example, qualifies as a Senior Operational Leader? Al-Awlaki never commanded any attacks but was a propagandist who arguably inspired them. Is an associated force a group that shares Al Qaeda’s ideology or must it be a part of a central command structure? Al-Awlaki’s Yemen-based non-state group, Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was developed independently in the south of Yemen and has national goals distinct from the aims of the transnational Al Qaeda network. [Continue reading…]

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