Memorial Day reading

On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times will publish its detailed studies of the nearly 500 Californians who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here is their preview:

Nearly 500 Californians have lost their lives while in service to their country in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 58 were immigrants; more than 160 were parents, who left behind more than 300 children. One descended from two presidents; another was a Guatemalan street orphan taken in by an American
family as a teenager. One high school lost six of its graduates.

As The Times reports:

At age 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled across the border from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad. "They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants," his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old was killed. "He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country."

The father of Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal who immigrated to the U.S. from Cambodia, where he spent four years in a Khmer Rouge labor camp recalled.

"This is our home," his father, Sim Long, said after his son was killed in March 2006 by a suicide car bomber in Fallouja, west of Baghdad. "I'm very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country."

Another father had a different perspective:

"I had my doubts about him and the Marines, knowing how my son rebelled against authority," said Ken Walker, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster, who was killed in April 2004 when his Humvee convoy was attacked in Iraq's Anbar province. "When he came back from boot camp, I was so proud. They took a punk kid and turned out a young man with a sense of honor."

Then there were those who joined because of what happened on Sept. 11:

"I'm ready to fight for my country," Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner, 20, of San Juan Capistrano told The Times before he deployed to Iraq. He was among seven Marines killed in September 2004 when a bomb-laden vehicle was detonated near their convoy outside Fallouja.

Many of those killed were married. As one wife recalled:

"He saw his baby do his first steps. He was a real good father and a real good husband," Rebekah Reyes said of her husband, Army Spc. Daniel F. Reyes, 24, of San Diego. "He was always thinking about us. He called me every morning from Iraq." Reyes was one of two soldiers killed in July 2007 when their unit was attacked with indirect fire -- a military term that usually refers to mortar or rocket fire -- in Tunis, Iraq, south of Baghdad.

Check out the full report this Sunday, Memorial Day.

Who knew: Deaths related to terrorism have declined since 2001

The Canadian Press reports:

A group of researchers from Simon Fraser University says global terrorism is on the decline, despite previous data and public perceptions that suggest otherwise.

The university's Human Security Report Project says fatalities from terrorist attacks around the world have, in fact, decreased by 40 per cent since 2001.

Researcher Andrew Mack says previous data showing increases in terrorism have included civilian deaths in Iraq.

But he says such deaths in civil wars have traditionally been treated as war crimes, not terrorism, and it makes sense to remove them from the data entirely.

Mack says even in Iraq recently there has been a sharp decline in attacks after several years of increased violence.

He says part of the reason is that global support for Islamic terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida has declined.

Al Qaeda: How much more depraved can it get?

Their latest exploit: Children

CBS News reports from Pakistan:

Amid cries of ‘Allah o Akbar’ (god is great), a young boy, barely 12 years old, lifts his machete and strikes at his victim who is lying on the ground, all tied up for the kill.

Waving a ‘V’ for victory sign with his right hand, the boy picks up the severed head and shows it around to the chants of applause from an audience gathered in a remote part of the region straddling the mountainous range which divides Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The performance in this chilling episode which may simply shock most people around the world, is the case of militant justice meted out to supposed traitors. It involves Al Qaeda and the Taliban slapping exemplary punishment to an individual suspected to be a spy for the government.

To me this suggests adults are not signing on to the cause. As the report continues:

This video has been captured by Pakistan’s military troops during their operations in the country’s semi autonomous tribal areas, as they went from village to village, searching for militant sanctuaries.

In the village of Spinkai-Roghzai where a group of journalists including CBS News were taken by Pakistan’s military on Sunday in the Waziristan tribal region, officials showed debris of what is described as a suicide training ‘nursery’....

“There is no harm in taking ‘jehad’ (holy war) for the right cause” read the sign board in a training class, documented in yet another Pakistani intelligence video, secretly captured ahead of the operation, through the use of hidden cameras inserted around the front compound of the school. A teacher, who wrapped himself up to his face with a piece of cloth, pointed towards a list of “recommendations for students” while surrounded by teenagers, urging them to embrace virtues such as “accept the way forward through sacrifice” and “accept that laying down your life for the right cause is not a waste”.

More evidence Al Qaeda is being defeated in Iraq

Nibras Kazimi, a former Iraqi dissident and now Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington and widely-read blogger at Talisman Gate on Iraq, reports on a recent posting on an Al Qaeda website:

A prolific jihadist sympathizer has posted an ‘explosive’ study on one of the main jihadist websites in which he laments the dire situation that the mujaheddin find themselves in Iraq by citing the steep drop in the number of insurgent operations conducted by the various jihadist groups, most notably Al-Qaeda’s 94 percent decline in operational ability over the last 12 months when only a year and half ago Al-Qaeda accounted for 60 percent of all jihadist activity!

As Kazimi points out, this study can be found on one of Al Qaeda's chief media outlets: the Al-Ekhlaas website.

In his study the author provides figures and graphs and states that the number of operations that Al Qaeda in Iraq has dramatically declined. As Kazimi writes:

Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq could claim 334 operations in Nov. 06 and 292 in May 07, their violent output dropped to 25 in Nov. 07 and 16 so far in May 08. Keep in mind that these assessments are based on Al-Qaeda's own numbers.

Below are the charts the Al-Ekhlaas writer posted. The figures he describes above are represented in the bars on the left; the smaller bars represent operations figures for other radical groups also operating in Iraq:

The trouble with Pashtun culture

In the Gurbuz districto of Khost province, a Pashtun village elder tells Ann Marlowe, a NY-based reporter:

We do not let our girls go to school. If a male teacher saw them, it would not be good for them.

Daoud Sultanzoy, member of the Afghan parliament, upon hearing a traditional Pashtun song:

Another song about how we Pashtuns are brave swordsmen! What about brave scientists? Brave doctors? Brave government officials? That is what this country needs. We can take a few years off from being brave swordsmen.

Still, the situation is not hopeless as Ann Marlowe reports in the May 19 issue of the Weekly Standard.

In the eastern provinces that borders Pakistan, for example, 72 out of 86 districts are now under the control of the central government. The American commanding credited with this success, Colonel Marty Schweitzer of the 82nd Airborne Division says that this came at a cost of only 11 civilian casualties.

As said: "If you [can bring these people] the benefits of government, they will take it every time."

Al Qaeda: Control freaks even in Cyber Space

My colleague and the founder of Kabul Center for Strategic Studies, Wailiullah Rahmani, sent me a link to a fascinating study by RFE/RL senior analyst Daniel Kimmage, on Al-Qaeda's media entities and the insurgents who operate in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is a follow-up to a similar study that Kimmage and another RFE/RL analyst, Kathleen Ridolfo, did in 2007, that focused on the media component of the Iraqi insurgency.

You can download the full report here (PDF format).

But meanwhile, here's a preview:

"This is a study," Kimmage was reported as saying that "looks at the global message that Al-Qaeda ...[and] its affiliates put out....how...they get that [message] out to the world." As he notes, "the Internet is really the primary delivery mechanism for Al-Qaeda...The message comes out in statements on a daily basis. It comes out in periodicals -- magazines published on the web. It comes out in books and it comes out in video," went on to say. His study focused on what was available on the Internet in June 2007.

As he went on:

"The typical forum always has certain divisions. It has a section on events. It has a section on news from the jihad, audio-visual, poetry, general discussion," he says. "What we see here is that everything is branded. In other words, if you look at the right side of the forum, there is a little logo next to every single press release. It is the logo of the group that is releasing it. And there is another branding mechanism -- down at the bottom, there is a section that identifies who released and produced this particular video clip. What we learn from this is that there is an organization that this particular video is affiliated with, there is a production company, and then there is a distributor..."

"So all of the audio and video and books and press releases -- it's all produced and distributed by someone. And when you map it all out, these are the connections," he continues. "From there, it goes out to the Internet. So not all of these groups directly post statements. So in other words, an armed group will film an attack and then it will be posted by a different organization."

As to what all this means with respect to Al Qaeda's sophistication, Kimmage had this to say:

"Al-Qaeda, which was very, very advanced and very, very impressive in its use of new technology, is, I think, a bit behind the curve," Kimmage says. "They are sort of stuck in Web 1.0. They are producing what they think is the coolest content, the best videos, the most impressive press releases. And they are creating the most sophisticated -- the best network -- to distribute it to the web. What's missing is interactivity in user-generated content -- a world in which users generate a lot of the content and in which people what to interact with others. Al-Qaeda really seems stuck in the old model.

"In 2006, Al-Qaeda released a big position paper and they warned their supporters against creating their own content. They said this was 'media exuberance' and that their supporters should let the official distribution and production groups handle this," Kimmage continues. "Even when Al-Qaeda has tried to be interactive, it is quite old-fashioned. So the question that we end up with is: Al-Qaeda -- which had done so well using the Internet to spread its message over the last few years -- are they now doomed to fade with this new more interactive and user-generated network? And will they be replaced by a much larger, much more integrated, much freer, much more empowered world in which it is very difficult to control messages and in which no one has a monopoly on information?"

Kimmage concludes that the desire of Al-Qaeda's media-production teams to strictly control the messages being put out on the Internet could ultimately backfire, causing Al-Qaeda to lose support from its sympathizers.

"Freer and more empowered networks, in the end, will do more to undermine Al-Qaeda's message than the actions of any government," he says. "In the end, an idea that takes root in the political sphere -- an idea that encourages people and inspires them to commit violence -- it only fades and dies when the idea itself is discredited. The discrediting of this idea, of this ideology, will happen online through a large conversation that takes places mainly without governments."

An American's first hand account of the Chinese earthquake

From an email one of my husband's colleagues sent home.

This experience was frustrating for me. I’m a trained volunteer disaster communicator back home and as such I would know what’s going on and can request resources. We plan, practice and drill. Unfortunately, China does not permit foreign ham operators and I wouldn’t have the language skills anyway. So I became another victim running away from the disaster area instead of toward it to render help. It’s not in my nature.

Iranian Desert

IN DESERT, originally uploaded by HORIZON.

The amazing Horizon at Flickr.

If confirmed, this is great news

From the BBC:

The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, has been arrested, according to media reports quoting the country's defence ministry.

Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was detained in the northern city of Mosul, reports said.

The US military in Iraq said it was currently looking into the reports.

The Egyptian-born militant took over the leadership of the group from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shortly after he was killed in a US air strike in June 2006.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been blamed for or has claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest insurgent attacks in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.

And unfortunately, this may not be correct:

A US military spokesman in Baghdad said he could not confirm that Masri had been arrested, but did not believe the reports to be true.

But let's hope it is as the BBC points out this is what this guy was all about:

Masri is believed to have helped Zarqawi form the first al-Qaeda cell in Baghdad.

After becoming leader, he vowed to "continue what Sheikh Abu Musab began" and avenge his death with attacks that would "turn your children's hair white".

Riyadh opens up to.....Mozart

It might not seem like such a milestone if you don't know that these sorts of events have been largely prohibited in the kingdom. But as today's NY Times reports:

In a groundbreaking concert in Saudi Arabia, a German-based quartet played European classical music in a public setting for a mixed-gender audience, right, The Associated Press reported. Public concerts are virtually unheard of in this strict Muslim kingdom, and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast-food outlets. The concert — with the Artis Piano Quartet performing works by Mozart, Brahms and Paul Juon — took place in a 500-seat government-run cultural center in Riyadh on Friday night and touched off speculation that Saudi Arabia was seeking greater openness.

So what did the quartet's pianist, Hiroko Atsumi, wear the astute observer of fashion in this part of the world might wonder? Not an abaya, it turns out, but rather "a long green top and black trousers."

The Prince of Darkness: Let Iraqis decide their fate

The "imperial", the "dark", the "cunning neo-con Iraq war monger" Richard Perle himself may surprise some of you by what he writes in today's New York Times:

THE most important thing we can do to help the Iraqis and ourselves is to recognize — and reverse — the seminal mistake that followed the quick destruction of Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime: the foolish (however well-meaning) and arrogant belief that we know better than the Iraqis how to rebuild their devastated society...

Stop! Iraqis know far better than we what makes sense for them. When administration officials and members of Congress, with their diplomatic, intelligence and political advisers — whose knowledge of Iraq is often recent, shallow and wrong — hector and lecture the Iraqis who are struggling to find a way forward, I wonder whether we have learned anything from our past mistakes.

The Dalai Lama: Defender of Islam

Pico Iyer writes in today's Financial Times on what the Dalai Lama has told him over the decades he has known him and covered him as a jounalist:

...it is astonishing how little most of us know about a man who has become one of the most easily recognised figures on the planet... the words of the Buddha, he says, should be thrown out if they are shown by new research to be faulty or incomplete. Nor do many people realise that the head of Tibetan Buddhism has delivered an extended series of lectures on the Gospels; or that he calls himself a defender of Islam and sometimes a ”half-Marxist”, admiring Marxism’s ideas of equality, if not the kind of dogmatism that has so ruthlessly assaulted his own country.

...the Dalai Lama [is a] a realist and a pragmatist, determined to incorporate into his culture all the modern and technological wisdom it [lacks], while also sustaining the core of Tibetan traditions. The costumes and rituals of Tibetan culture are often no longer relevant, he [says]; but ideas of compassion and of universal responsibility are as appropriate outside Tibet as they ever were within it. “Exile”, the word that for most of us means disruption and severance from the past, he [reads] as ”opportunity”, a chance to liberate his people for the future.

...He is that rare Buddhist who offers foreigners practical guidance while also telling them to study within their own traditions, where there’s less chance of misconception (seizing upon Buddhism before they have fully understood it, or gauged certain important cultural differences).

Regarding the struggle for Tibet:

...Oppressed minorities across the People’s Republic have decided to take advantage of the world’s focus on China in the months leading up to the August Olympics in Beijing and are broadcasting their suffering to the world. The Dalai Lama, in response, tells his people to speak out, but not to lash out; to ask for basic freedoms such as freedom of thought and speech but not to demonise the Chinese; and to forswear violence. It will only, he says, bring more violence down on a people who have suffered too much already.

And yet, more Tibetans in exile are saying more frequently that they cannot wait any longer...[but] the one exiled Tibetan who really understands China’s leadership is, in fact, the Dalai Lama, who has been dealing with it for 59 years, who has spent time in Beijing and who even has an elder brother who speaks fluent Chinese, lives in Hong Kong and was married to a Chinese woman.

... in the long term, he argues, dialogue and forgiveness are the only way: any resolution that solves the Tibetan question without taking in Chinese individuals is no solution at all. Tibet, he reiterated last November, has much to gain economically from remaining part of the People’s Republic – and the world has everything to gain from keeping up contact with its largest nation.

...He asks people not to free Tibet, but simply to “save it”.

And here is my favorite quote:

He has always placed his faith in individuals, Chinese and otherwise. He does not expect the Chinese leadership to come to its senses overnight, but has said for years that regular Chinese people, officially denied religion for more than half a century, may, one by one, notice how much they have in common with Tibet, and how they still have a rich spiritual tradition within their borders – in Tibet.

High oil prices: Good news for camels

Today's Financial Times reports:

“It’s excellent for the camel population if the price of oil continues to go up because demand for camels will also go up,” says Ilse Köhler-Rollefson of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development. “Two years ago, a camel cost little more than a goat, which is nothing. The price has since trebled.”

The shift comes not a moment too soon for a national camel population that has fallen more than 50 per cent over the past decade, to about 450,000, according to government figures.

Market prices for these “ships of the desert”, which crashed with the growing affordability of motorised transport, are rising again as oil prices soar...

“It’s very good news,” says Mr Singh, whose organisation aims to dispel the image of backwardness associated with camel ownership and tries to promote higher economic returns for breeders. “We had started to see camels, even female ones, being slaughtered for their meat. Now they are replacing the tractor again.”

Off topic but I can't resist spreading good news

The New York Times reports:

...the [U.S.] economy shed 20,000 jobs, the fourth consecutive month of decline. The drop in payrolls was less severe than expected...Economists had been bracing for a decline of up to 85,000 jobs, in line with the rate of losses over the first three months of the year. Instead, service industries like restaurants and medical care recorded a surge of new hires, according to the Labor Department.

The unemployment rate dropped as well, to 5 percent from 5.1 percent in March, as a separate survey of households, which is considered more volatile, showed that employment actually rose last month.

The cognitive age versus globalization

A new way of looking at the world, from David Brooks in today's New York Times:

The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.