Middle East

5 questions for Matteen Mokalla on Iran elections

/ Eamon / 4 Comments

matteenMy friend Matteen Mokalla is an Iranian-American SIPA (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs) grad who is writing a book drawing on his travels in Iran over the course of several months last year. I trust his opinion about Iranian matters greatly, and so decided to interview him via email today with some questions to deepen my understanding not just of the scale of the protests — we are all aware of that now — but their underlying issues and significance. Matteen has offered to answer any follow-up questions from readers, so please post them to the comments section.

1. How should Obama respond to the protests? How can he and other Western leaders avoid poisoning the opposition with the appearance of Western backing?

Although it is difficult for many in the West to see, the Iranian revolution that deposed the despotic Shah also brought a limited Democracy to Iran. The Republic’s democracy created a constitution, political parties, and most importantly solid oppositional leaders. This is why Iran has had the emergence of political elites as vastly different as Mousavi and Ahmadinejad. Had this form of home-brewed Democracy been imposed by the West it would never have had any sort of legitimacy and hence we would never see today people going to the streets demanding their rights. It will be sometime before similar movements emerge organically from other nations such as Syria and Egypt.

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“Talking with family and friends in Tehran”

/ Eamon / 26 Comments

My friend Gazelle, who has friends and family in Iran, shared the following note on Facebook and said I could repost it here. Much more detailed and straight-from-the-source explanation of what’s going on today. Plus pics at end of post Thank you Gazelle!

I was a bit tired of people on Twitter “tweeting” from the US instead of Iran and not knowing how much of what they were saying was true, so after about 45 min of trying to get through, I managed to speak to a few of my family members and friends. With hoarse voices from screaming and yelling, they were able to tell me a bit of what was actually going on yesterday…some of this might be repetitive to news reports, but this was just what my family told me.
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Misunderstanding reasons for Iranian unrest?

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It is hugely inspiring to see the hundreds of thousands of Iranians taking their destiny into their own hands and heading peacefully to the street to show that they will no longer accept the status quo. It’s not just Tehran. Check out clip of Isfahan protests if you haven’t seen them already:

Yet do we in the United States really understand what Iranians are agitating for? I haven’t seen a whole lot of reportage outlining the differences between Mousavi and Ahmadinejad’s platforms. I get concerned that Americans or others outside Iran will confuse what they want to change in Iran with what Mousavi’s supporters actually want changed. Right wing pressure on Obama to openly support the opposition (which would be staggeringly stupid politically, by the way, though the smart path is far from clear) hints to me that McCain and others are misunderstanding Mousavi’s platform.

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“Genocide-loving Arab hypocrites embrace mass murderer”

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Or so we would be led to believe by the New York Times article on Omar al-Bashir’s recent visit to Qatar!

The reason for Arab states’ rejection of the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir is very simple, and should be the nut graf here, not the comparison to Gaza. I’ll try to synthesize it. Here goes:

The reason that the ICC case against al-Bashir exists is that the Security Council referred it to the court. The United States is a member of the Security Council and the lead agitator for this case. However, the United States itself has rejected participation in the ICC. This means that Washington is using a tool whose legitimacy it has rejected, to bludgeon a state it considers an enemy in the Global War on Terror. Continue reading →

Pointless allegiance to Israel

/ Eamon / 1 Comment

Following a smear campaign by pro-Israel groups, Charles W. Freeman, a former U.S. diplomat, has been forced to withdraw from being nominated to be the head of the National Intelligence Council. Article here.

This is really disturbing, and seems to be yet another event proving Harvard professors’ Mearsheimer and Walt’s thesis of an ideologically driven Israel Lobby playing a disproportionate role in our foreign policy. Even when it would be better for America, better for the Middle East and even better for the Israeli people, our government stupidly aligns itself with a particular right-wing, Israel-is-the-key-to-all-Middle-East-progress ideology. It’s affecetd all levels of our discourse. This is why a number of Palestinians have told me it is actually much easier to criticize Israeli policy in Israel than it is in the United States.

The worst thing about this is that it shows Obama may not be deeply reevaluating our troubling, uncritical and constant support for all things Israeli — or at least all things that Israel’s American neocon, evangelical and right-wing Jewish lobbyists tell us are pro-Israeli.

As Freeman put it:

It is apparent that we Americans cannot any longer conduct a serious public discussion or exercise independent judgment about matters of great importance to our country as well as to our allies and friends.

Gaza Schools on the Brink

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Cross-posted from The Morningside Post.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a story for a class on the situation of schools in the Gaza strip. I was astounded to find how dire the situation is there for schoolkids.

“There is a great deal of difficulty concentrating because there’s a lot of trauma,” said Saahir Lone, a New York-based employee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which runs 221 schools for 200,000 children in Gaza. “It will be some time before some kind of routine can be established.”

Gaza’s educational system—already in a dire state before the recent hostilities—is all but crippled. Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza killed 400 children and injured many, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. With empty chairs haunting classrooms, schools damaged and an estimated 14 percent of all buildings in Gaza destroyed, the United Nations says that there is no easy way to establish a normal learning environment for students. Read more.

How badly has U.S. policy failed Somalia?

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“The only people who care at all about Somalis are the people who are working out of mosques. But I’m told that if they’re working out of mosques, they’re bad guys.”

That’s the conundrum that Columbia Professor Richard Bulliet says a CIA desk officer related to him at a conference in Washington a decade ago. Despite that clear revelation in the rank and file of the intelligence community, the United States has spent the 2000s doing everything possible to disable the Islamists in Somalia–even if it meant propping up brutal warlords with no real vision for a Somali state.

Bulliet recalled the incident last night during the event “The Obama Administration and the Middle East”, co-sponsored by the Arab Student Association, Columbia University Amnesty International and several other groups. Panelists–even as they expressed their happiness at Obama’s election–gave a sobering analysis of the limited prospects for fast, fundamental change in American policies in the Middle East. (Other panelists included Columbia profs Gil Anidjar and Peter Awn, CUNY professor Amir al-Islam and ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi.) Continue reading →

Sometimes Afghanistan is just like Gaza

/ Eamon / 1 Comment

‘In a statement, Colonel O’Hara said, “[F]orces exercised great restraint and prevented any civilian casualties at the same time the enemy placed the whole village in harm’s way by operating the way they do.”’

Besides the fact that O’Hara is an unlikely last name for an Israeli colonel, it’s hard to tell whether this statement applies to Gaza, Iraq or Afghanistan. In fact, it’s part of an American response to accusations that U.S. Special Ops killed 13 civilians in a raid on an Afghan village this month.

As the world (rightly) remains outraged at the destruction in Gaza, it’s good to remember that the U.S.A. continues a similar campaign in Afghanistan. The parallels should not be overstated–after all, Afghanistan is not our neighbor as Gaza is Israel’s. But these Afghan civilian deaths seem to take place further from the world’s attention than those in Gaza.

Let’s keep our eye on them, and keep pressuring Obama to make changes to his policy in addition to his rhetoric.