Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Bill Roggio on the Bomb Meant for Bhutto

"Sophisticated attack targeted Bhutto in Pakistan": http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2007/10/sophisticated_attack.php

Death Count Rises in Pakistan Bombing

"She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf," Haji Omar, a Taliban commander in the Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border, told Reuters by satellite telephone as Bhutto headed for Pakistan." [1]

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1. Tanvir, Aseem.  "Pakistan blast kills 89 as Bhutto returns."  Reuters, October 18, 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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The glorious return, smaller in turnout than expected but healthy enough, of Benazir Bhutto to Pakistan got its shot in the arm--or, rather, a whole new grounding in reality--with a blast that Reuters reporters have already translated into "33 shrouded corpses" (Liaquat National Hospital) and "at least 12 more at Jinnah Hospital." [1]

One may ask, "for what" and there is no answer.

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1. "Toll from Pakistan suicide attack climbs to over 45."  Reuters, October 19, 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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A Big Fat "Bravo-Zulu" for Thailand -- Freedom for the Press

Thailand's Parliament this week refused to extend the lèse majesté laws that restricted media coverage of issues involving the royal family and advisors.

What has taken them so long?

Thailand's lèse majesté laws abandoned: http://www.newswatch.in/news-analyses/global-monitor/9376.html

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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About Journalism -- A Short Reminder

Sorry, I've worked in PR, so, I guess, I'm tainted.

However, in the 101 scheme of things  . . .

1. Journalism exists to represent The Real in nature and in the states of affairs of humans;
2. Of benefit: cognizance and mastery of circumstance, individually and collectively, for anyone, everyone, anywhere in the world.

For too many movers and shakers -- businesses, clerics, criminals, mercenaries, and, of course, politicians -- the "Fourth Estate" looks as though it should be their agent (if it's not Murdoch's, lock, stock, and barrel).

Journalists, properly, ought to be the agents only of their own conscience and of God.

Journalists and Conflict -- The Newswatch URL

http://www.newswatch.in/news-analyses/media-and-conflict/

Islam's Good News (.org)

http://whyislam.org/877/Introduction/

I've been lazy, some, about listing the practically iconic reform personalities in Islam that I "discover" on the Internet, but here, presenting itself as the Islam all would rather know--peaceful, tolerant, temperate, and mannered--than the militant and "fiery" one that would behead teenagers in Somalia for watching the World Cup match on television, is, I think, a pretty good road map to the Islam with which the rest of the world may happily live (even co-opt and adopt, a form of flattery where there's freedom to choose one's way and one's masters).

Less Flip on Somali News

I wish not to commit Somalicide, which I think possible were I to delve into Somali affairs in-depth.

As hinted at in the dark humor of the previous post, what makes Somalia particularly dangerous to scribes is its cocktail of lawlessness and sophistication all around. 

• Criminals and aspiring or entrenched feudal interests for whom government is not a good thing certainly don't want to be found out, much less publicized;
• The Transitional Federal Government, made a punching bag by its visibility if not for other reasons, has little interest in divulging information as its security apparatus winds through the social vines that sustain its adversaries.

It has been also convenient to point the finger at the "Islamists", whether they are "there" or not (and I put it that way because of so much unclaimed and uninvestigated mayhem, or if investigated then unreported in depth on web sites like Shabelle's).

On its surface, the journalism on journalism in Somalia paints President Yusuf's government as the strong man's proto-democratic effort reverting to its roots as an autocrat's state.  One need not be so quick to buy that impression, however, because so little that is sensible emerges from the incidents on-site journalists cover.

On any given day, Shabelle.net's English page features a raft of mayhem leads.  Today (October 18, 2007):

• "A very big explosion went off somewhere H/wadag interjection in Mogadishu Somalia."
• "Three people including the police commissioner of Argentine a section of Karan district in Mogadishu were killed and two civilians were also wounded after armed men opened fire at were the commissioner was."
• "This blast occurred this morning at bar ismail road at Afgoi district in the lower Shabelle as convoy vehicles were going by there . . . Ethiopian troops arrived at the spot and began investigation pertaining to the motive of the explosion and no one was taken legally responsible on that matter."

Beneath the leads: no people, just shoot-'em-up cartoon figures or less--i.e., the explosion at H/wadag intersection: " . . . a hand grenade thrown at government police on the spot."  There's not a hint of a "who" (done it) in that.

Another facet of information development and delivery caught my attention a couple of weeks ago when government forces raided Shabelle's headquarters in Bakaaraha.  No question "the government done it"--troops, bullets, detentions, the works", but why?  A reader provided more sensible comment on the incident than the news, but I have left it without corroboration or refutation: truth to tell, I'm not sure I want to know "why" all that much.

This week saw another Transitional Federal Government (TFG) raid against another ostensibly honorable institution: the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).  Googling the story this morning, which is like getting the Internet to regurgitate information, and intuition brought in three stories, two of them fairly claiming the raid and subsequent detention of Idris Osman, the Somali program's chief, a mystery.  This excerpt comes from yesterday's Associated Press filing:

"Interior Minister Mohamed Mohamoud Guled denied that government forces carried out any operation at the U.N. compound. But he said the WFP had recently distributed food aid without consulting the government. In recent months, the government has blocked aid distributions to areas perceived to be adversarial." [2]

Without consulting the government?  Is that cause for raid and detention?  I should be outraged.  " . . . blocked aid distributions to areas perceived to be adversarial" could go both ways, I guess, but between the implications of giving "aid to the enemy" and the use of famine as a weapon, one wants so much to love the UN.

An Agence France Press (AFP) filing this morning also neatly eludes sensibility, knowingly so, I think:

The government has yet to comment on Osman's arrest. He is being held in a cell near the presidential palace.

"We hope that Idris will be released soon because he is innocent and did nothing wrong," the official added. [3]

Someone must have commented, however, because the post by the morning's UK's Guardian Unlimited delivered up the nut, and perhaps one should call it the knot: "But UN officials said it was linked to a new method of food distribution that began on Monday using 42 local mosques to get aid to more than 75,000 people in Mogadishu." [4]

Here, finally, is the secularizing, proto-democratic TFG given the predicament of approving the distribution of aid through clerics who seem not to have suffered at the hands of the Islamic Courts or deny that aid to some 75,000 Somalis.

Who is twisting whose arm?

Instead of discussion of food distribution security, however it's done (I'm just a guy on the outskirts of the Internet), before or after the fact, between Somalia's government and the U.N.'s relief mission, the U.N.'s scheme would seem to have threatened to present relief as coming through the mosques in opposition to the government.

As a story, that " . . . using 42 local mosques to get aid to more than 75,000 people . . . ." makes sense of the raid and arrest, and it doesn't entirely hold the U.N. safe and apart from criticism as regards its liaison with the Yusuf government.

Unfortunately, whether expressed through gallows humor or in the rails of general (never too specific) protest over the drubbings reserved for journalists, intimidation is a force or tool that works, and nowhere more so than in the development and distribution of information.

The demonstrative embrace of terror that would bomb a food line outside of a mosque needs condemnation too, but for whoever in the press is up to that on location, pray for their survival.

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1. "Information minister makes aggressive remarks about the press and its defenders."  Reporters Without Borders, October 11, 2007.

2. Hassan, Mohamed Olad.  "Somalia Detains U.N. Food Aid Official."  Associated Press, October 17, 2007.

3. "UN official still held by Somali security."  AFP, October 18, 2007.

4. Rice, Xan.  "UN chief held over use of mosques in famine relief."  Guardian Unlimited, October 18, 2007.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Journalism in Somalia - Very Simple

If you're up above your eyeballs in crime, the press is not your friend.

If you are investigating crime and raiding office buildings, marketplaces, and warehouses, you may not care to divulge your reasons for fear of tipping off your quarry: the press is not your friend.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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PKK -- Nothing to Lose -- Anything to Gain?

What force could withstand the pressure?  Affluence and empowerment on one side, accountable government on the other--it must be horrible.

;-)

Youthful and old idealists and intellectuals have a grievance, possibly, in the search for meaningful and reasonably funded life roles offering the possibility of greatness.  Whatever the substance of its expression, that's part of both the generational and revolutionary zeitgeist.

We want to make our marks.

Where the separatist rebels gathered in Iraqi Kurdistan once found themselves before the heel of Saddam Hussein and frightfully unwelcomed by other hosts, they may now entertain prospects more difficult than gunships, bombs, and bullets: there's much accommodation, peace, trade, and prosperity whizzing through the air.

Could things get better? Yes, much. 

Will getting there continue to lend itself to, one may say, encouragement through violence?

Daren Butler in his article for Reuters [1] this morning notes the risks to interests that Turkish Kurds may encounter in an open hot conflict.  I'll get fancy here and mix, match, and add a few of my own:

• General misery of impersonal bloodletting that accompanies wars of all kinds but in the Islamic Small Wars bears down with special ferocity on unaligned noncombatants--i.e., people who would have rather just minded their businesses and their families (and screw politics);
• Reduced agricultural industry, reduced levels of interested or volunteered professional services (a. who in the countryside can work in a war zone? b. who in professional life would want to put together a practice in a war zone?);
• Loss of over-the-border trade and employment for Turkish Kurds participating in the regionalized and captial infused economy.

Personally, quite naively, perhaps, I wonder if systems of dual citizenship should not be created for people whose loyalties to kin, kind, and land span international boundaries. 

Why not? 

The states have interest, of course, in populations and resources within their purview, but there's much to be said to for coherent cultures and unimpeded transit between relatives.

One may caution about Kurdish expansion into the host countries, but as ties between people evolve through business and commerce, liberal educations, and open international communications, virtually everyone participating (one may read "allowed to participate") also transforms.

Whatever the PKK's immediate political wants, the agenda would seem a hard sell where so many Kurds in the border area have benefited from "The Liberation" and have been able to live with peace,  close-by prosperity, and an overall improvement in government concern and capability on both sides of the border with Turkey.

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1.  Butler, Daren.  "Turkey's Kurds fear incursion to fuel conflict."  Reuters, October 17, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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