Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Middle East Murk

J Street policies are even more extreme than the most radical Israeli leftwing groups. The fighting with Hamas in Gaza, which was endorsed by all Jewish political parties in the Knesset, was criticised by J Street as "counterproductive" and "disproportionate". This, of itself, is no issue. What is unacceptable is the moral equivalency made by J Street between the policies of Israel and Hamas and its difficulty in distinguishing "between who is right and who is wrong".

It was recently disclosed that Arab and pro-Iranian elements were providing approximately 10% of J Street funding, a somewhat bizarre situation for a genuinely "pro-Israel" organisation. One donor and member of the organisation's finance committee, Genevieve Lynch, participated in the National Iranian American Council, the unofficial lobby group for the Iranian government. Judith Barnett, a former registered agent for Saudi Arabia, is a donor and serves on the J Street advisory council. Nancy Dutton, until 2008 an attorney for the Saudi Arabian embassy, donates to J Street's political action committees, which actively finance anti-Israeli congressional candidates. [1]

Aye, it's a weird world alright.

I'm a co-administrator for the Israel-Palestine Peace Group (IPPG) of the Georgetown University-based International Peace and Collaborative Development Network, a "Ning" software driven chat and friendship fest that has its own peculiar and surreal character with flocks of doves flying over some of the most egregious anti-Semitic spew (and stew) in English on the planet.

http://internationalpeaceandconflict.ning.com/

It's all quite polite, except that, um, the so-called "right of return" (of those who were sided with Hitler) should be fully accepted and the Jews, err, Israel, should, by one writer's estimate, be charged with reconstructing Gaza because, you know, they (mysteriously, for no good reason--anyone know why?) bombed the hell out of it last winter.

My latest appearance: http://www.mepeace.org where all dance together, sort of, which I think sweet, but the group's founder, Eyal Raviv, recently attended J Street's conference in Washington, D.C., October 24-28, 2009 with an it's-all-good attitude, and one may hope it is, even while harboring doubts.

I'm not so sure that peace (any price?) is all so good for either Israelis or their so far discombobulated neighboring pseudo governments, one of them a designated terrorist organization whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and whose backers would just as soon pick up where the SS had to leave off, the other itself a largely opaque and multi-sided kleptopawn, admittedly appearing to try to shed its skin and molt into something more accountable, respectable, and responsible to its own.  Isi Leibler's recent piece appearing in the Guardian UK supports that not-so-great feeling.

Still, in cybersapce, wherever political adversaries may gather, there one's own small voice may go and chime with or against the smaller wind(bags) of war.

I'm quite the windbag myself--I admit it.

Those who most want peace have the challenge of turning a broad, continuous, and hot light on the multivariate drivers of conflicts--arms deals, banking and charity arrangements, political leadership, ideological and religious excuses of every sort, language habits and habits of culture, etc.--and laying them out for clear, dead honest, and progressive analysis.

Cant and rhetoric, unfortunately, prove generally more easily indulged than care in study.

The result: looks good on the web!

In realspace, the politics may remain confused and "peace organizations" a fair mix of intermixed,  cross-wired, and bi-directional infiltration.

Perhaps that's the idea.

How is that working out?

Of the 58 members in the group I monitor (IPPG), fewer than half-a-dozen of us seem to be typing for the forums, and what to make of those, click on the first URL offered, find the group, and define it your way.

In either direction, however directions may be defined, don't the let the numbers fool you: one old man in a library and a comparative handful of disenchanted fans can and do change worlds, not necessarily for the better, but the judgment of that lays always in the future and future hindsight.

In any case, for this space, however peacenicky I may feel this afternoon, I don't think I am "J Street" by sensibility or temperament--not close.

Reference

1. Leibler, Isi.  "J Street's 'Pro Israel' Stance is Phoney."  Guardian.co.uk, October 26, 2009: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/26/j-street-lobby-israel

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Somalia - Life In and Around the Zone of Destruction

This is a pass-along for Journeyman Picture.  Here's a slice from the YouTube caption:

For 18 years Somalia has been at war with itself. Weve really seen everything: hunger, death, everything, says one Somalian, looking at the ruins of capital Mogadishu. With the city embroiled in a turf war, and civilians constantly caught in the crossfire, 18 000 shell-shocked Somalians have fled. The bullet went in her neck, she cant move says one nurse about a 12-year-old girl in this Somalian hospital. They have space for 80 patients here yet they treat over 200, despite threats from Islamist insurgents accusing the doctors of treating unbelievers

Journeyman Pictures.  "Life Despite War - Somalia."  YouTube, October 26, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VApA1wv3S9s

I've heard that "people will disappoint you," but I've learned too that people will surprise you with their inherent goodness.

Some journalists have put their conclusions ahead of their questions, e.g., coming up with bold statements like "Why they hate us," but look carefully and closely into the civil wars hosted within Islam and one may find more of love and courage than hate, but it is certainly an inflammable arrogance mixed with hate that plants the bombs and drives the bullets.

There's plenty about which to chat from Journeyman's 8-minute window on the misery wrought by Somalia's 18 years of political anarchy mixed in the past few (at least) with militant egos armed to the teeth and marching behind the various shields of religous zealotry.

# # #

Shah's Early Memoir and the Nerve of Some Women . . . .

Outside our sealed bubble of tolerant Muslim culture, the Islamic world was changing.  Some years before the Iranian revolution, our Qur'an teacher became fascinated by the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini.  He was hurriedly dismissed, and he eventually returned to Iran to study in a religious seminary.  When the thirst for Islamic revolution had stirred his heart sufficiently, he decided he had been brought to our household for a purpose: to witness the depravity and error into which our branch of the family of the Prophet had sunk.  For a while, we children were hurried past the thick laurel bushes in the driveway, in case our erstwhile Qur'an instructor was lurking there, ready to attack us.

What unacceptable religous ideas had he encountered in our home?  What teachings did he find so detrimental to the hearts of the faithful?  Perhaps Baghawi of Herat's sayings of the Prophet, which adjured one to think for oneself rather than conform to externals without question:

"One hour's teaching is better than a whole night of prayer."

"Trust in God, but tie your camel first."

"The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr."

"You ask me to curse unbelievers, but I was not sent to curse."

"I order you to help an oppressed person, whether they are Muslim or not."

"Women are the twin halves of men."

These were the values I grew up with.  This was the Islam I bought into. [1, pp. 11-12]

Men write books too, and I would slight the courage of none for that, but for the brassiest of the big balls, credit on occasion the nerve of some women.

Saira Shah's book, The Storyteller's Daughter, from which I have quoted for the above teaser, tells both the memories and the contemporary experience, including experience in the Taliban presence, of the progeny to a kind of a royalty and post-colonial dispossession.

Early on in her adventure in memoir, Shah asks "Does the Afghanistan of our myths really exist?  Are we still Afghans? And if Iam not an Afghan, what am I?"

While Shah finds evidence to support the family's mythos, her question posed in 2003, the year of her book's publication, remains cutting edge: if I am not Jewish, if you are not Christian, if he is not Lakota, or she not Sunni--and relate that back to a patch on the Big Blue Marble--what are we?

"Modern" would be my suggestion.

Should that feel vague or discomfitting--it would seem to be a recycling historical state of self-assessment--try "cosmopolitan".

Or that old Jewish, multi-monotheist. and way out of copyright standby puzzled about worldwide: "good."

Much of the world, this to the misfortune of the cosmopolitan, good, and modern Mister or Ms. of the World, hasn't the cultural or intellectual breadth granted either by affluence and education, mindful pluck and education, or public education (and educated discipline) associated with secular educations to shatter the suggestion of a limited and sharply drawn caricature of the self confined by its lack of access to new language metonymy and behavior. 

Worse, many who do have such access to foreign thought may hew nonetheless to the most chauvanist perception of their role among their own, denying the spirit of, say, the accumulation of several American pedigrees in education and returning straight to the comforts of a familiar hate or prejudice, a bent from which they may then seek to lead their more impressionable and less armored "street".

The movie Amelia Earhart has recently opened (to smaller than expected box office too), but as long as that pioneer's name, if not ghost, is in the air, one may suggest that in Shah and others, whom I will mention shortly, the spirit for flying beyond fixed horizons remains strong.  It is a good thing, for the times in Islam and all around its edges demand it--may the men among Islamic Moderns rise for a match.

We carry our myths--I like to say the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves--with us all our lives, but while they may inform our sensibilities, they are inevitably too packaged, small, and fixed to define them: inevitably, for better sometimes, for worse too often, we diverge.

I don't know how the next two-thirds of Saira Shah's book will be for cogent insight and vicarious experience, but I'm enjoying the writing and the spirit of courage, curiosity, and introspective inquiry evident in the voice.

In my library, The Storyteller's Daughter will have for company work by Sarah Chayes, a Pashto-speaking Jewish American woman who has entrepreneured in small manufacturing for the good of the economy serving Muslims south of Kabul; Anne Jones, an American on a post-Taliban story (still on it too); Azadeh Moaveni, now an Iranian Muslim reporting from London for Time magazine ; Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim Somali liberated through Danish hospitality and living today a most secular and modern post-modern life among security guards in the west; and Nafisi Azar, an Iranian national whose combined literary, personal, and political experiences have made Baltimore a more suitable home for her spirit than Tehran under the current regime.

Cited Reference

1. Shah, Saira.  The Storyteller's Daughter.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Other Reference

Chayes, Sarah.  The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban.  New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.

Hirsi Ali, Ayaan.  Infidel.  New York: Free Press, Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Jones, Ann.  Web: http://www.annjonesonline.com/index.html

Jones, Ann.  Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan.  New York: Metropolitan Books (Henry Holt and Company), 2006.

Moaveni, Azadeh. Web: http://www.azadeh.info/

Moaveni, Azadeh.  Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran.  New York: Random House, 2009.

Nafisi, Azar.  Things I've Been Silent About.  New York: Random House, 2008.

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My Last Gasp - "The Clutter, the Clutter."

For everyone, I am sure of this, it starts the same way: "To important to toss--not important enough to deal with right now (or not immediately resolvable).  Set it aside."

As the aptly named "piles" develop, and this especially true for obsessive-compulsive types, the initial nagging thought may involve filing or organizing the mess some fine rainy day.

Such days come, we know, and we could watch an old movie on the telly and sit before our file pile pulling, say, utility bills, but the same arrive with Facebook and a gazillion online blogs, social communities, e-relationships, and, not that I play but know some do, games.  The costs associated with "living online" rise as do the neglected stacks of set aside paper.

An additional wrench in my particular works: a building fire in 2006 that shortly after had strangers completely boxing for pack-out and temporary storage everything I owned, including boxes of material they felt the need to re-box both to charge the insurance company for additional boxes as well as to cut down on carrying weight.

I have been in the new place a while, built a small production center in the office and office library, and corralled much apartment junk into the same small space.

Physical clutter--hardware, knick-knacks, will have to wait for some other post: here's what I've learned so far about the paper piles and, possibly, note management.

Banking and legal documents set aside may be mined--just dig down deep and retrieve statements and contracts.  I should think that two-thirds of the battle because that's much of the soul, sad to say, of other people's interest in our important papers.

Documents related to business income and purchasing generally don't languish here but make it into a folder near the time of their creation, but for the business and home office set, they too may be mined.

Onward: in the personal realm, what is redundant?  What is trivial (e.g., seasonal catalogs for personal effects and other forms of junk mail)? What may be databased into a generalized Access or Excel file?

This may be tricky: there may be "proof-of-purchase" or serial number items in the pile associated with appliance warranties; here, also, there may be bookseller receipts that may help fill out data behind a growing library inventory.  I may want to catch those items and file them.

Much else, however, has been ignored because it is ignorable.  All those utility bills: are they not indicated in the bank statements (and recorded elsewhere locally as well as on the vendor's side)?  I'll keep them, perhaps, but no longer do I feel compelled to organize them--and I wonder about keeping them because the central statements are authoritative.

Cash receipts: data entry (Quicken) and backup.

Business cards: central box or notebook (plastic slip holders) for any recent.

Catalogs: trash.  All of the vendors are online.

Notes: I'm ready to resume the keeping of a large general database starting with three or four open categories and room for a memo.

Here I cannot eat the elephant all at once.

It grew too large.

However, even were I to reduce it by just an inch a week--and some inches may be easier than others--that's a stack of paper four feet high.  Not including the trash already in file boxes, the loose papers bothering me are not that high.

With clutter, just getting to it and dealing with each piece with finality may be a large part of the work.

Reference

LibrarySupportStaff.com.  "Managing Paper Clutter":   http://www.librarysupportstaff.com/paperclutter.html

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Kleptocats - How One Does It

The people of Southern Cameroons realized that if the revision of the constitution went unperturbed, it will give Mr. Paul Biya the political leverage to sustain not only the illegal occupation of Southern Cameroons but also the ferocious pillage of her resources till perpetuity. All these unleashed an avalanche of xenophobia that crystallized into a litany of strikes and demonstrations that began on February 25th 2008 and throttled unabated for about a week, offering Mr. Biya a plausible pretext to subject the people of Southern Cameroons to the most disparaging conditions in recent memory in the guise of restoring order. The strikes and demonstrations were catharses of pen off feelings which had been brewing for a sustained period of time. [1]

Basic ingredients:

The French mainly lobby the IMF, World Bank, European banks and the African Development bank--of course--to give loans and grants to Cameroon. There is also the constant granting of loans to Cameroon from the French Treasury. On the eve of elections in France, these French neo-colonial cheats steal from the French Treasury to pay for their elections through a revolving door scheme in which money is loaned to former French colonies, and the puppets heading these countries return a big percentage of the money to the politicians who run these schemes. Everyone benefits: the African dictator gets a percentage of the money; the French politicians gets the bigger portion to pay for elections. The French taxpayers lose money; and it is billed as a debt to the African state.  [2]

And be now good and compliant children:

The African Commission on Human and People's Rights urges the SCNC and SCAPO in question to give up all secessionist wishful-thinking and to envisage their transformation into a political party as an when necessary in order to contribute their quota as citizens to nation-building in Cameroon. The Commission further urges them, in a law-abiding attitude, to engage the State of Cameroon in a constructive dialogue on the constitutional problems and other grievances they raised such as the feeling of marginalization allegedly suffered by the Anglophone community. [3]

Is your blood boiling yet?

It should be.

On February 20, 1998, the same police commissioner arrested Njaru Philip while he was consulting a medical doctor in the government hospital. He was questioned and tortured about an article he had written the previous December. In June 2001, Philip Njaru was attacked by twenty policemen in Kombi town in southwest province, kicked and beaten with military belts and gun butts on the charge that he had refused to show the police his national identity card.

In 2003, Njaru Philip won the Hellman/Hammett Award granted by Human Rights Watch. [4]

With Cameroon, I can do this sort of thematic Googled regurgitation all day long.

For good measure, and of recent vintage (2009), this comes from the Committee to Protect Journalists:

Dear President Biya,We are very concerned about an ongoing pattern of abuses against press freedom in Cameroon. In particular, we are alarmed by recent death threats against an editor, the recent prosecution of two others by a military tribunal, and the lengthy imprisonments of another two on libel charges. We call on you to use your influence to end practices that are undermining the free flow of information. {5}

One hopes that knowledge of Cameroon's presidentially-led cultures of corruption and impunity has not been lost on France's President Nicolas Sarkozy or his people.  Nonetheless, here's the French treatment for the likes of Paul Biya: 

Day four of the official visit of President Paul Biya and First Lady, Chantal Biya enters a high gear today in Paris. At 13h00, President Paul Biya will be welcomed at the Elysee Palace by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Shortly after a tête-à-tête, the French President will offer a working lunch in honour of the President Paul Biya at the "Salon des Ambassadeurs" of the Elysee Palace. [6]

In fact, and possibly no less than in the good old colonial days, France remains a chief beneficiary of Cameroon's abundant resources, ranking second or third among the exploited state's export trading partners and first among its import--sales to Cameroon--buddies. [7, 7a]

In its strangely combined Kafkaesque and Orwellian way, the U. S. Department of State classifies Cameroon's form of government as "Type: Republic; strong central government dominated by president." [8]

 This, apparently, is what Uncle Sam seems to mean by that:

The 1972 constitution (amended in 1996 and 2008) provides for a strong central government dominated by the executive. The president is empowered to name and dismiss cabinet members, judges, generals, provincial governors, prefects, sub-prefects, and heads of Cameroon's parastatal (about 100 state-controlled) firms, obligate or disburse expenditures, approve or veto regulations, declare states of emergency, and appropriate and spend profits of parastatal firms. The president is not required to consult the National Assembly.

Now that's government "dominated by president." 

Fairly, honestly, American government having the nagging problem of having not yet lost its integrity, the same note goes on to echo the story for Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe:

For a quarter-century following independence, Cameroon was one of the most prosperous countries in Africa. The drop in commodity prices for its principal exports--oil, cocoa, coffee, and cotton--in the mid-1980s, combined with an overvalued currency and economic mismanagement, led to a decade-long recession. Real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) fell by more than 60% from 1986 to 1994. The current account and fiscal deficits widened, and foreign debt grew.

The government embarked upon a series of economic reform programs supported by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) beginning in the late 1980s. Many of these measures have been painful; the government slashed civil service salaries by 65% in 1993. The CFA franc--the common currency of Cameroon and 13 other African states--was devalued by 50% in January 1994. The government failed to meet the conditions of the first four IMF programs. A three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) approved by the IMF in October 2005 was to end by the end of 2008. It was not clear whether the Fund would continue with lending after this date.

Cameroon makes money--it just doesn't make it for most Cameroonian's, 48-percent of whom live in poverty.

As has long been the story with Mugabe and Zimbabwe, the quiet Paul Biya has made Cameroon, Francophile and Anglophile, his most personal business, controlling the state's independent media through intimidation and persecution, holding the appointments and purse strings of key government functions from internal security forces to the judiciary, and putting up, as may have been suggested elsewhere in this blog, Potemkin villages in the form of committees and, perhaps, peripheral actions, including a smattering of arrests, over matters ranging from corruption to the pervasive global presence of human rights abuse charges associated with his government.

The governments of Spain, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, United States, and the Netherlands--the first five top recipients of Cameroonian resources (export) as listed by Wikipedia--know what Cameroon is, and short of evidence of state-generated criticism or meddling, would seem to be enjoying it.

The big sellers to Cameroon (according to Wikipedia): France, Nigeria, Belgium, United States, Germany, The People's Republic of China, and Italy.

The strongman has the complicity of the strong, at least, and with banner raisers like the "War on Terror", sufficient leverage to maintain his place with a minimum of internal structural reform.  Moverover, The Money, clearly a character in its own right within the Cameroonian tragedy, hasn't a problem with inequitable national politics and the comparatively parochial hardships, much less the individual ones, that accompany it.

Apart from a little bit o' feel-good, what possible incentive is there in Cameroon, for anyone, much less its president, for an enforced and overarching fairness, honesty, or integrity?

The Money could care less about such hoity-toity abstractions.

Move on to cultural self-determination, forest ecology, and rural poverty and an old trope applies: where one stands, politically speaking, may have a lot to do with where one sits.  Should the main base of a minority have a sore back and butt for want of more comfortable furnishings, whose backs and butts are not sore the world over?  Such topics become the province of academics whose tentative findings serve primarily to underscore the cushy position of their adversaries and their imperviousness to social concern or conscience.

Moreover, The Money has a life of its own and goes where most wanted (and it seems most wanted in France, China, Italy, Spain, the United States, etc.) or most desperately prized by the most desperate migratory flocks of human labor: who is to say the immigrant deserves it less?

Whether it's Burma, Zimbabwe, or Cameroon within whose confines people suffer beneath the heel of an autocratic government, there is something more deeply intractable and troubling in the inability of the autocrats themselves to escape their own fate, which includes with The Money, such a pal, that one, a whopping worldwide serving of disingenous relationships and public and private opprobrium.

Once in, I imagine, it must be awfully hard getting out.

Cited Reference

1. Ozughen, Jude A.  "SCNC-USA's Demonstration at the US: A Blunt Message to Paul Biya."  Eliesmith, May 2, 2008: http://eliesmith.blogspot.com/2008/05/scnc-usas-demonstration-at-usa-blunt.html

2. Eyong, Moy Manyi.  "How Did Biya Manage to Make a Devestating Defeat in Banjul Look Like a Stunning Success."  Up Station Mountain Club, October 14, 2009: http://www.postnewsline.com/2009/10/how-did-biya-manage-to-make-a-devastating-defeat-in-banjul-look-like-a-stunning-success-1.html

3. Minister of Communication, Cameroon.  Communiqué. Published in AllAfrica.com, October 2, 2009: http://allafrica.com/stories/200910020528.html

4. AllExperts.  "Njaru Philip."  http://en.allexperts.com/e/n/nj/njaru_philip.htm

5. Committee to Protect Journalists.  "In Cameroon, pattern of press freedom abuses."  July 13, 2009: http://cpj.org/2009/07/in-cameroon-pattern-of-press-freedom-abuses.php

6. Tataw, Emmanuel.  "Cameroon: Biya-Sarkozy in Paris Today."  AllAfrica, July 24, 2009: http://allafrica.com/stories/200907240382.html

7. Wikipedia.  "Economy of Cameroon": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cameroon

7a. World Bank. "Cameroon : Trade Brief":  http://info.worldbank.org/etools/wti2008/docs/brief33.pdf

8. U. S. Department of State.  "Background Note: Cameroon."  September 2009: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/26431.htm

Other Reference

Ano-Ebie, Snowsel.  "Who Fears Journalists in Cameroon?"  The Entrepreneur, July 29, 2009: http://www.entrepreneurnewsonline.com/2009/07/who-fears-journalists-in-cameroon.html?cid=6a00d83451c73369e20120a6702922970c#comment-6a00d83451c73369e20120a6702922970c

Committee to Protect Journalists.  "Attacks on the Press in 2008: Cameroon."  February 10, 2009: http://www.cpj.org/2009/02/attacks-on-the-press-in-2008-cameroon.php

Emporiki Bank.  "Country Trading Profiles: Cameroon:" http://www.emporikitrade.com/uk/countries-trading-profiles/cameroon/presentation

International Monetary Fund.  "Cameroon: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper--Progress Report."  January 2008: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2008/cr0801.pdf

Scribd.  "Njaru v. Cameroon HRC Decision": http://www.scribd.com/doc/40142/Njaru-v-Cameroon-HRC-Decision

Southern Cameroon's National Council: http://scncusa.org/home

The Southern Cameroon Youth League.  "Interview Paul Biya."  Viewed October 26, 2009: http://internationalsecretary.blogspot.com/; Daily Motion.  "Talk De Paris - Paul Biya."  Uploaded November 1, 2007: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3cyg5_talk-de-paris-paul-biya-en_news

UNHCR.  "Cameroon: The Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) and the Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL); organizational structures; leaders; activities; membership cards; treatment of their members by government authorities."  Refworld, April 2, 2008: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,IRBC,,CMR,,4829b55cc,0.html

Wikipedia.  "Philip Njaru": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Njaru

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Antietam NBP - Bloody Lane from Observation Tower, Fall 2009

Antietam NBP - Roulette Farm, Horizontals, Fall 2009

Roulette Farm, Fall 2009

Somalia - For the Love of God . . .

"They destroyed the grave of Sheikh Ali Ibaar and our mosque. They also knocked down our Islamic university," local elder Hassan Ali told Reuters by telephone from Galhareeri.

"We are now just squatting among the trees on the outskirts of the town. We do not know where to flee." [1]

I hesitate deeply to again involve my web surfing mind and heart in the conflict in Somalia.  Abdi Sheikh's Alertnet piece wraps the state of affairs perfectly.

Al Shabaab specifically, perhaps the fighting in general, route villagers from their homes and out into a dreadful unknown that may afford such niceties as the squalid camps for 250,000 souls in Kenya or death by drowning for those who may wander as far as the Arabian Sea with aspirations of fleeing to Yemen.

Producing despair, death and fear, it seems, has turned out much easier for Shabaab than producing life-enhancing and life-sustaining services, most of which become the province of the world's more charitable organizations.

How bad have the fighters made it for their cowed and fleeing brothers and sisters?

Here is an excerpt from a still recent World Health Organization report [2]:

* * *

Assessment of the camps/settlements

The three camps/settlements are supported by the TFG health authorities. Goba 1 and 2 host a total of 333 families, while the Burhan camp hosts an estimated 120 families. (approximately 3000 people in total) Major challenges with different levels of severity in the three IDP camps/settlements include:

• Overcrowding around temporary settlements and water sources
• No fire extinguishers or fire-fighting equipment
• Lack of camp safety
• Insufficient water supply
• No routine sampling of water quality
• Insufficient sanitation facilities and no toilets for people with physical disabilities
• No designated areas for bathing washing, food preparation, food storage and waste disposal (including medical waste)
• Preparation of food occurring in front of tents, often less than a metre from adjacent shelters
• Lack of primary health services (health services are provided by either El Medina or Banadir hospitals)
• Poor environmental and personal hygiene
• No vector control measures in place

* * *

The short report's bullets don't stop with that last one.

As one may for the buildings and bunks of WWII-era concentration camp inmates, one may imagine as well a few rows of tents set out in the muck, and even extend that into seeing in the mind's eye a collection of hundreds of tents and 3,000 humans (noted in the above report) struggling with the desolate burdens posed by continuous environmental exposure and complete dependence on the kindness of strangers for the very little they have in their state of dispossession. 

How does one feel and see, however, that very same depth of suffering spread across the dismal tide of 1.25 million IDP's and refugees?

I'll leave that question rhetorical, as it must be, but take this one step further to better contemplate how small an invasion force, essentially, has been able to create so overwhelming a tragedy:

Estimates of Shabaab's size vary, but analysts generally agree that the group contains several thousand fighters, many of whom are from the Hawiye clan. The group has been able to expand its footprint in Somalia with relatively small numbers for two reasons: Somalia hasn't had a central government since 1991; and many of the clan warlords that filled the power vacuum have proven willing to cooperate with Shabaab, at least in Somalia's south. Shabaab has engaged in forced recruitment among Somalis, so it's unclear how many members of the group truly believe the organization's ideology. Experts say the number of rank-and-file members is less important than the number of hardcore ideological believers, which could range between three hundred and eight hundred individuals. Foreign fighters have traveled to Somalia to fight with Shabaab, as have Somalis from the United Kingdom and the United States. The FBI says as many as two dozen Somalis have disappeared from Minneapolis in the past two years; FBI director Robert S. Mueller III says one of these individuals was a suicide bomber in an October 2008 attack in Somalia. [3]

Catch the loose count: " . . . several thousand fighters  . . . the number of hardcore . . . between three hundred and eight hundred individuals . . . ."

Kenya this day hosts about 250,000 refugees.

Much of Mogadishu has been destroyed and substantial population, a number upwards of a million, has been consigned to camps in the city's region.

One needs must be careful with comparisons with the Holocaust, I know, and here there's no ignoring the world's awareness of and want to alleviate the suffering of displaced Somalis; still, one also looks back at the source of this "human caused disaster", as America's Administration might say with its best Orwellian euphemism for destruction associated with the distribution of Islam's persistent "low intensity" civil wars, and there, once again, are the youth, a different "youth", masked, sometimes uniformed now, brandishing Kalashnikovs, and at the end of each day, currently, tolerated for lack of wherewithal on the part of their victims and the global powers at large.

Reference

1. Abdi, Sheikh.  "Shabaab rebels destroy grave and mosque in Somalia."  Thompson Reuters Alertnet, October 19, 2009: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LJ081539.htm

2. World Health Organization.  "WHO Somalia - EHA: Situation of IDP's in Mogadishu and Afgooye Corridor -- inter-agency joint assessment."  October 7, 2009: http://www.emro.who.int/somalia/pdf/2009%20September%20Mogadishu%20report.pdf

3. Hanson, Stephanie.  "Backgrounder: Al-Shabaab."  Council on Foreign Relations, February 27, 2009: http://www.cfr.org/publication/18650/alshabaab.html

4. Human Rights Watch.  "Kenya: End Abuse and Neglect of Somali Refugees."  March 30, 2009: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/29/kenya-end-abuse-and-neglect-somali-refugees.  Additional materials available: http://www.hrw.org/node/81794.

5. IRIN.  "SOMALIA: Insecurity "no excuse" to neglect IDP's."  September 30, 2009: http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=86364

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Photo-Based Illustration from Communicating Arts

One of my goals has been to upgrade my Adobe Design Suite skills from Photoshop to Illustrator to InDesign to Dreamweaver, and thereby produce new custom or hands-on capability for print and web publications art, design, and layout--I've had the copywriting part pegged for some time.

Design, illustration, layout, and photography software draw both on practical, technical vocabulary development as well as intuition.  While anyone, essentially, may do something with many parts of the Adobe suites, there seems to me, as in music, a difference between topping out with three chords for playing guitar and pushing on to ascend to more capable Segovian heights.

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