Saturday, December 10, 2005

What We're Fighting For   Honor killings in the "liberated" Iraq On Wednesday's "All Things Considered," NPR correspondent Anne Garrels had a heart-rending and infuriating story out of Baghdad on the Iraqi tribal practice of "honor killing." In this medieval tradition, families who suspect that a woman among them has had sex outside of marriage -- even if she was raped -- feel honor-bound to murder her in order to save the family from disgrace. Killing a rape victim in order to preserve one's honor may sound backward to you -- as backward, say, as invading a country where there are no terrorists and then claiming you've got to stay and keep fighting because the terrorists now see the place as a central front in their war with you. Welcome to Iraq! Garrels tells the story of Fatima, a 16-year-old who was kidnapped by unidentified assailants in West Baghdad. The kidnappers threatened to rape and kill Fatima unless her brother quit the Iraqi police force. He did, and Fatima was released, but not, Garrels says, into safety. The mere possibility that she might have been raped was enough to seal her fate. Her family couldn't live with that kind of disgrace, and in order to preserve their honor, her cousin Sarhan shot her. Sarhan, who speaks freely and with seemingly no remorse to Garrels, is a piece of work. Listen to her report just to hear his chilling quotes: "She knew the customs, but I don't think she expected we would kill her," he tells Garrels. "She was crying. I saw in her eyes that she thought we would take her in our arms and say, 'Thank god you are safe.' But she got bullets instead." Sarhan, a law school graduate who works as a traffic cop in the newly liberated Iraq, concedes that his actions weren't sanctioned by religion. But tribal customs require such killings, he says. "The traditions of the tribe are even stronger than religion," he says. "Islam forbids this, but our culture runs deep." To let Fatima live would have been a "catastrophe," he says. "Her life would have been hell... Her father could not raise his head in front of people. Our entire family would be destroyed." Violence against women is just a part of life in Iraq, Sarhan says. He even admits to beating his wife with a rubber hose. "It's part of the tradition and the tribes." NPR received many letters in response to its Garrels' report, and the ones it aired on Thursday evening go far toward describing the barbarity of the situation. The brutality, one listener wrote, "seems to reach deep beyond the heart and into the soul, where it remains like a persistent aching sorrow." Another said, "I found the story so chilling that I felt physically ill. It is hard to imagine a culture where men have such a twisted, cruel sense of power over women that they can murder without any worry of consequences. There is no honor in any country that would allow this treatment of its women." And then there was this letter, which expressed something like hope. "How do we reconcile the fact that we are delivering aid, security and infrastructure to that part of the world, to those who to those who unabashedly kill and brutalize their girls, women and wives as a matter of traditional culture?" the listener asked. "The fact that these Iraqi values are utterly irreconcilable and absolutely contrary to American values should be the primary reason for why we are there. And we should fight to change and destroy the traditions of repulsive tribal morality." But as Garrels' report pointed out, the large and costly American presence in Iraq is not actually doing anything to save the women there. Women's rights groups say that the new Iraqi constitution allows more repression over women than the old, Saddam government did. And do we hear American officials -- the president and his wife, who so frequently invoke women's suffering in Iraq and Afghanistan before we invaded those nations -- call on Iraqis to crack down on barbaric practices now? Not at all. As Sarhan sees it, nothing will change these Iraqi customs. "It's a matter of generations," he says. "It's in our blood, custom and traditions." -- Farhad Manjoo, Salon.com 6:27:53 PM     comment []

It would be nice to think that, somewhere, Salvador Allende is smiling. . . Of course, one must also wonder how long it will take the vile Bush administration to brand her "another Hugo Chavez" and try to "destabilize" her government. My guess is 3-6 months.  Michelle Bachelet     December 9, 2005 Op-Ed Contributor Señora Presidente? By RAFAEL GUMUCIO Santiago, Chile CHILE is one of the more conservative countries on a continent that is not especially renowned as tolerant, forward thinking or democratically minded. Divorce was legalized here just last year, and abortion continues to be a taboo subject even for the most progressive of politicians. Our social codes and racial prejudices are deeply engrained. We are an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a history that has been marked - and continues to be marked - by the power of its military. Given this context, it is nothing short of extraordinary - even revolutionary - that the clear front-runner in the presidential vote being held on Sunday is Michelle Bachelet, a divorced mother of three who is an atheist and a member of the Socialist Party. Polls show Ms. Bachelet, a former defense minister, far ahead of her rivals, Sebastián Piñera, one of Chile's wealthiest businessmen; Joaquín Lavín, the ultraconservative former mayor of Santiago; and Tomás Hirsch of the Communist Party. Although a runoff is likely, the prevailing opinion here is that Ms. Bachelet will be the ultimate winner. If she is, she will be the first woman in the Americas to be elected president not because she was a wife of a famous politician, but because of her own record. That this is a probability is even more astonishing when one considers that nothing like it has occurred in countries like the United States or France, where the democratic tradition is far more stable and feminism's impact presumably far greater. Curiously, American television is now running a series that revolves around the "novel" idea of a female president. What is fiction in the United States may well become reality in Chile. The twist is that the Chilean candidate is a far more interesting character than the female president portrayed on American TV: as defense minister, Ms. Bachelet oversaw the successors and subordinates of the men who killed her father and tortured her and her mother during the darkest moments of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. How has this happened? Chile, more than ever, is proving itself to be the polar opposite of Lampedusa's Sicily: in order for things to change, they have to stay the same - or rather, they have to look as if they are staying the same. That is the best way I can describe the spirit with which the country seems to be anticipating the elections: people are aware that no matter what the outcome an unprecedented cultural, political and social revolution is taking place. And at the same time, they seem surprisingly unfazed by it all, observing these sweeping changes with ease, aplomb, even delight. Perhaps this is because Chileans have by now grown accustomed to wild fluctuations in the country's political fortunes. This past year, the Chilean people saw rightist leaders - until recently General Pinochet's staunchest allies - renouncing all ties to him. General Pinochet is now under house arrest, held not only on human rights charges but also for his alleged role in a financial scandal involving millions of stolen dollars. In countless other ways, the Pandora's box of Chilean politics has been flung wide open: nowadays it isn't at all strange to see an ultraconservative Catholic candidate signing his name on a transvestite's legs as a publicity stunt, nor is it odd to hear Ms. Bachelet talk about how hard it is to find Mr. Right. For decades, even centuries, Chilean politics have largely been of the old-boy's-network variety, in which an all-male group of power brokers have run things on their own terms, within a select inner circle, forging alliances with one another and making deals with the press behind closed doors, far removed from the citizenry they represent. Change in Chile has come at a breakneck pace in recent years, as justice is finally being delivered to dozens of dictatorship-era cronies, and the pillars of the church and the political elite have been shaken to their foundations by a wave of pedophilia scandals involving both. The changes are abrupt and the contradictions are evident. Thanks to the country's growing economy, Chileans have access to more creature comforts than ever before, and yet prosperity somehow hasn't dulled their sensibilities: the populace that benefits from free-market economics also turned out in droves to pay tribute to Gladys Marín, the president of the Communist Party, when her coffin was carried through the streets of Santiago in March. People may be gulping down Starbucks and coveting iPods, but they are also devouring highly irreverent political magazines like The Clinic (for which I write) and flocking to politically oriented movies like "Machuca," which is about the 1973 coup led by General Pinochet. Some analysts think that the free-market economy is responsible for this unprecedented change in Chile's political and social landscape. But other countries that follow that economic model (Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States), seem to be slouching in the opposite direction toward a retrograde, hard-line conservatism. Economics, then, clearly do not tell the entire story. Other analysts attribute the change to the current president, Ricardo Lagos, who has concentrated on reconciling Chile with its tortured past. Even so the general consensus is that nobody - not Mr. Lagos, not the Chilean intelligentsia, and certainly not the power elite - was prepared for the seismic social and political shift represented by Ms. Bachelet's thriving candidacy. I don't think anyone would have predicted 10 years ago that we would ever arrive at this moment, but it seems that Chile is eager to usher it in. For us, political and economic stability - despite being so recent and so precious - is not enough. Just as in 1970, when they went to the polls and elected a Socialist president, and again in 1988, when they rejected their dictator, Chileans have proved themselves to be far more daring with their vote than their lifestyles. Perhaps this is because when they vote - in secret, where nobody can judge or criticize them - they reveal their truest colors, their passion for change, for improvisation and for leadership in a world that seems hell-bent on moving in the opposite direction. Rafael Gumucio is a columnist for El Diario in New York and for newspapers in Chile. This article was translated by Kristina Cordero from the Spanish. 5:26:24 PM     comment []

Goodbye to an American Hero   Former Sen. Eugene McCarthy, 89, Dies - - - - - - - - - - - - By FREDERIC J. FROMMER Associated Press Writer December 10,2005 | WASHINGTON -- Former Minnesota Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy, whose insurgent campaign toppled a sitting president in 1968 and forced the Democratic Party to take seriously his message against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 89. McCarthy died in his sleep at the retirement home in the Georgetown neighborhood where he had lived for the past few years, said his son, Michael. Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination during growing debate over the Vietnam War. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race. The former college professor, who ran for president five times in all, was in some ways an atypical politician, a man with a witty, erudite speaking style who wrote poetry in his spare time and was the author of several books. "He was thoughtful and he was principled and he was compassionate and he had a good sense of humor," his son said. When Eugene McCarthy ran for president in 1992, he explained his decision to leave the seclusion of his home in rural Woodville, Va., for the campaign trail by quoting Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian: "They are wrong who think that politics is like an ocean voyage or military campaign, something to be done with some particular end in view." McCarthy got less than 1 percent of the vote in 1992 in New Hampshire, the state where he helped change history 24 years earlier. Helped by his legion of idealistic young volunteers known as "clean-for-Gene kids," McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the state's 1968 Democratic primary. That showing embarrassed Johnson into withdrawing from the race and throwing his support to his vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey. Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York also decided to seek the nomination, but was assassinated in June 1968. McCarthy and his followers went to the party convention in Chicago, where fellow Minnesotan Humphrey won the nomination amid bitter strife both on the convention floor and in the streets. Humphrey went on to narrowly lose the general election to Richard Nixon. The racial, social and political tensions within the Democratic Party in 1968 have continued to affect presidential politics ever since. "It was a tragic year for the Democratic Party and for responsible politics, in a way," McCarthy said in a 1988 interview. "There were already forces at work that might have torn the party apart anyway -- the growing women's movement, the growing demands for greater racial equality, an inability to incorporate all the demands of a new generation. "But in 1968, the party became a kind of unrelated bloc of factions ... each refusing accommodation with another, each wanting control at the expense of all the others." Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes. © 2005 The Associated Press 5:11:26 PM     comment []

''I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." --Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005    Iraq Attacks Kill Four U.S. Soldiers By ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago Four American soldiers were killed Saturday in separate attacks in the Baghdad area Saturday, the day kidnappers of four Christian peace activists had set for the release of all prisoners or the hostages would be killed. The attacks occurred five days before crucial national elections, which U.S. authorities hope will help stem the insurgency. Two of the soldiers were killed by small arms fire southwest of the capital, the U.S. command said in a statement. The others died in a roadside bombing in the Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and by small arms fire north of the city, the command said. No further details were released. Also Saturday, the U.S. military said an American soldier was killed and 11 others wounded the day before in a suicide car bombing in the Abu Ghraib district of western Baghdad. The Interior Ministry said it had no information on the fate of the four Christian peace activists, who were seized two weeks ago in Baghdad. The previously unknown Swords of Righteousness Brigade set Saturday as a deadline for killing Norman Kember, 74, of London, Tom Fox, 54, of Clear Brook, Virginia, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32. The kidnappers demanded that all security detainees held by coalition and Iraqi authorities be freed. On Saturday, the government said about 240 detainees had been freed from detention centers at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca. But U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Liz Colton said the release had been planned for weeks and had nothing to do with the demands. Elsewhere, the body of an Egyptian engineer was found Saturday a day after he was seized by gunmen in Tikrit. Ibrahim Sayed Hilali had lived in Tikrit for a long time, police said. U.S. and Iraqi authorities had predicted a spike in violence before Thursday's national elections, in which voters will choose a new parliament to serve for four years. U.S. authorities are hoping that a big turnout among Sunni Arab voters will help defuse the Sunni-dominated insurgency by creating a government that can win the community's trust. On Saturday, a roadside bomb hit a convoy carrying the former governor of Najaf province, Adnan al-Zurufi, wounding three of his bodyguards, police Capt. Hadi Najim said. Al-Zurufi was not injured in the attack, which occurred in Kufa, seven kilometers (four miles) east of Najaf, one of the most volatile regions of Iraq and an important spiritual center for Shiite Muslims. In northern Mosul, a roadside bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol killed two Iraqi civilians and injured one Saturday. There were no reports of American casualties, according to Bahaa al-Din al-Bakri, a doctor at the Jumhouri hospital. Gunmen also killed Ali Omeir, an official at a local non-governmental aid group, in northern Mosul's Sukar neighborhood as he was heading for work, al-Bakri said. East of Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting an American patrol injured an Iraqi civilian. There were no immediate reports about any American injuries, police Major Ali Shohi said. On Friday, Sunni Arab clerics used their main weekly religious service to plead for the hostages' lives because of their humanitarian work and condemnation of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. A French aid worker and a German citizen are also being held by kidnappers. There also was no word on the fate of an American hostage, Ronald Allen Schulz, after an Internet statement in the name of the Islamic Army in Iraq claimed to have killed him. Iraqi officials believe the revival of foreigner kidnappings may be part of a bid to undermine Dec. 15 elections, in which Iraqis will choose a parliament to serve for four years. U.S. officials hope a big turnout among the Sunni Arab minority, the foundation of the insurgency, will help quell the violence so that American and other foreign troops can begin to go home next year. Al-Qaida in Iraq, led by Jordanian terror boss Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has threatened to disrupt the balloting. Sunni Arabs largely boycotted the previous election in January, enabling rival Shiites and Kurds to win most of the 275 seats. This time, most Sunni clerics and leaders are urging fellow Sunnis to vote. Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press 10:19:02 AM     comment []

© Copyright 2006 Michael D. Zungolo. Last update: 1/3/2006; 10:00:27 AM.