Wednesday 28 November 2012
Monday 26 November 2012
South Asia’s Youth at Risk – Multimedia Storytelling by Young Journalists | ICFJ - International Center for Journalists
South Asia’s Youth at Risk – Multimedia Storytelling by Young Journalists | ICFJ - International Center for Journalists
South Asia’s Youth at Risk – Multimedia Storytelling by Young Journalists
اِس ايپلکيشن فارم کے اردو ترجمہ کے ليۓ' یہاں کلِک' کيجۓ
हिंदी में एप्लीकेशन भरने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें
Journalists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are invited to apply to a program that aims to connect 21-30 year old journalists in South Asia for joint reporting projects that will explore topics relating to youth and the risks young people face in the region, while also training the journalists on responsible reporting in the digital age. The program, run by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, has two main components. ICFJ will conduct a six-week online course for 80 journalists on digital expression. During the interactive course, participants will receive an introduction to in-depth reporting, weekly individual feedback from trainers on story progress, and lessons on Internet and document research. They will also learn interview techniques, how to generate support for a complex story in one’s newsroom, how to harness social media for reporting, and how to plan and execute a story plan and a multimedia package. Participants are required to propose story ideas related to the youth in their countries prior to starting the course so that they can rely on the online training to help them develop their stories for more in-depth reporting. The course will be conducted in four languages: English, Hindi, Pashto and Urdu. Daily translation will allow those of all languages to share ideas with the group.
ICFJ will follow the online course with a five-day conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka that will bring together the 30 best participants from the online course who propose the best projects. The projects will be grouped together for regional cooperation. The groupings will help each of the young journalists report their stories in a more responsible and informed way, and create a lasting change in the journalists’ understanding of one another’s cultures. Through these joint reporting projects, audiences throughout the region will benefit from more nuanced and in-depth reporting on critical cultural, religious and social issues. Project selections will be made before the Colombo conference, giving the journalists an opportunity to plan their reporting together. They will also present their projects to the larger conference group. The conference in Colombo will also include panel discussions, site visits and small group breakout meetings.
To apply for this program in English, click here.
اِس ايپلکيشن فارم کے اردو ترجمہ کے ليۓ' یہاں کلِک' کيجۓ
हिंदी में एप्लीकेशन भरने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें
This page and the application will soon be available in Pashto.
हिंदी में एप्लीकेशन भरने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें
Participants in the 2012 "Best Practices in the Digital Age for South Asian Journalists" Program interview a farmer in Sri Lanka using an iPod Touch.
ICFJ will follow the online course with a five-day conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka that will bring together the 30 best participants from the online course who propose the best projects. The projects will be grouped together for regional cooperation. The groupings will help each of the young journalists report their stories in a more responsible and informed way, and create a lasting change in the journalists’ understanding of one another’s cultures. Through these joint reporting projects, audiences throughout the region will benefit from more nuanced and in-depth reporting on critical cultural, religious and social issues. Project selections will be made before the Colombo conference, giving the journalists an opportunity to plan their reporting together. They will also present their projects to the larger conference group. The conference in Colombo will also include panel discussions, site visits and small group breakout meetings.
To apply for this program in English, click here.
اِس ايپلکيشن فارم کے اردو ترجمہ کے ليۓ' یہاں کلِک' کيجۓ
हिंदी में एप्लीकेशन भरने के लिए यहाँ क्लिक करें
This page and the application will soon be available in Pashto.
Thursday 22 November 2012
Message of Gaza Violence: Hamas Can’t be Ignored -Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Message of Gaza Violence: Hamas Can’t be Ignored: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The outbreak of violence between Israel and the Hamas-controlled "statelet" of Gaza serves no end. Both sides know that, yet they plunge ahead anyway, claiming that they are forced by their adversary to escalate the conflict.
Most experts agree that eventually the fighting will stop and leave the situation unchanged. The only question is the number of victims. If neither side has much to gain, why can't they stop themselves?Each side suspects the other of playing domestic politics. Palestinians fear that the Israeli government is making war with an eye to upcoming elections. Israelis suspect that Hamas -- whose full name is the "Islamic Resistance Movement" -- is lobbing rockets because it is tired of its rivals' taunting that it is not living up to its middle name.
There is some truth to these charges, but the deeper motivations have to do less with pleasing the home crowd and more with frightening and deterring the other side.
Both sides would love to have their adversary disappear but know they cannot make that happen any time soon, so for now they each have more limited goals.
The Israelis know that they cannot dislodge Hamas from Gaza without unacceptable cost and endless occupation. But they want to punish the movement so severely that it will be deterred from future violence. Hamas knows that the damage it inflicts serves no strategic value, but it hopes that its rockets will cause dislocation and even panic in Israel and send an international message that Gaza cannot be ignored.
So the fighting likely will be contained in the end. In addition to civilian casualties on both sides (with the toll much heavier in Gaza, since Israel is the much stronger party), there will be substantial political damage, as well. The United States will be regarded in the Arab world as complicit in the Israeli offensive. And Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel but whose population sympathizes with Hamas, will feel badly embarrassed by its apparent powerlessness.
But the real blame on international actors -- including the United States and Egypt -- falls not on their actions during this crisis, but on their long inaction before.
The United States under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama supported a harsh blockade on Gaza and pretended that the Israeli-Palestinian issue could be dealt with as if Hamas does not exist and Gaza does not matter. Under ousted leader Hosni Mubarak, Egypt quietly supported that position. Under Muhammad Morsy, Egypt's new president from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt is no longer quiet or supportive, but it has only been able to wield rhetorical tools.
Egypt (which now tilts toward Hamas) and the United States (which supports Israel) can, if they cooperate, probably bring about a ceasefire. What they do afterward is the real question.
There is no clear path forward for international diplomacy, but it is quite obvious what does not work: Waiting for Hamas to go away. In a visit to Gaza last May, I saw how thoroughly Hamas has come to dominate politics and society in the tiny but crowded enclave. The movement runs ministries, polices the streets and manages the economy. Gaza residents see no alternative to Hamas, nor are they asked for one, with elections canceled and opposition closely monitored.
As the Obama administration moves into its second term, it makes more sense to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that really exists rather than to pretend that there still is a "peace process" that only needs one more round of quiet talks to succeed.
This article originally appeared in CNN.
Message of Gaza Violence: Hamas Can’t be Ignored
The outbreak of violence between Israel and the Hamas-controlled "statelet" of Gaza serves no end. Both sides know that, yet they plunge ahead anyway, claiming that they are forced by their adversary to escalate the conflict.Most experts agree that eventually the fighting will stop and leave the situation unchanged. The only question is the number of victims. If neither side has much to gain, why can't they stop themselves?Each side suspects the other of playing domestic politics. Palestinians fear that the Israeli government is making war with an eye to upcoming elections. Israelis suspect that Hamas -- whose full name is the "Islamic Resistance Movement" -- is lobbing rockets because it is tired of its rivals' taunting that it is not living up to its middle name.
There is some truth to these charges, but the deeper motivations have to do less with pleasing the home crowd and more with frightening and deterring the other side.
Both sides would love to have their adversary disappear but know they cannot make that happen any time soon, so for now they each have more limited goals.
The Israelis know that they cannot dislodge Hamas from Gaza without unacceptable cost and endless occupation. But they want to punish the movement so severely that it will be deterred from future violence. Hamas knows that the damage it inflicts serves no strategic value, but it hopes that its rockets will cause dislocation and even panic in Israel and send an international message that Gaza cannot be ignored.
So the fighting likely will be contained in the end. In addition to civilian casualties on both sides (with the toll much heavier in Gaza, since Israel is the much stronger party), there will be substantial political damage, as well. The United States will be regarded in the Arab world as complicit in the Israeli offensive. And Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel but whose population sympathizes with Hamas, will feel badly embarrassed by its apparent powerlessness.
But the real blame on international actors -- including the United States and Egypt -- falls not on their actions during this crisis, but on their long inaction before.
The United States under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama supported a harsh blockade on Gaza and pretended that the Israeli-Palestinian issue could be dealt with as if Hamas does not exist and Gaza does not matter. Under ousted leader Hosni Mubarak, Egypt quietly supported that position. Under Muhammad Morsy, Egypt's new president from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt is no longer quiet or supportive, but it has only been able to wield rhetorical tools.
Egypt (which now tilts toward Hamas) and the United States (which supports Israel) can, if they cooperate, probably bring about a ceasefire. What they do afterward is the real question.
There is no clear path forward for international diplomacy, but it is quite obvious what does not work: Waiting for Hamas to go away. In a visit to Gaza last May, I saw how thoroughly Hamas has come to dominate politics and society in the tiny but crowded enclave. The movement runs ministries, polices the streets and manages the economy. Gaza residents see no alternative to Hamas, nor are they asked for one, with elections canceled and opposition closely monitored.
As the Obama administration moves into its second term, it makes more sense to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that really exists rather than to pretend that there still is a "peace process" that only needs one more round of quiet talks to succeed.
This article originally appeared in CNN.
Private soldiers:Bullets for hire| The Economist | Wavelink Cafe
Private soldiers:Bullets for hire
The business of private armies is not only growing, but changing shape
Nov 17th 2012 | from the print edition
On a wild geese chase The industry’s growth has been paid for by Western governments, keen to limit the political cost of military boots on the ground. Supply has also come mostly from the West: 70% of firms are British or American. As the big conflicts of the past decade come to an end, however, private armies are beginning to chase new business, according to Sean McFate of America’s National Defence University. Industrial firms, which are increasingly setting up shop in unstable places, are expected to be a growing chunk of the customer base.
One company, in particular, is preparing for the change: Academi, an American private military giant (which, before it was sued over the death of 17 civilians in Iraq in 2007, carried the less silly moniker of Blackwater and in 2009-11 was called Xe Services). More than 90% of the firm’s business to date has come from governments, but it thinks that in the future half of its customers could be corporate. Among the early adopters are energy firms and a hotel chain. By the end of the year Academi expects to have opened a new “several thousand acre” training site, probably in east Africa, to help meet the changing demand. As the market opens up, non-Western firms want a piece of the action. When Chinese road workers were kidnapped in South Sudan in January, Chinese armed guards were enlisted to help secure their release. One firm based in Beijing, Shandong Huawei Security Group, says it has hired about 100 guards for overseas work, and is looking for jobs in Iraq. In Angola, where more than 260,000 Chinese live and work, private firms keep them safe from banditry.
Moreover, big firms keep spawning smaller, local outfits. Large companies entering a new area typically employ locals as subcontractors. Emboldened by their new training, “subs” can spin off when a job ends, as a pool of hardened guns for hire. In June a UN monitoring group found a private anti-piracy unit in Somalia to be among the best-equipped forces in the region; it had been started with the help of Erik Prince, the former boss of Blackwater.
Small, informal groups are a particular cause of concern. They might work for the highest bidder, whether an oil firm or a frustrated despot (Colonel Qaddafi hired mercenaries in the weeks before the Libyan revolution that killed him in October last year). Mr McFate worries about the long-term impact of these private armies. As in 16th-century Europe, he says, Africa’s rich may employ mercenaries to carve out regions of control, leaving those left outside to fend for themselves.
A more immediate issue is how to regulate the fragmented industry. Ted Wright, the boss of Academi, says that its leadership has been completely replaced since the Blackwater days, and now makes subcontractors sign a set of rules and work under observation. Several states, including China, have signed the Montreux Document, a voluntary code of conduct.
Yet self-regulation is unlikely to be sufficient in a business known for its cut-throat competition. Some say that private firms should be barred from jobs more suited to conventional armies, and governments should impose sanctions at home for infractions abroad. But making rules that apply internationally will be difficult, says Thomas Hammes of America’s Institute for National Strategic Studies. Corporate responsibility, however, might help. Customers need to ensure that those hired to protect their sites are qualified and accountable—with the UN, itself a customer, taking the lead. Otherwise, the market for private soldiers might spin out of control.
Chart: Boom and Bust of world Economies?
Boom and bust
Which economies have seen the biggest annual rates of growth and contraction since 1980?WHAT will be the fastest growing economy in 2012? The answer is perhaps surprising: Libya. It is projected to grow by an extraordinary 122% this year, according to the IMF, as oil production recovers faster than expected. That is, however, only the second fastest year of growth in the IMF’s database (which stretches back over three decades). The quickest was recorded by Equatorial Guinea, a country of 720,000 people on (and off) West Africa’s coast. Until the 1990s it was a dirt-poor country selling cocoa and timber. In 1996, it attracted heavy foreign investment in a recently discovered offshore oilfield (resulting in a current-account deficit of 125% of GDP). In the following year, the country produced 80,000 barrels per day of light crude, increasing its GDP by almost 150%. In Equatorial Guinea’s case, fast growth followed a lucrative discovery. In most cases, though, it follows a nightmarish disaster. Kuwait’s economy contracted by 41% during the Gulf War of 1991, before growing by over 50% in the subsequent year. Libya’s economy shrank by about 60% in 2011, as the country descended into civil war and foreign oil firms evacuated their staff. Sharp contractions set the stage for rebounds, both economically and statistically. They can create a lot of slack—unused capacity or unemployed workers—that can be swiftly exploited when the economy recovers. They also create a smaller “base”, from which subsequent growth is measured. If a country’s GDP shrinks by 60%, it must grow by 150% just to restore its former size. Thus even if Libya fulfils the IMF’s forecast for this year, its GDP will still be smaller than it was in 2010.
Bangladesh: Ever murkier | The Economist
Bangladesh: Ever murkier | The Economist
WHAT explains the apparent abduction of a defence witness, just before he was to testify at Bangladesh’s International War Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka? Shukho Ranjon Bali was bundled away at the very gates of the tribunal, a domestic court that is charged with bringing to justice some of those accused of killing huge numbers (the government claims as many as 3m) of people in the bloody 1971 war of secession from Pakistan.
Mr Bali was snatched as the defence team and its witness arrived at the tribunal on November 5th. They were ordered from their car and told to identify themselves. Hasanul Banna Sohag, a defence lawyer, says one of four men, who claimed to be from the police Detective Branch, “snatched [Mr] Bali from my hand” and forced him inside a white police van, which then drove off.
The witness was to have spoken in the case of Delwar Hossain Sayedee, the prosecution’s strongest. Mr Sayedee is one of seven leading figures of Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic party) who is on trial. He is charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, murder, religious persecution and 16 other counts. He pleads not guilty. Mr Bali was originally a prosecution witness but he never appeared in court to testify to what he is alleged to have told investigating officers that he saw: the killing of his brother on the orders of Mr Sayedee in 1971.
Instead, says a defence lawyer, Mr Bali was going to tell the court that Pakistani army officers killed his brother and Mr Sayedee was not involved. It is not the only allegation of forced testimony: Tajul Islam, a defence lawyer, asserts that the prosecution has adopted a deliberate strategy of not producing witnesses so that their written rather oral testimony in court can be allowed as evidence. “They abducted him because this government plans to hang Mr Sayedee”, claims Mr Islam. On November 14th the prosecution called for the defendant to receive the death sentence.
One might have expected that elected political figures, who have been the driving force behind the trial, would now be determined to show that the legal process is not becoming a travesty. Yet the official response to a daylight abduction of a witness is hard to fathom. The tribunal meekly asked the prosecution to “look into the matter”, which found that the story of an abduction had been fabricated. The police refused to file a complaint. On November 11th, Bangladesh’s attorney-general testified before the High Court on a writ habeas corpus that the abduction claim had been fabricated by the defence to bring the tribunal into disrepute.
None of this brings confidence that the trial is being conducted to the highest standards. Even observers who have long insisted that there is merit in the process now see a rush to get the trial finished. The goal may be to wrap up before a general election that is expected in a little over a year. An indication of this is the tribunal’s decision to limit the number of defence witnesses. In Mr Sayedee’s case 28 of 46 witnesses were not allowed to give testimony. The court limited the number of witnesses to 12 in the case of Ghulam Azam—the head of the Jamaat in 1971, who is accused of having created pro-Pakistan death squads. Such squads carried out many killings and rapes during the nine-month war that pitted Bengali-dominated East Pakistan against West Pakistan.
The trial was always going to be awkward, and the defence’s tactics, for example submitting a list of 2,000 defence witnesses in the case of Mr Azam, have not always helped. The greatest problem, however, is that the main perpetrators, former Western Pakistani officers, are not in the courtroom but in Pakistan. This month Bangladesh demanded an apology from Pakistan for war crimes committed by its army, but as usual Pakistan’s government refused. Perhaps as a result, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has spurned an invitation to visit Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
(Photo credit: AFP)
Bangladesh:Ever murkier
Nov 19th 2012, 15:26 by T.F.J.
Mr Bali was snatched as the defence team and its witness arrived at the tribunal on November 5th. They were ordered from their car and told to identify themselves. Hasanul Banna Sohag, a defence lawyer, says one of four men, who claimed to be from the police Detective Branch, “snatched [Mr] Bali from my hand” and forced him inside a white police van, which then drove off.
The witness was to have spoken in the case of Delwar Hossain Sayedee, the prosecution’s strongest. Mr Sayedee is one of seven leading figures of Jamaat-e-Islami (Bangladesh’s biggest Islamic party) who is on trial. He is charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, murder, religious persecution and 16 other counts. He pleads not guilty. Mr Bali was originally a prosecution witness but he never appeared in court to testify to what he is alleged to have told investigating officers that he saw: the killing of his brother on the orders of Mr Sayedee in 1971.
Instead, says a defence lawyer, Mr Bali was going to tell the court that Pakistani army officers killed his brother and Mr Sayedee was not involved. It is not the only allegation of forced testimony: Tajul Islam, a defence lawyer, asserts that the prosecution has adopted a deliberate strategy of not producing witnesses so that their written rather oral testimony in court can be allowed as evidence. “They abducted him because this government plans to hang Mr Sayedee”, claims Mr Islam. On November 14th the prosecution called for the defendant to receive the death sentence.
One might have expected that elected political figures, who have been the driving force behind the trial, would now be determined to show that the legal process is not becoming a travesty. Yet the official response to a daylight abduction of a witness is hard to fathom. The tribunal meekly asked the prosecution to “look into the matter”, which found that the story of an abduction had been fabricated. The police refused to file a complaint. On November 11th, Bangladesh’s attorney-general testified before the High Court on a writ habeas corpus that the abduction claim had been fabricated by the defence to bring the tribunal into disrepute.
None of this brings confidence that the trial is being conducted to the highest standards. Even observers who have long insisted that there is merit in the process now see a rush to get the trial finished. The goal may be to wrap up before a general election that is expected in a little over a year. An indication of this is the tribunal’s decision to limit the number of defence witnesses. In Mr Sayedee’s case 28 of 46 witnesses were not allowed to give testimony. The court limited the number of witnesses to 12 in the case of Ghulam Azam—the head of the Jamaat in 1971, who is accused of having created pro-Pakistan death squads. Such squads carried out many killings and rapes during the nine-month war that pitted Bengali-dominated East Pakistan against West Pakistan.
The trial was always going to be awkward, and the defence’s tactics, for example submitting a list of 2,000 defence witnesses in the case of Mr Azam, have not always helped. The greatest problem, however, is that the main perpetrators, former Western Pakistani officers, are not in the courtroom but in Pakistan. This month Bangladesh demanded an apology from Pakistan for war crimes committed by its army, but as usual Pakistan’s government refused. Perhaps as a result, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has spurned an invitation to visit Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.
(Photo credit: AFP)
The Gaza Conflict in numbers: Rockets & Ranges
Daily chart
Rockets and ranges
Nov 20th 2012, 17:21 by Economist.com
The Gaza conflict in numbers
This post has been updated
AFTER eight days of fighting between Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who run Gaza, and Israel, a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt and America, has been confirmed. The ceasefire may bring an end to the violence, in which over 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have died since November 14th, but the challenge for both sides will be whether they can translate a renewed informal understanding into something more lasting.
This post has been updated
AFTER eight days of fighting between Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who run Gaza, and Israel, a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt and America, has been confirmed. The ceasefire may bring an end to the violence, in which over 100 Palestinians and three Israelis have died since November 14th, but the challenge for both sides will be whether they can translate a renewed informal understanding into something more lasting.
Crisis in Church of England After Rejection of Female Bishops - NYTimes.com
Crisis in Church of England After Rejection of Female Bishops - NYTimes.com
The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, was speaking after an emergency meeting of bishops called to debate Tuesday’s narrow balloting by its General Synod rejecting the ordination of women as bishops, even though female priests account for one-third of the Church of England’s clergy members. Female priests hold senior positions like canon and archdeacon, and some had been hoping to secure appointments as bishops by 2014 if the change had been approved.
Crisis in Church of England After Rejection of Female Bishops
By ALAN COWELL and JOHN F. BURNS Published: November 21, 2012 133 Comments
LONDON — In a sign of deepening crisis in the Church of England after it rejected the appointment of women as bishops, its spiritual leader said on Wednesday that the church had “undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility” and had a “lot of explaining to do” to people who found its deliberations opaque.
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Marie-Elsa Bragg after a Church of England synod on Tuesday voted down a change to allow female bishops.
The vote represented a direct rebuff to Archbishop Williams’s reformist efforts during his 10 years as head of the church and a huge setback to a campaign for change that has been debated intensely and often bitterly for the past decade.
More than 70 percent of the 446 synod votes on Tuesday were in favor of opening the church’s episcopacy to women. But the synod’s voting procedures require a two-thirds majority in each of its three “houses”: bishops, clergy and laity. The bishops approved the change by 44 to 3, and the clergy by 148 to 45. The vote among the laity, though, was 132 to 74, six votes less than the two-thirds needed.
The Church of England is the so-called established church, meaning that it is recognized by law as representing the official religion, enjoys special privileges and is supported by the civil authorities.
Some lawmakers suggested on Wednesday that the synod vote would create a crisis of church-state relations, since the rejection of female bishops contradicted national laws on gender equality. Prime Minister David Cameron, already at loggerheads with the church over the government’s plans to legalize same-sex marriage next year, urged church authorities on Wednesday to devise a way out of the impasse.
“I’m very clear the time is right for women bishops; it was right many years ago,” he told Parliament on Wednesday. “They need to get on with it, as it were, and get with the program. But you do have to respect the individual institutions and the way they work while giving them a sharp prod.”
Addressing the synod on Wednesday in unusually unambiguous language, Archbishop Williams declared, “We have, to put it very bluntly, a lot of explaining to do.”
“Whatever the motivation for voting yesterday, whatever the theological principle on which people acted and spoke, the fact remains that a great deal of this discussion is not intelligible to our wider society.
“Worse than that, it seems as if we are willfully blind to some of the trends and priorities of that wider society,” he added, acknowledging criticism from within that the church — already facing dwindling congregations — has lost a broader relevance to modern society.
“We have, as a result of yesterday, undoubtedly lost a measure of credibility in our society,” he said.
The archbishop is to retire next month after spending much of his time devising complex compromises intended to prevent a schism between reformers and traditionalists.
The archbishop has already acknowledged failing to accomplish a lasting reconciliation, but the vote on Tuesday robbed him of a final opportunity to salvage something of a legacy.
“Very grim day,” Justin Welby, bishop of Durham and the archbishop’s recently appointed successor, said in a Twitter message overnight. “Most of all for women priests and supporters, need to surround all with prayer & love and cooperate with our healing God.”
Both Archbishop Williams and Bishop Welby support women as bishops. The vote on Tuesday left Bishop Welby set to preside over a church seemingly unable to resolve an issue that is one of several contentious debates relating to gender and sexuality.
The vote appeared to require reformers to begin the debate within the church all over again, with procedures that, if unamended, could delay another vote until 2019. The reaction among reformers was vociferous, and often angry, with some talking of breaking with the church. Many traditionalists had made similar threats if they were outvoted, some saying that they would consider quitting the Anglican fold and, along with other Anglo-Catholics, join the Roman Catholic Church, which has adopted measures to encourage a shift of allegiance, including provisions that allow married Anglican ministers to serve as Catholic priests.
Wednesday 21 November 2012
India Hangs the Only Surviving Mumbai Attacker - NYTimes.com
India Hangs the Only Surviving Mumbai Attacker - NYTimes.com
Enlarge This Image
India Hangs the Only Surviving Mumbai Attacker
Manish Swarup/Associated Press
Activists of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nationalist, celebrated Ajmal Kasab's execution in New Delhi on Wednesday.
By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: November 21, 2012
NEW DELHI — India hanged Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving Pakistani gunman from the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead, in a surprise action on Wednesday that analysts in both countries said would nonetheless be unlikely to derail improving ties. Sebastian D'Souza/Mumbai Mirror, via Associated Press
Ajmal Kasab at the Chatrapathi Sivaji Terminal railway station in Mumbai in November 2008.
Mr. Kasab was one of 10 young men who hijacked an Indian fishing boat, killed its captain, took a rubber dinghy into Mumbai and then systematically attacked high-end hotels, a train station, a hospital and a Jewish community center over the course of three chaotic days. The 10 were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terrorist group, and their actions were directed by phone by people in Pakistan. Nine of the attackers were killed by Indian forces, and their bodies were buried in an undisclosed location. Only Mr. Kasab survived.
Pictures of Mr. Kasab wearing a black shirt and carrying an automatic weapon played on television all day on Wednesday in India, where the execution received blanket coverage. By contrast, news channels in Pakistan gave it considerably less attention, and the Pakistani government avoided direct comment on Mr. Kasab, with a Foreign Office spokesman saying only that Pakistan “condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestation.”
Tariq Fatemi, a retired Pakistani senior diplomat, said that some extremist groups would be angered by the hanging but that many other Pakistanis, including senior government officials, had been “deeply embarrassed” by Mr. Kasab and the Mumbai attacks. And he predicted that the hanging would do little to slow improving ties between the two countries.
“There is a virtual consensus among Pakistan’s mainstream political parties on the importance of keeping the process on the rails and even promoting it,” said Mr. Fatemi, citing recent trade liberalization measures.
Indeed, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan confirmed on Tuesday that his country had ratified an agreement with India to allow six-month visitors visas, one of many steps in the two nations’ growing ties.
Despite the notable silence by Pakistani officials, news of Mr. Kasab’s execution met with a smoldering, almost resentful reception at his home village of Faridkot, about 150 miles from the eastern city of Lahore. Residents there on Wednesday either tried to distance themselves from the notorious militant or painted him as the victim of a vast Indian conspiracy.
“We have nothing to do with this hanging,” said Muhmmad Siddique, a 45-year-old rural laborer who, like several others, said Mr. Kasab was the victim of efforts by the Indian government to paint Pakistan as a “terrorist nation.”
As reporters and photographers arrived in the village, a modest farming center of about 1,300 families, a powerful local landlord and former mayor, Ghulam Mustafa Watoo, gathered people in the town center and gave orders for journalists to be forced to leave.
“The media is defaming our village,” he said. “We have repeatedly denied any link with Ajmal.” He claimed that Mr. Kasab in fact hails from a different village of the same name, across the border in India. Still, he added that he was against the hanging.
“To pardon is a good thing,” he said, before launching into a discussion of the 65-year-old enmity between India and Pakistan.
Men armed with batons stood at the top of the street where Mr. Kasab’s family once lived, barring the media from entering. At any rate, there was nobody home — the family left Faridkot some years ago, according to several reports.
For months after the attacks, Pakistan denied that Mr. Kasab was one of its citizens. The country finally admitted that he was in 2009.
In a letter and follow-up fax to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, Indian officials asked that Mr. Kasab’s family be informed of his execution. Since no one had asked for Mr. Kasab’s body, the government buried him at the Yeravada Central Prison in Pune, officials said.
Mr. Kasab was sentenced to hang in May 2010, but executions have become so rare in India — the last was in 2004 — that there had long been speculation about whether Indian officials would commute the sentence and, if not, when it might be carried out.
Indian officials said that Mr. Kasab’s execution hit the fast track on Nov. 5, when President Pranab Mukherjee, a veteran of India’s dominant Congress Party, decided on Nov. 5 to reject Mr. Kasab’s appeal for clemency. Some suspected politics played a role: crucial state elections will be held next month in Gujarat, where anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan sentiments are popular and where the Congress Party is a considerable underdog.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde denied, however, that any domestic political considerations played a role in the timing of Mr. Kasab’s hanging.
Analysts note that even after Mr. Kasab’s execution, many loose ends remain about the Mumbai attacks. Stephen Tankel, a lecturer at American University in Washington, D.C., and author of a book on Lashkar-e-Taiba, said that pressing questions loomed over the ability — or willingness — of the Pakistani government to successfully prosecute seven Lashkar-e-Taiba activists who stand accused of orchestrating the attacks, and who are currently on trial in Rawalpindi.
“This closes one chapter for India, but others remain open,” Mr. Tankel said.
New Dangers in Familiar Gaza Violence | Wilson Center
New Dangers in Familiar Gaza Violence | Wilson Center
New Dangers in Familiar Gaza Violence
Confrontation between Israel and Hamas is an old movie. But the grim version playing out now -- with Hamas rockets, particularly use of a long range Fajr 5, aimed at Tel Aviv , Israeli airstrikes and the killing of a top Hamas official -- contains new and disturbing scenes. That said, there is reason to hope this won't turn into a complete disaster film. And Egypt may well be the key.
The last time Israel and Hamas tangled, in 2008 and 2009, the result was mayhem that left as many as 1,400 Palestinians dead, saw Israelis terrified and living in shelters, and destroyed large areas of Gaza. With diametrically opposed strategies and political goals, Hamas and Israel are fights waiting to happen.
But the current conflict contains several new and dangerous aspects likely to be with us for some time to come.
Jihadi elements
Part of the reason we've witnessed an uptick in the number of rocket attacks -- 750 this year -- is that a variety of smaller groups that Hamas cannot control, or chooses not to control, have been operating with greater impunity. Some are former Hamas militants, others are newbies, and they are testing the limits of Israel's reactions with the rocket attacks. One of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, may have played a role in the August 8 attack that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead in Sinai.
Hamas under pressure
In the face of this new competition, Hamas just can't fold up its tent and surrender the field. That means the Gaza-based organization needs to compete with or control these groups. And it's tough for Hamas to function as Israel's police officer, struggling to contain the smaller jihadi groups. After all, part of Hamas' reason for being is its championing of the armed struggle, a cause it can't abandon.
Now, with Hamas' external base of operation undermined in Syria as a result of the popular uprising there, Gaza becomes the main seat and repository of its legitimacy. And it must always demonstrate that it's the key actor there. Unlike Fatah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, it doesn't want to launch a U.N. initiative for statehood or even toy with the notion of negotiating with Israel. Maintaining the military option remains paramount.
Israel's politics and strategy
The Israelis are determined, particularly as they face the uncertainties of the Arab spring/winter, to demonstrate that they can protect their interests, particularly if challenged.
New actions by the jihadi groups and longtime concerns over Hamas' high-trajectory weapons have made Israel more likely to launch preventive attacks. The killing of Hamas military wing leader Ahmed al-Ja'abari, whom the Israelis have apparently targeted at least once before, was the manifestation of this proactive posture.
When you combine that with pressure on the Israeli government from communities exposed to rocket attacks, not to mention the upcoming elections in January, you have the makings of a very determined response. Particularly against the backdrop of an Iranian nuclear threat he can't defuse, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a stake in demonstrating that Israel can deter the Gazan threat and deal with it successfully.
But as bad as the situation appears, logic and self-interest should suggest de-escalation. Neither Israel nor Hamas has a stake in repeating the events of 2008 and 2009. War didn't fix the problem then, and it's unlikely to fix it now. Nor do the Israelis -- when the real threat is Iran -- want to get into a major military and political mess over Gaza that would make their relationship with Egypt even more complicated.
The government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has taken steps to support the Palestinians: tough rhetoric, recalling its ambassador from Israel, summoning the Arab League and putting the issue into play at the U.N. and sending its Prime Minister to Gaza. But it has no stake in seeing this conflict escalate or in attaching its future to Hamas or the jihadis, which it fears both in Gaza and in Sinai.
Egypt also has other priorities, such as economic aid. And at a time when the International Monetary Fund is negotiating a loan of over $4 billion and when it could use American support, Egypt doesn't want to get too close to Hamas. The longer the conflict goes on, and the greater the civilian casualties, the harder it will be for Morsy to play a positive role.
Cooler heads ought to prevail. Egypt should press Hamas to control the jihadis and to reimpose a truce--perhaps in exchange for a more open border with Gaza and greater political support from Turkey and Qatar, and the U.S. should urge restraint on Israel to allow Hamas to stand down. But this is the Middle East, where movies don't usually have happy endings.
This article originally appeared on CNN.com
The last time Israel and Hamas tangled, in 2008 and 2009, the result was mayhem that left as many as 1,400 Palestinians dead, saw Israelis terrified and living in shelters, and destroyed large areas of Gaza. With diametrically opposed strategies and political goals, Hamas and Israel are fights waiting to happen.
But the current conflict contains several new and dangerous aspects likely to be with us for some time to come.
Jihadi elements
Part of the reason we've witnessed an uptick in the number of rocket attacks -- 750 this year -- is that a variety of smaller groups that Hamas cannot control, or chooses not to control, have been operating with greater impunity. Some are former Hamas militants, others are newbies, and they are testing the limits of Israel's reactions with the rocket attacks. One of those groups, Jaysh al-Islam, may have played a role in the August 8 attack that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead in Sinai.
Hamas under pressure
In the face of this new competition, Hamas just can't fold up its tent and surrender the field. That means the Gaza-based organization needs to compete with or control these groups. And it's tough for Hamas to function as Israel's police officer, struggling to contain the smaller jihadi groups. After all, part of Hamas' reason for being is its championing of the armed struggle, a cause it can't abandon.
Now, with Hamas' external base of operation undermined in Syria as a result of the popular uprising there, Gaza becomes the main seat and repository of its legitimacy. And it must always demonstrate that it's the key actor there. Unlike Fatah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, it doesn't want to launch a U.N. initiative for statehood or even toy with the notion of negotiating with Israel. Maintaining the military option remains paramount.
Israel's politics and strategy
The Israelis are determined, particularly as they face the uncertainties of the Arab spring/winter, to demonstrate that they can protect their interests, particularly if challenged.
New actions by the jihadi groups and longtime concerns over Hamas' high-trajectory weapons have made Israel more likely to launch preventive attacks. The killing of Hamas military wing leader Ahmed al-Ja'abari, whom the Israelis have apparently targeted at least once before, was the manifestation of this proactive posture.
When you combine that with pressure on the Israeli government from communities exposed to rocket attacks, not to mention the upcoming elections in January, you have the makings of a very determined response. Particularly against the backdrop of an Iranian nuclear threat he can't defuse, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a stake in demonstrating that Israel can deter the Gazan threat and deal with it successfully.
But as bad as the situation appears, logic and self-interest should suggest de-escalation. Neither Israel nor Hamas has a stake in repeating the events of 2008 and 2009. War didn't fix the problem then, and it's unlikely to fix it now. Nor do the Israelis -- when the real threat is Iran -- want to get into a major military and political mess over Gaza that would make their relationship with Egypt even more complicated.
The government of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy has taken steps to support the Palestinians: tough rhetoric, recalling its ambassador from Israel, summoning the Arab League and putting the issue into play at the U.N. and sending its Prime Minister to Gaza. But it has no stake in seeing this conflict escalate or in attaching its future to Hamas or the jihadis, which it fears both in Gaza and in Sinai.
Egypt also has other priorities, such as economic aid. And at a time when the International Monetary Fund is negotiating a loan of over $4 billion and when it could use American support, Egypt doesn't want to get too close to Hamas. The longer the conflict goes on, and the greater the civilian casualties, the harder it will be for Morsy to play a positive role.
Cooler heads ought to prevail. Egypt should press Hamas to control the jihadis and to reimpose a truce--perhaps in exchange for a more open border with Gaza and greater political support from Turkey and Qatar, and the U.S. should urge restraint on Israel to allow Hamas to stand down. But this is the Middle East, where movies don't usually have happy endings.
This article originally appeared on CNN.com
The day I saw 248 girls suffering genital mutilation | Society | The Observer
The day I saw 248 girls suffering genital mutilation | Society | The Observer
The day I saw 248 girls suffering genital mutilation
The day I saw 248 girls suffering genital mutilation
In 2006, while in Indonesia and six months pregnant, Abigail Haworth became one of the few journalists ever to see young girls being 'circumcised'. Until now she has been unable to tell this shocking story
Midwives wait for the next girl to be brought in for circumcision in Bandung, Indonesia. Photograph: Stephanie Sinclair / VII
It's 9.30am on a Sunday, and the mood inside the school building in Bandung, Indonesia, is festive. Mothers in headscarves and bright lipstick chat and eat coconut cakes. Javanese music thumps from an assembly hall. There are 400 people crammed into the primary school's ground floor. It's hot, noisy and chaotic, and almost everyone is smiling.
Twelve-year-old Suminah is not. She looks like she wants to punch somebody. Under her white hijab, which she has yanked down over her brow like a hoodie, her eyes have the livid, bewildered expression of a child who has been wronged by people she trusted. She sits on a plastic chair, swatting away her mother's efforts to placate her with a party cup of milk and a biscuit. Suminah is in severe pain. An hour earlier, her genitals were mutilated with scissors as she lay on a school desk.
During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal. Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or "female circumcision" that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric. At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation's social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: "It is necessary to control women's sexual urges," says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. "They must be chaste to preserve their beauty."
I have not written about the 2006 mass ceremony until now. I went there with an Indonesian activist organisation that worked within communities to eradicate FGM. Their job was difficult and highly sensitive. Afterwards, in fraught exchanges with the organisation's staff, it emerged that it was impossible for me to write a journalistic account of the event for the western media without compromising their efforts. It would destroy the trust they had forged with local leaders, the activists argued, and jeopardise their access to the people they needed to reach. I shelved my article; to sabotage the people working on the ground to stop the abuse would defeat the purpose of whatever I wrote. Such is the tricky partnership of journalism and activism at times.
Yet far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. This year, the gathering took place in February. Hundreds of girls were cut. The Assalaam foundation's website described it as "a celebration". Anti-FGM campaigners have proved ineffective against a rising tide of conservatism. Today, the issue is more that I can't not write about that day.
By geopolitical standards, modern Indonesia is an Asian superstar. The world's fourth-largest country and most populous Muslim nation of 240 million people, it is beloved by foreign investors for its buoyant economy and stable democracy. It is feted as a model of tolerant Islam. Last month, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited London to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen in recognition of Indonesia's "remarkable transformation". Yet, as befitting an archipelago of 17,000 islands, it's a complicated place, too. Corruption and superstition often rule by stealth. Patriarchy runs deep. Abortion is illegal, and hardline edicts controlling what women wear and do are steadily creeping into local by-laws.
Although Indonesia is not a country where FGM is widely reported, the practice is endemic. Two nationwide studies carried out by population researchers in 2003 and 2010 found that between 86 and 100% of households surveyed subjected their daughters to genital cutting, usually before the age of five. More than 90% of adults said they wanted the practice to continue.
In late 2006, a breakthrough towards ending FGM in Indonesia occurred when the Ministry of Health banned doctors from performing it on the grounds that it was "potentially harmful". The authorities, however, did not enforce the ruling. Hospitals continued to offer sunat perempuan for baby girls, often as part of discount birth packages that also included vaccinations and ear piercing. In the countryside, it was performed mainly by traditional midwives – women thought to have shamanic healing skills known as dukun – as it had been for centuries. The Indonesian method commonly involves cutting off part of the hood and/or tip of the clitoris with scissors, a blade or a piece of sharpened bamboo.
Last year, the situation regressed further. In early 2011, Indonesia's parliament effectively reversed the ban on FGM by approving guidelines for trained doctors on how to perform it. The rationale was that, since the ban had failed, issuing guidelines would "safeguard the female reproductive system", officials said. Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama, also issued an edict telling its 30 million followers that it approved of female genital cutting, but that doctors "should not cut too much".
The combined effect was to legitimise the practice all over again.
It is impossible to second-guess what kind of place holds mass ceremonies to mutilate girl children, with the aim of forever curbing their sexual pleasure. Bandung is Indonesia's third largest city, 180km east of the capital Jakarta. I had been there twice before my visit in 2006. It was like any provincial hub in booming southeast Asia: a cheerful, frenzied collision of homespun commerce and cut-price globalisation. Cheap jeans and T-shirts spilled out of shops. On the roof of a factory outlet there was a giant model of Spider-Man doing the splits.
Bandung's rampant commercialism had also reinvigorated its moral extremists. While most of Indonesia's 214 million Muslims are moderate, the 1998 fall of the Suharto regime had seen the resurgence of radical strains of Islam. Local clerics were condemning the city's "western-style spiritual pollution". Members of the Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline vigilante group, were smashing up nightclubs and harassing unmarried couples.
The stricter moral climate had a devastating effect on efforts to eradicate FGM. The Qur'an does not mention the practice, and it is outlawed in most Islamic countries. Yet leading Indonesian clerics were growing ever more insistent that it was a sacred duty.
A week before I attended the Assalaam foundation's khitanan massal or mass circumcision ceremony, the chairman of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the nation's most powerful council of Islamic leaders, issued this statement: "Circumcision is a requirement for every Muslim woman," said Amidhan, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. "It not only cleans the filth from her genitals, it also contributes to a girl's growth."
It was early, before 8am, when we arrived at a school painted hospital green in a Bandung suburb on the day of the ceremony. Women and girls clad in long tunics were lining up outside to register. It was a female-only affair (men and boys had their own circumcision gathering upstairs), and the mood was relaxed and sisterly. From their sun-lined faces and battered sandals, some of the mothers looked quite poor – poor enough, possibly, to make the foundation's 80,000 rupiah cash handout as much of an enticement as the promise of spiritual purity.
Inside, I was greeted by Hdjella, 57, a teacher and midwife who would supervise the cutting. She was wearing a pink floral apron with a frilly pocket. She had been a traditional midwife for 32 years, she said, although, like most dukun, she had no formal training.
"Boy or girl?" she asked me, brightly. I was almost six months pregnant at the time.
"Boy," I told her.
"Praise Allah."
Hdjella insisted that the form of FGM they practised is "helpful to girls' health". She explained that they clean the genitals and then use sterilised scissors to cut off part of the hood, or prepuce, and the tip of the clitoris.
"How is this helpful to girls' health?" I asked. "It balances their emotions so they don't get sexually over-stimulated," she said, enunciating in schoolmistress fashion. "It also helps them to urinate more easily and reduces the bad smell."
Any other benefits? "Oh yes," she said, with a tinkling laugh. "My grandmother always said that circumcised women cook more delicious rice."
FGM in Indonesia is laden with superstition and confusion. A common myth is that it is largely "symbolic", involving no genital damage. A study published in 2010 by Yarsi University in Jakarta found this is true only rarely, in a few animist communities where the ritual involves rubbing the clitoris with turmeric or bamboo. While Indonesia doesn't practise the severest forms of mutilation found in parts of Africa and the Middle East, such as infibulation (removing the clitoris and labia and sewing up the genital area) or complete clitoral excision, the study found the Indonesian procedure "involves pain and actual cutting of the clitoris" in more than 80% of cases.
Hdjella took me to the classroom where the cutting would soon begin. The curtains were closed. Desks had been covered in sheets and towels to form about eight beds. Around each one, three middle-aged women wearing headscarves waited in readiness. Their faces were lit from underneath by cheap desk lamps, giving them a ghoulish glow. There were children's drawings and multiplication tables on the walls.
The room filled up with noise and people. Girls started to cry and protest as soon as their mothers hustled them inside. Rapidly, the mood turned business-like. "We have many girls to circumcise this morning, about 300," Hdjella shouted above the escalating din. As children were hoisted on to desks I realised with a jolt: this is an assembly line.
Hdjella led me to a four-year-old girl who was lying down. As the girl squirmed, two midwives put their faces close to hers. They smiled at her, making soft noises, but their hands took an arm and a leg each in a claw-like grip. "Look, look," Hdjella commanded, as a third woman leant in and steadily snipped off part of the girl's clitoris with what looked like a pair of nail scissors. "It's nothing, you see? There is not much blood. All done!" The girl's scream was a long guttural rattle, which got louder as the midwife dabbed at her genitals with antiseptic.
In the dingy, crowded room, her cries merged with the sobs and screeches of other girls lying on desks, the grating sing-song clucking of the midwives, the surreally casual conversational hum of waiting mothers. There was no air.
Outside in the courtyard, the festive atmosphere grew as girls and their mothers emerged from the classroom. There were snacks and music, and later, prayers.
Ety, 40, was elated. She had brought her two daughters, aged seven and three, to be cut. "I want them to be teachers. Being circumcised will bring them good luck," she said. Ety was a farmer who came from a village outside Bandung. "Daughters should be pure and obey their parents."
Neng Apip, 28, was smiling radiantly. She said she was happy her newly cut daughter Rima would now grow up into "a good Muslim girl". Rima, whose enormous brown eyes were oozing tears, was nine months old. Apip kissed her and gave her a rice cracker to suck. "Shh, shh, all better now," she cooed.
Tradition is usually about remembering. In the case of FGM in Indonesia it seems to be a cycle of forgetting. The act of cutting is a hidden business perpetrated by mothers and midwives, nearly all of whom underwent FGM themselves as young children. The women I met had little memory of being cut, so they had few qualms about subjecting their daughters to the same fate. "It's just what we do," I heard over and over again.
When the pain subsides, it is far from all better. The girls in the classroom don't know that removing part of their clitoris not only endangers their health but reflects deep-rooted attitudes that women do not have the right to control their own sexuality. The physical risks alone include infection, haemorrhage, scarring, urinary and reproductive problems, and death. When Yarsi University researchers interviewed girls aged 15-18 for their 2010 study, they found many were traumatised when they learned their genitals had been cut during childhood. They experienced problems such as depression, self-loathing, loss of interest in sex and a compulsive need to urinate.
I saw my interpreter, Widiana, speaking to Suminah, the 12-year-old who was the oldest girl there, and went to join them. Suminah said she didn't want to come. "I was shaking and crying last night. I was so scared I couldn't sleep." It was a "very bad, sharp pain" when she was cut, she said, and she still felt sore and angry. Widiana asked what she planned to do in the evening. "We will have a special meal at home and then read the Qur'an," said Suminah. "Then I will listen to my Britney Spears CD."
Back in Jakarta, an Indonesian friend, Rino, agreed to help me find out about the newborn-girl "package deals" at city hospitals. Rino phoned around Jakarta's hospitals. They told him he must see a doctor to discuss the matter. So we decided that is what we would do: since I was visibly pregnant, we'd visit the hospitals as husband and wife expecting our first baby. ("It's not necessary to bring your wife," Rino was told repeatedly when he rang back to book the appointments.)
We visited seven hospitals chosen at random. Only one, Hermina, a specialist maternity hospital, said it did not perform sunat perempuan. The other six all gave package prices, varying from 300,000 rupiah to 550,000 rupiah (£20-£36), for infant vaccinations, ear piercing and genital cutting within two months of birth.
Interestingly, the only doctor who argued against the procedure was a female gynaecologist from the largest Islamic government hospital, the Rumah Sakit Islam Jakarta. "You can have it done here if you wish," the doctor said with a sigh. "But I don't recommend it. It's not mandatory in Islam. It's painful and it's a great pity for girls."
Last month I spoke to Andy Yentriyani, a commissioner at Indonesia's National Commission on Violence Against Women. Yentriyani told me the problem is now worse than ever. Since the government's guidelines on FGM came into effect last year, more hospitals have started offering the procedure.
"Doctors see the guidelines as a licence to make money," she says. "Hospitals are even offering female circumcision in parts of Sumatra where there has never been a strong tradition of cutting girls."
"They are creating new demand purely for profit?"
"Yes. They're including it in birth packages. People don't really understand what they're signing up for." Nor do some medical staff, she adds. The new guidelines say doctors should "make a small cut on the frontal part of the clitoris, without harming the clitoris". But Yentriyani says that most doctors are trained only in male circumcision, so they follow the same principle of slicing off flesh.
Moreover, according to The Jakarta Post, the guidelines were rushed through partly in response to the deaths of several infant girls from botched FGM procedures at hospitals.
Likewise, Yentriyani says, the recent endorsement of FGM by some Islamic leaders has vindicated those carrying out mass cutting ceremonies, such as the Assalaam foundation. "Women are caught in a power struggle between religion and state as Indonesia finds a new identity," the activist explains. "Clamping down on morality, enforcing chastity, returning to so-called traditions such as female circumcision – these things help religious leaders to win hearts and minds."
Yentriyani and other Indonesian supporters of women's rights believe FGM can never be justified as a religious or cultural tradition. "Our government and religious leaders must condemn it outright as an act of violence, otherwise it will never end," she says. Her view is supported by organisations such as Amnesty International, which has called on Indonesia to repeal its guidelines allowing FGM. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also weighed in, saying in February this year that, although many cultural traditions must be respected, female genital cutting is not one of them. "It is, plain and simply, a human rights violation," Clinton declared.
Suminah will be 18 now; a grown woman. She could well be married, or at least betrothed. Soon enough she will probably have her own kids. I hope she's forgotten her pain, but held on to her rage.
Twelve-year-old Suminah is not. She looks like she wants to punch somebody. Under her white hijab, which she has yanked down over her brow like a hoodie, her eyes have the livid, bewildered expression of a child who has been wronged by people she trusted. She sits on a plastic chair, swatting away her mother's efforts to placate her with a party cup of milk and a biscuit. Suminah is in severe pain. An hour earlier, her genitals were mutilated with scissors as she lay on a school desk.
During the morning, 248 Indonesian girls undergo the same ordeal. Suminah is the oldest, the youngest is just five months. It is April 2006 and the occasion is a mass ceremony to perform sunat perempuan or "female circumcision" that has been held annually since 1958 by the Bandung-based Yayasan Assalaam, an Islamic foundation that runs a mosque and several schools. The foundation holds the event in the lunar month of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and pays parents 80,000 rupiah (£6) and a bag of food for each daughter they bring to be cut.
It is well established that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not required in Muslim law. It is an ancient cultural practice that existed before Islam, Christianity and Judaism. It is also agreed across large swathes of the world that it is barbaric. At the mass ceremony, I ask the foundation's social welfare secretary, Lukman Hakim, why they do it. His answer not only predates the dawn of religion, it predates human evolution: "It is necessary to control women's sexual urges," says Hakim, a stern, bespectacled man in a fez. "They must be chaste to preserve their beauty."
I have not written about the 2006 mass ceremony until now. I went there with an Indonesian activist organisation that worked within communities to eradicate FGM. Their job was difficult and highly sensitive. Afterwards, in fraught exchanges with the organisation's staff, it emerged that it was impossible for me to write a journalistic account of the event for the western media without compromising their efforts. It would destroy the trust they had forged with local leaders, the activists argued, and jeopardise their access to the people they needed to reach. I shelved my article; to sabotage the people working on the ground to stop the abuse would defeat the purpose of whatever I wrote. Such is the tricky partnership of journalism and activism at times.
Yet far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. This year, the gathering took place in February. Hundreds of girls were cut. The Assalaam foundation's website described it as "a celebration". Anti-FGM campaigners have proved ineffective against a rising tide of conservatism. Today, the issue is more that I can't not write about that day.
By geopolitical standards, modern Indonesia is an Asian superstar. The world's fourth-largest country and most populous Muslim nation of 240 million people, it is beloved by foreign investors for its buoyant economy and stable democracy. It is feted as a model of tolerant Islam. Last month, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono visited London to receive an honorary knighthood from the Queen in recognition of Indonesia's "remarkable transformation". Yet, as befitting an archipelago of 17,000 islands, it's a complicated place, too. Corruption and superstition often rule by stealth. Patriarchy runs deep. Abortion is illegal, and hardline edicts controlling what women wear and do are steadily creeping into local by-laws.
Although Indonesia is not a country where FGM is widely reported, the practice is endemic. Two nationwide studies carried out by population researchers in 2003 and 2010 found that between 86 and 100% of households surveyed subjected their daughters to genital cutting, usually before the age of five. More than 90% of adults said they wanted the practice to continue.
In late 2006, a breakthrough towards ending FGM in Indonesia occurred when the Ministry of Health banned doctors from performing it on the grounds that it was "potentially harmful". The authorities, however, did not enforce the ruling. Hospitals continued to offer sunat perempuan for baby girls, often as part of discount birth packages that also included vaccinations and ear piercing. In the countryside, it was performed mainly by traditional midwives – women thought to have shamanic healing skills known as dukun – as it had been for centuries. The Indonesian method commonly involves cutting off part of the hood and/or tip of the clitoris with scissors, a blade or a piece of sharpened bamboo.
Last year, the situation regressed further. In early 2011, Indonesia's parliament effectively reversed the ban on FGM by approving guidelines for trained doctors on how to perform it. The rationale was that, since the ban had failed, issuing guidelines would "safeguard the female reproductive system", officials said. Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, the Nahdlatul Ulama, also issued an edict telling its 30 million followers that it approved of female genital cutting, but that doctors "should not cut too much".
The combined effect was to legitimise the practice all over again.
It is impossible to second-guess what kind of place holds mass ceremonies to mutilate girl children, with the aim of forever curbing their sexual pleasure. Bandung is Indonesia's third largest city, 180km east of the capital Jakarta. I had been there twice before my visit in 2006. It was like any provincial hub in booming southeast Asia: a cheerful, frenzied collision of homespun commerce and cut-price globalisation. Cheap jeans and T-shirts spilled out of shops. On the roof of a factory outlet there was a giant model of Spider-Man doing the splits.
Bandung's rampant commercialism had also reinvigorated its moral extremists. While most of Indonesia's 214 million Muslims are moderate, the 1998 fall of the Suharto regime had seen the resurgence of radical strains of Islam. Local clerics were condemning the city's "western-style spiritual pollution". Members of the Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline vigilante group, were smashing up nightclubs and harassing unmarried couples.
The stricter moral climate had a devastating effect on efforts to eradicate FGM. The Qur'an does not mention the practice, and it is outlawed in most Islamic countries. Yet leading Indonesian clerics were growing ever more insistent that it was a sacred duty.
A week before I attended the Assalaam foundation's khitanan massal or mass circumcision ceremony, the chairman of the Majelis Ulama Indonesia, the nation's most powerful council of Islamic leaders, issued this statement: "Circumcision is a requirement for every Muslim woman," said Amidhan, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. "It not only cleans the filth from her genitals, it also contributes to a girl's growth."
It was early, before 8am, when we arrived at a school painted hospital green in a Bandung suburb on the day of the ceremony. Women and girls clad in long tunics were lining up outside to register. It was a female-only affair (men and boys had their own circumcision gathering upstairs), and the mood was relaxed and sisterly. From their sun-lined faces and battered sandals, some of the mothers looked quite poor – poor enough, possibly, to make the foundation's 80,000 rupiah cash handout as much of an enticement as the promise of spiritual purity.
Inside, I was greeted by Hdjella, 57, a teacher and midwife who would supervise the cutting. She was wearing a pink floral apron with a frilly pocket. She had been a traditional midwife for 32 years, she said, although, like most dukun, she had no formal training.
"Boy or girl?" she asked me, brightly. I was almost six months pregnant at the time.
"Boy," I told her.
"Praise Allah."
Hdjella insisted that the form of FGM they practised is "helpful to girls' health". She explained that they clean the genitals and then use sterilised scissors to cut off part of the hood, or prepuce, and the tip of the clitoris.
"How is this helpful to girls' health?" I asked. "It balances their emotions so they don't get sexually over-stimulated," she said, enunciating in schoolmistress fashion. "It also helps them to urinate more easily and reduces the bad smell."
Any other benefits? "Oh yes," she said, with a tinkling laugh. "My grandmother always said that circumcised women cook more delicious rice."
FGM in Indonesia is laden with superstition and confusion. A common myth is that it is largely "symbolic", involving no genital damage. A study published in 2010 by Yarsi University in Jakarta found this is true only rarely, in a few animist communities where the ritual involves rubbing the clitoris with turmeric or bamboo. While Indonesia doesn't practise the severest forms of mutilation found in parts of Africa and the Middle East, such as infibulation (removing the clitoris and labia and sewing up the genital area) or complete clitoral excision, the study found the Indonesian procedure "involves pain and actual cutting of the clitoris" in more than 80% of cases.
Hdjella took me to the classroom where the cutting would soon begin. The curtains were closed. Desks had been covered in sheets and towels to form about eight beds. Around each one, three middle-aged women wearing headscarves waited in readiness. Their faces were lit from underneath by cheap desk lamps, giving them a ghoulish glow. There were children's drawings and multiplication tables on the walls.
The room filled up with noise and people. Girls started to cry and protest as soon as their mothers hustled them inside. Rapidly, the mood turned business-like. "We have many girls to circumcise this morning, about 300," Hdjella shouted above the escalating din. As children were hoisted on to desks I realised with a jolt: this is an assembly line.
Hdjella led me to a four-year-old girl who was lying down. As the girl squirmed, two midwives put their faces close to hers. They smiled at her, making soft noises, but their hands took an arm and a leg each in a claw-like grip. "Look, look," Hdjella commanded, as a third woman leant in and steadily snipped off part of the girl's clitoris with what looked like a pair of nail scissors. "It's nothing, you see? There is not much blood. All done!" The girl's scream was a long guttural rattle, which got louder as the midwife dabbed at her genitals with antiseptic.
In the dingy, crowded room, her cries merged with the sobs and screeches of other girls lying on desks, the grating sing-song clucking of the midwives, the surreally casual conversational hum of waiting mothers. There was no air.
Outside in the courtyard, the festive atmosphere grew as girls and their mothers emerged from the classroom. There were snacks and music, and later, prayers.
Ety, 40, was elated. She had brought her two daughters, aged seven and three, to be cut. "I want them to be teachers. Being circumcised will bring them good luck," she said. Ety was a farmer who came from a village outside Bandung. "Daughters should be pure and obey their parents."
Neng Apip, 28, was smiling radiantly. She said she was happy her newly cut daughter Rima would now grow up into "a good Muslim girl". Rima, whose enormous brown eyes were oozing tears, was nine months old. Apip kissed her and gave her a rice cracker to suck. "Shh, shh, all better now," she cooed.
Tradition is usually about remembering. In the case of FGM in Indonesia it seems to be a cycle of forgetting. The act of cutting is a hidden business perpetrated by mothers and midwives, nearly all of whom underwent FGM themselves as young children. The women I met had little memory of being cut, so they had few qualms about subjecting their daughters to the same fate. "It's just what we do," I heard over and over again.
When the pain subsides, it is far from all better. The girls in the classroom don't know that removing part of their clitoris not only endangers their health but reflects deep-rooted attitudes that women do not have the right to control their own sexuality. The physical risks alone include infection, haemorrhage, scarring, urinary and reproductive problems, and death. When Yarsi University researchers interviewed girls aged 15-18 for their 2010 study, they found many were traumatised when they learned their genitals had been cut during childhood. They experienced problems such as depression, self-loathing, loss of interest in sex and a compulsive need to urinate.
I saw my interpreter, Widiana, speaking to Suminah, the 12-year-old who was the oldest girl there, and went to join them. Suminah said she didn't want to come. "I was shaking and crying last night. I was so scared I couldn't sleep." It was a "very bad, sharp pain" when she was cut, she said, and she still felt sore and angry. Widiana asked what she planned to do in the evening. "We will have a special meal at home and then read the Qur'an," said Suminah. "Then I will listen to my Britney Spears CD."
Back in Jakarta, an Indonesian friend, Rino, agreed to help me find out about the newborn-girl "package deals" at city hospitals. Rino phoned around Jakarta's hospitals. They told him he must see a doctor to discuss the matter. So we decided that is what we would do: since I was visibly pregnant, we'd visit the hospitals as husband and wife expecting our first baby. ("It's not necessary to bring your wife," Rino was told repeatedly when he rang back to book the appointments.)
We visited seven hospitals chosen at random. Only one, Hermina, a specialist maternity hospital, said it did not perform sunat perempuan. The other six all gave package prices, varying from 300,000 rupiah to 550,000 rupiah (£20-£36), for infant vaccinations, ear piercing and genital cutting within two months of birth.
Interestingly, the only doctor who argued against the procedure was a female gynaecologist from the largest Islamic government hospital, the Rumah Sakit Islam Jakarta. "You can have it done here if you wish," the doctor said with a sigh. "But I don't recommend it. It's not mandatory in Islam. It's painful and it's a great pity for girls."
Last month I spoke to Andy Yentriyani, a commissioner at Indonesia's National Commission on Violence Against Women. Yentriyani told me the problem is now worse than ever. Since the government's guidelines on FGM came into effect last year, more hospitals have started offering the procedure.
"Doctors see the guidelines as a licence to make money," she says. "Hospitals are even offering female circumcision in parts of Sumatra where there has never been a strong tradition of cutting girls."
"They are creating new demand purely for profit?"
"Yes. They're including it in birth packages. People don't really understand what they're signing up for." Nor do some medical staff, she adds. The new guidelines say doctors should "make a small cut on the frontal part of the clitoris, without harming the clitoris". But Yentriyani says that most doctors are trained only in male circumcision, so they follow the same principle of slicing off flesh.
Moreover, according to The Jakarta Post, the guidelines were rushed through partly in response to the deaths of several infant girls from botched FGM procedures at hospitals.
Likewise, Yentriyani says, the recent endorsement of FGM by some Islamic leaders has vindicated those carrying out mass cutting ceremonies, such as the Assalaam foundation. "Women are caught in a power struggle between religion and state as Indonesia finds a new identity," the activist explains. "Clamping down on morality, enforcing chastity, returning to so-called traditions such as female circumcision – these things help religious leaders to win hearts and minds."
Yentriyani and other Indonesian supporters of women's rights believe FGM can never be justified as a religious or cultural tradition. "Our government and religious leaders must condemn it outright as an act of violence, otherwise it will never end," she says. Her view is supported by organisations such as Amnesty International, which has called on Indonesia to repeal its guidelines allowing FGM. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also weighed in, saying in February this year that, although many cultural traditions must be respected, female genital cutting is not one of them. "It is, plain and simply, a human rights violation," Clinton declared.
Suminah will be 18 now; a grown woman. She could well be married, or at least betrothed. Soon enough she will probably have her own kids. I hope she's forgotten her pain, but held on to her rage.
Saturday 17 November 2012
Friday 16 November 2012
Sex and the Modern Soldier - By Rosa Brooks | Foreign Policy
Sex and the Modern Soldier - By Rosa Brooks | Foreign Policy
As I write this, the Petraeus saga, which morphed first into the Petraeus-Broadwell saga, and then into the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley saga, followed closely by the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen saga, is morphing into Phase 5, or maybe it's Phase 6. Who can keep track? By now, I believe, it's the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen-Evil Twin Natalie-Shirtless FBI Agent-Eric Cantor-Classified Documents story.
By the time you read this, the saga will have morphed into Phase 11 or 12, and it will no doubt have been revealed that Anthony Weiner was Jill Kelley's college roommate before a series of harassing phone calls from a Lockheed Martin executive led him to take up residence instead in one of those fancy hotel rooms favored by disgraced Gen. Kip Ward. Prince Harry and the Waffle House guy will probably also turn out to be involved.
But let's put schadenfreude briefly aside -- who can possibly keep up with these high-society types, anyway? -- and focus instead on the important question my mother asked me today, in a breathless early-morning call: What is up with these generals?
More specifically: Does the U.S. military have an adultery problem? A woman problem? A generic, all-purpose craziness, sleaze, and corruption problem? A public-image problem?
Answering these questions in order, I can offer a definitive "sort of," "kind of, "maybe," and "very possibly."
First, adultery and related peccadilloes.
Officially, military culture tends to smile upon marriage and frown upon singleness. The military provides married personnel with benefits not available to single personnel, and even today, officers often feel that remaining unmarried is regarded as professionally suspect (not just because it may raise suspicions of homosexuality -- for senior male officers in particular, a wife has historically been considered a must-have accessory, needed in her hostess role as much as in her role as companion). But ironically, the military's very "pro-marriage" culture may lead to a higher incidence of divorce and marital problems.
A recent Rand Corp. study found that compared with demographically matched civilians, military personnel are more likely to get married -- but after leaving the military, veterans are more likely than non-veterans to get divorced. "[T]hese findings," the study concluded, "suggest that the military provides incentives to marry … but that once the servicemembers return to civilian life and these incentives are absent, they suffer higher rates of marital dissolution than comparable civilians. This suggests that the military may encourage unions that would not normally be formalized into marriage in a civilian context, and are consequently more fragile upon exit from the military."
If some service members marry because it's expected or rewarded rather than because they've found a compatible partner, those marriages are presumably more fragile before exit from the military as well as after. There's no way to know for sure whether infidelity is more common in the military than in the civilian world, of course. Needless to say, adultery is one of those things people generally -- no pun intended -- lie about. But even if we leave aside the question of military marriages that should probably never have been entered into, it seems reasonable to suppose that adultery might be more common in the military than in the civilian world.
Military careers can place great strain on marriages. Military families are frequently uprooted, and deployments can separate spouses by thousands of miles, year after year. Consider David and Holly Petraeus, who reportedly moved 23 times over the course of their marriage and were frequently separated by lengthy training periods and deployments. That would test any marriage.
Military personnel have -- literally -- a societally granted license to kill, at least in wartime, and it's reasonable to expect those entrusted with such power to adhere to unusually high standards of behavior. Thus, adultery is still punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) -- and people still lose their jobs over it. "Mere" adultery is generally not sufficient to get a service member in legal trouble, though. That kicks in only if there's evidence that the adulterous conduct was "to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces." In other words, if no one's making much of a fuss about it and adultery is the only form of misconduct alleged, no one's likely to be punished. But the risk is always there.
Of course, a wide range of other conduct can also be prejudicial to good order and discipline or likely to "bring discredit" upon the armed forces, and the UCMJ offers fairly wide latitude to commanders who believe that their subordinates have been up to no good, regardless of the form taken by the no-goodness. For officers, "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" remains punishable under the UCMJ ("gentleman" has been generously defined to include ladies too). How often these UCMJ provisions are used to go after sexual indiscretions is unknown, as the military does not keep easily accessible records of such allegations or case dispositions.
Even retired military personnel are subject to the UCMJ, though the military rarely takes the trouble to go after retired service members. Will retired General Petraeus find himself in legal trouble? Probably not, unless a hue and cry over double standards forces the military to take action. Why should a retired four-star get away with conduct that could lead to a demotion, separation, or reduction in pay for a junior officer or enlisted soldier?
The Woman Problem
It would be fair to say that the military still has something of a woman problem. Although most military jobs are now open to women -- the exception being certain combat jobs -- women still make up only a small minority of all military personnel (about 15 percent) and a still-smaller minority of senior officers (no surprise, given that today's senior women officers joined the military, by definition, in an era in which even fewer jobs were open to women).
The military remains plagued by allegations of sexual harassment and assault, and a number of studies by the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs have concluded that women in the military face higher rates of sexual assault than do civilian women. Here again, no big surprise: The military remains an overwhelmingly male -- and overwhelmingly macho -- institution. Women are outnumbered and often rendered nearly invisible in a culture in which nearly all senior officers are male.
This extends to the home front, as well. In certain ways, the informal culture of military officers resembles the 1950s more than the 21st century. Military life isn't just hard on marriage -- it's also hard on the careers of the (mostly female) civilian spouses of military personnel. Rising up the career ladder isn't easy when you move from one military base to another every few years. One military friend of mine recalls a general telling junior officers -- in a recent lecture at an official Army command training event -- that they should actively discourage their wives from pursuing careers, because career women would be less supportive and flexible military wives. And though official publications now speak of officers' "spouses" rather than "wives," the military still produces etiquette guides for spouses, with a rather gendered focus on appropriate forms of address at social functions and the proper pouring of tea and coffee.
Here's something I worry about: Will the fallout from the Petraeus scandal make it even tougher for military women to rise to senior rank? In the military as in the civilian world, career advancement often has as much to do with informal mentoring relationships as with formal education or qualifications. No one bats an eye when the (male) boss goes out running or drinking with his (male) subordinates, but post-Petraeus, how many male senior officers will do the same with female subordinates? Not a lot -- and though such risk-aversion may reduce any appearance of impropriety, it will also reduce the odds that women will get the crucial mentoring that is provided so freely to their male colleagues.
All-purpose craziness, sleaze, and corruption?
Most soldiers I know do their best to live up to the Army values: "loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage." Every service has its own creed, but the core values of each service are basically the same, and every day, most of the roughly 2.5 million men -- and women -- in the military try their best to live up to them.
Needless to say, however, these values don't appear to have been particularly exemplified by the alleged recent behavior of General Petraeus and General John Allen. And it's not the marital infidelity -- acknowledged or alleged -- that bothers me. I'm willing to write that off to human frailty. Did General Allen exchange risqué emails with Kelley? Maybe -- but I don't really care. As for General Petraeus, when a lonely late-middle-aged married man with a stressful job falls into bed (or under the desk) with an attractive and adoring younger woman, it's not excusable, perhaps, but it's certainly understandable -- and really none of the country's business.
It's the emerging story of the all-too cozy relationship between Tampa's nouveau riche and the top brass at Centcom that makes me feel less charitable. Perhaps le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point -- but why were Petraeus and Allen spending all their free time at lavish parties hosted by a rich Tampa socialite? Who told Kelley it was fine to declare herself the "social liaison" to Centcom? Why didn't the fact that Kelley and her family were embroiled in multiple lawsuits alleging fraud and unpaid debt set off alarm bells for anyone at Centcom? Who anointed the 37-year-old Kelley as a Centcom "honorary ambassador," fostering relations between top Centcom officials and "Middle Eastern government officials"?
And, of course, what induced two of America's highest-ranking generals to wade into a vicious custody case involving the child of Kelley's twin sister, Natalie Khawam, sending character testimonials on Khawam's behalf to a judge who had declared Khawam to be a "psychologically unstable" manufacturer of "sensational accusations … so numerous, so extraordinary, and … so distorted that they defy any common sense view of reality"?
Talk about conduct "of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."
Needless to say, no one's sure yet what's true and what isn't, and what more lies hidden under various carpets and rocks. But enough has already emerged to raise serious questions about the ethics and judgment of several top officials. Was there actual corruption, nepotism, and impropriety? Unclear -- but there was unquestionably an appearance of impropriety, and we should expect better of America's most decorated military officers.
Service members sure expect better of them. I've been asking around among military friends, and all I hear is shock, disgust, and a sense of betrayal. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," one officer told me. "We're being had. These guys have chests full of medals, and they preach to us about military values. But look at this -- what the f*** are they doing?"
Does the military have a public image problem?
Whatever the reaction within the military community, will these revelations taint the military's public image? Since the 9/11 attacks, the military has become the most trusted institution in America. Indeed, Americans have put the military on such a high pedestal that it's considered near sacrilege for civilians to offer any criticism of the military. But there's no guarantee that things will stay that way. It depends on the breadth and depth of the rot.
If the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen business appears to be an aberration, Americans will forgive and forget: after two decades of war, most people are willing to cut the military some slack.
But if this week's revelations turn out to be the tip of the iceberg -- if whistle-blowers, media probes, and congressional investigations produce a rash of similar stories involving other senior military figures -- the public's patience may wear thin, fast. Being America's most trusted institution won't help the military much then: We're more appalled by those who betray our trust than by the bad behavior of those we never trusted in the first place. Sex abuse scandals in the Catholic clergy are a case in point.
The higher they are, the harder they fall.
Sex and the Modern Soldier
Just how bad is the military's woman problem?
BY ROSA BROOKS | NOVEMBER 14, 2012
By the time you read this, the saga will have morphed into Phase 11 or 12, and it will no doubt have been revealed that Anthony Weiner was Jill Kelley's college roommate before a series of harassing phone calls from a Lockheed Martin executive led him to take up residence instead in one of those fancy hotel rooms favored by disgraced Gen. Kip Ward. Prince Harry and the Waffle House guy will probably also turn out to be involved.
More... But let's put schadenfreude briefly aside -- who can possibly keep up with these high-society types, anyway? -- and focus instead on the important question my mother asked me today, in a breathless early-morning call: What is up with these generals?
More specifically: Does the U.S. military have an adultery problem? A woman problem? A generic, all-purpose craziness, sleaze, and corruption problem? A public-image problem?
Answering these questions in order, I can offer a definitive "sort of," "kind of, "maybe," and "very possibly."
First, adultery and related peccadilloes.
Officially, military culture tends to smile upon marriage and frown upon singleness. The military provides married personnel with benefits not available to single personnel, and even today, officers often feel that remaining unmarried is regarded as professionally suspect (not just because it may raise suspicions of homosexuality -- for senior male officers in particular, a wife has historically been considered a must-have accessory, needed in her hostess role as much as in her role as companion). But ironically, the military's very "pro-marriage" culture may lead to a higher incidence of divorce and marital problems.
A recent Rand Corp. study found that compared with demographically matched civilians, military personnel are more likely to get married -- but after leaving the military, veterans are more likely than non-veterans to get divorced. "[T]hese findings," the study concluded, "suggest that the military provides incentives to marry … but that once the servicemembers return to civilian life and these incentives are absent, they suffer higher rates of marital dissolution than comparable civilians. This suggests that the military may encourage unions that would not normally be formalized into marriage in a civilian context, and are consequently more fragile upon exit from the military."
If some service members marry because it's expected or rewarded rather than because they've found a compatible partner, those marriages are presumably more fragile before exit from the military as well as after. There's no way to know for sure whether infidelity is more common in the military than in the civilian world, of course. Needless to say, adultery is one of those things people generally -- no pun intended -- lie about. But even if we leave aside the question of military marriages that should probably never have been entered into, it seems reasonable to suppose that adultery might be more common in the military than in the civilian world.
Military careers can place great strain on marriages. Military families are frequently uprooted, and deployments can separate spouses by thousands of miles, year after year. Consider David and Holly Petraeus, who reportedly moved 23 times over the course of their marriage and were frequently separated by lengthy training periods and deployments. That would test any marriage.
Military personnel have -- literally -- a societally granted license to kill, at least in wartime, and it's reasonable to expect those entrusted with such power to adhere to unusually high standards of behavior. Thus, adultery is still punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) -- and people still lose their jobs over it. "Mere" adultery is generally not sufficient to get a service member in legal trouble, though. That kicks in only if there's evidence that the adulterous conduct was "to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces or was of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces." In other words, if no one's making much of a fuss about it and adultery is the only form of misconduct alleged, no one's likely to be punished. But the risk is always there.
Of course, a wide range of other conduct can also be prejudicial to good order and discipline or likely to "bring discredit" upon the armed forces, and the UCMJ offers fairly wide latitude to commanders who believe that their subordinates have been up to no good, regardless of the form taken by the no-goodness. For officers, "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman" remains punishable under the UCMJ ("gentleman" has been generously defined to include ladies too). How often these UCMJ provisions are used to go after sexual indiscretions is unknown, as the military does not keep easily accessible records of such allegations or case dispositions.
Even retired military personnel are subject to the UCMJ, though the military rarely takes the trouble to go after retired service members. Will retired General Petraeus find himself in legal trouble? Probably not, unless a hue and cry over double standards forces the military to take action. Why should a retired four-star get away with conduct that could lead to a demotion, separation, or reduction in pay for a junior officer or enlisted soldier?
The Woman Problem
It would be fair to say that the military still has something of a woman problem. Although most military jobs are now open to women -- the exception being certain combat jobs -- women still make up only a small minority of all military personnel (about 15 percent) and a still-smaller minority of senior officers (no surprise, given that today's senior women officers joined the military, by definition, in an era in which even fewer jobs were open to women).
The military remains plagued by allegations of sexual harassment and assault, and a number of studies by the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs have concluded that women in the military face higher rates of sexual assault than do civilian women. Here again, no big surprise: The military remains an overwhelmingly male -- and overwhelmingly macho -- institution. Women are outnumbered and often rendered nearly invisible in a culture in which nearly all senior officers are male.
This extends to the home front, as well. In certain ways, the informal culture of military officers resembles the 1950s more than the 21st century. Military life isn't just hard on marriage -- it's also hard on the careers of the (mostly female) civilian spouses of military personnel. Rising up the career ladder isn't easy when you move from one military base to another every few years. One military friend of mine recalls a general telling junior officers -- in a recent lecture at an official Army command training event -- that they should actively discourage their wives from pursuing careers, because career women would be less supportive and flexible military wives. And though official publications now speak of officers' "spouses" rather than "wives," the military still produces etiquette guides for spouses, with a rather gendered focus on appropriate forms of address at social functions and the proper pouring of tea and coffee.
Here's something I worry about: Will the fallout from the Petraeus scandal make it even tougher for military women to rise to senior rank? In the military as in the civilian world, career advancement often has as much to do with informal mentoring relationships as with formal education or qualifications. No one bats an eye when the (male) boss goes out running or drinking with his (male) subordinates, but post-Petraeus, how many male senior officers will do the same with female subordinates? Not a lot -- and though such risk-aversion may reduce any appearance of impropriety, it will also reduce the odds that women will get the crucial mentoring that is provided so freely to their male colleagues.
All-purpose craziness, sleaze, and corruption?
Most soldiers I know do their best to live up to the Army values: "loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage." Every service has its own creed, but the core values of each service are basically the same, and every day, most of the roughly 2.5 million men -- and women -- in the military try their best to live up to them.
Needless to say, however, these values don't appear to have been particularly exemplified by the alleged recent behavior of General Petraeus and General John Allen. And it's not the marital infidelity -- acknowledged or alleged -- that bothers me. I'm willing to write that off to human frailty. Did General Allen exchange risqué emails with Kelley? Maybe -- but I don't really care. As for General Petraeus, when a lonely late-middle-aged married man with a stressful job falls into bed (or under the desk) with an attractive and adoring younger woman, it's not excusable, perhaps, but it's certainly understandable -- and really none of the country's business.
It's the emerging story of the all-too cozy relationship between Tampa's nouveau riche and the top brass at Centcom that makes me feel less charitable. Perhaps le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point -- but why were Petraeus and Allen spending all their free time at lavish parties hosted by a rich Tampa socialite? Who told Kelley it was fine to declare herself the "social liaison" to Centcom? Why didn't the fact that Kelley and her family were embroiled in multiple lawsuits alleging fraud and unpaid debt set off alarm bells for anyone at Centcom? Who anointed the 37-year-old Kelley as a Centcom "honorary ambassador," fostering relations between top Centcom officials and "Middle Eastern government officials"?
And, of course, what induced two of America's highest-ranking generals to wade into a vicious custody case involving the child of Kelley's twin sister, Natalie Khawam, sending character testimonials on Khawam's behalf to a judge who had declared Khawam to be a "psychologically unstable" manufacturer of "sensational accusations … so numerous, so extraordinary, and … so distorted that they defy any common sense view of reality"?
Talk about conduct "of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."
Needless to say, no one's sure yet what's true and what isn't, and what more lies hidden under various carpets and rocks. But enough has already emerged to raise serious questions about the ethics and judgment of several top officials. Was there actual corruption, nepotism, and impropriety? Unclear -- but there was unquestionably an appearance of impropriety, and we should expect better of America's most decorated military officers.
Service members sure expect better of them. I've been asking around among military friends, and all I hear is shock, disgust, and a sense of betrayal. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark," one officer told me. "We're being had. These guys have chests full of medals, and they preach to us about military values. But look at this -- what the f*** are they doing?"
Does the military have a public image problem?
Whatever the reaction within the military community, will these revelations taint the military's public image? Since the 9/11 attacks, the military has become the most trusted institution in America. Indeed, Americans have put the military on such a high pedestal that it's considered near sacrilege for civilians to offer any criticism of the military. But there's no guarantee that things will stay that way. It depends on the breadth and depth of the rot.
If the Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen business appears to be an aberration, Americans will forgive and forget: after two decades of war, most people are willing to cut the military some slack.
But if this week's revelations turn out to be the tip of the iceberg -- if whistle-blowers, media probes, and congressional investigations produce a rash of similar stories involving other senior military figures -- the public's patience may wear thin, fast. Being America's most trusted institution won't help the military much then: We're more appalled by those who betray our trust than by the bad behavior of those we never trusted in the first place. Sex abuse scandals in the Catholic clergy are a case in point.
The higher they are, the harder they fall.
October Data: 20 Potential Suicides Among Active Duty US Soldiers
Defense.gov News Release: Army Releases October Suicide Data
US Army Releases October Suicide Data
The Army released suicide data today for the month of October. During October, among active-duty soldiers, there were 20 potential suicides: five have been confirmed as suicides, and 15 remain under investigation. For September, the Army reported 15 potential suicides among active-duty soldiers: four have been confirmed as suicides, and 11 remain under investigation. For 2012, there have been 166 potential active-duty suicides: 105 have been confirmed as suicides, and 61 remain under investigation. Active-duty suicide number for 2011: 165 confirmed as suicides, and no cases under investigation.
During October, among reserve component soldiers who were not on active duty, there were 13 potential suicides (nine Army National Guard and four Army Reserve): three have been confirmed as suicides, and 10 remain under investigation. For September, among that same group, the Army reported 16 potential suicides. Since the release of that report one case was added for a total of 17 cases (13 Army National Guard and 4 Army Reserve); five have been confirmed as suicides, and 12 remain under investigation. For 2012, there have been 114 potential not on active-duty suicides (75 Army National Guard and 39 Army Reserve): 83 have been confirmed as suicides, and 31 remain under investigation. Not on active-duty suicide numbers for 2011: 118 (82 Army National Guard and 36 Army Reserve) confirmed as suicides, and no cases under investigation.
“Suicide is preventable, and its prevention is a shared responsibility among all members of the Army family,” said Gen. David M. Rodriguez, commanding general, U.S. Army Forces Command. Rodriguez said that everyone is empowered to intervene and save lives, “effective intervention requires leadership involvement and support, an environment that promotes help-seeking for hidden wounds like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress and prior knowledge of available local and national resources. We all must take the time to do a self-inventory to assess the presence and impact of stressors in our lives. Of equal importance is the awareness of the needs of others around us. There are no bystanders in our Army family.”
Soldiers and families in need of crisis assistance can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Trained consultants are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and can be contacted by dialing 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or by visiting their website at http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org .
Army leaders can access current health promotion guidance in newly revised Army Regulation 600-63 (Health Promotion) at: http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r600_63.pdf and Army Pamphlet 600-24 (Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention) at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p600_24.pdf .
The Army's comprehensive list of Suicide Prevention Program information is located at http://www.preventsuicide.army.mil .
Suicide prevention training resources for Army families can be accessed at http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/suicide/training_sub.asp?sub_cat=20 (requires Army Knowledge Online access to download materials).
Information about Military OneSource is located at http://www.militaryonesource.com or by dialing the toll-free number 1-800-342-9647 for those residing in the continental United States. Overseas personnel should refer to the Military OneSource website for dialing instructions for their specific location.
Information about the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program is located at http://www.army.mil/csf/ .
The Defense Center for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) Outreach Center can be contacted at 1-866-966-1020, via electronic mail at Resources@DCoEOutreach.org and at http://www.dcoe.health.mil .
The website for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is http://www.afsp.org/ and the Suicide Prevention Resource Council site is found at http://www.sprc.org/index.asp .
During October, among reserve component soldiers who were not on active duty, there were 13 potential suicides (nine Army National Guard and four Army Reserve): three have been confirmed as suicides, and 10 remain under investigation. For September, among that same group, the Army reported 16 potential suicides. Since the release of that report one case was added for a total of 17 cases (13 Army National Guard and 4 Army Reserve); five have been confirmed as suicides, and 12 remain under investigation. For 2012, there have been 114 potential not on active-duty suicides (75 Army National Guard and 39 Army Reserve): 83 have been confirmed as suicides, and 31 remain under investigation. Not on active-duty suicide numbers for 2011: 118 (82 Army National Guard and 36 Army Reserve) confirmed as suicides, and no cases under investigation.
“Suicide is preventable, and its prevention is a shared responsibility among all members of the Army family,” said Gen. David M. Rodriguez, commanding general, U.S. Army Forces Command. Rodriguez said that everyone is empowered to intervene and save lives, “effective intervention requires leadership involvement and support, an environment that promotes help-seeking for hidden wounds like depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress and prior knowledge of available local and national resources. We all must take the time to do a self-inventory to assess the presence and impact of stressors in our lives. Of equal importance is the awareness of the needs of others around us. There are no bystanders in our Army family.”
Soldiers and families in need of crisis assistance can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Trained consultants are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year and can be contacted by dialing 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or by visiting their website at http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org .
Army leaders can access current health promotion guidance in newly revised Army Regulation 600-63 (Health Promotion) at: http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r600_63.pdf and Army Pamphlet 600-24 (Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention) at http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/p600_24.pdf .
The Army's comprehensive list of Suicide Prevention Program information is located at http://www.preventsuicide.army.mil .
Suicide prevention training resources for Army families can be accessed at http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/suicide/training_sub.asp?sub_cat=20 (requires Army Knowledge Online access to download materials).
Information about Military OneSource is located at http://www.militaryonesource.com or by dialing the toll-free number 1-800-342-9647 for those residing in the continental United States. Overseas personnel should refer to the Military OneSource website for dialing instructions for their specific location.
Information about the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program is located at http://www.army.mil/csf/ .
The Defense Center for Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) Outreach Center can be contacted at 1-866-966-1020, via electronic mail at Resources@DCoEOutreach.org and at http://www.dcoe.health.mil .
The website for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is http://www.afsp.org/ and the Suicide Prevention Resource Council site is found at http://www.sprc.org/index.asp .
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