All posts by dvarisco

Delta Farce: Jihad in Somalia?

Film and Video, Somalia, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


[Illustration: Delta Force video game; insert, Somali soldier killed in heavy fighting in Mogadishu is dragged through the city’s streets in late March. Photograph: Mustafa Abdi/AFP/Getty]

The impoverished East African country of Somalia is continually in the news. Minority Rights Group (MRG) International announced a month ago that Somalia is now the least safe country in the world for minorities, edging out Iraq and Sudan for this dubious distinction. Nor can it be said that Somalia is safe for majorities, given its recent, bloody history. In the past month more than 1,000 people have died, rivaling the surging toll in Iraq.

In 1993, a decade before Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was shocked and awed into anarchic free fall, a team of U.S. commandos parachuted into Mogadishu, the capital of this strife-torn East African country. Two Blackhawk helicopters were downed and the warlord escaped. Hollywood’s cinematic version hit the screen eight years later with the same bad ending. Then came the video game, Delta Force Black Hawk Down. Now a savvy teenager, armed with cheats, could rewrite history and let the good guys win. But in Somalia today it is hard to figure out just who the good guys are. Continue reading Delta Farce: Jihad in Somalia? →

Names of the Dead

Iraq War

Each day the New York Times has the courage to publish the names of American military personnel killed in Iraq. Today nine names are listed, the youngest at age 18. A Private first class from Paradise, California only found hell in serving his country in a war that even the most diehard (and these young men seem to die all too easily) neocons know cannot be won, only endured until the next election. These soldiers had first names of Shaun, Jesse, Mario, Aaron, Daniel, Joshua, Lucas, Steven and Brandon – a genealogical snapshot of America’s diversity. They grew up in Indiana, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, and Missouri. They could have been studying at a college. But for the names of those dead you would need to flip through the pages to read about the victims of the student rampage massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday.

What do these two lists have in common? In each case young lives were taken and careers ended before they began. Families had to confront the horror of death close to home. There are new scars that will never heal. There are tears that can never stop flowing. There is the nagging question of how could this happen. Continue reading Names of the Dead →

Napoleon Tried It: He Failed

Egypt, Iraq War, Islamic History, Orientalist Art


Illustration: “Napoleon and his General Staff in Egypt” by Jean-Léon Geróme, 1867

In 1798 the French leader Napoleon, a seemingly mature 28 year old at the time, set off from France with a fleet of 400 ships and 36,000 men. The goal was to conquer Egypt and “liberate” it from the corrupt Mamluk overlords. No CNN or BBC reporters were around; nor had al-Jazeera set up a satellite feed. It did not take long for the French to overwhelm the Egyptians with about 25,000 French against 15,000 local Mamluks. Napoleon won in sight of the Pyramids, but very soon after the entire mission was doomed to failure when Lord Nelson obliterated the French fleet. Napoleon himself left Cairo secretly a year later, returned to France and turned his conquest machine against fellow Europeans.
Continue reading Napoleon Tried It: He Failed →

This Is Not an Easter Egg

Humor and Satire, Islamophobia

Christians around the world celebrate Easter with thoughts of the empty tomb and resurrection of Christ. But there is more. Weather permitting, children are let loose in their Sunday best to hunt for Easter eggs, adding a secular, healthy, dietary blessing to the baskets of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans waiting at home. Even the White House lawn is set for the annual Easter Egg Roll (minus the Christian Rock) on Monday. It is as though many Christians are not content to leave the tomb empty. Apparently egged on by the spring fever of long forgotten fertility rites, the main message of Christianity gets sidetracked to a debate of anything but intellectual designing: which comes first, the Easter egg or the Easter bunny?

Eggs are not the exclusive mystical domain of Christendom (although the ludicrous lengths taken to parade a sacred holiday into outrageous bonnets and Texas-shaped eggs suggest we have entered the dispensation of Christendumb). Secular folk and agnostics eat their eggs for breakfast with bacon, toast and diner coffee. But all God’s children like eggs, including Muslims with internet savy and a taste for the miraculous. Take a gander (but do not confuse his spouse’s eggs with those shown here) at the three eggs shown below. What do you see different in the middle egg than the ones on either side (hint: the left is from the White House State of the Union Eggroll and the right is reported from last year’s Easter Sunday):
Continue reading This Is Not an Easter Egg →

Reflections on Fieldwork in Yemen

Anthropology/Sociology, Yemen

 

Reflections on Fieldwork in Yemen: The Genealogy of a Diary in Response to Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco
by Daniel Martin Varisco


[Anthropologist at rest with cat, al-Ahjur, Yemen, 1978]

[The following excerpt is from an article recently published in Anthropology of the Middle East (Volume 1(2):35-62, 2006).]

Abstract: In preparation for writing an ethnographic monograph on fieldwork in Yemen, I compare and contrast my field diary, written in 1978–9, with Paul Rabinow’s ‘Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco’ (1977). The underlying question is what post-fieldwork reflections reflect meaningfully about the immediacy of ethnographic fieldwork. I criticize the reflexivist trope of privileging ‘writing culture’ over the significance of ‘being there’ in the field. Point by point, I examine the implications of graduate training in anthropology, culture shock, health problems, language skills, the unreflective male voice, visual ethnography and the rhetoric of narrative writing.

Keywords: culture shock, ethnography, fieldwork, reflexivity, Visual Anthropology

Continue reading Reflections on Fieldwork in Yemen →

Real Change from Interfaith Dialogue

India

Muslim women search the beaches of Sagar Island for coins thrown into the waters of the Ganges by Hindu pilgrims. Heathcliff O’Malley/Telegraph Media Group © 2007

This morning’s news is predictable deja vu: another car bomb explodes in Iraq killing at least 20 people, the Taliban are poppying up again in Afghanistan, children are still starving in Darfur as their mothers get raped, Somalia is summarily consigned to old news since no new soldier bodies have been paraded in the streets. Page two… So much killing, so much religious faith spread around the ever warming globe, and seemingly so little dialogue for God’s children. But here’s a story from where the river bends, the Ganges of India that is, at the last bend it makes into the sea. Here is a river so holy to Hindus that it is viewed as alive, if not life itself, prompting both the devout and the just-following-the-nabob-mob to toss rupees into the polluted current. As Philip Reeves reports for NPR today, this all results in real change (if you dig hard enough in the sand) for a few of the poorest of India’s 150 million plus Muslims.

Continue reading Real Change from Interfaith Dialogue →

Another Blow for the Horn of Africa

Ethiopia, Islam and Christianity, Somalia, Terrorism Issue

The news this morning after Christmas is more bad news, especially for the Horn of Africa. As if the Darfur debacle in Sudan is not bad enough, the civil war in Somalia has escalated beyond the borders. Yesterday Ethiopia dispatched a fighter plane to briefly strafe the international airport in Mogadishu. This was not exactly shock-and-awe, but then Mogadishu is not Baghdad and the self-styled “Islamists” in more-or-less control of the capital are not a trained and disciplined army.

Continue reading Another Blow for the Horn of Africa →

The Sunni Triangle: Where is Square One?

Iraq War

[Pick your triangle and move to square one…]Our self-effusive politicians lie rather than admit mistakes. Our soldiers keep dying and these same politicians talk about sending more into harm’s way in Baghdad. The military death toll is now only 60 off the 3000 mark, one we are sure to reach in early January. Yesterday the Department of Defense released the names of the last nine on this list: they were Joe, Matthew, Henry, Kevin, Nicklas, David, Matthew, Seth and Luke. Tomorrow new names will be added. “Regretable but acceptable,” argue the rhetorical warriors against international terrorism.

It seems like everyday we are back to square one. Continue reading The Sunni Triangle: Where is Square One? →