Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

The Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Journalism and Media, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, YouTube Watch


For a brief introduction to a report on the killing of the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, check out this brief Youtube video. Here are the details on the video:

Watch the full 50-minute interview with Jeremy Scahill at http://owl.li/klnWN. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was a 16-year-old boy, born in Colorado, who liked listening to hip-hop and posed as a rapper in pictures posted on Facebook. He was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen two weeks after the Obama administration assassinated his father, the U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, in a separate strike. Abdulrahman’s death is a central part of Jeremy Scahill’s new book, “Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield.” While the Obama administration has defended the killing of Anwar, it has never publicly explained why his son was targeted. Scahill reveals CIA Director John Brennan, Obama’s former senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, suspected that the teenager had been killed “intentionally.” “I understand from a former senior official of the administration who worked on this program at the time, that when it became clear that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had been killed, that President Obama was furious, and that John Brennan, who at the time was … the guy running all of these operations, that Brennan believed or suspected that it was an intentional hit … against this 16-year-old kid,” Scahill says.

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Drone Policy in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Yemen

For anyone in the NYC region, I will be giving a talk at the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SEMINAR on KNOWLEDGE, TECHNOLOGY, and SOCIAL SYSTEMS on Wednesday, May 15, 7 pm (at Columbia University’s Faculty House). The title of the talk is: “Drone Strikes in the War on Terror: The Case of Post-Arab-Spring Yemen.” Unmanned drones have been used by the US military against terrorism in many areas of the world. In particular, these drones have become the US military’s weapon of choice in targeting terrorists in Yemen, where strikes quadrupled in 2012 from the previous year. This talk addresses the impact of these strikes on the political context within Yemen and the effectiveness of the strategy in combating Al Qaeda recruitment. The talk builds on a commentary published in the Middle East Muddle blog of the Anthropology News website.

For information on the talk, please contact me directly by email at daniel.m.varisco@hofstra.edu.

Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Development, Environment, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen, Zaydi


Background image is Daniel Beard illustration for the 1899 edition of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad

The well traveled journalist Thomas Friedman has popped up in Yemen, but apparently he has yet to find out that no one in Yemen drives a Lexus and Yemenis do not grow olive trees. Friedman has won many awards for his hot-air balloon reporting of events in the Middle East. He reminds me of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad, where the American boy hero gets a birds-eye view of Egypt and Palestine without ever escaping being mere “innocents abroad.”

Still, a postcard from Yemen via the New York Times op-ed page, by such a renowned journalist deserves a reading. As usual the journalist himself is one of the main attractions, including starting the very first sentence with an “I” to his own presence. I am not a fan of Friedman’s reportage, even when he claims some kind of inside knowledge about a place in the Middle East, but I do appreciate that two very important points are highlighted in his article: Yemen’s water crisis is a greater threat to instability than any political act and Yemen is poised to “have the best chance to start over – now – if they seize it.” I would only add this: if Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and the U.S. do not keep the Yemenis from seizing and sustaining control of their own future.

Like Friedman, I have long known that Yemen is “a country of breathtaking beauty, with wonderful people” and, yes, it has become a “human development disaster.” But I would not explain this disaster away as simply due to “political mismanagement” by a string of military dictators. The United Nations, the World Bank, the United States, Britain, France, The Netherlands, Japan, China and a rather long list of foreign aid donors have pumped millions upon millions of dollars into a system without achieving any sustainable results. Saudi money has bankrolled the Ministry of Education, introducing a conservative Salafi brand of Islam that is overtly political. Yemeni workers have been treated like slum bums by the Saudis and Gulfies who hire and fire them at will. While Friedman is right to stress that the environmental and economic crisis created by the critical shortage of water, especially for domestic use in cities, is the major problem being faced, it is not “just about water” by any means. The heavens and fountains of the deep could open tomorrow and the mix of old and new ideologies (most coming from outside Yemen) would blossom like spring flowers after a desert rain. Continue reading Tom Friedman (not Tom Sawyer) Abroad in Yemen →

Damned to be Devout

Central Asia, Islam in America, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

Source

In much of the Western world Sunday is traditionally the day devoted to religion (and picnics and sports and going to the beach when the sun shines, etc.). Even those who are not devoted to a particular religion find something to devote themselves to. So today I would like to devote my comments to the very idea of what it means to be “devout.” The tragedy orchestrated two weeks ago by the Boston Bombers adds yet another milestone to those who see Islam as a religion that promotes violence. Yet the two brothers who senselessly took several lives and forever altered the lives of many others appear to have almost no real knowledge of their religion. I am struck by the widespread use in the media of the term “devout” to describe the older brother Tamerlane. I am not at all surprised that an Islamophobe like Pamela Geller writes that “Again and again we see that Muslims who commit jihad violence are pious and devout.” Geller was commenting on an AP report that Tamerlane’s aunt had said he was a “devout Muslim” who prayed five times a day. The phrase went viral in the news media in part due to this sound bite but also because it reflected a common stereotype.

It seems that all it takes to be labeled “devout” as a Muslim is to pray five times a day, believe that 72 virgins are waiting anxiously to serve you in Paradise and be hooked on Internet terrorist sites. I don’t remember anyone saying that Terry Jones, the lunatic preacher who says he has a divine mission to burn Qurans, is a “devout” Christian. The Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik is usually labeled a “right-wing extremist” yet his writings show a profound regard for Christendom über alles. A person can be “devoted” to anything, including evil, but if I think of a “devout” Christian, Jew or Hindu, I think of someone who has internalized the devotional aspects of their religion due to an insight into the theology. Continue reading Damned to be Devout →

“It sure would be nice to have a drone up there”

Anthropology/Sociology, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue

If George Orwell had lived to see how 1984 plays out in 2013, he would no doubt shake his head, marveling at how a novel he wrote in 1949 could come so close to reality. Senator Lindsay Graham, a South Carolina Republican (who may not gulp down Tea Party rhetoric but surely likes to sip some of its poison), was interviewed yesterday in the Washington Post before the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was caught. His intent, as reported in the article, seemed more to downgrade the libertarian Rand Paul than to offer any kind of constructive comment on the unfolding tragedy of the bombing.

In his senate filibuster, Senator Paul had argued that America is not a battlefield, so Graham used his senatorial perch to argue “It’s a battlefield because the terrorists think it is.” Really? When exactly did a terrorist act, not an attack from another country or an armed insurrection from within, define what a “battlefield” is? Yorktown was a battlefield in 1781; Gettysburg in 1863; Normandy in 1944. If the sadistic setting of bombs targeted at civilians proves that America is a battlefield, then what about Waco in 1993 or Oklahoma City in 1995 or even the hijackings that led to the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001? When a battle is fought in war there are battlefields stained with the blood of combatants and often civilians as well; when a terrorist detonates a bomb it is a criminal act no less than when a disturbed 20-year old walks into an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut and shoots 20 children and 6 adults, after having killed his own mother. If every act of violence defines a battlefield, there can be no peace anywhere. Continue reading “It sure would be nice to have a drone up there” →

What is Terrorism?

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Terrorism Issue


by Laura Beth Nielsen, Al Jazeera Opinion, April 17, 2013

The Boston Marathon bombing once again has Americans asking, “Is this terrorism?” And more broadly, “What is terrorism?”

We asked ourselves those questions the moment we heard the news. Our news anchors asked for the next 24 hours (though they were clear to say at first that they did not know if it was terrorism). President Obama – thankfully – was careful not to use the word in his first press conference on the day of the bombings. But later on the following day – on Tuesday – Obama said, “Any time bombs are used to target civilians, it is an act of terrorism.”

What does it mean when we say something is “terrorism” and why does it matter?

As a professor of Sociology and Law, I study how ordinary people understand the law and how the law itself, including law’s categories and terms affect how people understand the world around them.

Using terms like “terrorism” shapes what ordinary people expect of the police, the justice system and our government. It affects what kind of punishment we want and the level of fear we feel about what is going on around us.

But what is terrorism? The most obvious definition is that terrorism is a crime meant to terrorise. We know what these kinds of crimes are: they are the kind that make us afraid to send our children to school, like Columbine; make us afraid to go to work, like 9/11; or make us afraid even just to spend beautiful spring day competing with our friends competing in a footrace. Continue reading What is Terrorism? →

Fatima’s Head

"Arab Spring", Ethics, Syria, Terrorism Issue

By Ziad Majed, al-Jadid

It is hard to imagine what happened to Fatima,* and it is hard to describe the silence that engulfed the witnesses of her death. I think the artistic works on Facebook that restored her head and depicted a rose garden or the moon or the sun have tried to compensate for that terrible silence and ease the pain of Fatima and her loved ones and all of us together.

What can be done to a Syrian child who “lost” her head?! And what can be said to a girl sprawled in her dress on the ground, arms spread wide, her small, drooping shoulders clinging to the wall directly?

Fatima Maghlaj did not understand what happened to her; she was headless all of a sudden. In an instant she lost the ability to dream and focus. She was paralyzed. She wanted to feel the dryness of her throat and ask for water. She wanted to call mother or father, but she could not make the words with her tongue and she could not find their picture in her memory. She tried to look around her to reassure herself that she was sleeping in a safe place to wait until these strange feelings of emptiness had ended. But her eyes and eyebrows and eyelashes were out of reach, scattered in the emptiness of the cold room. She found nothing but a tuft of hair that her mother had combed in preparation for her uncle’s wedding that evening. Continue reading Fatima’s Head →