Category Archives: Terrorism Issue

Letters from Abbottabad

Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Teaching Resources


The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has just issued a report on the letters found at Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. This is: Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Ladin Sidelined?
The authors are Don Rassler, Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, Liam Collins, Muhammad al-Obaidi, and Nelly Lahoud. Here is the description and it can be downloaded here.

This report is a study of 17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid and released to the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). They consist of electronic letters or draft letters, totaling 175 pages in the original Arabic and 197 pages in the English translation. The earliest is dated September 2006 and the latest April 2011. These internal al-Qa`ida communications were authored by several leaders, most prominently Usama bin Ladin. In contrast to his public statements that focused on the injustice of those he believed to be the “enemies” of Muslims, namely corrupt “apostate” Muslim rulers and their Western “overseers,” the focus of Bin Ladin’s private letters is Muslims’ suffering at the hands of his jihadi “brothers”. He is at pain advising them to abort domestic attacks that cause Muslim civilian casualties and focus on the United States, “our desired goal.” Bin Ladin’s frustration with regional jihadi groups and his seeming inability to exercise control over their actions and public statements is the most compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 de-classified documents. “Letters from Abbottabad” is an initial exploration and contextualization of 17 documents that will be the grist for future academic debate and discussion.

Tribal Governance and Stability in Yemen

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, Terrorism Issue, Tribalism, Yemen


Nadwa Al-Dawsari (with her tribal shiekh colleague)

by Nadwa Al-Dawsari, Carnegie Paper, April 2012

The power-sharing deal signed by Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh in November 2011 mentioned presidential elections, the formation of a national unity government, and a military commission to reform the armed forces. It was at best the first step in Yemen’s recovery from the protracted turmoil and instability that wracked the country for months.

In this uncertain period of transition, as the new government struggles to establish legitimacy and address its most pressing issues, tribal law and traditions will play an important role in restoring a degree of stability because government capacity is extremely limited. This is particularly true given increasing conflicts and emerging sectarian and political divisions in the country. State and rule of law institutions are not only weak and ineffective outside of the main cities but also widely untrusted.

Yemenis have relied on indigenous tribal traditions to regulate conflict and establish justice for centuries, if not millennia. Tribal law has effectively handled conflicts between various tribes, between tribes and extractive companies, and between tribes and the government. It has successfully prevented and resolved conflicts over resources, development services, and land, and has sometimes managed to contain complex revenge-killing cases. Nationally, tribal mediators have played an important role in promoting political dialogue and building consensus among political groups. During the past year, where government forces withdrew, tribes took responsibility and managed to provide a reasonable level of security within their territories and along the main roads that connect tribal governorates. Continue reading Tribal Governance and Stability in Yemen →

“My Name is Khan” déjà vu

Film and Video, Islamophobia, Pakistan, Terrorism Issue


Shah Rukh Khan as sex symbol

Someone really needs to read the riot act to The Patriot Act. Yes, the threat of terrorism is real and we millions of passengers dutifully take off our shoes and spread out our arms for see-through scanning or pat-down frisking in airports. But screening does not have to be irrational. How many times must a world-famous actor like Shah Rukh Khan be detained by security when he enters the United States? This is not the first time. What status is there to check out? Does the image above look like a serious threat? Would Salman Rushdie be rushed into detention?

Here is the report on Al-Jazzera :

He is one of the most famous men on the planet. Adored by millions. His films are almost always box office smashes. But when Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan travelled to the US on Thursday, he was detained by security for two hours while they checked out his “status”.

Ironic, considering his biggest hit film was the story of a man determined to visit the US president and give him a very simple message: My Name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist.

The film is a powerful look at what it means to be Muslim in the land of the free and the home of the brave. I wonder if he told Homeland Security that he wasn’t a terrorist.

He says he feels angry and humiliated. I know how he feels. In the last three years I have travelled to the US six times. Each time, bar one, I was stopped. I was asked to go to a holding facility and my passport was taken. You are asked to sit down by a polite but hostile official. Continue reading “My Name is Khan” déjà vu →

For Whom the Death Toll tolls

Afghanistan, Anthropology/Sociology, Ethics, Iraq, Iraq War, Libya, Mali, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


“John Donne and 1664 Dutch map of the world

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee….”
John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, 1624

What was true some four centuries ago for the English metaphysical poet John Donne is timeless, even if his writ shows its linguistic age. Today it can also be said that no country is an island unto itself, no matter where or how you spin the globe. This is certainly the case for the United Sates, with our military still on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, targeted drones over Pakistan and Yemen, the smoldering aftermath of the bombs that brought down Qaddafi in Libya, the stench of made-in-the-USA arms just about everywhere. If, as Donne eloquently reflects, the death of any man (or woman or child) diminishes us, then why are we so hell-bent on adding to this diminishing by arming thugs and sending our military to die in other countries?

First, it is important to realize how much the death toll drones on daily. Take today, for example. On Al-Jazeera we learn there are “many dead in Afghanistan suicide blasts,” 18 dead and 45 wounded by the numbers. As the nominal peace part still fails to protect the dictator-weary people of Syria, reports are that some 9,000 have been killed so far by the Assad regime, including refugees over the border in Turkey. There are also “Pakistanis dead in apparent sectarian attack,“adding six more to the thousands who have been killed in the ongoing violence that plagues Pakistan. The see-saw fighting in Yemen’s troubled south leaves “Dozens killed in attack on Yemen army base.” And a few days ago “Hamas hangs three Gaza prisoners“. Continue reading For Whom the Death Toll tolls →

ASMEA: ASinine and MEAn

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Orientalism, Terrorism Issue


The primary international professional association of scholars who study the Middle East is MESA, the Middle East Studies Association. If you go to the main website, you will read:

The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is a private, non-profit, non-political learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world. From its inception in 1966 with 50 founding members, MESA has increased its membership to more than 3,000 and now serves as an umbrella organization for more than sixty institutional members and thirty-nine affiliated organizations. The association is a constituent society of the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Council of Area Studies Associations, and a member of the National Humanities Alliance.

Members of MESA receive two journals, the flagship International Journal of Middle East Studies and the revamped Review of Middle East Studies. Each year MESA holds an annual convention, this year in Denver. As noted, the association is non-political and contains members with widely divergent views on the controversial political and religious issues in the Middle East and North Africa.

So, why, you might wonder, is there a rival organization known as ASMEA, The Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, with its own journal housed with Taylor and Francis? Ah, politics. The founding fathers of the association are Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who appear to have joined forces primarily because of a common distaste for the work of Edward Said and their unfailing attraction to the intelligence community. The welcome message suggests that ASMEA is filling a gap:

ASMEA is a new academic society dedicated to promoting the highest standards of research and teaching in Middle Eastern and African studies, and related fields. It is a response to the mounting interest in these increasingly inter-related fields, and the absence of any single group addressing them in a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary fashion.

Like MESA, it claims to be non-partisan, although it is hard to explain why having only one point of view constitutes being non-partisan. It is obvious that scholars, like everyone else, will have differing opinions about issues like Palestinian statehood, inflammatory religious rhetoric, gender and a variety of issues that call for better understanding through dialogue among scholars. But ASMEA is monologue on top of being superficially trite. The claims for the “highest standards of research” are laughable, given the contents of its journal. For example,the most recent issue contains one book review. The chosen book is Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World by Robin Wright. The author of the book is a reporter, well-traveled (140 countries and counting) and with a prolific presence on all the media. With due respect to the importance of journalism in a free society, Ms. Wright is not an academic scholar; nor has her book been published through the peer review vetting of an academic press. I am not concerned with the value of her book, but it is the kind of book that routinely gets reviewed in major media outlets and rarely in academic journals. Is this the only book that ASMEA could find worth reviewing? [Update: In my original post I misidentified Stephen A. Emerson as Stephen Emerson, an unabashed partisan who sees jihadist terror behind every Islamic-looking bush.] Continue reading ASMEA: ASinine and MEAn →

YEMEN: Behind militia lines in Jaar

Development, Gender and Sexuality, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


A Yemeni woman walks past a vehicle adorned with an Islamic flag in the town of Jaar, in the southern Abyan province, on January 25, 2012.

JAAR, 27 March 2012 (IRIN) – At first glance the city of Jaar, in Abyan Governorate near the Gulf of Aden, resembles many Yemeni towns struggling to rebuild after a year of nationwide protests shackled the central government’s ability to provide basic services.

Donkey carts line litter-strewn streets, and feral cats and dogs tiptoe past bullet-pocked storefronts and vacant buildings. Gaunt, bearded men drink tea and chew khat while shouting to each other across the street. In many respects, however, the remote settlement is different.

Controlled by a militant group called Ansar Al Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), the city is patrolled by armed militants in army trucks pillaged from the Yemeni military weeks earlier. The group’s black-and-white flag – a symbol of stability, according to Ansar al Sharia – flies at each entrance to the city, flapping behind Kalashnikov-toting soldiers riding motorcycles.

In a rare visit to Jaar on 5 March – the day after Ansar Al Sharia soldiers stormed a Yemeni military base outside Zinjibar killing more than 150 Yemeni soldiers and capturing 73 more – IRIN met civilians living under the expanding jihadist government.

Yemeni authorities believe the group is linked to Al Qaeda. Some local residents of Jaar said life under Ansar al Sharia was stable. One passer-by, when asked by a jihadist official what he thought of the “new [militant] government”, said it was “peaceful” and “nice”. Continue reading YEMEN: Behind militia lines in Jaar →

Israel’s Moral Peril

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Terrorism Issue

Children hold an Israeli flag in the Jewish settlement of Itamar on the West Bank; Photo by Rina Castelnuovo, The New York Times

By Alan Wolfe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 25

In the past few years, a trickle of dissent with respect to Israel has turned into a running stream. Books, articles, and Web sites critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, its acquiescence in the messianic designs of its settlers, its foreign-policy decisions on Gaza, Iran, and much more, and the increasing influence of the ultra-Orthodox over the character of its domestic life have begun to appear in significant numbers in America. Some, but not all, of these efforts, moreover, come from writers unused to being in the critical camp. The question is rapidly becoming not whether one should find fault with Israel, but how.

Two quite contrasting points of view have emerged among the critics. One can be called liberal and the other leftist. Liberals accept Israel’s legitimacy, search for ways that it can respect the rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and believe that the only viable future for the country is a two-state solution, one primarily Jewish, the other primarily Palestinian. Leftists view Israel’s creation in 1948 as an outgrowth of European colonialism, insist that as a Jewish state its character is inevitably racist, and lean toward the eventual creation of one state containing both Jews and Arabs. Should Israel’s actions continue to provoke opposition around the world, the question of which of these approaches will attract the most followers will become increasingly important.

I have a personal interest in this topic because I now count myself among the critics. For decades, I managed to write about some of the more controversial issues dominating the world without writing about the Middle East. The reason was simple: I was too intellectually paralyzed to do so. As a child, I had displayed an Israeli flag and carried blue-and-white coin boxes whose proceeds would plant trees in the new state. That, however, was about it: Serious Hebrew lessons, Zionist summer camps, and trips to the Middle East were of little interest to either my secular parents or me. Yet for all my family’s tendencies toward assimilation, Israel’s legitimacy was never questioned. Jews had been the victims of the greatest monster in history. Supporting the new state was the least the world could do to make up for it. We were, as I recall, vaguely aware that Arabs already lived on the land Israel claimed, but their complaints, to the degree that we heard them at all, seemed trivial by comparison to what had happened to our people. Continue reading Israel’s Moral Peril →

Sharing our values…

Anthropology/Sociology, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue, Yemen


This post is not about the value of journalism, but about the blind prejudice that infiltrates much journalistic writing about values. I am not talking about the caricature newscasting of a Fox News Geraldo Rivera, who thinks wearing a hoodie is a problem (just like some maintain that a woman wearing a miniskirt is asking for “it”). Rather it is the prize-touting expert-of-all-trades mentality of Thomas Friedman, whose talking-head status is, in journalistic terms, astronomical. Yesterday, Friedman posted a commentary in The New York Times entitled “A Festival of Lies.”

Friedman begins with a quote from the historian Victor Davis Hanson in The National Review:

“Military assistance or punitive intervention without follow-up mostly failed. The verdict on far more costly nation-building is still out. Trying to help popular insurgents topple unpopular dictators does not guarantee anything better. Propping up dictators with military aid is both odious and counterproductive. Keeping clear of maniacal regimes leads to either nuclear acquisition or genocide — or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan. What have we learned? Tribalism, oil, and Islamic fundamentalism are a bad mix that leaves Americans sick and tired of the Middle East — both when they get in it and when they try to stay out of it.”

I certainly agree with Friedman’s gut reaction that “And that is why it’s time to rethink everything we’re doing out there. What the Middle East needs most from America today are modern schools and hard truths, and we haven’t found a way to offer either.” Bravo. Bombs make enemies and schools build friendships: this hardly seems like a new revelation, but it is the kind of truth spoken to power that needs to be voiced time and time again.

But it is what underlies the rationale where I find an all-too-familiar ritual of truths that carry along the heavy baggage of assumptions that belie the argument being made. Continue reading Sharing our values… →