A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

Dark words of a private contractor in Afghanistan

Posted: 13 May 2011

 
Writer David Isenberg sets up the scene:

I received the following email from a Dyncorp contractor working in Afghanistan. He works as a trainer to the Afghan National Police. His comments below are worth reading.
But before you do you might remember that DynCorp is a member of the International Stability Operations Association, which has an elaborate Code of Conduct detailing how its companies are supposed to treat its employees. But judging from the below it appears DynCorp missed or ignored Part 6.11.
“Signatories shall provide their personnel with the appropriate training, equipment and materials necessary to perform their duties.”
“For whatever reason Dyn upper management has a severe disconnect between them and the actual workers on the ground. They have, so far, provided very little support in either equipment or services to us. I don’t think I would choose to work for them again.
“My job here is to train and assess the Afghan National Police. They want us to train them in “community policing” and teach them how to run a professional police department.  The soldiers themselves are happy to have me because I provide a lot of experience many of them don’t have. As for the success of the mission, I am skeptical. The Afghans do not think like us and they have a very different culture. I feel that they know we will eventually leave and that things will go back to the way they were prior to our arrival. Therefore they intend to get as much from us as possible while we are here. Were I in their shoes I imagine I would do the same. But ultimately I think our mission here will fail.
“As for Dyn, here is how they handle things. The original contract I signed on for was through the Dept. Of State and it was for one year with the pay being $158,000 and 52 days of leave. After 6 months here Dyn told us the contract was being cancelled and taken over by the DOD. They told us we would be getting a new contract soon that we would have to accept or we could go home. The new contract was for $117,000 and 28 days of leave, for the same job. You should know that we are considered embedded mentors. We live and operate in shitty conditions for the most part. Dyn did a horrible job of transitioning to the new contract and lost most of the contractors, who were disgusted with their lies and unethical handling of things. Dyn meanwhile lied to the DOD, telling them that they had more than enough contractors lined up to meet the requirements of the contract when they didn’t. The new contract has taken effect and Dyn still has nowhere near the number of people they need to fulfill the contract. Due to that they recently raised the pay for the job to $144,000 and 30 days of leave. It remains to be seen if that will be enough to get more people.”
 

Arab and Israeli school within Israel is a true rarity

Posted: 13 May 2011

Obama getting Middle East advice from non-Middle Easterners

Posted: 12 May 2011

Only in the New York Times.
This is an interesting piece about Barack Obama and his evolving views towards the Muslim world. The idea that people there will suddenly likes America after a pretty speech is delusional. For example, anti-US sentiment is strong in Egypt, as it should be, considering the Mubarak regime was backed for three decades, including by Obama until the last minute.
And note the conversations with supposedly leading foreign affairs “experts”, both of whom largely support the imperial role of the US in the world and backed the Iraq war. Fareed Zakaria assisted President Bush post 9/11 with “advice” how to manage the Middle East.
And, er, would the US President want to speak to some real experts in the Middle East itself?

For President Obama, the killing of Osama bin Laden is more than a milestone in America’s decade-long battle against terrorism. It is a chance to recast his response to the upheaval in the Arab world after a frustrating stretch in which the stalemate in Libya, the murky power struggle in Yemen and the brutal crackdown in Syria have dimmed the glow of the Egyptian revolution.
Administration officials said the president was eager to use Bin Laden’s death as a way to articulate a unified theory about the popular uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain — movements that have common threads but also disparate features, and have often drawn sharply different responses from the United States.
The first sign of this “reset” could come as early as next week, when Mr. Obama plans to give a speech on the Middle East in which he will seek to put Bin Laden’s death in the context of the region’s broader political transformation. The message, said one of his deputy national security advisers, Benjamin J. Rhodes, will be that “Bin Laden is the past; what’s happening in the region is the future.”
“The spotlight is understandably always on whatever country things are going worst in,” Mr. Rhodes said. “What’s important is to step back and say, ‘The trajectory of change is in the right direction.’ ”
Still, although Bin Laden’s killing may provide a rare moment of clarity, it has less obvious implications for American strategic calculations in the region. Some administration officials argue that the heavy blow to Al Qaeda gives the United States the chance to be more forward-leaning on political change because it makes Egypt, Syria and other countries less likely to tip toward Islamic extremism.
But other senior officials note that the Middle East remains a complicated place: the death of Al Qaeda’s leader does not erase the terrorist threat in Yemen, while countries like Bahrain are convulsed by sectarian rivalries that never had much to do with Bin Laden’s radical message. The White House said it was still working through the policy implications country by country.
…
Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, said Mr. Obama was as deeply immersed in all the Arab countries undergoing political upheaval. “The president, in each of these cases, has really been the central intellectual force in these decisions, in many cases, designing the approaches,” he said.
At night in the family residence, an adviser said, Mr. Obama often surfs the blogs of experts on Arab affairs or regional news sites to get a local flavor for events. He has sounded out prominent journalists like Fareed Zakaria of Time magazine and CNN and Thomas L. Friedman, a columnist at The New York Times, regarding their visits to the region. “He is searching for a way to pull back and weave a larger picture,” Mr. Zakaria said.
Mr. Obama has ordered staff members to study transitions in 50 to 60 countries to find precedents for those under way in Tunisia and Egypt. They have found that Egypt is analogous to South Korea, the Philippines and Chile, while a revolution in Syria might end up looking like Romania’s.
This deliberate, almost scholarly, approach is in keeping with Mr. Obama’s style, one that has frustrated people who believe he is too slow and dispassionate. But officials said it also reflected his own impatience, two years after he gave a speech in Cairo intended to mend America’s relations with the Muslim world, that many of these countries remained mired in corruption.
“The way he personally talks about corruption, he understands the frustration,” Mr. Rhodes said.

If this is not apartheid, the word has no meaning

Posted: 12 May 2011

The irreplaceable Gideon Levy in Haaretz:

Anyone who says “it’s not apartheid” is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn’t that apartheid? Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules – for Palestinians only.

We are sick of occupation, 63 years old

Posted: 12 May 2011

The following short film was produced by a number of youth in Bethlehem:
 

Dodgy Iraq war dossier still dodgy

Posted: 12 May 2011

 
Startling information but I’d like to know how many corporate journalists will apologise for publishing these bogus reports all those years ago? Yes, I hear a deafening silence, too:

A top military intelligence official has said the discredited dossier on Iraq‘s weapons programme was drawn up “to make the case for war”, flatly contradicting persistent claims to the contrary by the Blair government, and in particular byAlastair Campbell, the former prime minister’s chief spin doctor.
In hitherto secret evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie said: “We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care.”
His evidence is devastating, as it is the first time such a senior intelligence officer has directly contradicted the then government’s claims about the dossier – and, perhaps more significantly, what Tony Blair and Campbell said when it was released seven months before the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Laurie, who was director general in the Defence Intelligence Staff, responsible for commanding and delivering raw and analysed intelligence, said: “I am writing to comment on the position taken by Alastair Campbell during his evidence to you … when he stated that the purpose of the dossier was not to make a case for war; I and those involved in its production saw it exactly as that, and that was the direction we were given.”
He continued: “Alastair Campbell said to the inquiry that the purpose of the dossier was not ‘to make a case for war’. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used.”
Laurie said he recalled that the chief of defence intelligence, Air Marshal Sir Joe French, was “frequently inquiring whether we were missing something” and was under pressure. “We could find no evidence of planes, missiles or equipment that related to WMD [weapons of mass destruction], generally concluding that they must have been dismantled, buried or taken abroad. There has probably never been a greater detailed scrutiny of every piece of ground in any country.”