Majikthise

Bernie Kerik focused on busting Baghdad brothels

I always wondered what former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik did as a security consultant in Iraq...

Iraqi vice, according to General Ricardo Sanchez, who recalls that Kerik was more interested in raids to "liberate" prostitutes in Baghdad's brothels than in training the Iraqi police.

In other Iraq news, plans are afoot to construct a $700 million zone of influence around the US Embassy in Baghdad. A massive "American-style" amusement park and zoo is already under construction. 

Thousands of dockworkers protest war in Iraq

Bravo, dockworkers:

Yesterday, more than 25,000 dockworkers in 29 West Coast ports stayed off the job in order to protest the Iraq war, according to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. “Longshore workers are standing down on the job and standing up for America,” Bob McEllrath, the union’s president, said in a statement. “We’re supporting the troops and telling politicians in Washington that it’s time to end the war in Iraq.”

The organized labor working for peace. I hope this is a sign of things to come.

AP photographer Bilal Hussein reportedly set free

Free Bilal Hussein Committee just sent out the following announcement by email:

News just came in that our dear colleague Bilal Hussein is free at last!! Hemos recibido la noticia que nuestro querido colega Bilal Hussein esta libre al fin!!

The AP confirms that the 36-year-old photojournalist was released to his colleagues in Iraq last night. The U.S. military accused Hussein of collaborating with insurgents.

An Iraqi court exonerated Hussein earlier this month of terrorism charges against him . The United States issued a statement this week saying that Hussein was no longer considered a threat.

U.S. still holds photographer Bilal Hussein, despite release order

U.S. authorities in Iraq continue to detain AP photojournalist Bilal Hussein, despite an order by an Iraqi court to release him immediately under the provisions of an amnesty law.

The Pentagon says it needs more time to study the matter.

NYT identifies Blackwater shooter

The New York times has identified the primary suspect in a federal investigation into the Blackwater massacre at Nissour square, one Paul Slough formerly of the Texas National Guard:

Through a review of case documents and interviews in Texas and Washington, The New York Times identified the gunner as Mr. Slough, a former infantry soldier who joined Blackwater Worldwide after his dreams of joining the Army Special Forces were quashed by recurring problems from an old football injury.

His story offers a rare look at the men employed by the impenetrable private security company with the highest rate of shootings in Iraq. Military officials and executives of other contracting companies have long complained that Blackwater hired younger, financially struggling recruits; encouraged a shoot-first culture, and then used the company’s deep political connections with the Bush administration to shield its guards from punishment when they killed innocent people. [NYT]

Slough was a member of a Blackwater convoy that killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Nissour Square on September 16, 2007. Slough and his colleagues claim that the convoy was under attack, but neither military nor civilian investigators are buying their story.

Blackwater's State Department liaison resigns

The head of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Kevin Barry, has stepped down.  Barry was the liaison between State and Blackwater.

KBR employee says she was gang raped by coworkers and detained in Iraq

Brian Ross and Justin Rood have broken an explosive story of rape and false imprisonment in the Green Zone that raises questions about the contractor Halliburton/KBR, the US government, and the military.

A 22-year-old former Halliburton/KBR employee says she was gang-raped by her coworkers and imprisoned by the company in a shipping container. According to papers filed in a lawsuit against KBR and its former parent company Halliburton, the victim was only released from the container after intevention by the US State Department.

KBR issued a statement that the US authorities called off the company's internal investigation. Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, who helped get his constituent out of the shipping container, says that the State and Justice Departments are stonewalling his investigation.   

KBR has mysteriously "lost" the rape kit after receiving in from US military doctors.

No criminal charges have been laid and KBR wants the civil suit heard in closed-door arbitration.

HT: Eric

Religious vigillantes killed 40 women in Basra

Juan Cole points to a horrifying news item about religious vigilantes in Basra suspected of murdering at least 40 women in the past year:

By  SINAN SALAHEDDIN  

BAGHDAD (AP) — Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against "violating Islamic teachings," the police chief said Sunday.

Maj. Gen. Jalil Khalaf blamed sectarian groups that he said were trying to impose a strict interpretation of Islam. They dispatch patrols of motorbikes or unlicensed cars with tinted windows to accost women not wearing traditional dress and head scarves, he added.

"The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior," Khalaf told The Associated Press. He said men with Western clothes or haircuts are also attacked in Basra, an oil-rich city some 30 miles from the Iranian border and 340 miles southeast of Baghdad.

"Those who are behind these atrocities are organized gangs who work under cover of religion, pretending to spread the instructions of Islam, but they are far from this religion," Khalaf said.

"Your makeup and your decision to forgo the headscarf will bring you death," according to the red graffiti proliferating in certain districts.

Notes are found affixed to the mutilated bodies that explain why the victim was targeted. Stated motives include alleged adultery and violations of "Islamic teachings."

The authorities estimate that the true death toll exceeds the 40 murders reported so far. Many families are too afraid to come forward, they say.   

Blackwater, Cofer Black, and Mitt Romney

Did you know that Blackwater's chief spook, Cofer Black, advises Mitt Romney on terrorism?

Jeremy Scahill has the details in his latest reported piece on Blackwater, plus the latest on Blackwater's expanding navy and air force.

The AAA and engagement with the military

Anthropologist, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Last week, I spent a couple of days at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association in Washington, DC. I went for the unveiling of a much-anticipated report on anthropology and the military. I came away feeling like the committee took the easy way out.

The report focused primarily on relatively non-controversial kinds of engagement, such as studying the military, teaching in the military university system, and providing academic input to military leaders on very broad questions like the definition of "culture." In fairness, these relatively straightforward forms of engagement are far more common than exotic HTS-type assignments. Still, what the membership and the media really wanted to talk about were the hard cases like the fledgling Human Terrain System (HTS).

HTS embeds anthropologists and other social scientists on the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the short term, Human Terrain Teams provide direct social science support to a brigade commander. However, the ultimate goal of the project is to create a continuously updated map of the "human terrain" that will be available to any government agency that wants to see it, including intelligence agencies. 

HTS has no internal ethical review board. Any American university-based academic who wanted to go live with tribes in Iraq and call it anthropological research would have to submit a detailed research proposal for ethics approval. In HTS, there are no controls over what kind of information these social scientists can gather, or how it must be safeguarded to protect the informants.

The Executive Board of the AAA issued a preemptive statement of disapproval prior to the ad hoc committee's report, in large part because a major New York Times article had thrust HTS into the spotlight.

I can't fault the ad hoc committee for not addressing HTS in more detail. They began their investigation with a much broader mandate two years ago when AAA members noticed that the national security sector was stepping up its efforts to woo anthropologists. HTS didn't even exist when the ad hoc committee got started.

Even so, the report still reads like a cop out. It's not as if the really difficult issues are new. Anthropology has had a long and uncomfortable relationship with the military since the inception of the discipline.

The proponents of HTS see themselves as humanistic mavericks who just want to help the military learn more about culture. They hope that increased cultural understanding will make the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan less violent and more effective. The official line is that a Human Terrain Team reduced "kinetic operations" (the application of military force) by 60-70% in one brigade's territory in Afghanistan. It's hard to know what to make of this statistic without a lot more data, which the military isn't at liberty to share. Correlation isn't necessarily causation.

But let's assume that HTS really is helping the US military apply force more effectively, with less collateral damage. It's still not clear that HTS or, any other program that provides direct operational support to a combat brigade in wartime, is compatible with AAA's code of anthropological ethics.

I discuss some of the ethical dilemmas raised by HTS in greater detail here.

The bottom line is that, according to the the Code, anthropologists doing field work are supposed to put the welfare of their subject population first.  It comes down to the basic moral principle that you shouldn't use people. As a social science that studies real people's everyday lives, anthropology has walk a fine line between exploration and exploitation.

There's a general consensus that it's not right to ingratiate yourself with a group, learn from them, and turn that knowledge against them. Applying anthropological expertise to help kill some of the members of the population under study is not easy to reconcile with the field anthropologists' responsibility to avoid harm to his or her informants.

Some HTS proponents claim that they don't do targeting--that may be true of their operations so far, but there are no rules to ensure that won't happen in the future.

Now, one might argue that anthropological ethics need to be revised in order to balance the well-being subjects with some greater national interest, or a larger duty to minimize harm to innocents. That's certainly the approach the some HTS spokespeople use.

However, I didn't hear anyone at the AAA arguing that the code of ethics needed to be radically revised to accommodate embeds. The debate was couched in terms of what the code already allows. I agreed with the participants who complained that the report, and the "Empire Speaks Back" panel discussion that followed the unveiling of the report were too focused on the kinds of cooperation that might be allowed, and too hesitant to address what might be out of bounds, and why.