Remember when geopolitique.com released a map of Hezbollah’s telecomms network in Lebanon? Well, another organization, Lebanon-Support, has done one better with its map of Lebanon’s vulnerabilities, showing political, confessional, security and deprivation layers in the Lebanese landscape. Worth noting.

H/T to Middle East Strategy at Harvard for reporting it. 

In “Baghdad’s Teetering Floors,” Bryan Finoki writes about new barrier construction in that sunny peaceful spot on the Tigris:

Baghdad is starting to remind me a lot of that old wooden board game Labyrinth, I think it was called, or, maybe it was Tilt-A-World. The one you angled two wooden platforms back and forth with rotating knobs to maneuver a little steel marble through a maze of walls without dropping it into a hole. Ultimately, it was a game of delicate touch, floor balance, and tactical wall hugging. Advancing the marble required a strategy of resting it in a sequence of corners, or hold-outs, until you were ready to carefully slope the board again and make a run rolling the it along a fragmented edge hoping to reach another little bunker to pause once more.

It was a labyrinth of baby steps and well timed wall crawls, and playing it was a test of nerves since it took a steady hand to ever so gently pitch the platforms together in a combined direction that would roll the marble precisely where you wanted it to go. I imagine it like trying to diffuse an IED with your bare hands. One faulty overturn or misadjustment, and you were dead.

There’s more. Go read it. 

In the category of circular book reviews (I know, this is undergraduate short-cutting at its worst, but there’s more to the story), from Barnett R. Rubin, on Ahmed Rashid’s new book Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of National Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (Penguin, 2008). 

[This] is as far as I know, the first attempt at a comprehensive account of international policy toward Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia since 9/11, and as such is utterly indispensable. (I should note that Ahmed says some nice things about me in the acknowledgments and cites me a few times.

That’s right. Me, citing an author, who’s reviewing another author, both of whom cite each other.  Whatever, not the point. Rubin points out an interesting discrepancy in the way Rashid’s book has been promoted – or rather, not promoted, depending on where in the world he found himself on his book tour.

The book came out in the U.S. on June 3, and Ahmed spent most of the next three weeks touring the U.S. to promote it. For whatever reason, Ahmed’s publicist could not manage to get him on Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, or Oprah, but he did put in appearances on Charlie Rose (video below) and CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.

Ahmed has since gone on to Canada and the U.K., where his book was reviewed by both the Sunday Times and the Times of London. He was profiled by the New York Times‘ Jane Perlez for the International Herald Tribune, but as far as I can see this interview never appeared in print on this side of the Atlantic.

Hmmm. Curioser and curioser. Rubin: 

I find it strange that this first ever comprehensive account of the Bush administration’s failure in Afghanistan and the complicity with the Taliban of Pakistan’s military regime, written by the author of a former New York Times #1 best-seller, did not receive a single major review in the U.S. The Obama campaign really should mine it — the book has plenty of evidence to support — and extend — the Democratic candidate’s criticisms of the Bush administration’s failure to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. But most of all, anyone even remotely concerned with this region should buy and read it, and then recommend it to any friends and relatives who think they are not concerned with it.

Well OK then. Will do. 

Christian Bleuer, the formerly anonymous author of the Ghosts of Alexander blog, has self-outed. Bleuer writes “I have come to the realization that there is nothing controversial or confrontational about this blog. I therefore have no need to continue with my pseudo-anonymity.” A PhD student in the research phase of his degree at The Australian National University’s Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East and Central Asia), he states his blog is “about conflict related issues in Afghanistan: politics, culture, society, reconstruction, civil-military relations and insurgency.” Other qualifications:

I received my MA from Indiana University’s Central Eurasian Studies Department. My BA is also from IU with a major in political science and a minor from the Russian and East European Institute. I am a graduate of Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Saskatchewan, Canada.

I focus on rural and peripheral social, political and military dynamics in Afghanistan and Southern Central Asia. Of particular interest to me are local solidarity groups, identity and loyalty, especially how these factors affect survival strategies during conflict and competition. At the moment I am finding anthropological writings to be quite useful. But I steal liberally from most of the social sciences.

I have studied Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajiki and Russian during my time at Indiana University and I highly recommend their intensive summer language program (which includes Pashto). I am currently studying Farsi.

I am also the creator/editor of The Afghanistan Analyst, an online research portal for Afghanistan.

 Excellent. We’re hoping Christian will consider joining us here at the CTLab blog, as well.

By Bobby Chesney via the National Security Law List-Serve

SCOTUSBLOG’s Lyle Denniston offers the following update on developments in the Hamdan prosecution, where the parties now are focused on whether Boumediene compels the conclusion that detainees are entitled to constitutional rights beyond just the right to habeas itself. Captain Allred, the judge in Hamdan’s commission proceeding, has given the parties until July 2^nd to brief the issue.

Debate over Boumediene’s meaning

Lawyers for the Pentagon and for detainees now held at Guantanamo Bay have already engaged in a debate — at least in summary form — over the meaning of the Supreme Court’s June 12 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195). In short, the military lawyers contend that the detainees are now protected by only a single constitutional right, while the prisoners’ attorneys claim at least nine.

Mainly by coincidence, the constitutional dispute is playing out in the Pentagon’s war crimes case against a Yemeni national, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. He is the same detainee who won an earlier Supreme Court decision that the detainees had some legal right to challenge their detention — rights that Congress then moved to sharply curtail, an effort that the Supreme Court partly overturned in Boumediene .

The new phase of the constitutional disagreement will unfold in July when Hamdan’s trial resumes on charges of providing support to the Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan. Hamdan’s trial before a military commission was postponed on May 16 by the presiding judge, to await the Court’s ruling in Boumediene .

Under a ruling Thursday by the judge, Navy Captain Keith J. Allred, Hamdan’s defense lawyers are to file their motions making constitutional claims by July 2, and, depending on how those motions fare, the trial could start on July 21 — the first criminal trial growing out of the “war on terrorism.”

Allred rejected the plea of the detainees’ defense team to delay the trial until Sept. 22 to give them more time to prepare their constitutional claims in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. The motion for a continuance summarized what at least some of those claims will be. The Pentagon’s opposition filing gave its view of the very limited scope of Boumediene . The judge said that the time up to July 2 will give the defense enough time to prepare their constitutional motions.

The judge’s ruling can be downloaded here. (Attached to the two-page ruling are the defense motion for continuance and the prosecutors’ response. Thanks to Howard Bashman of How Appealing blog for providing a link to the Miami Herald file on these papers.)

The defense, in its motion filed one week after Boumediene was decided, argued: “ Boumediene was decided in a manner sharply adverse to the Government, rejecting numerous positions advanced, and authorities relied upon, by the Government in this case….The Boumediene holding that substantive and structural constitutional protections extend to Guantanamo has major implications for this case.”

The motion asserted that “a large array of constitutional rights and protections now must be considered, affecting all aspects of the substantive and procedural law that must be applied in this case.” It indicated that the defense team would offer, “at a minimum,” motions to apply nine specifically enumerated constitutional rights.

Here are the constitutional claims to be advanced:

1. A constitutional right to equal legal treatment, allegedly violated by any trial before a military commission (equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment).

2. A constitutional right not to be forced to give evidence against himself, presumably based on alleged evidence obtained in interrogations (Fifth Amendment ban on self-incriminaton).

3. A constitutional right to due process, based on alleged use of testimony obtained by coercion or torture and denial of access to documents about the conditions at Guantanamo (Due Process Clause of Fifth Amendment).

4. A constitutional right to call witnesses who may aid the defense, based on claims of too-limited access so far to “high-value detainees” at Guantanamo — including some key Al Qaeda leaders (Sixth Amendment right to compulsory process).

5. A constitutional right to the aid of a lawyer, allegedly frustrated by conditions at Guantanamo that inhibit lawyer-client relationships (Sixth Amendment).

6. A constitutional right to confront adverse witnesses, based on a claimed prosecution plan to offer “50 items of hearsay evidence” at trial (Sixth Amendment).

7. A constitutional right to a speedy and public trial, allegedly violated by the mode and scheduling of military commission trials (Sixth Amendment).

8. A constitutional right to be charged by a grand jury, allegedly violated by the charges leveled here only by Pentagon prosecutors (Fifth Amendment).

9. A constitutional right not to be accused of a crime for actions that were not criminal at the time, a test of whether a military commission has jurisdiction because the accusations are not violations of the law of war (Ex Post Factor Clause in Article II, limiting Congress’ authorize to create new crimes after the fact).

Several of those, if granted, would result in dismissal outright of the case against Hamdan. He would have to remain at Guantanamo, at least until a federal civilian court ruled on his habeas challenge to detention.

The Pentagon, in opposing the defense motion for more time to prepare challenges, argued that the Boumediene decision “is of little relevance” to a military commission trial. There was only “a narrow holding” by the Supreme Court, that detainees have a constitutional right to pursue a habeas claim in District Court. The decision, the prosecutors said, turned only on “the Suspension Clause” — that is, Congress’s violation of that Clause by seeking to bar habeas claims.

The detainees involved in the case, the prosecutors added, were not charged with any crime. Hamdan, by contrast, faces charges and will “receive a full and fair adversary process.”

The opposition also said: “If the court takes anything from the Boumediene decision, it should recognize the importance in preventing any further delay in the matter presently before it and deny the defense request.”

Judge Allred, while denying the motion to delay further, did not hint how he would react to any constitutional claims. He wrote: “The Commission is particularly interested in the parties’ views on what principles govern whether other constitutional provisions, such as those the defense intends to raise, apply in Guantanamo Bay.”