For anyone thinking sanctuary was only about gorrillas in the mist or guerrillas hit and missed, something interesting from The Economist: "The Militarization of Space: Disharmony in the Spheres." The Economist (19-25 Jan 2008), p. 23-25. The report gets into US military reliance on satellites, and the stability of space – the literal, empty version, not in the sense of a place imbued with meaning. As an operating environment for them, the newspaper writes, it’s become an increasingly chaotic piece of ethe-real estate, sometimes by design, and especially of late. In the contest for influence and control over the void, states such as China have been taking measures to assert their own access and control, meanwhile working to disrupt that of others. "The only conclusion," notes The Economist, quoting a Pentagon official, is that ‘space is no longer a sanctuary; it is a contested domain’." Sure, I’ll bite, and others have suggested as much before. The argument that sanctuaries are uncontested domains, though, isn’t exactly accurate – but I digress….
“You Can Hear What They Think and Speak…”
So says Leila Fadel, the McClatchy Newspapers’ Lebanese-American-Saudi bureau chief in Baghdad, of the content of her staff’s blog, Inside Iraq. Quoting her in "As Iraqis See It," New York Review of Books (17 Jan 08), writer and journalist Michael Massing surveys the McClatchy chain’s local blogscene. Inside Iraq is an official online extension of the MClatchy mortar and brick office, but it retains the unedited edginess of experiential blogging amidst life lived in hard places. Massing treats us to both the real lives and personalities of the diarists, and their hackle-stiffening accounts of there-but-for-the-grace-of-whoever death-defying ducks and weaves. Working for foreign media doesn’t inhibit their political opinions of the occupation, either. By Massing’s account, Salam Pax’s Where is Raed? this is not, but Inside Iraq still sounds like it’s worth a read for its reality-bites texture and depth.
Things Are Complicated in Iraq….
No kidding. Writing in The New Republic, Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution notes that in the wake of the troop surge, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news: for all of Iraq’s on-going problems, its current state of affairs "is entirely in keeping with historical norms." On the not-so-good news front, he writes that "while the pattern we have seen in Iraq is fully consistent with success, it also remains fully consistent with failure." Woops. Kenneth M. Pollack, "Apres-Surge: The Next Iraq Debates," The New Republic (31 Dec 2007).
No-Go Areas in the UK?
Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, “Extremism Flourished As UK Lost Christianity,” Telegraph (7 January 2008). To scathing response, the Nazir-Ali, “the Church’s only Asian bishop”, criticized the emergence of Muslim-dominated – and noisy – “no-go areas” as a consequence of multiculturalist ghettoization, official secularism, and the “multifaith ‘mish mash’ “. He also warned of dire consequences if “Britain does not recover that vision of its destiny which made it great”, bemoaning the loss of Christian preeminence. Interesting use of the term “no-go area”, which was commonly applied to nationalist dominated areas of Northern Ireland like Derry and South Armagh during The Troubles. For follow-up and what looks like some extensive reader response, see Jonathan Wynne-Jones, “Bishop Warns of No-Go Zones For Non-Muslims,” Telegraph (7 January 2008).
The UN in Iraq
I’ve had a soft spot for Samantha Power ever since I was an early graduate student working on the history of modern genocide and ethnic conflict. Never mind that this redhead is both beautiful and captivating (note to Red: not a fetish). Her Pulitzer wasn’t for nothing: ‘A Problem From Hell’: American in the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002) is one of the most important books available on the subject. A professor of public policy at Harvard who remains a practicing journalist, she writes with great clarity and style on some of the most gut-wrenching human rights and foreign policy issues of the day. So when she publishes something new, I perk up. She’s been promising a biography of the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN’s Envoy to Iraq killed in 2003 in the attack on its Baghdad headquarters. The book, according to her Harvard bio, is forthcoming from Penguin Press sometime this year. The latest issue of The New Yorker is carrying what must be the teaser (as with her award-winning Atlantic Monthly article on the Rwanda genocide, "Bystanders to Genocide", that preceded and featured in A Problem From Hell): "The Envoy: The United Nations’ Doomed Mission to Iraq". It’s a must read, written with her usual eye for human nuance and historical detail. Bravo – again.
MICHAEL A. INNES 