Hobbes on sovereignty, social order, & the nature of the social contract

I sent this to students in a course on social & political theory that I'm teaching this summer. (I almost never do courses during summers, but I guess everything in life has exceptions.) It may be of more general interest--by itself, and/or in connection with an earlier discussion of "Rousseau vs. Hobbes on sovereignty, citizenship, & the political".  —Jeff Weintraub

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To: Members of PoliSci. 298-920 (Social & Political Theory)
From: Jeff Weintraub
Re: Some Hobbesian afterthoughts

Partly in response to some questions, let me return to a few theoretical points from Hobbes that might be worth spelling out a bit further.

=> As we know, for Hobbes the creation and maintenance of the sovereign power has to be understood as based (in principle, if not as a matter of actual historical events) on a covenant--or, as others have called it, a social contract. This (hypothetical) contract or covenant simultaneously creates the sovereign and establishes the fundamental distinction between sovereign and subjects.

In the history of political theory and ideology, there have been non-Hobbesian versions of this idea that understood it as involving some sort of compact or agreement between the sovereign and the subjects. It is important to understand why Hobbes strongly and explicitly rejects any notion of this sort, and why he regards it as incompatible both with the logic of his theory and with the core requirements of sovereignty itself.

Some of his key reasons are summed up in the discussion on pp. 230-231 of Leviathan (in ch. XVIII), and we partly discussed them on Monday.

In particular, we briefly considered some of the reasons Hobbes gives for rejecting the idea that the sovereign's authority could rest on covenants between the sovereign and individual subjects. Not only would this imply that the subject's grant of power to the sovereign might be conditional rather than absolute and all-or-nothing (which would dangerously undermine the core requirements of sovereignty itself), but there is also the problem that there is no conceivable third party that could “judge” between the sovereign and the subject in case of a disagreement over the terms of such a covenant. (And if such an independent third party existed, then we wouldn't have effective sovereignty, would we?)

On the other hand, there is also another historically significant version of the notion that the sovereign's authority rests on a covenant between ruler and ruled, and it might be worth a little more discussion than we gave it on Monday. This version involves, not a set of separate agreements between the sovereign and each individual subject, but a covenant between the sovereign and the people as a whole. According to this notion (of a "contract of government," to use one historical formulation), the people agrees to submit to the sovereign--and both sides have to abide by the terms of this covenant.

(As Hobbes puts it on XVIII:230, if "he that is made Soveraigne" were to make a "Covenant with his subjects beforehand," that would require either that "he must make a severall Covenant with every man," or else that "he must make it with the whole multitude as one party to the Covenant.")

In some ways, Hobbes regards it as even more important to refute this version--of a covenant between a sovereign and a people--than the other one. In addition to the considerations already outlined above, he also emphasizes one further reason that cuts to the heart of his whole theoretical vision.

This notion is completely absurd, Hobbes argues, because it would require assuming that there can be such a thing as a 'people' separate from or independent of the sovereign. That is, it pretends that a 'people' could exist as a collective body or community which is capable of collectively acting or deciding on its own--including, for example, the act of agreeing to submit to a sovereign. But this would violate what Hobbes regards as an absolutely fundamental and essential premise, which is that society consists exclusively of individuals--or, more precisely, individuals plus a sovereign. What holds those individuals together is purely the fact that they are all subject to the same sovereign. Until a sovereign is created, there is no body politic. (And if the sovereign is removed, the body politic dissolves back into individuals.) So it's ridiculous to think that a pre-existing 'people' could collectively make a covenant with the sovereign. A covenant "with the whole, as one party, it is impossible; because they are not yet one Person...."

This is an argument to which Hobbes returns several times, just to make sure you get the point. For example, in a very significant formulation on XVI:220, he insists quite sharply that it is the "unity" of the sovereign that constitutes a society and holds it together, and not any "unity" or solidarity between the members of society. Without the power of the sovereign to bind them together, they are just a mass of individuals--"the Multitude is naturally not One, but Many...."  For a graphic representation of this idea, have another look at the illustration on the cover of your copy of Leviathan, which also appeared in the original 1651 edition.

If you grasp why this argument is so important to Hobbes, it will give you an insight into some of the central premises and principles of his whole theoretical approach to society and politics--in particular, his radical individualism. So ponder it further.

=> And here is another Hobbesian theoretical question you might all want to ponder. We have seen that, according to Hobbes, a key task or function of the sovereign is to make (and enforce) laws. As Hobbes insists repeatedly, laws have to be made, and they can be made only by a sovereign power "that hath command over others" (XVI:217).

Well, within the logic of Hobbes's theory, how can we explain why someone might--or might not--obey those laws. Specifically, what kinds of motivations would lead an individual to obey (or not obey) laws or other rules?

Yours for theory,
Jeff Weintraub

Journalists under attack? - The case of Mohammed Omer

"From triumph to torture" is the title of a piece by John Pilger in last Wednesday's Guardian about an ordeal recently undergone by Mohammed Omer, a young Palestinian journalist from Gaza. Pilger writes:

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or "official drivel", as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. [....]

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza's borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel's infamous security organisation.

According to this account, Omer was held for hours by the Shin Bet with no good cause, stripped naked, humiliated, and physically abused until he passed out. When he was eventually released and allowed to return to Gaza, he was taken to a hospital there.

I would not normally disseminate a report of this sort by the despicable John Pilger, whose credibility in such matters is not great. (Sure enough, Pilger couldn't resist tossing a few dishonest claims into his wider discussion, as noted in a thoughtful piece by Mira Vogel of Engage.)

But what's really appalling is that, in this case, Pilger's description of the treatment suffered by Mohammed Omer, which is based on Omer's own account, may actually be true. If so, this sounds like a disgraceful case of gratuitous harassment and brutality--and one where Omer may even have been singled out for mistreatment precisely because the security people knew he was a journalist.

I notice that the Dutch Foreign Ministry takes these allegations seriously enough that it has demanded an explanation from the Israeli government. And Reporters Without Borders has issued a protest about this incident, along with a more general condemnation of "abusive behaviour by Israeli security agents towards Palestinian journalists moving around the Territories or returning from visits abroad."

The Israeli government has promised to investigate what happened. It had better undertake a serious investigation, for the sake of both justice and Israel's own national interest. If these accusations are true, then Omer deserves an apology (and compensation) and the people responsible should be punished. And if the Israeli security services are, indeed, routinely abusing and harassing Palestinian journalists just for doing journalism, then they should be made to stop it. This kind of stuff is wrong, sickening, and indefensible.

--Jeff Weintraub

UPDATE (7/7/2008): According to an Associated Press report, "Israel's Government Press Office said in a statement that Omer was never subjected to physical or mental abuse. It said his account was full of contradictions and was without foundation." (Some further details here.) This sounds like a preliminary statement from the Israeli side, and for the moment we await further information and clarification about this whole affair.

Has there been a military coup in Zimbabwe? (continued)

As I reported on June 18 ("Has there been a military coup in Zimbabwe?"):

A number of informed analysts are apparently convinced that there has indeed been a kind of "military coup by stealth" in Zimbabwe. That is, the regime's repressive apparatus is no longer acting simply as the instrument of Mugabe's rule, but is largely running the show on its own account, with Mugabe himself relegated to a more secondary role. [....]

This analysis may or may not be overstated, but it sounds sufficiently plausible to be fairly terrifying. The implication would be that the Zimbabwean military and the rest of the ZANU-PF elite have ruled out any possible compromise with the political opposition that might weaken their own grip on power, and they are determined to do anything necessary to avoid losing power even if they take the country down with them. If so, then Zimbabwe may be headed toward a catastrophe even greater than what it has endured already.

Along the same lines, a June 25 guest-post on Normblog by Morris Szeftel referred to a widespread belief, apparently shared by Morgan Tsvangirai, that Robert Mugabe might have been willing to give up power after his defeat in the first-round elections on March 29, "but was prevented from doing so by his hardliners." (As Szeftel correctly pointed out, one implication is that Paul Collier's well-meaning suggestion that Mugabe's removal by a military coup might help solve the Zimbabwean crisis was drastically misconceived, to put it mildly.)

=> An article in yesterday's Washington Post (to which I was alerted by Norman Geras) provides a comprehensive picture of the brutal campaign of terror, intimidation, and repression unleashed by Mugabe's ZANU-PF regime to crush the opposition in the period leading up to the June 27 run-off election (which became a one-man show after Tsvangirai, the opposition candidate, concluded that he had to drop out). Along the way, it cites new information that appears to support the interpretation outlined above. Some highlights:

In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy. [....]

The Washington Post was given access to the written record by a participant of several private meetings attended by Mugabe in the period between the first round of voting and the runoff election. The notes were corroborated by witnesses to the internal debates. Many of the people interviewed, including members of Mugabe's inner circle, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution. Much of the reporting for this article was conducted by a Zimbabwean reporter for The Post whose name is being withheld for security reasons. [....]

This account reveals previously undisclosed details of the strategy behind the campaign as it was conceived and executed by Mugabe and his top advisers, who from that first meeting through the final vote appeared to hold decisive influence over the president. [....]

President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.

Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition. [....]

Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, took power in 1980 after a protracted guerrilla war. The notes and interviews make clear that its military supporters, who stood to lose wealth and influence if Mugabe bowed out, were not prepared to relinquish their authority simply because voters checked Tsvangirai's name on the ballots.

"The small piece of paper cannot take the country," Solomon Mujuru, the former guerrilla commander who once headed Zimbabwe's military, told the party's ruling politburo on April 4, according to notes of the meeting and interviews with some of those who attended. [....]

Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement. [....]

None of this mitigates Mugable's responsibility or guilt for his central role in the Zimbabwean catastrophe. But the problem is a lot bigger than just this one murderous and megalomaniacal tyrant. Read the rest below.

--Jeff Weintraub
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Washington Post
Saturday, July 5, 2008 (p. A1)
Inside Mugabe's Violent Crackdown
Notes, Witnesses Detail How Campaign Was Conceived and Executed by Leader, Aides
By Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.

Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition.

Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.

In the three months between the March 29 vote and the June 27 runoff election, ruling-party militias under the guidance of 200 senior army officers battered the Movement for Democratic Change, bringing the opposition party's network of activists to the verge of oblivion. By election day, more than 80 opposition supporters were dead, hundreds were missing, thousands were injured and hundreds of thousands were homeless. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's leader, dropped out of the contest and took refuge in the Dutch Embassy.

This account reveals previously undisclosed details of the strategy behind the campaign as it was conceived and executed by Mugabe and his top advisers, who from that first meeting through the final vote appeared to hold decisive influence over the president.

The Washington Post was given access to the written record by a participant of several private meetings attended by Mugabe in the period between the first round of voting and the runoff election. The notes were corroborated by witnesses to the internal debates. Many of the people interviewed, including members of Mugabe's inner circle, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution. Much of the reporting for this article was conducted by a Zimbabwean reporter for The Post whose name is being withheld for security reasons.

What emerges from these accounts is a ruling inner circle that debated only in passing the consequences of the political violence on the country and on international opinion. Mugabe and his advisers also showed little concern in these meetings for the most basic rules of democracy that have taken hold in some other African nations born from anti-colonial independence movements.

Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, took power in 1980 after a protracted guerrilla war. The notes and interviews make clear that its military supporters, who stood to lose wealth and influence if Mugabe bowed out, were not prepared to relinquish their authority simply because voters checked Tsvangirai's name on the ballots.

"The small piece of paper cannot take the country," Solomon Mujuru, the former guerrilla commander who once headed Zimbabwe's military, told the party's ruling politburo on April 4, according to notes of the meeting and interviews with some of those who attended.

'Professional Killers'

The plan's first phase unfolded the week after the high-level meeting, as Mugabe supporters began erecting 2,000 party compounds across the country that would serve as bases for the party militias.

At first, the beatings with whips, striking with sticks, torture and other forms of intimidation appeared consistent with the country's past political violence. Little of it was fatal.

That changed May 5 in the remote farming village of Chaona, located 65 miles north of the capital, Harare. The village of dirt streets had voted for Tsvangirai in the election's first round after decades of supporting Mugabe.

On the evening of May 5 -- three days after Mugabe's government finally released the official results of the March 29 election -- 200 Mugabe supporters rampaged through its streets. By the time the militia finished, seven people were dead and the injured bore the hallmarks of a new kind of political violence.

Women were stripped and beaten so viciously that whole sections of flesh fell away from their buttocks. Many had to lie facedown in hospital beds during weeks of recovery. Men's genitals became targets. The official postmortem report on Chaona opposition activist Aleck Chiriseri listed crushed genitals among the causes of death. Other men died the same way.

At the funerals for Chiriseri and the others, opposition activists noted the gruesome condition of the corpses. Some in the crowds believed soldiers trained in torture were behind the killings, not the more improvisational ruling-party youth or liberation war veterans who traditionally served as Mugabe's enforcers.

"This is what alerted me that now we are dealing with professional killers," said Shepherd Mushonga, a top opposition leader for Mashonaland Central province, which includes Chaona.

Mushonga, a lawyer whose unlined face makes him look much younger than his 48 years, won a seat in parliament in the March vote on the strength of a village-by-village organization that Tsvangirai's party had worked hard to assemble in rural Mashonaland.

After Chaona, Mushonga turned that organization into a defense force for his own village, Kodzwa. Three dozen opposition activists, mostly men in their 20s and 30s, took shifts patrolling the village at night. The men armed themselves with sticks, shovels and axes small enough to slip into their pants pockets, Mushonga said.

The same militias that attacked Chaona worked their way gradually south through the rural district of Chiweshe, hitting Jingamvura, Bobo and, in the predawn hours of May 28, Kodzwa, where about 200 families live between two rivers.

When about 25 ruling-party militia members attempted to enter the village along its two dirt roads, Mushonga said, his patrols blew whistles, a prearranged signal for women, children and the elderly to flee south across one of the rivers to the relative safety of a neighboring village.

Over the next few hours, the two rival groups moved through Kodzwa's dark streets. Shortly after dawn, Mushonga's 46-year-old brother, Leonard, and about 10 other opposition activists cornered five of the ruling-party militia members. One of the militia members was armed with a bayonet, another a traditional club known as a knobkerrie.

In the scuffle, Leonard Mushonga and his group prevailed, beating the five intruders severely. But he said that this small, rare victory revealed evidence that elements of the army had been deployed against them.

One of the ruling-party men, Leonard Mushonga said, carried a military identification badge. In a police report on the incident, which led to the arrest of 26 opposition activists, the soldier was identified as Zacks Kanhukamwe, 47, a member of the Zimbabwe National Army. A second man, Petros Nyguwa, 45, was listed as a sergeant in the army.

He was also listed as a member of Mugabe's presidential guard.

Terror Brings Results

The death toll mounted through May, and almost all of the fatalities were opposition activists. Tsvangirai's personal advance man, Tonderai Ndira, 32, was abducted and killed. Police in riot gear raided opposition headquarters in Harare, arresting hundreds of families that had taken refuge there.

Even some of Mugabe's stalwarts grew uneasy, records of the meetings show.

Vice President Joice Mujuru, wife of former guerrilla commander Solomon Mujuru and a woman whose ferocity during the guerrilla war of the 1970s earned her the nickname Spill Blood, warned the ruling party's politburo in a May 14 meeting that the violence might backfire. Notes from that and other meetings, as well as interviews with participants, make clear that she was overruled repeatedly by Chiwenga, the military head, and by former security chief Emerson Mnangagwa.

Mnangagwa, 61, earned his nickname in the mid-1980s overseeing the so-called Gukurahundi, when a North Korea-trained army brigade slaughtered thousands of people in a southwestern region where Mugabe was unpopular. From then on, Mnangagwa was known as the Butcher of Matabeleland.

The ruling party turned to Mnangagwa to manage Mugabe's runoff campaign after first-round results, delayed for five weeks, showed Tsvangirai winning but not with the majority needed to avoid a second round.

The opposition, however, had won a clear parliamentary majority.

In private briefings to Mugabe's politburo, Mnangagwa expressed growing confidence that the violence was doing its job, according to records of the meetings. After Joice Mujuru raised concerns about the brutality in the May 14 meeting, Mnangagwa said only, "Next agenda item," according to written notes and a party official who witnessed the exchange.

At a June 12 politburo meeting at party headquarters, Mnangagwa delivered another upbeat report.

According to one participant, he told the group that growing numbers of opposition activists in Mashonaland Central, Matabeleland North and parts of Masvingo province had been coerced into publicly renouncing their ties with Tsvangirai. Such events were usually held in the middle of the night, and featured the burning of opposition party cards and other regalia.

Talk within the ruling party began predicting a landslide victory in the runoff vote, less than three weeks away.

Mugabe's demeanor also brightened, said some of those who attended the meeting. Before it began, he joked with both Mnangagwa and Joice Mujuru.

It was the first time since the March vote, one party official recalled, that Mugabe laughed in public.

'Nothing to Go Back To'

The opposition's resistance in Chiweshe gradually withered under intensifying attacks by ruling-party militias. After the stalemate in Kodzwa, the militias continued moving south in June, finally reaching Manomano in the region's southwestern corner.

The opposition leader in Manomano was Gibbs Chironga, 44, who had won a seat in the local council as part of Tsvangirai's first-round landslide in the area. The Chirongas were shopkeepers with a busy store in Manomano. To defend that store, they kept a pair of shotguns on hand.

On June 20, a week before the runoff election, Mugabe's militias arrived in Manomano with an arsenal that had grown increasingly advanced as the vote approached.

Some carried AK-47 assault rifles, which are standard issue for Zimbabwe's army. For the attack on Manomano, witnesses counted six of the weapons.

About 150 militia members, some carrying the rifles, circled the Chironga family home. Gibbs Chironga fired warning shots from his shotgun, relatives and other witnesses recalled. Yet the militiamen kept coming. They broke open the ceiling with a barrage of rocks, then used hammers to batter down the walls.

When Gibbs Chironga emerged, a militia member shot him with an AK-47, said Hilton Chironga, his 41-year-old brother, who was wounded by gunfire. Gibbs died soon after.

His brother, sister and mother were beaten, then handcuffed and forced to drink a herbicide that burned their mouths and faces, relatives said.

Both Hilton Chironga and his 76-year-old mother, Nelia Chironga, were taken to the hospital in Harare, barely able to eat or speak. The whereabouts of Gibbs Chironga's sister remain unknown. The family home was burned to the ground.

"There's nothing to go back to at home," Hilton Chironga said softly, a bandage covering the wounds on his face and a pair of feeding tubes snaking into his nostrils.

"Even if I go back, they'll finish me off. That is what they want," he said.

Two days later, as Mugabe's militias intensified their attacks, Tsvangirai dropped out of the race.

Groups of ruling-party youths took over a field on the western edge of downtown Harare where he was attempting to have a rally, and soon after, he announced that the government's campaign of violence had made it impossible for him to continue. Privately, opposition officials said the party organization had been so damaged that they had no hope of winning the runoff vote.

On election day, Mugabe's militias drove voters to the polls and tracked through ballot serial numbers those who refused to vote or who cast ballots for Tsvangirai despite his boycott.

The 84-year-old leader took the oath of office two days later, for a sixth time. He waved a Bible in the air and exchanged congratulatory handshakes with Chiwenga, whose reelection plan he had adopted more than two months before, and the rest of his military leaders.

About the same time, a 29-year-old survivor of the first assault in Chaona, Patrick Mapondera, emerged from the hospital. His wife, who had also been badly beaten, was recovering from skin grafts to her buttocks. She could sit again.

Mapondera had been the opposition chairman for Chaona and several surrounding villages. If and when the couple returns home, he said, he does not expect to take up his job again.

"They've destroyed everything," he said.

How to deal with rude, abusive, or intemperate letters

Norman Geras passes on an example of one strategy for dealing with an unwise or intemperate letter you've written yourself (quoted from here):

Anyone tempted to send a rude letter, or to send an offensive reply to a rude letter, might well follow the example of the late, great Colonel Alfred Wintle, an eccentric and irascible figure who was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1939 for trying to steal an aircraft with which he intended to invade France, single-handedly. In 1946, Colonel Wintle wrote to The Times from the Cavalry Club: “Sir, I have just written you a long letter. On reading it over, I have thrown it in the wastepaper basket. Hoping this will meet with your approval, I am Sir . . .”

What about responding to overwrought or idiotic letters you receive? I confess that I've always wanted to find the right opportunity to use a snappy comeback I vaguely remember seeing attributed to Mark Twain, or George Bernard Shaw, or someone of that sort. Having received an angry letter from some correspondent, this person responded by writing (more or less):

Dear Sir,

I believe I should warn you that a dangerous lunatic appears to be sending out letters and putting your name on them.

I suppose it would work for e-mail, too. (Not to mention a lot of the stuff that fills up "comments" threads on blogs--except that there the "dangerous lunatic" bit wouldn't always be a joke.)

Update: Sebastien Angel, a once-upon-a-time student of mine at UPenn, wrote me to suggest that this letter-from-a-lunatic response should be attributed to Steven Young, a Democratic US Senator from Ohio from 1958-1971 and a noted political eccentric. Sure enough, a 1962 Time Magazine profile of Young included the following example of the Senator's famously terse and undiplomatic correspondence:

Answering critical mail, he writes: "Some crackpot has written to me and signed your name to the letter. I thought you ought to know about this before it gets any further."

Some other examples:

To one disenchanted supporter he said frankly: "You are entirely misinformed and your letter is silly, but thank you for voting for me." But the classic Young reply remains: "Sir: You are a liar. Sincerely, Stephen M. Young, United States Senator."

Well, I still have the feeling that Sen. Young was paraphrasing an earlier version from the 19th (or early 20th) century. But so far he's the best-authenticated source, and I thank Sebastien for the tip.

Still your humble servant,
Jeff Weintraub

George Packer on "Obama's Iraq Problem" ... and ours

This important piece by George Packer deserves to be read carefully, thoroughly, and--for those who start out feeling skeptical about its arguments--with an open mind. That's not such an onerous recommendation, since the piece is clear, concise, and well-argued. In my view, it's also cogent and convincing.

Packer is someone who speaks about Iraq with unusual seriousness, depth of knowledge, and genuine concern. Back in 2002-2003, he was one of the left-liberal reluctant hawks who (like me) supported military action against Saddam Hussein--primarily, in Packer's case, on humanitarian and anti-fascist grounds. He later decided that this had been a mistake. (His reasons for coming to both of those conclusions are explained, along with much else, in his excellent book The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq.) But he's also argued that at this point it would be catastrophically wrong, on both moral and prudential grounds, for the US to simply abandon Iraq and the Iraqis. And he believes, correctly, that developments in Iraq over the past year and a half have strengthened the case for a more constructive and morally responsible alternative.

Some highlights:

In February, 2007, when Barack Obama declared that he was running for President, violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic levels, and he based his candidacy, in part, on a bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of American forces upon taking office. At the time, this pledge represented conventional thinking among Democrats and was guaranteed to play well with primary voters. But in the year and a half since then two improbable, though not unforeseeable, events have occurred: Obama has won the Democratic nomination, and Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to stabilize. With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far. [....]

Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse. [....] So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.”

Some of Obama's advisers, including Samantha Power and Colin Kahl, "have been more forthcoming"--or at least more tantalizing--in talking about possibilities for flexible planning and "conditional engagement."

The politics of the issue is tricky, because acknowledging changed ideas in response to changed facts is considered a failing by the political class. [....] Yet, as exhausted as the public is with the war, a candidate who seems heedless of progress in Iraq will be vulnerable to the charge of defeatism, which John McCain’s campaign will connect to its broader theme of Obama’s inexperience in and weakness on national security. [....]

Obama has shown, with his speech on race, that he has a talent for candor. One can imagine him speaking more honestly on Iraq. If pressed on his timetable for withdrawal, he could say, “That was always a goal, not a blueprint. When circumstances change, I don’t close my eyes—I adapt.” [....] If Obama truly wants to be seen as a figure of change, he needs to talk less about the past and more about the future: not the war that should never have been fought but the war that he, alone of the two candidates, can find an honorable way to end.

=>For several months I have been meaning to write something advancing the same kind of argument that Packer makes in this piece, but for various reasons I've put off doing it--partly because I was still puzzling through the complex, shifting, and sometimes murky news coming from Iraq. Now Packer has beaten me to it, so I will simply endorse what he says. This piece nicely pulls together a wide range of issues in both Iraqi and American politics, and in my opinion he gets them all right. (OK, I might quibble with details in a few formulations here and there, but nothing serious.)

People who support Barack Obama for President (as I do) should pay special attention to what Packer argues here ... because if a President Obama does wind up doing the right thing with respect to Iraq (which I strongly hope he does, and which I think there is some possibility he might), then that may surprise and upset a number of his most ardent fans.

=> Sometime soon I may write some some further things about these matters myself. In the meantime, if you're interested in reading some other cogent analyses and recommendations that largely dovetail with Packer's, I also recommend consulting Fareed Zakaria ("What Obama Should Say On Iraq") and Trudy Rubin (for example, here & here & here).

But for a start, let me just repeat that Packer gets it right here, so please read the whole thing.

--Jeff Weintraub
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New Yorker
July 7, 2008
Obama's Iraq problem
By George Packer

In February, 2007, when Barack Obama declared that he was running for President, violence in Iraq had reached apocalyptic levels, and he based his candidacy, in part, on a bold promise to begin a rapid withdrawal of American forces upon taking office. At the time, this pledge represented conventional thinking among Democrats and was guaranteed to play well with primary voters. But in the year and a half since then two improbable, though not unforeseeable, events have occurred: Obama has won the Democratic nomination, and Iraq, despite myriad crises, has begun to stabilize. With the general election four months away, Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far.

Obama’s plan, which was formally laid out last September, called for the remaining combat brigades to be pulled out at a brisk pace of about one per month, along with a strategic shift of resources and attention away from Iraq and toward Afghanistan. At that rate, all combat troops would be withdrawn in sixteen months. In hindsight, it was a mistake—an understandable one, given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today—for Obama to offer such a specific timetable. In matters of foreign policy, flexibility is a President’s primary defense against surprise. At the start of 2007, no one in Baghdad would have predicted that blood-soaked neighborhoods would begin returning to life within a year. The improved conditions can be attributed, in increasing order of importance, to President Bush’s surge, the change in military strategy under General David Petraeus, the turning of Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda, the Sadr militia’s unilateral ceasefire, and the great historical luck that brought them all together at the same moment. With the level of violence down, the Iraqi government and Army have begun to show signs of functioning in less sectarian ways. These developments may be temporary or cyclical; predicting the future in Iraq has been a losing game. Indeed, it was President Bush’s folly to ignore for years the shifting realities on the ground.

Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse. The question is whether Obama will publicly change course before November. So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.”

Obama’s advisers have been more forthcoming. Samantha Power, before she resigned from the campaign for making an indiscreet remark about Hillary Clinton, told the BBC, “He will, of course, not rely upon some plan that he’s crafted as a Presidential candidate or a U.S. senator. He will rely upon a plan—an operational plan—that he pulls together in consultation with people who are on the ground.” Last month, the Center for a New American Security, which has become something like Obama’s foreign-policy think tank, released a report that argued against a timetable for withdrawal, regardless of the state of the war, and in favor of “conditional engagement,” declaring, “Under this strategy, the United States would not withdraw its forces based on a firm unilateral schedule. Rather, the time horizon for redeployment would be negotiated with the Iraqi government and nested within a more assertive approach to regional diplomacy. The United States would make it clear that Iraq and America share a common interest in achieving sustainable stability in Iraq, and that the United States is willing to help support the Iraqi government and build its security and governance capacity over the long term, but only so long as Iraqis continue to make meaningful political progress.” It’s impossible to know if this persuasive document mirrors Obama’s current thinking, but here’s a clue: it was co-written by one of his Iraq advisers, Colin Kahl.

A “conditional engagement” policy is a much better fit for the present situation in Iraq. It would keep the heat on Iraqi politicians, whose willingness to reach compromise on issues like oil revenues, provincial elections, de-Baathification, and power sharing still lags well behind the government’s recent military successes. It would allow for a phased withdrawal of most troops, depending on political progress and on the performance of the Iraqi Army. This, in turn, would ease the pressure on the American military and answer the rightful disenchantment in American public opinion. There will be no such thing as victory in Iraq, but the next President, if he remains nimble, may be able to keep the damage under control.

The politics of the issue is tricky, because acknowledging changed ideas in response to changed facts is considered a failing by the political class. Accordingly, Obama, on the night that he proclaimed himself the nominee, in St. Paul, made a familiar declaration: “Start leaving we must. It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future.” His supporters claim that the polls are with Obama, that war fatigue will make Iraq a political winner for him in November. Yet, as exhausted as the public is with the war, a candidate who seems heedless of progress in Iraq will be vulnerable to the charge of defeatism, which John McCain’s campaign will connect to its broader theme of Obama’s inexperience in and weakness on national security. The relative success of the surge is one of the few issues going McCain’s way; we’ll be hearing about it more and more between now and November, and it might sway some centrist voters who have doubts about Obama.

Obama has shown, with his speech on race, that he has a talent for candor. One can imagine him speaking more honestly on Iraq. If pressed on his timetable for withdrawal, he could say, “That was always a goal, not a blueprint. When circumstances change, I don’t close my eyes—I adapt.” He could detail in his speeches the functions that American troops and diplomats can continue to perform even as our primary combat role recedes: training and advising, counterterrorism, brokering deals among Iraqi factions, checking their expansionist impulses, opening talks with our enemies in the region. He could promise to negotiate all this with Iraqi leaders, emphasizing the difference between a relationship that respects the wishes of the public in both countries and one in which Iraqis are coerced into coöperation. If Obama truly wants to be seen as a figure of change, he needs to talk less about the past and more about the future: not the war that should never have been fought but the war that he, alone of the two candidates, can find an honorable way to end.

What next for Zimbabwe? (Robert Southall)

This piece in openDemocracy by the South African academic Roger Southall, written on the eve of Zimbabwe's bogus run-off election on Sunday, provides one of the best analytical overviews I've seen of where the Zimbabwean political situation stands right now, both internally and internationally.

Southall's discussion should be read in full, but I would say its basic messages are the following.

It is still not too late to save Zimbabwe, but the Zimbabweans can't do it by themselves. Keeping the country from going over the brink will also require serious, sustained, and coordinated constructive action from the alleged 'world community'--above all from key African governments, especially those of Zimbabwe's neighbors in southern Africa. (These points were also cogently argued by Gideon Rachman in a June 23 column in the Financial Times, "Paths out of Zimbabwe's dead end"--which I also recommend.)

By itself, that's simply more bad news. The good news is that, for the first time, there are signs that this might actually happen. In this respect, the growing collapse of the international legitimacy of Mugabe's regime has been a crucial factor:

The international reaction to Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the presidential run-off election scheduled for 27 June 2008 may prove to be a key moment in the long-haul campaign to bring about political change and a return to democracy in Zimbabwe. Nelson Mandela's pithy reference to the country's "tragic failure of leadership" is only the most resonant of a range of critical judgments from African leaders; the latter enabled passage of an unprecedented and unanimous United Nations Security Council statement condemning violence against Zimbabwe's opposition and saying that this has rendered a free and fair poll impossible. [....]

The Zimbabwean president, in power since the country's birth in 1980, has proved remarkably adept at surviving a spectacular economic collapse and mega-inflation induced by his regime's own policies. He has managed this feat through a mix of military power, targeted repression, and political patronage; together, these mechanisms have enabled the political-military elite to resist every pressure if not actually to prosper. Critically, the project of the president and his cronies has been dressed up in an anti-imperialist, liberationist guise which hitherto has secured the necessary levels of African support to ensure continental and regional paralysis even in the face of mounting internal crisis.

Yet now, something seems to have snapped among those whose quiescence the regime has most relied on: Zimbabwe's own neighbours, even including some of Robert Mugabe's erstwhile "comrades". The regime's violent onslaught upon the politicians and supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the approach to the second round of the presidential election, and Mugabe's explicit declaration that he will not accept defeat, have provoked African leaders to indicate that the time has come for the 84-year-old president to go. [....]

Three new developments contribute to the state they're in. [....]

First, Zanu-PF's intransigence in face of its undisputed loss of the parliamentary (and first-round presidential) elections on 29 March 2008 has stripped the regime of its declining continental legitimacy. African leaders from southern Africa who had already broken ranks - Levy Mwanawasa from Zambia and Ian Khama from Botswana - have now been backed by calls by counterparts in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and even Angola for Mugabe to play fair. It is particularly significant that the Mugabe regime is visibly draining South African support. While President Thabo Mbeki remains committed to his endless rounds of "quiet diplomacy", ANC president Jacob Zuma has become vocally scathing about the Mugabe regime's brutality and has accused it of riding roughshod over the ideals of the struggle for African liberation (see "South Africa and Zimbabwe: the end of ‘quiet diplomacy'?", 29 April 2008).

Second, growing African impatience with Mugabe is slowly but surely taking institutional form. The current electoral observers from the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been scorned in the media for remaining supine and hotel-bound, yet interestingly African criticism of Mugabe has increasingly been versed in terms of the aspirations and adopted electoral and human-rights norms formally adopted by both organisations. [....] In short, Mugabe can no longer expect to enjoy SADC's tolerance, let alone its active support.

Third, the change in the African mood has given courage to western powers to call for stiffer action. [....]

It is against this background that the changing South African situation is likely to become increasingly critical. [....] The call is now out from within the ANC - and notably its partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - for talk to be backed by muscle. [....] Even segments of the business community, expressed by leaders in the financial press, are now calling for the imposition of sanctions.

Above all, South Africa at large has been shaken by the recent outbursts of xenophobic violence against foreigners [JW: discussed here] and is correspondingly alarmed by the prospect of an even greater flow of refugees from Zimbabwe if the situation becomes even worse than it presently is. [....] What goes for South Africa, increasingly goes for the region as a whole: Zimbabwe appears as a dangerous vacuum in a regionally stretched economy.

Furthermore, given the political will, there are ways that Zimbabwe's neighbors could apply real and effective leverage to push Mugabe and his ZANU-PF regime toward a political settlement. But whether or not they will actually do this is an open question. And even in the best-case scenario, a lot of genuinely painful and difficult policy dilemmas would remain.

But circumstances are changing rapidly, with drastic action needed to prevent Zimbabwe falling further into the abyss. The silver lining is that for the first time there are prospects of Africa and the west coming together on how to deal with Robert Mugabe, and in doing so offering a glimmer of light to Zimbabwe's hard-pressed people.

Read the whole thing (below). And, if you're interested, click on the map to enlarge.

--Jeff Weintraub


==============================
openDemocracy
June 26, 2008
The politics of pressure: the world and Zimbabwe
Roger Southall

The brutal pre-election repression of Robert Mugabe's regime may at last have brought the world to a tipping-point of disgust. But this is where the hard questions begin, says Roger Southall.

The international reaction to Morgan Tsvangirai's withdrawal from the presidential run-off election scheduled for 27 June 2008 may prove to be a key moment in the long-haul campaign to bring about political change and a return to democracy in Zimbabwe. Nelson Mandela's pithy reference to the country's "tragic failure of leadership" is only the most resonant of a range of critical judgments from African leaders; the latter enabled passage of an unprecedented and unanimous United Nations Security Council statement condemning violence against Zimbabwe's opposition and saying that this has rendered a free and fair poll impossible.

These international responses to the most recent brutal violations of human and civic rights in Zimbabwe have both cast a shadow over the (now) one-man election and created the sense of a new momentum in addressing the country's political and humanitarian crises. But is this the "tipping-point" over Robert Mugabe and his regime, or merely the end of the beginning?

A change of routine

For too long the international community has been at odds, with western demands for increased pressure upon the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) regime of Robert Mugabe being met with African (and notably South African) resistance. This week's events suggest that at long last the ground might be collapsing beneath Mugabe's feet.

The Zimbabwean president, in power since the country's birth in 1980, has proved remarkably adept at surviving a spectacular economic collapse and mega-inflation induced by his regime's own policies. He has managed this feat through a mix of military power, targeted repression, and political patronage; together, these mechanisms have enabled the political-military elite to resist every pressure if not actually to prosper. Critically, the project of the president and his cronies has been dressed up in an anti-imperialist, liberationist guise which hitherto has secured the necessary levels of African support to ensure continental and regional paralysis even in the face of mounting internal crisis.

Yet now, something seems to have snapped among those whose quiescence the regime has most relied on: Zimbabwe's own neighbours, even including some of Robert Mugabe's erstwhile "comrades". The regime's violent onslaught upon the politicians and supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the approach to the second round of the presidential election, and Mugabe's explicit declaration that he will not accept defeat, have provoked African leaders to indicate that the time has come for the 84-year-old president to go.

Mugabe is braving the storm and remains committed to proceeding with the election. The Zanu-PF perspective is that a ritualised Mugabe victory will provide the president with the legality he requires to appoint a government and members to the senate which will help neutralise the MDC majority in the national assembly. The calculation is that these manoeuvres would be followed by business as usual, where Mugabe can resume his game of playing the west off against Africa and juggling his regime's economic survival against mounting odds. But this time round, his and his followers' predicament looks more serious. Three new developments contribute to the state they're in.

A gathering chorus

First, Zanu-PF's intransigence in face of its undisputed loss of the parliamentary (and first-round presidential) elections on 29 March 2008 has stripped the regime of its declining continental legitimacy. African leaders from southern Africa who had already broken ranks - Levy Mwanawasa from Zambia and Ian Khama from Botswana - have now been backed by calls by counterparts in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and even Angola for Mugabe to play fair. It is particularly significant that the Mugabe regime is visibly draining South African support. While President Thabo Mbeki remains committed to his endless rounds of "quiet diplomacy", ANC president Jacob Zuma has become vocally scathing about the Mugabe regime's brutality and has accused it of riding roughshod over the ideals of the struggle for African liberation (see "South Africa and Zimbabwe: the end of ‘quiet diplomacy'?", 29 April 2008).

Second, growing African impatience with Mugabe is slowly but surely taking institutional form. The current electoral observers from the African Union (AU) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) have been scorned in the media for remaining supine and hotel-bound, yet interestingly African criticism of Mugabe has increasingly been versed in terms of the aspirations and adopted electoral and human-rights norms formally adopted by both organisations. Even more interesting is that President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia, currently SADC chairman, chose to issue a call for the postponement of the 27 June vote on behalf of the organisation, despite the fact that he had managed to make contact with leaders of only four of its fourteen member-countries. Meanwhile, lawyers are lining up to declare the run-off election illegal in terms of Zimbabwe's own constitution. In short, Mugabe can no longer expect to enjoy SADC's tolerance, let alone its active support.

Third, the change in the African mood has given courage to western powers to call for stiffer action. Hitherto, western condemnation of the Mugabe regime, backed by the imposition of "smart sanctions" against the elite, has been widely regarded in Africa as suspect, and may indeed have been counterproductive in that it has enabled Mugabe to beat the anti-British and anti-imperial drum. Yet now Britain has felt sufficiently emboldened by African criticism of Mugabe to call for Zimbabwe's power-supplies to be cut off, and for South Africa to block electricity supplies.

So what are the immediate prospects for "Zimbusting" and forcing a change in regime? Why should Mugabe concede to pressures which he has consistently defied before? And how far are his African neighbours prepared to go in curtailing his regime's survival?

A scaling pressure

The initial change, which extends far more than diplomatic nicety, is that the Mugabe government risks becoming even more an international pariah than it was before. Electoral analysis and sheer commonsense have all pointed to the fact that the two previous rounds of parliamentary and presidential elections in Zimbabwe were grossly manipulated, one way or another, to secure an outcome favourable to Zanu-PF, but fellow African regimes were prepared to look the other way and endorse the official results. Not so this time. Mugabe's "victory" in the presidential election will not be accepted, and his claim to internal legitimacy will be challenged.

It appears likely that the legality of his regime after the election will not be recognised by the SADC, and that the African Union (which is preparing for a summit in Sharm al-Sheikh on 30 June-1 July 2008) will follow suit. This would in turn lead to the possibility of Zimbabwe being suspended or expelled from United Nations bodies (although not from the UN itself). Mugabe has been enabled to wriggle past western restrictions on his international travel by attending meetings of the UN, but this option might then be closed down. In that event, his wife Grace will have to make do with the bare shelves of the shops in Harare, as Mugabe follows the ghost of Ian Smith down the path to international isolation.

It is worth asking whether neighbouring countries will advance this process by curtailing supplies of energy and oil to Zimbabwe. This is unlikely in the short term, but it shouldn't be ruled out as a possibility. The spiralling rise in the international price of oil must already be placing exorbitant demands upon Zimbabwe's derelict economy, severely compromising both its ability to pay its suppliers in foreign currency and the willingness of neighbours to endure debt. Meanwhile, the flow of remittances from Zimbabwe migrants in the region to their families - a key factor both in keeping the latter alive and providing a source of foreign currency - is itself likely to come under severe pressure, as inflation takes its toll upon employment and earnings throughout the region.

It is against this background that the changing South African situation is likely to become increasingly critical. While Mbeki has justifiably earned credit for securing the electoral conditions which provided for an MDC victory in the 29 March 2008 elections, his policy of quiet diplomacy is otherwise threadbare. The call is now out from within the ANC - and notably its partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) - for talk to be backed by muscle. A border blockade could find remarkable popularity, especially in the lead-up to the 2009 election campaign. Even segments of the business community, expressed by leaders in the financial press, are now calling for the imposition of sanctions.

Above all, South Africa at large has been shaken by the recent outbursts of xenophobic violence against foreigners and is correspondingly alarmed by the prospect of an even greater flow of refugees from Zimbabwe if the situation becomes even worse than it presently is. The financial costs in terms of border control, administration, policing and competition with locals on the job market are already huge, while the costs in terms of the political and investment uncertainty that massive migrancy inflow generates are dangerously unknown and unpredictable. What goes for South Africa, increasingly goes for the region as a whole: Zimbabwe appears as a dangerous vacuum in a regionally stretched economy.

The present indications are that the region will give increasingly forceful backing to Mbeki's pleas to both Mugabe and Tsvangirai to agree to a Kenya-style "government of national unity" (GoNU), probably linked to plans for the conduct of a free and fair election within six to twelve months. If this reduces the prospect of a descent into civil war and provides some sort of opening to a better future, so be it. But questions abound. Even if Morgan Tsvangirai offers to serve for an interim period under a Robert Mugabe who he claims with justification to have beaten in an election, what guarantees could he be given that the regime would adhere to any agreement and honour the results of a free election? What guarantee that the security forces would withdraw to the barracks and acknowledge civilian authority?

A new motion

Any credible answer to these and related questions depends on carrots and sticks. Much is made of the prospect of an "honourable" exit for Mugabe and amnesty for him and his politico-military cronies from domestic and international prosecution for multiple offences against domestic and international laws covering a myriad of crimes from corruption to genocide. Such concessions, distasteful though they may be, will have to be convincing (especially in the light of Charles Taylor's arraignment before the special court for Sierra Leone in the premises of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, following the revocation of his immunity from prosecution in Nigeria). A massive infusion of international economic assistance and humanitarian relief, with particular material acknowledgment by Britain of its historic responsibility for the present mess, will also be called for.

Yet to be effective, such a breakthrough would require consistent and focused international pressure. This would include serious international supervision of the electoral process (eventually with an army of international monitors - not just observers - on the ground) and very possibly a significant presence of African peacekeeping troops (in the name of either or both the AU and UN) to neutralise the influence of the Zimbabwean military.

There has been little indication from Mbeki hitherto that his recommendation of a GoNU carries real weight, his preference for a reformed (if preferably Mugabe-less) Zanu-PF over the MDC having long gone before him. But circumstances are changing rapidly, with drastic action needed to prevent Zimbabwe falling further into the abyss. The silver lining is that for the first time there are prospects of Africa and the west coming together on how to deal with Robert Mugabe, and in doing so offering a glimmer of light to Zimbabwe's hard-pressed people.

--------------------
Roger Southall is honorary research professor in the sociology of work programme, University of the Witwatersrand

Electioneering in Zimbabwe (continued)

From Norman Geras (at normblog). --Jeff Weintraub
-------------------------
July 1, 2008
They do it their way

Zimbabwean government spokesman George Charamba tells it like it is:

We have our own history of evolving dialogue and resolving political impasses the Zimbabwean way.

Posted by Norm at 05:21 PM

Six women Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian Baha’i prisoners

This follows up Roya Hakakian's recent piece about the intensifying persecution of the Baha'i community in Iran, "Then They Came for the Bahai". The Nobel Peace Prize winners who issued this appeal include the Iranian lawyer and human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi.

We note with concern the news of the arrest of six prominent Baha’is in Iran on 14 May 2008 [....] [W]e register our deepest concern at the mounting threats and persecution of the Iranian Baha’i community.
We call on the Iranian Government to guarantee the safety of these individuals (and) grant their immediate unconditional release.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Baha'i World News Service
June 30, 2008
Nobel laureates call for release of Iranian Baha’i prisoners

NEW YORK — Six Nobel Peace Prize laureates have issued a statement calling on the Iranian government to free immediately seven prominent Iranian Baha’is imprisoned in Tehran.

The six Nobel winners, under the banner of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, called on the Iranian government to guarantee the safety of the Baha’is –- being held in Evin Prison with no formal charges and no access to lawyers -- and to grant them an unconditional release.

“We are thankful to these internationally prominent activists for calling publicly for the release of our fellow Baha’is, who are detained for no reason other than their religion,” said Bani Dugal, principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations.

The Nobel laureates supporting the statement are:

-- Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire, founders of the Peace People in Northern Ireland and winners of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976;
-- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, a leading advocate of ethno-cultural reconciliation in her native Guatemala and Nobel winner in 1992;
-- Professor Jody Williams, international campaigner for the banning of land mines, winner in 1997;
-- Iranian human rights lawyer Dr. Shirin Ebadi, winner in 2003;
-- Kenyan environmental activist Professor Wangari Muta Maathai, Nobel winner in 2004.

Their statement, issued on the letterhead of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, reads:

“We note with concern the news of the arrest of six prominent Baha’is in Iran on 14 May 2008. We note that Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi, Mr. Jamaloddin Khanjani, Mr. Afif Naeimi, Mr. Saeid Rezaie, Mr. Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Mr. Vahid Tizfahm are members of the informal group known as the Friends in Iran that coordinates the activities of the Baha’i community in Iran; we further note that another member of the Friends in Iran, Mrs Mahvash Sabet, has been held in custody since 5 March 2008; we register our deepest concern at the mounting threats and persecution of the Iranian Baha’i community.

“We call on the Iranian Government to guarantee the safety of these individuals (and) grant their immediate unconditional release.”

The Nobel Women's Initiative was established in 2006 by the six women laureates - representing North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa – to contribute to building peace by working together with women around the world. Only 12 women have ever won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative maintains an office in Ottawa, Canada.