It appears Maliki is doing Khamenei's bidding.
'The Iraqi government said Wednesday it plans to close a camp that is home to more than 3,000 members of an Iranian opposition group, a day after launching a violent assault on the camp that was criticized by Washington and praised by Tehran.
Since members of the group, known as the Mujahedin e-Khalq, or the MEK, have enjoyed U.S. military protection since 2004, the raid could indicate an Iraqi desire to improve ties with Iran as the U.S. withdraws its forces.'
Meanwhile, bombs also killed 11 Iraqis.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Retarded State of the Middle East
'Why is the Arab world – let us speak with terrible sharpness – so backward? Why so many dictators, so few human rights, so much state security and torture, so terrible a literacy rate?
Why does this wretched place, so rich in oil, have to produce, even in the age of the computer, a population so poorly educated, so undernourished, so corrupt? Yes, I know the history of Western colonialism, the dark conspiracies of the West, the Arab argument that you cannot upset the sheikhs and the kings and the autocrats, the imams and the emirs when the "enemy is at the gates". There is some truth to that. But not enough truth.
Once more the United Nations Development Programme has popped up with yet one more, its fifth, report that catalogues – via Arab analysts and academics, mark you – the retarded state of much of the Middle East. It talks of "the fragility of the region's political, social, economic and environmental structures... its vulnerability to outside intervention". But does this account for desertification, for illiteracy – especially among women – and the Arab state which, as the report admits, is often turned "into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support"?
As Arab journalist Rami Khouri stated bleakly last week: "How we tackle the underlying causes of our mediocrity and bring about real change anchored in solid citizenship, productive economies and stable statehood, remains the riddle that has defied three generations of Arabs." Real GDP per capita in the region – one of the statistics which truly shocked Khouri – grew by only 6.4 per cent between 1980 and 2004. That's just 0.5 per cent annually, a rate which 198 of 217 countries analysed by the CIA World Factbook bettered in 2008. Yet the Arab population – which stood at 150 million in 1980 – will reach 400 million in 2015.
I notice much of this myself. When I first came to the Middle East in 1976, it was crowded enough. Cairo's steaming, fetid streets were already jam-packed, night and day, with up to a million homeless living in the great Ottoman cemeteries. Arab homes are spotlessly clean but their streets are often repulsive, dirt and ordure spilling on to the pavements. Even in beautiful Lebanon, where a kind of democracy does exist and whose people are among the most educated and cultured in the Middle East, you find a similar phenomenon. In the rough hill villages of the south, the same cleanliness exists in every home. But why are the streets and the hills so dirty?
I suspect that a real problem exists in the mind of Arabs; they do not feel that they own their countries. Constantly coaxed into effusions of enthusiasm for Arab or national "unity", I think they do not feel that sense of belonging which Westerners feel. Unable, for the most part, to elect real representatives – even in Lebanon, outside the tribal or sectarian context – they feel "ruled over". The street, the country as a physical entity, belongs to someone else. And of course, the moment a movement comes along and – even worse – becomes popular, emergency laws are introduced to make these movements illegal or "terrorist". Thus it is always someone else's responsibility to look after the gardens and the hills and the streets.
And those who work within the state system – who work directly for the state and its corrupt autarchies – also feel that their existence depends on the same corruption upon which the state itself thrives. The people become part of the corruption. I shall always remember an Arab landlord, many years ago, bemoaning an anti-corruption drive by his government. "In the old days, I paid bribes and we got the phone mended and the water pipes mended and the electricity restored," he complained. "But what can I do now, Mr, Robert? I can't bribe anyone – so nothing gets done!" '
Why does this wretched place, so rich in oil, have to produce, even in the age of the computer, a population so poorly educated, so undernourished, so corrupt? Yes, I know the history of Western colonialism, the dark conspiracies of the West, the Arab argument that you cannot upset the sheikhs and the kings and the autocrats, the imams and the emirs when the "enemy is at the gates". There is some truth to that. But not enough truth.
Once more the United Nations Development Programme has popped up with yet one more, its fifth, report that catalogues – via Arab analysts and academics, mark you – the retarded state of much of the Middle East. It talks of "the fragility of the region's political, social, economic and environmental structures... its vulnerability to outside intervention". But does this account for desertification, for illiteracy – especially among women – and the Arab state which, as the report admits, is often turned "into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support"?
As Arab journalist Rami Khouri stated bleakly last week: "How we tackle the underlying causes of our mediocrity and bring about real change anchored in solid citizenship, productive economies and stable statehood, remains the riddle that has defied three generations of Arabs." Real GDP per capita in the region – one of the statistics which truly shocked Khouri – grew by only 6.4 per cent between 1980 and 2004. That's just 0.5 per cent annually, a rate which 198 of 217 countries analysed by the CIA World Factbook bettered in 2008. Yet the Arab population – which stood at 150 million in 1980 – will reach 400 million in 2015.
I notice much of this myself. When I first came to the Middle East in 1976, it was crowded enough. Cairo's steaming, fetid streets were already jam-packed, night and day, with up to a million homeless living in the great Ottoman cemeteries. Arab homes are spotlessly clean but their streets are often repulsive, dirt and ordure spilling on to the pavements. Even in beautiful Lebanon, where a kind of democracy does exist and whose people are among the most educated and cultured in the Middle East, you find a similar phenomenon. In the rough hill villages of the south, the same cleanliness exists in every home. But why are the streets and the hills so dirty?
I suspect that a real problem exists in the mind of Arabs; they do not feel that they own their countries. Constantly coaxed into effusions of enthusiasm for Arab or national "unity", I think they do not feel that sense of belonging which Westerners feel. Unable, for the most part, to elect real representatives – even in Lebanon, outside the tribal or sectarian context – they feel "ruled over". The street, the country as a physical entity, belongs to someone else. And of course, the moment a movement comes along and – even worse – becomes popular, emergency laws are introduced to make these movements illegal or "terrorist". Thus it is always someone else's responsibility to look after the gardens and the hills and the streets.
And those who work within the state system – who work directly for the state and its corrupt autarchies – also feel that their existence depends on the same corruption upon which the state itself thrives. The people become part of the corruption. I shall always remember an Arab landlord, many years ago, bemoaning an anti-corruption drive by his government. "In the old days, I paid bribes and we got the phone mended and the water pipes mended and the electricity restored," he complained. "But what can I do now, Mr, Robert? I can't bribe anyone – so nothing gets done!" '
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Crackdown on Shia in Egypt
How naive of the US government to trust the Saudi royal jarab to deliver justice.
'Early last week, Amnesty International released a report highlighting the misuse of the “counter-terrorism” pretext by the Saudi Arabian government. The novel justification was used to perpetrate, according to Amnesty, human rights violations of “shocking” levels in what was an “already dire human rights situation”. Among the many cases cited in the report as evidence, mention is made of Hani al-Sayegh; a Saudi-Shi’a citizen who along with eight others, has been detained for close to 13 years “without trial”. The nine detainees, who have become widely known in the Eastern Province as Al-Mansiyoon (the Forgotten Ones), were detained in connection with the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996.
Interestingly, investigative journalist Gareth Porter retraced the details before and after the bombing in a recent five-part series of articles in which he points out:
“The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organizer.” – (Inter Press Service, ‘Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List’, 22 June 2009)
Today, the grim realities that have historically faced the Shi’a community in the Saudi Kingdom have little changed. In the predominantly Shi’a Eastern Province, reports of arbitrary detentions (including of juveniles) and cases of sectarian harassment are regular occurrences. Mai Yamani, a Saudi national and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, notes that the “[s]uppression of the Shi’a is … a part of the Kingdom’s strategy to counter Iran”.
This posture is by no means unique to the Saudi Kingdom; indeed the same story is repeated in Bahrain, Kuwait and increasingly over recent years, in Egypt. In early 2006, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak declared: “Shi’as are mostly always loyal to Iran and not [to] the countries in which they live”. Not surprisingly thus, Egyptian media outlets upped the sectarian-ante following Hizbullah’s altercation with Mubarak during the Gaza war, which was shortly followed by the uncovering of a “Hizbullah-cell” in Egypt.
Since then, the Egyptian press has gone into a whirlwind of frenzy, labelling Shi’as and also – it must be strongly underlined – members of the popular Sunni socio-political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, as “traitors”, “agents of Iran”, and an “inseparable part of the ‘Evil Crescent”. The give-away exposes, unmistakably, the underlying rationale for Egypt’s sectarian agenda. With the pattern of (deceptive) use of the sectarian card to silence critics of Mubarak’s regime firmly taking shape, the US administration – in requital – has pulled their man closer.
Media outlets are just beginning to reveal the extent of the wide-scale crackdown on the country’s Shi’a population following the high-profile arrest of leading Shi’a cleric Hassan Shehata at the beginning of this month. The director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Hossam Bahgat, warned that the hostile treatment of Shi’as by the Egyptian security apparatus – motivated by the climate of “political tension between Cairo and Tehran” – could return to “explode in the face of the Egyptian regime”.
On the back of the most recent (reported) raid in which 13 citizens were detained on charges of spreading Shi’ism, the aggregating numbers of those targeted by Egypt’s sectarian-crackdown are truly shocking; for a country in which Shi’as supposedly account for only one-percent (1%) of the overall Muslim population (90%), early reports suggest in excess of 300 detentions in mere weeks.'
--Ali Jawad
'Early last week, Amnesty International released a report highlighting the misuse of the “counter-terrorism” pretext by the Saudi Arabian government. The novel justification was used to perpetrate, according to Amnesty, human rights violations of “shocking” levels in what was an “already dire human rights situation”. Among the many cases cited in the report as evidence, mention is made of Hani al-Sayegh; a Saudi-Shi’a citizen who along with eight others, has been detained for close to 13 years “without trial”. The nine detainees, who have become widely known in the Eastern Province as Al-Mansiyoon (the Forgotten Ones), were detained in connection with the Khobar Towers bombings in 1996.
Interestingly, investigative journalist Gareth Porter retraced the details before and after the bombing in a recent five-part series of articles in which he points out:
“The Saudi regime steered the FBI investigation toward Iran and its Saudi Shi’a allies with the apparent intention of keeping U.S. officials away from a trail of evidence that would have led to Osama bin Laden and a complex set of ties between the regime and the Saudi terrorist organizer.” – (Inter Press Service, ‘Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List’, 22 June 2009)
Today, the grim realities that have historically faced the Shi’a community in the Saudi Kingdom have little changed. In the predominantly Shi’a Eastern Province, reports of arbitrary detentions (including of juveniles) and cases of sectarian harassment are regular occurrences. Mai Yamani, a Saudi national and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center, notes that the “[s]uppression of the Shi’a is … a part of the Kingdom’s strategy to counter Iran”.
This posture is by no means unique to the Saudi Kingdom; indeed the same story is repeated in Bahrain, Kuwait and increasingly over recent years, in Egypt. In early 2006, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak declared: “Shi’as are mostly always loyal to Iran and not [to] the countries in which they live”. Not surprisingly thus, Egyptian media outlets upped the sectarian-ante following Hizbullah’s altercation with Mubarak during the Gaza war, which was shortly followed by the uncovering of a “Hizbullah-cell” in Egypt.
Since then, the Egyptian press has gone into a whirlwind of frenzy, labelling Shi’as and also – it must be strongly underlined – members of the popular Sunni socio-political movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, as “traitors”, “agents of Iran”, and an “inseparable part of the ‘Evil Crescent”. The give-away exposes, unmistakably, the underlying rationale for Egypt’s sectarian agenda. With the pattern of (deceptive) use of the sectarian card to silence critics of Mubarak’s regime firmly taking shape, the US administration – in requital – has pulled their man closer.
Media outlets are just beginning to reveal the extent of the wide-scale crackdown on the country’s Shi’a population following the high-profile arrest of leading Shi’a cleric Hassan Shehata at the beginning of this month. The director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Hossam Bahgat, warned that the hostile treatment of Shi’as by the Egyptian security apparatus – motivated by the climate of “political tension between Cairo and Tehran” – could return to “explode in the face of the Egyptian regime”.
On the back of the most recent (reported) raid in which 13 citizens were detained on charges of spreading Shi’ism, the aggregating numbers of those targeted by Egypt’s sectarian-crackdown are truly shocking; for a country in which Shi’as supposedly account for only one-percent (1%) of the overall Muslim population (90%), early reports suggest in excess of 300 detentions in mere weeks.'
--Ali Jawad
Monday, July 27, 2009
US AID siphoned to insurgents
No surprise here...
'The top U.S. aid agency has suspended a $644 million Iraq jobs program after two outside reviews raised concerns about misspending, including an inspector general's audit that found evidence of phantom jobs and money siphoned to insurgents.
The Community Stabilization Program, launched in 2006, was designed to tamp down the insurgency by paying Iraqis cash to do public works projects such as trash removal and ditch digging. International Relief and Development (IRD), a Virginia-based non-profit corporation, ran the program, one of many it manages for the U.S. government.
It is rare for the U.S. Agency for International Development to suspend an ongoing aid program, particularly involving one of its major contractors. More than 80% of IRD's $500 million annual budget comes from USAID, company tax filings show.
The stabilization program "is generally thought of as one of the most effective counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq," Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew told USA TODAY.
In a little-noticed March 2008 audit, however, USAID's inspector general reported evidence that the program was being defrauded through overbilling and payments to ghost Iraqi employees.'
'The top U.S. aid agency has suspended a $644 million Iraq jobs program after two outside reviews raised concerns about misspending, including an inspector general's audit that found evidence of phantom jobs and money siphoned to insurgents.
The Community Stabilization Program, launched in 2006, was designed to tamp down the insurgency by paying Iraqis cash to do public works projects such as trash removal and ditch digging. International Relief and Development (IRD), a Virginia-based non-profit corporation, ran the program, one of many it manages for the U.S. government.
It is rare for the U.S. Agency for International Development to suspend an ongoing aid program, particularly involving one of its major contractors. More than 80% of IRD's $500 million annual budget comes from USAID, company tax filings show.
The stabilization program "is generally thought of as one of the most effective counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq," Deputy Secretary of State Jacob Lew told USA TODAY.
In a little-noticed March 2008 audit, however, USAID's inspector general reported evidence that the program was being defrauded through overbilling and payments to ghost Iraqi employees.'
US soldiers killed innocent Iraqis
No surprise here either...
'Soldiers from an Army unit that had 10 infantrymen accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter after returning to civilian life described a breakdown in discipline during their Iraq deployment in which troops murdered civilians, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Some Fort Carson, Colo.-based soldiers have had trouble adjusting to life back in the United States, saying they refused to seek help, or were belittled or punished for seeking help. Others say they were ignored by their commanders, or coped through drug and alcohol abuse before they allegedly committed crimes, The Gazette of Colorado Springs said.
The Gazette based its report on months of interviews with soldiers and their families, medical and military records, court documents and photographs.
Several soldiers said unit discipline deteriorated while in Iraq.
"Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated," said Daniel Freeman. "You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley," an armored fighting vehicle.
With each roadside bombing, soldiers would fire in all directions "and just light the whole area up," said Anthony Marquez, a friend of Freeman in the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. "If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em."
Taxi drivers got shot for no reason, and others were dropped off bridges after interrogations, said Marcus Mifflin, who was eventually discharged with post traumatic stress syndrome.'
'Soldiers from an Army unit that had 10 infantrymen accused of murder, attempted murder or manslaughter after returning to civilian life described a breakdown in discipline during their Iraq deployment in which troops murdered civilians, a newspaper reported Sunday.
Some Fort Carson, Colo.-based soldiers have had trouble adjusting to life back in the United States, saying they refused to seek help, or were belittled or punished for seeking help. Others say they were ignored by their commanders, or coped through drug and alcohol abuse before they allegedly committed crimes, The Gazette of Colorado Springs said.
The Gazette based its report on months of interviews with soldiers and their families, medical and military records, court documents and photographs.
Several soldiers said unit discipline deteriorated while in Iraq.
"Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated," said Daniel Freeman. "You came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley," an armored fighting vehicle.
With each roadside bombing, soldiers would fire in all directions "and just light the whole area up," said Anthony Marquez, a friend of Freeman in the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. "If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em."
Taxi drivers got shot for no reason, and others were dropped off bridges after interrogations, said Marcus Mifflin, who was eventually discharged with post traumatic stress syndrome.'
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Helping innocent victims
'Marwa had suffered terribly during the U.S.-led invasion. When she was 9, during an air raid, a bomb had ripped through her home. Her right thumb was shredded. Her nose was blown off. Worse than anything, her mother died.
Strangers, their politics and warfare, had taken almost everything from her. But it was also strangers, working for two aid groups, who had found an American hospital willing to help at no cost and a doctor who would make every effort to restore her pretty looks. UCLA was the hospital. Dr. Tim Miller, chief of plastic surgery, the doctor. Over the course of several difficult operations -- through a season of hardship that began with her fearful arrival in America, all alone because her father had to stay home and care for her siblings -- Dr. Miller did what he could. It wasn't perfect, and nothing could be done for her thumb, but he built her a nose.
And then, just when she seemed settled, everything would change again. Like several-score other Iraqi children who have been injured during the war, Marwa was allowed to come to this country only on a temporary visa. It didn't make much sense, didn't matter that her Iraqi neighborhood dripped in chaos, rules were rules, she had to go home.
I feared the worst. I knew Miller had vowed to have her return so he could finish the job, but I worried her family would become refugees in their own country, as so many have, and that nobody would be able to find her again. I worried she'd get caught in the web of destruction. That she'd be killed.
Then, this May, a call came from UCLA. "It's about Marwa," said the voice on the other end.
I held my breath.
"She's coming back! Coming back, for some finishing touches on her nose."
It turns out that over the last year, UCLA and the nonprofits -- the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict -- had worked diligently behind the scenes to have Marwa return. They had found her father, readied a new visa, bought plane tickets and arranged all the details.
Dr. Miller was a prime mover. He felt he understood her, having seen war's madness as a medic in the jungles of South Vietnam. Marwa had never left his thoughts. "She's just so delightful, such a complex and wonderful child," he said recently, a nod to a stubborn streak that, at times on that first visit, had veered into petulance but also to her easy charm and playful manner.
Miller said he'd met few people as resilient. "I've spent many a night wondering and worrying about her. I'd watch the news and see some of the terrible things happening there and think, 'Where is she . . . is Marwa OK?' "
Certainly, she had returned home looking better. She was no longer mercilessly taunted. Her prospects would be better as she approached marriage age.
Now 15, Marwa speaks of her nose calmly. "It good," she says, one of her stock English phrases. But sadly, tellingly, as if there is now nothing that can faze her, she discusses the hardship faced daily in Iraq with the same steely calm.
Shortly after returning home, Marwa and her family -- her father, his new bride, her three siblings -- were forced by threats of violence to move to another neighborhood, about 40 minutes from Baghdad. When they left, she says, the home was firebombed. Now they live in a one-bedroom home with a roof that has partly caved in.
Her father has had trouble finding work. Her 16-year-old brother puts in long hours at a car repair shop. He makes about $5 a day, she says, money that's key to feeding her family.
She's an observer. A mimic. Wise beyond her years. Sharp. When Marwa went home, there were hopes she would take advantage of these talents by returning to school. She dreamed of becoming an architect. But because of the tumult, she says, she has been unable to return to school. It's been four years since she was regularly in a classroom.
So it is that she has spent most days cooped up at home. It's too dangerous to go outside much. She cares for her siblings, helps make the food, cleans. Over and over, she reads letters given by her L.A. caretakers when she left here. When her tears dry, she watches Turkish soap operas and Jackie Chan movies, sometimes straining to hear them above the crackle of gunfire coming from her neighborhood.
At least the movies have helped with one thing: "English coming good," she told me the other day, her deep, dark eyes gleaming as we ate French toast at Mimi's Cafe near Griffith Park. She had gone there with Theresa Moussa, a UCLA Medical Center liaison who became a mother figure during her first trip. "Understand more," Marwa said of herself, haltingly, in English. "Speak more? Oh my God, very, very hard."
When I asked how much she'd missed this country -- a place she once feared, blaming American bombs for her disfigurement and her mother's death -- she let Theresa translate.
"The whole time I wanted to return, even if it was just for a little while," she said. "I just wanted to feel this place again."
How time changes things. She is taller, her face fuller, her shoulders growing strong. She has the same lightheartedness and little of the petulance. But underneath it all, there remains a deep wariness.
"Now I am back, I am happy," she said, through Theresa. "I don't want to think of leaving again, this hurts too much. . . . The future? Who knows the future?" '
Strangers, their politics and warfare, had taken almost everything from her. But it was also strangers, working for two aid groups, who had found an American hospital willing to help at no cost and a doctor who would make every effort to restore her pretty looks. UCLA was the hospital. Dr. Tim Miller, chief of plastic surgery, the doctor. Over the course of several difficult operations -- through a season of hardship that began with her fearful arrival in America, all alone because her father had to stay home and care for her siblings -- Dr. Miller did what he could. It wasn't perfect, and nothing could be done for her thumb, but he built her a nose.
And then, just when she seemed settled, everything would change again. Like several-score other Iraqi children who have been injured during the war, Marwa was allowed to come to this country only on a temporary visa. It didn't make much sense, didn't matter that her Iraqi neighborhood dripped in chaos, rules were rules, she had to go home.
I feared the worst. I knew Miller had vowed to have her return so he could finish the job, but I worried her family would become refugees in their own country, as so many have, and that nobody would be able to find her again. I worried she'd get caught in the web of destruction. That she'd be killed.
Then, this May, a call came from UCLA. "It's about Marwa," said the voice on the other end.
I held my breath.
"She's coming back! Coming back, for some finishing touches on her nose."
It turns out that over the last year, UCLA and the nonprofits -- the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict -- had worked diligently behind the scenes to have Marwa return. They had found her father, readied a new visa, bought plane tickets and arranged all the details.
Dr. Miller was a prime mover. He felt he understood her, having seen war's madness as a medic in the jungles of South Vietnam. Marwa had never left his thoughts. "She's just so delightful, such a complex and wonderful child," he said recently, a nod to a stubborn streak that, at times on that first visit, had veered into petulance but also to her easy charm and playful manner.
Miller said he'd met few people as resilient. "I've spent many a night wondering and worrying about her. I'd watch the news and see some of the terrible things happening there and think, 'Where is she . . . is Marwa OK?' "
Certainly, she had returned home looking better. She was no longer mercilessly taunted. Her prospects would be better as she approached marriage age.
Now 15, Marwa speaks of her nose calmly. "It good," she says, one of her stock English phrases. But sadly, tellingly, as if there is now nothing that can faze her, she discusses the hardship faced daily in Iraq with the same steely calm.
Shortly after returning home, Marwa and her family -- her father, his new bride, her three siblings -- were forced by threats of violence to move to another neighborhood, about 40 minutes from Baghdad. When they left, she says, the home was firebombed. Now they live in a one-bedroom home with a roof that has partly caved in.
Her father has had trouble finding work. Her 16-year-old brother puts in long hours at a car repair shop. He makes about $5 a day, she says, money that's key to feeding her family.
She's an observer. A mimic. Wise beyond her years. Sharp. When Marwa went home, there were hopes she would take advantage of these talents by returning to school. She dreamed of becoming an architect. But because of the tumult, she says, she has been unable to return to school. It's been four years since she was regularly in a classroom.
So it is that she has spent most days cooped up at home. It's too dangerous to go outside much. She cares for her siblings, helps make the food, cleans. Over and over, she reads letters given by her L.A. caretakers when she left here. When her tears dry, she watches Turkish soap operas and Jackie Chan movies, sometimes straining to hear them above the crackle of gunfire coming from her neighborhood.
At least the movies have helped with one thing: "English coming good," she told me the other day, her deep, dark eyes gleaming as we ate French toast at Mimi's Cafe near Griffith Park. She had gone there with Theresa Moussa, a UCLA Medical Center liaison who became a mother figure during her first trip. "Understand more," Marwa said of herself, haltingly, in English. "Speak more? Oh my God, very, very hard."
When I asked how much she'd missed this country -- a place she once feared, blaming American bombs for her disfigurement and her mother's death -- she let Theresa translate.
"The whole time I wanted to return, even if it was just for a little while," she said. "I just wanted to feel this place again."
How time changes things. She is taller, her face fuller, her shoulders growing strong. She has the same lightheartedness and little of the petulance. But underneath it all, there remains a deep wariness.
"Now I am back, I am happy," she said, through Theresa. "I don't want to think of leaving again, this hurts too much. . . . The future? Who knows the future?" '
Friday, July 24, 2009
Iranian VP fired
after he suggested Iranians are friends of the Israeli people! So the Islamic Revolution prohibits Iranians from being friends with ordinary Israelis.
Ali Khāmene’i is a schmuck, and so is his ugly puppet Ahmedinejad.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed his most senior vice-president, it has been reported.
The decision, the state news agency Irna said, came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered Mr Ahmadinejad to do so.
First Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie had angered hardliners last year by saying Iranians and Israelis were friends."
Ali Khāmene’i is a schmuck, and so is his ugly puppet Ahmedinejad.
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed his most senior vice-president, it has been reported.
The decision, the state news agency Irna said, came after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered Mr Ahmadinejad to do so.
First Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie had angered hardliners last year by saying Iranians and Israelis were friends."
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