Haleh Esfandiari on Iran

In the Review section of the 15 April edition of The Australian Financial Review there is a fine article, Could Iran be next: Haleh Esfandiari says the voice of the people is being ignored in Tehran, reprinted from the New York Review of Books.

Haleh Esfandiari is the director of the Woodrow Wilson Internation Centre for Scholars in Washington DC, and the author of My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran, Harper Collins, 2009. She was held in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Iran for 105 days in 2007.

Esfandiari begins:

As the Libyan uprising was gathering force last week, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, criticized Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, for using violence against his own people and advised him and other Middle Eastern heads of state to listen to their publics. The irony was not lost on anyone. Only two weeks earlier, on February 14, Ahmadinejad had sent hundreds of riot police, paramilitary basijis, and baton-wielding goons in plainclothes to disrupt demonstrations in Tehran and other Iranian cities called by Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, leaders of the opposition, in solidarity with the people of Tunisia and Egypt. By the end of the day, 1,500 protesters had been arrested; two had been killed.

The next day, 222 of the 290 deputies of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, approved a resolution to put Mousavi and Karroubi on trial for sedition. Several dozen of the deputies, raising clenched fists, then began to shout out calls to execute the two men. The supposedly “moderate” Speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani, quietly joined in. Karroubi and Mousavi, already under house arrest to prevent them from attending the rallies they had hoped to lead, were held incommunicado, denied visits even from their children and families, and then taken away to an unknown detention center.

Here was another irony, in view of the recent pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East that Ahmadenijad purported to support. Karroubi, a senior cleric, is a former Speaker of Parliament; Mousavi was prime minister and guided the country through the difficult years of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Their “crime” was to have posed a serious challenge to Ahmadinejad as candidates in the 2009 presidential elections, which many Iranians believed were blatantly rigged. Millions of Iranians poured out into the streets to protest when Ahmadinejad’s victory was announced. “Where is my vote,” became the slogan of the protesters, and some even cried “death to the dictator”— meaning Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei—an almost unprecedented attack on the regime itself.

But then the security forces and Basijis cracked down with brutal force; according to the government’s own figures, some six thousand were arrested during the election protests. That crackdown, and the mass show trial of protesters broadcast on state television that followed, muted but did not silence the opposition Green Movement. Protests have been attempted periodically since and invariably suppressed by government forces, as they were again last week.

Read Esfandiari’s article in full here.

In the run-up to the June 2009 Iranian Presidential election I posted brief profiles, with photographs, of Mousavi, who was widely expected to win the election (see Iran election watch: Mir-Hossein Mousavi), and Karroubi (see Iran election watch: Mehdi Karroubi). How different Iran and its relations with the world might have been had either of these men won.

My reflections on this historic tragedy, posted shortly after the event, may be seen at Reflections on events in Iran. I think they hold up pretty well to this day.

A brief trip to the Southern Highlands

Last week I took the opportunity of a trip to Sydney to accept an invitation from my friend Harry Pidgeon to spend a couple of days at his home at Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

One of the highlights of a wonderful couple of days in a beautiful part of the world was a visit to the fortieth annual meeting of the Southern Highlands Carriage Club, which brings horse-drawn carriage enthusiasts from all over NSW. On the day we visited the cone racing was on – time trials through a series of witch’s hats with balls mounted on them – cause one of the balls to fall and you lose points.

We passed the time of day briefly with the lady in the first photo, who told us she was from Parkes. “Parkes?” I said. “Would you happen to know a man named Terry Hunter?” “Of course”, she replied. Terry Hunter was a contemporary of mine in Wright College at the University of New England, who has spent the last thirty years working in the family real estate business G. Hunter & Company Pty Limited. Small world.

The following day Harry took me, a friend of his and a couple of our other former school classmates to the croquet lawns at Exeter, to receive instruction in the ostensibly sedate but quietly vicious game of croquet. That proved to be great fun, and we continued until bad light stopped play. From left to right in the photo below are former classmates Harry Pidgeon, Hugh King and Philip Bailey.

For more on Harry Pidgeon see Harry Pidgeon at Cooks Hill, Harry Pidgeon exhibition: Naturally touched and Harry Pidgeon's opening at Cooks Hill.  For more on Philip Bailey, see Yehudiana: Reliving the Menuhin Oddysey and Bailey on Menuhin at Killara.

A la mode frangourou

Calling all foodies: I am indebted to my friend James Belshaw for drawing my attention to Sophie Masson’s wonderful blog at http://alamodefrangourou.blogspot.com/ .

Enjoy (and don’t forget you heard it first from me!).

The Guantánamo Wikileaks

In a must-read article entitled What the Guantanamo leaks won’t reveal in Al Jazeera, 25 April 2011, Darryl Li, a graduate of Yale Law School who has worked on legal defense of Guantánamo detainees, reflects on a few things that may not be explicit in the Guantánamo files released by WikiLeaks but are crucial to understanding their significance.

In the section on “threat assessments” Li begins:

If the initial document dump is any guide, most of what Wikileaks has obtained are “detainee assessments” that reveal more about the inner fantasy world of the US intelligence apparatus than who the detainees really are. The fantasy is not some elaborate conspiracy to fabricate stories from whole cloth; rather, it is the result of an intense desire for “useful” intelligence, coupled with an astounding lack of safeguards or quality control.

Later:

Although these assessments would be considered “analytical” rather than “raw” intelligence, one can see very little analysis in them at all. They cite intelligence reports without any discernible attempt to assess their veracity. They read as if someone searched for the detainee’s name in a giant database and then simply pasted together all the passages they could find. For these reasons, one of the worst things one could do is use these files as a baseline for assessing the culpability or dangerousness of their subjects. The “detainee assessments” should not feed the stale, speculative, and fearmongering debate over Guantánamo “recidivism”; they should end it.

In subsequent sections he deals with the impact of detainee torture and abuse, the farce of the prosecutions, the other prisons and the role of the client states, especially Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. Read Li’s piece in full here.

Li’s appraisal of the threat assessments resonates with my own. Having read the Recommendation to a Retain under DoD Control (DoD) for a Guantanamo Detainee relating to Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib (see here) and that relating to David Hicks (see here) I am singularly unimpressed by either their alleged intelligence value or the case they make for retaining someone in detention.

To take just one example relating to Habib, after acknowledging that a number of statements allegedly made to Egyptian interrogators were made under extreme duress, and all subsequently withdrawn, the writer of the assessments includes one of them (“lnformation was found on his home computer regarding poisoning rivers in the U.S.”) stated as fact in the summary of reasons why he should continue to be detained, probably the only paragraph a busy senior officer would read.

David Hicks was assessed as “a highly skilled and advanced combatant, as well as a valuable asset and possible leader for extremist organizations”, in spite of his never having succeeded in getting himself into a combat zone, and in spite of the assessment report adducing no evidence of his leadership potential. There is more to advanced combat skill than attending a series of training courses, some of which Hicks did not complete, and there is no evidence he has ever led anyone.

Both these reports show evidence of being what they are: reports written within a military chain of command for a higher level officer who did not expect to receive recommendations for release.  It looks to me as though the drafter of the reports started with the recommendation to retain and worked his way back to the best case he could make, which in both cases is full of holes. A prosecutor would have a torrid time trying to make any of this “evidence” stand up in a civilian court.

Milestone: 50,000 hits

Some time this morning Australian Observer chalked up its 50,000^th hit since the first post was put up on 25 February 2009.

This doesn’t put it in the big league, but thanks to all readers for your interest.

Anzac Day roundup

It being the eve of Anzac Day it seems appropriate to provide readers with a roundup of the various posts I have put up about, or touching on, the war service of various people I have known, usually with connections to The Armidale School or the University of New England.

In Anzac Day, 1967 I provided some pictures of the Anzac Day March in Sydney, 54 years ago.

Anzac Day, Armidale, 1959 gives a couple of photos taken by my mother during Armidale’s 1959 Anzac Day march, and a bit of background about Anzac day in Armidale.

In Duty Done: Flight Lieutenant Colin Russell Leith AM DFC I recounted the remarkable flying career of Spitfire pilot Russell Leith, who served with RAAF 453 Squadron in Britain, was credited with 3 ½ kills, participated in the Battle of Normandy, was shot down behind the German lines, evaded capture and rejoined his unit to fly on until the end of the war.

In Burial of Australian Spitfire Pilot I noted the burial with full military honours of Flight Lieutenant Henry ‘Lacy’ Smith, who had been missing presumed dead since his aircraft was shot down on 11 June 1944, just five days after D-Day, and whose body was discovered in the wreckage when his plane was discovered last November by a French couple, buried in the mud of the Orne estuary.

In Vale Rex Robert Budd, DFC (1935-2010) I wrote of an Old Boy of The Armidale School who served two operational tours of duty with 9 Squadron between 1968 and 1970 flying Iroquois helicopters during the Vietnam War and was the first RAAF pilot to log 1000 hours during that campaign. After the war he became one of the pioneers of helicopter mustering of cattle.

Alex Buzo on George Crosslé reproduces my late classmate’s obituary piece for a remarkable Irishman, one of our teachers at The Armidale School, who never revealed anything of his war service in our time at school, because he worked at the top secret British code-breaking establishment at Bletchley Park.

Alex Buzo on Brian Mattingley reproduces Alex’s obituary for another remarkable teacher, who commenced teaching at the Armidale School in 1939, survived 36 missions over Germany and occupied Europe as a navigator in Lancaster bombers (average survival 10 missions), was awarded a DFC, returned to the School and resumed his teaching career.

Remembering Des Harrison is an obituary I wrote in 2005 about the teacher who was master in charge of cadets during my time at The Armidale School. He had joined the staff at The Armidale School at the beginning of 1942, but after just two terms he enlisted in the army and spent two eventful years as a member of the Northern Australia Observer Unit that came to be known as "Curtin's Cowboys".  In peacetime, as well as being master in charge of cadets, he had a long career with the 12/16 Hunter River Lancers, becoming in due course the regiment’s commanding officer.

Jock McDiarmid, MM C de G is a plea for information about a remarkable Scotsman who was School Sergeant at The Armidale School from 1957-59 and from 1961-April 1962. Jock had an outstanding war record, having seen action with the Special Air Service behind German lines in the invasion of Sicily and the liberation of France, followed by further action in Holland (where the picture in the post was taken in 1945) and Germany. On the trail of Jock McDiarmid pieces together what little I have been able to find out about his military career, and Jock McDiarmid’s MM commendation quotes the citation for Jock’s Military Medal.

New England University Rugby Team 1939 recounts the stories of a group of young men, my father included, who were university students at the outbreak of war, and touches on their military service where known.

Last but by no means least, Ida Madge Brown (1904-2009) is a tribute to a family friend, daughter of John Francis Brown, who planted the first vine grapes at Milawa.  Madge died in Wangaratta in 2009 at the remarkable age of 105. Madge had an eventful war: she served with 2/4th Australian General Hospital during the height of the conflict at Tobruk, became matron-in-charge of the hospital ship Wanganella, and at the end of the war shared with my father the task of commencing the rehabilitation of the prisoners in Changi Prison and arriving in Singapore from the Burma-Thailand railway and camps elsewhere.

Laos and the Convention on Cluster Munitions

The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) is a treaty that was adopted on 30 May 2008 on Dublin, and opened for signature on 3 December 2008 in Oslo.

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) signed the treaty on the day it was opened for signature, and ratified it on 18 March 2009.

As well as being one of the poorest countries in the world, Laos is one of the most afflicted by cluster munitions as a result of US bombing in the years 1964-73. The ordnance dropped included about 260 million cluster bombs (see Lao National Regulatory Authority for UXO/Mine Action [UXO-NRA] website here).  Not bad for a country whose population only reached 3 million in 1974 (see here).  That’s 90 bomblets per caput.

There is a substantial failure rate for these munitions, leaving large numbers of bomblets to lie in wait for unsuspecting farmers, foresters, fisherfolk, children and wildlife. On the subject of failure rates a January 2011 Congressional Research Service paper (see here) has this to say:

There appear to be significant discrepancies among failure rate estimates. Some manufacturers

claim a submunition failure rate of 2% to 5%, whereas mine clearance specialists have frequently

reported failure rates of 10% to 30%. A number of factors influence submunition reliability. These

include delivery technique, age of the submunition, air temperature, landing in soft or muddy

ground, getting caught in trees and vegetation, and submunitions being damaged after dispersal,

or landing in such a manner that their impact fuzes fail to initiate.

 UXO-NRA estimates that there are of the order of 80 million live bomblets remaining in the country, a figure which looks as though it is based on taking the upper estimate of 30% failure rate for 260 million bomblets – probably not unreasonable given the geographical characteristics of Laos.

The CRS report cited above quotes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as estimating the number of unexploded cluster bomblets at between 9 million and 27 million, which looks on the low side to me, the upper estimate representing a failure rate of only 10% and the lower one being more in line with manufacturers’ claims of 2-5% failure. It nevertheless represents between 1.5 and 4 bomblets for every man woman and child in Laos (current population about 6.5 million).

The impact of this on Laos is horrifying.  According to UXO-NRA (here):

-  All 17 provinces in Laos suffer UXO contamination

-  25% of all villages are UXO contaminated

-  50,000 plus victims of UXO of all kinds (1964-2008)

-  20,000 casualties post-war (1974 on)

In the last decade there have been 300 UXO casualties per annum, of which 30% were caused by cluster bombs. Children represented 40% of the casualties.

As a State Party to the Convention Laos has quite onerous obligations under Article 4.1: it is required:

... to clear and destroy, or ensure the clearance and destruction of, cluster munition remnants located in cluster munition contaminated areas under its jurisdiction or control ... as soon as possible but not later than ten years from [the date of entry into force of the Convention].

Given that, 37 years after the cessation of hostilities, less than 1% of the bomblets have been made safe, this will require a remarkable acceleration of activity. A 4 September 2010 article (New case for US reparations in Laos) by Melody Kemp in Asia Times Online (see here) says:

... at the current rate of clean-up, UXO Laos/NRA estimates it will take 3,000 years to completely clear the country of all the explosive remnants left behind from US bombers.

The Convention imposes rather modest requirements upon States Parties that have used cluster munitions in another State Party (and of course none upon countries which are non-signatories, which include the United States, Russia, China and Israel): the using State Party is simply “strongly encouraged”

... to provide, inter alia, technical, financial, material or human resources assistance to the [other] State Party, either bilaterally or through a mutually agreed third party, including through the United Nations system or other relevant organisations, to facilitate the marking, clearance and destruction of such cluster munition remnants.

The United States will of course strongly protest that, even though it is a non-signatory to the Convention, it is contributing to the disposal of UXO in Laos. In Clearing the cluster bombs in Laos (The Guardian, 30 September 2010) US chargé d'affaires in Vientiane Peter Haymond responds (see here) directly to Melody Kemp’s article cited above, taking exception to her implication “that the United States has done little to assist in clearance of unexploded ordnance”. Unfortunately the figures he cites rather underline Kemp’s point:

This fiscal year, the US state department will spend more than $5m in Laos on a range of UXO-related activities, including more than $3.5m to fund the mine and UXO clearance operations both of the Lao government's own UXO clearance agency and of international clearance organisations operating in Laos.

Taking the ICRC’s estimates of unexploded submunitions, that $3.5 million represents between 13 and 39 cents per bomblet. I don’t think you get much bomb disposal for that sort of money.