Caledoniyya

At last, PhotoHunt Saturday on a Saturday. That must earn me a reward of some kind, no?

This week’s theme is a toughy: ‘pointed’.

After much musing and posturing, I present the slightly unorthodox Pink Shoes:

On average, 8,000 kidnappings take place annually, from the Northern Caucasus to China, South America and Europe.

Of this figure, 3,000 take place in Mexico, while the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) hold the highest number of hostages in the world, 3,000, with ten people being abducted each day.

Emerging out of the fighting in the 1950s between liberal and conservative militias, the FARC was established in 1964 by the Colombian Communist Party to defend what were then autonomous Communist-controlled rural areas.

One of Latin America’s oldest, largest, most capable, and best-equipped insurgency groups of Marxist origin, the FARC is governed by a general secretariat led by Alfonso Cano.

Organized along military lines and including several units, it operates mostly in key urban areas such as Bogotá, with approximately 9,000 to 12,000 armed combatants and several thousand more supporters, based mostly in rural areas.

In 2003, the FARC conducted several high profile terrorist attacks, including a February car-bombing of a Bogotá nightclub that killed more than 30 persons and wounded more than 160, as well as a November grenade attack in Bogotá’s restaurant district that wounded three Americans.

While it is hard to obtain steadfast figures on the nature and outcomes of kidnappings - by their very essence criminalistic and therefore murky - it is further estimated that victims stand an 80% chance of survival.

The fact that in Colombia the figure is reduced to 21% makes the recent release of the former Colombian presidential candidate, Íngrid Betancourt, so miraculous.

In recent years the mortality rate of hostages held by the FARC has risen substantially with instances such as the Valle del Cauca Deputies crisis and the 2008 Andean Diplomatic crisis, in which a total of thirty-two people were killed.

Captured on February 23, 2002, Betancourt was taken alone with her aide, Clara Rojas, while campaigning in a southern region of Colombia that is controlled by the FARC.

In 2002 Rojas gave birth to a baby boy in captivity, named Emmanuel, the father of whom is speculated to be a FARC guerrilla.

Earlier this year, both Rojas and another former congresswoman, Consuelo González, were freed through Operation Emmanuel, which had been coordinated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Born in Colombia on December 25, 1961, Betancourt grew up in Paris where her father, Gabriel Betancourt Mejia, was a diplomat.

Her mother, Yolanda Pulecio, was a former Miss Colombia who later served in Colombia’s Congress.

Betancourt married, and later divorced, a French diplomat, Fabrice Delloye, receiving French citizenship as a result, and had two children, Melanie and Lorenzo.

In 1989 she returned to Colombia to become actively involved in national politics, and was subsequently elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1994, on an anti-corruption ticket.

She then formed her own party, the Oxygen Green Party, and became a senator in 1998.

A severe critic of the FARC, Betancourt empathised greatly with the plight of those living in rebel-controlled San Vicente del Caguan, and it was this empathy that prompted her to ignore government warnings and persistently visit the area.

According to her husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, said she had felt she needed to be with the people of San Vicente “during the good and the bad”.

In April this year, pessimistic news entered circulation when a priest from a village near FARC-occupied land claimed that Betancourt had been taken to the local clinic for medical care.

A medical mission sent by French President Nicolas Sarkozy landed in Colombia hoping to offer Betancourt medical care, but ultimately remained grounded in the capital, Bogota.

Nevertheless, yesterday, in a feat of derring-do, the Colombian government successfully plucked both Betancourt, the American contractors Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell, Marc Gonsalves, and eleven Colombian security personnel, from the jungle and away to freedom.

Codenamed Operation Jaque, which translates as ‘checkmate’, the rescue team tricked the FARC rebels into handing over the hostages by posing as members of a fictitious non-government organisation that supposedly would fly the captives to a camp to meet the rebel leader, Cano.

Once ensconced in the two helicopters, the handcuffed hostages were confronted by men wearing shirts of Che Guevara.

Upon taking off, however, the men revealed themselves to be members of the Colombian army, a move that almost caused the helicopter to crash as wild jubilation broke out and they made the break for freedom.

According to Betancourt:

This is a miracle. There is no historical precedent for such a perfect operation. The helicopter almost fell from the sky because we all jumped, shouted, cried and embraced. We couldn’t believe it.

The inspirational story of Íngrid Betancourt is a reminder of how volatile and fickle a concoction politics and conflict can be.

For now, there can be happiness for the second success of such an operation in one year.

Yet many thousands of hostages remain in captivity the world over - a simple Google search of petitions reveals a bleak reality that the suffering continues for aid workers, journalists, lawmakers, and ordinary citizens.

At the end of such posts I usually place a link to organisations taking action on such issues.

The sad fact is that the crime of kidnapping, for political or monetary gain, is so rife that it is near impossible to monitor.

And so this post can only end with the twee hope that for those still in captivity, the success of Operations Emmanuel and Jaque can be repeated.

Soon.

[Images via: kozumel, Damouns, and the BBC.]

Clearly harbouring a few teething problems when it comes to acknowledging the weekend, here is an ever-so slight overdue dose of PhotoHunt Saturday, the theme for this week being “bright”, with the following entry comprising a prayer candle at Exeter Cathedral:

An old friend once told me that it is the choices we make, not the chances we take, that determine our destiny.

Admittedly, I am not particularly susceptible to the old poster’n'adage school of thought, but it struck me at the time as quite profound and has duly stuck with me down the years.

I am terrible at making decisions. The mere act of attending a hairdressing appointment can reduce me to a quivering wreck, mumbling “Red!”, “No! Black!”, “No, no, hold on, do you have mahogany?”, “Actually, what do you think?”.

While in such instances I can easily delegate to the hairdresser, my current circumstance can be delegated to no one, and so, I find myself wriggling through sleepless nights at a loss over what to do, where to go, what will be right for my career, and perhaps most of all, right for me.

For the past nine years I had a Plan: get a degree, complete a postgraduate degree, obtain my Ph.D., acquire a job in academia, and pass the remainder of my life writing works on the Middle East, conducting riveting research, and teaching students with an equal zeal for the region and its history.

Regrettably, while the Plan has worked this far, it has been stalled substantially by the complex mechanisms of academia.

If you have ever seen The Long Way Round, a glorious motorcycle saga by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, you will remember the dire tribulations that they encountered on the Road of Bones, in Siberia.

To truly convey my status quo, I believe the years leading up and through my Ph.D. can be compared to the well-managed tarmac roads, with the post-doctoral journey being a bumpy, yet exciting entrance into the unknown.

In reality, I have bounced ungainly off the tarmac and onto the rocky, uneven, and pot-holed Road of Bones, perpetually falling off my bike, losing hope, gaining a slither of hope, and then falling into a pool of mud amid much cursing and fist-shaking.

With each passing day I am compelled to smile passively as yet another colleague tells me that with so many publications I should get a job in an instant, all the while unaware that I have been applying since January, and endured three interviews before falling afoul of departmental nepotism (ouch).

Alternatively, I am warned that in academic circles, scoring your first job can take up to two years - a prospect that at six months in, I cannot bear.

As September looms with no job in sight, I am casting my eye for alternatives for the short term.

Certainly, a lack of written work is no problem, with eight encyclopedia entries, one paper, the publication of my thesis, and a long distance research project in Saudi Arabia currently on the go.

Which brings the decision to the fore: I am rapidly becoming tempted by a nine-month TEFL job in the Italian mountains, but fear that the sojourn could remove me too far from academia.

Certainly, I can keep applying and attend interviews, but conducting research might be a squeeze.

The other choice is to remain in Britain, growing more wilted by the day.

Is it really the gamble that I imagine? Or am I merely being over-dramatic? Should I take the chance and jet off for a three-term time-out? Or bide my time in Britain and keep praying that I shall not be subject to the two year application abyss?

Choices. Meh. Someone pass me a Magic 8 Ball…

[Clip: Monty Python]

Next week I will be attending my graduation, or, as I like to term it, “Ritual Humiliation While Wearing A Floppy Hat”.

Naturally, this ceremony of absurdities is only being undertaken so that my mother can not only pass the day in a swirl of taffeta hats and proud coo-ing, but also so that we might at last remove the God-awful graduation picture that lingers in the office from my undergraduate days.

Each time I forlornly gaze upon that image, the mantra “death-warmed-up” scrolls across my mind.

In short, it is deeply minging, and I have been duly practising a melange of smirks and poses in the bathroom mirror for the past fortnight.

Nevertheless, graduation remains a ritual, and at Doctoral level, one that inspires immense pride in families and friends alike.

Even if family members cannot attend in person, the university’s media capabilities mean that they can purchase a DVD of the ceremony; watch it online; or hammer an array of pictures depicting grimaces and gurns in black gowns to the home walls.

While I mewl plaintively about the quirky be-tassled cap however, I must bear in mind those who wish to attend, but cannot, due to their status as Palestinians.

One such woman is Amneh Badran, who completed her Ph.D. in politics a few months ago, and has previously campaigned vociferously for women’s rights in Jerusalem and the wider occupied territories.

I first encountered Amneh while organising a panel for the annual interdisciplinary conference, and as the subject was ‘War’, she duly submitted an abstract based on her thesis, which explores a comparative case between Palestine/Israel and South Africa, in terms of human rights and segregation.

Duly impressed at the time, I was subsequently bowled over while chairing by her sagacity and ability to convey a crucial issue, without isolating those audience members who may have been of alternate political orientations, or new to the subject.

It was with great regret then, that I discovered this morning that Amneh will not be able to attend her Doctoral graduation ceremony next week due to visa restrictions.

Despite having contacted the consulate in Jerusalem and requested her supervisor to act similarly, Amneh has yet to receive a positive response.

Since then, she has contacted the local Palestine Solidarity Campaign group with the following request:

I wrote an appeal to the consulate in Jerusalem and informed my supervisor in the University. He wrote to the consul. Also, two of my friends who have a connection with an MP are trying to lobby him. If you and others from the university could write to the consul in Jerusalem and / or the ambassador in Amman in support of my right to attend the graduation, it might help.

As the former Director of the Jerusalem Center for Women, Amneh has worked tirelessly to raise awareness for worthy causes.

It is precisely for this reason that her situation cannot pass unnoticed.

Dishearteningly, she is not alone, as the UK launch this week of the Let Palestinians Study campaign attests (more on which will I shall write anon.).

However, if the issue can be tackled one person at a time, then that is the route I shall follow.

For further information and contact details, visit the Palestine Solidarity Campaign website. 

[Image via: law_keven.]

Happily blogging since June last year.

[Image via: stevesture]

Censorship, it seems, is an all-pervasive bête noire, and one that is infiltrating academic circles as swiftly as the bubonic plague at a medieval market.

As I have expounded on inumerable occasions, academia, for me, has been always regarded as the last bastion in which the freedom to inform, discover, and disseminate knowledge is held sacred.

Equally, the story of the Palestinians and the diaspora must be one of the most emotive, wrenching, and inspiring sagas of all humanity, while in terms of pathos, tragedy, art and achievement, few cultures would come close.

Which is why the following account by Jim Holstun is so perplexing:

I first heard about the group [StandWithUs] in 2005, after its Executive Director, Roz Rothstein, wrote my university’s president, provost and Arts and Sciences dean to warn them that I was teaching courses in Palestinian culture. She passed along some hysterical libels from anonymous community members (not my students), gave a detailed critique of my syllabuses, encouraged them to investigate me and two other colleagues, and helpfully suggested a few questions they might want to ask.

Somehow, in this battle of wills that has raged since 1948, the boundaries have been torn down to the extent that even learning about Palestine has become questionable.

How far can this go? Will students be dissuaded in future from studying Palestine? Do the promulgators of these restrictions truly believe that they will succeed in erasing Palestine from the memories of the global population?

Truly, it is piffle, and should be nipped in the bud.

Preventing the teaching of Palestinian culture, history, art, or politics is blatant discrimination, and academia should not become another battlefield in which it is acceptable to use such tactics.

[Image via: Ziet O Zaa3taar]

This may be of interest for those of you lucky enough to be in the fair city of Amman this month:

Building up a Socio-economic Platform for the Jordanian Political Parties

In cooperation with the Center for International Private Enterprises (CIPE), Al-Quds Center for Political Studies organizes a Seminar on June 28-29, 2008 at Radisson Sas Hotel entitled “Building up a Socio-economic Platform for Jordanian Political Parties - International Experiences”

The experiences of the Moroccan Independence Party and the Justice and Development Party in building up a socio-economic platform will be presented at the Seminar. Member of the Executive Committee; a former Minister of Projections and Planning; and Professor of Economics at Mohammad V University-Dr. AbdulHamid Awwad will present the experience of the Independence Party. Member of the Turkish Parliament-Dr. Jaunet Yuxel will present the experience of the Justice and Development Party.

Some of the Jordanian Parties’ Leaders and Parliamentarians will participate in this Seminar in addition to some activists from the economic and academic scenes.

This event is one of a series started by Al-Quds Center for Political Studies and implemented along the past two years  with the aim of building up the institutional capacity of the Jordanian Political Parties and improve their socio-economic discourse.

Find further details, here.

In the melee of soapboxes espousing causes and concerns, it is all too easy to overlook individuals and organizations striving just as hard to make a difference.

To date, I have made no secret of my stance on the Palestinian issue, and I shall doubtless remain an advocate for a free and peaceful Palestine for the rest of my life.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but mention the endeavours of Israeli organizations such as B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Certainly, staunch advocates from my standpoint could argue that the very notion of a pro-Palestinian Israeli is oxymoronic and deserving of pithy rejoinders ameliorated as advice as to how such “do-gooders” could really help the Palestinians.

Since this post is in honour of those hard-working men and women at the aforementioned organizations, I shall shy away from an in-depth attribution of blame and responsibility, and instead highlight the recent work of B’Tselem and ACRI, in particular.

Following the cluster bomb conference held in Dublin, Ireland, last month, the urgent necessity to render such weapons illegal was emphasized.

While I have posted on these Satanic munitions previously, their continued use around the world can never be condemned enough.

Dropped from the sky or deployed from the ground, the fatal behemoths release dozens of hundreds of smaller submunitions, with those released by air termed as “bomblets”, and those spawned from artillery or rockets known as “grenades”.

According to the Cluster Munition Coalition, at least fourteen countries are sufficiently numb to their conscience to have used cluster bombs, while seventy-six countries have collectively stockpiled billions of submunitions.

Let us take a moment to consider this figure. Billions.

Imagine a stadium filled with a billion baseballs, or footballs.

Now imagine each one of those balls has the ability to kill a child. Or a mother returning from a village after shopping for her family.

Hanging in this gallery of rogues are an array of nations, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, Israel, Morocco, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia (USSR), Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, UK, US, and the FR Yugoslavia.

In total, thirty-four states are known to have pooled their collective genius and produced not a cure for AIDS or cancer, but 210 different types of cluster munitions.

As a result, more than twenty-four countries have been affected by the use of cluster munitions including Afghanistan, Albania, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Chad, Croatia, DR Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Grenada, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uganda, and Vietnam, as well as Chechnya, Falkland/Malvinas, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Western Sahara.

On the 31 May, however, a bold step of progress was taken as 100 nations agreed to ban the use of cluster bombs.

The United States declined to participate, as did Russia, India, Pakistan and Israel.

A quandary remains, nevertheless, over the loopholes in the agreement, which has been likened to the Ottawa Convention of 1997.

These loopholes, it is cautioned, could facilitate the non-participatory states in their endeavours and provide major obstacles to those nations in agreement with the ban.

Which is where B’Tselem and ACRI step in, after calling on the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, to involve Israel in the international effort to ban cluster bombs.

In the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon War, ACRI demanded a criminal investigation into Israel’s use of cluster bombs in the region.

Subsequently, the Winograd Commission’s report criticized Israel’s firing of cluster bombs into built-up areas, inasmuch as it was conducted with the recognition that civilians who left their homes during the war would be exposed, upon their return, to injury from the duds.

Predictably, the Israeli government has declined to acknowledge the calls of B’Tselem and ACRI, both on the issue of cluster bombs, and on wider human rights violations perpetuated by the Israeli state against Palestinian and Lebanese citizens.

Nevertheless, groups such as these should not be ignored in the realm of campaigning, but included.

The future of Palestine is impossible to define at this current time, but the daily abuses endured and the continued deployment of such weapons of death is an issue that can be tackled by the global community right now.

Lastly, I cannot include these images without giving a nod to the photographers and providng a little background.

The first image was taken in Bagram, Afghanistan, by John Rodsted at a PTAB submunitions piled up in 2002.

It was part of a munition dump containing 60, 000 tons of UXO.

The second image was captured by Marwan Naaman, this time taken in Lebanon.

Ali Wansa, a 44-year-old Lebanese national who lost his leg because of an Israeli cluster bomb, waits for a physical therapist to check his amputated leg at the Hezbollah run al-Abbas laboratory at the devastated southern suburb of Beirut, on 21 September 2006 .

Wansa, whose leg was blown off as he was working on his land in the southern village of Dibeen, hopes to get a new artificial leg instead of his old broken one.

For further information on cluster bombs, visit the Cluster Munition Coalition, or sign The People’s Treaty, here.

For additional media resources such as images, publications, and film, visit The Norwegian People’s Aid.

…on a Monday.

But henceforth, it shall be a Saturday, I promise.

This ingenious event calls upon bloggers and photo-enthusiasts alike to post up an image from their own personal renderings each week in accordance with the stipulated theme, which is released on the Saturday morning.

This week, the theme is water, a topic of particular personal fascination owing to my passion for all things nautical, marine, and blue.

Thus, I present Aκρωτήριο Σούνιο, taken at one of my most revered locations, Sounion, on the periphery of Athens, Greece.

On other entries, I would recommend the following for sheer delightful nostalgia and glamour!