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UN Counter-Terrorism Expert Launches Inquiry into the Civilian Impact of Drones and Other Forms of Targeted Killing
![[Image of MQ-1 Predator Drone, used primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force. Image by David Smith.]](/content_images/3/sm_2139413765_f7b959bd8e_z.jpg "[Image of MQ-1 Predator Drone, used primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States Air Force. Image by David Smith.]")
LONDON (24 January 2012) - UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson QC will be formally launching an Inquiry into the civilian impact of the use of drones and other forms of targeted killing, focusing on the applicable legal framework, a critical examination of the factual evidence concerning civilian casualties, with a view to making recommendations to the UN General Assembly concerning the duty of States to conduct effective independent and impartial investigations into the lawfulness and proportionality of such attacks. The Inquiry will be publicly launched at a press conference this ...
Keep Reading »O.I.L. Media Roundup (30 January)
![[Malian troops stand guard outside Kati Barracks in Bamako, the headquarters of coup leader Amadou Sanogo. Image by Magharebia. From Wikimedia Commons]](/content_images/3/sm_Les_allies_dal-Qaida_detruisent_un_tombeau_sacre_a_Tombouctou_(8142142738).jpg "[Malian troops stand guard outside Kati Barracks in Bamako, the headquarters of coup leader Amadou Sanogo. Image by Magharebia. From Wikimedia Commons]")
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention, and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week] News "UN Expert Investigates US Drone Attacks, Targeted Killings that Involve Civilian Casualties," Associated Press The AP reports on the special investigation by Ben Emmerson, the UN rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, into the legality of drone warfare and targeted killings as used by the ...
Keep Reading »First Jordanian Elections post Arab Uprisings; Challenges of Reporting from Syria
![[Ink stained fingers after voting. Image by james_gordon_losangeles via. flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_jordanelections2.jpg "[Ink stained fingers after voting. Image by james_gordon_losangeles via. flickr]")
This week, Amman-based activist and writer Hisham Bustani updates VOMENA on the first Jordanian parliamentary elections since the Arab uprisings, and what they mean for the country. More than thirty journalists were killed in Syria in 2012 alone. Istanbul-based freelance journalist Justin Vela talks about the challenges and pitfalls of reporting from a Syrian warzone. [Correction from Hisham Bustani: To correct a mistake I made in the interview regarding the number of the Jordanian Parliament's seats. The correct total number of seats is 150 seats: 123 seats of which are dedicated to the single vote/local district individual candidates; and ...
Keep Reading »Early Perspectives from Algeria on Northern Mali and French Intervention
![[Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal points to a map of Algeria after a press conference held in Algiers, Monday, 21 January 2013. The Islamist militants who attacked a natural gas plant in the Sahara wore Algerian army uniforms, memorized the layout of the vast complex and included two Canadians and a team of explosives experts ready to blow the place sky-high, Algeria’s prime minister said Monday. Image by Sidali Djarboub/AP Photo.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2013-01-22at4.10.54PM.png "[Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal points to a map of Algeria after a press conference held in Algiers, Monday, 21 January 2013. The Islamist militants who attacked a natural gas plant in the Sahara wore Algerian army uniforms, memorized the layout of the vast complex and included two Canadians and a team of explosives experts ready to blow the place sky-high, Algeria’s prime minister said Monday. Image by Sidali Djarboub/AP Photo.]")
Thus far, Algerian press coverage and reactions are divided on France’s military intervention in northern Mali, Operation SERVAL, as well as the additional thrusts in the south by Mali’s jihadist coalition. Skepticism that has been prevalent in Algerian media coverage of calls for the internationalization of the Malian crisis remains a strong thread in opinion and editorial writing nonetheless. While significant strands of elite opinion—especially at the political level—appear to have somewhat rallied to support military intervention in northern Mali. At the same time, the Algerian government’s longstanding position in favor of "dialogue" and a "political ...
Keep Reading »Focus sur le Mali, troisième partie: Une périlleuse démonstration de force de l'ancienne puissance coloniale
![[Les habitants de Tombouctou protestent contre la prise de contrôle par le groupe islamiste Ansar al-Din. Image par Jemal Oumar/Magharebia.]](/content_images/3/sm_ScreenShot2013-01-22at9.44.57AM.png "[Les habitants de Tombouctou protestent contre la prise de contrôle par le groupe islamiste Ansar al-Din. Image par Jemal Oumar/Magharebia.]")
[Cet article est le troisième d'une série de trois, avec des perspectives différentes sur les développements au Mali. Les articles précédents - « Mali in Focus, Part One: The Jihadist Offensive Revisited » et « Focus sur le Mali, deuxième partie: Une guerre qui menace toute la région » ] Large consensus politique sur la scène politique intérieure, soutien de la communauté internationale, urgence de la situation face à l'avancée rapide des milices islamistes, tout à première vue concourt à justifier l'intervention militaire française au Mali. Derrière la prétendue légitimité de « l'opération Serval&nbs
Keep Reading »O.I.L. Media Roundup (18 January)
![[A Soldier stands guard in a tower at Camp Delta at Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay. Image by Spc. Cody Black. From Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_800px-US_Navy_091231-A-0285B-005_A_Soldier_stands_guard_in_a_tower_at_Camp_Delta_at_Joint_Task_Force_Guantanamo_Bay.jpg "[A Soldier stands guard in a tower at Camp Delta at Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay. Image by Spc. Cody Black. From Wikimedia Commons.]")
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention, and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week] News "Clearing Palestinian Protestors from West Bank Site, Netanyahu Pledges to Build Settlement," Joel Greenberg The Washington Post reports both on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plans to construct further settlements in the West Bank and his government's forced eviction of Bab al-Shams, a ...
Keep Reading »Good Taliban, Bad Taliban: Pakistan’s Double Game and the US War on Terror
![[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]](/content_images/3/sm_schmelztaliban11.jpg "[Maulvi Nazir, a militant leader close to the Pakistani military, was killed in a US drone strike. Image from AP.]")
The start of 2013 brought a fresh upsurge of US drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, killing between twenty-three and forty-four people. Since 2008, when President George W. Bush ordered increased strikes on “militants” and associated “infrastructure targets” in these areas, killings have been a constant occurrence. President Barack Obama not only continued this policy, but escalated it dramatically. Of the 360 total strikes documented by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, 308 have occurred since Obama took office. It is no surprise, then, that individual drone strikes no longer cause much of a stir in the international press, ...
Keep Reading »O.I.L. Media Roundup (6 January)
![[Gaza -- Graffiti on the Separation Wall in Palestine. Image by ISM Palestine. From Wikimedia Commons.]](/content_images/3/sm_800px-Gazagraffiti.jpg "[Gaza -- Graffiti on the Separation Wall in Palestine. Image by ISM Palestine. From Wikimedia Commons.]")
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention, and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week] News "Israel Approves Another 1,200 Settlements Around Jerusalem", Peter Beaumont In what constitutes the latest in a larger wave of nearly 5,500 proposed settlement units, Israel has approved the development of 1,200 settlement units around Jerusalem. This expansion, the "largest in recent memory', ...
Keep Reading »United Nations Periodic Update on Syria
![[Damaged street in Homs, Syria, November 2012. Image by Freedom House via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_sryia122912web.jpg "[Damaged street in Homs, Syria, November 2012. Image by Freedom House via Flickr]")
[The following report was issued by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic of the United Nations on 20 December 2012.] Introduction The unrelenting violence in Syria has resulted in thousands of deaths; untold thousands of wounded, detained, and disappeared; and physical destruction on a massive scale. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes, and those that remain struggle to secure basic necessities. World heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed, as have entire neighbourhoods. Civilians have borne the brunt of escalating armed confrontations as the front lines between ...
Keep Reading »A Faraway Neighbor
![[Gaza. Image by the author.]](/content_images/3/sm_farawayschmelz.jpg "[Gaza. Image by the author.]")
For those of us who have grown up Arab, Palestine is a constant presence. From childhood to adulthood, we hear about the Palestinian cause, from the news, from friends and family, from parents and grandparents, from school, from songs. Palestine is close to our hearts, while its reality is so far away. The land itself feels distant; despite its proximity, one can only dream of seeing it. If there is a small glimmer of light emerging from the Egyptian revolution, it is that the reality of Palestine may not be as far as it seems. As Israel executed “Pillar of Cloud,” five hundred Egyptians crossed the Rafah border into Gaza carrying medical supplies ...
Keep Reading »Malala, Abandoned to the Hawks of War
![[Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan, right, with World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab during the World Economic Forum Special Meeting on Economic Growth and Job Creation in the Arab World at the Dead Sea in Jordan,22 October, 2011. Photo by Photo by Nader Daoud.]](/content_images/3/sm_6269556650_57cf652964_z.jpg "[Asif Ali Zardari, President of Pakistan, right, with World Economic Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab during the World Economic Forum Special Meeting on Economic Growth and Job Creation in the Arab World at the Dead Sea in Jordan,22 October, 2011. Photo by Photo by Nader Daoud.]")
On 10 December 2012, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari announced that his government and UNESCO were establishing the “Malala Fund for Girls’ Education,” and that Pakistan would contribute ten million dollars. This fund’s namesake, Malala Yousufzai, is a young activist for girls’ education. She was shot and severely wounded on 9 October 2012 by Taliban-led armed thugs on her way to school in the Swat Valley in Northwest Pakistan. Given the marathon international media coverage of her story, Zardari’s jumping on the bandwagon illustrates how Malala has become the newest, youngest icon for the “War on Terror.” Even as the fifteen year-old recovers from the shooting, she ...
Keep Reading »Documenting Yemen's Injured South
![[Flag of South Yemen on a wall in Aden. 11 July 2012. Photo by Ammar Basha]](/content_images/3/sm_AmmarBashaCoverPix03.jpg "[Flag of South Yemen on a wall in Aden. 11 July 2012. Photo by Ammar Basha]")
I shot the film presented here, "Third Day in the Heart of the Revolution,’’ over a single day. Divided in two parts, it tells stories from the south of Yemen two years after the revolution started. The first segment focuses on the Yemeni governorate of Abyan and those who fled its capital Zinjibar during the war with Ansar al-Sharia. The second presents the youth of al-Mansura in Aden who have been expelled from Sahat Al-Shuhada' (Martyrs' Square) through the use of deadly force by security forces. After the two short films I made about the youths in Change Square of Sana’a and the Life March in late 2011 that briefly reinvigorated Yemen's uprising, I wanted to ...
Keep Reading »Setting New Precedents: Israel Boycotts Human Rights Session
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a unique mechanism that intends to review the behavior of states without distinction. The UN General Assembly established it in 2006 as part of the functions of the Human Rights Council. It is a state-driven process to comprehensively assess a state's compliance with human rights law. The Human Rights Council is to hold three two-week sessions each year during which time they review the files of sixteen member states. Accordingly each state will undergo the review ...
Keep Reading »Syria's Kurds: A Struggle Within a Struggle
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 22 January 2013.] Syria's Kurds: A Struggle Within a Struggle Executive Summary As Syria’s conflict has expanded, the population in majority-Kurd areas has remained relatively insulated. Keeping a lower profile, it has been spared the brunt of regime attacks; over time, security forces withdrew to concentrate elsewhere. Kurdish groups stepped in to replace them; to stake out zones of influence, protect their respective areas, ...
Keep Reading »Mali in Focus, Part Three: A Dangerous Show of Force from a Former Colonial Power
[This article is the final of a three-part series featuring different perspectives on the recent developments in Mali. Previously published: "Mali in Focus, Part One: The Jihadist Offensive Revisited" and "Mali in Focus, Part Two: A War That Threatens the Entire Region"] Broad political consensus in the domestic political sphere, support from the international community, and the urgency of the situation due to the rapid advance of Islamist militias—together, at first glance, these ...
Keep Reading »مالي الحرب الماحقة
بدأت فرنسا حملتها في مالي ودس أنفها في شؤون مستعمرتها السابقة متعذرة بمحاربة "القوى الإسلامية المتطرفة" وضرورة وضع حد لسطوتها في مالي. خططت وأرست القواعد والجنود وقررت القصف ومطاردة هذه الجماعات، قتلت إلى حد الآن العشرات من عناصر" أنصار الدين" وقصفت بعض خزانات وقودها، وقال الجيش المالي إنه استعاد السيطرة على بعض المدن. أعلنت فرنسا أنها لن تتعدى الجنوب المالي، وإنه ليس من ضمن مخططاتها التوجه إلى الشمال، إنما ستمهد للقوات الأفريقية للقيام بتلك المهمة وتحرير الشمال من قبضة "الجماعات ...
Keep Reading »Focus sur le Mali, deuxième partie: Une guerre qui menace toute la région
[Cet article est le deuxième d'une série de trois, avec des perspectives différentes sur les développements au Mali. Le premier article - « Mali in Focus, Part One: The Jihadist Offensive Revisited » ] « …Ce conflit est légitime et vital pour la sécurité des Français. Nous ne pouvons pas espérer conserver nos modes de vie et notre prospérité si nous n'allons pas à l'extérieur du territoire national participer à la stabilisation et au règlement des crises, à ...
Keep Reading »Mali in Focus, Part One: The Jihadist Offensive Revisited
[This article is the first of a three-part series featuring different perspectives on the recent developments in Mali.] Although the jihadists in northern Mali share the same radical Islamist substrate, we were expecting to see Iyad Ag Ghaly’s Ansar Eddine (AD) movement cloak itself in a more moderate attitude in return for having obtained a respectable status in the Azawad conflict. This was the wish expressed by several international mediators—namely Algeria and Burkina Faso—given the different ...
Keep Reading »Tamerlane in Damascus
In December of 1400, Timur left the rubble of Aleppo and Hama behind, making his way to the outskirts of the first city of Syria: Damascus. By this time, an Egyptian army under the command of the Mamluk Sultan himself had arrived in Syria, engaging in several skirmishes with Timur’s forces. Then, abruptly, it headed back to Cairo at the start of the new year, ostensibly to prevent a rival from taking control in the Sultan’s absence. Newly vulnerable, the Damascene population sent a delegation of scholars ...
Keep Reading »All Armies - the Syrian Regime, the FSA and Islamist - Are Thieves
During the 1990s, my small village which felt like it was cut off from half the known world experienced a strange new phenomenon. A big mosque was built by donors from the city of Hama, the cost of which at the time outstripped the earnings of the residents of the whole village combined. The thing I remember most about the mosque was the huge quantities of rice and olive oil deposited in front of the mosque to distribute among the regular visitors. We began to see a few of the men from the village let ...
Keep Reading »Syrian Refugees: Reliance on Camps Creates Few Good Options
[The following report was issued by Refugees International on 5 December 2012.] Syrian Refugees: Reliance on Camps Creates Few Good Options Summary The civil war in Syria has forced large numbers of Syrians from their homes, and in many cases from the country entirely. Refugees continue to flee in record numbers, and there are currently almost 400,000 registered or waiting for registration in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey combined. The United Nations has said ...
Keep Reading »O.I.L. Media Roundup (17 December)
[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention, and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week] News "European Court Backs CIA Rendition Victim," Al Jazeera English The European Court of Human Rights has ordered Macedonia to pay German ...
Keep Reading »Atatürk and My Grandfather
Where the young Palestinian Ismail Hroub was killed and buried after being recruited by the Ottoman army in the early twentieth century remains unknown. His brother, my paternal grandfather Khalil Hroub, would for the rest of his days remain saddened by the early loss of his brother. He had refused any money from the Ottoman administration, then based in Hebron, as compensation for this loss. Like many Palestinian families who lost young men in the Great War, and despite sheer poverty and need, my ...
Keep Reading »Sudan: Major Reform or More War
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 29 November 2012.] Sudan: Major Reform or More War Executive Summary The “Sudan Problem” has not gone away with the South’s secession. Chronic conflict, driven by concentration of power and resources in the centre, continues to plague the country. The solution is a more inclusive government that addresses at least some of the peripheries’ grievances, but pledges to transform governance remain unfulfilled. A key hurdle – though not the ...
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His poems will be read with admiration and awe, but perhaps it’s time to forget about Adunis the cultural critic and radical intellectual. The Arab Spring has consigned Adunis, the self-proclaimed revolutionary, to irrelevance. And that is the beauty of revolutions.click | email | tweet
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