Time for Uncle Sam to Let Go of Iraq's Bike Seat?

Check out this curiously-worded memo by Col. Timothy R. Reese, the chief of the Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, MND-B, which has the offhandedly urgent title, "It’s Time for the US to Declare Victory and Go Home."

Among the strange, domestic-themed idioms:

"Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose."

"Iraq is not a country with a history of treating even its welcomed guests well."

"The [Iraqi government and Iraqi Security Forces] will tolerate us as long as they can suckle at Uncle Sam’s bounteous mammary glands."

"The [2008 Security Agreement] outlines a series of gradual steps towards military withdrawal, analogous to a father teaching his kid to ride a bike without training wheels. ... We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race. And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground."

To paraphrase Uncle Reese: We should put the cookie jar away because the Iraqi government wants to bake brownies. Iraq pour itself a glass of milk. And even though, in spite of Maliki's efforts to swab it all up with his old college tee-shirt, the government commits milk spills that cost the country enormous amounts of milk money; even though the den is a total mess, the garden is overgrown, and the kids are still fighting over the T.V. remote that is Kirkuk; even though the Sunnis aren't doing their homework, and Sunni hall monitors aren't getting the respect they deserve from those lazy asshole prefects and hall monitors who aren't inviting us to their parties; and even though bullies still roam the halls brandishing AK-47s and setting off bombs, the fact is that our cookies are overcooked, and we're crowding the kitchen terribly.

"Therefore, we should declare our intentions to withdraw all US military forces from Iraq by August 2010," Reese writes. Or, to put it another way: It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home!

I'm sure America's anti-war activists are wringing their hands over this one.

"They need to take responsibility for their country..."

From the Iraqi perspective, here is the view of Barack Obama's first Presidential visit to their country: a man flown in secretly, delivered to Camp Victory “to say thank you to the troops,” and gone in five hours.

I cringed as I read President Obama's rehashed talking points on his Iraq policy, a "responsible" prolonged withdrawal—specifically, I cringed at his patronizing Theys.

"They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty," he told U.S. troops in a short speech at a Saddam-era palace in the Green Zone, a section of Baghdad that the U.S. Army captured exactly six years ago. "They have got to make political accommodations. They're going to have to decide that they want to resolve their differences through constitutional means and legal means. They are going to have to focus on providing government services that encourage confidence among their citizens. . . . We can't do it for them."

I have never experienced the humiliation of occupation, but I can say now that I have experienced the humiliation of occupying. Many times before, I have said that the government and people of the United States have a responsibility to improve Iraqis' lives through nonviolent methods. Troop count alone—whether it goes up or down—will never define our progress and our righteousness. And here is President Obama, the new partner, the emblem of a new era, laboring the point of “responsibility" while neglecting the very people for whom we were supposed to have fought this war.

The responsibility to hand over responsibility? Bandied about and buzzing, the word "responsibility" is beginning to remind me of those doomsaying two words of May 2003—words so haunting that you needn't be reminded of them, and so historic that they have their own Wikipedia entry.

Image from The New York Times' Baghdad Bureau blog.

Never forget?

We will never forget Vietnam. We will never forget the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. On October 7 next year, Page One of The New York Times (if there still is a Page One) may even memorialize the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom and the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. But today, March 20, 2009, there is no space reserved on the front page for the Iraq War, now beginning its sixth year.

Just as Afghanistan's was the less-important war last year, Iraq's is a low priority this year. As Afghanistan and Pakistan have exploded into the public consciousness, violence in Iraq "has flattened at the lowest level since the war began six years ago." Iraq's provincial elections "took place in a remarkably peaceful climate" (although, at least five candidates were assassinated). The status-of-forces agreement signed by the U.S. and Iraqi governments in late 2008 "will reduce boots on the ground and U.S. influence on Iraqi matters." President Obama has vowed to end combat operations by August 2010. Last month, Obama told the world: "Iraq's future is now its own responsibility."

A year ago today, I wrote on this blog: "The question of American responsibility remains fixed in reality; it always will. Let's proceed with that question on our minds." Even I, in a sense, have moved on: to music, to the war in northern Uganda, to the crisis in Zimbabwe. Like so many others, the recession haunts me like a poltergeist. But I still believe that even after all of our troops leave Iraqi soil two years from now (if all goes according to plan), we as Americans must still consider our responsibility to Iraq. We can work to find secure living situations for the millions of Iraqi refugees; or donate to progressive cultural institutions in the country, like the Iraqi National Library and Archive. We can just read a few great books to learn more about the nation that our nation has invaded and occupied, and to understand the war's historical implications.

I understand that this will be a struggle. This past year has brought so much hope, but there have also been so many dark days. Many of us will forever reserve this day for memories and tears, for the contemplation and recognition of innumerable sacrifices and scars. But for many Americans, recent memory has cast a pall over those of the past.

The Biggest Weapon in Northern Uganda

Update, 12/31/08: In late November, when a government ultimatum expired, Kony failed yet again to sign a final peace agreement that would end the war. A week after this article went to print, the Ugandan, South Sudanese and DR Congo militaries kicked off a renewed military campaign against the LRA. Now, reports are circulating (here, here, here, here, and elsewhere) that LRA fighters slaughtered over 400 villagers over Christmas in northeast Congo. The LRA denies the allegations. For more, check out the Ugandan dailies The New Vision and The Daily Monitor, as well as the great Ugandan news magazine The Independent.

Lucky Bosmic Otim, a popular musician from northern Uganda, is practically impossible to reach by phone. He has one, but it’s always turned off. The only way to contact him is through his friends, whose cell phones have invariably been turned off as well. When I finally met him last June, at his wife’s house a few kilometers outside the provincial capital of Gulu, he explained that his fame has attracted undesirable fans.

“The rebels, they used to call,” he said. “They wanted me to be part of the peace talks. When they call you like that, it’s very, very, very bad.”

Bosmic was referring, of course, to the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel outfit that has terrorized the north’s predominantly ethnic Acholi population for over twenty years, kidnapping children, forcing girls into sexual slavery, training boys as fighters, and turning them against their own villages, neighbors, even families. But since the Ugandan government’s peace talks with the LRA ushered in a period of peace in this war-torn region two years ago, Acholis have begun to rebuild a society devastated by violence, poverty, disease, and mass displacement. And a fledgling music industry has exploded, with musicians like Bosmic rocketing to stardom.

While many hits sung in the Acholi language of Luo deal in love—like Jackson’s “Atye ii Mar” (“I’m in Love”)—a strain of popular songs by artists like Bosmic, Jahria Okwera, and Jeff Korondo are raising questions about the complicated, controversial issues that haunt Acholi life, like domestic violence and the return of battle-hardened child soldiers. “They’re all educative,” said Nicky Afaye, a producer at the leading Mega FM radio station. “They all endeavor to really speak about peace.”

For his part, Bosmic, a lean twenty-four-year-old with an intense, searching expression, is perhaps most famous for his reggae-tinged entreaty “Peace Return,” a chart-topper at Mega FM driven by a syncopated piano line and a synth flute melody. The song echoes a desperate refrain commonly heard in the north: “Peace return/To northern Uganda/It’s our prayer.”

Judging by Bosmic’s penchant for battle fatigues—as he sat on a grass clearing with his two-year-old in his lap, he was decked out in a grey camoflage jacket, green designer camo pants, small dreads with orange tips sticking out of a maroon beanie, and a wristband in Rastafarian green, yellow, and red, embroidered with a marijuana leaf—he addresses the subject with militant zeal. “They call me a freedom fighter,” Bosmic said. “But ours is not through guns. Our guns are the microphones. The mic is the biggest weapon.”

As with many others here, war and all of its attendant problems have dominated Bosmic’s life. He was born in Kitgum, a province close to the border of South Sudan, but his parents died in a civil war in the ’80s, when a southwestern Ugandan resistance movement led by Yoweri Museveni overthrew the government and established a de facto military regime with democratic flavoring—which Museveni still rules over today, still as president of Uganda.

After he was orphaned, Bosmic came under the care of the bishop at a Protestant church in Gulu, where he played a traditional stringed instrument called the adungu and sang for the church. “When I was in the church, others were already singing this ‘world music,’” he said. “But to me, they were not bringing out the message I wanted to pass to the world. Their music was full of obscenity, talking about love only. We have got so many orphans who need help in the world. We have got victims of war, wars around the world. So I thought it wise I should join, so that I also pass the message to the world.”

As he grew into his teens, Bosmic began writing lyrics loaded with Christian themes and political messages. Eventually, inspired by the late South African reggae artist Lucky Dube, he himself took on the name “Lucky” and produced a string of Afrobeat-style songs using the music programming software FruityLoops, the inexpensive, easy-to-master backing band of most northern Ugandan singers.

With cheap cassettes of his music sold in the market, and his songs playing on Mega FM, Bosmic quickly took on a devoted following, mostly in the Acholi districts of northern Uganda. He incorporated English lyrics into his songs to reach a wider audience, and became something of a regional icon when the low-budget music video for “Peace Return” showed up on YouTube a year ago, boosting international awareness of this often-overlooked war.

There is a telling contradiction between the stark messages of Bosmic’s lyrics and their backdrop of reggaeton beats, squeaky-clean instrumentation, and uplifting melodies: His music bursts with hope, but songs like “Suicide Drinking” are also dogged by anger and frustration about a broken Acholi society.

Gulu, a small town where hundreds of international aid organizations and local, small-time NGOs are headquartered, is full of bars and clubs. In the three weeks my traveling partner and I spent there, a party scene thrived. Scores of locals and expats alike spent long nights drunk on Ugandan beer and liquor, shooting pool and grooving to Bob Marley, American R&B, dancehall covers of songs like Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” and Acholi crowd-pleasers with relentlessly fast beats.

Music and dance are cornerstones of culture in Acholiland, the central districts of the north. Norman Okot, a music and dance trainer at Health, Education, Literacy, and Sports (HEALS), a Gulu-based nonprofit for war-scarred children, told me that the Acholis have a dozen traditional dances, each geared toward a specific activity: the Bwola, or royal dance, for the coronation or death of a king; the “war dance”; and the Laraka Nraka and Ajere, courting rituals for boys and girls. “Anything to do with life in Acholi, whether life, or death, or pleasure, is always accompanied by dancing,” Okot said.

So it is with northern Uganda’s contemporary music. The north’s nightclub scene, locals told me, often serves as a venue for dancing and drinking away the horrific memories of war and the difficulties of everyday life. “If you go to my village, there is a dance hall,” said Stellah Akello, an Acholi college student from a village near Gulu. “If you go to my mother’s village, there is a dance hall. People are tired of war. They want peace of mind.”

Yet the happy excesses of the clubs sometimes mirror the more poisonous excesses of the men who wallow in the hundreds of Internally Displaced Person camps scattered across the region. An estimated two million people have been displaced during the war. Many of them were forced to move into these unsanitary camps of crude mud-brick huts, starkly different from the lush forests of trees, elephant grass, and corn and cassava crops that surround them. Traumatized and unable to work their fields because of the LRA rebels stalking the bush, many men in the camps turned to alcohol. Today, aid workers and camp residents say, lots of men still laze away their days drinking locally brewed beer, while their wives take care of the family.

Alcohol, aid workers and residents say, fuels the gender-based prejudice, domestic violence, and rape endemic in Acholiland. Sometimes, aid workers and residents say, men will even steal the food aid their wives pick up from the World Food Program in order to buy more alcohol.

In “Suicide Drinking,” Bosmic blasts the widespread use of alcohol as an escape. “They are trying to drink off their lives,” he said.

It may be peaceful in northern Uganda these days, but the war isn’t over yet. The LRA has continued attacking villages and abducting children in villages near rebel hideouts in Central Africa, destabilizing the region and stoking fear. In Uganda, thousands of IDP camp residents have no means to go home. By all accounts, Ugandans will only believe the war is finished once Kony has signed a final peace agreement. But he failed to show up for the signing last April, and rebuffed negotiators again in late November. The Ugandan military has considered taking on the LRA in a renewed military campaign, but Acholis will only be able to fully restore their society after the war ends, international aid workers and Ugandans say. And reconstruction is, itself, an extremely daunting undertaking. “Where do we begin? Educationally, we are nowhere. Economically, we are nowhere. Politically, we are nowhere,” Bosmic said. “We are crippled. We don’t have legs.”

To Bosmic, the Acholis’ only remaining wealth is the thick greenery and fertile soil of the land, which they have depended on for survival for hundreds of years. Last June, he pulled out a notebook with lyrics scribbled on the lined pages, and showed me a new song he was about to record.

The song is called “Kakana,” Luo for “My Tribe,” and it sends a sobering warning: “Don’t sell off your land.”

This article ran in the December/January issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

In the den of Republicanistan, Palin rules

Last night, I joined a team of bleeding-heart liberals to cross into "Republicanistan" and crash a watching party for the New York Young Republican Club at the Houndstooth Pub in Midtown. I had pretty low expectations for the Vice-Presidential debate after reading Jack Shafer's primer and I expected to lose composure at some point and blow our cover. In the end, the experience was not nearly as infuriating as it was surreal and depressing.

The debate began shortly after our team downed some Jagger shots and briefly chatted up the well-dressed, 30-something technocrats sipping cocktails in the bar's dimly lit basement space. Watching the debate on FOX News, I whooped and hollered on cue for the first half, simultaneously trying to keep up the act and focus on the actual words of the candidates. I got the impression, though, that us city-dwellers weren't the intended audience. With Palin's cornpone talk and Biden's invitations to visit his working class home town, they clearly were trying to court the small-town "Main Streeters" of America's battleground states.

Both of them put up a pretty good fight, but I don't think either of them came out particularly victorious. But Palin's getting a lot of credit for not doing anything extremely stupid. As the NY Times notes, “She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way.” For me, Palin proved to have the most memorable comments.

Early on, with total lack of irony, she parroted Barack Obama's platform of change: "I do respect [Biden's] years in the U.S. Senate, but I think that Americans are craving something new and different and that new energy and that new commitment that’s going to come with reform,” she said. “I think that’s why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House, and I’m happy to join him there.”

Later, she repeated McCain's economic policy: a key to economic stability is cutting excessive government spending. Clearly, the Republican ticket wants it both ways, since they simultaneously plan to continue the War in Iraq, which is estimated to cost $2 billion a week.

She proceeded to lambaste Barack Obama for not supporting the so-called surge that, she said, "has proven to work." McCain did the same thing in last Friday's Presidential debate. The weird thing is that, in fact, the surge has proven not to work. Let's not forget that America started the surge in 2007 to make "breathing space" to build a viable Iraqi government. When he unveiled the plan, President Bush said that, "over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas."

But has the Iraqi government made any progress? No. Iraq's parliament is just as fractious, corrupt and unreliable as it was over a year ago. Recently, an Iraqi journalist for McClatchy newspapers named Laith wrote that, over a year into the surge, most Iraqis still have no faith in their government: "All the Iraqis realized that our political parties don't care about us and that money and power are their only concern. We just wait for the last day of the age of this failure government and parliament. Until that day; those people means nothing to us but a thorn in the heart of Iraq that casues pain and bleeding."

Experts credit the "Sons of Iraq," who turned against Al Qaida in Iraq and joined forces with the US military, for bringing down the violence. They also note that Muqtada al-Sadr brought down the violence when he enacted the Mahdi Army cease-fire. But according to this transcript, Palin never even mentioned the words "Anbar" or "Mahdi" (although she did say the word "maverick" 15 times) during the debate. At any rate, there are signs that the peace is about to crumble again into sectarian conflict and political infighting. [Lunch break is almost over: I'll have to post a blizzard of hyperlinks later.]

My carefree whooping came to a halt when Palin declared, "Now, Barack Obama had said that all we're doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians. And such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause. That's not what we're doing there. We're fighting terrorists, and we're securing democracy, and we're building schools for children there so that there is opportunity in that country, also. There will be a big difference there, and we will win in -- in Afghanistan, also." I could no longer cheer for such inaccurate and preposterous acts of rhetorical gymnastics.

This marked a turning point in the debate, after which everything got progressively more disturbing. At one point, Palin made a crack about Biden's late wife, once a schoolteacher. "You mentioned education and I'm glad you did," she told Biden. "I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?" To that, the Young Republicans cheered.

I dwell on Sarah Palin here because she is a dangerous campaign tool who has trivialized the election. Lately, I've wondered if there is a medieval demon-impostor I can compare her to. Over e-mail today, I brought the question to my mom, an expert on Rennaissance literature. She had a fascinating and insightful response:

I’m more familiar with early modern imagery . . . But in both periods, you have two strands: either religious imagery of anti-Christ figures/ female monsters or secular imagery of folksy, secular Robin Hood heroes. Most of the folksy lore pits “haughty and wealthy elites” against “the folk,” “the many-headed monster” of the peasantry. Robin Hood lore is rich in the early modern period, but what you see is either 1) that the aristocrats were right all along to fear the vulgar, rough peasants who would wheedle their way into high places of authority or 2) that the rough peasant is a hero, by overthrowing an always corrupt or inept aristocracy.

The female monster tradition is probably the tradition that best characterizes the current situation, but it is viciously misogynistic. It draws upon the “lipstick on a pig” metaphor—you may see a beautiful appearance, and you may be captivated and charmed, but this woman is really the whore of Babylon, and will lead you to Hell. Or worse, she is a pig.

The problem --for thoughtful people-- with this literary tradition is that there’s no position to occupy to critique the folksy hero—except to take the side of the haughty elites. You are either folksy, vulgar and peasant OR you are an aristocrat who holds yourself high above the lowly, little people. There’s no way to critique the false posturing of the peasants who would rise to power without validating the aristocrats.

Basically, Sarah Palin is drawing upon this whole tradition—and the polarization works in her favor— as have the Republicans and the red state/blue state distinction for the past 8 years. This distinction serves a figure like Sarah Palin very well—because it distracts both red state and blue state believers from the contradictions within these categories. Red Staters will not critique Sarah Palin, because she “stands for” their resentment of the elite, Washington insiders, and everything you want to associate with them. Whether she is qualified for the position is irrelevant—her genuine, authenticity as a folksy outsider is all the qualification she needs.

Check out these lyrics by Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Red, White and Blue” from their Vicious Cycle CD, produced in –you guessed it—the big year for political music, 2003. And a performance-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26vYdayusrU Here’s the Sarah Palin anthem if there ever was one.

But where would Lynyrd Skynyd be without plastic LA friends and music producers?????? Indeed, this positioning is pretty dishonest.

Love,

Mom

"Red White And Blue"

We don't have no plastic L.A. Frynds,
ain't on the edge of no popular trend.
Ain't never seen the inside of that magazine GQ.
We don't care if you 're a lawyer, or a texas oil man,
or some waitress busting ass in some liquor stand.
If you got Soul
We hang out with people just like you

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say we've always been, Red, White, and Blue

Ride our own bikes To Sturgis
we pay our own dues,
smoking camels, drinking domestic BREWS
You want to know where I have been
just look at my hands
Yeah, I've driven by the White House,
Spent some time in jail.
Momma cried but she still wouldn't pay my bail.
I ain't been no angel,
But even God, he understands.

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been, Red, White, and Blue

Yeah that's right!

My Daddy worked hard, and so have I,
paid our taxes and gave our lives
to serve this great country
so what are they complaining about

Yeah we love our families, we love our kids
you know it is love that makes us all so rich
That's where were at,
If they don't like it they can justget the HELL out!

Yeah!

My hair's turning white,
my neck's always been red,
my collar's still blue,
we've always been here
just trying to sing the truth to you.
Yes you could say
we've always been,
Red, White, and Blue

oh..oh..Red, White, and Blue....
Red, White, and Blue
oh..oh....Red, White, and Blue

Palin portrait courtesy the Alaskan government.

Limbo in the North - Will the war in Uganda ever end?

Eveline Alobo, a weary, rail-thin 50-year-old mother of five, turned in her chair to look at the man waving his arms in the air. In one hand, he clutched a cane; in the other, a bottle of home-brewed beer. Through the hot, hazy air of the dry season, the babbling man, in his torn shirt and hat, resembled a marionette.

“He is drunk,” Alobo said, frowning. An Association of Volunteers for International Service (AVSI) staff member hopped up and ran towards the man, clapping his hands in the air to scare him off.

Alobo, an ethnic Acholi, lives in the Acet Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp, about 75 miles from the border of Sudan, one of hundreds of camps that dot Uganda’s northern region. Acet looks like most of the other camps: The fertile undergrowth typical of neighboring villages has been cleared away, making room for a few simple structures that serve as schoolhouses and a clinic, plus row after row of mud-brick huts with thatched-grass roofs, many of them furnished with little more than a pot for cooking. Every few yards, a latrine shaped like a porta-potty juts out of the ground. Using the latrines makes the camp more sanitary, but children fear them, so small rivers of human waste run down the mud pathways.

“The sanitation is just shit,” said Louisa Seferis, program director for AVSI’s Northern Uganda office, which monitors and manages camps in three of Uganda’s northern districts.

Alobo moved to Acet 20 years ago. She fled her home after the Lord’s Resistance Army—a rebel outfit that’s been terrorizing the region for more than two decades in an attempt to overthrow the government—raided her village in the middle of the night. She watched as rebels pulled her husband and daughter from their hut and hacked them to death with machetes, then made off with her son.

Now, like most of the displaced, she faces the filth and widespread alcoholism of the IDP camps.

Continue reading this article, which I co-wrote with Hannah Rappleye, at San Diego CityBeat...

Post-Surge Iraq - America's "House of Cards"

Last night, NY Times reporter Dexter Filkins read from his new book, The Forever War, and led a Q&A session that proved rather inconclusive. In his white dress shirt and blue blazer, he looked nothing like the haggard man pictured in his recent NY Times Magazine article "My Long War," but he had the classic nonchalant air and beaten-up face of a war journalist, and his diction was loaded with military lingo. He smiled and chuckled a lot. "I'm totally nervous," he said, about doing the night's event. "I'd rather be shot at with a 50 caliber machine gun."

Filkins is the "death wish" type of journalist who races through battle zones unfazed and wins the good graces of Marines and media critics alike for his down 'n' dirty reporting. His book looks O.K. – it’s a collection of stark and/or action-packed personal accounts of Afghanistan in the late ’90s, the Sept. 11th attacks, and the early years of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. I've only gotten through the first couple chapters (busy with other books), but already a vehicle, several buildings and a head have exploded into oblivion; a hand has gotten chopped off during a public execution at a soccer stadium; and the tragic fate of some child soldiers who worked for the Northern Alliance has been poetically alluded to. I can tell already that this isn't going to be another Taliban, Assassins' Gate, Night Draws Near, or No True Glory. Filkins doesn't have the sharpest intellect, but he can make sense of chaos and horror with a nearly photographic sense, and that's where his book is strong. "It's just stuff that I saw," he explained. "It's representative of my experience."

He just got back from Iraq last Friday. During the Q&A, he said that Iraq is really peaceful now. "The gains are real," he said. But he referred to the country aptly as a "kaleidoscope," and said that it's a "fool's game" to predict what might happen there in the future.

He shied away from opining on the situation, but he suggested that all of this success would amount to little if we withdrew from Iraq in a year. The most elucidating point came when an Iraqi man Filkins apparently knew pressed him on the rivalry between the "Sons of Iraq" - the Sunni fighters and tribal leaders allied against Al Qaida in Iraq, who are famous for bringing down the violence - and the Shi'i-led government. If Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki continues to marginalize the Sunnis (Maliki recently said that he plans to incorporate only 20% of them into the Iraqi Army), won't Iraq eventually devolve into sectarian conflict again?

Filkins had an ominous retort. With the "Anbar Awakening," the United States built an immense "house of cards," he said. “And, you know, a house of cards is better than no house at all.”

“Is it gonna last? Who knows?” he added. “Stay tuned.”

Fun with the news!

Check out this quote, taken from an article published in yesterday’s New York Times. I took out some key terms to make it a mad-lib. Have at it!

“Does the (1.)_______ government really wish to operate in the modern world as an outsider, alienating free countries and trying to rally the world’s dictatorships?” (2.)_____ asked.

1. industrialized nation
2. top government official of rival industrialized nation

Here’s mine:

“Does the American government really wish to operate in the modern world as an outsider, alienating free countries and trying to rally the world’s dictatorships?” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asked.

At long last...

...our Veep-hopeful is revealed! Senator Joe Biden. Right now I'm watching Barack Obama and Biden's heartful speeches in Springfield, Illinois, on Al Jazeera online TV. The two of them are bro-ing down, big time. And there's been at least one vague reference to Langston Hughes. The crowd roars!

What I don't like about Joe Biden is his "soft-partition" idea for Iraq. Helene Cooper of the New York Times describes it as such: "There would be a loose Kurdistan, a loose Shiastan and a loose Sunnistan, all under a big, if weak, Iraq umbrella."

Ergo, it's a fool's plan.

66 Months for Hamdan

It took an hour and a half to decide the fate of Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden's former driver: 66 months imprisonment. He's served most of his sentence already, so he'll only actually be behind bars for five months. Nevertheless, the United States can detain him until the endless "war on terror" comes to an end.

"I would like to apologise one more time to all the members and I would like to thank you for what you have done for me," Hamdan reportedly told the jurors when he heard the verdict.

He was convicted of providing material support to terrorism, but not for committing conspiracy to murder Americans. The verdict is a limited victory for the Bush Administration - a tacit validation of the perfidious legal framework it set up after September 11, according to Jane Mayer's great new book The Dark Side: the Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, to do what it pleases to anybody who might be considered a terrorist.

This is the first war crimes trial held by the United States since World War II and America has done something unprecedented: it put the war criminal's chaperone on trial.

Like many points during the previous eight years of my life, this is a preposterous and nearly surreal event. Why, I wonder, didn't America first try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks of September 11, 2001, the most definitive moment of my generation? We certainly have enough evidence of his crimes, obtained through torture, along with a laundry list of confessions.

There's a relatively simple answer. All of this - Guantanamo Bay, the "enhanced interrogation" of "illegal enemy combatants," trials held partially in secret, which accept evidence obtained through hearsay and coercion - is so ad hoc that it needs a trial run. So, to get things started, the tribunal takes on Bin Laden's taxi-man, a family man and day laborer to the defense, an "Al Qaeda warrior" who served "as the last line of defense for Al Qaeda’s senior leadership” to the prosecution.

This is yet another definitive moment in American history. The sentencing is like a coronation for Hamdan's martyrdom.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case that America could not deny Guantanamo detainees, who have been detained for years without being charged with a crime, the age-old write of habeas corpus. Bush's Military Commissions Act of 2006, stupidly ratified by Congress, threw that reasoned conclusion into the garbage. And now, taxi-man Hamdan is finally going to jail - setting off a protest by Amnesty International that seems to win the empathy of Hamdan's own judge. "I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and your daughters and your country," Navy Capt Keith Allred, the tribunal's judge, told Hamdan.

Meanwhile, in Gutananamo, Khalid Shaikh Muhammad awaits trial. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is stronger than it's been in years. And somewhere out there, Osama Bin Laden is still in hiding. White House staffers aren't dancing in the streets just yet, but a recent statement announced that, "We're pleased that Salim Hamdan received a fair trial."

Let me translate the double-speak: "fair" means "curbed" and "trial" means nothing.

Photo: Salim Hamdan, originally posted on the CNN.com.

Would You Rather...

Gulu, Uganda. Recently:

The rain is finished. The sky is overcast and a thick dew encroaches on this wide, windowless conference room. I realize that the interview conditions are terrible. There are too many note-takers here. One of them, thankfully, is a woman, Hannah. But I, unfortunately in this circumstance, am a man. What's worse, our interpreter, too, is a man: Victor Oloya, former abductee of the Lord's Resistance Army, and founder and Chairman of War Affected Children's Association, an NGO based in Gulu. My only consolation, at this point, is that the woman we're going to interview has approached us herself.

The three of us sit in cramped, wooden desk-chairs and create something of a circle around Anena Aginess, a 23 year-old from the village of Awach. Aginess has a small face and smooth features. Her hair is drawn down tight in cornrows. Her front teeth are missing. She pays no attention to the swarm of mosquitoes that harass us. Her head hangs down and she focuses her big brown eyes, her dilated pupils, down at the floor.

We begin with questions that are usually basic, but always churn your guts here. She has two brothers, who live in Gulu, and one sister who lives in Awach. The LRA killed her father in 1995. She has two children, one of them conceived in the bush.

In 1996, LRA rebels ambushed her village, abducted her, brought her to the thick wild of Kalongo in Pader District and gave her away to a rebel commander 20 years her senior. She became a mule, carrying water and supplies on her head for her captors. They beat her when she walked too slow.

The commander who called himself her "husband" raped her and made her pregnant. He forced her to stay at his side in the battles against the Ugandan army. One day, she tried to escape. As punishment, he stabbed her in the right leg with a bayonet. Aginess lifts up her long skirt to show us the scar.

During the battle of Atiak, two years after her abduction, he was shot and killed. She asked her cousin, another LRA commander, to let her escape. She told two of her companions, who were also abused and treated like mules, of her plan. Together, at 4 o'clock in the morning, they fled into the bush towards the nearest town. They found some civilians, who took them to the local council.

Finally, after going through experiences too horrific to relate, Aginess and her friends were free. Back in the bush, rebels found out that her cousin had helped her escape, and they killed him.

When Aginess returned to Awach, the villagers feared that the LRA would return, to seek vengeance. There were no rehabilitation programs available. And, she says, nobody in her community helped her. Eventually she met a man, and they had another child together. But he rejected her first baby, so she left him and moved in with her family.

Now Aginess lives alone. Every morning, she goes to the market to sell fruit. She's trying to start a small garden, where she can harvest crops to sell. But she hardly sees her family and she has little help. Her children are 8 and 2 years old. She worries about their education.

About a million LRA abductees have registered with the government, she says, but there is no government assistance. There are just UPDF soldiers, who themselves are known to commit sexual abuse and violent atrocities.

When we are finished asking questions, Victor, Hannah and I walk back to the center of Gulu. Victor chats with me and ignores Hannah, who walks behind us. The three of us are stuck in an overwhelming quiet, so there is not much to talk about. Victor waves goodbye when we reach WACA's office. When he is gone, Hannah recounts a match of the game "Would you rather...?" We had played it the week prior. I asked, "Would you rather be a man or a woman?"

Now that she's given it some thought, Hannah says, she would rather be a man. It's interesting that she has been thinking about this, I tell her, because so have I. If I could do it over again, I say, I would rather live the life that is undervalued, neglected, even despised, but that is ultimately more admirable, which requires ineffable strength and responsibility in the face of great ugliness, corruption and impotence: I would rather be a woman.

Women

I've been traveling around Uganda and Kenya for a month and a half now, and I would estimate that 98 percent of the people I've interviewed so far have been men. I already was sick of it a while ago and now I am really sick of it. I am in Gulu now and I realize that women's rights are the most important and the most overlooked and underappreciated issue affecting Uganda as a whole, if not, you know, the entire rest of the world.

"Ugandan men are arrogant," Emma, a young student, told Gary and I at Embassy Bar the other night. I get the impression that "arrogant" is only one of the many of nasty adjectives you could use. Christine Okot, the Ugandan Government's Gender Officer for Gulu District, recently offered a couple others: "stubborn" and "big-headed."

I'm not trying to say that all men are bad here, nor am I trying to say that I truly understand the issue - because, of course, I can't - but it's become obvious: Women are like mules in Uganda. They are property. "A man has a right over the wife and everything the woman owns in the home," Okot told Hannah and I yesterday.

Ask any woman here and they will tell you that gender inequality is rife, that domestic violence is normal and, if anything, encouraged. The situation has become so much worse because of the war. LRA rebels used rape as a tool to destroy the lives of Acholi women. And after the Acholi community was crammed into overpopulated, isolated, dirty and dangerous IDP camps, where many people have lived for decades, rape and incest increased and gender roles changed radically.

"All the time you spend roaming around," said Michael Ojok, a 24-year-old resident of Acet Camp in Gulu District, who has lived there seven years. "You don't have your garden, you don't have crops." Living in the IDP Camps, Ojok and many others have told me, so many men feel helpless and resort to drinking. When they run out of money, they steal bicycles, land, or the food aid distributed to their wives, to drink more. Then they come home and beat their wives.

Meanwhile, the women take care of the children, take care of orphans, collect the seed from the World Food Programme, dig the gardens, grow crops, fetch water from the bore hole, and pretty much do everything else. "All the responsibilities are on the women," Esther Abwol, a mother who lives in Olwal Camp in Amuru District, told Hannah and I. "It is up to you to struggle and make sure your family is O.K."

Today, aid workers and camp residents said, now that people are free to return to their villages and tend their crops, the problem is still huge. Just look at all the drunks farting around in the camps on an average weekday. There were plenty at Acet Camp on Tuesday. Even the Local Community Leader of Odek Subcounty was falling-down drunk.

There are a number of aid groups that deal with women's rights, like Straight Talk and Boy Talk, which holds regular sessions for women and men about sex, health issues and how to stop domestic violence at home. Christine Okot, the Gender Officer, runs working groups that network with state institutions and aid groups to promote gender equality in development programs.

But Okot said that too many aid organizations here fail to address the underlying causes of gender inequality, domestic violence, rape and the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is intimately connected to these problems. "They tackle the symptoms," she said. "They think that drinking is the problem."

Women here, working women, students, aid workers and government officials alike, say that the true problem lies with culture and tradition. Girls just getting into maturity have been pushed into marriage. Women can't leave the house, even to go to the hospital, without asking their husband's permission. If women are raped, they are often blamed for it themselves. Some women worry that they are not good enough wives if their husbands don't beat them.

It's a matrix of issues - political, cultural, economic, psychological. How do you find a solution? Women here say that men need to be more deeply involved in promoting gender equality. And ultimately, the next generation of leaders need to be educated about gender equality and human rights. "Your children are still young," Okot tells the women of the community. "Train the young people."

The Holy Spirit Lives in Gulu

Gulu, Uganda. Sunday:

Hannah is going out on a wild motorbike ride through IDP camps with some people from UNHCR today. My frame is too large to ride on the back of a such a bike, while swerving through narrow and muddy roads. So I spend the day searching for the church of Severino Lukwoya.

Severino Lukwoya is the father of Alice Auma, the founder of the Holy Spirit Movement, a paramilitary group that brought together numerous militias with strong ethnic Acholi membership, after President Yoweri Museveni led the National Resistance Army to victory in 1986. She is otherwise known as Alice Lakwena (Lakwena means "messenger" in Luo), because she believed that spirits spoke through her and told her to eradicate the "sin" of her society. When she went into exile in Kenya in the late '80s, her father took over HSM. Meanwhile, Joseph Kony, who claimed to be Alice Lakwena's cousin, led a small rival movement. But it grew, eventually, it developed into the Lord's Resistance Army, a force of children who were abducted and ordered to maim and kill, supposedly to institute a government guided by the Ten Commandments.

I find the New Jerusalem Temple, Lukwoya's church, near Gulu's used-clothes market, off a dirt road and behind some houses. It is a modest church-house made of brick, with a smooth concrete floor and a roof made of corrugated-iron. Near the door, there is a twin bed adorned with a blue mosquito net. At the front of the room, a frilly banner made of tinsel reading "Happy Birthday" is strung across the ceiling - over a simple wooden pulpit and a table covered in a white lace cloth. The back wall is painted teal, but shapes are left in a background of stone: a cross with a sun on top, four stars, a moon; a shield with spears run through it; a triangular mountain, with a tree and a human figure sticking out the sides. Covering the mountain is a square painted in lush blue, making water.

Two men are plucking out a trance-like melody on adungus, stringed insturments that vaguely resemble boats. A woman is fluently working a flat, metal shaker imprinted with a red, white and blue "USA" logo. Another woman is tapping out a simple rhythm on a drum. They all sway back and forth, their heads tipped down, and sing in murmurs.

A dozen barefoot people are sitting and looking forward, while some oblivious children stand around. A few women sit on a bamboo mat to the left. The rest sit in short benches to the right. They finger small prayer-books.

And there Severino Lukwoya sits, over in the far right corner, at a small table with a white table-cloth on it. An ornate cross decorated with stars and a moon, and with the shape of a sun atop it, sits in front of him, along with a green bottle of holy water and a cellular phone. He is sunk into his chair and he looks lost in thought. He is a very old man, with deep wrinkles in his thick and charcoal skin. He has mangled and missing teeth. The puffy white hair on his crown is somehow imprinted with a cross shape. I find out later that his dark, penetrating eyes glow. That his voice silences the church-house.

I am still standing at the door when the young priest, Acaye Isaac, a man with a soft voice and gentle handshake, walks up to me. He invites me to remove my shoes and sit. He seems to know exactly why I am here. I sit at an empty bench as the day's mass continues.

Acaye Isaac and one of the adungu players take turns reading from their small prayer-books and delivering sermons. After each turn, the band starts up another swaying song. The congregation sings along. Everything is done in Luo, so I understand the amens and not much else. I think the day's services are nearly over when Isaac delivers a long sermon, standing at the pulpit and speaking soberly and seriously.

An adungu player plucks almost inaudibly as Isaac speaks. Heads hang down or look forward. Then Isaac finishes and there is a song. In the few moments of silence afterwards, an eerie metallic pattering begins on the roof of the church. They are sprinkles of rain. But when I turn around and look outside, I see no rain falling.

The service continues. There are more readings. There are more songs. There are more sermons. There are more songs. Because I understand basically nothing, I have time to think.

Then there is communion. Isaac pulls away the white cloth on the table next to the pulpit, to expose a bowl of some kind of paste and altar wine. The children line up first, then the adults. Isaac dabs a spoonful of paste in each of their hands, then presents them with wine from a goblet. The congregation finish the communion with a song.

Finally, Severino Lukwoya stands up to speak. I am urged to sit at the front of the church. Obina Hallan, a man in a suit and a tie printed with the American flag, sits next to me to translate.

It is not Lukwoya who speaks to me, he says, but the Holy Spirit. I am welcomed. I am urged to spread the word of the spirit across the word. "I know your father Abraham. I also know Jacob. I changed my name from Jacob to Israel. I am in Africa because I am the son of Cain. Now I work with the black people. I changed my name from Israel to Melta, which means Rock." He gestures to the stars, the moon, the mountain, the shield, on the far wall of the church. "I am the rock. I am all of this."

"The whole world is killing each other without getting tired. That's why the soldiers of God come down, to ask people to stop sinning," he continues. "And they stopped sinning."

Lukwoya gestures at Isaac, sitting in a chair behind the pulpit. "Look at his body. He is doing the will of the Father."

"Very many people poured their blood," Lukwoya says. "This shows that the lamb died. And they are saved with the blood of the sheep." I did not take communion with the church. He says that the holy water is still there for me to take. "It has the spirit and seeds of all these stars." There is a brief pause and I do not take the holy water.

He says that he is black because of Cain. He wants to get God's blessing, to be like the whites. But he is content with his duty here, to drive away the evil spirits in Africa.

Then he sits. He has finished his sermon.

Isaac stands to deliver his own sermon. When he is done, the adungu player, a thin man with smooth cheek-bones, wearing a blue-striped button-up shirt and blue pants, stands to speak. He looks straight forward. "Very many people were killed, because they want leadership," he says. The New Jerusalem Temple is here, then, to cleanse the world of its evils.

"What we call sin is the struggle for leadership," he continues. "And that's why we call ourselves the descendents of Cain. Cain was the first killer for leadership."

"If your eyes look at good things as bad things, cut out your eyes," he says. "Our body is a temple of God. If you would like to kill your friend, it means you refuse Jesus and that you want to kill Jesus."

"If we live a bad life, animals rebel and also live a bad life," he says. "People who are going to live with God will live forever."

The adungu player is done and the entire congregation breaks into song. The hymn is slow. At the pulpit, he bobs back and forth in strange meditation. He gestures at Severino, the Father. "Here is truly the God," he says. "Our ancestors are here."

When he is done, he invites me to ask the Father questions. Severino is sitting at his small table, looking at me through the bottle of holy water, when I ask him when and how the spirit found him. Severino chuckles. "It is a long story," he says. "God has put me down as a promise."

Long ago, the Holy Spirit was born as a person. Then He became an animal. In 1928, Severino Lukwoya was born and the Holy Spirit went into Severino Lukwoya. In 1948, God made Severino's Bible catch aflame. A voice emanated from the book: "You are my worker."

Suddenly, rain comes pounding down against the iron roof. The deafening roar eats the church-house. Severino stops talking. I look around. Behind the pulpit, two congregants kneel down to pray. They face the wall, their eyes closed, hands together, and tilt back and forth, back and forth. Obina, my translator, asks me, "Are you scared?"

Obina Hallan is an economics and history professor at Gulu University, he says, and a volunteer for the local office of the World Food Programme. He says that the New Jerusalem Temple is an unpopular and controversial church among the Born Agains here. They do not agree with New Jerusalem's baptisms, but he asserts that this church is only following the word of the Bible. He smiles. "I don't know what God did," he says. "I just found myself here."

Thunder strikes. Several minutes pass and eventually the rain dies down. Severino, standing now, is talking to a little child. Eventually he turns to me. The interview resumes. I ask him what the stars, the moon, and all of the other rocks tell him.

"Their communication is all about peace," he says. "That is why I brought stars. I plant the stars into people. That is why I have the soil of rebirth, Melta... I have not come to talk like Abraham, to kill. I have come to give people peace. I am the God of life. I need life."

I ask him where the evil spirits come from. He points at his heart, then points at me. "It comes from inside you," he says. "It comes from the teaching of the whites." Their technology has created weapons. Their money has introduced the world to greed. "They possess all the evils."

"The Bible has been written with a lot of wisdom," he continues. And the world must heed the warning of his church: destroy all of the wisdom of weapons and greed. "Extend your network across the world," he tells me.

I ask him when his church began. He says that it ascended slowly, very slowly. "We are very few here," he says. "People go where there are riches."

When Americans come to other churches in Uganda, he says, they bring nothing but money. The priests use the money to fatten themselves. The congregants dance because they are getting richer. "They are doing all those evil things," he says. "They don't want the word of God."

If Severino Lukwoya is a charlatan, then he wants me to think that he is at least a very poor one. He says that he never accepts money from visitors. He goes about town with his pulpit, only to preach on the streets.

I ask him how there will be peace in Northern Uganda. Severino, speaking as the Father, says that people must convert to his word. "I heard people crying," he says. "That's why I descended down to help them."

The peace here at the moment, he says, resulted from his work: He went to Lake Victoria and removed the evils there. He removed a fire from the mountains. He convinced "the whites" to start the peace talks in Juba, South Sudan. "This is a country of peace," he says. "Everybody is at rest."

I have one more question, I say. I want to know about Joseph Kony. Do evil spirits speak to him?

"I do not communicate with him," he says. "I do not want to say anything about him."

He refers me to Luke, Chapter 10, verses 1-24, and Matthew, Chapter 10, verse 2, verses 12-22, 22-32, and 38-42. "If the people of Uganda do not want to repent," he says, "then there is suffering."

He says that Joseph Kony and Yoweri Museveni are the same and that they may both be the supervisor in the Garden of God. "All of them are doing the same work in the Garden of God. All of them have killed," he says. "If they are the Garden Supervisor, they have to repent."

I thank him for his time and exit the church, entering the damp afternoon day. As I walk back to the market, crowds of children flank me, screaming, taunting, laughing. I stare straight forward as I step across a rickety bridge over a small and muddy channel. A few blocks away, I reach my hotel.

Update, 5/2009: It may seem from this post that I believe that Severino Lukwoya is actually the Holy Spirit. I do not. That was not the purpose of this entry. In hindsight, I suppose that I could have discussed this controversial church more objectively.

Nile Special

Gulu, Uganda. The other day. 3:30 in the morning:

"Peace Return Northern Uganda," a song by the famous Acholi musician Lucky Bosmic Otim, fires out of the P.A. at Havana Pub. Some expatriate friends, Hannah and I are all dancing in the far corner of the dimly lit, modestly-sized, ever-bumping club. I am dancing with myself, convulsing along with the irresistible hooks of Bosmic's entreaty.

I interviewed Bosmic last week, as we sat in front of the church where he sang as a boy, looking out onto the field of his alma mater, Gulu High School, as his two-year-old Jeremiah sat in his lap. He is lean and intense, and his facial features are smooth. He was wearing a grey camo jacket and green, designer camo pants. He did not talk about music or dancing. He started singing the songs he sings, he told me, because he got sick of songs about love. He talked to me about the war. After twenty-two years of war, he said, "We have no legs."

Some reggae comes on and I am disappointed that Bosmic has left Havana. But I've been drinking Nile Special tonight and I want to dance. I groove to the swaying beat. Sam, a computer-science student at Gulu University, a gaunt man with pronounced jowls and a big smile, leans into me. We enjoy dancing, we agree. He asks me where I've been in Uganda so far. "I've been in Kampala. Jinja. Gulu," I say.

In Gulu, many times people have told me grim and deeply personal things without provocation, without my asking, without any reason at all, it seems. Sam's eyes bulge and his expression turns grave. He tells me that Northern Uganda is not the only place that has been affected by the war. He is from Eastern Uganda, east of Jinja, the source of the Nile. Over the blaring of Gulu's ubiquitous dance music, he says that LRA rebels killed both of his parents.

I want to talk to him more, but not here. We grab two plastic chairs from the outside patio area and sit down. Niles are gone, so I buy us both Bell beers. We yell into each other's faces over the music. Madonna is playing when he says that he once prayed to God. "God," he said, "please, save my soul."

He was living in a hut by himself when the rebels came to his village at four o'clock in the morning. They killed his parents in the hut ahead of him. They passed his. Then they burst into the hut of his uncles and cousins. They killed his uncles, he yells at me, and abducted his cousins.

Sam's brother sold cows so that he could attend university. Now, Sam is thankful. Sam puts his trust in God.

I am swaying. I am about to burst. I am drunk and I am in a state of overwhelmed horror. It dawns on me that this moment is special. Something has crystallized. A gravity has hit me. The NGO people have jobs, and the work their jobs. The journalists collect facts, anecdotes and quotes, and write articles. The people who have been hit by this war have lost everything - everything. So many of them still get by, and do what they need to do, regardless. And in the off hours, just like the NGO people and the journalists, they smile, drink and dance.

That's why Sam came to Havana, after all: To wash his body and brain with beer. To let all of his scars seep from him in the ritual of dancing. To forget that his memory contains the sight of killing, a life of struggle, and every other thing that people like me would never understand.

For the moment, I don't desire a place where people get drunk and have insignificant conversations about movies, but I still need to escape. I go to the bathroom. I return to the dance hall and talk with Hannah and Gary, a new friend and a former Marine. Gary tells me that he traveled through "ambush alley" in An Nasiriyah during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It's a historic battle. He says that he'll be happy to talk about it if I get him extremely drunk some time. I give him a hug.

The newspaper once reported that 95% of the people in Gulu drink alcohol. That's probably not true - the women, after all, take care of everything in Northern Uganda, which I will be sure to discuss in depth later - but Gulu is indeed full of bars and clubs. And at night on a Friday, it's not odd to see two men dancing to a radio in the street.

In Gulu, even dancing and drinking is a war story. The fun is too much to bear.

Correction: This entry originally titled Bosmic's song "Peace Return." The title, as it is printed on the cassette I bought in the market, is actually "Peace Return Northern Uganda."

10 mins 20 secs left

That's how much time I have to tell you what's been going on in Gulu and elsewhere since the previous dispatch.

Gulu is boring. There are lots of banks, plenty of general stores and market stands and dozens of bars and clubs. At night the town is dark and all there is to do is drink. Needless to say, we've been drinking and watching soccer a lot lately. There are countless expats here and they are good people to pass the time with.

[30/6/08 I absentmindedly failed to include an important component of the Gulu town late-night lifestyle: dancing. The other night I met Stella, a student at Makerere University, and we danced late into the night. All of the negative energy and stress boiling inside of me seeped out out of me, like rum escaping the skin of an alcoholic. Acholi music at breakneck speed is ideal, but I also loved the dancehall cover of "Fast Car." You win 500 shillings if you can guess why.]

I'm getting used to taking bucket showers.

The other day a team from a local NGO called Caritas took us out to the Olwal IDP camp in Amuru district. The Olwal camp is composed of mud-brick huts with doors bearing the USAID logo. We interviewed about a dozen people who lived in the camp. Their faces and bodies are worn, their skin thick, their features pronounced. An 11-year old boy, his eyes soft and his expression vulnerable, sat with his arms limply hanging between his legs. None of them smiled.

Only when I asked about Joseph Kony did a few of them chuckle, because it is so difficult and disturbing to talk about Joseph Kony that asking about him is almost ridiculous.

There are so many reasons that the residents of Olwal will not or cannot return home - conflicts over land ownership, lack of money and food, lack of infrastructure in their old villages, the carnage that these places have seen, the fear of Joseph Kony and the LRA's return.

Problems of alcohol abuse and domestic violence also haunt the camp. "The ladies have become now the breadwinners," explained Aciro Agnes, a counselor for the Psychosocial Support Progrm of Caritas. "The men have become helpless."

[A man with a thick film of sweat on his face, wearing a sportcoat over his bare chest, walked up to me and gestured at his hungry stomach. The driver of the Caritas truck sauntered over, eating from a bag of tiny sesame seeds, nearly smirking. I assumed that he would pour the man some seeds, but he just kept on eating. You see, the driver explained, this man spent the whole morning drinking alcohol - and now he is hungry. Two Caritas counsellors walked over. This happens all the time, they told me, gesturing at the man. Speaking in Luo, the three of them told the hungry man off. He ambled away.]

All of this is very difficult and complicated to explain. I'm not taking anything for granted anymore. Hannah and I have got some articles in the works, though, so keep your eyes peeled.

Our Silence in the North

Gulu, Uganda. Yesterday:

Gulu is a chill town. The streets are a dusty red-orange, the surrounding bush thick and green. It's sleepy here and easy smiles are everywhere. By all accounts the Acholis love the huge population of ex-pats, who work for NGOs from across the globe. As a matter of fact, things are so very chill here that, if it wasn't for the white Land Cruisers everywhere, bearing labels like "UN" and "Save the Children," you would swear that a war never happened.

It's a whisper sometimes: a man might have a damaged eyeball; soldiers in camo fatigues wait in line at the bank; hordes of songs in Luo speak of peace and reconciliation, but I don't speak Luo. Then there are the screams. On our first night here, the night-time security guard at the Respond ReNUH guest-house mentioned to me that he had spent six years in the bush. He showed me his elbow, frozen in place. "It has no power," he said. He pointed to the scar from a bullet hole in his left shoulder. He showed me the one in his leg. He lifted up his shirt and gestured at the one in his back. Then, he pointed to a few more.

A tank rolled by the house this morning, but, for some reason, I managed to sleep through it. A roommate told me that, should the savage Lord's Resistance Army return to Gulu, then it will be this road which it will pass down.

I'm sitting in a small computer shop, picking out Acholi hits for a mix CD. Local Acholi music - and there is a lot of it - is mostly made on the computer, and it all has a message. For these reasons, I love Acholi music. Best of all, it bears a striking resemblance to the reggaeton that is ubiquitous in Brooklyn. Ken, who is making the mix for me with some of his friends, loves dancehall and reggaeton. "Puerto Ricoooo!" he says. He puts on "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee and the three of us all burst into laughter, then bob our heads.

Hannah has been sitting outside at the curb, chatting. I check on her. She is now sitting in a plastic chair on the corner. She is alone, watching the passerby go about their business.

I know her expression. Every day, the two of us share long bouts of silence. Usually one of us kills it when we look at the other, smile and tell some joke. That or start the first volley of an intense conversation. The silences are getting longer and harder to break. At this moment, Hannah's silence is not composed of boredom or sickness. It is enigmatic and pitch black. I ask her what's wrong and she tells me that things are unbearably sad. She begins to cry.

Within the past half hour, the gravity hit her, in whatever way. Now I am standing here. And I wonder, how do you medicate the impact of an immense sadness? In this circumstance, I can put on a smile and say that things have been OK in Northern Uganda for the past two years, they are OK now, they will probably be OK. I can speak of the positive energy here. Or the two of us can extricate ourselves from the situation and talk, the best option. I say nothing but I stand there, in case I am needed.

I return to get my mix CDs and then return to the corner, where I sit down next to Hannah and an older man. He talks about the instability, uncertainty and fear that permeates Northern Uganda. The thousands of internally displaced peoples around the region were kicked out of their villages and moved into makeshift cities, commonly referred to as "IDP camps," over a decade ago. The people want to go back home, he tells us, and many have already. The NGOs are working hard, but Uganda's government is leaving it to the NGOs, the complications are vast and too many people have no means.

Then there is the fear. The peace talks have fallen apart. The government is calling for a military campaign to get rid of the LRA, now holed up in the Central African Republic and the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Everyone fears the return of the perplexing and maniacal Joseph Kony and his band of child soldiers.

Rumors abound these days. On Monday, the New Vision carried the Page One headline, "SPLA TO ATTACK KONY HIDEOUT." There was a report that the Sudanese People's Liberation Army got in a skirmish with a band of LRA some 40 kilometers from the Sudan-Uganda border. The day after we arrived in Gulu, the logistics manager of the American Refugee Committee told us that one LRA was killed, another injured, and another captured, or something like that, in Okidi. But who knows who is who, he added, since the LRA and the UPDF basically wear the same uniforms? At Da Pub, over Nile Special beers, a man who works at a military hospital said that the 1,000 or so remnants of the LRA break into tiny cells, that they can easily slip past a battalion, and that they are basically invisible. Earlier today, a Gulu local named Anthony, twenty years old, told me that Joseph Kony knows all. He can read your thoughts and anticipate your movements.

Hannah and I go back to the guest house. We take a seat on the porch and I say that we can talk, if she wants. She is about to say something, it seems, when a roommate comes by to chat. Neither of us pay much attention to what she says. She walks off to get her phone. Hannah goes to lie down. Sitting at the porch, I feel the same urge. I then wonder what makes me so exhausted. Yesterday I blamed the sun. Before that I blamed my growing insomnia. But I can no longer explain this exhaustion.

I am alone now with my thoughts, so I get my notebook and write.

Throw-Down - The Experts Go Head to Head Over Iraqi Nationhood

I sit here in the computer lab, writing a paper on forms of Iraqi nationalism after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Basically, the whole establishment is here and it's a throw-down. Reinhard Schulze says there's nothing innately "Western" about nationalism and civil rights. Yitzhak Nakash says that the Ottoman's attempts to smash tribal affiliations in the late 19th century created the conditions in the south for widespread tribal conversions to Shi'i Islam. Hanna Batatu says that Iraq's problems after the British anointed Faisal as King of Iraq weren't religious or ethnic, but economic, which is why the Communists had it right all along!

I can't find a picture of the I.C.P.'s legendary secretary general, Fahd, but I can give you a list of some books you might want to check out if, all of a sudden, you start asking yourself, "Why did the British throw these three provinces together as a mandate, anyway? Did they secure for Iraq an inevitable future of fractious nationhood and, eventually, civil war?"

A Modern History of the Islamic World (2000), by Reinhard Schulze, tracks the major events of history in the far-reaching Islamic world and discusses the "secular" and "Islamic" divide, not as the essential and irreconcilable differences between two certain peoples, but as political ideologies. My Islamic history professor once referred to it as "the Bible" of modern Islamic studies.

The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (1979), by Hanna Batatu, offers an enormously-detailed history of Iraq's social elites during the Ottoman period; its nationalist, communist, socialist and Ba'thi revolutionary movements after the Brits took over Iraq as a mandate; and the process of Iraq's industrialization and modernization. It's a fun and fascinating read and a critical resource.

The Shi'is of Iraq (1995), by Yitzhak Nakash, documents the evolution of Shi'i Islam in the south and central parts of Iraq, beginning in the late 18th century, when tribes flooded into the "frontier" after being chased out of Arabia by Wahhabi warriors. An important resource on the country's largest religious group.

The Marsh Arabs (1964), by Wilfred Thesiger, is about one Briton's adventures in the reed-strewn marshlands of southern Iraq, full of details on plant and animal-life and one view on how industrialization almost completely destroyed the ways of the tribes. Another fun and fascinating resource, for adventurer and book-worm alike.

Republic of Fear (1989), by Kanan Makiya, about Saddam Hussein's Panopticon of a government system. Due to his controversial (and occasionally outrageous) views, Makiya is something of a media darling; his book has been more-or-less canonized on the home-front. It's no more important than the rest of these books, but it certainly beats all of the other readings on just how bad Saddam was.

Iraq Talk in Congress - "Blah, blah, blah..."

General Petraeus: man of the hour! Photo by Charlie Archambault, from USN&WR.

Today's Congressional testimony delivered by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker served as a good refresher for the people that didn't pay attention to even a shred of last month's coverage on the Iraq war.

Now it looks official that Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (which by all accounts appears far more effective, organized and disciplined than Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's mostly S.I.I.C.-allied Iraqi Army), along with a myriad of other militias, will furthermore be crammed into a nominal catch-phrase: "Special Groups." Needless to say, this is sure to make the endless hunt for "bad guys" all the more confusing.

Update, 4/10, 12:34 p.m. - I should probably consider Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki responsible for the Iraq Army, huh? At the moment I couldn't really tell you how S.I.I.C.'s armed wing, the Badr Organization, fits into the whole "special groups" vs. Iraq Army thing - whether they're a "special group" or serial infiltrators (and, judging by the news coverage surrounding the latest bout of fighting in Basra, serial deserters) of the Army. I'm guessing that they're both...

11:29 p.m.

Bush speaks!

And the war's critics put the pressure on him.

"The president has taken us into a failed war, he's taken us deeply into debt and that debt is taking us into recession," said Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, according to BBC. "We need some answers from the president."

That Darn Memo

The storied 81-page memo that outlined our government's legal justification for abusing prisoners, written by John C. Yoo, a former deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, has finally been declassified. I haven't yet read the thing in full. But judging from what I've read so far, it's apparent that Yoo's memo uses the kind of malleable, vague, paranoid thinking that the Bush Administration has employed to justify all of its other crimes.

But I'm still waiting for the answer to the million-dollar question: Who truly deserves the credit for conjuring up the philosophy behind our torture program, the Bush Administration, Yoo, or the creators of 24?

There's more on the memo at Slate and elsewhere.

Jeffrey Gettleman First To Use NY Times Teleporter

Today the New York Times runs two articles by the oft-bearded connoisseur of conflict-zones, Jeffrey Gettleman. One covers the precarious situation of Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and one reports on the stalemated state of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga's new power-sharing initiative.

We all know that "Crazy G." can pull off some wild stunts. I've always lauded him for being a great writer and reporter. But this latest effort takes the cake - just look at those datelines! Apparently, he spends the day in Mogadishu and Nairobi. Hypotheses?

I've ruled out the possibility of a body double - only the real Jeffrey could come up with those ledes. So, either the Times has a teleportation service that they're not telling us about, or Crazy G. is just much crazier than I thought.