The blog collects the occasional writings of Steven L. Gardiner. Many of the posts are political in nature, others deal with issues of culture and identity. I welcome comments and feedback. If you like what you see, please do add it to your feed or re-post it to your social networking site. I appreciate the support. You can find out more about me on the About and Life Story pages.
Anti-American Rally in Kabul, Photo Military.com (http://www.military.com/news/article/petraeus-burning-quran-endangers-troops.html?ESRC=army.nl)
According to a recent email from Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Afghanistan, to the Associated Press (September 7, 2010), “Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”
Well–duh.
Petraeus is referring to the plans of a Gainesville,Florida-based church to hold “International Burn A Quran Day” on September 11, 2010.
The church in question, the Dove World Outreach Center, led by Pastor Terry Jones, has been holding annual anti-Islamic events on September 11 for years and is of a piece with Fred Phelps notorious Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas–known for a homophobia so rabid it has led to protests at the funerals of American soldiers on the grounds that they died serving a country that has fallen from God’s favor. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is a link to an interview with Fayyaz Baquir, Director of the Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center in Islamabad conducted by Maggie Ronkin over at Anthropology Works. An excellent interview with an informant who really understands what is happening on the ground and links to credible relief organizations. slg
An interview by Maggie Ronkin with Fayyaz Baqir, Director of the Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Center, Islamabad, Pakistan
MR: What regions of Pakistan and sectors of the population are affected most by the tragic flooding?
FB: Vast swathes of land in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (previously the Northwest Frontier Province), Southern Punjab (the Siraiki region of the Punjab), Sindh, and Balochistan have been devastated by the recent floods. These floods are considered to be the worst in the entire world during the past hundred years. It is not an exaggeration that fifteen million families have been rendered homeless, and hundreds of thousands of homes have been wiped off the face of the earth. Hundreds of villages are no more. Standing crops over thousands of acres, cattle, infrastructure, and productive assets of millions of families have been lost due to flooding. A woman from a very well off and respected family of a rural district contacted by phone said “Everything is gone. We are beggars”. Scores of women from small farm and landless families burst into tears when asked about their plight. “There is no food, no water, no medicine, no help” most of them narrated. If they do not receive assistance soon, they may reach the point where they think that there is “no hope”. Such a situation will add another dimension to the crisis because desperate minds are fertile ground for militants. This is a great humanitarian crisis to which the world’s conscience needs to respond. The scale of this tragedy is so enormous that the country’s entire population is reeling in shock. (Read the rest of the article on Anthropology Works; Image credit: Anthropology Works.)
26 August 2010. New York Times, Editorial: “Legacy of Torture.” The NYT notes that government cases against Guantanamo prisoners who have been tortured either by the U.S. or its allies are being thrown out of court by American judges, since information obtained via the use of “enhanced interrogation”–aka torture–is unreliable. Note that while the Times here uses the word torture to describe Bush-era practices, policy has been to avoid such usage since 2004. It would be a good thing if this editorial marks a change of policy. (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006300069).
For several years I have been lecturing and teaching courses related to Pakistan in which I have spent a good bit of my time debunking the popular “failed state” (or failing state) trope. So much coverage has been framed in terms of the “nuclear-armed” country falling to radical Islamists who then get their hands on some nukes and somehow start bombing the crap out of… well that’s not exactly clear. This has been a bogeyman story. The talking heads ask: “Can Pakistan keep control of its nuclear weapons?” The question, of course, was only asked as a provocation. The sober retired general paid to answer the question would go on to quietly explain that “at present” it wasn’t an issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Sayyid Ahmed al Qabbanji is a liberal Iraqi scholar of Islam. He spoke this week in Abu Dhabi, at the majlis of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. (A majlis is a gathering–literally a “place of sitting”–but more generally a hosted forum for discussion and hospitality.) According to today’s National, Mr al Qabbanji argued that various forms of fundamentalism our luring people away from “true Islam.”
From Liberty Magazine (http://www.libertymagazine.org/index.php?id=1330)
The Dongria Kondh, a traditional group in India, has won a hard-fought victory against the multi-billion dollar mining company Vedanta Resources. According to Survival International India’s Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh ruled yesterday that the mining giant’s plans to extract bauxite from from hills sacred to the small tribal group in the eastern part of the country amounted to a “blatant disregard for the rights of the tribal groups” and questioned the legality of a company refinery built in the area.
The years long campaign to stop the mining project has attracted unprecedented attention for a small tribal group, receiving support from the British and Norwegian governments, the Church of England, human rights and environmental groups. Survival International, an NGO that promotes indigenous rights, has been at the forefront of the battle to stop the mining. A short film, Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain, has been widely viewed, helping to promote international support for the Dongria.
Read more about the Dongria and view the film at the Survival International site.
(http://www.survivalinternational.org/)
(Photo: A Dongria Kondh woman picks millet in Niyamgiri, India. Credit © Toby Nicholas/Survival.)
In Islam, Ramadan is a lunar month of daytime fasting and prayer marked by a ritual breaking of the fast at sunset, called Iftar. While the Prophet of Islam broke his fast on dates and milk, contemporary Iftars can be quite elaborate and restaurants do a brisk business in fast-breaking buffets and meals. In Abu Dhabi it is a time when families gather for a feast of traditional foods.
(Left, table set for Iftar at the City Cafe in Abu Dhabi, photo by S. L. Gardiner.) Read the rest of this entry »
I have lived with my wife and partner Angie Reed Garner and our German shepherd Heathcliff in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, since August 2008. We moved here directly from Lahore, Pakistan, where I had been a professor at the Lahore University of Management Science (LUMS) in 2007 – 2008.
Life in Pakistan was both intense and intensely social: we made many friends. As catastrophic floods have hit the country in recent weeks our hearts go out to Pakistan and we encourage friends to make a donation to an NGO doing work in the region such as Oxfam or Doctors without Borders.
(Me in front of the Professor bedding shop in Abu Dhabi, August 2010, photo by Angie Reed Garner) Read the rest of this entry »
Aaron Belkin is the director of the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Palm does research on sexual minorities in the military and have been strong advocates for the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. armed forces. (Image from the Palm Center.)
I met Aaron at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association a few years ago. He can a paper on sexual assaults directed at military men by other military men. It reminded me of such an assault that I was witnessed while in the United States Army in the early 1980s. We had a long conversation after his presentation and were in touch for a year or so afterward until I moved to Pakistan. Read the rest of this entry »
