Closing the week 18 – Round up Osama Bin Laden
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Featuring Osama bin Laden; a round up
The Kill
» Osama Bin Laden Pronounced Dead… For the Ninth Time Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!
When Obama pronounced Osama Bin Laden dead in a televised announcement heard round the world last night, he was at least the ninth major head of state or high-ranking government official to have done so.
Thinking Images v.16: Osama Bin-Laden and the pictorial staging of politics | David Campbell
The images that have emerged around the killing of Bin-Laden show how much of the pictorial record of politics is staged. Staging is not the same as faking. Political photography records events in front of the camera faithfully. But political events are often photo opportunities in which politics becomes theatre. Photography is complicit in this act when it doesn’t look beyond the immediate frame.
The White House’s release of a series of photographs on its Flickr stream showing the President and his national security advisers in and around the Situation Room (see above) was a fascinating but carefully managed insight into the conduct of Bin-Laden’s killing. If the post-mortem photo were to be released, it would also be part of this managed stream. But it was a small detail around another picture in the Flickr stream, of President Obama addressing the media, that showed how central the photo-op is to politics.
Bin Laden’s Quiet End | The Middle East Channel
So Osama bin Laden has finally been killed. This obviously represents the achievement of a goal long sought by virtually all Americans and most of the world, and is a cathartic moment capturing the attention of the world. As most counter-terrorism experts (and administration officials) have been quick to point out, his death will not end al-Qaeda. It does matter, though. There could be some major operational impact on the relative balance among al-Qaeda Central, the decentralized ideological salafi-jihadist movement, and the regional AQ franchises. But I will leave those crucial issues to others for now in order to focus on the impact of his death on Arab politics and on the broader milieu of Islamism.
The Big Lie: Torture Got Bin Laden – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast
Old-fashioned, painstaking, labor-intensive intelligence work. The American way. We never needed to stoop to bin Laden’s standards to get bin Laden. We needed merely to follow our long-tested humane procedures.
The killing of Osama bin Laden is an instance of a much more general policy pursued by the United States and its allies – the targeted killing of named individuals in the war against terrorism and against various insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the midst of American celebration of the fact that al-Qaida has lost its charismatic leader, it is worth getting clear about targeted killing in general, i.e. about the legality and the desirability of a policy of this kind. Targeted killings are of two kinds. The first involves killing people who are actually engaged in carrying out terrorist acts – planting a bomb or preparing someone for a suicide bombing. The second involves the elimination of high-profile individuals whose names appear on a special list of active commanders and participants in terrorism or insurgency. These killings are part of a strategy of disruption and decapitation directed against terrorist organisations.
Who told them where he was? « LRB blog
A US Special Forces operation in Pakistan has taken out Osama bin Laden and a few others. He was in a safe house close to Kakul Military Academy (Pakistan’s Sandhurst). The only interesting question is who betrayed his whereabouts and why. The leak could only have come from the ISI and, if this is the case, which I’m convinced it is, then General Kayani, the military boss of the country, must have green-lighted the decision. What pressure was put on him will come out sooner or later. The event took me back to a conversation I had a few years ago.
Bin Laden finally dead – Blog – The Arabist
A bittersweet moment: he deserved to die, but it took so long to track him down, despite all of the billions spent in intelligence and high-tech defense gear, that by the time he died it seemed almost irrelevant to the wider problems of the region. Also, to think of all the time and lives wasted, and the unnecessary, criminal ventures like the war on Iraq that were justified in the name of fighting Bin Laden. But I’m a believer in revenge, and symbolically this is important for the US, and for the families of the victims of 9/11. Let’s hope this might be used as an occasion to turn the page in US foreign policy.
Several things do strike you, though.
Osama bin Laden obituary | World news | The Guardian
To his enemies, whatever colour or creed, he was a religious fanatic, a terrorist with the blood of thousands on his hands, a man who had brought war and suffering to a broad swath of the Islamic world and come close to provoking a global conflagration on a scale not seen for decades. To his supporters, whose numbers peaked in the few years after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in America that he masterminded, he was a visionary leader fighting both western aggression against Muslims and his co-religionists’ lack of faith and rigour. For both, Osama bin Laden, who has been killed at the age of 54 by US special forces at a compound near Abbottabad, a town about 50 miles north-east of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was one of those rare figures whose actions changed the course of history.
Dynamic Relations: Thoughts on Bin Laden’s Death
I’m trying to wrap my head around all the posts that copy some nice, idealistic quote from Martin Luther King Jr or Gandhi or whomever. Why the non-violent sentiments now? Why the sentiments for a hypocritical narcissist who hid behind the veil of religion to convince others to die for his cause while justifying his own life? Why the sentiments now when 46 Americans were executed by 11 states in 2010 by legal decree? I’m not smart enough to know if killing Bin Laden was morally correct or not, but I do have enough insight to know that our celebration is misplaced. Celebrating his death only redefines the Us-Them divide and misdirects our gaze from the conditions that have led to the state of the world. His death won’t cause more violence, but the West’s continued political economic imperialism will (because We know best for Them). There is a strong inverse correlation between violence and economic opportunity (50% of death row inmates never graduated high school). Perhaps if we did better to place those ideals from MLK into the fabric of our society–into industrial capitalism, foreign policy, international trade agreements, and education at home and abroad–we wouldn’t be in this mess. Celebration blinds us to empathy and deludes us into thinking that the world is easily knowable.
Market Anthropology: Violence Begets Violence
If there was ever a more fitting bookend to the bubble that is silver and gold – we received it tonight.
Osama Bin Laden is dead.
The poster-face of the fear trade has been killed.
Anthropology 1200: Osama Bin Laden is Dead
As I am watching the three hour old news about the recent success of the American mission in Pakistan, I am struck by conflicted emotions. The leader of Al Qaeda, the man responsible for the death of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, was killed at the hands of the CIA. After nearly a decade of hunting, the man responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been killed during a raid on his compound by U.S. Navy Seals. I find it somewhat odd that after so much death, pain and suffering that the American people are so ecstatic over more death. I completely understand the jubilation that people have about the complete neutralization of the man responsible for killing 3,000 American citizens and countless military but I, for one, am sick body bags. I’m not going to celebrate the murder of a murderer but I will celebrate that this is one step closer to being finished.
Susan Hirsch, a Professor of Anthropology and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, talked to NPR’s Melissa Block about Bin Laden’s death. Susan Hirsch’s husband was killed in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
News Desk: Notes on the Death of Osama bin Laden : The New Yorker
No doubt there will be time to reflect more deeply about the news announced by President Obama last night. For now, I thought it might be useful to annotate some of the initial headlines.
Osama | Center for a New American Security
I had told myself for years that the death of Osama bin Laden would not mean anything. Decapitation campaigns against sophisticated, mature terrorist networks, I knew, rarely yield strategic effects. But standing in that Washington bar, I was overcome with emotion.
The Ability to Kill Osama Bin Laden Does Not Make America Great – COLORLINES
Osama Bin Laden, evil incarnate, has justified so, so much American violence in the 21st century. We have launched two wars and executed God knows how many covert military operations in the ethereal, never-ending fight he personifies. We have made racial profiling of Muslim Americans normative, turned an already broken immigration system into an arm of national defense, and reversed decades worth of hard-won civil liberties while pursuing him, dead or alive. We have abandoned even the conceit of respect for human rights in places stretching from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay in the course of hunting him down. Now, finally, the devil is dead.
Geronimo
Museum Anthropology: Bin Laden Code-name “Geronimo” Is a Bomb in Indian Country
Although perhaps a bit far afield for Museum Anthropology, this editorial fundamentally relates to the issue of representation — how American Indians are represented in the public sphere, an issue of great importance to museum anthropologists.
Bin Laden’s Code Name Was ‘Geronimo’ « zunguzungu
Anyway, if we look at this story as revelatory of who we are now, what ethical constraints, imperatives, and licenses are being instantiated in the Global War on Terror, then I think we have a lot of reasons to be distinctly un-celebratory. The fact that his code name was “Geronimo” makes me tired and sad. If this is the story we are meant to celebrate, then we should think carefully about what it is that we are supposed to be happy to be defined by: the use of torture to get intelligence from detainees, a kill-first, hold-the-trial-later operation which targets households (and includes the deaths of nearby family members), and the idea that OBL’s corpse is more important than, say, capturing him and putting him on trial. We may decide that these things as justifiable, may think that the ends legitimize the means. But it may also only confirm a great deal about who we already knew ourselves, as a country, to be: our security apparatus has been doing exactly this sort of thing for years now. And can we really be comfortable with that? Can we be happy with it? Can we call it victory, justice? And is this the conclusion or the final normalization of “9/11??
Osama, Geronimo, and the scalp of our enemy « zunguzungu
Osama, Geronimo, and the scalp of our enemy
» “A Very Kind and Peaceful People”: Geronimo and the World’s Fair SAMPLE REALITY
Exactly ten years ago this week I turned in my last graduate seminar paper, for a class on late 19th and early 20th century American literature taught by the magnificent Nancy Bentley. The paper was about the 1904 World’s Fair and Geronimo, a figure I’ve been thinking about deeply since Sunday night. Because of the strange resonances between the historical Geronimo and the code name for Osama Bin Laden, I’ve posted that paper here, hoping it helps others to contextualize Geronimo, and to acknowledge his own voice.
Codename: Geronimo | Savage Minds
Following quick on the heels of the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s demise at the hands of U.S. Special Forces Special Operations personnel, the public has learned more about the top secret operation to find this elusive enemy. One of the most revealing bits of trivia has been that Bin Laden was assigned the code name “Geronimo” by the operation tasked with capturing and killing him. This raises the question, what does a nineteenth century Apache leader have to do with twenty first century Saudi millionaire? Perhaps nothing when viewed from an academic standpoint, it seems more like a non sequitur. But when read as expression of an underlying ideology, one that has legitimated American military action for centuries, the answer is: quite a lot, actually.
American Indians object to ‘Geronimo’ as code name for bin Laden raid – The Washington Post
He died 102 years ago in Oklahoma, a beaten warrior, a prisoner of war, an exile from his homeland, a propped-up sideshow, a gambler and a lukewarm Christian. His family was murdered by Mexicans. The Americans stripped him of most everything else.
Justice, State Power and the War on Terror
The Osama bin Laden exception – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
Beyond the apparent indifference to how this killing took place, what has also surprised me somewhat is the lack of interest in trying to figure out how the bin Laden killing fits into broader principles and viewpoints about state power and the War on Terror. I’ve seen people who have spent the last decade insisting that the U.S. must accord due process to accused Terrorists before punishing them suddenly mock the notion that bin Laden should have been arrested and tried.
America resembles the land of the munchkins, as it celebrates the death of the Wicked Witch of the East. The joy is understandable, but it endorses what looks increasingly like a cold-blooded assassination ordered by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that “justice was done”. Amoral diplomats and triumphant politicians join in applauding Bin Laden’s summary execution because they claim real justice – arrest, trial and sentence would have been too difficult in the case of Bin Laden. But in the long-term interests of a better world, should it not at least have been attempted?
The Torture Apologists – NYTimes.com
The killing of Osama bin Laden provoked a host of reactions from Americans: celebration, triumph, relief, closure and renewed grief. One reaction, however, was both cynical and disturbing: crowing by the apologists and practitioners of torture that Bin Laden’s death vindicated their immoral and illegal behavior after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Popular reactions
No dignity at Ground Zero | Mona Eltahawy | Comment is free | The Guardian
So it was a shock to find hundreds of others had turned that hallowed ground into the scene of a home crowd celebrating an away victory they hadn’t attended, the roots of which they were probably not there to experience or were too young to remember.
Us?mah Bin L?den is Dead: Forum Reactions | JIHADOLOGY
NOTE: Older quotes are first. Newest quotes toward the bottom of this post. This post was last updated 5/2/11 9:10PM US Central time.
In the months leading up to Osama bin Laden’s death, a survey of Muslim publics around the world found little support for the al Qaeda leader. Among the six predominantly Muslim nations recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project, bin Laden received his highest level of support among Muslims in the Palestinian territories – although even there only 34% said they had confidence in the terrorist leader to do the right thing in world affairs. Minorities of Muslims in Indonesia (26%), Egypt (22%) and Jordan (13%) expressed confidence in bin Laden, while he has almost no support among Turkish (3%) or Lebanese Muslims (1%).
Over time, support for bin Laden has dropped sharply among Muslim publics.
“USA! USA!” is the wrong response – War Room – Salon.com
Bin Laden’s death is a great relief, but by cheering it we’re mimicking our worst enemies
News: More anthropology needed on bin Laden story
These responses do not come from any deep recesses of human nature, or some kind of evolved instinct. No, to get this right we must get closer to our present particularities rather than mythical evolutionary history. As I wrote in my blog-post “Anthropology, Barack Obama, Osama Bin Laden,” the sources are:
a) That since 2001 this has been ginned as a “war on terror” rather than the prosecution of criminals.
b) That people have individualized these events, trying to turn this into a “thank you President Bush.”
c) That there has been a recent upsurge in xenophobic nationalism.
Unlike the social sciences mentioned in this article, anthropology recognizes the particularities of “human nature” at this specific political-economic juncture.
YouTube – US Muslims hope for new start
Muslim American groups have welcomed the news of Bin Laden’s killing.
After September 11, 2001, many Muslims claimed they were treated with suspicion and endured increased discrimination in the United States.
Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar has more.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISTUDzg_Z1M]
The Muslim World Sounds off on Bin Laden’s Demise | Informed Comment
Usama Bin Laden, a mass killer, passed virtually unmourned from the scene. There were no demonstrations against his killing in the Arab world. A few Taliban protested in Quetta and Afghanistan, as one might expect. Mostly Muslims denounced him and expressed relief he was gone.
Bin Laden carried out 9/11 to begin a big political and social movement. Nearly 10 years later the vast majority of Muslims did not trust him and many seem glad to see the back of him, while large numbers had decided that he was irrelevant to their lives.
tabsir.net » To hell with Bin Laden?
For the past decade it has been “Where the hell is Bin Laden?” Now that he is dead at last, the tabloid mantra is “ROT IN HELL,” at least for the medium of unsubtleness known as the NY Daily News. In less than 24 hours after his James Bond style killing a website appeared on Facebook called Osama Bin Laden is Dead. As can be seen from the screen shot below, the insults of revenge are having their day.
Bin Laden, the myth
LRB · Charles Glass · Cyber-Jihad
Now, the kids are terrified of some guy in a cave. The successors of McCarthy, Hoover and the 1950s television network bosses teach them that the madman Osama bin Laden can kill them at any minute, that he hates their freedom (perhaps not so much as their parents do) and is out to get them just because they are free. Unlike Khrushchev, Osama bin Laden has neither ICBMs nor nuclear warheads capable of destroying mankind ten times over. He does not even have a country. Yet he scares more than Khrushchev did. As every American schoolchild saw, bin Laden attacked the homeland on 11 September 2001 – burying a few thousand of us. He may yet bury more. We, of course, are sending his kind to their graves in Afghanistan, Iraq and other corners of the Islamic patrimony.
?????? ?? ????? Views from the Occident: IN PICTURES: Usama bin Laden, In Visual Retrospect: Part I
With reports that Al-Qa’ida Central leader Usama bin Laden (Osama bin Laden, Ladin) has been killed in a U.S. military attack, talk has shifted to what’s next for the once-premier organization. This is the first part of a series of “In Pictures” posts that will focus on providing a visual retrospective on Bin Laden in jihadi-takfiri cyber artwork. The artwork is taken from my research archive.
As I have written previously, graphic artwork is an important medium for jihadi-takfiris and they use it extensively.
Commentary: Bin Laden’s Death Shatters Conventional Wisdom | The National Interest
The triumphal news of Bin Laden’s killing yesterday has also called into question—if not shattered—much of the conventional wisdom about al-Qaeda’s leader and the movement he founded. First, the assumption was that he was hiding in a cave in some isolated mountain range, cut off equally from his supporters and from the creature comforts that make life as a fugitive more bearable. Yet we learn that he’s been living a stone’s throw from the Pakistani capital, both in comfort and relative anonymity. This in turn calls into question some of the assumptions about the aid and assistance he doubtlessly would have needed to receive from a variety of plotters to be located right under the nose of the government and its military and intelligence authorities. Also, the assumption was that Bin Laden was in such isolation and so cut off from communication that he’d nearly been reduced to a figurehead, a marginal character, in al-Qaeda’s operations and destiny. His presence in an urban hub, presumably with a variety of modes of contact, calls into question the supposedly hands-off, irrelevant role he had been believed to play in al-Qaeda’s strategy and perhaps even day-to-day operations. Indeed, it may have been his active participation in key al-Qaeda decision-making and operational matters that allowed us to track him to his hideout—there must have been an unusual number people coming and going, functioning essentially as couriers. It may thus be that he’s had much more of a role in al-Qaeda than we believed.
Top Ten Myths about Bin Laden’s Death | Informed Comment
New details of the operation against Usama Bin Laden have emerged. Here are the myths that people keep bombarding me with and which are now known to be untrue.
We Killed Osama bin Laden, Now Let’s Kill the Myth – New America Media
The United States is jubilant over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. However, it will be some time before history catches up with the mythology that arose around him and the al-Qaeda organization in the past 10 years. Osama bin Laden at the end was far from the looming powerful figure he was made out to be. He had outlived his usefulness both as a bogeyman for the West, and as an Islamic responder to the neo-colonialist forces his organization purported to confront.
Now he’s dead, so what?
After Bin Laden: what next for al-Qaida and global jihad? | World news | The Guardian
Do the various Islamist groups in Pakistan and al-Qaida affiliates around the world pose a real threat to the west, and what strategic direction will they now take?
Wanted: Charismatic Terror Mastermind. Some Travel Required. – By Leah Farrall | Foreign Policy
As speculation about al Qaeda’s leadership succession mounts in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, the answer to who will assume control next lies in the organization’s rules and regulations — like those of any good corporation. Written and reviewed by a group of senior leaders, some of whom may now be poised to assume new positions within al Qaeda, they provide insight into how this critical transition will be handled, and will factor heavily into who is selected to move up the leadership ladder.
Al Qaeda’s organizational protocols (some earlier versions of which are available at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point) make clear that a chain of succession exists.
Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Bin Laden Plagued the Arab World, As Well
Based on an unscientific review of today’s Arab media, Arabs and other Muslims, too, are taking quiet comfort from his demise, with good cause, although predictable voices of Arab resentment surfaced, as well.
Osama’s Dead, But How Much Does It Matter? – An FP Round Table | Foreign Policy
Bin Laden’s death will have profound implications for al Qaeda — and for U.S. engagement in the Middle East.
Osama bin Laden’s death: What now for al-Qaida? | Jason Burke | Comment is free | The Guardian
What does the death of Osama bin Laden mean for the future direction and leadership of militant Islamism?
So Osama’s dead. And? — Registan.net
What does this mean, many ask. My answer? Not a whole lot. Mullah Omar is still drawing breath, as are Haqqani pater and fils, as is Hakimullah Mehsud, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and countless others. And of all of them, Osama commanded smallest number of men, and in many ways was nothing more than a figurehead. ISAF troops continue to flow into Afghanistan today, not from it. Deployment dates remain firm. Attacks have not ceased. The war stopped being about Osama a loooong time ago.
Don’t Get Cocky, America – By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross | Foreign Policy
Osama bin Laden’s death is a significant blow for al Qaeda, removing a figurehead who had evaded the largest manhunt in world history for almost a decade, and who seemingly managed to remain operationally relevant up until he was killed. In the torrents of commentary that will follow his announced death, many will agree with the puzzling proclamation that analyst Peter Bergen made on CNN last night that this marks the end of the war on terror.
News Desk: Bin Laden: Hey, Hey Goodbye : The New Yorker
Bin Laden is dead but is Al Qaeda? Certainly, his terror organization could not die without its leader being killed or captured. In the last few months it was fashionable to say that bin Laden was irrelevant. But the fact that he was able to evade justice since 1998, when he authorized the bombings of the two American embassies in East Africa, emboldened terrorists all over the globe.
On Bin Laden’s death and the Arabs – Blog – The Arabist
The trends that are winning out in recent years are the radical-resistance ideologies of Hizbullah (and to a lesser degree Hamas) and the radical-centrist view that fueled the uprisings. And in the longer-run, it is the latter rather than the former that have a vision of societies that are not constantly mobilized towards an external (or internal) enemy. The views of Hamas and Hizbullah address the problems of war and occupation, but not those of these societies beyond those problems. Bin Laden never really addressed either, his fight was for the glory of the impossible and in the hereafter.
OBL is Dead, Al Qaeda Isn’t – By Daniel Byman | Foreign Policy
Let’s begin with some notes of caution. As any expert will tell you, one of bin Laden’s biggest successes is creating an organization that will survive him. When bin Laden and a few associates founded al Qaeda in 1988, the organization was tiny and relied on the Saudi millionaire for the bulk of its funding. In subsequent years the organization has grown to support insurgents throughout the Muslim world, issued propaganda swaying the views of millions and, of course, murdered thousands through terrorism and its participation in civil wars. Thousands were asked to formally join the organization, and tens of thousands received training. So al Qaeda will not collapse overnight.
Obama and the End of Al-Qaeda | Informed Comment
Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East. He passed from the scene at a time when the dictators are falling or trying to avoid falling in the wake of a startling set of largely peaceful mass movements demanding greater democracy and greater social equity. Bin Laden dismissed parliamentary democracy, for which so many Tunisians and Egyptians yearn, as a man-made and fallible system of government, and advocated a return to the medieval Muslim caliphate (a combination of pope and emperor) instead. Only a tiny fringe of Muslims wants such a theocratic dictatorship. The masses who rose up this spring mainly spoke of “nation,” the “people,” “liberty” and “democracy,” all keywords toward which Bin Laden was utterly dismissive. The notorious terrorist turned to techniques of fear-mongering and mass murder to attain his goals in the belief that these methods were the only means by which the Secret Police States of the greater Middle East could be overturned.
Anzalone, After Usama: The Jihadi-Takfiri Trend after Bin Laden | Informed Comment
The killing of Usama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qa‘ida Central, this week in Pakistan has opened the door to intense speculation about the future of the militant organization and the transnational jihadi-takfiri trend that it represents. A great deal of attention has been paid to who the next leader of al-Qaeda Central, its next public face, will be. Bin Laden’s killing, while certainly a major loss to al-Qaeda Central and its regional affiliates, does not sound the death knell of the transnational trend known as the jihadi-takfiri (those who view Muslim holy war [jihad] as a pillar of the faith and who lightly excommunicate [takfir] and attack other Muslims who disagree with them). While the importance of his killing should be recognized, it is critically important to not exaggerate its likely impact.
Experts Explore Ripple Effect of Bin Laden’s Death
Thomas Gibson, professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester, has taught on Islam and global politics for the past decade in response to Sept. 11. He calls al-Qaida a decentralized network of “religiously inspired revolutionaries” who failed to achieve their objectives in their home countries. This network, he says, was kept alive by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq because it made the U.S. appear as the greatest threat to ordinary Muslims rather than their own corrupt governments.
“Recent pro-democracy uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria have made both ‘U.S. imperialism’ and radical Islamic revolutionaries seem less relevant to ordinary people. It is now clear to most observers that Arab dictators have been using the threat of Islamic extremism as an excuse to extract resources from the U.S. to maintain their power,” Gibson says. “So-called terrorist groups in South Asia are a different matter, and many of them are, in fact, tactical fronts for the Pakistani military’s struggle with India.”
Gibson says there is good evidence that the Pakistani military has deliberately played both sides in the Afghan civil war to extract military resources from Washington. The fact that bin Laden’s villa in Abbotabad was just two miles from the Pakistani Military Academy and just 30 miles from the capital of Pakistan, he says, indicates that they have probably been using him as a bargaining chip for the past 10 years.
Misc. I
Anthropologists: “It’s time to kill the Osama bin Laden myths”
Anthropologists: “It’s time to kill the Osama bin Laden myths”
But it did not work out that way. Where the Wild Frontiers Are vividly captures the failure of most members of the U.S. elite to successfully “imagine” the reality of people’s lives and society in Pakistan in this important way. Ahmed unsparingly criticizes most of the so-called “experts” who prognosticate about Pakistan and its region in the U.S. mainstream media. About Robert Kaplan, he writes that “”The empire… will surely invite him to speak to groups with shinier brass and shinier domes. The historians reading [his] book will have less cause to be charitable”. A similar charge, he lays at the feet of Rory Stewart and Greg Mortenson.
Magnus Marsden, Living Islam. Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier
1This pleasure is rarely given to a book reviewer, so I shall put it simply: Living Islam is an important work, and this justifies assessing it in earnest and at length.1 ‘What does it mean to live a Muslim life?’ wonders Magnus Marsden. Asking this basic but powerful question has perhaps never been as strong a scientific imperative as today. To be sure, everyone—from the media and think-tanks in the West to religious and political authorities in the Muslim world—claim monopoly over the answer. This is particularly true when it comes to Pakistan, a country where disputes over the right to define ‘what a Muslim is’ have direct political and legal consequences.
Misc. II The Arab Uprisings
The Salafist challenge: Coming out of the Arab woodwork | The Economist
Extreme Islamists are growing more confident in the wake of the upheavals
The self-immolation of young and jobless Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi in the provincial town of Sidi Bouzid, being deprived of his vegetable stand and humiliated by the authorities, triggered popular movements and historic events in the Arab World completely unexpected in their magnitude…
The Reawakening of Nahda in Tunisia | Middle East Research and Information Project
There were two revolutions in Tunisia over the winter of 2010-2011. The first is already the stuff of legend. Twenty-six year old Mohamed Bouazizi, in an act of outraged despair at the indignity of not being allowed to work, set himself afire and released a revolution that spread from the interior to the coast and thence to the region, toppling two dictators of 24 years (Tunisia) and 30 years (Egypt) along the way.
The second upheaval was just as remarkable, even if it was eclipsed by the convulsions in Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and now Syria. From January 18 — the day Ben Ali fled — to March 4 a grassroots coalition of trade unions, leftists, human rights groups and Islamists, mainly but not only from the Nahda (Renaissance) movement, turned Casbah Square into a pulpit for protests against any and all attempts by remnants of Ben Ali’s regime to regain control of the transition away from dictatorship. Having refused to open fire on protesters in the first revolution, Tunisia’s 30,000-strong army withdrew to its constitutional role in the second: It guarded certain civic sites but allowed the struggle to play out between regime and opposition.
And play out it did.
Dutch
11/9 en de dood van Osama bin Laden – GeenCommentaar
Nee, de titel is geen slip-of-the-pen. Want ik heb het niet over de aanslag in New York, maar over die in Amman, in het hart van het Midden-Oosten. Geen wonder dus dat de mensen in Amman net als die in New York blij zijn met het nieuws dat Osama bin Laden dood is. Genoot Osama bin Laden er ooit aanzienlijke steun, in de afgelopen jaren is die gesmolten als sneeuw voor de zon. Hoe kan het ook anders…
Ayaan Hirsi Ali en de strijd tegen de radicale islam: Osama Bin Laden dood
Osama_Bin_Laden De meest gezochte man door de Verenigde Staten en het meesterbrein achter de aanslagen van 9/11 is dood. Amerikaanse troepen hebben Osama bin Laden in Pakistan tijdens een helikopteractie gedood en hebben zijn lichaam in handen. Dat heeft de Amerikaanse president Obama even na half zes vanochtend Nederlandse tijd tijdens een persconferentie gezegd. “Het recht heeft gezegevierd”, aldus de president.
Bin Laden dood, terrorisme springlevend | Wijblijvenhier.nl
Als je na de dag van gisteren niet weet dat Osama bin Laden is vermoord, dan vraag ik mij af in welke grot jij hebt geleefd. Afijn, ik mag je dan bij deze wel als eerste feliciteren met het goede nieuws. Osama, hoofdrolspeler in zijn eigen producties, liefhebber van gevaarlijke speeltjes, die zovelen een euthanasiewens aanpraatte, de enige celebrity zonder facebookaccount, de verpersoonlijking van de onderwereld… is neergeschoten, onderzocht en begraven… in zee… want president Obama had natuurlijk wel respect voor de religie van Osama en die zegt dat hij zo snel mogelijk moet worden begraven. Ik neem aan dat de leden van de Amerikaanse special forces ook hun schoenen uitdeden voor ze zijn vila – goed ‘verscholen’ nabij een militaire academie en een politiebureau – in Pakistan binnentraden om hem voorzichtig neer te schieten?
De opkomst van Al Qaeda in de jaren negentig was een reactie op de toenmalige politieke repressie in het Midden-Oosten. Inmiddels is in veel landen een streven naar democratisering op gang gekomen. Bin Ladens ideologie was gebaseerd op de woede over vernedering en onmacht, terwijl de huidige ontwikkelingen gebaseerd zijn op het terugwinnen van waardigheid. Roel Meijer stelt de vraag of Bin Ladens dood het einde van een tijdperk markeert en het begin van een nieuw hoofdstuk in de geschiedenis van het Midden-Oosten. Leon Wecke spreekt de column uit.
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