Google search results knowledge about you

They know all about you

Every time you use an internet search engine, your inquiry is stored in a huge database. Would you like such personal information to become public knowledge? Yet for thousands of AOL customers, that nightmare has just become a reality. Andrew Brown reports on an incident that has exposed how much we divulge to Google & co

Guardian August 28, 2006

In March this year, a man with a passion for Portuguese football, living in a city in Florida, was drinking heavily because his wife was having an affair. He typed his troubles into the search window of his computer. "My wife doesnt love animore," he told the machine. He searched for "Stop your divorce" and "I want revenge to my wife" before turning to self-examination with "alchool withdrawl", "alchool withdrawl sintoms" (at 10 in the morning) and "disfunctional erection". On April 1 he was looking for a local medium who could "predict my futur".
But what could a psychic guess about him compared with what the world now knows? This story is one of hundreds, perhaps tens of thousands, revealed this month when AOL published the details of 23m searches made by 650,000 of its customers during a three-month period earlier in the year. The searches were actually carried out by Google - from which AOL buys in its search functions.
The gigantic database detailing these customers' search inquiries was available on an AOL research site for just a few hours before the company realised that substituting numbers for users' names did not really protect their identities enough. The company apologised for its mistake - and removed the database from the internet. The researcher who published the material has been sacked, as has his manager, and last week AOL's chief technology officer, Maureen Govern, resigned. But those few hours online were enough for the raw data files to be copied all over the internet, and there are now four or five sites where anyone can search through them using specialised software.
What was published by AOL represents only a tiny fraction of the accumulated knowledge warehoused within Google's records - but it has given all of us, as users, a dramatic and unsettling glimpse of how much, and in what intimate detail, the big search engines know about us.
The number of searches Google carries out is a secret, but comScore, an independent firm, reckons that the search engine performed 2.7bn searches by American users alone in July this year. Yahoo, its main rival, conducted around 1.8bn American searches in the same month; Microsoft's MSN around 800m and AOL 366m.
All of this information is stored. Google identifies every computer that connects to it with an implant (known as a cookie) which will not expire until 2038. If you also use Gmail, Google knows your email address - and, of course, keeps all your email searchable. If you sign up to have Google ads on a website, then the company knows your bank account details and home address, as well as all your searches. If you have a blog on the free blogger service, Google owns that. The company also knows, of course, the routes you have looked up on Google maps. Yahoo operates a similar range of services.
All this knowledge has been handed over quite freely by us as users. It is the foundation of Google's fortune because it allows the company to target very precisely the advertising it sends in our direction. Other companies have equally ambitious plans: an application lodged on August 10 with the US Patent & Trademark Office showed that Amazon is hoping to patent ways of interrogating a database that would record not just what its 59 million customers have bought - which it already knows - or what they would like to buy (which, with their wish lists, they tell the world) but their income, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. The company, of course, already knows who we are and where we live.
Even though the search logs that AOL released were made anonymous, by assigning a number to each user, it is not difficult in many cases to discover somebody's name from their search queries. And it is easy to follow exactly what users were thinking as they sat at their computers, in the apparent privacy of their own homes, since the time and date of every search is given.
On April 4, for instance, user 14162375, the melancholy Portuguese-American in Florida, seems to have passed out on the keyboard at 6.20pm, when he asked, suddenly, "llllfkkgjnnvjjfokrb" then "vvvvbmkmjk" and "vvglhkitopppfoppr". An hour later he had recovered enough to search for variations on his wife's name - he thought she might have moved to New England. On the evening of April 16, matters came to a head. "My cheating wife," he typed; and then, five times, "I want to kill myself," and then "I want to make my wife suffer," followed quickly by "Kill my wifes mistress," "My wifes ass," "A cheating wife". Two days after that he was back looking for audio surveillance and bugging equipment and four weeks later he seemed to have cheered up and was looking for motorcycle insurance.
The story stops abruptly there, at the end of May, because that is when the three months' worth of released AOL search records came to an end.
One of the first researchers to demonstrate that we will tell anything, however intimate, to a computer, was Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT, who in 1966 wrote a programme called "Eliza" that parodied non-directional psychotherapy. If the user typed anything in, Eliza would appear to ask a question based on that cue. In no time at all, unhappy students were telling the computer all their troubles as if there were a real and sympathetic person behind the screen. Stories and jokes about this circulated for decades, but the men most successful at turning this concept into a fortune were the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. As users, we think that the Google search engine is a way of supplying us with information about what's on the web. But the flow of information is two way. We ask Google things that we would hesitate to ask anyone living. The price for the answers is that Google remembers it all.
Take user 11110859 of New York City, who fell in love and then was sorry. She was up early on March 7 to buy hip-hop clothes from G-Unit; by March 26, however, there was more excitement in her life. Searches on "losing your virginity" were followed by three weeks of frantic worry about whether she was pregnant: stuff she might have hesitated to tell her best friend or her mother is all quite clear from the Google searches. But by the end of April the pregnancy scare was over and had been replaced by a broken heart. Even before she had stopped asking "Can you still be pregnant even though your period came?" she was asking "Why do people hurt others" and this was the theme of almost all her questions throughout May, culminating on the afternoon of the 19th, when she asked "How to love someone who mistreated you?"; "What does Jesus say about loving your enemies?" "What does God mean when he says bless those who spitefully use you?" Then she spent a couple of days trying to buy Betty Boop postage stamps, and the next thing we know, she was asking first for directions to the New York prison on Rikers Island, then "What items are we allowed to bring at Rikers Island" and finally for "uncoated playing cards".
User 11110859 was not the only person interested in the prison but she seems to have been the youngest and, in some senses, the most innocent. User 3745417 laid out her thoughts in detail just as graphic: on March 6 she made eight searches on child molestation and similar phrases. A week later she was trying to find a prisoner in Rikers Island - nine searches in one evening - a subject she returned to at 9.30am on March 25, when she made another eight searches. Between March 27 and March 29 she made 34 successive searches for M&M chocolates in the early evening, followed on the 30th, at 10pm, by four searches for "Kid Party Games". By 10.15pm she was searching for "Whitney Houston"; then, in the course of the next hour, 29 searches on "black porn for women" and similar subjects.
By the end of April, she was looking for a legal aid lawyer in New York City, a swimsuit, a credit card and a holiday in the Bahamas.
These stories, with all the revealing information they contain, cannot always easily be tied to a specific individual, but sometimes they can. The social security number, with which all Americans are issued, conforms to a recognisable pattern which is easy to search for in the data that AOL released. So, too, are telephone numbers. On the internet, you can buy anything from anywhere, but there are some things, such as pet care, which people mainly buy locally, so it is easy to spot where they live. People often search for their own names, which can then be cross- referenced with the telephone book.
At least one person in the AOL group, a blameless grandmother in Alabama, was identified by the New York Times within days of the AOL data release. And though it may be hard to identify complete strangers, it is very much easier to recognise in the AOL data details of someone you may already know. A church lady in the midwest, whose quest for Christian quilted wall hangings was interspersed with inquiries about vibrators and arousing frigid wives, is probably easy for anyone in her congregation to identify.
This is knowledge beyond the dreams of any secret police in history. Earlier this year Google fought a lawsuit to keep a week's worth of random search data out of the hands of the US government, but other search companies have handed over their data without complaint and nobody has yet discovered what deals have been struck between search engines and the Chinese government. China is generally thought of as attempting to censor the internet, which it does; search engines that do business in China must censor their own results if they are to succeed. But the real power for a totalitarian government is no longer just censorship. It is to allow its citizens to search for anything they want - and then remember it.
No western government, so far as we know, has gone that far. But if one ever does, it will know where the information is kept that will tell it almost everything about almost everyone. This morning, as I logged in to Googletalk, to chat with my sister, the programme silently upgraded itself. "Would you like to show friends what music you're playing now?" it asked.

China: boom to bust? and statistics

Fruit of the boom threatens to push China's economy out of control

A glut of villas, shopping malls, steel mills and car plants is raising fears of a crash

Jonathan Watts in Beijing

Guardian August 23, 2006

Few views of China's spectacular economic growth could be more impressive than the one offered by the property company Tomson Riviera in Shanghai. From the top floor of its sleek, luxury apartment blocks in the Pudong development zone, you can, say the brochures, look out across the Huangpu river at one of the world's most futuristic skylines.
The panorama does not come cheap. At 180m yuan (£14m) for a penthouse, this is the most exclusive residential complex on the mainland. Unfortunately for the developers, it is also the emptiest.
Since it opened in October last year, the waterfront development has failed to attract a single buyer for any of its 74 apartments. The situation is so desperate that Tomson has decided to put a second block out to global public tender.
Even so, analysts say, the price is unlikely to rise for several years. They blame it on an optimistic initial valuation of £8,200 a sq metre. Others blame a housing market swamped with swanky apartment blocks and luxury villas. In a single week last month, residential prices in Shanghai fell 10%.
But there is another, darker explanation doing the rounds: that Tomson Riviera is the victim of a Chinese economy that is out of control. Unbalanced, overheated and wobbling on the shaky foundations of a debt-ridden banking system, the economy, say some doom-mongers, is heading for a fall.
It is not the first time such predictions have been heard. Since the start of the opening and reform policy in 1978, pessimists have intermittently warned that an average annual growth rate of 9% was unsustainable and would end in collapse. So far they have been wrong. China has not only maintained stable growth, it is accelerating. Yesterday government figures revealed that the number of mobile phone customers in the country, already the world's biggest telecoms market, had grown to more than 431 million in the past year, up 45%.
But how fast is too fast? The question is once again being asked, and not just by the perennial pessimists. In a survey published last month in the respected Caijing magazine, 56% of Chinese economists saw signs of overheating, up from 15% in April.
After the latest quarterly GDP figures revealed an 11.3% surge, even the president, Hu Jintao, who usually avoids economics, joined the fray. He warned of tough measures, including credit curbs and restrictions on land development, to "restrain blind growth in high energy-consuming and polluting industries". After being fixed for a decade, interest rates have been raised three times in a year, albeit slowly, to cool the economy.
Bubble
But although the Chinese economy is growing more than twice as fast as Japan's did during its "bubble" heyday in the late 1980s, Beijing's problem is one of balance more than speed. Developing countries tend to grow rapidly as they catch up with rich countries. With a huge population that is still extremely poor by global standards, China has plenty of ground to make up.
China is unusual in many ways. It is the largest ever developing country; it is the largest country to make the transition from a command economy to a market. It is also ageing fast, and lastly it exports capital to the rest of the world rather than importing it. Where it is similar to other developing economies in the past is that there are distinct signs of overinvestment and wasted resources on a colossal scale.
The US industrialised rapidly in the 19th century, but it suffered periodic, painful and relatively short-lived boom-bust cycles as investors speculated wildly on often uneconomic projects. China, it is feared, could be on the brink of something similar: a savage but temporary slowdown that will not affect the country's long-term growth prospects.
The national development and reform commission, the pilot of China's economy, noted with alarm recently that fixed asset investment increased 29.8% in the first six months of the year. In the car and textiles sectors, the increase was more than 40%.
The trigger for a crash could be a period of weakness in the US, the main customer for low-priced goods from Chinese factories. Exports and fixed investment account for more than 80% of China's GDP, and any sudden fall in US demand would feed through into factory closures and higher unemployment in China. The initial shock would, it is feared, be compounded by a financial crisis as it brought to light numbers of under-performing bank loans.
In the short term, the government would throw money at the problem by expanding public spending. In the longer term, the solution would be to expand consumption - the mainstay of developed economies but a poor third behind investment and exports in China.
According to the commerce ministry, domestic supply exceeds demand for about 70% of consumer goods. The gap is evident at many of the new shopping centres. In Beijing's Golden Resources Mall, whose owners claimed it was the biggest in the world when it was opened in 2004, sales staff far outnumber the customers. Half of the restaurants have closed, so has the spa and beauty salon. Several chain stores have moved out.
"Business isn't what we expected," said a sales clerk at the Lancel outlet. The French handbag shop has a turnover of about £15,000 a month. "We've been open two years, but there has been no improvement." The mall's management company had to abandon a plan to open a car centre because the market is so glutted that prices have nosedived. China's factories can turn out 2m more cars than the market demands.
The mismatch between what the economy can produce and what it consumes has resulted in a big current account surplus and trade tensions with the EU over items such as bras, shoes and pullovers, and with the US over everything from textiles to steel. In June, China's monthly trade surplus hit a record $14.5bn (£7.7bn), putting the country on course to surpass last year's record $100bn annual trade surplus. With money flowing in from all over the world, China overtook Japan this summer as the country with the world's largest foreign exchange reserves. By the end of the year, its holdings are expected to pass $1 trillion.
The government is worried that the flood of money washing into an already loose credit system will add to the glut of villa developments, shopping malls, steel mills and car plants. It has ordered banks to tighten their lending policies and instructed local governments, a major driver of investment and development, to slow the allocation of land for new projects.
Wild speculators
Most analysts believe that these measures will have to be supplemented by an appreciation of the yuan exchange rate, which was partially unpegged from the dollar last year, and still dearer borrowing. But the impact of monetary policy is uncertain. Far more important and difficult is the task of reining in local authorities, which are addicted to expansion. These municipalities are the wildest speculators in China's economy. Free from electoral pressures, provincial leaders are judged on the size and growth of their economies. Many also have the incentive of kickbacks to push development projects, whatever the impact on the environment and local people's rights, and often regardless of central government instructions.
With Beijing's grip on its provinces so shaky, the talk is once again of whether China can slow gently to a more sustainable level or whether it will crash.
Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, estimates June's 19.5% surge in industrial output was the strongest since China launched its reforms. "The unbalanced growth model has now gone to excess," wrote Stephen Roach, economist and China expert at the bank. "The coming downshift in Chinese economic growth could well be a good deal bumpier than widely thought. The longer it waits, the bigger the bumps."
Stephen Green, of Standard Chartered Bank, believes the absence of inflation suggests China has room to grow even faster. "I think the restructuring we've seen - more private sector, more foreign investment, more openness - plus efforts to sort out energy bottlenecks mean the economy can grow pretty fast without inflation. Why not 12% or higher?"
Chinese policymakers argue that the problems of growth are best solved by more growth. So far, this simple formula has worked. For more than 25 years, Beijing's mandarins have proved impressively adept at steering the economy away from major ruts. But navigation is becoming more difficult as the economy picks up pace and adds bulk. With China now more important than ever to the global economy, the rest of the world must hope that they can maintain control, or the damage will be felt far beyond the odd Shanghai luxury apartment complex or Beijing mega-mall.

Backstory
In the late 1970s, premier Deng Xiaoping began transforming China's economy from Soviet-style central planning to a market-led one. Small enterprises were allowed to flourish, foreign investment promoted and farms privatised. The private sector grew to about 75% of the economy, which has expanded at a rate of 9.4% for the past 25 years. China overtook Britain as the world's fourth-largest economy last year and is set to pass the USA by 2034. But with 1.3 billion people with an average income each of £900 a year, 150 million people live in poverty.

Damn lies and Chinese statistics

By David Pan

Asia Times 16 August 2006

GUANGZHOU - Despite Beijing's repeated warning that it would severely punish officials falsifying economic statistics, the latest figures show regional officials continue to cook the books to inflate local economic growth. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10.9% in the first half of this year. However, the average of GDP growth rates of the 31 provinces on the mainland of China far exceeded 12% during the same period.

In real terms, the sum of GDP figures of all provinces was 804.8 billion yuan more than the national figure reported by the NBS. Data earlier released by the National Development and Reform Commission shows that every province recorded double-digit growth in the first half of this year, with 23 of them having a growth rate of higher than 12%. Inner Mongolia attained 18.2%, Jiangshu 15.4%, Shandong 15.3%, Tianjin and Guangdong both 14.4%, Zhejiang 14.1%, Henan 13.9%, Guangxi 13.6%, Hebei 13.5% and Sichuan 13.3%. Only three province reported slightly growth lower than the national rate: Yunnan, Ningxia and Gansu.

People may ask: which should be China's real GDP, the NBS figures or those reported by the provinces? "It is common in China that the mean GDP figure of provinces is higher than the national one given by the NBS," said Gao Huiqing, a researcher with the State Council's Information Center. "For some years, the provinces' mean GDP growth figures have been some three to four percentage points higher than the national ones. I believe that the latter is more reliable because the NBS is capable of rectifying the errors found in the provincial reports." Li Deshui, former NBS director, had once written to point out that the discrepancy between the statistical figures of the local and central governments, a tendency that is worsening every year, stems from the authorities' ineffective crackdown on falsification of statistics by local officials.

Analysts say the fundamental cause of such a malpractice lies in the problematic statistics system currently adopted in the country. Basically, the NBS and provinces use the same methods to derive GDP figures. Apart from some difficulties on the technical side, the main problem is in the attitude and mentality of the officials when reporting statistical figures to the central government. Many local officials tend to try to look right by cooking the figures according to their needs in order to demonstrate their performance.

The system-related causes of such malpractice are twofold: 1) Inasmuch as the GDP figure is a "yardstick" to measure the performance of local officials, there is a strong motive for them to manipulate the statistics; 2) The local governments are given the power to do so. The data that are most easily falsified by local officials are those in the category of the so-called "soft" information, such as the amount of investment. Another common falsification is duplicate calculation of industrial output, which also constitutes an important part of the GDP.

In many regions, trade figures are taken into calculation of the local GDP figures, causing it to become unjustifiably higher. The current statistics system in China is working by the principle of "diversified responsibility under a unified leadership", by which the NBS claims the nominal leadership, while the all-important matters regarding personnel affairs and allocation of financial resources are held fast in the hands of the local governments. Thus local statistics officials would be more obedient to their local governments than to the NBS.

To overcome this, Qiu Xiaohua, the current NBS director, now sets a task to screen out all false information and the bureau is working on measures for this purpose. In the hope of eliminating the possibility for local officials cooking the books, the NBS's long-term goal is to let economic statistics in any given place be calculated directly by the higher authority. For instance, economic data in a province will be directly calculated by the NBS, and figures in a city calculated by the provincial statistical authority. In a conference in May, Qiu first advocated reform in the current system, saying that the key to ending fraudulent reporting was to make statistical work independent of local governments' influence.

Analysts have pointed out that falsification of economic statistics could bring disastrous consequences for China. By falsifying figures, the local governments will suffer a credibility crisis among the public. Some social organizations may take advantage of this to spread more false information to confuse the public for their own interests, and people may also be deceived by false figures masquerading as true and scientific. Furthermore, major decisions on macro-economic policy may be led astray on account of falsified information deviating heavily from reality.

As some put it, the risky situation is just like "a blind man riding on a blind horse on the edge of an unfathomable abyss". In short, infidelity in statistics is not only a problem of expertise or technicality, nor is it just one of economics and society. It is an unmistakable symbol of unsound political ecology. As long as the performance appraisal of officials by the GDP yardstick and the promotion of officials based on economic statistics is not banished, as long as the liars and cheaters are not punished, as long as those who dare to expose officials' falsification of economic statistics are suppressed, it is impossible to get rid of statistics falsification and its disastrous consequences.

David Pan is a freelance writer based in Guangzhou.

Maori Queen funeral

Dame Te Ata safely home atop the sacred mountain

By SUSAN PEPPERELL, DENISE IRVINE, LESTER THORLEY and YVONNE TAHANA

In the safe hands of her people The Lady is at rest.

Stuff NZ 22 August 2006

Today, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu lies among her ancestors on the top of Taupiri Kuao – her journey from girlhood at Huntly's Waahi Marae to leader of the 150-year-old Kingitanga movement now over.
Yesterday her loving people took her to Taupiri one last time, but only after a fond and emotional farewell at Turangawaewae.
Although many mourners were up all night, the day proper begins with the tolling of four bells and a church service.
Before the funeral begins, the new King, Dame Te Ata's eldest son, Tuheitia Paki, is installed in the richly carved throne placed beside his mother's casket. Tuheitia's son, 16-year-old Whatumoana, stands beside him as Tuheitia stood beside his mother at her crowning 40 years ago.
"Hei Kingi," calls Maniapoto kaumatua Tui Adams to the crowd three times.
Each time they reply: "Ae".
It is done.
King Tuheitia is crowned with the historic bible used at past Kingitanga coronations, then the new Kingitanga leader sits with bowed head beside his mother's casket during the funeral service.
Among the speakers is Archdeacon Ngarahu Katene, who describes Dame Te Ata as an extraordinary person, "whose romance with life is whimsical and rare".
He says people like her are "life's magic; their magic has shaped our lives".
Archbishop Whakahuihui Vercoe remembers back 40 years to Dame Te Ata's coronation, and a time when "we thought the world had come to an end in Maoridom, when we had the temerity to elect a woman (as Queen)".
Archbishop Vercoe praises the way Dame Te Ata has moved among her people, sustaining them with her presence. There are murmurs of agreement for both speakers, then more whispers as messages of sympathy from Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and the Pope are read.
Sir Howard Morrison stands at the microphone. Goodbye My Sweetheart he sings as he struggles to keep going.
In a moment that engenders laughter among the crowd, one of three doves released "because ma'am loved her doves", refuses to fly away. It lingers and looks, as bemused by the situation as those charged with letting it go. Eventually it plucks up courage, flaps its wings and soars skyward. The crowd sighs with relief.
Then there is a message for the new king: "Be strong and follow in the footsteps of your mother."
The coffin is closed and there is one last benediction.
"It is time to leave your Turangawaewae. The people are gathered here from the motu to farewell you.
"Go to your God."
A path is cleared to the gate, keening voices fill the air and Dame Te Ata's casket – carried shoulder high – leaves. A huge contingent of family, friends and official visitors follow her to the hearse.
The workers remain behind to remove the greenery that has adorned the front of Mahinarangi and the marae forecourt for the past few days.
Outside, crying kuia walk single file to find their bus to take them to Taupiri as the Ratana band readies to lead the hearse to the river's edge.
The procession is led by a young man in a blue blazer and black bow tie, his face a mix of intense concentration and nerves.
But his pacing is impeccable as the muted music of the band carries to the thousands of people already lining the river banks.
A final haka is performed on the green lawns of Turangawaewae, and there are many willing hands to take the casket to the waka Tumanako bedecked in all its finery, a canopy of woven flax at its centre.
Out on the river the skill of the paddlers takes over. They manoeuvre their way downstream accompanied by three other waka whose occupants chant to maintain the rhythm of the paddling.
All along the river are people watching history pass them by.
Meanwhile, at Taupiri the last wisps of the morning fog linger at its summit. Crowds stream from buses and walk the final stretch along SH1.
The mountain is already a sea of black-clad mourners, as thousands wait for their arikinui.
Kuia form an honour guard from the road to the cemetery. They practise their movements that will call on the mourners.
"Remember you're going left to right, not up and down."
"Look at your mate next to you to get it right."
The waka Tumanako lands, the casket is handed to a group of warriors and the paddlers walk silently past the crowds.
The Taniwharau and Turangawaewae rugby league players who will haul the casket to the top of Taupiri Kuao get some last-minute coaching. They are to walk at the pace of the slowest kuia walking beside them.
Four bishops are first to climb the steep steps to the grave, their bright red cassocks almost the only flash of colour on the hillside.
As the warrior pallbearers hand over their charge for the ascent the chanting begins:
Toia mai
Te waka
Ki te urunga,
Te waka
Ki te moenga,
Te waka
And suddenly the hillside is a mass of arms moving in unison encouraging the pallbearers, calling Dame Te Ata to her final home. Those who are close enough reach out to touch the coffin as it passes by.
At the rear of the procession there is a poignant glimpse of Dame Te Ata's husband, Whatumoana, being carried in a chair up the hill to the graveside.
And at the top, the sounds of haka and karanga echo off the gullies.
A whaea kaikaranga has waited for hours in the cold to begin her last link of the karanga chain, to call her loved one home to the urupa atop Tainui's sacred mountain.
Her lament begins as the teams of men surge up the maunga.
The whaea also calls to the tupuna who already lie in the clay of Taupiri – acknowledging their presence.
The black sea of mourners parts to let the men through, and after a last huge effort up the steep slopes, the Queen is there, surrounded by chanting warriors with taiaha and mere.
People spontaneously join in the haka as King Koroki's korowai is lifted from the casket, and Dame Te Ata lowered into the ground.
Generations of her whanau, and kuia, hold single stem red roses. Honoured pakeha guests Prime Minister Helen Clark and Chief Justice Sian Elias stand graveside, surrounded by scenes of open grief in the sunshine.
There are hymns and in one final gesture the mourners throw their roses into the deep hole and a mournful lament drifts away on the wind.
From below none of this is visible. From below the thousands of people bearing witness see the casket heaved up the hill and over the brow where, suddenly, Dame Te Ata vanishes among her people, safe in their hands.

Sharia law in the UK?

If you want sharia law, you should go and live in Saudi

Shahid Malik, the Labour MP, explains why he told fellow Muslims that if they don’t like Britain they should pack their bags

Sunday Times 20 August 2006

Scotland Yard described it as a plot “to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. John Reid concurred: “The terror threat to the public was unprecedented, the biggest that Britain had ever faced.”
As it transpired, there was nothing melodramatic about these descriptions. It was to be a “terror spectacular” beyond our worst nightmares, involving blowing up a dozen aeroplanes in mid-air over the Atlantic Ocean, with the wilful massacre of more than 1,000 innocent men, women and children.
Last Tuesday, after a 90-minute meeting with John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, to discuss the challenges of extremism and foreign policy, I emerged and was immediately asked by the media whether I agreed that what British Muslims needed were Islamic holidays and sharia (Islamic law). I thought I had walked into some parallel universe.
Sadly this was not a joke. These issues had apparently formed part of the discussion the day before between Prescott, Ruth Kelly, the communities minister, and a selection of “Muslim leaders”. I realised then that it wasn’t me and the media who were living in a parallel universe — although certain “Muslim leaders” might well be.
Maybe some of these “leaders” believed that cabinet ministers were being alarmist, that the terror threat posed by British extremists was exaggerated. Maybe they thought that the entire plot and threat were the “mother of all smokescreens”, a bid to divert our attention from the killing fields of Lebanon. Or maybe it was another symptom of that epidemic that is afflicting far too many Muslims: denial. Out of touch with reality, frightened to propose any real solutions for fear of “selling out”, but always keen to exact a concession — a sad but too often true caricature of some so-called Muslim leaders.
Other members of the Muslim community I am sure would have cringed as I did when listening to Dr Syed Aziz Pasha, secretary-general of the Union of Muslim Organisations of the UK and Ireland, who explained his demand for sharia and more holidays: “If you give us religious rights we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.” He has done much good work over the years but this is clearly not one of his better moments.
Who speaks for Muslims? The government has a near impossible task but I’m sure even it realises that we need to look beyond some of the usual suspects and, crucially, to find mechanisms directly to engage with young people, where many of our challenges lie. To me the plot seemed all too real: I flew back from the United States that very week; my sister, her husband and their two kids live in New York so we all regularly shuttle to and fro. If the alleged plot had been realised we could all have been “statistics”.
As I have repeatedly said, in this world of indiscriminate terrorist bombings, where Muslims are just as likely to be the victims of terrorism as other British and US citizens, we Muslims have an equal stake in fighting extremism. Hundreds of Muslims died on 9/11 and 7/7. But more importantly, given that these acts are carried out in the name of our religion — Islam — we have a greater responsibility not merely to condemn but to confront the extremists. In addition to being the targets of terrorism, Muslims will inevitably be the targets of any backlash.
Given this context, most Muslims will perhaps feel disappointed at some of the comments of those “leaders” who went in to bat on their behalf. Of course self- indulgent bad timing is not the sole preserve of Muslim leaders: David Cameron’s gross misjudgment of the national mood in his criticisms of how the government had failed to keep us safe and secure were just as crass. Cameron’s stance, in undermining the unity required from our leaders on such occasions of national unease,played into the extremists’ hands.
So too, unfortunately, did the comments of some of the “Muslim leaders” who demanded sharia for British Muslims rather than the existing legal system. The call for special public holidays for Muslims was unnecessary, impracticable and divisive. Most employers already allow their staff to take such days out of their annual leave. And what about special holidays for Sikhs, Hindus, Jews? If we amended our laws to accommodate all such requests, then all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be able to put our workplaces and communities back together again.
When it comes to sharia, Muhammad ibn Adam, the respected Islamic scholar, says: “It is necessary by sharia to abide by the laws of the country one lives in, regardless of the nature of the law, as long as the law doesn’t demand something that is against Islam.” It is narrated in the Koran that the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “It is necessary upon a Muslim to listen to and obey the ruler, as long as one is not ordered to carry out a sin.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, no 2796 & Sunan Tirmidhi).
In Britain there are no laws that force Muslims to do something against sharia and Muslims enjoy the freedom to worship and follow their religion, as do all other faiths. Compare Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, a sharia regime where women are forbidden to drive; or Turkey, a secular country where women are forbidden to wear the hijab; or Tunisia, where civil servants are forbidden to wear a beard.
I believe that as a Muslim there is no better place to live than Britain. That doesn’t mean that all in the garden is rosy; often Islamophobia is palpable. But my message is: whether you are white, Asian, black, Muslim, Christian or Jew, if you don’t like where you’re living you have two choices: either you live elsewhere, or you engage in the political process, attempt to create change and ultimately respect the will of the majority.
When Lord Ahmed, the Muslim Labour peer, heard my comments — I said essentially that if Muslims wanted sharia they should go and live somewhere where they have it — he accused me of doing the BNP’s work. He is entitled to his opinion. However, a little honesty, like mine, in this whole debate might just restore trust in politicians and ease the population’s anxieties.
Since I made my remarks my office has been overwhelmed with support. I also know that some Muslims feel uncomfortable, not necessarily because they disagree but because they feel targeted. But what I want to say to my fellow British Muslims is that in this country we enjoy freedoms, rights and privileges of which Muslims elsewhere can only dream. We should appreciate that fact and have the confidence to fulfil the obligations and responsibilities as part of our contract with our country and as dictated by sharia law.

Effect of Israeli policy?

A fight to the finish

By Dahr Jamail

Asia Times 10 August 2006

DAMASCUS - "I care about my people, my country and defending them from the Zionist aggression," said a Hezbollah fighter after I'd asked him why he joined the group. I found myself in downtown Beirut sitting in the back seat of his car in the liquid heat of a Lebanese summer. Sweat rolled down my nose and dripped on my notepad as I jotted furiously. "My home in Dahaya is now pulverized," he said while the concussions of Israeli bombs landing in his nearby neighborhood echoed across the buildings around us. "Everything in my life is destroyed now, so I will fight them. I am a shaheed [martyr]." He asked to remain anonymous, and that I refer to him only as Ahmed. The late-afternoon sun was behind him as he told me just how
hard his life had been. When he was 11 years old he and his youngest brother had been taken from their home by Israeli soldiers and put in prison for two years. I asked him what happened to him there, but that was a subject he wouldn't discuss. One of his brothers was later killed by Israeli soldiers. After his release from an Israeli prison Ahmed was spending his teenage years in southern Lebanon when he was caught in crossfire between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers near his home. He was shot three times. Many years before, his father had been killed by an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp in south Beirut. "What are we left with?" he asked, while the angle of the sun through the windshield highlighted tears welling in his eyes. "I know I will die fighting them, then I will go to my god. But I will go to my god fighting like a lion. I will not be slaughtered like a lamb."

A widely misunderstood group

Leaving on this trip to Syria, I never intended to go to Lebanon. When my plane took off from San Francisco, Lebanon was still a peaceful land; by the time my plane touched down in Damascus, however, everything had changed. That very day, I learned on landing, Hezbollah had taken two Israeli soldiers captive and killed eight others. While the mainstream media have taken it as fact that the Hezbollah raid occurred inside Israel, many Arab outlets claim the Israelis actually entered Lebanon before being attacked. The exact location of the clash remains in dispute. Clearer, however, are the effects of the subsequent Israeli attack on Lebanon.

Physically, Lebanon has been bombed if not yet back to the Stone Age, then at least to a point where much of the country now looks as it did in the worst periods of its brutal civil war, which lasted from 1975 until 1990. According to statistics provided by the Lebanese government on July 24, there had already been well over US$2.1 billion of damage to the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon - all three of its airports and all four of its seaports had by then been bombed, and in the weeks to follow it was only to get worse. By estimates that go quickly out of date as the bombing campaign continues, there has already been nearly $1 billion of damage done to civilian residences and businesses, with more than 22 gasoline stations as well as fuel depots bombed and the major highways along which fuel resupply would take place badly damaged. Scores of factories, worth more than $180 million, have also been damaged or destroyed. Red Cross ambulances, governmental emergency centers, United Nations peacekeeping forces and observers, media outlets and mobile-phone towers have all been bombed, each a violation of international law. Mosques and churches have been hit; illegal weapons such as cluster bombs and white phosphorus used; and, as far as can be told at this early point, more than 90% of the victims killed have been civilians. As of this writing, the Lebanese government had already announced at least 900 deaths, and that number is now certainly well over 1,000. At least 60 Israelis are also dead from Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel and fierce fighting inside Lebanon.

Tom Engelhardt recently wrote (Air war, barbarity and the Middle East, August 1):

As air wars go, the one in Lebanon may seem strikingly directed against the civilian infrastructure and against society; in that, however, it is historically anything but unique. It might even be said that war from the air, since first launched in Europe's colonies early in the last century, has always been essentially directed against civilians. As in World War II, air power - no matter its stated targets - almost invariably turns out to be worst for civilians and, in the end, to be aimed at society itself. In that way, its damage is anything but "collateral", never truly "surgical", and never in its overall effect "precise". Even when it doesn't start that way, the frustration of not working as planned, of not breaking the "will", invariably leads, as with the Israelis, to ever wider, ever fiercer versions of the same, which, if allowed to proceed to their logical conclusion, will bring down not society's will, but society itself.

The government of Israel stated at the outset that the goal of its massive air campaign, leveled directly at the infrastructure of Lebanese society and at its economy, was in essence psychological - meant to increase popular pressure against Hezbollah; but, as might easily have been predicted, exactly the opposite has occurred.

"I never supported Hezbollah before," a young student at the American University of Beirut told me shortly after I arrived in the capital city. "But now they are defending us against Israel." His view of Hezbollah is quickly becoming the norm for hundreds of thousands of previously unsympathetic Lebanese as US-made Israeli bombs and missiles continue to rain down on the country.

During my time in Lebanon I drove to Qana. On the way there, I passed one small hilltop village after another, all of them resembling bombed-out ghost towns. Chunks of buildings littered the roads, which our car had to negotiate carefully. Powdered rock from shattered homes seemed to cover everything like a thin film. No one was walking the deserted streets, even in the middle of the day. The few who remained, mostly the elderly and children, hid in basements. For whole stretches, only occasional stray cats and dogs were seen, along with a flock of goats whose herder had long since fled. Irregular thumping of bomb explosions continued in the distance. The roar of Israeli F-16s overhead was a constant reminder that no place in the south of this country was safe. After witnessing this level of destruction, the literal tearing apart of a society, it was clear to me why so many more people were supporting Hezbollah.

Enter Nasrallah

To grasp the unfolding events in Lebanon, you have to begin with an uncomfortable fact. Hezbollah, widely known throughout much of the West as a "terrorist organization", is seen as anything but in Lebanon. This was obviously true of most Shi'ites, especially in south Lebanon, before this round of war began. Now, even many in the conservative Christian population in parts of northern Lebanon and west Beirut have come to hold its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in high regard. With seats in the Lebanese parliament, Hezbollah is seen as a legitimate political group.

Hezbollah first came into existence as a result of the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon, which began on June 6, 1982. The group draws most of its popular support from southern Beirut and southern Lebanon, where the majority of the country's Shi'ite population lives. Downtrodden, impoverished, and largely overlooked by a government in Beirut in which they had inadequate representation, the Shi'ites were primed for a leader who would promise them a better future. The group was officially founded on February 16, 1985, when Sheik Ibrahim al-Amin proclaimed its manifesto. Nasrallah would only come to power after the Israeli military assassinated Amin. A charismatic leader, he promptly solidified his base and swelled Hezbollah's ranks by working to satisfy the most essential needs of his followers. Hezbollah soon started providing the basic social-service infrastructure in the neglected Shi'ite areas of the country - hospitals, schools, construction projects, welfare programs and, above all, a well-trained, highly disciplined militia for protection.

After years of brutal guerrilla war against the Israeli military, which had occupied part of south Lebanon, Hezbollah succeeded in doing what neither the Lebanese government nor its impotent army could possibly have done. Its fighters wore down the Israeli military and finally forced it out of the country in 2000. This, not surprisingly, lent it even greater popularity. While the coming years also brought it more significant political representation and respect, the Druze and Christian populations continued to distance themselves from or oppose the group. Now, the staggeringly disproportionate Israeli response to the detention of two of its soldiers and the killing of others in mid-July has changed even this.

In a sense, the Israelis are accomplishing the previously inconceivable - uniting the otherwise hostile power centers of the country behind Hezbollah. Last week, the Israelis actually began bombing key bridges in the Christian part of the country for the first time - a clear statement that no Lebanese are to be spared their attentions. Most of the Druze and Christian leadership have by now condemned the Israeli response. Many have even gone so far as to state that they believe Hezbollah is working to defend the country's sovereignty. Thus the Israeli response has played a huge role in strengthening the already strong hand of Nasrallah.

The view from Damascus

Hezbollah enjoys massive popular and political support in Syria. Everywhere in the ancient city of Damascus the yellow-and-green flags of the group hang from storefronts, flutter in the wind from television antennas, and fly from the radio antennas of cars. Portraits and photos of Nasrallah are taped to the back windows of Mercedes and BMWs. Key chains of his bearded, smiling face, along with iconic T-shirts in which he is portrayed between the Syrian flag and that of Hezbollah, are now selling like hotcakes. "We know the Americans are trying to smash our dignity," a man named Faez told me in the coastal Syrian city of Latakia. Inside a heavily air-conditioned European-style coffee shop, while sipping espresso, the businessman did what so many Syrians do nowadays – he used "America" and "Israel" interchangeably. The head of the Syrian Union of Engineers, Hassan Majid, was no less frank as we sat in his plush office in downtown Damascus. "Hezbollah has our greatest respect now," he said softly.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese refugees have flooded the capital. You can see them inhabiting schools and crowded into various offices for Middle East Airlines, Lebanon's air carrier. They are always to be found at Syrian Red Crescent shelters hoping to acquire lodging, food, or other assistance. The support they receive is of a far better kind than is available to the tens of thousands of internal refugees who have fled no further than Beirut, where they sleep in the dirt in city parks or, if they are lucky, on thin foam mats in still-empty schools; yet their accounts of suffering and loss are no less heart-wrenching. These stories ripple across Syria daily, broadcast far and wide by state television.

At the headquarters of the Syrian Red Crescent, you can still see a plaque from the Red Cross thanking the Syrian group for its efforts assisting Hurricane Katrina victims. When I asked about it, one of the volunteers told me Syria had donated medical supplies to aid the desperate residents of New Orleans. An old man named Hassan Hamdan had just arrived from south Lebanon and was waiting for volunteers to find him somewhere to sleep. He caught the spirit of the moment when he took my very first open-ended questions as an opportunity to vent his rage. In a sense, it never felt as if he was talking to me at all. As he began, he promptly stood up. His voice rose instantly into the shouting range and he quite literally yelled, "The Israelis are attacking and killing everything which moves!" I involuntarily took a step back, fearing he was so angry he might actually assault me. "It's total destruction! They just shredded our city!" For a moment he calmed slightly and explained that he'd just left his village near the south Lebanese city of Bint Jbail. Immediately, his voice rose and he was off again: "Everyone is now with Hezbollah! Even Jesus is with Hezbollah! Insha'Allah [God willing], Hezbollah will smash the Israelis and kick them from Lebanon once and for all!" I've seen similar rantings broadcast on Syrian state television as people crowd around to watch inside sweaty restaurants and I automatically dismissed it as so much state propaganda. But here that "propaganda" was alive and unbelievably vociferous, with not a screen in sight.

In fact, it hardly matters any more what anyone says or does. Sometimes you can feel a tidal pull in events - in this case, a strong one flowing in a single powerful direction. When one Israeli general recently aimed some pointed barbs at Syria for supporting Hezbollah, and President Bashar al-Assad promptly put the Syrian military on high alert, popular support for Hezbollah, further galvanized, only grew accordingly. It's no longer hard to imagine a whole region in which the shouting might reach previously inconceivable decibels and nobody will be listening.

Drastic measures

After visiting a hospital in Beirut where I saw dozens of horribly wounded children, women and the elderly, their skin burned, often from the flames of their own devastated homes, their bodies shredded, possibly by the cluster bombs the Israelis have reportedly been using, I walked outside and wept. Shortly after, I met with Ahmed again and briefly described the experience while, once again, tearing up. "This is what I've been seeing my entire life," he replied, staring into my eyes. "Nothing but pain and suffering." Now, this is also what so many Lebanese, sheltered these past years of reconstruction from life experiences like Ahmed's, are seeing first-hand, and this is why Hezbollah is viewed by almost all Lebanese as a legitimate resistance movement, not a "terrorist organization". This is what the Israelis have actually done to the Lebanese, other than dismantling their society and turning them into refugees in their own land.

When you are in Syria or, I suspect, in most Arab states today and utter the words "terrorist organization", it doesn't even occur to people that Hezbollah might be the topic of conversation. They take it for granted that you're referring either to Israel or the United States. As Israeli pilots continue to drop US-made precision-guided bombs from F-16s and Hezbollah launches barrages of rockets ever deeper into Israel, the radicalization of both populations - and of the region - only intensifies amid the spreading devastation. When this war finally ends, the societal, economic and environmental destruction will undoubtedly be staggering - it already is - as well as long-lasting; but it will pale in comparison to the psychological damage that has already been done.

Rather than sowing the seeds of a future peace, it's painfully clear to an observer that the seeds of everlasting bloodshed, resentment and resistance are now sprouting amid the ruins. Arab leaders continue to earn the scorn of their populations for not putting their all into stopping the Israeli campaign against Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hezbollah appears committed to doing so until the very end - and, based on what I saw in my days in Lebanon, that "end" of mutual destruction seems all that is left on the minds of those involved.

The Israelis, overvaluing the technology of war and, in particular, of air power (as so many have done before them), began their campaign against Lebanon by using perfectly real bombs and missiles to achieve largely psychological ends - the humiliation of Hezbollah in the eyes of the Lebanese population. As it turns out, they have indeed changed the psychology of Lebanon - and possibly of the region. Just not in ways they ever imagined. As Tarad Hamade, the Lebanese minister of labor and official representative of Hezbollah, told me in Beirut recently, "We might not be as powerful as the Israeli army, but we will fight until we die."

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist from Anchorage, Alaska, who spent eight months reporting from occupied Iraq. He regularly reports for Inter Press Service, and contributes to Asia Times Online, The Independent, the Sunday Herald, as well as Tomdispatch.com. He maintains a website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com.

AIDS in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia Begins to Face Hidden AIDS Problem

Hassan M Fattah

New York Times 8 August 2006

RIYADH —He lives virtually in hiding, his real life a secret from his family and some of his closest friends.Being gay in Saudi Arabia is hard enough. But for a growing number of Saudis like Feisal, middle-aged, gay and HIV-positive, life is a tangle of regret and fear.

“You live in constant fear of being found out and attacked,” said Feisal, who spoke on condition that only his middle name be used, for fear of discrimination. “I’m sure a lot of people would think I deserve what I have if they knew about it.”

If not for a mixture of Saudi doctors, social workers and advocates for AIDS patients who have pushed the government to tackle the disease more openly and encouraged patients to fight for their rights, Feisal’s situation would be even more dire. But change is slowly taking place.
For years Saudi Arabia kept its growing AIDS problem hidden. Statistics on the disease were sealed in envelopes and guarded like national secrets. In mosques, imams spoke of AIDS as the “wrath of God” brought upon people who committed “sexual deviancy.”

Now, the government is opening up. In June, the Ministry of Health announced that more than 10,000 people in Saudi Arabia were H.I.V.-positive or had AIDS, including nearly 600 children. The numbers appear to show a significant increase in infection over 2004, when 7,800 cases were reported, and 2003, when 6,700 cases were reported. Officials say that better reporting is the reason for the growing numbers. But many doctors say even the latest figures are off, with the real numbers likely to be far higher in this nation of 27 million people. One physician who has treated many patients who have been hiding their condition or were unaware of it estimated that the real number could be as high as 80,000.

Some years back, the government passed legislation protecting the privacy of people who were ill and guaranteeing their right to work, which provided some protection to AIDS patients. Saudi citizens with AIDS have also long had the right to free medical care, and today receive expensive anti-retroviral drugs without charge.

But the rights and protections are only for Saudi citizens. More than three-quarters of the reported H.I.V. cases are of foreign residents. Foreigners living here found to be H.I.V.-positive are typically imprisoned and then deported.

Fortunately for Feisal, he is a Saudi citizen. “I have to praise the government,” he said. “We get the drugs for free, the medical care for free, and the treatment is confidential.” But Feisal said that nothing is being done to build acceptance of people with AIDS, much less homosexuality.

Indeed, the lingering challenge for most AIDS patients is their acceptance by society. Ever since the first case was diagnosed here in 1984, the disease has challenged social and religious taboos. Women began to be infected by their husbands, who contracted the disease on trips abroad and, increasingly, inside the country. Children, too, were born infected, and soon the numbers became hard to ignore.

In this highly conservative Muslim nation, where women are forbidden to drive and talk of sex is taboo, even traditional efforts at AIDS prevention face challenges. There is little talk of condom use and safe sex; outreach is focused on abstinence and fear of God.

A growing movement of AIDS patients, doctors and social workers is putting emphasis on teaching Saudis about the disease, though, to help AIDS patients live more normal lives. The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center here in the capital now holds regular public discussions on AIDS and how to live with it. Doctors like Abdullah al-Hokail, who has worked on AIDS at the hospital since the 1980’s, appears regularly on Saudi television to explain the effects of the disease and to preach safe sex. “The main problem here is not the disease itself,” said Muneera al-Dahhan, a clinical counselor at King Faisal Hospital, the top AIDS treatment center in the country. “It is the tough view of society. People see this as the result of sexual behavior that is unacceptable in our society and are unable to accept it.”

Many other Muslim countries have begun similar programs after decades of underreporting incidence rates. Religious leaders long credited Islam and the region’s conservative culture, which forbids premarital sex, for the low incidence of AIDS. But most clinicians inside and outside the region long suspected that local health agencies were reporting incomplete numbers. When Rami al-Harithi stood before television cameras at a commemoration of World Aids Day in the Saudi capital last year, he became one of the first AIDS patients to come out in the open.

“I wanted to change people’s view of H.I.V.,” said Mr. Harithi, whose story has attracted sympathy throughout the country. A hemophiliac, Mr. Harithi contracted H.I.V. when he was 8 years old. “Just as I’d expected, people were surprised to see me as just a normal guy inflicted with this disease.”
Mr. Harithi has become something of a celebrity here, appearing on almost every Saudi television and satellite channel, profiled in newspapers and invited to speak at medical symposiums. As an advocate he has sought to deliver one consistent message: AIDS patients are nothing to be afraid of and deserve their rights. “I’m not trying to get hugs and kisses by going public,’’ he said. “I just want to ensure that my rights at work and in life are guaranteed and that I will continue to get the care I need.”

Other AIDS patients jealously note that the specifics of Mr. Harithi’s case have allowed him to lead a more normal life than they can. For those who contracted the disease sexually, especially those in Saudi Arabia’s homosexual underworld, life often proves far lonelier. “He’s excusably positive,” said one patient who has kept in touch with Mr. Harithi, speaking on condition of anonymity to preserve his privacy. “Public sympathy is with him because of the way he contracted the disease; it wasn’t through sex. They wouldn’t have been as nice otherwise.”

For men like Feisal, who tested H.I.V.-positive five years ago, the options are markedly different. He attended college in the United States, where he enjoyed an avowedly raucous gay sex life, but returned to Saudi Arabia where homosexuality was a crime and became closeted. He was trying out for a job when a friend warned him that it would entail a blood and urine test. He decided to test independently first, and found that he was infected with H.I.V. Even other gay men have rejected him, he said. He used to frequent a gay Arab Internet chat room. But when he admitted that he was H.I.V. positive to one user, he said, he was banned from one of the sessions. “I did this to myself and take responsibility for what happened,” he said. “If I was a citizen of the U.S. or of Europe, I would want to live. But here there’s no gay life, much less an H.I.V.-positive life.”

The latest efforts have made a difference but only a small one, many AIDS patients say.
“There is a war against the disease,” said one man, who contracted the disease after an encounter with a prostitute in the United States years ago and who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of embarrassment. “They accept the sick, but don’t want to deal with them as people.”

Lebanon divided

Nasrallah and the three Lebanons

Sami Moubayed

Asia Times 3 August 2006

DAMASCUS - Many in the Arab world are blaming the Lebanese for being so disunited and for not rallying en masse behind Hezbollah and its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah. These divisions are strange for those who do not know Lebanon: there are in essence three Lebanons, each with its own history, objectives, alliances and leaders. One friend from "Sunni Lebanon" cursed Hezbollah tremendously, saying that the Shi'ite militia had ruined her life, while another from "Shi'ite Lebanon" (which makes up about 40% of the population) said Hezbollah was the greatest thing about the Arab world since emancipation from the Ottomans in 1918. A third
friend, from "Christian Lebanon", said Hezbollah was not the "Party of God" as its name means in Arabic, but rather "The Party of the Devil".

Still, there are many crossovers in Lebanon, according to a recent poll by the Beirut Center for Research and Information to test the country's pulse on the war in Lebanon. This was done before Israeli warplanes on Sunday bombed the ill-fated village of Qana, killing more than 51 people (including 22 children). This single event strongly increased anti-Israeli sentiment and a genuine desire for either revenge or an immediate ceasefire. The survey was administered among the country's Shi'ites, Sunnis, Druze and Maronite Christians. It surprisingly showed that 70.9% of all Lebanese supported Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 that sparked the Israeli retaliation.

Because of the loud criticism of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah by Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, only 40% of the Druze community voted in favor of such operations. Christian support, because of the backing General Michel Aoun has given Nasrallah, was at 55%. In all, the survey showed that 87% of the Lebanese people supported Hezbollah's retaliation against Israel, attributed mainly to Hezbollah's celebrated military performance to date. Meanwhile, 89.5% said they did not see the US as an honest broker in the Middle East conflict. Another 64.3% were not satisfied by the performance of Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora. Within the Sunni community, 64.8% said they did not approve of Siniora as premier.

Certainly, then, the poll shows that many Sunni Muslims (and Maronite Christians as well) support Nasrallah. All talk about him having zero support in non-Shi'ite districts is nonsense. Nasrallah has outgrown his Shi'ite identity and transformed himself into a pan-Lebanese, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic leader. The fact that he is a cleric, a Muslim and a Shi'ite is actually of little importance at this stage of his war with Israel. Shi'ite Lebanon

One Lebanon, mostly in the south, is that of Hezbollah, a Lebanon of Shi'ites and the epicenter of anti-Israeli rhetoric and action. This Lebanon is co-shared by the Amal movement of Nabih Berri. Not all inhabitants of this Lebanon are members of Hezbollah, but all of them respect and love Nasrallah. In the 1960s, this Lebanon used to receive no more than 0.7% of the state budget for public works and hospitalization, while the other two Lebanons were being described as the "Switzerland of the East". This is the no-alcohol Lebanon of veiled women, bearded men, poverty-stricken districts and ubiquitous posters of ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. This is the Lebanon we see on Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV. This Lebanon is anti-American and anti-Israeli to the bone. Many here, Nasrallah included, speak fluent English, but prefer to converse, think and write in Arabic. French culture in this Lebanon is minimal. A friend of this correspondent lived in the Jnah district of Beirut. When he wanted to move out and sell his furniture, a member of Hezbollah visited him, saying he would buy all of the furniture and appliances and donate them, in the name of Hezbollah, to needy families in the Shi'ite community. And he did.

Another story of Nasrallah's Lebanon is that of a poor woman from the Shi'ite community. She was finding a hard time making ends meet until a member of Hezbollah visited her home in al-Dahiyyieh, a Shi'ite suburb of Beirut. He presented her with a brand-new sewing machine, telling her to work on it and produce sweaters and scarves, promising that all of her output would be bought by Hezbollah. Many hundreds of families in Shi'ite Lebanon live off monthly stipends delivered to their homes at the start of every month, in a sealed envelope, from the secretary general of Hezbollah. The families of the wounded, the arrested in Israeli jails and those who died in combat receive free education and hospitalization, at the expense of Hezbollah. This is the Lebanon that is being targeted by Israel.

For the reasons mentioned above, among others, it will be difficult - if not impossible - to turn the tables against Hezbollah and Nasrallah in their Lebanon. Simply put, Nasrallah is king in his Lebanon. Disarming him by force would be impossible. The Shi'ites, who had suffered from the status of an underclass in the 1950s and 1960s, reversed their fortunes through Iran, wealth from the Shi'ite community in the diaspora, and Nasrallah. They will not disarm at will because, in addition to being a shield against Israel, they view the arms of Hezbollah as a symbol of their strength and very existence. They are strong because Hezbollah is armed. True, other parts of Lebanon have been destroyed in the latest war, but the areas to suffer the most are the Shi'ite districts, in al-Dahiyyieh and south Lebanon. They are paying the high price for supporting Hezbollah, and nobody among the Shi'ites seems to be complaining. Sunni Lebanon

Another Lebanon is that of the Sunni Muslims, headed for 13 years by the towering influence of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in February 2005. It is now under the command of his son, Saad, and Prime Minister Siniora, two US-educated politicians who value liberal economies, open society, and fine, secular education. This is the Lebanon where both pan-Arab and Anglo-Saxon influence are very strong. Its residents speak and understand perfect English, and use it comfortably with Arabic. It is the Lebanon of fine food, good wine, beautiful women, shopping, beaches and pleasure. This is a Lebanon historically allied to Syria. Its leaders in the 1930s and 1940s saw themselves as closer to Damascus and their co-religionists in Syria than they were to the Christians of Mount Lebanon. They originally wanted to reunite with Syria, the motherland, but by the late 1930s had abandoned this idea in favor of being part of Greater Lebanon, on the condition that they be treated as equal to the Christians. This Lebanon broke with Syria after Hariri's assassination. Its leaders, onetime allies of Damascus, turned against Syria when it became unpopular to be pro-Syrian, accusing the Syrians of murdering Hariri.

Unlike Nasrallah's united Lebanon, however, this Lebanon is sharply divided. One side is headed by Saad Hariri. It is anti-Syrian, pro-Saudi Arabian and pro-West. The other is headed by former traditional Sunni notables (especially Beiruti) who were sidelined by the rise of Rafik Hariri in 1992 and continue to lurk in the shadows under Saad. They are pro-Syrian. Leaders of this Lebanon are former prime ministers Salim al-Hoss and Omar Karameh, along with politicians such as Tammam Salam. They believe that Syrian influence has been traded for that of the United States. The Americans promised the post-Syria leaders of Lebanon democracy, prosperity and stability. Instead, they have given them war and bombs, tolerating and then fanning the current war in order to break Hezbollah. Naturally, this group is still allied to Syria and praises Nasrallah as a pan-Islamic and pan-Arab leader. Hariri's Lebanon - the one we see on Future TV (Hariri's station) - dreads the spread of Iranian influence in the Arab world. An anti-Hariri team does exist, but it has terrible public relations managers and is almost unheard or unseen in the international and local media.

Christian Lebanon This the third Lebanon. It is the Lebanon that was once dominant, from the post-Ottoman era until the end of the civil war in 1990. This is the Lebanon that has preserved the sophistication and democracy of Lebanon. It opposed Muslim hegemony in the 1950s and 1960s, refusing to make Lebanon a revolutionary nation inspired by the rebelliousness, socialism and anti-Westernism of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This Lebanon is influenced tremendously by France. Some of its residents are more comfortable with French than Arabic. Some refuse to learn English to preserve their Franco-Lebanese culture. It is a norm in this Lebanon to wake up every morning and drink coffee while reading French-language newspapers.

This Lebanon is currently headed by the ex-warlord Samir Gagegea, who was recently released from jail, and the former army commander, Michel Aoun. When Aoun allied himself to Nasrallah - sending shock waves throughout Christian Lebanon - many said this was political suicide and would ruin him within the Maronite community. He was labeled a turncoat. It would end his dreams at becoming president of Lebanon, they said. Aoun, however, understood that Lebanon had changed, knowing perfectly well that Christian support alone was no longer enough to secure a seat for him at the Baabda presidential palace.

To understand the wonders Aoun has done for Hezbollah, one must understand how faithful his supporters have been in backing him. When he wanted them to fight the Syrians, they were anti-Syrian to the bone. When he allied to Hezbollah, they became convincing and eloquent defenders of Hezbollah. Aoun's people support everything he tells them. It's that simple. And now he is telling them to stand firm behind Hezbollah and Nasrallah. Israel is trying to turn the tables in Lebanon against the Shi'ites. It wants the Christians to suffer from the Israeli war, and blame Nasrallah for having dragged Lebanon into this confrontation. That is why it has landed bombs in Christian Lebanon. But the Christians are not turning yet against Nasrallah. On the contrary, they are helping with the relief processes, through charity groups, non-governmental organizations, churches and monasteries. This is due to Michel Aoun.

The anti-Hezbollah factions from Christian and Sunni Lebanon say Nasrallah does not have the right to dictate the fate of Lebanon as a country destined to be at war with Israel. This is said by Hariri's and Gagegea's Lebanon. They argue that Nasrallah did not have the right to capture the two Israeli soldiers, in total disregard for the Lebanese government and the people who have subsequently suffered. They say Nasrallah is a creation of Iran and Syria, fighting their proxy war with Israel through Lebanon at the expense of the Lebanese. This war, they argue, has cost Lebanon a staggering sum of US$9 billion to date.

Nasrallah says that (unlike other prominent Lebanese politicians currently in the anti-Syrian camp) he did not use his connections in Damascus to live an extravagant lifestyle, travel to Europe or stash money in foreign banks. He used his connections with the Syrians to buy arms and wage war against Israel - and he is very proud of it. Nasrallah, after all, does not enjoy the luxuries of life. How he sees Lebanon is very different from how the Sunnis or Christians see it. He certainly has never been to tourist attractions in the Lebanese mountains or beach, nor has he imagined the Beirut nightlife. He lives a monastic life surrounded by his family, and drives around in a Mercedes-Benz 500 (1990 model). He could not care less for a thriving Lebanese economy, like Siniora or Hariri, and tourism to him - which has been ruined by this war - means nothing.

The point is: Nasrallah probably does not suffer when he sees Beirut in blackout and in a grinding economic standstill. To most Lebanese, the image of downtown Beirut transformed from a city abuzz with life and spirit into a ghost city spells misery and disaster. To Nasrallah, it just means the normal and expected task of combating the Israelis is under way. As much as Israel, these three Lebanons will decide the fate of the country.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

Air might?

Might in the air will not defeat guerillas in this bitter conflict

Charles Heyman

Times 2 August 2006

AFTER Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon under pressure from Hezbollah in 2000, there was a rethink at the Israeli Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv. It resulted in a counter-guerrilla doctrine called “the vulture and the snake”.
The air force became the offensive counter-guerrilla force (the vultures) that would destroy the guerrillas (the snakes), wherever they might be. Ground forces were to defend Israel’s territorial integrity and, if necessary, make incursions into enemy territory to destroy pockets of guerrillas that the air force might be struggling to neutralise. The ground forces would be “in and out” very quickly and there would be no attempt at occupation.

That is what has been happening in Lebanon for the past three weeks. Since the formation of an air force counter-guerrilla task force, the Israeli air force has been the lead service and the army has played a secondary role.
This doctrine appears to have failed. The Hezbollah guerrilla force is still intact. What the planners forgot is that Hezbollah would use hospitals, schools, apartment blocks and other civilian infrastructure as cover for its activities. Hezbollah knows that it would be suicide to fire rockets from open areas; it would be unlikely to last five minutes if it did. Using the civilian population as cover is an integral aspect of asymmetrical warfare, and it follows that innocent civilians will die in large numbers in air attacks. The attacker, in this case Israel, subsequently loses the all-important international public relations battle.
What we are now seeing is a move towards the more traditional Israeli policy of using the army to take ground inside Lebanon and to flush out Hezbollah’s guerrillas. On paper Israel has total superiority.
It has one of the world’s most efficient military — well trained, motivated and equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry. It has hundreds of aircraft and the most modern artillery systems, and thousands of armoured vehicles and missiles. Hezbollah’s arsenal consists mostly of rifles, machineguns, grenades, mortars and mines plus improvised explosive devices.
Its fighters’ real advantage is their knowledge of the terrain, long experience of operations against the Israeli Defence Forces, local leadership and a burning sense of grievance. Hezbollah fighters rarely stand and fight. If they do, they are usually destroyed. Their main tactic is attrition, causing whatever casualties they can, usually through ambushes or mines, and then melting away.
Artillery and air attacks are seldom successful against such tactics. Indeed, the great military question of our time is how do you defeat an asymmetric warfare grouping such as Hezbollah? The reality is that you are unlikely to defeat it on the battlefield, simply because its fighters will refuse to fight on the battlefield of your choosing. If they did, they would be destroyed by a military machine such as Israel’s.
Your counter-guerrilla doctrine has to be much smarter. For a start, think of a 20-year time frame — because there are no quick fixes. Be prepared to spend an ocean of money. Identify the political grievance at the heart of the problem and prepare a comprehensive policy embracing political, economic, social, media and military means that will address that grievance over a generation.
No matter what happens, proportionate, and where possible minimum, force is absolutely necessary. In this type of campaign, large body counts are never a sign of success; they are nearly always a sign of failure.
In the short term the Israeli Defence Forces will win its campaign in southern Lebanon. It will chip away at Hezbollah’s infrastructure until something that passes for control is imposed. There will be incessant patrolling by Israeli troops on the ground and drones in the sky, supported by good Israeli intelligence.
After about a month, southern Lebanon is unlikely to be an area where Hezbollah can operate at will and, apart from the occasional ambush, the IDF will have the upper hand.
But the long-term winners will almost certainly be Hezbollah. The Israelis will withdraw from southern Lebanon at some stage, because they cannot afford to keep large numbers of reservists on a war footing indefinitely. Hezbollah will move back, and any UN force that tries to disarm it will become part of the problem. Hezbollah will resist and, after extensive casualties, the UN will likely be forced to withdraw.
Hezbollah will also survive in the long term because the traumatised children fleeing today’s onslaught will become the fighters of tomorrow.

Major Charles Heyman is the former editor of Jane’s World Armies and editor of The Armed Forces of the United Kingdom.