Via Qifa, this is the best video I’ve ever seen of Beirut:

If you’ve ever lived in a city like Beirut or Baghdad, you’ve probably been scanned by a bomb sniffing wand at a checkpoint. Here in Beirut, they’re used at army checkpoints as well as entrances to the parking lot at the mall. I’ve always wondered how these things detect explosives, and I’ve heard that they somehow work by smell.

This has never made any sense to me, and my curiosity was piqued when while driving a friend’s car, I was stopped at the entrance to the parking lot of my local supermarket. The security guard took the wand and walked to the side of the car, the famed Datsun, and as I was getting ready to keep driving as I’ve done hundreds of times before, he asked me to stop. He said that the wand had detected something and wanted to know if I had perfume in the car. I said that I was wearing cologne but didn’t think there were any major amounts in the car. He said that that must be it and then waved me through without actually checking the car.

Needless to say, I was even more confused as to how the wand worked and more than a little disconcerted about the level of security. If all a suicide bomber had to do to get past the bomb sniffer was spray on some imitation CK1, then we’re in for some trouble.

It was with some fascination, then, that I read this piece in the Times today about the conflict between Iraqis and Americans when it comes to these bomb sniffing wands:

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.

… The suicide bombers who managed to get two tons of explosives into downtown Baghdad on Oct. 25, killing 155 people and destroying three ministries, had to pass at least one checkpoint where the ADE 651 is typically deployed, judging from surveillance videos released by Baghdad’s provincial governor. The American military does not use the devices. “I don’t believe there’s a magic wand that can detect explosives,” said Maj. Gen. Richard J. Rowe Jr., who oversees Iraqi police training for the American military. “If there was, we would all be using it. I have no confidence that these work.”

The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”

…“I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”

This, to me, is a sort of psychological experiment. Despite my complete lack of understanding about these devices, I’ve always just assumed that they more or less worked. Otherwise, why would they be so ubiquitous? And maybe that’s the point. Maybe security is based on the assumption that if a checkpoint has one of these detectors, then people will assume that they can’t go through it with explosives. Apparently, the company that sells them markets the devices as being able to detect “guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high.”

And maybe it works as kind of a security placebo-deterrent.  Or maybe, at tens of thousands of dollars a wand, it’s just a way for modern day snake oil salesmen to prey on the governments of developing countries:

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable,” Colonel Bidlack said, “except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets.”

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.

If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.

On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle.

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

“You need more training,” the general said.

UPDATE: Here’s a blog that I found that focuses on the use of similar devices throughout the world, but especially in Thailand.

 

My friend Elias highlights a post over at Syria Comment on Syria’s “four seas strategy,” which has Syria at the center of an alliance with Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Presumably, one of the aims of this strategy would be to further isolate Israel in the region.

Now, I don’t know if I buy this strategy, as I don’t really see the strategic connection between such a hodgepodge of countries, except of course, that Syria is kind of roughly at the center of the bunch. But what the idea does underline is the souring of relations between Turkey and Israel, while the former gets cozier and cozier with Syria.

This ranges from the Turkish cancellation of NATO exercises in which Israel was to play a role and Erdogan’s outspoken criticism of the war in Gaza to the  lifting of visa requirements between Syria and Turkey and the announcement of future joint military exercises.

So what’s going on here? While it’s clear why Damascus would like to strengthen ties with Ankara, it’s not evident what Turkey has to gain in the exchange. Theories that I’ve heard range from the revival of Turkish influence in a neo-Ottoman alliance to a general souring of relations with the west because of European resistance to Turkey’s entry into the EU. Some others claim, often breathlessly, that this is a logical consequence of Ankara being ruled by an ostensibly Islamist government.

None of these ideas is particularly convincing to me on its own. It is likely a combination of several things. First of all, Turkey might be hedging its bets in case its bid for EU membership never comes through, and domestically speaking, Erdogan has nothing to lose and everything to gain by criticizing the war in Gaza and putting some distance between Israel and Turkey. Furthermore, in general, Israel needs Turkey more than the other way around. While Ankara does buy weapons from the Israelis,  as a NATO member state, Turkey is never in danger of a dearth of weaponry. Also, Israel has been weakened from an international standpoint by its conduct in Gaza and Lebanon, so pushing on the Jewish state is really a zero-cost course of action. Erdogan is able to shore up support at home and in the region at large without really risking much.

The increasingly cordial relations with Syria (and to a lesser extent Iran), I think, follow roughly the same logic. With both Damascus and Tehran leaning toward the possibility of improved relations with the US and consequently the rest of the West, Ankara doesn’t really risk much by improving relations with them, especially if the Turks keep a low, neutral profile when it comes to things like the Iranian nuclear program and support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Furthermore, by having friendly relations with Syria and Iran, Turkey can do its best to preemptively head off any Kurdish plans for independence, since all three countries share a desire to not have their Kurdish minorities lured to an independent Kurdistan, broken away from Iraq. So as long as Washington and Brussels continue to flirt with Damascus, Ankara doesn’t really risk upsetting anyone except the Israelis. And like I’ve said, the Israelis aren’t really in a position these days to dictate terms to one of the only Muslim countries that even recognizes them. So the Turks can strengthen their role in the region while getting in on the financial opening of Syria with little to no cost to relations with the West: again, win-win for Ankara.

The Economist has an interesting post on the Bernstein op-ed, which I looked at the other day:

Mr Bernstein has little concrete to say about allegations, substantiated by the UN’s Goldstone commission, by the Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem, and by HRW, that the IDF committed war crimes in Gaza. He writes that it is hard for human-rights organisations to “know” whether crimes took place because they rely on testimony from possibly self-interested witnesses. This is a very strange thing for someone who once founded a human-rights organisation to say, though I can well imagine it coming from representatives of the regimes they criticise. In my experience working with them, HRW’s researchers have been rigorous and scrupulous in their evaluations of testimony and evidence.

… As with other groups, there’s a long tradition of Jewish literary investigation into the unique historical predicaments of Jewishness. That impulse makes for great culture, and lousy politics. Israel and its supporters need to stop using their historical narratives for political cover. As far as international law is concerned, there is nothing so terribly exceptional about Israel. Every nation is different from every other nation, but we’re all subject to the same Geneva Conventions. The standards for Israel are no different from those for Hamas. That is what Human Rights Watch stands for, and Richard Bernstein isn’t doing Israel any favours by arguing the opposite.

I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment and don’t really have much to add to its content. But I will say that things seem to be changing for Israel. Even in the US, there is much more scrutiny of Israel’s actions and questioning of whether those actions, which are generally supported or at least not hindered by Washington, are in the American national interest. The Walt and Mearsheimer article on the Israel lobby got people talking about a topic most people kept away from like a third rail, and then as if it wanted to prove their point, Israel reacted to Hezbollah’s border raid and capturing of soldiers by brutally destroying much of Lebanon.

Since then, we’ve had Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, continued settlement of the West Bank and an overall lack of cooperation with the Obama administration. Things have gotten so bad for Israel that Olmert has been shouted down in Chicago and subject to an attempted citizen arrest for war crimes in San Francisco.  The current smears against J Street are but a sign of weakness from the pro-Likud lobby in Washington, whereas J Street’s success in staking out a pro-peace middle ground is a bellwether of the direction that American attitudes, including those of Jewish Americans, are starting to take on Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories.

The Titanic, as it were, seems to be sinking, and the Israelis aren’t even rearranging the deck chairs, they’re barreling down on the same course right into the iceberg, full steam ahead. When even the US finally has little sympathy for Israel’s actions, the Jewish state will have no one to blame but itself.

Robert Bernstein, a founder of Human Rights Watch, has penned an essay censuring the organization for its criticism of Israel:

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.

The organization is expressly concerned mainly with how wars are fought, not with motivations. To be sure, even victims of aggression are bound by the laws of war and must do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties. Nevertheless, there is a difference between wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.

This is wrong on many levels. First of all, for all his ignorant bluster and malicious holocaust denial, Ahmadinejad has never threatened to “murder Jews everywhere.” In fact, at around 25,000 people, Iran has the biggest Jewish population outside of Israel in the region. So if the Iranian regime, despicable as it is, has decided to start murdering Jews, that’s news to the tens of thousands of them who currently live in Iran.

Second, Bernstein seems to be saying that ostensibly democratic nations should get a free pass on human rights abuses. So by this logic, Guantanamo Bay would be fine, but a comparable detention center in, say, Uzbekistan wouldn’t be, because the former country is democratic while the second is authoritarian.

He finds fault with the idea that human rights groups ought to look at conduct instead of motivation. But motivation is by its very nature a subjective measurement. Israelis think that Hamas is motivated to send rockets because they just want to kill Jews, whereas Palestinians will tell you that their motivation is to do with 40 years of occupation and the blockade of Gaza’s land and sea borders. Conduct, on the other hand, is a much more objective thing to measure. Either Israelis used white phosphorous in populated areas or they didn’t.

What Bernstein, who surely knows better, is failing to note is that the fourth Geneva Convention, which is the international mechanism that deals with the treatment of civilians during war, makes no distinction between acts carried out by “open” societies and “closed” ones. Nor does it distinguish between “wrongs committed in self-defense and those perpetrated intentionally.” Finally, the convention states that even if a country’s enemy is not a signatory of the convention, that country is still bound to uphold the laws of war and that if one party of a conflict does not abide by these laws, that is not a reason for the other to fail to do so.

Simply put, a country, no matter how democratic or “open” it may be, cannot get a free pass on war crimes just because it is defending itself. A country’s responsibility to uphold the Geneva Conventions is not dependent on the nature of its enemy. The Israeli Supreme Court itself has said,

This is the destiny of a democracy: She does not see all means as acceptable, and the ways of her enemies are not always open before her. A democracy must sometimes fight with one arm tied behind her back.

Some wrongheaded defenders of Israel have claimed that because Israel is “defending itself,” the responsibility of dead Gazans lies at the feet of Hamas instead of the IDF, which has actually killed them. They often confuse motive with intent. The first explains why a country has done what it has and is irrelevant when discussing war crimes. In this case, Israel attacked Gaza in response to rocket attacks, whose motives were in return a response to the occupation and the blockade on Gaza (insert cycle of attacks and reprisals here).

On the other hand, intent, which is whether or not the action was done intentionally, is relevant to war crimes. So even if my main motive for blowing up an apartment building is to protect troops from rocket fire coming from next door, if I’ve intentionally destroyed that building knowing that the 25 civilians inside will likely be killed, I open myself up to accusations of war crimes. My motive is irrelevant, but the intent is important.

Finally, this all means that neither a country’s “openness” nor how democratic it is has any bearing on whether or not it has committed war crimes.*And as long as we’re talking about “openness,” this year’s ranking by Reporters Without Borders is probably germane to the discussion. In terms of freedom of the press, Israel has slipped to 93rd place out of 175 countries, putting it behind both Kuwait and Lebanon, while also placing 150th for Israel’s extra-territorial holdings, right behind Sudan and Afghanistan.

*Incidentally, for a discussion of how democracies might actually be more inclined to commit ethnic cleansing than their autocratic counterparts, see Michael Mann’s interesting book.

• My friend Elias over at The National the problems with consensual politics
• Alex de Waal on how Bayart’s politics of the belly relate to Sudan
• Christopher Borgen on how great powers talk about self-determination in Kosovo and South Ossetia
• Al-Megrahi lays out his case
• WaPo on Gration and another point of view from Bec Hamilton who was also there
• Patrick Seale on the implosion of Yemen
• LATimes on Amal Saad-Ghorayeb v. NATO
• Ian Ayres on headstone snark

There has been some interesting news out of the IAEA recently. The UN nuclear watchdog expressed concern about the nuclear capabilities of a certain middle eastern nation (hint: starts with an “I”) and voted to have all of its nuclear sites subject to UN inspections. But this is how that country responded:

“The delegation of [I] deplores this resolution,” David Danieli, deputy director of [I]’s atomic energy commission, told the chamber after the vote.

“[We] will not cooperate in any matter with this resolution which is only aiming at reinforcing political hostilities and lines of division in the Middle East region.

This news should get the hawks in Washington riled up and should be a prelude to getting western nations ready to lay on economic sanctions, right? Of course none of those things will happen, because the nation in question isn’t Iran, it’s Israel.

The latter, as opposed to the former, actually does have nuclear weapons and keeps their existence a poorly guarded secret. In fact Israelis are prosecuted for publicly speaking about the Jewish state’s nuclear weapons program. But where is the outrage? Where are the economic sanctions aimed at Israel?

This double standard certainly does not go unnoticed in Tehran, where the Iranian government can see a clear difference in how Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea are treated as  opposed to, say, Iraq. And what lesson do we think Iran will learn from such a double standard?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: eventually, either nobody will have nukes in the middle east, or everybody will.

Last night, I spent about an hour of my life that I’ll never get back watching Gadaffi give his speech at the UN. It’s the first time that I’ve ever watched, as opposed to read, one of his speeches, and I hope it will be the last.

He rambled on and on and on about the inequality of the UN Security Council (and especially it’s veto-wielding permanent members), reparations for Africa ($7.77 trillion, how he came up with this number is anyone’s guess), 65 wars that weren’t stopped by the UN (I’d be curious to see the list), moving the UN headquarters (apparently to combat jet-lag and give the US a break), amongst other issues that I didn’t see, because CNN decided to cut the broadcast short and get reactions (al-hamdullah!).

Gadaffi made a fool out of himself and Libya, as well as the African Union, of which he is currently the president. He also made serious issues, like reforming the Security Council, sound ridiculous. He kept rambling with self-righteous pomp, presumably hoping that if he said the same thing the seventh time in a slightly different way, he’d get some thunderous applause.

Reforming the UN Security Council, which he called the “Terror Council,”  is an important issue that deserves serious consideration, not the ramblings of a demented tinpot dictator whose petro-dollar budget is only matched in size by his ego. He continually and repeatedly lambasted the UN for hypocrisy, for failing to stop 65 wars (one of which was his invasion of neighboring Chad and malicious meddling in Sudan), for not being democratic (as opposed to his 40 years of despotic rule that’s about as crazy as those of Idi Amin or Turkmenbashi), and for fomenting metaphorical “terror” (as opposed to the literal kind).

Some of the issues that (King of kings) Gaddafi tried to bring up in his tin-eared megalomaniac way deserve to be discussed rationally, not mocked because of the insanity of their messenger. Gadaffi, as usual, has set back the cause that he claims to support.

The UN fact finding mission on last winter’s war in Gaza is out, and you can read the report here. I haven’t had time to read the report yet, but I have read some of the commentary, most likely by people who also haven’t read the report. One thing that struck me was a striking similarity in language coming from opposite sides of the spectrum.

Here are two quotes, one from Max Boot at Commentary and the other from As’ad Abukhalil, a.k.a. the Angry Arab. Try to guess who is who:

it’s a good thing that the United Nations wasn’t around during World War II. I can just imagine its producing a supposedly evenhanded report that condemned the Nazis for “grave” abuses such as incinerating Jews, while also condemning the Allies for their equally “grave” abuses such as fire-bombing German and Japanese cities. The recommendation, no doubt, would have been that both sides be tried for war crimes, with Adolf Hitler in the dock alongside Franklin Roosevelt.

and:

Of course, all [UN] reports … now have to condemn the victims. It is called a balance. If Judge Goldstone were to write a report about Nazi war crimes, he would have considered the Warsaw ghetto uprising a war crime too.

I’m sure neither realizes the irony of their similar rhetoric. Of course, neither of these brilliant minds seems too upset about being an example of Godwin’s Law, either. In any case, the answers are here and here.

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/FactFindingMission.htm

I know the blog has been slow (read: dead) lately, but I promise it will pick back up soon enough. In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of pieces out that you can check out.

The first is in Publio and is a creative piece called “Arabic for Lovers: A Lexicon for Beginners,” and the second is in the current edition of The Executive, and is a longer more substantive piece on domestic workers in Lebanon called, “Serve but don’t swim.”

Unfortunately, neither is available online, but both are really good magazines that you’ll want to buy anyway.