Emmanuel Eni
Chapter 3: The Wicked Reign
«The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly» John 10:10 On returning to Lagos, I continued in my business and after two weeks I went back to the sea. The Queen of the Coast gave me what she called her “first assignment”. I should go to my village and kill my uncle, a prominent powerful native doctor who was responsible, according to her, for the death of my parents. I obeyed and went but having not killed before, I hadn’t the courage to kill him, rather I destroyed his medicines and rendered him powerless. As a result of this act he lost all his customers till this date. I came back to give a report assignment but she was wrathful with me. She said the consequence of disobeying her instructions was death, but because of her love for me she would send me back to the same village to kill two elders who she said gave a helping hand in the killing of my parents. Whether this was a punishment for disobeying her or not, I did not know. However, I obeyed and went back to the village and ‘managed’ to kill these men and sent their blood to her. As a result of the mysterious circumstances of their death the elders in the village went to inquire from another powerful native doctor who normally sent lightning to investigate the killer. Unfortunately for these men, I met the native doctor in spirit where he was consulting with spirits and warned him not to say anything if he loved his life. He came out and told the elders to go home and beg one of their sons whom they had offended and never mentioned my name. The lightning he sent returned and struck in their midst killing some and leaving many wounded. After this first act, the powers in me started manifesting themselves. I would deform a girl for refusing me friendship etc. Eni
My Meeting with Satan
I later went back to Lagos. One day, a girl named NINA came to me. NINA whose parents were from Anambra State was a very beautiful young girl but lives mostly in the sea, i.e. the underwater spirit world. She was an ardent agent of the Queen of the Coast and very wicked. She hated the Christians to the core and would go all length to fight Christianity. I first met her during my visit to the sea. NINA came for an errand from the Queen of the Coast. We left immediately and reaching there I learnt of our having a conference with Lucifer. Satan, in this meeting, gave us the following instructions: To fight the believers and not the unbelievers, because the unbelievers were already his. When he said this, one of us asked: “Why?” He said the reason was that God drove him out of ‘that place” (he refused to call the word ‘Heaven’ and all throughout our meetings with him he never mentioned the word ‘Heaven’. Rather he would always use the word ‘that place’) because of pride, and therefore he does not want any Christian to get there (Heaven). He also told us that we should not fight the hypocrites. “They are like me”, he said. He continued his speech and said: “We should only fight the real Christians.” That his time was near, therefore “we should fight as never before and make sure no one enters 'that place'.” So one of us said to him: “We heard that God has sent someone to rescue mankind back to God.” Satan then asked: “Who is that?” One member answered “Jesus” and to our greatest surprise, Lucifer fell from his seat. He shouted at the man and warned him never to mention that name in any of our meetings if he loves his life. It is true that at the name of Jesus every knee must bow (Phil. 2: 10), including Satan.
After this incident he encouraged us and told us not to mind “these Christians”, that he Lucifer would soon come to rule the world and would give us, his agents, a better place so that we would not suffer with the rest of the world and he would make us rulers. He continued that since man likes flashy and fanciful things, he would continue to manufacture these things and make sure that man has no time for his God and that he would use the following to destroy the church:
1. Money, 2. Wealth, 3. Women.
At the end of this speech he dismissed the meeting. This was my first meeting with Satan. Several others followed after this meeting. As we were leaving, the Queen of the Coast, who now appears in different forms, invited me to her mansion. She inserted human ashes with other things inside the bones of my two legs, a stone (not an ordinary stone) in my finger and something else inside the bone of my right hand. Each of these things had their duties. The stone in my finger was to know the thought of anyone against me. The one in my right hand was to empower me to destroy and the ones in the legs are to make me more hardened and to become more dangerous and also to enable me change to a woman, beast, bird, cat, etc. She took me to one of the laboratories and gave me a telescope, a T.V. and a video. These were not ordinary things but were to be used in detecting the born again Christians and the church goers inside the Church. Finally she gave me sixteen girls to work as my agents. NINA was one of them. I came back to Lagos armed with the above mentioned ‘gifts’.
Transformed into satan’s agent
I had no human feelings nor mercy in my heart any longer. I went into operation immediately and destroyed five duplex at a go. They all sunk inside the ground with their inhabitants. This happened at Lagos in August 1982. The contractor was held responsible for not laying a good foundation and paid dearly for it. A lot of destruction happening in the world today are not man made. The devil’s duty is to steal, kill and destroy. I say it again, “satan has no free gift”. I went into causing accidents on the roads etc. A case I would like to mention is about a young convert who went about testifying of his salvation and deliverance. He was causing a lot of harm in the spirit world for doing this, so I planned an accident for him. One day he was on a luxurious bus to Lagos. He had an appointment where he was to give his testimony. As the bus was on high speed, I wheeled it out of the road and it went and crashed onto a tree. All the passengers died except this young convert. His escape was miraculous because he came out of the vehicle through the boot of the bus and shouted: “I am safe! I am safe!” We tried to stop him from testifying but we failed. Through the T.V., we would know a man who repented newly and would pursue him seriously to see if we could make him backslide. If after six months we do not succeed, we would go into his business and make it go bankrupt. If he/she is a civil servant we would oppress him/her through the boss, and if possible make the boss terminate his/her appointment. If after all these he refuses to backslide then we would give him up. But if he backslides he would be killed to make sure he does not have a second chance to repent. I destroyed lives to the extent that Lucifer became very pleased and made me chairman of the wizards. A month after my chairmanship, a meeting was called. We attended that meeting as birds, cats and snakes. These creatures are used for the following reasons;
1. Turning to birds make wizards more dangerous.
2. Turning to cats make wizards able to reach both spirits and humans.
3. Turning to rats enable wizards to enter into a house easily, then in the night turn to shadow, and then to human being and suck the victim's blood.
In this meeting we had only one item on the agenda: “The Christians.” We then scheduled to hold an African wizard conference in Benin city in 1983. We published it in all the dailies and all the public media. All the forces of darkness were mobilized and we were very confident that nothing was going to interrupt this meeting. In fact everything was well planned and there was no loophole. Suddenly, the Christians in Nigeria went into prayers and praises unto their God and all our plans were shattered. Not only that our plans were shattered but also there was real confusion in the kingdom of darkness. As a result, the witches' and wizards' conference could not be held in Nigeria. Christians should note that the moment they go into real praises to God almighty, there would be trouble and confusion both in the sea and in the air, and the agents of satan would have no resting place. Prayer is like throwing a time-bomb in our midst and everyone would escape for his/her life. If Christians would realize and use the power and authority God has given them, they would control the affairs of their nation! Only Christians can save our nation. After the failure of this conference, which was later held in South Africa, I was called back to the sea. When I arrived, I was told from that moment I would make the sea my home and only visit the world for difficult operations. I was given a new assignment: inventing charms for native doctors, in charge of the control room and sending the gifts, i.e. opening of white garment churches (prayer houses), opening of maternities, opening stores and making them prosper, giving 'children' and money. These will be explained one after the other:
1. Opening of White "Garment Churches": When a man comes to us for an assistance to build a prayer house and help him performing healings etc., he would be given some conditions:
a) He will agree to donate to us one or two souls every year.
b) At a certain level of office in the church the person would be initiated to our society.
c) No member would be allowed to come into the prayer house with shoes on.
When he accepts these conditions, he would be given something like a white gravel, human bones, blood and charms, all in a native pot. He would be instructed to bury this pot with all its content in front of the church and bury the cross on its top. After the burial, only the cross should be seen. He would be advised to build a pool or keep a basin where spirits would continue to supply special water. This water is what you hear them call "holy water." Many people when disturbed by evil spirits go to these “prophets” to cast them out. The truth is, they only add more demons to them. A devil cannot cast out devil. (Luke 11:17-19) What the prophet would do is, he will pray for the member and then give him/her a red cloth to put in his/ her house, and then would advise him/her to always pray with candles and incenses. By this act the person invites us into his/her house. Sometimes the member would be advised to bring a goat etc., for sacrifice. These sacrifices are for us to come and help cure the man. The prophet has no power to cure or heal.
2. Opening of Maternities: If a woman comes to us for assistance in opening a maternity and making it prosper, she would be given this condition: "A month would be chosen by us in which all the children born in the maternity would die, but the other months the children would live"If she accepts, she would also be given a charm which would attract people into the maternity. There are such maternities in Onitsha, Lagos, etc. shoes are not allowed into such maternities.
3. Opening of Fancy Stores: When a man approaches us for assistance in this respect, he would be given a ring with a condition that no woman should be allowed to touch it. He also must agree to be our member. If he accepts to fulfill these conditions, his store would be stocked always with the best and latest materials by us.
4. Giving of Children: If a barren woman goes to some native doctors, after laying her complaints, she would be asked to bring the following: a white cock, a goat, native chalk and baby care. She would be advised to go and in her absence, the native doctor will come to us bringing these things. We would then mix certain things which are difficult to explain in writing, and include human ashes. He would use this charm to cook food for the woman etc. She would become pregnant and give birth, but it's not a normal human being. If the child is a female she would live and even get married but would remain barren all her life. If the child is a male he will live and even be trained only to die suddenly. They never live to bury their parents. I would like to mention here that barrenness is mostly caused by demons. You may see a woman barren here on earth, but she would have children in the sea. I therefore advise God's children to wait on God alone because only God gives real children.
5. Giving of Money: If a man comes to us for money, he would be given these conditions to fulfill: He will be asked to give a part of his body or if he has a family he would be asked to bring his son. If single, he would be asked to bring his elder or younger brother. Whoever he decides to bring must be from the same womb. Something worth mentioning is: during the killing of the victim, the person who brought him would be given a spear or an arrow. His relations would be made to file past in a mirror. As soon as the one he had donates passes, he would be asked to strike and as this happens the victim would die where he is. There are other methods but one thing Satan does is that: He makes sure that in the different methods, the donor becomes responsible for the death of the victim, by making the donor strike the victim. remember, satan has no free gift.
30 Jun 2014
DELIVERANCE FROM THE POWER OF DARKNESS: THE INITIATION
Emmanuel Eni
Chapter 2: The Initiation
« There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. » Proverbs 14:12 « But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God to the wicked. » Isaiah 57: 20-21 And life outside Jesus Christ is exactly as stated in the above Scriptures. I left my village armed with N50 and the address given to me by Alice, escaping to freedom, liberty, enjoyment and all that go with them: but as you will see later it was far from what I had conceived in my young heart. When I arrived in Lagos, it was so beautiful in my eyes and I compared it with Heaven, whatever Heaven is like. I saw all those tall and beautiful buildings and on each face I could see happiness (so I thought). People appeared very busy each one minding his/her business. I was excited and said to myself, “Now I know I am free! I arrived at Akintola Road, Victoria Island and was well received by Alice and her parents. The parents knew me and my background as we came from the same village but never knew of my relationship with their daughter. Alice then introduced me to them as a man she has ‘chosen’ to marry. The parents were shocked but after some discussions with her, agreed on the condition that they would further my education. Alice rejected their offer and requested that I be allowed to live with her in her own flat. The parents could not accept this but she insisted. They had a strong argument for four days and under some unexplained influence they agreed and I moved in with Alice. Alice, a very beautiful girl, told me that she was an accountant with the Standard Bank and that she would make me rich and give me all that I needed in this life and said: “Just settle down and enjoy yourself!” My first impression about Lagos was true after all; few months ago I was in a small hut in a small village surrounded by hatred, starvation and suffering and here I am, living in a big city, in a well furnished flat with a beautiful ‘wife’ who had promised to give me all that life could offer. She showered me with gifts, money, clothing, ‘love’ etc. I never knew that the world was filled with these ‘good things’. The devil indeed is a deceiver! The Scripture rightly says: “The thief cometh not but for to steal, to kill and to destroy. ONLY the son of man (JESUS CHRIST) can give life and give it more abundantly3” (John 10: 10). Dear reader, the devil has no free gift! Whatever he gives you is for an exchange with your soul. This state of euphoria was short-lived, because after a period of three months strange things started happening.
The Mysterious Experiences
One night, I woke up in the dead of the night and found a boa-constrictor beside me. I wanted to shout but could not. Some nights, I would wake up to see Alice’s body as transparent as a cellophane bag. Some nights, she would disappear and reappear. Some nights I would hear strange noises or dancing in the living room etc. I could no longer bear these fearful happenings so I decided to ask her, and the first reaction was violence and serious warning. She said: “Do not ask me this question again or else I will deal with you.” From then I knew my life was in danger. I then preferred the sufferings in the village to what I came to discover. I became afraid of her. Two days passed and she came with smiles, gifts and hugged me. She told me how much she loved and cared for me and encouraged me not to be afraid and promised to explain things to me later. She took me to a night club and there reminded me of her promise to make me rich etc., and told me: “ONE DAY YOU WILL KNOW ALL THAT I KNOW!” We came back and life continued as normal between us. Inwardly I knew I was in danger, but how could I escape and where would I escape to? It is important to note here that Alice’s parents did not know that their daughter, though young, was involved seriously in occultism and spiritualism and she seriously warned me never to tell them if I loved my life. Dear reader, can you imagine, a 20 year old girl doing all these things? The outside world saw her as a very beautiful and harmless girl working with a big Bank but she was the devil’s agent. There are a lot of Alices in the world today as you will find out later in this book.
A Horrific Discovery
One day, after she had left for work, I decided to search the flat. As young as she was, the flat was well furnished. She had four refrigerators and on opening one, I saw human skulls, different parts of human body both fresh and dry. Inside the ceiling were skeletons. In another corner of one of the rooms I saw (what I later knew as a ‘chamber’) a water-pot filled with blood and a small tree in the centre of the pot, a calabash and a red cloth by it. I could not continue. Now I knew that I was a dead man and since I had nowhere to run to. I surrendered my life to whatever comes, life or death and kept sealed lips. Alice came back from work and from the way she looked at me, I knew that right in her office she knew what I did in the house. Encounter with the Occult World
The following day she requested me to follow her to a meeting. I was already a captive and had no choice. We went to a very big building on the outskirts of Lagos. On arriving (the building had an underground conference hall), I was instructed by Alice to enter backwards. I obeyed and entered with my back, she also did the same. The hall was so large with about 500 young men and women seated in a circle, and seated above them was a man whose head could only be seen and without a body, as the Leader. Some of these young people were students, undergraduates, graduates, teachers etc. Alice pressed a button on the wall and a seat came out from the ground and I sat. She did the same and another came out for her and she sat. She introduced me to the congregation as a new member and they applauded and welcomed me. Alice was promoted as a result of this. All that they discussed in the meeting I never understood. At the end of it and as we were about to leave, I was asked to come back alone the following day by the Leader. This was my first encounter with the occult world. That same night, at 2.00 a.m. (and this is the usual hour of meetings and dangerous operations by all the forces of darkness and their agents), Alice woke me up and revealed certain things to me. She said: “I am not an ordinary human being. I am half human and half spirit but mainly of the spirit. What you see in my chamber is what I use in the night so that the spirit will guide me through the day. As for the skeletons I will tell you later.” I never said a word. She brought out some books on world mysteries for me to read, and with my inquisitive mind I decided to read them. Shortly I became interested and immediately she saw that I was now interested. Unknown to me, she sent my name to an occult society in India. As previously instructed, the following day I went back to the society alone and there met nine others and some witnesses. We were to be initiated. We were called out to the centre of the hall and the following things were administered to us: 1. A concoction that looked like putty was rubbed on our bodies. This qualifies you as a full member. 2. A glass shot of oil-like liquid was given to us to drink. This qualifies you to be an agent. 3. A gunpowder-like substance was rubbed on our heads. This qualifies you to study their mysteries. Unknown also to me, this initiation ceremony was being recorded in India and the next day I received a letter from them. In the letter I was instructed to stain the letter with my own blood and to post it back to them through a means they described, not the Post Office. I did. From this point, there was no turning back; turning back meant death as one was always reminded and I knew there was no more hope for me.
Covenant with Alice
Early one morning, she told me there was an important ceremony to be performed in the house. At 2.00 a.m. she brought a crawling child, a girl, alive. Before my eyes, Alice used her fingers and plucked out the child eyes. The cry of that child broke my heart. She then slaughtered the child into pieces and poured both the blood and the flesh into a tray and asked me to eat. I refused. She looked straight at me and what came out of her eyes cannot be explained in writing. Before I knew what was happening, I was not only chewing the meat but also licking the blood. While this was happening she said: “This is a covenant between us, you will never say out anything you see me do or anything about me to any human on earth. The day you break this covenant your own is gone.” Meaning that the day I break this covenant I will be killed. After this incident I started having strange feelings inside me. I was changed and could no longer control myself. A word of warning to mothers. Do you know your house helps? What is his/her background like? Do you care to find out all about him/her before entrusting the lives of your children etc. to him/her? How did Alice get the little child she slaughtered, you may ask. Therefore parents, know the background of your house helps. When Alice saw that she had succeeded in getting me fully involved in SPIRITISM and was fast growing in it, she was satisfied an knew her mission was accomplished. She found a flat for me, helped furnish it and thereafter severed the relationship.
Covenant in India
The Society in Delhi, India sent me a second letter asking me to come over to India. In it also I was instructed to do the following: “Eat excreta, eat decaying smelling rats, and to have sexual intercourse with spirits in the cemetery at night.” After fulfilling the above I was bound never to have any sexual intercourse with any women on earth. I sent a reply to their letter informing them that I had no visa neither do I know how to get to India. At this time I had started doing ‘business’. I was a serious smuggler but because of these powers behind me I had no trouble with customs etc
I started having a lot of money, food and materials were no longer scarce. One day, I locked my flat and went out; coming back, I opened the door and behold a man sitting in the parlor. I was afraid. He said: “Are you not Emmanuel Amos?” I said I am. He said: “I have been sent to come and collect you to India, so get ready.” I locked everywhere, went and sat beside him on the cushion ready for the next order. But like lightning, he touched me and we vanished. The next place I saw myself was in a big conference hall in Delhi, India, with a large congregation already seated and waiting to welcome us. They brought out files where my name had already been written and asked me to sign beside it. I did. A tray containing human flesh, cut in pieces with a basin of blood were brought. An empty jug was given to each person, then a man without a head went round pouring the blood and flesh into the jugs. Different candles and incenses were being burnt also. The headless man made some incantations and everyone drank the blood and ate the meat and the meeting was over.
The Initiations in India
Now the period of my testing had come. I was sent to a valley about 200 metres deep. In it were assorted dangerous reptiles and wild beasts. These were to torture me. I was not to shout, for if I did, I have failed the exam and the consequence was DEATH. After seven days of agony I was brought out and sent to a place called ‘INDIA JUNGLE’. In this jungle, I saw different types of demonic birds; demonic because some had faces like dogs, some like cats, etc. Yet with wings. Inside this jungle was a cave, and this cave is only opened by these demonic birds. They opened the cave and I went inside. The things I saw are hard to explain. There were terrible creatures, some looked like human beings but with tails and without human faces, etc. This was another place of torture. The torture there could best be described as semi-hell. I was in that state for 7 days and was brought out. I was then sent to a very big library that contained large volumes of mystic books to study. I later picked two books: Abbysinia, which means destruction, and Assina, which means giving life or curing. Later I was given more books. I was instructed to build a chamber as soon as I return to Nigeria with the following things in it: “A native water pot filled with human blood, a living tree inside, a human skull, vulture feathers, wild animal skins, boa skin and a big shiny laterites beside the pot.” The blood inside the water pot is to be taken every morning with an incantation. I was also instructed never to eat any food cooked by HUMANS but that I would be fed supernaturally. With all these instructions I came back to Nigeria the same way I went, and fulfilled all. Back Home in Nigeria
I had now become a part and parcel of the spirit world and could travel at will to any part of the world. According to the books I brought, spirit beings are living in space. Perhaps they would increase my powers, so I decided to try. I came out of my house, made some incantations and called the whirl wind and disappeared. I found myself in space and saw these spirit beings. What do you want they asked; I told them I wanted powers. I came back to earth after two weeks having acquired powers from them. Like I said earlier, I no longer could control myself. Despite all these powers I had already received, I still needed more and more powers! I then decided to go into underworld to prove what was written in the books given to me. One day I went to a hidden place in the bush, made some incantations as stated in the books and commanded the ground to open. The ground opened and the demons created steps immediately. I stepped in and went right inside the ground. There was total darkness that can only be compared with one of the plagues that occurred in Egypt as recorded in the Bible. I saw a lot of things that are hard to explain. I saw people chained, people used for making money - their duties are to work day and night to supply money to their captors. I saw some elite society members who came in to do some sacrifices and would go back to the world with some gifts given to them by the spirits controlling the place. I saw some church leaders who came for powers, powers to say a thing that is accepted without questioning in the church. I stayed for two weeks and came back after receiving more powers. People saw me as young and innocent but never knew I was dangerous. There are lots of such people around; only those in Christ Jesus are safe in real sense of safety.
Covenant with The Queen of The Coast
One evening, I decided to have a walk. Along Ebute Metta bus-stop, I saw a young beautiful lady standing. I never spoke a word to her. The next day while passing also I saw her still at the same spot. The third day I saw her still at the same spot and while passing she called me. I stopped and introduced myself to her as Emmanuel Amos but she refused introducing herself. I asked her name and address but she only laughed. She asked me mine and I told her the street ONLY. When I was about leaving, she said she would visit me one day. In my mind I said, that was impossible, I did not give her my house number how then could she come. But true to her words, I heard a knock on my door after a week of that meeting at the bus-stop. There she was, the mysterious lady! I welcomed her in my mind. (I wondered who this beautiful lady was, and did she know she was treading on dangerous grounds?) I entertained her and she left. After this first visit, her visits became regular without any relationships. I noticed that in her visits she kept to a particular time, and would not come a minute earlier or later! In some of her visits I would take her to the Lagos Barbeach, or to the Paramount Hotel or Ambassador Hotel etc. All these while, she still did not tell me her name. I decided not to worry since I knew the relationship would not develop more than that. I had already been instructed never to touch a woman. Suddenly she changed the day visits to nights. During one of the visits she told me: “Now it is time for you to visit me.” We stayed together that night and at 8.00 a.m. the following day we took off. We joined a bus and she told the driver to stop at the barbeach. As we stopped, I asked her: “Where are we going?” She said: “Don’t worry, you are going to know my house.” She took me to a corner of the barbeach, used something like a belt and tied around us and immediately a force came from behind and pushed us into the sea. We started flying on the surface of the water and straight to the ocean. Dear reader, these happened in my physical form! At a point we sank into the sea bed and to my surprise I saw us walking along an express way. We moved into a city with a lot of people all very busy.
The Spirit World
I saw laboratories, like science lab, designing lab, and a theatre. At the back of the city, I saw young beautiful girls and handsome young men. No old people. She introduced me to them and I was welcomed. She took me to places like “darkroom”, “drying room”, and “packing room”. She then took me to a main factory and warehouse and then came to her private mansion. There she sat me and told me: “I am the queen of the coast and would like very much to work with you. I promise to give you wealth and all that go with it, protection and all that go with it, life and an ‘angel’ to guide you.” She pressed a button and a tray came out with human flesh (in pieces) in it and we ate together. She commanded a boa to appear and asked me to swallow it. I could not. She insisted but I could not, how could I swallow a live boa. She then used her powers and I swallowed it. These were three covenants: The human flesh and blood, the boa and the demonic angel were always there to make sure no secret was revealed. But the ‘angel’ was given power to discipline me if I went astray and also to bring me food from the sea any time I was here on earth. I promised to obey her always. After this promise she took me to another part of the ocean, this time an island. There were trees and each of these trees had different duties: - tree for poisoning, - tree for killing, - tree for invoking, and - tree for cure. She gave me powers to change to all kinds of sea animals like hippopotamus, boa constrictor and crocodile and then she vanished. I stayed in the sea for a week and through one of the means (as crocodile) mentioned above I came back to the world.
The Underworld Laboratories
I stayed in Lagos for a week and went back to the sea, this time for two months. I went into the scientific laboratories to see what was happening. I saw psychiatrists and scientists all working very seriously. The work of these scientists is to design beautiful things like flashy cars, etc., latest weapons and to know the mystery of this world. If it were possible to know the pillar of the world they could have, but thank God, ONLY GOD KNOWS. I moved into the designing room and there I saw many samples of cloth, perfumes and assorted types of cosmetic. All these things according to Lucifer are to distract men’s attention from the Almighty God. I also saw different designs of electronics, computers and alarms. There was also a T.V. from where they knew those who are born again Christians in the world. There you see and differentiate those who are church goers and those who are real Christians. I then moved from the laboratories to the ‘dark room’ and ‘drying room’. The dark room is where they kill any disobedient member. They kill by first draining the person’s blood and then send the person to the machine room where he/ she will be ground to powder and then send the dust to the ‘sack room’ where they will be bagged and kept for the native doctors to collect for their charms. There were more things which are hard to explain in writing. Despite all these powers in me, I was not yet qualified to meet with Lucifer but only qualified to be his agent. All the same I was satisfied that I now had powers and could face, challenge and destroy things at will. Could there be any other powers anywhere I mused within my mind.
Chapter 2: The Initiation
« There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. » Proverbs 14:12 « But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God to the wicked. » Isaiah 57: 20-21 And life outside Jesus Christ is exactly as stated in the above Scriptures. I left my village armed with N50 and the address given to me by Alice, escaping to freedom, liberty, enjoyment and all that go with them: but as you will see later it was far from what I had conceived in my young heart. When I arrived in Lagos, it was so beautiful in my eyes and I compared it with Heaven, whatever Heaven is like. I saw all those tall and beautiful buildings and on each face I could see happiness (so I thought). People appeared very busy each one minding his/her business. I was excited and said to myself, “Now I know I am free! I arrived at Akintola Road, Victoria Island and was well received by Alice and her parents. The parents knew me and my background as we came from the same village but never knew of my relationship with their daughter. Alice then introduced me to them as a man she has ‘chosen’ to marry. The parents were shocked but after some discussions with her, agreed on the condition that they would further my education. Alice rejected their offer and requested that I be allowed to live with her in her own flat. The parents could not accept this but she insisted. They had a strong argument for four days and under some unexplained influence they agreed and I moved in with Alice. Alice, a very beautiful girl, told me that she was an accountant with the Standard Bank and that she would make me rich and give me all that I needed in this life and said: “Just settle down and enjoy yourself!” My first impression about Lagos was true after all; few months ago I was in a small hut in a small village surrounded by hatred, starvation and suffering and here I am, living in a big city, in a well furnished flat with a beautiful ‘wife’ who had promised to give me all that life could offer. She showered me with gifts, money, clothing, ‘love’ etc. I never knew that the world was filled with these ‘good things’. The devil indeed is a deceiver! The Scripture rightly says: “The thief cometh not but for to steal, to kill and to destroy. ONLY the son of man (JESUS CHRIST) can give life and give it more abundantly3” (John 10: 10). Dear reader, the devil has no free gift! Whatever he gives you is for an exchange with your soul. This state of euphoria was short-lived, because after a period of three months strange things started happening.
The Mysterious Experiences
One night, I woke up in the dead of the night and found a boa-constrictor beside me. I wanted to shout but could not. Some nights, I would wake up to see Alice’s body as transparent as a cellophane bag. Some nights, she would disappear and reappear. Some nights I would hear strange noises or dancing in the living room etc. I could no longer bear these fearful happenings so I decided to ask her, and the first reaction was violence and serious warning. She said: “Do not ask me this question again or else I will deal with you.” From then I knew my life was in danger. I then preferred the sufferings in the village to what I came to discover. I became afraid of her. Two days passed and she came with smiles, gifts and hugged me. She told me how much she loved and cared for me and encouraged me not to be afraid and promised to explain things to me later. She took me to a night club and there reminded me of her promise to make me rich etc., and told me: “ONE DAY YOU WILL KNOW ALL THAT I KNOW!” We came back and life continued as normal between us. Inwardly I knew I was in danger, but how could I escape and where would I escape to? It is important to note here that Alice’s parents did not know that their daughter, though young, was involved seriously in occultism and spiritualism and she seriously warned me never to tell them if I loved my life. Dear reader, can you imagine, a 20 year old girl doing all these things? The outside world saw her as a very beautiful and harmless girl working with a big Bank but she was the devil’s agent. There are a lot of Alices in the world today as you will find out later in this book.
A Horrific Discovery
One day, after she had left for work, I decided to search the flat. As young as she was, the flat was well furnished. She had four refrigerators and on opening one, I saw human skulls, different parts of human body both fresh and dry. Inside the ceiling were skeletons. In another corner of one of the rooms I saw (what I later knew as a ‘chamber’) a water-pot filled with blood and a small tree in the centre of the pot, a calabash and a red cloth by it. I could not continue. Now I knew that I was a dead man and since I had nowhere to run to. I surrendered my life to whatever comes, life or death and kept sealed lips. Alice came back from work and from the way she looked at me, I knew that right in her office she knew what I did in the house. Encounter with the Occult World
The following day she requested me to follow her to a meeting. I was already a captive and had no choice. We went to a very big building on the outskirts of Lagos. On arriving (the building had an underground conference hall), I was instructed by Alice to enter backwards. I obeyed and entered with my back, she also did the same. The hall was so large with about 500 young men and women seated in a circle, and seated above them was a man whose head could only be seen and without a body, as the Leader. Some of these young people were students, undergraduates, graduates, teachers etc. Alice pressed a button on the wall and a seat came out from the ground and I sat. She did the same and another came out for her and she sat. She introduced me to the congregation as a new member and they applauded and welcomed me. Alice was promoted as a result of this. All that they discussed in the meeting I never understood. At the end of it and as we were about to leave, I was asked to come back alone the following day by the Leader. This was my first encounter with the occult world. That same night, at 2.00 a.m. (and this is the usual hour of meetings and dangerous operations by all the forces of darkness and their agents), Alice woke me up and revealed certain things to me. She said: “I am not an ordinary human being. I am half human and half spirit but mainly of the spirit. What you see in my chamber is what I use in the night so that the spirit will guide me through the day. As for the skeletons I will tell you later.” I never said a word. She brought out some books on world mysteries for me to read, and with my inquisitive mind I decided to read them. Shortly I became interested and immediately she saw that I was now interested. Unknown to me, she sent my name to an occult society in India. As previously instructed, the following day I went back to the society alone and there met nine others and some witnesses. We were to be initiated. We were called out to the centre of the hall and the following things were administered to us: 1. A concoction that looked like putty was rubbed on our bodies. This qualifies you as a full member. 2. A glass shot of oil-like liquid was given to us to drink. This qualifies you to be an agent. 3. A gunpowder-like substance was rubbed on our heads. This qualifies you to study their mysteries. Unknown also to me, this initiation ceremony was being recorded in India and the next day I received a letter from them. In the letter I was instructed to stain the letter with my own blood and to post it back to them through a means they described, not the Post Office. I did. From this point, there was no turning back; turning back meant death as one was always reminded and I knew there was no more hope for me.
Covenant with Alice
Early one morning, she told me there was an important ceremony to be performed in the house. At 2.00 a.m. she brought a crawling child, a girl, alive. Before my eyes, Alice used her fingers and plucked out the child eyes. The cry of that child broke my heart. She then slaughtered the child into pieces and poured both the blood and the flesh into a tray and asked me to eat. I refused. She looked straight at me and what came out of her eyes cannot be explained in writing. Before I knew what was happening, I was not only chewing the meat but also licking the blood. While this was happening she said: “This is a covenant between us, you will never say out anything you see me do or anything about me to any human on earth. The day you break this covenant your own is gone.” Meaning that the day I break this covenant I will be killed. After this incident I started having strange feelings inside me. I was changed and could no longer control myself. A word of warning to mothers. Do you know your house helps? What is his/her background like? Do you care to find out all about him/her before entrusting the lives of your children etc. to him/her? How did Alice get the little child she slaughtered, you may ask. Therefore parents, know the background of your house helps. When Alice saw that she had succeeded in getting me fully involved in SPIRITISM and was fast growing in it, she was satisfied an knew her mission was accomplished. She found a flat for me, helped furnish it and thereafter severed the relationship.
Covenant in India
The Society in Delhi, India sent me a second letter asking me to come over to India. In it also I was instructed to do the following: “Eat excreta, eat decaying smelling rats, and to have sexual intercourse with spirits in the cemetery at night.” After fulfilling the above I was bound never to have any sexual intercourse with any women on earth. I sent a reply to their letter informing them that I had no visa neither do I know how to get to India. At this time I had started doing ‘business’. I was a serious smuggler but because of these powers behind me I had no trouble with customs etc
I started having a lot of money, food and materials were no longer scarce. One day, I locked my flat and went out; coming back, I opened the door and behold a man sitting in the parlor. I was afraid. He said: “Are you not Emmanuel Amos?” I said I am. He said: “I have been sent to come and collect you to India, so get ready.” I locked everywhere, went and sat beside him on the cushion ready for the next order. But like lightning, he touched me and we vanished. The next place I saw myself was in a big conference hall in Delhi, India, with a large congregation already seated and waiting to welcome us. They brought out files where my name had already been written and asked me to sign beside it. I did. A tray containing human flesh, cut in pieces with a basin of blood were brought. An empty jug was given to each person, then a man without a head went round pouring the blood and flesh into the jugs. Different candles and incenses were being burnt also. The headless man made some incantations and everyone drank the blood and ate the meat and the meeting was over.
The Initiations in India
Now the period of my testing had come. I was sent to a valley about 200 metres deep. In it were assorted dangerous reptiles and wild beasts. These were to torture me. I was not to shout, for if I did, I have failed the exam and the consequence was DEATH. After seven days of agony I was brought out and sent to a place called ‘INDIA JUNGLE’. In this jungle, I saw different types of demonic birds; demonic because some had faces like dogs, some like cats, etc. Yet with wings. Inside this jungle was a cave, and this cave is only opened by these demonic birds. They opened the cave and I went inside. The things I saw are hard to explain. There were terrible creatures, some looked like human beings but with tails and without human faces, etc. This was another place of torture. The torture there could best be described as semi-hell. I was in that state for 7 days and was brought out. I was then sent to a very big library that contained large volumes of mystic books to study. I later picked two books: Abbysinia, which means destruction, and Assina, which means giving life or curing. Later I was given more books. I was instructed to build a chamber as soon as I return to Nigeria with the following things in it: “A native water pot filled with human blood, a living tree inside, a human skull, vulture feathers, wild animal skins, boa skin and a big shiny laterites beside the pot.” The blood inside the water pot is to be taken every morning with an incantation. I was also instructed never to eat any food cooked by HUMANS but that I would be fed supernaturally. With all these instructions I came back to Nigeria the same way I went, and fulfilled all. Back Home in Nigeria
I had now become a part and parcel of the spirit world and could travel at will to any part of the world. According to the books I brought, spirit beings are living in space. Perhaps they would increase my powers, so I decided to try. I came out of my house, made some incantations and called the whirl wind and disappeared. I found myself in space and saw these spirit beings. What do you want they asked; I told them I wanted powers. I came back to earth after two weeks having acquired powers from them. Like I said earlier, I no longer could control myself. Despite all these powers I had already received, I still needed more and more powers! I then decided to go into underworld to prove what was written in the books given to me. One day I went to a hidden place in the bush, made some incantations as stated in the books and commanded the ground to open. The ground opened and the demons created steps immediately. I stepped in and went right inside the ground. There was total darkness that can only be compared with one of the plagues that occurred in Egypt as recorded in the Bible. I saw a lot of things that are hard to explain. I saw people chained, people used for making money - their duties are to work day and night to supply money to their captors. I saw some elite society members who came in to do some sacrifices and would go back to the world with some gifts given to them by the spirits controlling the place. I saw some church leaders who came for powers, powers to say a thing that is accepted without questioning in the church. I stayed for two weeks and came back after receiving more powers. People saw me as young and innocent but never knew I was dangerous. There are lots of such people around; only those in Christ Jesus are safe in real sense of safety.
Covenant with The Queen of The Coast
One evening, I decided to have a walk. Along Ebute Metta bus-stop, I saw a young beautiful lady standing. I never spoke a word to her. The next day while passing also I saw her still at the same spot. The third day I saw her still at the same spot and while passing she called me. I stopped and introduced myself to her as Emmanuel Amos but she refused introducing herself. I asked her name and address but she only laughed. She asked me mine and I told her the street ONLY. When I was about leaving, she said she would visit me one day. In my mind I said, that was impossible, I did not give her my house number how then could she come. But true to her words, I heard a knock on my door after a week of that meeting at the bus-stop. There she was, the mysterious lady! I welcomed her in my mind. (I wondered who this beautiful lady was, and did she know she was treading on dangerous grounds?) I entertained her and she left. After this first visit, her visits became regular without any relationships. I noticed that in her visits she kept to a particular time, and would not come a minute earlier or later! In some of her visits I would take her to the Lagos Barbeach, or to the Paramount Hotel or Ambassador Hotel etc. All these while, she still did not tell me her name. I decided not to worry since I knew the relationship would not develop more than that. I had already been instructed never to touch a woman. Suddenly she changed the day visits to nights. During one of the visits she told me: “Now it is time for you to visit me.” We stayed together that night and at 8.00 a.m. the following day we took off. We joined a bus and she told the driver to stop at the barbeach. As we stopped, I asked her: “Where are we going?” She said: “Don’t worry, you are going to know my house.” She took me to a corner of the barbeach, used something like a belt and tied around us and immediately a force came from behind and pushed us into the sea. We started flying on the surface of the water and straight to the ocean. Dear reader, these happened in my physical form! At a point we sank into the sea bed and to my surprise I saw us walking along an express way. We moved into a city with a lot of people all very busy.
The Spirit World
I saw laboratories, like science lab, designing lab, and a theatre. At the back of the city, I saw young beautiful girls and handsome young men. No old people. She introduced me to them and I was welcomed. She took me to places like “darkroom”, “drying room”, and “packing room”. She then took me to a main factory and warehouse and then came to her private mansion. There she sat me and told me: “I am the queen of the coast and would like very much to work with you. I promise to give you wealth and all that go with it, protection and all that go with it, life and an ‘angel’ to guide you.” She pressed a button and a tray came out with human flesh (in pieces) in it and we ate together. She commanded a boa to appear and asked me to swallow it. I could not. She insisted but I could not, how could I swallow a live boa. She then used her powers and I swallowed it. These were three covenants: The human flesh and blood, the boa and the demonic angel were always there to make sure no secret was revealed. But the ‘angel’ was given power to discipline me if I went astray and also to bring me food from the sea any time I was here on earth. I promised to obey her always. After this promise she took me to another part of the ocean, this time an island. There were trees and each of these trees had different duties: - tree for poisoning, - tree for killing, - tree for invoking, and - tree for cure. She gave me powers to change to all kinds of sea animals like hippopotamus, boa constrictor and crocodile and then she vanished. I stayed in the sea for a week and through one of the means (as crocodile) mentioned above I came back to the world.
The Underworld Laboratories
I stayed in Lagos for a week and went back to the sea, this time for two months. I went into the scientific laboratories to see what was happening. I saw psychiatrists and scientists all working very seriously. The work of these scientists is to design beautiful things like flashy cars, etc., latest weapons and to know the mystery of this world. If it were possible to know the pillar of the world they could have, but thank God, ONLY GOD KNOWS. I moved into the designing room and there I saw many samples of cloth, perfumes and assorted types of cosmetic. All these things according to Lucifer are to distract men’s attention from the Almighty God. I also saw different designs of electronics, computers and alarms. There was also a T.V. from where they knew those who are born again Christians in the world. There you see and differentiate those who are church goers and those who are real Christians. I then moved from the laboratories to the ‘dark room’ and ‘drying room’. The dark room is where they kill any disobedient member. They kill by first draining the person’s blood and then send the person to the machine room where he/ she will be ground to powder and then send the dust to the ‘sack room’ where they will be bagged and kept for the native doctors to collect for their charms. There were more things which are hard to explain in writing. Despite all these powers in me, I was not yet qualified to meet with Lucifer but only qualified to be his agent. All the same I was satisfied that I now had powers and could face, challenge and destroy things at will. Could there be any other powers anywhere I mused within my mind.
DELIVERANCE FROM THE POWER OF DARKNESS: ESCAPE TO NEW LIFE
Emmanuel ENI
Chapter 1: My Escape to "New Life"
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22: 6). This is a story of God’s works - mighty, wonderful and mysterious - in obedience to the command of JESUS CHRIST to me saying: “Go and testify what I have done for you.” One usually thinks of misfortune as an act of fate and that we can do nothing to alter the events of our lives. To an extent this is true. In the case of a child of God, his life is planned1 (Proverbs 16: 9). Whether that plan is fulfilled or not depends on a number of factors, the individual’s closeness to God, his view about the ultimate purpose of life, and the socio-spiritual environment he finds himself. The course of your life is challenged by some external factors. The crisis is reached when you give over your WILL one way or the other, for good or evil. You can love or hate. You can wish to understand or misunderstand. The will to obey is the greatest force of a new born Christian, while the will to disobey is the most destroying force of the sinner. A child when left alone in the world is controlled by one of two powers: good or bad, right or wrong, God or the devil. Everyone is challenged by these two forces of life, and each must choose which life he must live. And I believe that is what the Bible says: “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he grows he will not depart from it.” You will agree that the dearest and closest person to any child’s heart is his mother. An orphan is an unfortunate child and more exposed to attacks of the devil than children with parents. A mother is a protector of body and soul but it becomes double tragedy when both parents are lost and more so in most mysterious circumstances. My story started 22 years ago in a little village called Amerie Iriegbu Ozu Item in Bende Local Government Authority, Imo State. My parents were not classified amongst the rich but my dad was privileged to inherit 42 hectares of land from my grandfather, a blessing which has today brought the greatest misfortune ever recorded in the history of the family. My dad was greatly envied by his distant and near relations for reasons I do not know, perhaps for his vast land inheritance. We were a happy family, my parents having got four of us: Love, Margaret, Emmanuel and Chinyere. After having the first two daughters, my parents waited for 14 years before having me (the only son) and later my younger sister Chinyere. This brought real happiness to the family but this happiness was short-lived as the first tragedy struck. My lovely and caring mother died. She was alleged to have died owing to witchcraft, and four years later my father died, again through an alleged work of juju involved against him. Two years after the death of both parents my eldest sisterLove, disappeared mysteriously and Margaret, the second daughter of my parents, went mental. It was a chain of tragedies in the life of a humble and otherwise happy family. My younger sister Chinyere and I were sent to our grandparents. There I completed my elementary education and was later admitted into Item High School. I read up to Class III and dropped out of school as a result of lack of fund for fees etc. Shortly after that, my grandparents also died. After all the ceremonies that go with burials, an unknown relation collected my younger sister Chinyere, and up to this date I do not know her whereabouts. I was forced by severe maltreatments to go back to my father’s house, and there to live alone at the age of 13 years. How does a child of 13 years feed himself in the midst of his father’s enemies and consequently his own enemies? How very afraid I was! These events seemed to have brought me to the end of worthwhile living. Was there anyone who cared? Was there anyone who was concerned about “a little boy's misfortune?” One day I met a friend I knew during my elementary school days named Chinedum Onwukwe. Chinedum loved me very much and having heard all that befell took me to his parents who readily received me and took me as a second son. Life came back to normal again. I was well cared for. I was happy again: then I knew that the God my mother prayed to when she was alive was alive somewhere hence He had provided me with new parents, so I thought in my mind. I enjoyed this goodness for about two years and then the devil struck again. Chinedum and his parents were traveling to Umuahia and their car ran into a tipper carrying laterites. Chinedum and his parents died on the spot! On hearing the news I collapsed. My sorrow could better be imagined. I managed to survive through the burial ceremony, supplying those cooking with firewood and running errands: at the end of which I went back to my father’s house and resumed the menial jobs to be able to feed. I continued doing odd jobs on the farm, in gardens, going a fishing with elders until one day, a man from my compound hired me to work in his farm for 50k. At the farm he subjected me to a series of questions. First, he asked me to show him my father’s lands; secondly, to hand over such lands to a man, no matter how closely related he was. In either case I objected and he was offended. He then vowed to kill me in the forest. I became afraid and ran and shouted for help. Unfortunately, because the area was far into the thick forest, no one came but help came from God. He pursued me with his knife but being younger I was too fast for him and fell into a pit of about 1.82 meters deep and was covered by the grass in it. He searched for me and after a while he gave up. I later struggled out of the pit and through another route returned to the village. I reported the incident to the elders in the compound but no action was taken - the common plight of orphans. This incident created real hatred in my young heart; no one loved me, no one cared. I reflected in my mind why anyone would want to kill me knowing I had no parents. Life was full of misery. Now I know that God in His love restrained the devil from suggesting suicide to me. I turned to the Church and became a full member of the Assemblies of God church in my village (I still am) but unfortunately no one cared even when some of the members knew about me. It is important to note that I became a full member of the church without knowing Jesus Christ. I never knew what it meant to be BORN AGAIN. If you are in the Church of Jesus Christ and find yourself in the situation I found myself, give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture says: “Let Him have all our worries and cares, for He is always thinking about you and watching everything that
concerns you” (1 Peter5: 7 - Living New Testament). In the midst of all these hardship and suffering ALICE appeared! Alice was a girl I knew during my elementary school days. She was five years older and from the same village. We were in the same class, sat on the same bench and became very friendly. With this childhood’s ‘love’ affair, we promised ‘getting married’ when we would be old. Ridiculous! A child of 11 years then, without parents, no education, no food to eat, promising marriage to a girl of five years his senior! Alice later left for Akure for her secondary education and sent me dozens of ‘love’ letters. The next time I met Alice, I was 15 and she was 20. She had finished her secondary education and was working with the Standard Bank Lagos (now First Bank), where her parents lived. Alice having known my background and my plight took advantage of it. She told me to join her at Lagos and handed me her house address with N50 (Naïra: National Currency of Nigeria)! That was a fortune for a young boy of 15 years who had never earned up to N2 a day! This was manna from heaven and this meant that Lagos must be a wonderful place with plenty of money and the good things of life for all to enjoy. Then I must go to Lagos to make my own money and get riches too. Going to Lagos to my mind was my only way of escape. Escape from my father’s enemies, escape from my enemies, escape from hunger and ALL my problems. Escape! Escape! Yes, escape from All that is evil.
Chapter 1: My Escape to "New Life"
"Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22: 6). This is a story of God’s works - mighty, wonderful and mysterious - in obedience to the command of JESUS CHRIST to me saying: “Go and testify what I have done for you.” One usually thinks of misfortune as an act of fate and that we can do nothing to alter the events of our lives. To an extent this is true. In the case of a child of God, his life is planned1 (Proverbs 16: 9). Whether that plan is fulfilled or not depends on a number of factors, the individual’s closeness to God, his view about the ultimate purpose of life, and the socio-spiritual environment he finds himself. The course of your life is challenged by some external factors. The crisis is reached when you give over your WILL one way or the other, for good or evil. You can love or hate. You can wish to understand or misunderstand. The will to obey is the greatest force of a new born Christian, while the will to disobey is the most destroying force of the sinner. A child when left alone in the world is controlled by one of two powers: good or bad, right or wrong, God or the devil. Everyone is challenged by these two forces of life, and each must choose which life he must live. And I believe that is what the Bible says: “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he grows he will not depart from it.” You will agree that the dearest and closest person to any child’s heart is his mother. An orphan is an unfortunate child and more exposed to attacks of the devil than children with parents. A mother is a protector of body and soul but it becomes double tragedy when both parents are lost and more so in most mysterious circumstances. My story started 22 years ago in a little village called Amerie Iriegbu Ozu Item in Bende Local Government Authority, Imo State. My parents were not classified amongst the rich but my dad was privileged to inherit 42 hectares of land from my grandfather, a blessing which has today brought the greatest misfortune ever recorded in the history of the family. My dad was greatly envied by his distant and near relations for reasons I do not know, perhaps for his vast land inheritance. We were a happy family, my parents having got four of us: Love, Margaret, Emmanuel and Chinyere. After having the first two daughters, my parents waited for 14 years before having me (the only son) and later my younger sister Chinyere. This brought real happiness to the family but this happiness was short-lived as the first tragedy struck. My lovely and caring mother died. She was alleged to have died owing to witchcraft, and four years later my father died, again through an alleged work of juju involved against him. Two years after the death of both parents my eldest sisterLove, disappeared mysteriously and Margaret, the second daughter of my parents, went mental. It was a chain of tragedies in the life of a humble and otherwise happy family. My younger sister Chinyere and I were sent to our grandparents. There I completed my elementary education and was later admitted into Item High School. I read up to Class III and dropped out of school as a result of lack of fund for fees etc. Shortly after that, my grandparents also died. After all the ceremonies that go with burials, an unknown relation collected my younger sister Chinyere, and up to this date I do not know her whereabouts. I was forced by severe maltreatments to go back to my father’s house, and there to live alone at the age of 13 years. How does a child of 13 years feed himself in the midst of his father’s enemies and consequently his own enemies? How very afraid I was! These events seemed to have brought me to the end of worthwhile living. Was there anyone who cared? Was there anyone who was concerned about “a little boy's misfortune?” One day I met a friend I knew during my elementary school days named Chinedum Onwukwe. Chinedum loved me very much and having heard all that befell took me to his parents who readily received me and took me as a second son. Life came back to normal again. I was well cared for. I was happy again: then I knew that the God my mother prayed to when she was alive was alive somewhere hence He had provided me with new parents, so I thought in my mind. I enjoyed this goodness for about two years and then the devil struck again. Chinedum and his parents were traveling to Umuahia and their car ran into a tipper carrying laterites. Chinedum and his parents died on the spot! On hearing the news I collapsed. My sorrow could better be imagined. I managed to survive through the burial ceremony, supplying those cooking with firewood and running errands: at the end of which I went back to my father’s house and resumed the menial jobs to be able to feed. I continued doing odd jobs on the farm, in gardens, going a fishing with elders until one day, a man from my compound hired me to work in his farm for 50k. At the farm he subjected me to a series of questions. First, he asked me to show him my father’s lands; secondly, to hand over such lands to a man, no matter how closely related he was. In either case I objected and he was offended. He then vowed to kill me in the forest. I became afraid and ran and shouted for help. Unfortunately, because the area was far into the thick forest, no one came but help came from God. He pursued me with his knife but being younger I was too fast for him and fell into a pit of about 1.82 meters deep and was covered by the grass in it. He searched for me and after a while he gave up. I later struggled out of the pit and through another route returned to the village. I reported the incident to the elders in the compound but no action was taken - the common plight of orphans. This incident created real hatred in my young heart; no one loved me, no one cared. I reflected in my mind why anyone would want to kill me knowing I had no parents. Life was full of misery. Now I know that God in His love restrained the devil from suggesting suicide to me. I turned to the Church and became a full member of the Assemblies of God church in my village (I still am) but unfortunately no one cared even when some of the members knew about me. It is important to note that I became a full member of the church without knowing Jesus Christ. I never knew what it meant to be BORN AGAIN. If you are in the Church of Jesus Christ and find yourself in the situation I found myself, give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Scripture says: “Let Him have all our worries and cares, for He is always thinking about you and watching everything that
concerns you” (1 Peter5: 7 - Living New Testament). In the midst of all these hardship and suffering ALICE appeared! Alice was a girl I knew during my elementary school days. She was five years older and from the same village. We were in the same class, sat on the same bench and became very friendly. With this childhood’s ‘love’ affair, we promised ‘getting married’ when we would be old. Ridiculous! A child of 11 years then, without parents, no education, no food to eat, promising marriage to a girl of five years his senior! Alice later left for Akure for her secondary education and sent me dozens of ‘love’ letters. The next time I met Alice, I was 15 and she was 20. She had finished her secondary education and was working with the Standard Bank Lagos (now First Bank), where her parents lived. Alice having known my background and my plight took advantage of it. She told me to join her at Lagos and handed me her house address with N50 (Naïra: National Currency of Nigeria)! That was a fortune for a young boy of 15 years who had never earned up to N2 a day! This was manna from heaven and this meant that Lagos must be a wonderful place with plenty of money and the good things of life for all to enjoy. Then I must go to Lagos to make my own money and get riches too. Going to Lagos to my mind was my only way of escape. Escape from my father’s enemies, escape from my enemies, escape from hunger and ALL my problems. Escape! Escape! Yes, escape from All that is evil.
EMBRACING SHARI'A LAW: AMERICA'S BLIND SPOT
Joanne Moudy
As Christians all around the world watched Dr. Meriam Ibrahim Ishag bravely endure unthinkable horrors of her captivity, release, re-arrest and now tenuous future, Americans in particular can take away one critical piece of knowledge. We absolutely do not want any form of the barbaric Shari’a law introduced into our U.S. courts.
Except it’s too late.
Thanks to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Shari’a law is well on it’s way to becoming the new standard in civil court cases. As usual, the ACLU is playing the ‘guilt’ card and working against the intent of our First Amendment rights of free speech.
Attempting to get the jump on Shari’a, many states have already passed laws prohibiting the use of foreign religious law in their courts. Yet despite strong voter support for these measures, the ACLU is fighting to get them all overturned. Oklahoma was one such state and – sure enough – in 2013 a federal court struck down their efforts, ignoring 70% of the population’s wishes that the U.S. Constitution take precedence.
The ACLU claims it is necessary to consider religious law (Shari’a) when negotiating adoptions, custody of children, executing a will and/or settling disputes over private property rights, to name a few. What the ACLU fails to mention is that within Shari’a law, women are considered property and thus have no rights, which means they have no say in court.
Proponents of Shari’a law also seem to forget that when foreigners come to America, they are supposed to assimilate into our culture, not the other way around.
Consider the case of the 2008 arranged marriage in Morocco between S.D., a 17 year-old girl, and M.J.R., a man she did not know. Born to a Muslim father, S.D. was by default forced into Islam and had no choice but to accept her fate of the prearranged marriage.
The teenager was introduced to the man at their wedding and one month later they moved to New Jersey so that M.J.R. could pursue his career in accounting.
Apparently it wasn’t ‘love at first sight’ or ‘wedded bliss’ because by 2010, S.D. (still a teenager) had filed for a restraining order against her ‘husband’ on the grounds of rape, kidnapping and aggravated assault. Apparently the man repeatedly forced her to have non-consensual sex and abused her when she tried to refuse.
Eventually M.J.R. took the teen to the home of an Imam and verbally divorced her in accordance with Shari’a law. However, the sexual assaults and abuse continued, even after the divorce.
Believing the laws of New Jersey would protect her, S.D. did what any logical abuse victim would do to defend herself. She lodged complaints with the police, filed for a restraining order against the assailant and sought permanent intervention through the courts.
Imagine her surprise when Hudson County Superior Court Judge Joseph Charles refused to uphold the restraining order because he felt the man brutalizing the teen was doing so out of a desire to live his faith. Furthermore, the Judge found that even though the religious customs clashed with the New Jersey law, Muslim beliefs took precedence.
In Judge Charles’ opinion he wrote, “This court does not feel that … this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when … he wanted to … was something that was not prohibited.”
Interestingly enough, the leftists chanting the ‘war on women’ mantra were silent on this case. Perhaps they momentarily forgot that women don’t actually enjoy being raped or assaulted, even if it is by a man they are quasi ‘married’ to.
Fortunately S.D. had the financial resources to force an appeal of the case and eventually Judge Charles’ despicable decision was overturned by the appellate court. M.J.R. was then charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and criminal restraint.
Even though this case was almost four years ago it brings forth the ever-present concern that Shari’a law is slowly and silently encroaching upon our U.S. Constitution and individual state’s rights. While this case was eventually made right, the very notion that any sitting judge would consider Shari’a law in an American court – should scare the pants off every American citizen.
As the world around us implodes with barbaric Muslim radicals and sympathizers on the march to eradicate all Judeo-Christian people everywhere, we must be ever vigilant to prevent it taking over at home. Stand firm for American laws. Stand firm for America.
As Christians all around the world watched Dr. Meriam Ibrahim Ishag bravely endure unthinkable horrors of her captivity, release, re-arrest and now tenuous future, Americans in particular can take away one critical piece of knowledge. We absolutely do not want any form of the barbaric Shari’a law introduced into our U.S. courts.
Except it’s too late.
Thanks to efforts by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Shari’a law is well on it’s way to becoming the new standard in civil court cases. As usual, the ACLU is playing the ‘guilt’ card and working against the intent of our First Amendment rights of free speech.
Attempting to get the jump on Shari’a, many states have already passed laws prohibiting the use of foreign religious law in their courts. Yet despite strong voter support for these measures, the ACLU is fighting to get them all overturned. Oklahoma was one such state and – sure enough – in 2013 a federal court struck down their efforts, ignoring 70% of the population’s wishes that the U.S. Constitution take precedence.
The ACLU claims it is necessary to consider religious law (Shari’a) when negotiating adoptions, custody of children, executing a will and/or settling disputes over private property rights, to name a few. What the ACLU fails to mention is that within Shari’a law, women are considered property and thus have no rights, which means they have no say in court.
Proponents of Shari’a law also seem to forget that when foreigners come to America, they are supposed to assimilate into our culture, not the other way around.
Consider the case of the 2008 arranged marriage in Morocco between S.D., a 17 year-old girl, and M.J.R., a man she did not know. Born to a Muslim father, S.D. was by default forced into Islam and had no choice but to accept her fate of the prearranged marriage.
The teenager was introduced to the man at their wedding and one month later they moved to New Jersey so that M.J.R. could pursue his career in accounting.
Apparently it wasn’t ‘love at first sight’ or ‘wedded bliss’ because by 2010, S.D. (still a teenager) had filed for a restraining order against her ‘husband’ on the grounds of rape, kidnapping and aggravated assault. Apparently the man repeatedly forced her to have non-consensual sex and abused her when she tried to refuse.
Eventually M.J.R. took the teen to the home of an Imam and verbally divorced her in accordance with Shari’a law. However, the sexual assaults and abuse continued, even after the divorce.
Believing the laws of New Jersey would protect her, S.D. did what any logical abuse victim would do to defend herself. She lodged complaints with the police, filed for a restraining order against the assailant and sought permanent intervention through the courts.
Imagine her surprise when Hudson County Superior Court Judge Joseph Charles refused to uphold the restraining order because he felt the man brutalizing the teen was doing so out of a desire to live his faith. Furthermore, the Judge found that even though the religious customs clashed with the New Jersey law, Muslim beliefs took precedence.
In Judge Charles’ opinion he wrote, “This court does not feel that … this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when … he wanted to … was something that was not prohibited.”
Interestingly enough, the leftists chanting the ‘war on women’ mantra were silent on this case. Perhaps they momentarily forgot that women don’t actually enjoy being raped or assaulted, even if it is by a man they are quasi ‘married’ to.
Fortunately S.D. had the financial resources to force an appeal of the case and eventually Judge Charles’ despicable decision was overturned by the appellate court. M.J.R. was then charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and criminal restraint.
Even though this case was almost four years ago it brings forth the ever-present concern that Shari’a law is slowly and silently encroaching upon our U.S. Constitution and individual state’s rights. While this case was eventually made right, the very notion that any sitting judge would consider Shari’a law in an American court – should scare the pants off every American citizen.
As the world around us implodes with barbaric Muslim radicals and sympathizers on the march to eradicate all Judeo-Christian people everywhere, we must be ever vigilant to prevent it taking over at home. Stand firm for American laws. Stand firm for America.
WORLD LEADERS PRETEND
Mike Adams
Dear Michael (Stipe):
You don't know me but I feel like I know you because I know your music so well. Back in the '80s, R.E.M. was easily my favorite band. In fact, in 1989 I joined a band that played a lot of your music. The job financed my PhD and made it possible for me to become a college professor. Naturally, I thank you for writing those songs. Your music inspired me and countless others.
Just last week, I ordered a copy of the 25th Anniversary reissue (released in 2013) of your 1988 album Green. I listened to it twice in one afternoon and reflected back on the time period when you and I shared a similar worldview. The song "World Leader Pretend" brought back vivid memories of what I now consider to be a glorious time in our nation's history. I've reprinted the lyrics of the song below and made some comments about how history has shed new light on your now 26-year old observations:
I sit at my table and wage war on myself
It seems like it's all, it's all for nothing
I know the barricades
And I know the mortar in the wall breaks
I recognize the weapons, I've used them well
When I first heard the opening verse of this song, I was thrilled. I was a member of the Democratic Party and a supporter of Michael Dukakis. Your album was released around the time of the 1988 election and I recognized it as a scathing indictment of the Reagan Administration as well as a dire warning that we could not continue with Reagan's foreign policy by electing George Bush to what would amount to a third Reagan term.
This is my mistake
Let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
I was never exactly sure what every line in your songs was saying because I was almost always intoxicated when listening to them. However, I always sensed that this verse was a reference to alleged deleterious effects of Reagan's policies on our image around the world. I also thought it was a call to repair that image by electing Dukakis - and, believe me, I was on board with the plan. I voted for him proudly - even though I knew he would lose by a wide margin.
I've a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim that claims are left unstated
I demand a rematch
It appeared to me then, as it does now, that your principal complaint with Reagan was the military buildup of the 1980s. This particular paragraph also seemed to contain a barb against the much maligned SDI missile defense system that was derisively referred to as the "Star Wars" program.
I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motives
I recognize the weapons
I've practiced them well
I fitted them myself
Part of the genius of this song is that it juxtaposes two interesting themes. The first is criticism of Reagan for fancying himself to be the leader of the entire world. The next is that of you imagining yourself to be the leader of the entire world and also declaring how you would do things differently. There are religious overtones attached to each idea. Reagan is seen as a religious crusader who equates his own motives with the will of God. But your humanist solution to the Reagan build-up was a crusade of a different sort - no less religious in nature.
It's amazing what devices you can sympathize
Empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
The wall imagery was the most fascinating aspect of your writing in this song. At times, it sounds like you are referring to a metaphorical wall erected by Reagan foreign policy. But at other times it seems as if you are referring an actual wall. I'll come back to the actual will later in my commentary.
Reach out for me
Hold me tight
Hold that memory
Let my machine talk to me
Let my machine talk to me
I have no idea what this verse is saying. I got off drugs back in 1991.I'll just move on to the next verse.
This is my world, and I am the World Leader Pretend
This is my life, and this is my time
I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit
Its high time I razed the walls that I've constructed
In this verse it seems clear that you are referring to metaphorical walls. It is also clear that you are referring to nuclear disarmament as a way of repairing the damage inflicted by the Reagan administration on the rest of the world. The transition from "raising walls" and "razing walls" is clever wordplay, indeed.
It's amazing what devices you can sympathize
Empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
The only question I have when I read this verse repeat is whether you really think that just one man, positioned as a world leader, can knock down walls (real or metaphorical) on his own. The next verse seems to supply an answer.
You fill in the mortar
You fill in the harmony
You fill in the mortar
I raised the wall
And I'm the only one
I will be the one to knock it down
As you know, Michael Dukakis, was not elected in 1988. Instead, George Bush was elected. Consequently, Reagan's basic foreign policy continued. And just one year later something very interesting happened. A wall fell down. It wasn't a metaphorical wall. It was a real wall that separated East and West Berlin. It was a testament to a failed view of the world.
As I look back on those days of being a leftist atheist and listening to R.E.M. in a drunken and drug- induced stupor, I realize just how truly lost and naive I was. I hated my own country and I sympathized with our enemies. I also imagined a new world order that had its basis in the worship of humanity, not in the worship of God.
Historical events have led me to conclude that my view of the world was wrong. But how about you, Michael? Have you ever considered changing your view of the world now that history has spoken and the Cold War ended through strength, rather than unilateral disarmament?
In other words, is your view of the world one that is based in reality? Or is it only make believe?
Dear Michael (Stipe):
You don't know me but I feel like I know you because I know your music so well. Back in the '80s, R.E.M. was easily my favorite band. In fact, in 1989 I joined a band that played a lot of your music. The job financed my PhD and made it possible for me to become a college professor. Naturally, I thank you for writing those songs. Your music inspired me and countless others.
Just last week, I ordered a copy of the 25th Anniversary reissue (released in 2013) of your 1988 album Green. I listened to it twice in one afternoon and reflected back on the time period when you and I shared a similar worldview. The song "World Leader Pretend" brought back vivid memories of what I now consider to be a glorious time in our nation's history. I've reprinted the lyrics of the song below and made some comments about how history has shed new light on your now 26-year old observations:
I sit at my table and wage war on myself
It seems like it's all, it's all for nothing
I know the barricades
And I know the mortar in the wall breaks
I recognize the weapons, I've used them well
When I first heard the opening verse of this song, I was thrilled. I was a member of the Democratic Party and a supporter of Michael Dukakis. Your album was released around the time of the 1988 election and I recognized it as a scathing indictment of the Reagan Administration as well as a dire warning that we could not continue with Reagan's foreign policy by electing George Bush to what would amount to a third Reagan term.
This is my mistake
Let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
I was never exactly sure what every line in your songs was saying because I was almost always intoxicated when listening to them. However, I always sensed that this verse was a reference to alleged deleterious effects of Reagan's policies on our image around the world. I also thought it was a call to repair that image by electing Dukakis - and, believe me, I was on board with the plan. I voted for him proudly - even though I knew he would lose by a wide margin.
I've a rich understanding of my finest defenses
I proclaim that claims are left unstated
I demand a rematch
It appeared to me then, as it does now, that your principal complaint with Reagan was the military buildup of the 1980s. This particular paragraph also seemed to contain a barb against the much maligned SDI missile defense system that was derisively referred to as the "Star Wars" program.
I decree a stalemate
I divine my deeper motives
I recognize the weapons
I've practiced them well
I fitted them myself
Part of the genius of this song is that it juxtaposes two interesting themes. The first is criticism of Reagan for fancying himself to be the leader of the entire world. The next is that of you imagining yourself to be the leader of the entire world and also declaring how you would do things differently. There are religious overtones attached to each idea. Reagan is seen as a religious crusader who equates his own motives with the will of God. But your humanist solution to the Reagan build-up was a crusade of a different sort - no less religious in nature.
It's amazing what devices you can sympathize
Empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
The wall imagery was the most fascinating aspect of your writing in this song. At times, it sounds like you are referring to a metaphorical wall erected by Reagan foreign policy. But at other times it seems as if you are referring an actual wall. I'll come back to the actual will later in my commentary.
Reach out for me
Hold me tight
Hold that memory
Let my machine talk to me
Let my machine talk to me
I have no idea what this verse is saying. I got off drugs back in 1991.I'll just move on to the next verse.
This is my world, and I am the World Leader Pretend
This is my life, and this is my time
I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit
Its high time I razed the walls that I've constructed
In this verse it seems clear that you are referring to metaphorical walls. It is also clear that you are referring to nuclear disarmament as a way of repairing the damage inflicted by the Reagan administration on the rest of the world. The transition from "raising walls" and "razing walls" is clever wordplay, indeed.
It's amazing what devices you can sympathize
Empathize
This is my mistake, let me make it good
I raised the wall
And I will be the one to knock it down
The only question I have when I read this verse repeat is whether you really think that just one man, positioned as a world leader, can knock down walls (real or metaphorical) on his own. The next verse seems to supply an answer.
You fill in the mortar
You fill in the harmony
You fill in the mortar
I raised the wall
And I'm the only one
I will be the one to knock it down
As you know, Michael Dukakis, was not elected in 1988. Instead, George Bush was elected. Consequently, Reagan's basic foreign policy continued. And just one year later something very interesting happened. A wall fell down. It wasn't a metaphorical wall. It was a real wall that separated East and West Berlin. It was a testament to a failed view of the world.
As I look back on those days of being a leftist atheist and listening to R.E.M. in a drunken and drug- induced stupor, I realize just how truly lost and naive I was. I hated my own country and I sympathized with our enemies. I also imagined a new world order that had its basis in the worship of humanity, not in the worship of God.
Historical events have led me to conclude that my view of the world was wrong. But how about you, Michael? Have you ever considered changing your view of the world now that history has spoken and the Cold War ended through strength, rather than unilateral disarmament?
In other words, is your view of the world one that is based in reality? Or is it only make believe?
SERBS, SARAJEVO AND SELF-DETERMINATION
George Mano
On this one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I, we have a chance to look back with a historian’s eye at the assassination in Sarajevo, at the people involved, and the broader meaning of the incident for the world today.
In a nutshell, on June 28, 1914, six young men stood in positions on street corners and sidewalks in Sarajevo with the intent to kill the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg Empire. The six young men belonged to a group called Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), which hoped to free Bosnia-Hercegovina from Austro-Hungarian rule and unite it with Serbia in a nation of South Slavs. Five of the men were ethnic Serbs. One, Muhamed Mehmedbasic, was a Bosnian Muslim.
On that sunny day, as the Archduke’s motorcade rolled down the streets, it passed the first assassin, Mehmedbasic, who lost his nerve and did not throw his bomb. The second assassin also failed to act, but the third one, a young man named Nedeljko Cabrinovic, tossed his bomb at the passing car. His bomb, however, bounced off the archduke’s vehicle and exploded under a following car in the motorcade, destroying that vehicle and wounding more than a dozen people. Hearing the explosion, the last three assassins were surprised to see the archduke’s car speed past them, and they failed to act. Franz Ferdinand, angry that someone had just tried to kill him, gave the mayor of Sarajevo a piece of his mind as they met at the City Hall, the final destination. Trying to calm her husband, the archduke’s wife, Duchess Sophie, suggested that they abandon their plans for the day and visit the wounded bomb victims in the hospital instead. Franz Ferdinand agreed, and they got back into their car and headed back onto the road. It was then, as they were on their way to the hospital that their driver turned onto a side street and the sixth assassin, a nineteen-year-old kid named Gavrilo (i.e., Gabriel) Princip, still waiting on the corner, saw his chance, stepped forward and fired two shots which resulted in the death of the archduke and his wife.
The immediate consequences of the assassination were anti-Serbian riots and pogroms. Incited by the Austrian Governor and Croatian nationalists, for several days mobs attacked Serbs, their homes, their businesses, and their churches. Reports submitted by the Austrian Governor Oskar Potiorek two days later said that all Serbian shops in Sarajevo had been destroyed. Many prominent Serbs were expelled or imprisoned, and 460 were executed. Sarajevo, for the first time in its history, was divided by ethnicity.
Next came power-politics. The alleged mastermind of the plot, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, known as Apis, was head of Serbian Military Intelligence. That was enough for the Austrians to blame the government of Serbia for the assassination and issue a ten-part ultimatum. For many in Europe, it looked like a call to war. Winston Churchill wrote, “The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia (is) the most insolent document of its kind ever devised.” Edward Grey, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said, “Any nation that accepted conditions like that would really cease to count as an independent nation.” The Serbian government denied being involved in the plot and accepted all demands of the ultimatum except for the part which would have allowed Austrian agents to do their own investigations on Serbian soil. The K-und-K government was not satisfied; a month after the assassination, on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and World War I began.
What does it all mean? For many people, today’s anniversary is another chance to disparage the Serbs. And why not? The Serbs are politically weak and unlikely to retaliate, no matter what is said about them. When Yugoslavia broke up, the news media put black hats on the Serbs for years, and now Hollywood regularly chooses them as villains. Anyone who has seen American movies or TV shows in the past twenty years is likely to have noticed that many of the bad guys are Serbs (or Russians or educated Englishmen). In the 1996 movie The Rock, FBI bomb expert Nicholas Cage tries to disarm an explosive device containing sarin gas packed in a box labeled “Aid to Bosnia” and “Sloboda ili Smrt”—“Freedom or Death”—the slogan of the Serbian Chetniks. Also in 1996, the Steven Seagal action flick “Glimmer Man” features our hero trying to prevent Russians from supplying Serbian terrorists with chemical weapons (although it is never explained why they would buy them in the US instead of Russia). More recently, the Ice Cube-Kevin Hart, comedy-action film Ride Along concerns Serbian arms dealers, and recent TV shows like Burn Notice, Sherlock, and Flashpoint treat us to Serbian arms dealers or terrorists. In between 1996 and 2014 Hollywood also gave us Behind Enemy Lines, Diplomatic Siege, The Fourth Angel, Extreme Ops 2, The Hunted, Hunt for Justice, The Hunting Party, The Peacemaker, The Filthy War, and Storm, among others, in which Serbs are the people we are supposed to hate. Ironically, the last time a Serb committed a terrorist act was exactly one hundred years ago—in Sarajevo.
Today is also an opportunity for self-styled Balkan experts to sound wise. These people tend to be anti-Serbian as well and say things like “ISIS, the Sunni extremists in Iraq, are just like those Serbian nationalists back in 1914.” Really? ISIS seems more like the Austrian government of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Croatian nationalists who inflicted a pogrom on the Serbs.
Perhaps, the real lesson we can apply today is about nationalism and our double-standard regarding it. We look down on some people. Self-determination is for people we like, not for those we don’t. An Englishman waving a Union Jack is a “patriot,” but a man in Crimea waving the Russian tricolor is an “ultranationalist.” Both are in their homeland among a majority of their own people, but we despise the latter and do not allow him to determine his own fate. He is required to live under a foreign power, like the South Slavs in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1914.
On this one-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of World War I, we have a chance to look back with a historian’s eye at the assassination in Sarajevo, at the people involved, and the broader meaning of the incident for the world today.
In a nutshell, on June 28, 1914, six young men stood in positions on street corners and sidewalks in Sarajevo with the intent to kill the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg Empire. The six young men belonged to a group called Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia), which hoped to free Bosnia-Hercegovina from Austro-Hungarian rule and unite it with Serbia in a nation of South Slavs. Five of the men were ethnic Serbs. One, Muhamed Mehmedbasic, was a Bosnian Muslim.
On that sunny day, as the Archduke’s motorcade rolled down the streets, it passed the first assassin, Mehmedbasic, who lost his nerve and did not throw his bomb. The second assassin also failed to act, but the third one, a young man named Nedeljko Cabrinovic, tossed his bomb at the passing car. His bomb, however, bounced off the archduke’s vehicle and exploded under a following car in the motorcade, destroying that vehicle and wounding more than a dozen people. Hearing the explosion, the last three assassins were surprised to see the archduke’s car speed past them, and they failed to act. Franz Ferdinand, angry that someone had just tried to kill him, gave the mayor of Sarajevo a piece of his mind as they met at the City Hall, the final destination. Trying to calm her husband, the archduke’s wife, Duchess Sophie, suggested that they abandon their plans for the day and visit the wounded bomb victims in the hospital instead. Franz Ferdinand agreed, and they got back into their car and headed back onto the road. It was then, as they were on their way to the hospital that their driver turned onto a side street and the sixth assassin, a nineteen-year-old kid named Gavrilo (i.e., Gabriel) Princip, still waiting on the corner, saw his chance, stepped forward and fired two shots which resulted in the death of the archduke and his wife.
The immediate consequences of the assassination were anti-Serbian riots and pogroms. Incited by the Austrian Governor and Croatian nationalists, for several days mobs attacked Serbs, their homes, their businesses, and their churches. Reports submitted by the Austrian Governor Oskar Potiorek two days later said that all Serbian shops in Sarajevo had been destroyed. Many prominent Serbs were expelled or imprisoned, and 460 were executed. Sarajevo, for the first time in its history, was divided by ethnicity.
Next came power-politics. The alleged mastermind of the plot, Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijevic, known as Apis, was head of Serbian Military Intelligence. That was enough for the Austrians to blame the government of Serbia for the assassination and issue a ten-part ultimatum. For many in Europe, it looked like a call to war. Winston Churchill wrote, “The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia (is) the most insolent document of its kind ever devised.” Edward Grey, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, said, “Any nation that accepted conditions like that would really cease to count as an independent nation.” The Serbian government denied being involved in the plot and accepted all demands of the ultimatum except for the part which would have allowed Austrian agents to do their own investigations on Serbian soil. The K-und-K government was not satisfied; a month after the assassination, on July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and World War I began.
What does it all mean? For many people, today’s anniversary is another chance to disparage the Serbs. And why not? The Serbs are politically weak and unlikely to retaliate, no matter what is said about them. When Yugoslavia broke up, the news media put black hats on the Serbs for years, and now Hollywood regularly chooses them as villains. Anyone who has seen American movies or TV shows in the past twenty years is likely to have noticed that many of the bad guys are Serbs (or Russians or educated Englishmen). In the 1996 movie The Rock, FBI bomb expert Nicholas Cage tries to disarm an explosive device containing sarin gas packed in a box labeled “Aid to Bosnia” and “Sloboda ili Smrt”—“Freedom or Death”—the slogan of the Serbian Chetniks. Also in 1996, the Steven Seagal action flick “Glimmer Man” features our hero trying to prevent Russians from supplying Serbian terrorists with chemical weapons (although it is never explained why they would buy them in the US instead of Russia). More recently, the Ice Cube-Kevin Hart, comedy-action film Ride Along concerns Serbian arms dealers, and recent TV shows like Burn Notice, Sherlock, and Flashpoint treat us to Serbian arms dealers or terrorists. In between 1996 and 2014 Hollywood also gave us Behind Enemy Lines, Diplomatic Siege, The Fourth Angel, Extreme Ops 2, The Hunted, Hunt for Justice, The Hunting Party, The Peacemaker, The Filthy War, and Storm, among others, in which Serbs are the people we are supposed to hate. Ironically, the last time a Serb committed a terrorist act was exactly one hundred years ago—in Sarajevo.
Today is also an opportunity for self-styled Balkan experts to sound wise. These people tend to be anti-Serbian as well and say things like “ISIS, the Sunni extremists in Iraq, are just like those Serbian nationalists back in 1914.” Really? ISIS seems more like the Austrian government of Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Croatian nationalists who inflicted a pogrom on the Serbs.
Perhaps, the real lesson we can apply today is about nationalism and our double-standard regarding it. We look down on some people. Self-determination is for people we like, not for those we don’t. An Englishman waving a Union Jack is a “patriot,” but a man in Crimea waving the Russian tricolor is an “ultranationalist.” Both are in their homeland among a majority of their own people, but we despise the latter and do not allow him to determine his own fate. He is required to live under a foreign power, like the South Slavs in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1914.
INDIA - BANGLADESH: HOPE FOR A NEW BEGINNING
Haruna Ur Rashid
The 38-hour trip of Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to Dhaka from 25 June was remarkable for various reasons.
First, it demonstrated the priority the Narendra Modi government places on India’s relations with Bangladesh. Second, Swaraj promised to remove the obstacles in order to strengthen relations with Bangladesh – irrespective of the party in power in the country; and emphasised on people-to-people relations. Third, Swaraj stated that the Indian government would work with the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh to further strengthen relations and at the same time by meeting with the Chairperson, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) , the largest opposition party outside the parliament , she showed her prudence and sense of pragmatism. Fourth, she was found straightforward, plain-speaking, pleasant, and indeed a very likeable person.
The people of Bangladesh did not expect the first foreign visit by Swaraj to resolve pending issues with India; but they are the respective citizens’ issues because these issues – such as the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement and the Land Boundary Agreement – directly affect the people on the ground. Her telephone call to the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee before the visit reflected the Modi government’s keen desire to reach a consensus with the various stakeholders in India to resolve the issues.
The people of Bangladesh believe that the Modi government has an excellent opportunity to build a new era of relationship with Bangladesh – similar to what Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, did during her New Delhi visit in January 2010.
The Hasina government had cooperated in removing the threat of insurgency to India’s northeastern states by expelling the insurgents who operated out of sanctuaries in Bangladesh. She had allowed, without a transit agreement, transit facility to the India’s northeastern states – including the transportation of heavy duty equipment for ONGC Tripura Power Company’s 727 MW gas-based project located at Palatana, and the transportation of 10,000 tons of food grains for Tripura through its territory.
However, in return, Bangladesh did not get what India has promised and this has been a severe disappointment for Bangladeshi citizens. The trust-deficit with India remains high in Bangladesh and it needs to be removed to usher in a new invigorated bilateral relationship.
The Minister laid bare some of the policies in a speech at the Bangladesh International Institute of Strategic Studies on 26 June. She expressed gratitude for the cooperation her country received from Bangladesh in combating trans-boundary crime, insurgency and terrorism.
The Minister reportedly said democracy needed strong institutions and a culture of tolerance, inclusion and respect for differences. She used the weighty words which have enough food for thought and meaning for all about the need of observance of democratic norms in a country.
Observers say that this statement appears to have been made in the context of non-inclusive 5 January parliamentary elections which returned the Hasina government in power for the third time. Many observers say that the statement is a stark contrast to the view held by the former Congress-led government in New Delhi regarding the 5 January elections.
On a major irritant in relations – such as the killing/abduction of Bangladeshi civilians at the Indo-Bangladesh border – she stated that India’s objective must not only be to reduce incidents along the border but also enhance peace, stability and goodwill.
Bangladesh was looking forward to the Minister’s endorsement for the proposed new economic corridor among Bangladesh-China-India- Myanmar (BCIM) in her speech but the visiting Indian Minister did not mention it. Does that mean the Modi government has lost interest in the BCIM corridor?
Swaraj said India's development could not be complete and sustainable unless they successfully partnered with their immediate neighbours. It is noted that the 2011 Indo-Bangladesh Framework Agreement on Cooperation and Development opened up possibilities in cooperation on bilateral, sub-regional and regional level on areas such as, water, energy, food security and environmental safety. Furthermore, the Modi government may take initiative in constituting a sub-regional unit comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and the northeastern states of India. If their economy is integrated to the region, it could turn into hub of economic activities and when people have money into their pockets, they are happy and are not lured towards militancy or insurgency.
Bangladeshi people are hopeful that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to the SAARC leaders for his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi, on 26 May, will generate productive spirit of regional cooperation in which South Asia can be an economic powerhouse.
The 21st century has been described as “Asian century” because both economic and strategic weights are shifting toward Asia; and South Asia, under the new strong and imaginative leadership of India, could contribute to translating that into reality, and Bangladesh will fully cooperate with India to this end.
The 38-hour trip of Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to Dhaka from 25 June was remarkable for various reasons.
First, it demonstrated the priority the Narendra Modi government places on India’s relations with Bangladesh. Second, Swaraj promised to remove the obstacles in order to strengthen relations with Bangladesh – irrespective of the party in power in the country; and emphasised on people-to-people relations. Third, Swaraj stated that the Indian government would work with the Sheikh Hasina government in Bangladesh to further strengthen relations and at the same time by meeting with the Chairperson, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) , the largest opposition party outside the parliament , she showed her prudence and sense of pragmatism. Fourth, she was found straightforward, plain-speaking, pleasant, and indeed a very likeable person.
The people of Bangladesh did not expect the first foreign visit by Swaraj to resolve pending issues with India; but they are the respective citizens’ issues because these issues – such as the Teesta Water Sharing Agreement and the Land Boundary Agreement – directly affect the people on the ground. Her telephone call to the Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee before the visit reflected the Modi government’s keen desire to reach a consensus with the various stakeholders in India to resolve the issues.
The people of Bangladesh believe that the Modi government has an excellent opportunity to build a new era of relationship with Bangladesh – similar to what Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, did during her New Delhi visit in January 2010.
The Hasina government had cooperated in removing the threat of insurgency to India’s northeastern states by expelling the insurgents who operated out of sanctuaries in Bangladesh. She had allowed, without a transit agreement, transit facility to the India’s northeastern states – including the transportation of heavy duty equipment for ONGC Tripura Power Company’s 727 MW gas-based project located at Palatana, and the transportation of 10,000 tons of food grains for Tripura through its territory.
However, in return, Bangladesh did not get what India has promised and this has been a severe disappointment for Bangladeshi citizens. The trust-deficit with India remains high in Bangladesh and it needs to be removed to usher in a new invigorated bilateral relationship.
The Minister laid bare some of the policies in a speech at the Bangladesh International Institute of Strategic Studies on 26 June. She expressed gratitude for the cooperation her country received from Bangladesh in combating trans-boundary crime, insurgency and terrorism.
The Minister reportedly said democracy needed strong institutions and a culture of tolerance, inclusion and respect for differences. She used the weighty words which have enough food for thought and meaning for all about the need of observance of democratic norms in a country.
Observers say that this statement appears to have been made in the context of non-inclusive 5 January parliamentary elections which returned the Hasina government in power for the third time. Many observers say that the statement is a stark contrast to the view held by the former Congress-led government in New Delhi regarding the 5 January elections.
On a major irritant in relations – such as the killing/abduction of Bangladeshi civilians at the Indo-Bangladesh border – she stated that India’s objective must not only be to reduce incidents along the border but also enhance peace, stability and goodwill.
Bangladesh was looking forward to the Minister’s endorsement for the proposed new economic corridor among Bangladesh-China-India- Myanmar (BCIM) in her speech but the visiting Indian Minister did not mention it. Does that mean the Modi government has lost interest in the BCIM corridor?
Swaraj said India's development could not be complete and sustainable unless they successfully partnered with their immediate neighbours. It is noted that the 2011 Indo-Bangladesh Framework Agreement on Cooperation and Development opened up possibilities in cooperation on bilateral, sub-regional and regional level on areas such as, water, energy, food security and environmental safety. Furthermore, the Modi government may take initiative in constituting a sub-regional unit comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and the northeastern states of India. If their economy is integrated to the region, it could turn into hub of economic activities and when people have money into their pockets, they are happy and are not lured towards militancy or insurgency.
Bangladeshi people are hopeful that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to the SAARC leaders for his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi, on 26 May, will generate productive spirit of regional cooperation in which South Asia can be an economic powerhouse.
The 21st century has been described as “Asian century” because both economic and strategic weights are shifting toward Asia; and South Asia, under the new strong and imaginative leadership of India, could contribute to translating that into reality, and Bangladesh will fully cooperate with India to this end.
29 Jun 2014
MORE UNRAVELING
Stephen F. Hayes
As the Obama administration’s case for the Bowe Bergdahl-Taliban prisoner exchange further unraveled last week, the geo-political implications of the deal became clearer. They’re not pretty.
In the hours before Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel clicked on the microphone to testify about the swap on June 11, Obama administration officials told reporters to expect a forceful defense of the exchange and an aggressive refutation of the criticism that has attended it.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Hagel walked members of the House Armed Services Committee through the administration’s well-worn talking points, which had already failed to satisfy many members of Congress. And on several occasions he contradicted explanations administration officials had offered over the previous 10 days — including some arguments that Hagel himself had made.
In the early stages of the controversy, the administration defended the decision, and its choice not to inform Congress as required by law, by pointing to the failing health of Bowe Bergdahl. The captive soldier’s “health was deteriorating,” Hagel said during a June 1 interview on Meet the Press. “This was essentially an operation to save the life of Sgt. Bergdahl.”
Administration officials had pressed this case aggressively in the days following the swap, culminating in a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal reporting that the final proof-of-life video provided by the Taliban showed Bergdahl looking frail. “Rapid deterioration of soldier’s health persuaded leaders to back exchange,” the paper reported. A spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pointed to Bergdahl’s condition as a key reason for the urgency of the exchange, telling the Journal that the intelligence community had “evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl’s health was failing and that he was in desperate need of medical attention.”
But 10 days later, after several news outlets noted that the video was shot in December and that intelligence officials had privately disclaimed any such evidence, the administration backed off. In his June 11 testimony, Hagel sounded almost like an administration critic. “We didn’t know what kind of health Bergdahl was in,” he said. “All we had was a six-month [old] video.”
Another problem for the administration is its insistence, simultaneously, that the war in Afghanistan is just like other wars that the United States has engaged in, and that it is unlike any other war we’ve ever fought.
Hagel spent much of his testimony insisting that the Obama administration had not, technically, negotiated with terrorists. The United States negotiated this deal with the Qataris, he argued, who merely served as an intermediary for the Taliban, who merely spoke on behalf of the actual terrorists of the Haqqani network, who had held Bergdahl for much of his captivity in Pakistan. Despite the fact that he was held by terrorists, who were represented by the Taliban, a nongoverning nonstate actor, Hagel insisted that Bergdahl was “not a hostage; he was a prisoner of war.”
And yet, when Republicans pressed Stephen Preston, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, on whether members of the Taliban could be held legally after the conflict ended, he acknowledged that the “Taliban [could be] held as associates of al Qaeda.”
Hagel also continued to insist that the U.S. government had “substantially mitigated” the threat that the freed Taliban commanders would pose to the United States despite two additional reports confirming that senior U.S. intelligence officials believe they will return to the fight.
While much of the focus at home remained on the Obama administration’s shifting justifications for the swap, the potential damage the deal has done overseas is significant. The Afghan government publicly embraced the exchange, but it had little choice. With the dramatic drawdown of U.S. troops well underway and a full departure of combat troops scheduled to take place by 2016, Hamid Karzai and other Afghan leaders are racing to find some reconciliation with the Taliban — or at least with segments of the Taliban, however small, that may be reconcilable.
Administration officials have gone out of their way to say that they hope this deal revives those efforts. The opposite seems more likely. Hamid Karzai has been a challenging and uneven ally. But by cutting his government out of these talks and dealing directly with the Taliban (and later indirectly through the Qataris), the Obama administration has badly undermined the government in Kabul.
As the Obama administration’s case for the Bowe Bergdahl-Taliban prisoner exchange further unraveled last week, the geo-political implications of the deal became clearer. They’re not pretty.
In the hours before Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel clicked on the microphone to testify about the swap on June 11, Obama administration officials told reporters to expect a forceful defense of the exchange and an aggressive refutation of the criticism that has attended it.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Hagel walked members of the House Armed Services Committee through the administration’s well-worn talking points, which had already failed to satisfy many members of Congress. And on several occasions he contradicted explanations administration officials had offered over the previous 10 days — including some arguments that Hagel himself had made.
In the early stages of the controversy, the administration defended the decision, and its choice not to inform Congress as required by law, by pointing to the failing health of Bowe Bergdahl. The captive soldier’s “health was deteriorating,” Hagel said during a June 1 interview on Meet the Press. “This was essentially an operation to save the life of Sgt. Bergdahl.”
Administration officials had pressed this case aggressively in the days following the swap, culminating in a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal reporting that the final proof-of-life video provided by the Taliban showed Bergdahl looking frail. “Rapid deterioration of soldier’s health persuaded leaders to back exchange,” the paper reported. A spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper pointed to Bergdahl’s condition as a key reason for the urgency of the exchange, telling the Journal that the intelligence community had “evidence that Sgt. Bergdahl’s health was failing and that he was in desperate need of medical attention.”
But 10 days later, after several news outlets noted that the video was shot in December and that intelligence officials had privately disclaimed any such evidence, the administration backed off. In his June 11 testimony, Hagel sounded almost like an administration critic. “We didn’t know what kind of health Bergdahl was in,” he said. “All we had was a six-month [old] video.”
Another problem for the administration is its insistence, simultaneously, that the war in Afghanistan is just like other wars that the United States has engaged in, and that it is unlike any other war we’ve ever fought.
Hagel spent much of his testimony insisting that the Obama administration had not, technically, negotiated with terrorists. The United States negotiated this deal with the Qataris, he argued, who merely served as an intermediary for the Taliban, who merely spoke on behalf of the actual terrorists of the Haqqani network, who had held Bergdahl for much of his captivity in Pakistan. Despite the fact that he was held by terrorists, who were represented by the Taliban, a nongoverning nonstate actor, Hagel insisted that Bergdahl was “not a hostage; he was a prisoner of war.”
And yet, when Republicans pressed Stephen Preston, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, on whether members of the Taliban could be held legally after the conflict ended, he acknowledged that the “Taliban [could be] held as associates of al Qaeda.”
Hagel also continued to insist that the U.S. government had “substantially mitigated” the threat that the freed Taliban commanders would pose to the United States despite two additional reports confirming that senior U.S. intelligence officials believe they will return to the fight.
While much of the focus at home remained on the Obama administration’s shifting justifications for the swap, the potential damage the deal has done overseas is significant. The Afghan government publicly embraced the exchange, but it had little choice. With the dramatic drawdown of U.S. troops well underway and a full departure of combat troops scheduled to take place by 2016, Hamid Karzai and other Afghan leaders are racing to find some reconciliation with the Taliban — or at least with segments of the Taliban, however small, that may be reconcilable.
Administration officials have gone out of their way to say that they hope this deal revives those efforts. The opposite seems more likely. Hamid Karzai has been a challenging and uneven ally. But by cutting his government out of these talks and dealing directly with the Taliban (and later indirectly through the Qataris), the Obama administration has badly undermined the government in Kabul.
THEIR 9/11 ROLE
Thomas Joscelyn
One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against the enemies of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan the day before. And Osama bin Laden viewed that September 10 offensive as an essential part of al Qaeda’s 9/11 plot.
The 9/11 Commission found that the hijackings in the United States on September 11, 2001, were the culmination of al Qaeda’s three-step plan. First, on September 9, 2001, al Qaeda assassinated Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in a suicide bombing. Massoud’s death was a major gift to the Taliban because he was their chief rival and still controlled parts of the country. The assassination was also intended to weaken opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda within Afghanistan before the United States could plan its retaliation for the most devastating terrorist attack in history. The Northern Alliance did, in fact, play a role in America’s response.
The following day, September 10, al Qaeda and the Taliban took their second step. A “delayed Taliban offensive against the Northern Alliance was apparently coordinated to begin as soon as [Massoud] was killed,” the 9/11 Commission found. Fazl and one of bin Laden’s chief lieutenants, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, played key roles in this setup for 9/11. At the time, al Iraqi oversaw what al Qaeda called the Arab 55th Brigade, which was Osama bin Laden’s chief fighting force inside Afghanistan and fought side by side with Mullah Omar’s forces.
According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment of Fazl, al Iraqi met with Fazl “on several occasions to include immediately following the assassination of [Massoud] in September 2001.” Al Iraqi “stated the Northern Alliance was demoralized after the assassination and [he] met with [Fazl] to immediately coordinate an attack with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance.”
Al Qaeda viewed both the assassination of Massoud and the offensive launched the following day as necessary components of the 9/11 plot. At first, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders were said to be wary of any spectacular attack against the United States, as it would likely draw fierce retaliation from the world’s lone superpower. (The 9/11 Commission did find “some scant indications” that Omar “may have been reconciled to the 9/11 attacks by the time they occurred.”) The plan to attack the United States was controversial even within al Qaeda, with some senior leaders objecting to the idea.
But Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders believed, correctly, that the first two steps of their plan would ensure the Taliban’s continuing support. The 9/11 Commission found that as Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s military chief at the time, Mohammed Atef, “deliberated” the 9/11 hijackings “earlier in the year,” they “would likely have remembered that Mullah Omar was dependent on them for the Massoud assassination and for vital support in the Taliban military operations.” And, while the commission’s sources were “not privy to the full scope of al Qaeda and Taliban planning,” bin Laden and Atef “probably would have known, at least,” that the “general Taliban offensive against the Northern Alliance” on September 10 “would rely on al Qaeda military support.”
The 9/11 Commission’s final report goes on to say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, remembers Atef “telling him that al Qaeda had an agreement with the Taliban to eliminate Massoud, after which the Taliban would begin an offensive to take over [all of] Afghanistan.”
Mohammad Fazl’s cooperation with al Iraqi was, therefore, part of the plan KSM remembered.
As controversy over the deal for Sgt. Bergdahl has continued to swirl, current and former Obama administration officials have sought to draw a sharp distinction between the threat posed by the Taliban Five and al Qaeda.
“These five guys are not a threat to the United States,” former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said during an interview on NBC News last week. “They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.”
One of the five senior Taliban leaders transferred to Qatar in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl played a key role in al Qaeda’s plans leading up to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mohammad Fazl, who served as the Taliban’s army chief of staff and deputy defense minister prior to his detention at Guantánamo, did not have a hand in planning the actual 9/11 hijackings. Along with a notorious al Qaeda leader, however, Fazl did help coordinate a military offensive against the enemies of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan the day before. And Osama bin Laden viewed that September 10 offensive as an essential part of al Qaeda’s 9/11 plot.
The 9/11 Commission found that the hijackings in the United States on September 11, 2001, were the culmination of al Qaeda’s three-step plan. First, on September 9, 2001, al Qaeda assassinated Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud in a suicide bombing. Massoud’s death was a major gift to the Taliban because he was their chief rival and still controlled parts of the country. The assassination was also intended to weaken opposition to the Taliban and al Qaeda within Afghanistan before the United States could plan its retaliation for the most devastating terrorist attack in history. The Northern Alliance did, in fact, play a role in America’s response.
The following day, September 10, al Qaeda and the Taliban took their second step. A “delayed Taliban offensive against the Northern Alliance was apparently coordinated to begin as soon as [Massoud] was killed,” the 9/11 Commission found. Fazl and one of bin Laden’s chief lieutenants, Abdul Hadi al Iraqi, played key roles in this setup for 9/11. At the time, al Iraqi oversaw what al Qaeda called the Arab 55th Brigade, which was Osama bin Laden’s chief fighting force inside Afghanistan and fought side by side with Mullah Omar’s forces.
According to a leaked Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment of Fazl, al Iraqi met with Fazl “on several occasions to include immediately following the assassination of [Massoud] in September 2001.” Al Iraqi “stated the Northern Alliance was demoralized after the assassination and [he] met with [Fazl] to immediately coordinate an attack with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance.”
Al Qaeda viewed both the assassination of Massoud and the offensive launched the following day as necessary components of the 9/11 plot. At first, Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders were said to be wary of any spectacular attack against the United States, as it would likely draw fierce retaliation from the world’s lone superpower. (The 9/11 Commission did find “some scant indications” that Omar “may have been reconciled to the 9/11 attacks by the time they occurred.”) The plan to attack the United States was controversial even within al Qaeda, with some senior leaders objecting to the idea.
But Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders believed, correctly, that the first two steps of their plan would ensure the Taliban’s continuing support. The 9/11 Commission found that as Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s military chief at the time, Mohammed Atef, “deliberated” the 9/11 hijackings “earlier in the year,” they “would likely have remembered that Mullah Omar was dependent on them for the Massoud assassination and for vital support in the Taliban military operations.” And, while the commission’s sources were “not privy to the full scope of al Qaeda and Taliban planning,” bin Laden and Atef “probably would have known, at least,” that the “general Taliban offensive against the Northern Alliance” on September 10 “would rely on al Qaeda military support.”
The 9/11 Commission’s final report goes on to say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of 9/11, remembers Atef “telling him that al Qaeda had an agreement with the Taliban to eliminate Massoud, after which the Taliban would begin an offensive to take over [all of] Afghanistan.”
Mohammad Fazl’s cooperation with al Iraqi was, therefore, part of the plan KSM remembered.
As controversy over the deal for Sgt. Bergdahl has continued to swirl, current and former Obama administration officials have sought to draw a sharp distinction between the threat posed by the Taliban Five and al Qaeda.
“These five guys are not a threat to the United States,” former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said during an interview on NBC News last week. “They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody.”
CAN INDIA'S MILITARY BE FIXED?
Gary Schmitt, Sadanand Dhume
American strategists are taken with the idea of India’s strategic potential: a large democracy with a blue-water navy and the world’s third-largest armed forces that happens to be jammed between an imploding Pakistan and an expansionist China. But a deeply dysfunctional Indian defense community has frustrated efforts to turn that potential into reality. Will the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month with the strongest mandate of any Indian leader in 30 years jumpstart much-needed reforms? The answer will help determine whether India begins to fulfill its vaunted potential as a U.S. strategic partner in Asia and beyond.
On the face of it, Modi’s election augurs well for India’s defense preparedness. On the campaign trail, Modi promised a strong India able to stand up to its adversaries. He deplored what he called the then-ruling Congress party’s lack of respect for soldiers, and promised to devote his government to long-overdue military modernization.
But the list of problems he faces is a long one. The Indian defense budget has declined to less than 2 percent of the country’s GDP, the lowest in five decades. This might be tolerable if the country’s security environment had gotten appreciably better in recent years—but it hasn’t. Though India hasn’t witnessed a major terrorist strike since the carnage in Mumbai in 2008, Pakistan remains a threat, and the prospect of terrorist attacks has not gone away. As the United States draws down its troops in the region, Afghan instability is likely to be of increasing concern, and India faces on land and at sea a rapidly rising military power in China, with which the country shares a disputed 2,500-mile border.
The challenges, however, run much deeper than a lack of resources. The procurement system is broken, corruption a constant problem, and tensions between the various military services and the civilian defense bureaucracy are serious and longstanding. Politically appointed defense ministers have had little time for—and, more important, little interest in—straightening out all that ails the Indian defense effort.
The last defense minister, A. K. Antony, was so worried that corruption associated with military procurement would tarnish his image that he brought India’s acquisition process to a virtual halt. At the slightest hint of scandal, purchases would be stalled and companies blacklisted until investigations could be completed. The result: tens of billions of dollars in new equipment not acquired, with existing platforms growing outdated and more expensive to maintain.
Indians themselves point to the history of multiple on-again, off-again attempts to procure aerial refuelers, transport aircraft, and light utility helicopters. For example, even though India’s air force is replete with older (in some cases, relatively ancient) fighter aircraft like the MiG-21, there seems little urgency in replacing them. After a drawn-out bidding process, the government finally opted in 2012 to buy 126 of Dassault’s Rafale aircraft for $11 billion, but it still hasn’t finalized the contract. As a result, the full complement of Rafales probably will not enter the Indian Air Force’s inventory until well into the next decade.
Similarly, before the turn of the century, plans were approved for India to acquire 24 new diesel-electric attack submarines, both to increase the size of the submarine fleet and to replace an aging fleet. Yet it’s possible that over the next year only 9 of the current fleet of 14 attack submarines will be operational, with the rest needing overhauls—a reality reinforced by repeated accidents onboard Indian Navy submarines, including the total loss, with crew, of a Russian-made submarine last August. Yet plans to build the new submarines have been delayed time and again. Inevitably, delays mean higher costs, and, with a budget dominated by personnel expenses, this means even fewer rupees to buy needed equipment.
Already, the army is facing shortages in ammunition, field artillery, night-vision capabilities, specialized counterterrorism equipment, and antitank weapons.
American strategists are taken with the idea of India’s strategic potential: a large democracy with a blue-water navy and the world’s third-largest armed forces that happens to be jammed between an imploding Pakistan and an expansionist China. But a deeply dysfunctional Indian defense community has frustrated efforts to turn that potential into reality. Will the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month with the strongest mandate of any Indian leader in 30 years jumpstart much-needed reforms? The answer will help determine whether India begins to fulfill its vaunted potential as a U.S. strategic partner in Asia and beyond.
On the face of it, Modi’s election augurs well for India’s defense preparedness. On the campaign trail, Modi promised a strong India able to stand up to its adversaries. He deplored what he called the then-ruling Congress party’s lack of respect for soldiers, and promised to devote his government to long-overdue military modernization.
But the list of problems he faces is a long one. The Indian defense budget has declined to less than 2 percent of the country’s GDP, the lowest in five decades. This might be tolerable if the country’s security environment had gotten appreciably better in recent years—but it hasn’t. Though India hasn’t witnessed a major terrorist strike since the carnage in Mumbai in 2008, Pakistan remains a threat, and the prospect of terrorist attacks has not gone away. As the United States draws down its troops in the region, Afghan instability is likely to be of increasing concern, and India faces on land and at sea a rapidly rising military power in China, with which the country shares a disputed 2,500-mile border.
The challenges, however, run much deeper than a lack of resources. The procurement system is broken, corruption a constant problem, and tensions between the various military services and the civilian defense bureaucracy are serious and longstanding. Politically appointed defense ministers have had little time for—and, more important, little interest in—straightening out all that ails the Indian defense effort.
The last defense minister, A. K. Antony, was so worried that corruption associated with military procurement would tarnish his image that he brought India’s acquisition process to a virtual halt. At the slightest hint of scandal, purchases would be stalled and companies blacklisted until investigations could be completed. The result: tens of billions of dollars in new equipment not acquired, with existing platforms growing outdated and more expensive to maintain.
Indians themselves point to the history of multiple on-again, off-again attempts to procure aerial refuelers, transport aircraft, and light utility helicopters. For example, even though India’s air force is replete with older (in some cases, relatively ancient) fighter aircraft like the MiG-21, there seems little urgency in replacing them. After a drawn-out bidding process, the government finally opted in 2012 to buy 126 of Dassault’s Rafale aircraft for $11 billion, but it still hasn’t finalized the contract. As a result, the full complement of Rafales probably will not enter the Indian Air Force’s inventory until well into the next decade.
Similarly, before the turn of the century, plans were approved for India to acquire 24 new diesel-electric attack submarines, both to increase the size of the submarine fleet and to replace an aging fleet. Yet it’s possible that over the next year only 9 of the current fleet of 14 attack submarines will be operational, with the rest needing overhauls—a reality reinforced by repeated accidents onboard Indian Navy submarines, including the total loss, with crew, of a Russian-made submarine last August. Yet plans to build the new submarines have been delayed time and again. Inevitably, delays mean higher costs, and, with a budget dominated by personnel expenses, this means even fewer rupees to buy needed equipment.
Already, the army is facing shortages in ammunition, field artillery, night-vision capabilities, specialized counterterrorism equipment, and antitank weapons.
THE IRANIAN REGIME'S MR. FIX IT
Lee Smith
Qassem Suleimani is apparently the most interesting man in the world. To judge by the profiles in major Western media outlets—including the New Yorker, BBC, and the Guardian—the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ external operations unit, the Quds Force, is the most feared and ruthless military strategist since Rommel. He’s also a fixer, a cleaner, like a figure out of a Quentin Tarantino film. Just last week, Suleimani was on call to help out a troubled client in Baghdad. After the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Mosul, Suleimani landed with a cadre of Iranian advisers to lend a steady hand and reinforcements to Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Some call Suleimani the Iranian proconsul in Iraq, but these days, Hajj Qassem, as he is known to friends and admirers, is everywhere around the Middle East. As he reportedly texted the American commander of coalition forces in Iraq in 2007: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.” And now there’s Syria, too, where Suleimani is gathering fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, as well as Iranian troops from the IRGC and Basij to build a Shiite International to defend another Iranian ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Some say Hajj Qassem is Iran’s real powerbroker, and Hassan Rouhani is just the happy, so-called moderate, face of the clerical regime. Indeed, there are rumors floating around Shiite circles in Beirut that Suleimani recently attempted a coup against Rouhani, blocked at the last moment by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Maybe Suleimani really did try to topple Rouhani—it’s no secret he favored a rival, Tehran mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, a fellow IRGC field commander from the war with Iraq whose son is believed to be married to Suleimani’s daughter. However, it’s just as likely that the rumors are the latest installment in an Iranian public relations blitz intended to brand Suleimani as the Middle East’s indispensable man. The campaign is directed at the Obama White House: If you want anything done in the Middle East, you’ll have to go through Iran and you’ll have to deal with Qassem Suleimani. If Rouhani and Javad Zarif are the regime’s moderates, Suleimani is its pit bull at the gate.
Suleimani is a serious person. “He’s considered a hero in Iran,” says Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “He defended Iran in the face of Iraqi invasion in the 1980s, fought the drug cartels close to the Afghan border in the 1990s, and is now defending the Shia against Sunni terrorists like ISIS.”
According to Alfoneh, Suleimani is one of the instruments the Islamic Republic has used to foment a permanent state of crisis in Iraq, making Iraqis, especially the Shiites, dependent on his good will. It seems the White House is equally eager to stay on his good side, says Alfoneh. “I’m sure Suleimani enjoys the fact that the United States government, which has formally designated him a terrorist, now depends on his help to restore security in Iraq and save Baghdad from ISIS.”
Not surprisingly, the Obama administration has swallowed the bait from Tehran. Last week the White House indicated that it wanted Iraq’s political parties to form a new government—a positive step insofar as Maliki is one of the key sources of Iraq’s problems, and his failures paved the way for the ISIS blitzkrieg through Mosul. However, the administration also let on that it would be working with the regional power that controls Maliki. “We are interested in communicating with Iran,” said Secretary of State John Kerry. So that “the Iranians know what we’re thinking, that we know what they’re thinking, and there is a sharing of information so people aren’t making mistakes.”
The White House believes it has no choice but to coordinate with Iran since there’s no getting around Tehran’s power on the ground. The administration has reportedly pursued the same policy in Lebanon: through the Lebanese Armed Forces, it has shared intelligence on Sunni extremists with Hezbollah, Tehran’s division in the eastern Mediterranean. Because Obama will not devote sufficient assets to stopping Sunni jihadists fighting from Beirut to Baghdad, the administration believes it has little choice but to work with the only actor with men on the ground that shares an interest in stopping groups like ISIS. Who else but Qassem Suleimani? According to his PR offensive, he sees everything and knows everything. Hajj Qassem is everywhere.
Qassem Suleimani is apparently the most interesting man in the world. To judge by the profiles in major Western media outlets—including the New Yorker, BBC, and the Guardian—the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ external operations unit, the Quds Force, is the most feared and ruthless military strategist since Rommel. He’s also a fixer, a cleaner, like a figure out of a Quentin Tarantino film. Just last week, Suleimani was on call to help out a troubled client in Baghdad. After the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) overran Mosul, Suleimani landed with a cadre of Iranian advisers to lend a steady hand and reinforcements to Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki.
Some call Suleimani the Iranian proconsul in Iraq, but these days, Hajj Qassem, as he is known to friends and admirers, is everywhere around the Middle East. As he reportedly texted the American commander of coalition forces in Iraq in 2007: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan.” And now there’s Syria, too, where Suleimani is gathering fighters from Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, as well as Iranian troops from the IRGC and Basij to build a Shiite International to defend another Iranian ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Some say Hajj Qassem is Iran’s real powerbroker, and Hassan Rouhani is just the happy, so-called moderate, face of the clerical regime. Indeed, there are rumors floating around Shiite circles in Beirut that Suleimani recently attempted a coup against Rouhani, blocked at the last moment by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Maybe Suleimani really did try to topple Rouhani—it’s no secret he favored a rival, Tehran mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf, a fellow IRGC field commander from the war with Iraq whose son is believed to be married to Suleimani’s daughter. However, it’s just as likely that the rumors are the latest installment in an Iranian public relations blitz intended to brand Suleimani as the Middle East’s indispensable man. The campaign is directed at the Obama White House: If you want anything done in the Middle East, you’ll have to go through Iran and you’ll have to deal with Qassem Suleimani. If Rouhani and Javad Zarif are the regime’s moderates, Suleimani is its pit bull at the gate.
Suleimani is a serious person. “He’s considered a hero in Iran,” says Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “He defended Iran in the face of Iraqi invasion in the 1980s, fought the drug cartels close to the Afghan border in the 1990s, and is now defending the Shia against Sunni terrorists like ISIS.”
According to Alfoneh, Suleimani is one of the instruments the Islamic Republic has used to foment a permanent state of crisis in Iraq, making Iraqis, especially the Shiites, dependent on his good will. It seems the White House is equally eager to stay on his good side, says Alfoneh. “I’m sure Suleimani enjoys the fact that the United States government, which has formally designated him a terrorist, now depends on his help to restore security in Iraq and save Baghdad from ISIS.”
Not surprisingly, the Obama administration has swallowed the bait from Tehran. Last week the White House indicated that it wanted Iraq’s political parties to form a new government—a positive step insofar as Maliki is one of the key sources of Iraq’s problems, and his failures paved the way for the ISIS blitzkrieg through Mosul. However, the administration also let on that it would be working with the regional power that controls Maliki. “We are interested in communicating with Iran,” said Secretary of State John Kerry. So that “the Iranians know what we’re thinking, that we know what they’re thinking, and there is a sharing of information so people aren’t making mistakes.”
The White House believes it has no choice but to coordinate with Iran since there’s no getting around Tehran’s power on the ground. The administration has reportedly pursued the same policy in Lebanon: through the Lebanese Armed Forces, it has shared intelligence on Sunni extremists with Hezbollah, Tehran’s division in the eastern Mediterranean. Because Obama will not devote sufficient assets to stopping Sunni jihadists fighting from Beirut to Baghdad, the administration believes it has little choice but to work with the only actor with men on the ground that shares an interest in stopping groups like ISIS. Who else but Qassem Suleimani? According to his PR offensive, he sees everything and knows everything. Hajj Qassem is everywhere.
MIRROR, MIRROR
Henrik Bering
In the history of art, self-portraiture constitutes a world of its own, presenting us with moods ranging from the lighthearted to the sordid. There is sheer delight in Rubens’s painting of himself and his first wife Isabella Brant in a bower of honeysuckle bliss; acute menace when Caravaggio decks himself out as Bacchus, looking like some exceedingly poisonous rent boy, and veering into grisliness when he lets the severed head of Goliath carry his own likeness. Self-mockery is on offer in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1536-41), in which the artist has given his own melancholy features to the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Edward Munch’s androgynous self-images are exercises in toe-curling exhibitionism.
Here, James Hall provides a lively cultural interpretation of the genre from the Middle Ages to today. But rather than provide a series of “greatest hits,” he is more concerned with the reasons why artists create self-portraits, pursuing themes such as the role of the self-portrait as a vehicle for self-promotion and self-exploration; its use as therapy; and sex and the self-portrait. Whereas a portrait painter often has to conform to the wishes of his client, the self-portrait leaves him free to do as he pleases.
Almost until the end of the 15th century, self-portraits were rare, notes Hall. The medieval artist might insert a vignette of himself in an illuminated manuscript, or include himself in a biblical crowd scene (he is the one who looks directly at us). But things change dramatically from 1490 onwards, when sculptors and masons started calling attention to themselves, as did painters such as Parmigianino, Raphael, and Giorgione in Italy and Dürer—the most prolific creator of self-images in the Renaissance—in Germany.
Known across Europe for his engravings and woodcuts, Dürer proved an expert in self-advertisement and status affirmation. No mere artisan he! One oil portrait shows him as a fashion plate, clad in the finest fabrics; another shows him as a Christ-like figure. In both, his hair gets special attention, hair being regarded as indicative of the brain activity below. This marks Dürer “not as a proto hippie, but a supremely fertile and versatile thinker,” writes Hall.
Common to Dürer and his Italian colleagues, Hall believes, is the fact that they subscribed to the notion of the child prodigy popular in the Renaissance: the idea that genius is something innate rather than acquired. They positively reveled in their youth and their gift. To an early drawing of himself, done at the age of 12, Dürer later proudly added, “This I drew myself from a mirror in the year 1484, when I was still a child.” To Dürer, a gifted artist’s quick sketch “on half a sheet of paper” or engraving on “a tiny piece of wood” will always beat the painting of a poor plodder who works “with the utmost diligence for a whole year.”
After this outburst of youthful exuberance, notes Hall, a shift occurs with Michelangelo and Titian. Decades before bestowing his own likeness onto St. Bartholomew, Michelangelo produced the first-ever self-cartoon sketch, next to a sonnet grumbling about the working conditions in the Sistine Chap-el. (As Hall notes, the ability to mock oneself is the hallmark of the supremely confident.) Titian, on the other hand, had the courage to portray himself in extreme old age, the first to do so. Of his two late self-portraits, the second shows Titian in a mood of “punitive piety,” with a faraway gaze and translucent, parchment-like skin; he is a man no longer of this world.
With Rembrandt, the genre reaches a high point, both as a vehicle for self-advertisement and for self-examination: One of every five of his productions is a self-portrait. In The Artist in his -Studio (ca. 1628), Rembrandt presents his credentials as a prodigy, a tiny figure “swallowed up by his voluminous working clothes and wide-brimmed hat, and dwarfed by the giant wooden easel with its elephantine legs.” In his etchings, he experiments with expressions and grim-aces, while his oils, featuring himself in fancy costumes, prove to costumers what he is capable of doing.
However, it is in the self-portraits produced in his last decade (which included his bankruptcy) that Rembrandt goes further than any of his predecessors in subjecting himself to intense scrutiny. No longer the hot name in art, his 1665 self-portrait with palette and brushes, and arm on hip, shows him magnificently defiant—the very coarseness of his style a taunt to smoother newcomers.
In the history of art, self-portraiture constitutes a world of its own, presenting us with moods ranging from the lighthearted to the sordid. There is sheer delight in Rubens’s painting of himself and his first wife Isabella Brant in a bower of honeysuckle bliss; acute menace when Caravaggio decks himself out as Bacchus, looking like some exceedingly poisonous rent boy, and veering into grisliness when he lets the severed head of Goliath carry his own likeness. Self-mockery is on offer in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1536-41), in which the artist has given his own melancholy features to the flayed skin of St. Bartholomew. Edward Munch’s androgynous self-images are exercises in toe-curling exhibitionism.
Here, James Hall provides a lively cultural interpretation of the genre from the Middle Ages to today. But rather than provide a series of “greatest hits,” he is more concerned with the reasons why artists create self-portraits, pursuing themes such as the role of the self-portrait as a vehicle for self-promotion and self-exploration; its use as therapy; and sex and the self-portrait. Whereas a portrait painter often has to conform to the wishes of his client, the self-portrait leaves him free to do as he pleases.
Almost until the end of the 15th century, self-portraits were rare, notes Hall. The medieval artist might insert a vignette of himself in an illuminated manuscript, or include himself in a biblical crowd scene (he is the one who looks directly at us). But things change dramatically from 1490 onwards, when sculptors and masons started calling attention to themselves, as did painters such as Parmigianino, Raphael, and Giorgione in Italy and Dürer—the most prolific creator of self-images in the Renaissance—in Germany.
Known across Europe for his engravings and woodcuts, Dürer proved an expert in self-advertisement and status affirmation. No mere artisan he! One oil portrait shows him as a fashion plate, clad in the finest fabrics; another shows him as a Christ-like figure. In both, his hair gets special attention, hair being regarded as indicative of the brain activity below. This marks Dürer “not as a proto hippie, but a supremely fertile and versatile thinker,” writes Hall.
Common to Dürer and his Italian colleagues, Hall believes, is the fact that they subscribed to the notion of the child prodigy popular in the Renaissance: the idea that genius is something innate rather than acquired. They positively reveled in their youth and their gift. To an early drawing of himself, done at the age of 12, Dürer later proudly added, “This I drew myself from a mirror in the year 1484, when I was still a child.” To Dürer, a gifted artist’s quick sketch “on half a sheet of paper” or engraving on “a tiny piece of wood” will always beat the painting of a poor plodder who works “with the utmost diligence for a whole year.”
After this outburst of youthful exuberance, notes Hall, a shift occurs with Michelangelo and Titian. Decades before bestowing his own likeness onto St. Bartholomew, Michelangelo produced the first-ever self-cartoon sketch, next to a sonnet grumbling about the working conditions in the Sistine Chap-el. (As Hall notes, the ability to mock oneself is the hallmark of the supremely confident.) Titian, on the other hand, had the courage to portray himself in extreme old age, the first to do so. Of his two late self-portraits, the second shows Titian in a mood of “punitive piety,” with a faraway gaze and translucent, parchment-like skin; he is a man no longer of this world.
With Rembrandt, the genre reaches a high point, both as a vehicle for self-advertisement and for self-examination: One of every five of his productions is a self-portrait. In The Artist in his -Studio (ca. 1628), Rembrandt presents his credentials as a prodigy, a tiny figure “swallowed up by his voluminous working clothes and wide-brimmed hat, and dwarfed by the giant wooden easel with its elephantine legs.” In his etchings, he experiments with expressions and grim-aces, while his oils, featuring himself in fancy costumes, prove to costumers what he is capable of doing.
However, it is in the self-portraits produced in his last decade (which included his bankruptcy) that Rembrandt goes further than any of his predecessors in subjecting himself to intense scrutiny. No longer the hot name in art, his 1665 self-portrait with palette and brushes, and arm on hip, shows him magnificently defiant—the very coarseness of his style a taunt to smoother newcomers.
IN DUBIOUS BATTLE
J. Harvie Wilkinson III
Back then, it was not known as World War I, for the obvious reason that the Second World War still lay in the future. It was simply the Great War, for the world had never seen anything like it.
We’re close to the centennial of the Guns of August, which has brought forth all sorts of discussions of the causes and consequences of the war. The focus of this book by Peter Hart, historian at the Imperial War Museum, is quite different: He sees the war through the eyes of those who fought it. The result is a riveting account from those on both sides of the conflict, those for whom the larger disquisitions on the meaning of the war yielded utterly to the daily struggle for survival.
The Great War featured an unusual number of highly literate soldiers for both the Allies (chiefly the Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia, and, much later, the United States) and the Central Powers (chiefly Germany and Austria-Hungary), who had no inkling of the inferno that awaited them. We know of the remarkable trio of war poets—Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon—and we expect that generals would convey their accounts and impressions. But it is the insight and sensitivity of innumerable junior officers and enlisted men that bring home the terrors of bombardment, from which there seemed no exit, and the eternal presence of mud.
Sadly, the description of Lieutenant Richard Dixon of the 14th Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, at the Third Battle of Ypres (1917) is not the worst:
All around us lay the dead, both friend and foe, half in, half out of the water-logged shell holes. Their hands and boots stuck out at us from the mud. Their rotting faces stared blindly at us from coverlets of mud; their decaying buttocks heaved themselves obscenely from the filth with which the shell bursts had smothered them. Skulls grinned at us; all around us stank unbelievably. These corpses were never buried, for it was impossible for us to retrieve them. They had lain, many of them, for weeks and months; they would lie and rot and disintegrate foully into the muck until they were an inescapable part of it to manure the harvests of a future peace-time Belgium.
The Great War marked the progression of precision killing. The weapons may seem quaint or primitive to us now, but what they presaged was ominous for mankind. The first German U-boats were often lethal, but above all they were cramped, with the bunks of some officers so small they lay only on their sides. The machine guns made a killing field of No Man’s Land; poison gases took aim at eyes, throats, and lungs: “We choked, spit, and coughed, my lungs felt as though they were being burnt out, and were going to burst. Red-hot needles were being thrust into my eyes.” The air war featured celebrated aces, such as Germany’s Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and Canada’s William Barker, but the main initial use of planes was for reconnaissance—namely, to locate opposing artillery batteries. Indeed, it was those ever-more-massive artillery barrages that may have posed the greatest threat, as described by a German lieutenant:
The earth roared, trembled, rocked—this was followed by an utterly amazing crash and there, before us in a huge arc, kilometres long, was raised a curtain of fire about one hundred metres high. The scene was quite extraordinary; almost beyond description. It was like a thunderstorm magnified one thousand times!
The carnage of the Great War dwarfed any previous conflict, and the casualty figures are chillingly rounded-off here. Hart estimates that “just under 9,722,000 soldiers died through military action in the war.” Another 21 million were injured, many “scarred or maimed for life.” Germany alone lost two million soldiers; France almost a million-and-a-half. By contrast, the United States lost “only” 116,000. The Great War was hardly the first to take a heavy toll on civilians, but approximately 950,000 “died from direct military action” and almost six million more from “war-related famine and disease.” As the conflict wore on, the numbers mounted, to no apparent purpose or effect. An inch gained one day was often given back the next.
The seemingly senseless carnage understandably sparked a search for scapegoats, the most available of whom were inept commanders: The epithet of “lions led by donkeys” was meant to contrast the valor of the ordinary fighting men with the obtuseness of those who ordered them over the top. Hart attempts a modest rehabilitation of the reputations of several commanders, one of whom was the German general Erich von Falkenhayn.
Back then, it was not known as World War I, for the obvious reason that the Second World War still lay in the future. It was simply the Great War, for the world had never seen anything like it.
We’re close to the centennial of the Guns of August, which has brought forth all sorts of discussions of the causes and consequences of the war. The focus of this book by Peter Hart, historian at the Imperial War Museum, is quite different: He sees the war through the eyes of those who fought it. The result is a riveting account from those on both sides of the conflict, those for whom the larger disquisitions on the meaning of the war yielded utterly to the daily struggle for survival.
The Great War featured an unusual number of highly literate soldiers for both the Allies (chiefly the Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia, and, much later, the United States) and the Central Powers (chiefly Germany and Austria-Hungary), who had no inkling of the inferno that awaited them. We know of the remarkable trio of war poets—Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and Siegfried Sassoon—and we expect that generals would convey their accounts and impressions. But it is the insight and sensitivity of innumerable junior officers and enlisted men that bring home the terrors of bombardment, from which there seemed no exit, and the eternal presence of mud.
Sadly, the description of Lieutenant Richard Dixon of the 14th Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, at the Third Battle of Ypres (1917) is not the worst:
All around us lay the dead, both friend and foe, half in, half out of the water-logged shell holes. Their hands and boots stuck out at us from the mud. Their rotting faces stared blindly at us from coverlets of mud; their decaying buttocks heaved themselves obscenely from the filth with which the shell bursts had smothered them. Skulls grinned at us; all around us stank unbelievably. These corpses were never buried, for it was impossible for us to retrieve them. They had lain, many of them, for weeks and months; they would lie and rot and disintegrate foully into the muck until they were an inescapable part of it to manure the harvests of a future peace-time Belgium.
The Great War marked the progression of precision killing. The weapons may seem quaint or primitive to us now, but what they presaged was ominous for mankind. The first German U-boats were often lethal, but above all they were cramped, with the bunks of some officers so small they lay only on their sides. The machine guns made a killing field of No Man’s Land; poison gases took aim at eyes, throats, and lungs: “We choked, spit, and coughed, my lungs felt as though they were being burnt out, and were going to burst. Red-hot needles were being thrust into my eyes.” The air war featured celebrated aces, such as Germany’s Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron, and Canada’s William Barker, but the main initial use of planes was for reconnaissance—namely, to locate opposing artillery batteries. Indeed, it was those ever-more-massive artillery barrages that may have posed the greatest threat, as described by a German lieutenant:
The earth roared, trembled, rocked—this was followed by an utterly amazing crash and there, before us in a huge arc, kilometres long, was raised a curtain of fire about one hundred metres high. The scene was quite extraordinary; almost beyond description. It was like a thunderstorm magnified one thousand times!
The carnage of the Great War dwarfed any previous conflict, and the casualty figures are chillingly rounded-off here. Hart estimates that “just under 9,722,000 soldiers died through military action in the war.” Another 21 million were injured, many “scarred or maimed for life.” Germany alone lost two million soldiers; France almost a million-and-a-half. By contrast, the United States lost “only” 116,000. The Great War was hardly the first to take a heavy toll on civilians, but approximately 950,000 “died from direct military action” and almost six million more from “war-related famine and disease.” As the conflict wore on, the numbers mounted, to no apparent purpose or effect. An inch gained one day was often given back the next.
The seemingly senseless carnage understandably sparked a search for scapegoats, the most available of whom were inept commanders: The epithet of “lions led by donkeys” was meant to contrast the valor of the ordinary fighting men with the obtuseness of those who ordered them over the top. Hart attempts a modest rehabilitation of the reputations of several commanders, one of whom was the German general Erich von Falkenhayn.
WHAT ABOUT THE BOOK?
Geoffrey Norman
Nobody has time to read these days. Everybody says so, anyway. So in the case of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, is there any good reason to buy the book and read it? Not much, going by the reviews. None has called it a page turner and, at more than 600 of them, you’d like to have a reason to keep turning. Life is short, and there are many, many books still to read.
Maureen Dowd describes the book as “inert, a big yawn.” Others are kinder, but none is enthusiastic. There is no review that makes you think that you can buy this book and count on it to deliver the satisfactions enjoyed by literate people.
Now there is absolutely nothing contingent about this. Mrs. Clinton wasn’t broke any longer when she wrote the book. She wasn’t trying to turn out a bodice ripper to pay some bills in the fashion of William Faulkner when he wrote Sanctuary. She got close to a $14 million advance for this book. She could have found herself a little studio somewhere, shut down the phone and the email, splurged on a top-shelf coffeemaker and a comfortable desk chair and gone to work, making it her goal to write the kind of book that, in the contemporary argot, would “change people’s lives.” A book that an ordinary reader, not consumed by the politics of the moment, would find pleasure and enlightenment in reading.
She chose, manifestly, not to do that, and the choice says something about her. Nobody can write a good book as the result of merely having decided to. But one can make an effort not to write a bad book, and Mrs. Clinton is certainly intelligent enough to recognize flaws in a book that would keep it from being good, or great, and might even make it bad.
You don’t, for instance, write about how Canada “our northern neighbor is an indispensable partner.”
Readers hoping for a book that will be a kind of companion for many hours aren’t looking for the sort of thing they can get from any canned political speech. Which is to say, passages like this:
Ultimately, what happens in 2016 should be about what kind of future Americans want for themselves and their children — and grandchildren. I hope we choose inclusive politics and a common purpose to unleash the creativity, potential, and opportunity that makes America exceptional. That’s what all American people deserve.
Even great books include the occasional clunker. But an accumulation reveals either a tin ear or, worse, contempt for literary standards. If the author couldn’t even take the trouble to clean up this kind of mush, one thinks, why should I bother to keep up my end and read the damned thing?
And then there is the matter of proportion. You don’t include in the same autobiographical work a chapter on how much you love your mother and your daughter along with one on the controversial murder of an American ambassador who worked for you. You don’t do this, that is, unless your aim is not to write a good book but one that contains material that you can place in Vogue to soften your image along with something that will work in Politico and help “position” you for a coming political campaign.
Constructing (as opposed to writing) a book that can be excerpted in both Vogue and Politico will likely result in one that recalls the Winston Churchill line: “Pray remove this pudding. It has no theme.” Churchill had an actual pudding in mind, but the line can be applied to Hard Choices and to many less-celebrated books belonging to this unfortunate genre. In fact, Churchill himself provides the proof that it is not some iron law of nature that such books should be a bore and chore to read, that it is possible to write a political/historical memoir that succeeds as a book and even a work of literature.
This thought occurred to me during the week when all the talk was of Mrs. Clinton’s book. Why not, thought I, read an actual book that is right for the moment? This is the 100th summer since the Guns of August, and Churchill’s The World Crisis is still one of the indispensable books on that catastrophe. So I spent the week rereading the one-volume, abridged edition.
Nobody has time to read these days. Everybody says so, anyway. So in the case of Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices, is there any good reason to buy the book and read it? Not much, going by the reviews. None has called it a page turner and, at more than 600 of them, you’d like to have a reason to keep turning. Life is short, and there are many, many books still to read.
Maureen Dowd describes the book as “inert, a big yawn.” Others are kinder, but none is enthusiastic. There is no review that makes you think that you can buy this book and count on it to deliver the satisfactions enjoyed by literate people.
Now there is absolutely nothing contingent about this. Mrs. Clinton wasn’t broke any longer when she wrote the book. She wasn’t trying to turn out a bodice ripper to pay some bills in the fashion of William Faulkner when he wrote Sanctuary. She got close to a $14 million advance for this book. She could have found herself a little studio somewhere, shut down the phone and the email, splurged on a top-shelf coffeemaker and a comfortable desk chair and gone to work, making it her goal to write the kind of book that, in the contemporary argot, would “change people’s lives.” A book that an ordinary reader, not consumed by the politics of the moment, would find pleasure and enlightenment in reading.
She chose, manifestly, not to do that, and the choice says something about her. Nobody can write a good book as the result of merely having decided to. But one can make an effort not to write a bad book, and Mrs. Clinton is certainly intelligent enough to recognize flaws in a book that would keep it from being good, or great, and might even make it bad.
You don’t, for instance, write about how Canada “our northern neighbor is an indispensable partner.”
Readers hoping for a book that will be a kind of companion for many hours aren’t looking for the sort of thing they can get from any canned political speech. Which is to say, passages like this:
Ultimately, what happens in 2016 should be about what kind of future Americans want for themselves and their children — and grandchildren. I hope we choose inclusive politics and a common purpose to unleash the creativity, potential, and opportunity that makes America exceptional. That’s what all American people deserve.
Even great books include the occasional clunker. But an accumulation reveals either a tin ear or, worse, contempt for literary standards. If the author couldn’t even take the trouble to clean up this kind of mush, one thinks, why should I bother to keep up my end and read the damned thing?
And then there is the matter of proportion. You don’t include in the same autobiographical work a chapter on how much you love your mother and your daughter along with one on the controversial murder of an American ambassador who worked for you. You don’t do this, that is, unless your aim is not to write a good book but one that contains material that you can place in Vogue to soften your image along with something that will work in Politico and help “position” you for a coming political campaign.
Constructing (as opposed to writing) a book that can be excerpted in both Vogue and Politico will likely result in one that recalls the Winston Churchill line: “Pray remove this pudding. It has no theme.” Churchill had an actual pudding in mind, but the line can be applied to Hard Choices and to many less-celebrated books belonging to this unfortunate genre. In fact, Churchill himself provides the proof that it is not some iron law of nature that such books should be a bore and chore to read, that it is possible to write a political/historical memoir that succeeds as a book and even a work of literature.
This thought occurred to me during the week when all the talk was of Mrs. Clinton’s book. Why not, thought I, read an actual book that is right for the moment? This is the 100th summer since the Guns of August, and Churchill’s The World Crisis is still one of the indispensable books on that catastrophe. So I spent the week rereading the one-volume, abridged edition.
FORBIDDEN THOUGHTS
Leslie Lenkowsky
In late April, a 70-year-old Chinese journalist, Gao Yu, was taken into custody, one of several human rights activists rounded up to keep them from observing the 25th anniversary of the massacre of student protesters by government troops in Tiananmen Square. Shortly afterwards, Gao appeared on television, confessing to a specific offense: leaking what the Chinese news agency Xinhua described as a “highly confidential document” to a foreign website.
“I admit that what I have done touched on legal issues and threatened national interests,” she said, according to the BBC. “My actions were very wrong.”
What had she revealed? Not the plans for a new Chinese warplane or cyberattack. Not even details about the real health of China’s economy or major industries. Rather, as her lawyer has all but acknowledged, the secret paper Gao made public was “Document Number 9,” issued a year earlier by the main administrative office of China’s Communist party. Entitled “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” it demonstrates what the leadership of China regards as truly threatening: not the West’s economic or military might but its political and philosophical ideas.
Pronouncements such as this—the ninth issued in 2013—aim to instruct the party faithful throughout China on official doctrine as promulgated by the Central Committee and, importantly at that time, newly chosen President Xi Jinping. Like the others, Document Number 9 was meant to be discussed at local party meetings and inform party-run publications and websites, but was not for public consumption. It opens a window into what China’s normally secretive government officials are thinking, or at least want loyalists to think, which, thanks to the unfortunate Gao Yu, everyone can now know.
The communiqué focuses on seven “false ideological trends, positions, and activities” that the party leadership believes are spreading in the country and endangering “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Foremost among them is “Western Constitutional democracy,” the idea that good governance requires a separation of powers, general elections, a multiparty system, an independent judiciary, and other features. According to Document Number 9, China’s system of government should reflect “Chinese characteristics.” It should place “the Party’s leadership” and “the People’s Democracy” ahead of the political and legal processes championed by the West.
Likewise, in the eyes of China’s leaders, advocating for “universal values” amounts to claiming “that the West’s value system defies time and space, transcends nation and class, and applies to all humanity.” Such arguments are “confusing and deceptive,” they contend, because China—and “Socialism”—should subscribe to fundamentally different values.
These include rejecting individual and economic freedom. Document Number 9 dismisses “promoting civil society” as based on the idea that “in the social sphere, individual rights are paramount and ought to be immune to obstruction by the state”; it pits “the Party against the masses.” Nor does “neoliberalism,” defined as relying on private property and markets to shape economic activity, fare any better. The “catastrophic consequences” that have occurred in “Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe” show its flaws, the authors write, and underscore the dangers of efforts “to weaken the government’s control of the national economy.”
Also disparaged is freedom of the press. It is an idea, says Document Number 9, which challenges “China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline.” Those who embrace it “gouge an opening through which to infiltrate our ideology.”
Writing about the past is suspect as well. “Historical nihilism,” which Document Number 9 defines as the repudiation of the “historical purpose” of the Chinese revolution, such as by rejecting “the scientific and guiding value of Mao Zedong thought,” is not only mistaken, but also “tantamount to denying the legitimacy of the CCP’s long-term political dominance.”
Finally, the communiqué makes clear that questioning public policies, even in the name of “reform” or of “opening,” is impermissible. Raising doubts about the direction or pace of the government’s current course will “disturb people’s existing consensus on important issues like which flag to raise, which road to take, which goals to pursue, etc.,” ultimately retarding China’s “stable progress.” Not least of all, Document Number 9 warns that this could encourage “Tibetan self-immolation,” “terrorist attacks in Xinjiang,” and the breakup of China along ethnic and religious lines, among other dire consequences.
In late April, a 70-year-old Chinese journalist, Gao Yu, was taken into custody, one of several human rights activists rounded up to keep them from observing the 25th anniversary of the massacre of student protesters by government troops in Tiananmen Square. Shortly afterwards, Gao appeared on television, confessing to a specific offense: leaking what the Chinese news agency Xinhua described as a “highly confidential document” to a foreign website.
“I admit that what I have done touched on legal issues and threatened national interests,” she said, according to the BBC. “My actions were very wrong.”
What had she revealed? Not the plans for a new Chinese warplane or cyberattack. Not even details about the real health of China’s economy or major industries. Rather, as her lawyer has all but acknowledged, the secret paper Gao made public was “Document Number 9,” issued a year earlier by the main administrative office of China’s Communist party. Entitled “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” it demonstrates what the leadership of China regards as truly threatening: not the West’s economic or military might but its political and philosophical ideas.
Pronouncements such as this—the ninth issued in 2013—aim to instruct the party faithful throughout China on official doctrine as promulgated by the Central Committee and, importantly at that time, newly chosen President Xi Jinping. Like the others, Document Number 9 was meant to be discussed at local party meetings and inform party-run publications and websites, but was not for public consumption. It opens a window into what China’s normally secretive government officials are thinking, or at least want loyalists to think, which, thanks to the unfortunate Gao Yu, everyone can now know.
The communiqué focuses on seven “false ideological trends, positions, and activities” that the party leadership believes are spreading in the country and endangering “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” Foremost among them is “Western Constitutional democracy,” the idea that good governance requires a separation of powers, general elections, a multiparty system, an independent judiciary, and other features. According to Document Number 9, China’s system of government should reflect “Chinese characteristics.” It should place “the Party’s leadership” and “the People’s Democracy” ahead of the political and legal processes championed by the West.
Likewise, in the eyes of China’s leaders, advocating for “universal values” amounts to claiming “that the West’s value system defies time and space, transcends nation and class, and applies to all humanity.” Such arguments are “confusing and deceptive,” they contend, because China—and “Socialism”—should subscribe to fundamentally different values.
These include rejecting individual and economic freedom. Document Number 9 dismisses “promoting civil society” as based on the idea that “in the social sphere, individual rights are paramount and ought to be immune to obstruction by the state”; it pits “the Party against the masses.” Nor does “neoliberalism,” defined as relying on private property and markets to shape economic activity, fare any better. The “catastrophic consequences” that have occurred in “Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe” show its flaws, the authors write, and underscore the dangers of efforts “to weaken the government’s control of the national economy.”
Also disparaged is freedom of the press. It is an idea, says Document Number 9, which challenges “China’s principle that the media and publishing system should be subject to Party discipline.” Those who embrace it “gouge an opening through which to infiltrate our ideology.”
Writing about the past is suspect as well. “Historical nihilism,” which Document Number 9 defines as the repudiation of the “historical purpose” of the Chinese revolution, such as by rejecting “the scientific and guiding value of Mao Zedong thought,” is not only mistaken, but also “tantamount to denying the legitimacy of the CCP’s long-term political dominance.”
Finally, the communiqué makes clear that questioning public policies, even in the name of “reform” or of “opening,” is impermissible. Raising doubts about the direction or pace of the government’s current course will “disturb people’s existing consensus on important issues like which flag to raise, which road to take, which goals to pursue, etc.,” ultimately retarding China’s “stable progress.” Not least of all, Document Number 9 warns that this could encourage “Tibetan self-immolation,” “terrorist attacks in Xinjiang,” and the breakup of China along ethnic and religious lines, among other dire consequences.
BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE
David Devoss
They came from the west through the Syrian Desert, across the Euphrates River, and down off the Nineveh Plain. Mosul, Baiji, Tikrit, Samarra—cities held by the U.S. military just two and a half years before—fell almost without a fight, absorbed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a prospective terrorist caliphate based on sharia law and governed by Salafist militants who make even al Qaeda shudder.
For the moment, America’s $3 trillion attempt to plant a pluralist democracy in the heart of the Middle East lies in ruins. Trained and equipped at a cost of $25 billion, Iraq’s army is in disarray, the Humvees, tanks, and field artillery it inherited from the United States now in enemy hands. Al Anbar sheikhs like Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha who joined the Sunni Awakening in 2007 at the behest of Gen. David Petraeus are being hunted down and killed. Captured government officials who happen to be Shiite face the possibility of summary execution.
No armed foreign intervention will quell the enmity that divides Sunni and Shiites. In Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi disdain for Shiites is such that an inadvertent handshake requires ablutions. Pakistani Sunni disparage fervent Shiites with nicknames like “mosquitoes.” In Iraq, where the collision of the Persian and Arab worlds has left a 60/40 Shiite to Sunni divide, American options are limited. “The initial impulse is to take short-term military action, but the problems in Iraq are political,” says American Academy of Diplomacy president Ron Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador who served in Iraq with the Coalition Provisional Authority. “Sending in American troops will just redirect all the anger toward us.”
Much of the blame for the current chaos goes to Iraq’s 64-year-old premier, Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite who came to power in 2006 after promising George W. Bush and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad he would form a government of national reconciliation. After twice building coalitions with Sunni support, Maliki denied Sunni political parties the ministries he had promised. His biggest mistake, however, was dismissing from government service the former al Qaeda sympathizers Petraeus had employed at minimal expense during the surge.
A dour politician, Maliki is no man of the people. Instead of shaking hands with voters, he moves through a crowd head bowed, enveloped by a flying wedge of bodyguards with linked arms. “In return for military assistance, Maliki once again has promised to form an inclusive government, but I suspect he will break his promise,” says Marina Ottaway, a senior scholar of Middle East affairs at the Wilson Center. “Maliki has no credibility left. There can be no reconciliation as long as he heads the government.”
Iraq’s constitution requires Maliki, who has already served two terms as premier, to relinquish power. But there is little chance of that happening since last year cronies on Iraq’s Supreme Court voided that part of the constitution.
ISIS has no chance of taking over Iraq. The Shiites will fight to the death to protect the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf that lie south of Baghdad. With massive support from Iran, Maliki might even survive politically. Washington’s reasons for saving Maliki and befriending Iran are less compelling given the fact the United States has an alternative, alliance with a more prosperous and stable partner in northern Iraq’s Kurdish population.
Spend more than a few days in the Kurdish capital of Erbil and you’ll hear Kurds say, “We love America but it doesn’t love us.” From an American perspective, it is hard to see what’s not to love. The Kurds have a booming capitalist economy, a functioning court system, two political parties that manage to compromise on most issues, and a regulatory environment that favors Western investment. Though officially part of Iraq, the three Kurdish provinces function as a quasi-independent nation in that they collectively issue visas, control border crossings, and pursue a foreign policy independent of Baghdad. Though largely Sunni in orientation, the Kurds maintain friendly relations with Tehran’s Shiite government and close business ties with Ankara.
All this is possible because of oil, a commodity Washington fears might prompt Iraq’s Kurds to proclaim independence.
They came from the west through the Syrian Desert, across the Euphrates River, and down off the Nineveh Plain. Mosul, Baiji, Tikrit, Samarra—cities held by the U.S. military just two and a half years before—fell almost without a fight, absorbed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a prospective terrorist caliphate based on sharia law and governed by Salafist militants who make even al Qaeda shudder.
For the moment, America’s $3 trillion attempt to plant a pluralist democracy in the heart of the Middle East lies in ruins. Trained and equipped at a cost of $25 billion, Iraq’s army is in disarray, the Humvees, tanks, and field artillery it inherited from the United States now in enemy hands. Al Anbar sheikhs like Mohammed Khamis Abu Risha who joined the Sunni Awakening in 2007 at the behest of Gen. David Petraeus are being hunted down and killed. Captured government officials who happen to be Shiite face the possibility of summary execution.
No armed foreign intervention will quell the enmity that divides Sunni and Shiites. In Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi disdain for Shiites is such that an inadvertent handshake requires ablutions. Pakistani Sunni disparage fervent Shiites with nicknames like “mosquitoes.” In Iraq, where the collision of the Persian and Arab worlds has left a 60/40 Shiite to Sunni divide, American options are limited. “The initial impulse is to take short-term military action, but the problems in Iraq are political,” says American Academy of Diplomacy president Ron Neumann, a former U.S. ambassador who served in Iraq with the Coalition Provisional Authority. “Sending in American troops will just redirect all the anger toward us.”
Much of the blame for the current chaos goes to Iraq’s 64-year-old premier, Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite who came to power in 2006 after promising George W. Bush and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad he would form a government of national reconciliation. After twice building coalitions with Sunni support, Maliki denied Sunni political parties the ministries he had promised. His biggest mistake, however, was dismissing from government service the former al Qaeda sympathizers Petraeus had employed at minimal expense during the surge.
A dour politician, Maliki is no man of the people. Instead of shaking hands with voters, he moves through a crowd head bowed, enveloped by a flying wedge of bodyguards with linked arms. “In return for military assistance, Maliki once again has promised to form an inclusive government, but I suspect he will break his promise,” says Marina Ottaway, a senior scholar of Middle East affairs at the Wilson Center. “Maliki has no credibility left. There can be no reconciliation as long as he heads the government.”
Iraq’s constitution requires Maliki, who has already served two terms as premier, to relinquish power. But there is little chance of that happening since last year cronies on Iraq’s Supreme Court voided that part of the constitution.
ISIS has no chance of taking over Iraq. The Shiites will fight to the death to protect the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf that lie south of Baghdad. With massive support from Iran, Maliki might even survive politically. Washington’s reasons for saving Maliki and befriending Iran are less compelling given the fact the United States has an alternative, alliance with a more prosperous and stable partner in northern Iraq’s Kurdish population.
Spend more than a few days in the Kurdish capital of Erbil and you’ll hear Kurds say, “We love America but it doesn’t love us.” From an American perspective, it is hard to see what’s not to love. The Kurds have a booming capitalist economy, a functioning court system, two political parties that manage to compromise on most issues, and a regulatory environment that favors Western investment. Though officially part of Iraq, the three Kurdish provinces function as a quasi-independent nation in that they collectively issue visas, control border crossings, and pursue a foreign policy independent of Baghdad. Though largely Sunni in orientation, the Kurds maintain friendly relations with Tehran’s Shiite government and close business ties with Ankara.
All this is possible because of oil, a commodity Washington fears might prompt Iraq’s Kurds to proclaim independence.
THIS LEGAL IMMIGRANT WANTS THE OLD AMERICA
Michael Youssef
As we pause to celebrate the birth of this blessed nation, many among us are sad and even disgusted over what has happened to it.
Millions of Americans who have known “the old America”—the one they were born in and grew up in—feel a deep disappointment that their grandchildren will not grow up to know the country that valued morality and biblical ethics.
From the White House to the schoolhouse, we see forces that reject biblical values. From our government, we even see the outlawing of the name of Jesus from public prayers, especially from the military, which owes all victories to Him.
And there are also those, such as my family and me, who immigrated to this blessed land and long for the original America—the America as envisioned by the founding fathers.
I came to this country because, as a boy living under the tyranny of dictatorship and socialism, I longed to be free. I read the writings of America’s founders and dreamed of breathing the air of freedom—the air that was purchased with the blood of many American patriots.
That desire echoes the desire of the silent majority of millions of immigrants who legally came here, or were brought by their forebears. People who valued America and could never take it for granted because they had experienced oppressive political systems in their home countries.
In my article series, The Price of Liberty, I described what those millions of legal immigrants want. It is a refrain that goes something like this:
We want the America that feared God.
We want the America whose foundation was the Bible.
We want the America of which George Washington said: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
We want the America of which Abraham Lincoln said: “The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.”
We want the America of the Founding Fathers who said: “When the importance of religion is diminished … so is the effectiveness of government.”
We want the America of which the Supreme Court in 1844 said: “The Bible, and especially the New Testament [should] be read and taught as divine revelation in the [schools, otherwise] … where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”
We want the America of which New York Supreme Court Chief Justice Kent said in 1811: “We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters [other religions].”
We want the America of which the Supreme Court of New York in 1811 also said: “Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of the civil government … because it tends to corrupt the morals of the people, and to destroy good order.”
We want the America of which Daniel Webster said: “The principles of all genuine liberty and of wise laws and administrations, are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man, therefore, who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be an accessory to all of the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.”
Today we are seeing Webster’s prophetic words come to life; we are witnessing all the “public disorders” of which we are now “doomed to suffer.”
This race to the bottom must stop. We want the old America back.
We want the America that reflects the beliefs of most of the country, not the vocal and belligerent minority. We want an America of those earlier courts, not the courts of the last fifty years that have been busy striking at the Christian cornerstone of our nation.
As we celebrate America’s birth, let us not become weary of praying and working for our Judeo-Christian foundation to be reestablished.
As we pause to celebrate the birth of this blessed nation, many among us are sad and even disgusted over what has happened to it.
Millions of Americans who have known “the old America”—the one they were born in and grew up in—feel a deep disappointment that their grandchildren will not grow up to know the country that valued morality and biblical ethics.
From the White House to the schoolhouse, we see forces that reject biblical values. From our government, we even see the outlawing of the name of Jesus from public prayers, especially from the military, which owes all victories to Him.
And there are also those, such as my family and me, who immigrated to this blessed land and long for the original America—the America as envisioned by the founding fathers.
I came to this country because, as a boy living under the tyranny of dictatorship and socialism, I longed to be free. I read the writings of America’s founders and dreamed of breathing the air of freedom—the air that was purchased with the blood of many American patriots.
That desire echoes the desire of the silent majority of millions of immigrants who legally came here, or were brought by their forebears. People who valued America and could never take it for granted because they had experienced oppressive political systems in their home countries.
In my article series, The Price of Liberty, I described what those millions of legal immigrants want. It is a refrain that goes something like this:
We want the America that feared God.
We want the America whose foundation was the Bible.
We want the America of which George Washington said: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.”
We want the America of which Abraham Lincoln said: “The only assurance of our nation’s safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion.”
We want the America of the Founding Fathers who said: “When the importance of religion is diminished … so is the effectiveness of government.”
We want the America of which the Supreme Court in 1844 said: “The Bible, and especially the New Testament [should] be read and taught as divine revelation in the [schools, otherwise] … where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?”
We want the America of which New York Supreme Court Chief Justice Kent said in 1811: “We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters [other religions].”
We want the America of which the Supreme Court of New York in 1811 also said: “Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of the civil government … because it tends to corrupt the morals of the people, and to destroy good order.”
We want the America of which Daniel Webster said: “The principles of all genuine liberty and of wise laws and administrations, are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man, therefore, who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be an accessory to all of the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.”
Today we are seeing Webster’s prophetic words come to life; we are witnessing all the “public disorders” of which we are now “doomed to suffer.”
This race to the bottom must stop. We want the old America back.
We want the America that reflects the beliefs of most of the country, not the vocal and belligerent minority. We want an America of those earlier courts, not the courts of the last fifty years that have been busy striking at the Christian cornerstone of our nation.
As we celebrate America’s birth, let us not become weary of praying and working for our Judeo-Christian foundation to be reestablished.
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