Weekly Reading List: ISIS, ISIS baby, Running Free, Squanto, Advent Habits, Running Free and African borders

There Is Only One Way to Defeat ISIS
Short explanation: crack down on the financial flow from Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait.

What ISIS Really Wants
Published this past March, this is THE definitive 'scenesetter' on ISIS and its origins--a terrifying read.

The origins of ISIS, explained in 3 minutes
Ezra Klein breaks it down a very complex subject in a digestible manner.

You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
A good historical background on Saudi.

The Islamist Tantrum People are dead in Paris because Europe decided to make a fetish of its tolerance for intolerance.
A great read and a challenging article about the dangers of unguided tolerance.

Infographic: The Screening Process for Entry to the United States for Syrian Refugees
21 Steps is quite thorough BUT not one of them involves checking their facebook/twitter accounts.

The Miracle of Squanto’s Path to Plymouth
This story will blow your mind!  I never had any idea about Squanto's incredible path.

BreakPoint This Week: Advent and Christmas Habits
A good reminder about preparing ours hearts for Christmas

Run Free - The True Story of Caballo Blanco
Born to Run is one of my favorite books and made me fall in love with running.

The "Real" Map of Africa: Redrawing Colonial Borders
Fascinating look at what makes a state a state and the wide disparity in Africa.

April 6th: 19 Years since the genocide in Rwanda and Eleven Things You Should Know About the Genocide in Rwanda

   April 6th: 19 Years since the genocide in Rwanda and

Eleven Things You Should Know About the Genocide in Rwanda

       A brutal and evil campaign started today 19 years ago.  Over the following 100 days, the Hutu government planned and sponsored the murder of nearly a million people: men and women, children and babies--most of them split open and hacked to death with machetes like this:

It's worthwhile to pause today and recall this heartbreaking tragedy and perhaps discuss it with 
your family and kids (once they are old enough).  When my daughters are older, I plan on sitting down with them each year and watching one of the films below, or discussing one of articles/books that I've listed below.  It's important that we acknowledge that this genocide occurred, that we analyze why and how it occurred, and that we recognize the brave sacrifices of the men and women who DID DO something during the genocide.  Finally, despite the rhetoric of "never again", its important to keep at the forefront of our dialogue that IT IS possible for such a genocide to occur again if we (i.e., the international community on the macro level and you and I on the micro level) don't remain diligent, vigilant and proactive.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote here is an apt one:
"In the end,
we will remember
not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends."

Eleven Things You Should Know about the Genocide in Rwanda (and which I didn't know either until I wrote a paper about it):

1. In 100 days, Hutu extremists killed 800,000 men, women and children--507,000 of them Tutsis (77% of the registered Tutsi population).  That's about 11% of their population.  That would be the equivalent of 26 million people being killed in the US over a 3 month period.

2. The U.S. government (USG) acknowledged early on (on 28 April to be exact, when there were at least 100,00 already dead) that people were being slaughtered, but instructed its UN Ambassador to remain in "listening mode" and "not commit the USG to anything."

3. The best and most complete account of the genocide is the Alison Des Forges' (of HRW) Leave None to Tell the Story.

4. A shorter but equally excellent read is Samantha Powers' damning condemnation of the U.S. government's silence (i.e., inaction) in "Bystanders to Genocide" from the Atlantic Monthly.

5.The USG's belated humanitarian response (after the genocide was over) actual enabled many of the killers to escape the country through the refugee camps.

6.  Hutu hate radio broadcasts were used to incite and organize the killings--the USG had the capability to jam these broadcasts but deemed it too expensive.

7.  The NSA archive is a non-profit group run through George Washington University that archives thousands of previously classified documents (obtained through FOIA) that lend a primary source look into look at hundreds of events in our nation's history.

8.  Never again?  It could happen in Syria.

9.  What constitutes "justice" and reconciliation after the genocide is a lot different than you might imagine (See Gourevitch's top-notch New Yorker Article)

10. In 2001, there was a backlog of 100,000 perpetrators waiting to be tried--this is one reason Kagame instituted the gacaca "grass courts."

11.  President Clinton's March 1998 apology in Rwanda may have been technically accurate: "we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred," however, in reality the U.S. didn't just not do as much as it should have, instead officials in the U.S. government willfully and aggressively pressured the international community to not only withdraw peace-keeeping forces but also prevented others from intervening.

FILMS:
Most people have seen or are familiar with the superb movie Hotel Rwanda.


Another movie on the genocide is the vivid and heartbreaking Sometimes in April.  I wrote a paper evaluating the Raoul Peck's masterpiece here.



A few others that are on my "to watch" list are:
Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (2005)


Shake Hands with the Devil (2007)

That Spring in 1994: What I Remember—Recollections of the Rwandan Genocide

That spring in 1994, I was 15 years old and a freshman at Bedford High School in Massachusetts.   Searching my memory of that period, I can't uncover even a faded polaroid recollection to give witness to the murder of almost a million men, women, boys, girls and babies. 

That spring

I remember working as a bagger at the grocery store on Hanscomb Air Force Base. 

I remember fleeing the base theatre with my friend CJ after we lit up cigars during a movie.

I remember the field where I would play soccer by my school.

What I can recall

I close my eyes and I can smell the dusty paper of the grocery bags.

I close my eyes and I can feel my heart racing as we were chased out of the theatre.

I close my eyes and I can see the long and overgrown green grass of the soccer field.

That same spring

Nearly a million people's last breath and smell was rotten and rife with

sweat, urine, and blood.

Murderers crushed and ripped apart nearly a million hearts.

Murderers smashed shut nearly a million sets of eyes. 

That same spring

Millions of people

knew.

And millions of people did

nothing.

Today

            Today

                        Today

                                    Today

                                                          and everyday

I trudge with the grief of my own ignorance

like an iron yoke

on the shoulders

of my soul.

Genocide in Syria? Early Warning Systems for Genocide

BONUS LINK:  My entire (so far) grad school notes collection can be found here. 

Let me preface this post by saying I know VERY little about Syria.  My studies mainly focus on those countries on the African continent but many of my courses this quarter peripherally touch on Syria. This means that I write my ideas from a place of humility, eager to continue to read and learn from country and regional experts.  

Genocide in Syria?

Were I a Shia--or an Alawite (or a Christian for that matter)--I would make sure I had a back packed to hightail it out of Syria as quickly as possible.

I just read  Barbara Harff's No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?  Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955 for my class on ethnic conflict and it opened my eyes to the possibility for future genocides to occur around the globe.

Harff identifies several variables that can be used as early warning identifying markers but there is one that has the biggest demonstrated influence:  a formerly dominant minority that loses power due to state failure is 2.5 times more likely to become targets of a genocidal campaign.  This means that the Alawite minority and Christian minority (espousing an economic power instead of a political one) would become the targets when they lose power.
Questions:
Would the Alawites be better off seceding when they lose power and forming their own state in the northwest region of Syria?
Would a post-Assad Syria be better off (of course what does that mean--better off for who?) without the Alawites and Shia as part of Syria?
Does this idea open the door too wide for the possibility of ethnic cleansing?

Of note there are other early warning models out there, most notably at the Sentinel Project.

LINKS for further consideration:

http://thesentinelproject.org/guest-blog-could-rwanda-see-another-genocide/
http://thesentinelproject.org/wp-content/uploads/Genocide-in-Rwanda-Recurrence-Risk-Model-Using-Two-Early-Warning-Models-Clarinda-Solberg.pdf
http://thesentinelproject.org/our-work/early-warning-system-overview/