Category: Uncategorised

Two scary things about the Saudi plan to building a 550-mile fence to shut out Iraq:

1. It’ll take 5-6 years for them to complete. They reckon things will be bad for a
   
   long
   
   time
2. The cost is some £13bn. I know this is a country rolling in money, but still: that’s an awful lot to pay just to keep Iraq’s rebels from getting out.

Now, maybe I’m overreacting. Building protection along a border is normal, and normally expensive. It’s only the Telegraph spin linking this so directly to Iraq. But still, it does suggest that the Saudis are working on an assumption that Iraq is going to end up in civil war within the next few years.

Looking through Brookings Iraq Index for something else entirely, I came across this baffling table. The amount of post sent each year in Iraq:

Year	Tons of mail
2001	148 tons sent (231 received)
2003	37 tons sent
2004	43 tons sent
2005	54 tons sent

Huh? Use of the postal system is a third of what it was under Saddam? Why on earth would that be the case?

Granted, dodgy statistics are the most likely culprit – the figures are sourced to an article in the New York Times, and its quite likely that the Baath figure is dodgy for some reason or other. Odder still: somehow the Times writer interprets the figures as “

evidence of recovery

“.

Still, it’d be nice to think there’s some mystery in those numbers, waiting to be uncovered.

Parties, and not the government, rule Iraq now

One line that tells you more than most articles, out of an excellent piece of journalism by Lara Logan. It’s also a perfect example of how compelling human interest journalism

can

be, when it’s done on the basis of a lot of facts, not just telling the story of the first native you meet.

Lara has framed what seem like two of the most important issues in Iraq. The first is the role of parties, mentioned above. The other is this picture of befuddled GIs surrounded by two conflicts they don’t understand:

…American soldiers are bearing the burden of a failed strategy and being forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, suddenly caught in the midst of two distinct wars: a counter-insurgency and a rapidly escalating sectarian conflict.

And their partners in the counter-insurgency war are participating in the sectarian conflict they’re being asked to stop.

I’d not heard of Lara Logan before, but from here on in I’m reading everything she writes.

flat good.

lack of shower curtain or curtain over the bathroom window, not so good. especially when there’s a supermarket opposite.

I’m not usually all that shy about my body. But this is ridiculous.

[crossposted to IAG]

A while back the New York Times and the [BBC](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5357340.stm) cheerfully reported that 25 Sunni tribes in Anbar had decided to support the Iraqi government in attacking insurgents.

Am I too cynical in thinking that the crucial sentence is this one:

In addition to the government’s blessing, Mr. Rishawi said, the tribes also wanted weapons and equipment to confront the Qaeda-backed insurgents.

Asking for weapons from the government isn’t a sign of loyalty – it’s about getting yourself the equipment to defend yourself against anybody – government, American, jihadi, whatever – who attacks you.

Every Iraqi grouping with an ounce of sense wants to keep itself heavily armed at the moment – and if the kit comes with a vague government permission to use it, so much the better.This isn’t any different from the militias that were incorporated into the various security forces, or the employment of tribes to guard oil pipelines.

Or am I being too cynical?

This post deserves propagation. Abu Aardvark points out the key sentence in the letter to Zarqawi from al-Qaeda’s central command: “

prolonging the war is in our interest

“. As he explains, this makes perfect sense: the jihadis are unpopular in Iraq, and they would have no chance at all were the country not under foreign occupation. But while we are in the country, they can use their fight against us to build international support. Yes, that’s been obvious for a long time, but it’s something else to have it confirmed from the horse’s mouth. Full letter [http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony/CTC-AtiyahLetter.pdf](here), others captured in the same batch [here](http://www.ctc.usma.edu/harmony.asp)

• I really, really need to get my head down and do some work. I had figured that getting out of Cambridge would clear my head, and in most ways it has, but not to the point where I can sit down and do what I’m supposed to do.
• I find myself almost wishing that Hungarian was spoken by more people. There are some truly beautiful nuances to the language, but there’s no way I’m going to learn it just for 2 months and 13 million speakers. There are some very nice things you can do with affixes to slightly alter the meaning of words. But I’ve consciously decided not to aim higher than the ‘point and gesture’ level.
• That riot thing. Since I’m living stupidly close to the parliament, I’ve beenoccasionally dropping in on the ongoing anti-government protest that’s been happening there since the Prime Minister. It’s impressive how old and calm everybody there is. I mean, an anti-government protest without an angry young man in sight? that’s quite something.

I’m temporarily turning off comments on this blog, because of the ridiculous amount of comment spam I’m getting right now. No promises about when they’ll come back; probably when I’m sorted out enough to put a bit more content around here.

How can you develop a service without sharing a language with your users?

Holed up in Budapest, my head too messed up to do any proper work (eep! the doom she is a-coming!), I’ve been listening to danah Boyd‘s keynote at the blogtalk conference that’s just winding up in Vienna.

She touches on the fact that the creators of Orkut don’t have the faintest idea what their Portugese or Hindi-speaking users are doing. I’d always vaguely assumed that there would be a fair few Portugese-speakers within the Orkut development team, for instance. But obviously not.

It’d be a nice little project for a journalist or an anthropologist, to work out how much the developers of these sites know about their users.

The US Congress has done something remarkably sensible, by tacking onto a defense spending bill a guarantee that they will not establish permanent bases in Iraq. As Reuters says,

“

Democrats and many Republicans say the Iraqi insurgency has been fueled by perceptions the United States has ambitions for a permanent presence in the country.

“

Yep. A [poll](http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep06/Iraq_Sep06_rpt.pdf) released a few days ago found that 77% of Iraqis believe that the US plans permanent bases in Iraq, down just 3% since January.

The problem is, not even most Americans are going to notice this little message in a corner of a bill, let alone Iraqis. US-funded propaganda outlets might publicise it if they’re smart, but they don’t have any credibility. And anyway, why should they believe what Congress demands, if Bush isn’t willing to state it openly, and if there is always a way to work around it?