Eric Umansky

Accountability in Action

Back in February a Blackwater guard shot and killed three three Iraqi government guards who, witnessed said, hadn't opened fire.

A few minutes later, a Iraqi Army commander at the scene went over to the Blackwater unit to complain:

Abood, a short, stocky man who speaks halting English, said he learned from the Justice Ministry that snipers from a U.S. security company -- not insurgents -- had shot the guards. He drove in a Humvee with one of his lieutenants to the ministry. The Blackwater guards were gathered in the traffic circle, he said, preparing to leave. Most were stocky, with goatees and small communication devices in their ears.

"I told them, 'I want to speak with the guy who is in charge of this unit,' " he said.

The Blackwater guards started toying with him, Abood said.

"He's in charge," said one, pointing at one of his colleagues.

"No, he's in charge," said another.

"They didn't care what I was saying," Abood said....

Abood said he was still waiting when the Blackwater guards climbed inside their vehicles, set off smoke grenades in the circle and sped away in a green-and-orange cloud toward the Green Zone.

The whole incident is detailed in a frontpage story in today's Washington Post. It
makes for grim reading.

Pakistan

This--from the NYT-- about sums it up for me:

“The major reason for militancy is lack of democracy and governance,” said Talat Masood, a political analyst and retired general. “They’ve been overlooked for short-term gains, and there are not even short-term gains anymore.”

The amazing thing to me is that we've been sticking by Musharraf--in a way that's ultimately counter-productive--while he hasn't even been delivering on his promises to go over AQ/Taliban. All-in-all it's a pretty good  example of why supporting a strongman, in the interest of "realism," as often as not comes back to bite you in the ass.   

Update: My former Slate colleague Fred Kaplan has a more measured take.

Film Festival!

This week marks the start of "14th Annual Damascus International Film Festival." The films run the gamut, from short documentaries  in Arabic to....Happy Feet and  (even weirder)  Lives of Others.

Tonight, Sara and I went to go see one of the documentaries, which was half in  English and  wholly terrible. (More about that later.)

We were actually lucky to get into the theater in the first place. Though tickets aren't sold in advance and there was no real line, there was a husky unpleasant man standing in front of the entrance letting in the holloi polloi arriving in late-model BMWs and Mercedes and keeping the likes of us out. H.U.M.  was  smoking away  and brushing off anybody who didn't have an invitation (to an event that was supposed to be open). Eventually, he wandered away...and we wandered in at the invitation of H.U.M.'s kindly replacement.

The movie--The Woman--was a  celebration of the live and POV of,  government poo-bah and  former presidential translator Bouthaina Shaaban. The film didn't include interviews with others, just her speaking for an hour and a half.

We considered leaving the middle but didn't want to risk getting a bad  rep. Also, my phone had fallen onto the floor in the middle of the screening, though I was considering abandoning it.

Once we left, the entrance was mobbed by admirers of Ms Shaaban, who was there kibitzing  (as I believe they say here).

It was all quite unusual. But there were definitely some familiar sightings.

Which Way Did they Go?

While I'm on the photo-blogging binge--and have access to the Internet, I'd thought I'd share one last photo from our trip last weekend....

We took a right.

Cool Car Sunday

,

I heard from a fellow foreigner in the neighborhood that this car, which is often parked near our apartment,  was first owned by a prime minister of Syria and was the first "presidential car" in the country. No idea if that's true. Either way, nice to have the old timer around the 'hood.

And this is your brain on candy

Niece Willa apparently enjoyed her Halloween loot.

Palmyra, Another P.O.V.

By Sara

Of course, there was much more to Palmyra than a pretty face or two. As Eric noted (when he wasn't ogling the models), the ruins were among the most impressive we've seen in Syria.

Departing Damascus at 8:00 a.m. Friday morning to avoid traffic, we were thrilled not only to have our friend P. for company, but also for her car as well. It was significantly more comfortable than our regular means of travel- dilapidated buses with neither air conditioning nor shock absorption. We did a little hotel research upon arrival and found that one of our reservations was at a hotel (the Zenobia) practically within the main ruins site.

While I absolutely have moral qualms about building on top of a 2000+ year old city, I have to say, enjoying a drink at sunset at the hotel's outdoor restaurant mere feet away from the temple of Bel was incredible.

Known in Arabic by its original name of Tadmor, Palmyra was a prosperous, independent city in the few centuries leading up to its Roman conquest in the 1st century A.D. as it was situated along a main trading route and  was adjacent to a lush, fertile oasis. The city then followed the typical track of many in the Mideast, after having been conqured by Romans, the Arabs marched in a few centuries later, and Palmyra never again lived up to its former glory.

However, the oasis is still in use and still quite a site to behold - about 10 kilometers square of tall date palms amid hundreds of miles of desert. Guidebooks in hand, we decided to check it out, imagining it would be like a zoo or park with footpaths and communal areas. At first, we couldn't figure out how to enter the oasis. Then we came upon a hole in the wall and saw a family having Saturday morning tea. The patriarch, Mohammed, invited us in and gave us a tour.

He told us (in Arabic- impressed? between the 3 of us, especially P., we were able to communicate) that the oasis is divided into separate, walled-off plots and maintained by independent farmers. He picked delicious dates and pomegranates for us and brought us back to sit with his daughters and nieces for tea.

The eldest, at 14 and 15-years-old, had stopped going to school after third grade because their home is too far from the nearest school. One of them told P. she expects to be married soon. They join their father/uncle once a week to help with the harvest. We tried to help them with olive gathering...

...but were informed we were stepping on too many of them. Despite our poor farming skills, the three of us agreed our side trip to the oasis was one of our favorite moments thus far in our travels in Syria.