For the second event of the series, we will be joined by critically-acclaimed artist David Birkin, in conversation with Max Houghton, who uses his work to examine elements of censorship and spectacle in the so-called War on Terror. He has explored subjects ranging from the covert deployment of drones in Pakistan and Yemen, to the Bush-era ban on photographing flag-draped coffins. We will be hearing from Birkin on his recent work that engages with invisible warfare – including ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’, his public performance involving a plane circling the Statue of Liberty’s torch; and ‘The Evidence of Absence’, in which he launched a replica of a military surveillance blimp currently flying over Kabul above a London residential neighbourhood.
This event will be moderated by Max Houghton, senior lecturer in photography at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She previously ran the documentary photography MA at the University of Westminster, and edited the photography biannual 8 magazine for six years. She writes regularly on the arts for publications including FOAM, Photoworks, 1000 Words and The Daily Telegraph.
David Birkin is a British-born artist based in New York. He studied anthropology at Oxford University and fine art at the Slade, and was a fellow on the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His past projects have included a collaboration with the courtroom sketch artist at Guantanamo, a visual rendering of identification numbers from the Iraqi civilian casualty database, and skywriting an extract of CIA legalese above Manhattan. He has exhibited internationally, most recently at The Mosaic Rooms in London, FotoFest in Houston, and the Whitney ISP in New York, and has written for publications including Creative Time Reports, Cabinet Magazine, Ibraaz and the Harvard Advocate.
Drone warfare has become the defining policy of Obama’s war on terror. Unmanned aerial vehicles provide a unique solution to the unpopular politics of war, granting the United States the ability to take out targets in the remotest parts of the world without any risk to American life.
Drone, directed by Tonje Hessen Schei and four years in the making, was screened at the Frontline Club on Monday 13 April 2015. The documentary explores the true cost of drone strikes, from civilian casualties to the mental health of drone pilots and the implications for international law.
Tonje Hessen Schei
“I’ve been obsessed with this issue since 2010, but now after all these years of the drone strikes and all the people that have been killed, to meet people on the street that don’t know what a drone is… it scares me,” said Schei.
“I’m not anti-drone,” Schei told the Frontline Club audience. “What I’m very critical of is the CIA’s use of drones where they’re killing thousands of people outside of declared war zones.”
One of the underlying problems with drone strikes that Schei’s documentary explores is the lack of intelligence. In Waziristan, the remote part of Pakistan that Drone largely focuses on, accurate intelligence is almost impossible and this is reflected in the statistics.
Director Tonje Hessen Schei
“I think some of the recent numbers [of targets killed] are around 69 high level militants. So then you wonder, what about the other 90 percent. Who are they killing? And what kind of ‘imminence’ are these people posing to the security of the States?”
“One of the main things that we hope to do is to sort of take down the whole selling point on the drones being this perfect surgical weapon in the war on terror… it is important to acknowledge the thousands of people and the thousands of civilians that have been killed in this war.”
Creating this film was no easy task, as gaining access both in the US and in Pakistan proved difficult.
Schei told audience members that she was starting to get “a little bit desperate” whilst trying to get access to the US Air Force.
“Interestingly enough, as soon as Brandon [Bryant] agreed to participate in the documentary, the US Air Force opened their front door, pretty much almost the day after,” said Schei. Bryant was an ex-drone pilot who, after leaving the Air Force with severe post-traumatic stress, told his story to Der Spiegel.
“There was something about the way he told his story and the importance of his voice that really made an impact on me,” said Schei. She spent nine months building up trust with Bryant because of the “incredible media hunt” which he experienced after the Der Spiegel story was published.
Once the US Air Force were sure of Bryant’s participation in the documentary, they extended invitations to Schei to visit airbases and provided access to their video library.
Tonje Hessen Schei
“What do you really think the chances are of seeing genuine prosecution?” asked a member of the audience. “Is there really a chance of actual indictment of the head of the CIA for war crimes?”
In fact, two of the film’s protagonists, Shahzad Akbar and Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve, have recently been making legal progress in Pakistan.
“[Akbar] actually, last week, won a very important case in Pakistan where a judge is now opening up the possibilities for the CIA officials to be prosecuted for their involvement in the 2009 strikes against Kareem Khan and his family,” said Schei.
Drone strikes still have significant popular support in the US, likely because they give the impression of security without the human cost of the lives of US soldiers. “They [the American public] don’t have enough information about what is really going on,” said Schei. However, the use of drones in warfare is not solely an American issue.
Over 100 countries worldwide are currently developing drone technologies, including the UK, Israel, China, Russia and Iran. Schei told audience members that the use of drones by the US is setting a dangerous precedent, both with regards to international law and international standards surrounding the use of drones.
“I think it’s going to be very very difficult for us to point our finger at anybody else that starts going after whoever they might see as imminent threats around the world,” she said, “…it’s just a matter of time before we will see this.”
Visit the Drone website for more information on the film and upcoming screenings.
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On 2 May 2011, America’s public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden, was killed by Navy SEALs in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The raid only lasted 40 minutes, but the hunt for bin Laden took two decades.
For 20 years, a small team of female agents known as “The Sisterhood” tracked the activities of al-Qaeda. They were trying to take down bin Laden before most of us even knew his name. Piecing together scraps of intelligence, they uncovered a secret terrorist organisation, al-Qaeda, and warned Washington of this new impending threat. Their warnings were repeatedly ignored, until the 9/11 attacks, when all the rules changed.
In Manhunt, director Greg Barker takes the viewer through the process that eventually led to the discovery of the world’s most wanted terrorist, giving a peek into the hidden world of the US intelligence community, which turns out to be populated by ordinary people wondering whether waging war is really part of their job description.
Directed by Greg Barker
Duration: 103′
Year: 2013
Edward (David Oyelowo) is an MI5 officer convinced that home-grown terror suspect Waleed (Arsher Ali) is plotting an atrocity on British soil. His investigations lead him to Egypt, where he finds himself entering into an uncomfortable alliance with the local security services who are prepared to secure the proof he needs by whatever means necessary.
Confronted by the key moral dilemma of our time, the MI5 officer Edward is forced into choosing between two morally devastating outcomes. Complicit explores the moral compromises surrounding the use of torture in fighting the ‘War on Terror’ and offers a penetrating insight into the dangerous world of counter- terrorism.
Commissioned by Channel 4, Complicit is written by Guy Hibbert (Blood and Oil, Five Minutes of Heaven, Omagh), directed by Niall McCormick (The Long Walk To Finchley) and produced by Jolyon Symonds (Mrs Mandela) and Kevin Toolis (Cult of the Suicide Bomber).
Duration: 93′
Year: 2012
“The Rules of the Game belongs to those who have suffered the most throughout the ‘War on Terror- the victims and their families.” This opening line of the book gave me goose bumps since exactly eight years ago today, the ‘War on Terror’ came banging on my door and since then things have never been the same again. This book speaks to me but it truly belongs to those less privileged voiceless and nameless victims of the ‘War on Terror’ who are still abused, incarcerated, humiliated and degraded. It is a well researched and detailed document that pieces together how the rules of the game have been suspended for a community expanding two billion people globally.
The book boldly states that “Islam is now the largest suspect community ever to have existed.” Everyone I spoke to in Somalia knew exactly what that meant. The experience of Somalis is also well documented in the book and is even used to highlight the far reaching hand of the ‘War on Terror’. “Those on the most remote corners of the Earth suffered directly from the use of profiling based on religion. In the far north–eastern corner of Kenya, refugees from Somalia were interned when Ethiopians attacked the Union of Islamic Courts…These Somalis have been in a refugee camp for seventeen years and had no tangible links to Somalia– and yet Kenya placed them under internment…In the words of the Somalis themselves, they felt as if they were in Guantanamo Bay because they were Somali Muslims.”
The aim of Asim Qureshi’s book is to present the stories of those who have been personally affected by the ill-conceived reaction to the terrorist threat of the US and her allies. He argues that the ‘War on Terror’ cannot be seen as ‘individual acts separate from one another…rather they must be seen as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, which when placed together in their correct positions produce an holistic picture.”
The book is dedicated to named children and reads, ‘This book is written in the hope that your world is safer than ours.’ It also ends with the same sentiment of hope. “Counter-terrorism measures will never work as long as they continue to be reactionary and devoid of understanding of the group that they seek to tackle…by trying to understand the perspectives of both sides, there is the hope that there can be dialogue, and with that hope comes the hope for change.” This last analysis has been proven right even with the UK Government’s Prevent Strategy that has now been recognised by a cross-party committee of MPs to have not only failed but also backfired.
I share this hope for change and especially the hope for the future generation of young Muslims who are currently growing up in uncertain, frightening, and hateful times. For the last few years I have been volunteering in mediation and conflict resolution. I have recently started studying for a postgraduate degree in the same field. If I have learned anything from my experiences and my studies, it is that while conflict can present opportunities for positive change without addressing the root causes, the vicious cycles can go on and become intractable.
Cageprisoners is a human rights organisation to raise awareness of the plight of War on Terror detainees and prisoners. They are always looking for volunteers who can help with research or even writing to detainees. If you can help their cause in any way please do contact them. Follow them on Twitter.
The author Asim Qureshi, is trained in law and is currently the Senior Researcher for Cageprisoners. At April’s First Wednesday Frontline Club will be looking at the "War on Terror": Following the suicide bombings in Russia on 29 March. Asim Qureshi will be taking part in the second part of the discussion examining the "war on terror".
The Rules of the Game is available for sale via Hurst publishers and on Amazon.
by DAVID AXE and JOHN MASATO ULMER
Somali-American terror recruits have common roots in an impoverished, neglected and sometime oppressed immigrant community. Their feelings of impotence and isolation — and their desperate searches for structure — are not new. But for the most part, any violent impulses simmered under the surface until late 2006, when the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia gave American Somalis — and their kinsmen all over the world — a cause on which to hang their dissatisfaction.
In December of that year, thousands of Ethiopian troops streamed into neighboring Somalia, supported by fighter jets and columns of tanks. The attack was aimed at preventing what Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called the “Talibanization” of Somalia by the Islamic Courts Union, at the time the umbrella group for Al Shabab and other Islamists.
Quietly assisting the Ethiopians was a handful of American Special Forces, aircraft and aerial drones. “Ethiopia’s interests at the moment fully coincide with America’s security interests in the region,” Zenawi said. But at the time, what amounted to the third front in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” received very little attention in most of the U.S.
Not so in Minnesota, as well as other states with large Somali immigrant communities. Here, the reaction to the Ethiopian invasion was powerful. Ramla Bile, a United Somali Movement member, recalls feeling “helpless.”
“We felt that if we didn’t do anything, there wouldn’t be any Somalia, just the Somali people,” says an acquaintance of one of the “travelers” who gave only her first name, Najma.
“The primary motivation for such travel was to defend their place of birth from the Ethiopian invasion,” FBI Associate Director Philip Mudd said, “although an appeal was also made based on their shared Islamic identity.”
Read the rest in World Politics Review.
(Photo: David Axe)
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by DAVID AXE and JOHN MASATO ULMER
When 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali-born immigrant living in Minnesota, blew himself up in Puntland, Somalia, on Oct. 29 last year, he became the very first American suicide bomber, and a harbinger of a looming crisis. Ahmed sneaked into Somalia in late 2007, followed by potentially scores of other young Minnesotan Somali-Americans.
Since the first wave of “travelers,” as they are known, left America, Minnesota has become a quiet battleground. The miniature, homegrown war on terror has pitted government authorities and their allies in the Somali community against fiery youths, hardline mosques and angry, alienated Somali immigrants.
Both sides claim to represent the voice of Minnesota’s roughly 70,000 Somalis. All agree, however, that the issue has its roots in broken families, neglected kids, alleyway bullying, and many Americans’ all-too-casual racism and xenophobia. In our post-9/11 world, Somali immigrants’ race and faith “pushed those buttons of fear,” says Dr. Peter Rachleff, a professor specializing in immigration, labor and African-American history at Macalester College, in St. Paul. And the backlash that fear created has contributed to a sense of alienation among many Somalis that sometimes results in desperate actions.
In America, Somali immigrants represent a minority within a minority within a minority. They’re black. They’re native Africans. And they’re Muslims. “Somalis face language and cultural barriers,” explains Abdirizak Bihi, a Somali community organizer and uncle of one of the travelers. Bihi’s 17-year-old nephew Burhan Hassan sneaked into Somalia in November, and reportedly died of a gunshot wound seven months later.
Many young Somali-Americans live in broken homes — their fathers either dead or working abroad. “We have the highest [number of] single-mom households in this community,” Bihi says. “It’s very bad, especially for the boys. They need a mentor.”
Read the rest at World Politics Review.
(Photo: Elliot Dodge deBruyn)
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by DAVID AXE and JOHN MASATO ULMER
On Oct. 29 last year, Shirwa Ahmed drove a car full of explosives up to a government compound in Puntland, a region of northern Somalia, and blew himself up. The blast — apparently orchestrated by al-Shabab, an Islamic militant group with ties to al-Qaida — was part of a coordinated attack in two cities that killed more than 20 people. A BBC reporter described body parts flying through the air.
The attackers were “not from Puntland,” said Adde Muse, the regional leader. He couldn’t have been more right. For most of his life, the Somali-born Ahmed had lived in Minnesota, where he was more accustomed to frigid winters than to the dry, yellow sands of East Africa. The 26-year-old former truck driver with the fluffy beard — “as American as apple pie,” according to one acquaintance — was the very first American suicide bomber, and a harbinger of a looming crisis. Since Ahmed sneaked into Somalia in late 2007, potentially scores of other young Minnesotans have followed him.
By all accounts, Ahmed hadn’t come to Somalia to die. His motive was apparently to help Shabab defend Somalia against an invading Ethiopian army. The defense of Somalia was a popular cause among many Somalis living in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East — especially among young people. On the long, winding journey from Minneapolis’ streets and parks to Somalia’s bleached sand and searing sun, Ahmed’s original impulses had gotten tangled up with Shabab’s al-Qaida-style religious extremism.
But it’s possible that even the Ethiopian invasion was just the political cause that gave shape to Ahmed’s deeper desires. Many of the young men recruited by Shabab got their start in Minneapolis street gangs that mix Somali patriotism, religious fervor and an almost familial structure. The gangs give young men a sense of belonging they can’t find at home, at school or in the community. That belonging was a powerful and dangerous thing for Minnesota’s Somali recruits, for it cloaked a radical political sensibility that eased the men into jihad. Radical mosques perhaps only reinforced that indoctrination. “They’ve been disillusioned, indoctrinated and misled,” says Omar Jamal, a civil rights advocate in Minneapolis.
Read the rest at World Politics Review.
(Photo: Elliot Dodge deBruyn)
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Last week Osama bin Laden exhorted Somalis to rise up in jihad against new president Shariff Sheikh Ahmed, a call that even Somali insurgent leaders rejected.
Earlier, as many as two dozen Somalis living in the U.S. sneaked into Somalia to join Islamic fighters combating the U.S.-, U.N.- and A.U.-backed government. One recruit (pictured) became the first American suicide bomber, when he blew himself up in northern Somalia in October.
Now one surviving recruit has had a “change of heart,” according to a diaspora leader. The 22-year-old has reportedly returned to the U.S. and is now in hiding.
]]>In October, a suicide bomber killed 30 people in northern Somalia, a region once considered fairly safe compared to rest of the war-torn country. Now it appears the bomber was an American, making him the first suicide jihadist to come from this country. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more:
]]>"It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota," [FBI Director Robert] Mueller said. Federal authorities have said that [Shirwa] Ahmed was one of as many as two-dozen young men of Somali descent who disappeared in the past two years from their homes in the Minneapolis area after being recruited by the Shabab, a militia suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda that has waged a war against the Somali government.