Is the Bibi Aisha Time Magazine cover story a fake?

A question. Does the injured woman in the top two pictures, look like the one in the bottom picture?

The woman in the top two pictures was recently mutilated at the time the picture was taken, and was suffering additionally from a severe beating (which you can see in the bruising on her feet in). The one below appears to have healed wounds. So why is this important?

The woman in the first two pictures, named Nazia, was mutilated by her husband, a man named Mumtaz, in southern Zabul province of Afghanistan

at the age of 17 in the year 2007. This crime was appropriately perceived as a heinous one, by the local population, and local women held a demonstration calling for the immediate arrest of the mutilating criminal, who had highlighted the vile nature of his act by mutilating his wife on the first day of Eid al-Adha. This is one of the major Islamic holidays, lasting for three days. A reasonable social comparison would be if a man in the US were to chop off his wife's ears and nose on Christmas, a holiday that traditionally lasted 12 days, as you might recall from the holiday carol (the one with a "Partridge in a Pear Tree"). Such a crime being committed on such a special day would seem particularly horrific in the US or Afghanistan.

This holiday crime had a political angle however. The criminal's brother was a policeman working for the US-backed Afghan government.

Switch to the present. The second woman, if she is in fact, a second woman, is supposedly named Bibi Aisha, is purportedly 18 or 19 in 2010, depending on whether you accept the New York Times or CNN account, and according to a rash

of recent news articles, most notably a cover story for Time Magazine, was also mutilated by her husband, but in this version of the story, there is a different political angle. The husband,

all ten of his brothers, and his father are reportedly, members of the Taliban, the scene of the crime has shifted to Oruzgan province,

and the crime took place just last year. Also in THIS version of the story, the mutilation is not the solitary outrageous crime of an abusive husband, who performed the mutilation, and beat his wife severely, according to the report, breaking a number of bones and smashing her teeth. Rather, in this second case, or perhaps, second version of the story, the brutal mutilation was done according to the orders of a Taliban judge.

So what is going on? Are these in fact two different women, or is there just one woman? If you look at the two pictures, they look very much like the same person separated only by the passage of a couple of years, a suntan, and the facial swelling visible in the first pictures induced by a brutal beating and her mutilation. Not only is there an extreme similarity of features (particularly when you account for the swelling around her mouth, where her vile husband smashed her teeth), but you can also see that the mutilations are very, very similar. In the case of the ear mutilations in particular, what are the chances that two brutal husbands will produce so similar results when they decide to hack off their wife's ears, and this just happening to two entirely different women with similar/identical features? Indeed the similarity in ear shape is very suggestive of identity in and of itself, because human ears vary in shape to the point that they are often used to confirm the identity of people in photographs in criminal cases. In very few such cases is part of the ear actually missing.

The chances seem even smaller when you look at the age of Nazia, being 17 in December 2007, with the reported age of "Bibi Aisha" being supposedly 18 or 19 in 2010. This is very close to what you would expect if the first victim was given a new name for propaganda purposes, and made a bit younger to build sympathy (needless to say, the woman or women deserve the utmost sympathy whatever their age(s).

I suspect that another clue as to whether or not the Time story about "Bibi Aisha" is in fact a separate case can be found in the story itself, although this theory hinges on some analysis of Taliban application of Islamic law (if I am wrong in this particular analysis, and this can be shown, I will of course remove this part of the analysis, but my being wrong about this does not obviate the question of the identity of "Bibi Aisha", or her attackers).

According to the story, the poor woman was mutilated on the orders of the Taliban, and then left for dead. Having your nose and part of your ears cut off is not especially likely to kill you however, although it is a horrible crime. The Taliban are experienced in warfare, given the history of Afghanistan, and with so many nasty wounds around, they would be unlikely not to know about this. But why would somebody make up a story about her being left for dead, given the extremity of the crime we KNOW was committed against her?

Well in fact, the Taliban are notorious for their enforcement of extreme and archaic punishments for crimes, (or sins). The Taliban would punish a woman who was an adulterer; they would kill her! The Taliban may be brutal, but they are not particularly capricious about whether or not to apply Islamic law however. To punish a woman for adultery under Islamic law requires proof, and in Islamic law this means witnesses. A jealous and abusive husband might well have problems here, especially since making a false, or simply unproven accusation of this sort can carry a significant penalty under Islamic law; up to 80 lashes with a whip. If "Bibi Aisha" did cheat on her husband, and there were a bunch of witnesses, then the Taliban might well have stoned her to death, but the jealous maniac of a husband who would cut his wife's nose off could not expect his paranoia to be satisfied just because of this. For what it is worth, the Taliban, who by no means deny that they punish adultery, deny that she was ever accused in, or punished by, a Taliban religious court.

The problem, the great big problem, is that on one hand the Taliban are a bunch of violent extremists, who eagerly go about enforcing an extreme and restrictive law. On the other hand, the US backed government is not as extreme, but doesn't much enforce the law. or at least does not enforce the law very reliably or fairly.

If the Taliban just enforced reasonable laws, it is doubtful that even the might of the US government could have stopped them from winning in Afghanistan a long while back. On the other hand, particularly with the might of the US government behind them, but mainly because of how extreme the Taliban are, it is doubtful that the Afghan government could have failed to win, also a long while back if they weren't continually setting new records for corruption and abuse.

The US backed Afghan government has a terrible record of not prosecuting men with government connections for violence against women. Nadia Anjuman, for example, was Afghanistan's most famous and popular female poet, known not only in Afghanistan, but in the neighboring nations besides. She was murdered by her politically connected abusive husband, but the US-backed Afghan government only sentenced him to five years in jail.......... and then let him out after one month. Nadia Anjuman was famous and popular, but even she would not receive justice under the Karzai government. With Nadia Anjuman being murdered with impunity by her husband in 2005, Mumtaz, the husband of Nazia might have thought that in 2007 he also could get away with mutilating his wife because his brother was a policeman.

The Anjuman case is a good example of my point about the "rock and a hard place" choice as it is viewed by the Afghan population. The murdered poet Nadia Anjuman had, under the Taliban, been forced to take literature classes in secret, she and other women resorting to the ruse of a sewing school, in order to evade Taliban prohibitions on women's education. To quote Leila Razeqi, the woman who actually set up the secret women's literature classes, "If the Taliban were here they would have punished her husband, and maybe that would be better.” You and I might not agree with this sentiment, but the Karzai government is apparently bad enough that Afghans are likely to.

The cover story in Time however, is telling a somewhat different story. Instead of domestic abuse being a universal problem that shows up worst where the government is the most corrupt, the story becomes more black and white. Everybody knows that the Taliban are cruel, but the cover article tries to tie them to unusual punishment as well, not just cruel punishment. As the political slant in Time Magazine goes, this is "What happens If We Leave Afghanistan". Well "what happens" may be a phony story, but if it is not, then supporting the Karzai government does not come off any better by comparison. Instead of a woman with her nose and ears cut off, we would have......... a younger woman, seemingly a near twin, with her nose and ears cut off, PLUS with her teeth broken, and bones broken. What an improvement.

If you have any sympathy for "Bibi Aisha", there is another horrible possibility, or perhaps probability to consider. She cannot read or write, and according to the New York Times, had never heard of Time Magazine, until she was given a copy of the issue with her name on it. Now if she is in fact, the same woman as Nazia, who was mutilated in 2007, she was mutilated by a man connected to the Karzai government, not the Taliban. Time Magazine "confirmed that she is in a secret location protected by armed guards", armed guards who are on the side of the Karzai government, so this poor woman may still be in the hands of forces that are, so far as she knows, from the same group as the man who mutilated her. Now, according to the New York Times, she "did not remember how she managed to walk away to find help" from the site of her mutilation. What sort of threats might she be getting from her armed "protectors" now to make her tell the "right" story?

"Bibi Aisha" is being brought to the United States for surgery, so she could be rescued, if in fact she is being held as a propaganda pawn, but this would certainly require that some journalist can get to the truth of the situation. Even if Bibi Aisha and Nazia are in fact different people, we need journalists, bloggers, and everyone who cares to see that women are not mutilated, to work to make sure that the public knows that the problem of violence against women, even the most severe kinds, is certainly not confined to the Taliban.

The beginning of the end in Afghanistan

The US is now shifting its forces to urban areas in Afghanistan. This is not the end of the beginning, this is the beginning of the end.

By this I do not mean to say that redeploying forces must always be a loss, or is leading to defeat. Neither is true. However, the war in Afghanistan, and indeed the foundation of major conflict in Afghanistan for the past 40 or 50 years, is fundamentally based on a split between the rural population, and the urban population.

So long as this clash of cultures is so large, it is questionable whether Afghanistan could be controlled, as a geographic entity, even if the urban population were a majority. Since the rural population is the majority however, a withdrawal from the rural areas means that the Taliban has captured the crucial territory in Afghanistan.

The US and international forces, like the Soviets before them, have regarded girls schools and movie theaters as being bolts of modernity for a modern state. In fact, ANY cultural modernization, however virtuous, that takes place in urban but not rural areas, is a nail in the coffin of the urban government.

If the Taliban constitutes the 'native' faction in the rural and tribal areas, then the war itself will become in addition to a religious crusade, and a war against foreign occupation, also a tribal war.

The Pashtun tribesmen are THE crucial faction, and if they are united against you, you lose Afghanistan.

The political machinations of the Pentagon being what they are, the generals in charge are asking for more troops, in order to "win". In fact, strictly speaking, they are quite correct that they can win with enough troops. The detail being left out, is that Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar have nothing on these bold fellows, provided sufficient numbers of soldiers are provided.

This is not to say that US commanders are incompetent; neither the Mongols or Alexander the Great had much luck in the region, but US political dialog generally requires that American military officers bark patriotically about victory under all circumstances.

At least so far as most of the US military's brass is concerned, the job of the politicians in charge is to look at the size of the bill, and the price in blood to be paid, and call off the game before the losses add up. There are now more Americans fighting in Afghanistan when you include 'contractors' than there were Soviets at the height of their misadventure. Time to hit the road.

The freaky thing is that this Afghanistan adventure is malfunctioning badly enough so that Joe Biden, of all people, can see the problem and is the LEADING advocate of bailing in the Obama administration. I would like to imagine that the sheer brainpower of Obama and Co. has burned through the BS, but when you read the amazingly negative remarks by the Generals in charge of our safari, it seems more likely that the decision makers are getting "foxhole religion". I suspect that the situation is simply bad enough that Biden's characteristic of blurting out anything in his head has made him an advocate of the obvious.

This is probably the last chance for pulling out without having the war be seen as a complete and utter fiasco. The Pakistanis have made sure to maintain their connections with the Taliban for the primary reason that they aren't willing to risk a government in Afghanistan that isn't an ally. There are plenty of secondary reasons as well, not least being many Pakistani's sympathy with the Taliban. What is going to happen this spring, given the clear downward trajectory of the US occupation, is that the Pakistanis are going to either export their highly troublesome religious fanatics, or start packaging them for shipping.

A lot of people in Washington would probably like to drag out a withdrawal, even if they figure that the war is a turkey, but there isn't any way that the US is going to allowed to slowly 'slip off the edge'. If we don't move quick, the Pakistanis are going to push, hoping that the US will kill off as many annoying Pakistani fanatics in Afghanistan as possible. A lot of the old hands at the PSI had made the calculation that the Taliban was coming back at the BEGINNING of the war, and only an idiot would believe anything different now. The thing is, the NON-religious and secular Pakistani officials are going to tend to support the Taliban at this point by sending their armed fanatics, simply because they hope that the US bases will serve as 'roach motels' (they check in, but never check out) for fanatics. The Arab governments played this game with the Soviets, the Pakistanis have done this with India for generations, and there is no earthly way that we are going to be able to convince Pakistan to stop. In fact, there is a fair chance that the Arabs will start up again, if they are not already.

Even if it takes a while for the Pakistanis to arrive, some of our most important anti-Taliban measures are going to explode in our laps, if we are still largely in place by the spring. Many advocates of a continued commitment are advocating that the US pour more effort into training Afghans, to take the place of US troops. This is all very well, but it neglects the questionable loyalty of the new recruits. The Taliban is very happy to have American trained soldiers, as this permits them to understand and counter US combat tactics. Consequently, the Taliban will pay a defecting Afghan soldier a salary larger than he would receive fighting for the government. Afghan warfare is fought by the seasons, and it is very likely that Taliban sympathizers are, as I write this, signing up for Afghan government service, knowing that they will be trained during the winter, and will not have to bear arms against their countrymen. US training should improve the future-Taliban's chances of survival, and collecting a salary during training certainly beats spending the winter in a cave! Come spring however, we can expect many new Afghan soldiers to melt away with the snow.

What the US needs to do now, is to bail out, and do so by cutting some sort of deal that gives us a "chaos" excuse for the eventual collapse. If we do it right, the Pakistanis will want to stop or control a lot of their own Taliban in place, rather than export them as hopeful casualties.

Otherwise, the US will scream about "stopping your crazies" and the Pakistanis will, while shaking us down for equipment, comply somewhat in "taking control" but will leave the door to Afghanistan wide open as THE option of choice for avoiding the thrills of a Pakistani jail. This is such an obvious and well known strategy there that even if the US was somehow able to stop both the central government, and the upper levels of the hard-line intelligence apparatus from using it, thousands of low level officials, soldiers and police would use the scheme for careerist motivations;"well MY district is under control", or to cut down on the chances of being shot or blown up.

Incidentally, I would give fair odds that if the war drags out, we are going to end up seeing some significant tensions with China as a side effect, albeit a very classified side effect (actual reasons for tension hidden). Recall that the Chinese are Pakistan's other major ally, and one that the Chinese cannot afford to lose in any geopolitical sense. Anybody in the Pakistani government that the Americans don't like, is a natural recruit for China. The US has accustomed the political culture of Pakistan to the notion of working with a foreign intelligence service in the CIA. This sort of hidden contact with an ally is regarded more as a political maneuver in Pakistan than as treason and it is likely that the Chinese will take advantage of the situation. With Afghanistan and Pakistan so close, they have every reason to support those Pakistanis who are less affiliated with the US, and frankly even if the US becomes alienated from the Pakistanis altogether, the Chinese win.

Now the Chinese don't actually like Muslim radicals, but Muslim radicals are the largest anti-American faction of note in the world today, and so it makes sense to have them on good terms in a very covert sense. This risk is worth taking for the Chinese for three reasons.

First, KGB type tactics seem like a satisfactory means for the Chinese to deal with foreign terrorists or weirdoes. Using spy tactics is generally going to mean that agents will have to have contact with the targeted group, whether they are terrorists or not. Second, the Uighur separatists, who provide the main risk to China associated with increased terrorist or Muslim extremist activity, are basically under control, so their spies can take more risks. Third, the Americans won't turn over the Uighur's that they have captured, and have Uighur supportive media. This means that the best means for the Chinese to grab dissident Uighurs is to deal with the Muslims that they would run to, rather than to turn to the US, which is nominally in a war with terrorism in general.

I don't think that any of this means that the Chinese will actually take serious Muslim radical supporting steps however. The real reason that there is likely to be tension is that the Americans and signals-intelligence heavy nations tend to believe that people mean what they say. If you think about it, a significant proportion of the words being said at any given point anywhere in the world are likely to be sarcastic, or social lies.

If a Chinese intelligence officer is trying to pick up a Pakistani government official who wants to export the local radicals, one of the most obvious means of sucking up is to say that he is right, flattering him, and encouraging him to do what you can tell he wants to do anyway. The Americans pick this up, and flatter themselves with the notion that one, they are being plotted against, and two, the reason that an unwinnable counterinsurgency is being lost is that someone big is "actually" doing it.

I suspect that most high governmental officials anywhere in the world are used to disbelieving a lot of what is said to them, but signals intelligence allows a person to get 'drunk' on secrets and truths. What you pick up spying isn't magically true.

Incidentally, Chinese intelligence officers are likely to take advantage of the eavesdropping as an additional recruiting tool. If the Chinese say, in communications that they know will be intercepted, that particular figures are either working with them, or simply have particular anti-American attitudes, then the US protective reaction towards those Pakistanis becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Tactical gamesmanship of this sort is likely to be seized upon by people looking for a "good" and less humiliating reason for loosing a guerrilla war, and also by the traditionally anti-China faction. Just another potential/likely side-effect when you keep digging your problem deeper. Keep it simple, and bail.

Wrestling With Religion: What GOP Strategist Steve Schmidt Doesn't Understand

(and why this matters around the world)
Also, a post that must be read entirely to be understood.

Caricature from "Le Rire" regarding a 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State)

John McCain's campaign manager Steve Schmidt made some news of his own the other day with his speech at the Log Cabin Republicans' national convention. The Huffington Post summed it up very well; "Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Manager: Religion Could Kill The GOP". Unfortunately the Huffington Post has also, in summing up Schmidt's point, made a better one than Schmidt himself did. To quote;

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt declared. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

Whatever you think about the policies and beliefs of the Republican Party, this statement is incorrect.

First, in a technical sense, "Christian Democratic" political parties are extraordinarily common throughout the globe, and are frequently dominant in European Union nations. The international organization of Christian democratic parties, the Centrist Democrat International (CDI), is the second largest international political organization in the world (second only to the Socialist International). A majority of of the nations that the average North American would acknowledge as being democratic have extremely strong Christian Democratic parties. There is plenty of reason NOT to want any party with religion embedded directly of course, but nobody should pretend it is impossible.

In the second place, Schmidt's statement about the proper role of religion in politics is logically unsound. This is a pretty strong statement on my part, and such criticism would be unfair if the statement was taken casually, but policy at his level has to treated precisely.

What Schmidt is saying, is that an issue, or proposal that arrives, or is taken into the public sphere, is not to be filtered by religious convictions. Obviously in this context there is no question of Republican positions being formally certified by some specific religious hierarchy. What he is talking about is the religious sensibilities of Republican Party members.

To Schmidt these religious feelings should be ENTIRELY private; they should not influence or veto a proposal. Who however, imagines that a person who is egalitarian, who feels that people should not starve, who feels that everyone should have medical care, or who is a feminist, is NOT going to allow their feelings about what is right, appropriate and ethical, to influence their positions on political issues?

Anyone who claims that their convictions, of whatever type, are not going to influence their position on political issues, either simply doesn't know how to FIND their convictions "with both hands", does not in fact, hold the convictions that they claim to, is LYING, or, worst of all, is "just following orders". Each and every political party is going to have to take the deeply held sensibilities of their members into account.

But why should a liberal, or someone who has never even visited the US think that this point is so important? To be sure, everyone has convictions, a nice and politically pius sentiment, but isn't this fundamentally still a defense of theocratic politics?

In fact, Steve Schmidt's comments indirectly reveal exactly why religion threatens the future of the Republican party, and also why theocratic religious politics are such a problem around the globe. Schmidt asserts that the sequence;

public issue - policy proposal - voter evaluation according to personal convictions & beliefs

is corrupted if the religious convictions of the voter affect his or her REACTION to a policy proposal. This idea is wrongheaded to be sure, but the reaction to these notions is often equally undesirable. The theocrat simply reverses the sequence to;

personal convictions and beliefs - policy proposal - public issue evaluated by political calculation.

Instead of the government AVOIDING policy that offends the convictions of the populace, one gets religious convictions regurgitated ONTO the public, by the government. This theocratic regime tramples upon anyone with divergent beliefs, and the impure vessel of government stains, rots, and fouls what is pure in religion. If the public and if political parties of any nation fall into a false choice between a 'morals-free-zone, and theocratic rule, then that nation or party is in for a very hard time.