Category Archives: Politics: International

Via Lenz Blog (this is my week for Germans?), who got it from Richard Stallman's political notes — an interesting but user-unfriendly list that thus mirrors its author — I find out about the US's latest bit of Really Stupid anti-PR—putting foreign reporters in lockup, starving them, then deporting them. (Sadly, almost as stupid policies exist elsewhere.) Yes, when I went to Australia to give a lecture, I had to get an expensive visa and do paperwork and they were fussy about it and if I hadn't they might not have let me in. Yes, the young woman in question (who was going to interview Olivia Newton John for a magazine) didn't do her paperwork right, but she told the truth when asked about it. That may justify an hour's extra questioning, but not deportation. But then I always said the INS U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was one of the worst bureaucracies in DC.

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At the time George W. Bush gave his speech to the UN, the speech that everyone expected would be devoted to Iraq, the amount of time devoted to the evils of the international sex trade seemed mysterious, even inexplicable. The best explanation I could come up with at the time was that it was filler thrown into the speech becuase the warring factions within the administraiton couldn't agree on much else.

Now, though, an alternate explanation is taking shape: Karl Rove is a genius. The speech was an attempt at political innoculation against the potential corrosion from the Neil Bush sex scandals stemming from his divorce case.

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Prof. Kim Lane Scheppele of the University of Pennsylvania Law School is an expert on new constitutions. She's not very happy about the new Afghan effort:

An English translation of the proposed constitution of Afghanistan is available [Word .doc].

This constitution will be debated and ratified, if all goes according to plan, in a Constitutional Loya Jirga to be convened in December.

If you want to know more about the process through which it was drafted, the Constitutional Commission's English language website is very informative. It can be found [here] .

International expert opinions (organized under UN auspices but which, so far as I can tell, were mostly ignored on the larger questions) can be found[here].

In my first reactions, it seems to me that the draft constitution is a substantial step backwards from the 1964 Constitution that brought Afghanistan its first representative democracy. Many of the rights provisions are subject to the qualification that the details will be regulated by law (which makes many basic rights subject to legislative limitation). There is a general equality clause but no specific equality clause for women. The constitution nationalizes natural resources and forbids foreigners from owning land.

The President has sweeping powers. The Parliament's role is limited to approval or disapproval of state policy that originates with the President. The President appoints the vice president, all of the ministers (though these may be subject to no confidence votes), one-third of the upper house and all of the judges of the Supreme Court (with the latter subject to the approval of the upper house). There is no Constitutional Court, though there is a Human Rights Commission. Constitutional questions can only be taken up by the Supreme Court upon a petition from the government or the courts. There is no public access to constitutional review.

But by far the biggest change in the new constitution is in the role of Islam. In the 1964 constitution, Islamic law was to be used by judges only where there was no positive law on point, as a kind of common law that could be used when statutes and the constitution ran out. Now Islam is a central organizing basis of constitutional life at an equal or perhaps even higher level than the Constitution itself. Political parties may not be formed that conflict with Islam. The educational system shall be designed to be in accord with Islam. The section on the family requires the state to eliminate traditions contrary to Islam. The new constitution does not specify which branch of Islamic law shall be considered authoritative (the old one did), but one can imagine in a country whose most recent government was the Taliban that the view of Islam on offer throughout the political system may not be particularly friendly to international standards of human rights.

While the current president of Afghanistan is a moderate, the current Supreme Court is left over from the Taliban time and they have quite radical views of what Islamic law requires. In fact, in the present legal system, there are almost no judges educated in secular law because all of the universities have been closed since the start of the civil war. Those who are literate (and far less than half of the male population and less than 20% of the female population are literate these days) learned what they know in madrassas which operated in the tribal lands of Pakistan, and this includes the present judges on the Supreme Court.

I must admit to being both disappointed and wary of the draft constitution. It is a constitution that would be easy to abuse. I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this.

(reprinted from Conlaw list with permission; minor reformatting)

Sets a great precedent for Iraq, right?

CNN.com – Senate votes to end Cuba travel ban – Oct. 23, 2003. Well, that ought to get the folks in Little Havana excited. But maybe not as excited as it would have a few years ago.

There is a pervasive myth that the US embargo of Cuba weakens the Castro dictatorship. I believe it strengthens it. I wish our Cuba policy were like our Poland policy during the regime of the evil General Wojciech Jaruzelski. At that time, and before, the US policy—spurred by the Polish-American lobby who wished to enrich rather than impoverish their families—was to encourage two-way cultural exchanges, and lend Poland lots of money to buy our goods. The combination was devastating to the Communists. When people saw what life was like on the other side of the Iron curtain they got, well, bolshi. US engagement helped create the conditions for Solidarity's victories. Conversely, embargo entrenches the dictatorship, by creating a foreign scapegoat for the nation's dismal economy. Viewed as an act of neighborly hostility, the embargo is invoked to justify repression.

Thus, I want to scream when I read,

Opponents warned that the provision sent a wrong signal at a time when the Castro regime has escalated its crackdown on dissidents. “Why should we now open up travel to Cuba to give additional cash flow to the Castro regime?” asked Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

No. No. It's not a “signal”. It's a policy. And the reason you live with whatever short run benefits might enure to a Communist regime — even when it's misbehaving — is that 40 years of your policy has produced nothing good. Meanwhile, doing the opposite in Europe brought down the entire Warsaw Pact.

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Here's a candidate for humanitarian invervention (particularly if you belive Iraq was one): Uzbekistan. According to this article in the Guardain, Ambassador accused after criticising US, the government of Uzbekistan—an important ally in the war against whatever it is we are fighting, and which receives a US bribe subsidy of half a billion dollars per year, sounds like, well, Iraq.

The UK embassador to Uzbekistan was undiplomatic about certain local customs, like the jailing thousands of political prisoners, and the government boiling some of them to death. So, he's in trouble. His friends blame pressure from the US. The UK denies the pressure (but they would, wouldn't they?). The Guardian suggests that instead of being outspoken about the Uzbekistan's abuses, the US government supports the regime.

The important thing here is not the details of a British ambassador's career. The important thing is what this reminds us about the side effects of the Administration's obsession with Iraq. Add the entrenchment of the murderous regime in Uzbekistan to the calculus the next time someone explains how the world is better off without Saddam.

How many other murderous regimes is it worth entrenching to get rid of one?

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