Archive for the ‘Peace and Human Rights’ Category

Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education – Dec 4 3:00-4:30 PM Alumni Center

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

UC Davis Global Affairs and UC Davis Human Rights Studies

Syria’s Lost Generation: A Human Rights Challenge to American Higher Education
Friday, December 4, 2015 Founder’s Library, Alumni Center — 3:00– 4:30

Human RIghts@UCDavis Director Keith David Watenpaugh and Syrian-Kurdish Refugee Students Beirut, March 2014

Human RIghts@UCDavis Director Keith David Watenpaugh and Syrian-Kurdish Refugee Students Beirut, March 2014

Keynote: The Imperative to Protect the Human Right to Higher Education
Keith David Watenpaugh, Director Human Rights Studies, UC Davis

Specialized Educational Training During Conflict
Adrienne Fricke, Syria Advisor to Physicians for Human Rights

Jusoor: An Endeavor to Help Syria through Education
Maya al-Kateb, Director Jusoor

Emergency Support to Syrian Students and Professors: IIE’s Syria Consortium
Higher Education in Crisis
Daniel Obst, Deputy Vice President, International Partnerships in Higher Education, IIE

Syrians Students for a Better Future Program
Megan Mozina, Director of the International Initiatives and Strategic Alignment, Illinois Institute of Technology

This public program is part of the UC Davis initiative to develop principles and best practices for the protection and support for refugee university students globally.

A joint project of Human Rights @UCDavis: The Interdepartmental Program in Human Rights Studies and UC Davis Global Affairs

Joint UC Berkeley Law, Election Administration Research Center —UC Davis Human Rights Initiative Preliminary Observation Report- Nagorno Karabakh Presidential Election, July 19, 2012

Monday, July 23rd, 2012

Joint UC Berkeley Law, Election Administration Research Center —UC Davis Human Rights Initiative Preliminary Observation Report- Nagorno Karabakh Presidential Election, July 19, 2012

Date of Report: July 22, 2012

Group Composition and Method

The group arrived in Stepanakert, the capital city of the Nagorno Karabakh (NK) on Monday, July 18 and remained in NK throughout the election on July 19, and departed the NK on July 21.

Prior to the election, the group held a series of meetings with NK electoral commission officials, each of the three candidates for office, members of their staff, local human rights advocates, journalists and engaged in random discussions with citizens and likely voters.

On the day of the election, the group used a systematic research methodology based on a comprehensive survey questionnaire designed at the Election Administration Research Center, of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, completing the survey form based on observing the election at 7 sites, including a pre-election visit to a voting center, and a return visit to one site. These observations included a range of voting centers in the capital, small villages and regional centers. Observations were made in three provinces: Stepanakert, Askeran, and Martuni,.

The observer team was present at a voting center at opening, returning to that same center for closing to observe the ballot counting and reporting procedures.

The team then followed ballots and reporting materials to the Stepanakert regional election center and observed final handling and recording of results and materials. We were the only observer team in NK that followed the entire process.

The day after the election members of the group conducted follow-up interviews with two members of the Central Election Commission (CEC), local human rights advocates, journalists, election observer members from other countries, and representatives of the second place candidate.

Group members:

Karin Mac Donald, Director, The Election Administration Research Center, University of California, Berkeley Law (Election and Monitoring Specialist)
Professor Keith David Watenpaugh, Director, Human Rights Initiative, University of California Davis (Cultural Expert, non-native Armenian speaker)
Professor Heghnar Zeitlian Watenpaugh, Affiliate Scholar, Human Rights Initiative, University of California, Davis (Cultural Expert, Armenian native-speaker)

Preliminary Observations

The group was very impressed with the professionalism, demeanor, dedication and seriousness of purpose at all levels of election administration, in particular that of local election boards.

We observed large numbers of women voters and that a considerable majority of women served as presidents and members of local election boards.

The teams noted with approval the uniformity of training and availability of reference materials that were widely used on the local level.

We also observed a great deal of uniformity in the implementation of the election process throughout the zone of monitoring.

The team was accompanied, at most times, by representatives of the NK government, who served as translators and facilitators, we appreciated the spirit of openness, access and collaboration before, during and after the election.

We also were satisfied with the manner in which spoiled ballots and ballots that were mismarked were handled according to established procedures as outlined in reference material provided by the CEC. This process was done effectively, transparently and efficiently.

As far as we could observe, the election procedures followed the NK election code.

The group observed that the training and preparation of candidate proxies (“Trusted People”) was inconsistent and seemed generally poor, preventing proxies from being able to fully advocate for the interests of their candidates within the bounds of established procedure.

Despite the presence of voters with physical disabilities, including the use of canes and wheelchairs, there was little if no formal provision made for independent access by people with physical disabilities to voting.

The group observed two occasions of what could constitute attempted voter intimidation. In addition, the team received first-hand reports of subtle and not-so-subtle forms of voter intimidation. The team observed one incident of inappropriate passive electioneering in a polling place.

The leading opposition candidate’s campaign alleged prior to the election in the Armenian press (15 June 2021) that government resources and personnel were being used by the incumbent’s campaign. Subsequent to the election in the candidate’s concession statement (20 July 2012) similar allegations were raised again, as well as in interviews with campaign staff.

We note that interaction between international monitor groups was not facilitated before and after the elections, creating a lost opportunity for collaboration and exchange of expertise. There was no formal mechanism for collecting the observations of international teams.

Preliminary Conclusion

We congratulate the people and election officials of the NK on an election that generally adhered to international standards.

We look forward to analyzing the enormous amount of qualitative and quantitative data we have collected and plan to issue a follow-up report with more specific recommendations. We believe that this election signals the probability that future elections in the NK will be more competitive. This may necessitate a reexamination of ballot security measures.

The degree of voter engagement, high voter turnout, the sophistication and acumen of the electorate, and the civic spirit of the voters suggests that the NK is creating a vibrant and vital democratic society.

One very important dimension of this election that we observed is that even the major losing candidate and his campaign, despite their concerns about fairness and irregularities, viewed this election as a critical step in the evolution of a fully democratic society. This same empowering sense of what the election meant was shared by a broad spectrum of NK society.

We look forward to working with the people of the NK to further strengthen their democratic institutions and provide any assistance that we can as they continue their journey in support of a vibrant, transparent, and free democracy.

UC Davis Human Rights Journal – Making the Case 1:2 2012

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

Our undergraduates have produced the second number of the 2012 volume of Making the Case.

It is a tremendous effort and represents the work of some of our best and brightest. Several of the authors are Human Rights Minors. Some are going on the Human Rights graduate programs elsewhere. It was edited by Rachel Pevsner, who did a great job.

It’s a mix of historical works, interviews, art and music. I was impressed with all of the work, but especially essays by three of my students:

Geneva Brooks: Barriers to Resistance in
Rwanda and the Holocaust

Phoebe Bierly: Genocide Denial and the
Stolen Generations

Michael Hoye: Examining the Success of the
International Criminal Court

Link to the journal

Some thoughts on the humanitarian challenges of the coming civil war in Syria

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Sitting with Gilbert Achcar and several of my UC Davis Jewish Studies and Middle East Studies colleagues in a local café after a talk on his book The Arabs and the Holocaust, the conversation turned to Syria.

Achcar’s conclusion, which I share (as does the UN) is that Syria is on the road to civil war.  Indeed, I would argue that parts of Syria, in particular the cities of Homs, Hama and Idlib and their hinterlands are already in a state of civil war.  Those cities have been placed under siege, death squads roam them in broad daylight rounding up and “disappearing” civilians and uniformed security forces fight running gun battles with bands of defectors who are often just defending their neighborhoods.

Still protestors take to the streets each Friday like they have since last March and each Friday dozens are killed. Over 3000 so far, including some 190 children.   This persistent courage in the face of unrestrained brutality inspires not just heart rendering awe, but also confirms how resilient the Syria opposition is.  This resiliency will force the Syrian régime to increase its use of organized violence and at some point the largely peaceful resistance will itself become violent, perhaps in a battle for the city of Homs.

The longer the conflict continues the more “international” it will also become.  This isn’t in the sense of Libya, where Western forces sided with the Libyan TNC.  There appears to be none of the international will to intervene in Syria that there was in Libya and various sanctions régimes have been blunted at the UN by Russian and Chinese opposition.  Instead the international component of the civil war in Syria will be regional, with Iran extending support to the régime with help from Iraq and Lebanon’s Hizbollah and Saudi Arabia and Turkey providing assistance to the opposition, which is not coincidently dominated by Sunni Muslims, as well as help from Iraqi Kurdistan for Syria’s vast Kurdish population. Arms, money and military and cyberwar expertise are flowing into Syria from all sides.

With the coming of civil war in Syria, it is important to begin to anticipate what kinds of humanitarian challenges will arise and how the international community could mobilize to meet them.  The Syria Civil War will resemble that of Iraq between 2006-2008 and Lebanon 1975-1990.  It makes sense to draw some lessons from the humanitarian experience of those conflicts.  What follows are some very preliminary thoughts and observations.

1)   Like Iraq and Lebanon, very little distinction will be made between combatants and non-combatants.

This fact will have critical implications for refugee flows, the creation of IDPs, the safety of civilians in situ, and refugees in transit across international borders.  The Iraqi experience shows how quickly large numbers of IDPs can result from civil conflict, especially if this civil conflict is accompanied by forms of ethnic cleansing.  The kind of ethnic cleansing that accompanied the civil war in Iraq, in particular in Baghdad, is unlikely in Syria.

Still minor refugee flows out of Syria over the last few months give some indication of where major flows will go: from northwestern Syria into the Turkish province of Hatay and from central Syria into northern Lebanon.  In both of these cases people moving probably have relatives on the other side of the border.  Currently the UNHCR is providing assistance to about 3200 Syrians who have fled to Wadi Khalid, which is just across the border from Homs.  I’m also certain that three to four times this number of Syrians has already crossed into Lebanon, but those refugees have not registered with the UN.  Recent cross border raids by Syrian forces into Lebanon to seize deserters and opposition figures confirms that Syrian refugees in Lebanon are not safe.  Lebanon is in no position to oppose these incursions even if there were political will in Beirut to do so.

Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, October 2011

Attacks on Kurds in Syria’s Mesopotamia will force Kurds into Iraqi Kurdistan where the problem will be less political will to assist, but rather logistical support.  Indeed Iraqi Kurdistan could provide a very useful staging ground for refugee assistance.

The Turkish border is more militarized and the Turkish military more able to provided needed protection.  A possible option looking forward is the creation of a humanitarian corridor into Turkey through the Orontes River Valley, which would allow safe passage out of Homs, Hama and Idlib.  There are a host of other political problems with direct Turkish intervention in Syria, not the least of which are fears of Ankara’s Neo-Ottomanist designs on the Levant.   Nevertheless, any meaningful international commitment to the safety of Syrian refugees will require humanitarian intervention in Syria.

2) Like Iraq and Lebanon, violence will have political and sectarian dimensions.

Rightly or wrongly the régime of Bashar al-Assad is associated with the entirety of the Alawite minority in Syria.  The security apparatus and military elite in Syria is dominated by Alawites.  There will be ethnic reprisals in the civil war.  The most vulnerable populations, however, as was the case in Iraq, are the urban and rural Christian minorities.  A possible example of the shape of things to come came last week when a bomb exploded in the Armenian Orthodox Church in the Damascus’s old city.  It is unlikely that this bomb was set by régime opponents.  What is probably the case is that it was planted by state security forces as a message to the city’s Armenians that were they to support the opposition that they would face further attacks and/or that they would no longer be protected by the state from extremist violence.  Christians are disproportionately represented in Iraq’s refugee diaspora and it is likely that this would reoccur in Syria.  What this speaks to though is that where mass violence is probable,  genocide is  possible.

The West ignores the possibility of genocide in Syria at the peril of any humanitarian credibility it has achieved with successes in Libya.

Along the same lines, Syria remains one of the primary locations for refugees from Iraq – some 1.3 million with several thousand active asylum seekers.  Stepped up efforts to resettle and return these refugees would help reduce the possibility that this extremely vulnerable group would become victims of another conflict.

Syria’s problems and years of misery are just beginning.

Failing Syria at the UN, Killing Children and the Punishing of Dissidents

Friday, October 7th, 2011

It was a moment of déjà vu in the UN Security Council this week when China and Russia voted against sanctions on Syria.  Their votes were out of line with a global consensus that the Syrian régime’s war on its people violates human rights and is a threat to regional peace and security.  What those two states did was dismissed on the streets of Syria’s smaller cities, where people carried banners that read “Russia and China do not [favor] freedom or dignity,” but is also reminiscent of the Cold War when the progress of human rights was held hostage by the Soviet Bloc and the US and its allies.

Some historians have argued that the Cold War merely interrupted the history of human rights; I tend to think the politicization of human rights by states in this fashion is the norm and that consensus building in the UN around human rights action is the unique, rare and now fleeting exception.

Still, the EU, Turkey and the US are continuing to build a sanctions régime against Syria.  And reports from inside the country show no let up in demonstrations, a trickle of military defections and the gradual organization in exile of an alternative government.  Still Aleppo and Damascus are quiet and their inhabitants, though fully aware of what is happening in the rest of the country have yet to rise in solidarity.

All this means for now is continuing misery in Syria: the UN has just announced that 187 children have been killed since demonstrations began last Spring and word comes of additional harassment of Syrian dissidents living abroad.

Syrian children hold a vigil for 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, who activists say was tortured and killed by Syrian security forces. Photograph: Jamal Saidi/Reuters

Along those same lines, I call your attention to the case of Yassin Ziadeh.  Yassin’s brother, Radwan, is an important Syrian dissident who fled Syria several years ago. Radwan has even visited Davis as a Scholar at Risk and was a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Peace a year before I was.  He has been at the forefront of identifying human rights abuse in Syria.  Now his family back home, in particular his brother, are being targeted by the régime.  According to Scholars at Risk, Yassin is being held incommunicado and without charge.  Presumabley this is being done to pressure his brother and frighten others in the Syrian diaspora;  if they support the opposition their families back in Syria are in danger.  If you have a chance please use the model below to write to the Syrian ambassador on behalf of Yassin.

I’ll blog more about Syria over the weekend.

Reflections on the Teaching of Human Rights at Ten Years After 9/11

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

There was something missing, something just not right…

Spring Qtr. ’11. A student in my “Human Rights” introductory course was at my office hours to talk. In class we had discussed the human rights implications of the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden, something that had just happened that week, breaking off from the syllabus to think about terrorism as a crime against humanity and revisiting a discussion we had had earlier about how Islamism (like most religious ideologies) tends to deny the very existence of human rights in favor of a more divinely ordained code of ethics and behaviors.

The classroom conversation turned to the question of whether bin Laden’s human rights had been violated or what we had been told had happened was a justifiable and legitimate use of deadly force? I then asked my students to think about what could have been gained by putting him on trial? We had been studying the concept of crimes against humanity trials and I observed that Nazis, Rwandan Genocidaires, and Serbian ultra-nationalists who had done similar or even worse crimes than bin Laden (but not to Americans) had been successfully captured, tried and even some executed. Think “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

Nazi war criminals in the dock at Nuremberg, 1946

My student had come to talk more about that last question. She had lost someone in the Pentagon, and told me that ever since the killing of bin Laden “there was something missing, something just not right,” and when we talked about putting him on trial that that was it.

Human rights undergraduates tend to have this kind of thoughtful and reflective approach to history and the present, which is one of the more rewarding aspects of teaching in that field. But her response was particularly so and made me remember something from the very beginning of my career as a teacher.

I am suddenly the expert because I’m the only historian of the Modern Middle East for three Upstate New York counties. A colleague in my department has asked me to lecture at the Elderhostel. Sixty senior citizens sit at circular banquet tables. It’s three weeks since the Events and a few days after George W. Bush first used the phrase “war on terror” in a speech. It was a speech that also included the word “crusade.” I’m giving a talk on popular culture in the Arab world: Umm Kulthum, Rai music, Palestinian graffiti. That’s not what they want to talk about. They want to know about Them, the Muslims, the Arabs, the Enemy who wants to kill Us.

I try to tell them a different story, one about what a marginal figure bin Laden is and how radical Islamism is a cancer over there, too. Then I tell them that we’re not at war. Those who brought down the towers are criminals, mass murderers, who should face the full force of the American justice system. I ask them to remember Timothy McVeigh who was from another Upstate city and how he was caught, tried and convicted. Al-Qaeda is a criminal enterprise, it’s run and funded like one and it can be dismantled like one, it might take time. But just imagine what an elegant statement of what-makes-us-different it would be to perp-walk bin Laden and his crew into the Daniel Patrick Moynihan federal courthouse in Lower Manhattan and have him judged by a jury of 12 tough New Yorkers, convict them and then let them rot at the supermax in Florence, Colorado? Let the world see them for the pathetic, spineless, petty mobsters they are, let them descend into the hell of their own obscurity and be denied the martyrdom they crave, don’t even sentence them to die, just lock the door and throw away the goddamn key.

In 2001 this didn’t go over so well.

Moynihan Court House – site of successful criminal prosecutions of terrorists

I think I was asking too much of them at the time. That moment was infused with panic and fear, and inflamed by an administration that could invoke Pearl Harbor, the Old West and the Clash of Civilizations in a single breath. What I was asking them to consider seemed weak, effete, intellectual and ineffectual. It was us-or-them and some pointy-headed, tweedy moonlighting assistant professor wasn’t going to persuade them to entrust their desire for revenge to the CIA, FBI, lawyers and judges. That any reaction other than war was possible had been crowded out of public consciousness and it is important to recall today how harshly any dissent was dealt with at the time: it was labeled unpatriotic, it was heresy against the memory of the heroes of 9/11; are you one of them?

I don’t claim to have had any idea at the time what would unfold because of the former administration’s decision to invent the “war on terror.” But that choice to do so — and here I want to distinguish between the Events and the American (over)reaction to them — changed the field of Middle East History, my area of expertise, and altered the environment in which the teaching of and research on human rights takes place.

The extent of shared humanity

The starting point for my “Human Rights” course is a close examination of the framing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the wake of World War II. The framers of the UDHR — including Eleanor Roosevelt, for whom this blog is named — insisted that the declaration was an expansion to all of humanity of the kinds of rights established in various national compacts and constitutions including the US Bill of Rights.

The reaction to 9/11 called into question how committed Americans are to the universal nature of human rights. This is of course the question raised by the elaboration of a separate legal system outside of US law for the men held at Guantanamo Bay. In the words of Navy lawyer Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, who argued the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case: “All men have rights, including the right to a trial — a regular trial! The abuse of prisoners indicates that we don’t think detainees are human.” How then to reconcile the preeminent role of American political thought on the universality of human rights with the application of those rights in practice only to US citizens on US soil? As in other historical fields is there an American human rights exceptionalism?

As I teach human rights, I’ve found that it’s easy to get students to support the human rights claims of a Nelson Mandela or a nameless middle-class college student facing a truncheon in Tahrir Square. The true test of our humanity is seeing that humanity in those monsters that live in our midst. In making war, we are asked to temporarily forget the humanity of the enemy; the overreaction to the Events that led us into wars of our own choosing made that forgetting simple and without cost.

Cultures of Impunity

In the Middle East of today or the South America of the late-20th century when those who abuse human rights under the color of authority routinely get away with it, it is said to have created a “culture of impunity.” As we examine how cultures of impunity are addressed and ended, my students can’t help but see clear echoes of that culture in post-9/11 euphemisms like “extreme rendition” and “enhanced interrogation.” As word comes that the CIA rendered suspects unto Libya and a former US vice-president fears arrest as a war criminal, connecting foreign cultures of impunity to a domestic one doesn’t evoke their outrage but reinforces a creeping cynicism. This cynicism is a pendulum swing away from the too credulous attitudes towards authority and the military solution of a half-generation ago among students who were older when 9/11 took place. This cynicism concerns me inasmuch as it doesn’t enjoin action, but rather its reverse and reinforces an even more dangerous sense of alienation from our political structures.

This last year, for the first time I found myself having to tell the history of 9/11 to my students in my giant freshman course, “Fundamentalism.” Before then, I had assumed that they “knew” what had happened. When I began teaching that class, my freshmen were 12 years old when 9/11 took place and many do remember it, or at least think they do and could tell stories about watching the towers collapse on televisions rolled into their junior high classrooms. This year’s freshmen were 8 years old when it happened and their memory of the events, if they have any at all, is mediated by what happened after: the Iraq War, the financial collapse, the election of Barack Obama.

Historians sometimes use (and abuse) the concept of historical interruption. The idea is that a society is evolving or moving a certain direction and some event or war or social or economic collapse sidetracks it onto a course (usually bad) it wouldn’t have taken otherwise. The United States and its relationship to human rights seemed to have been moving in a different historical direction before 9/11. The question we’ll need to answer and what I’ll pose to my students for the rest of my career is whether America and Americans are now back on that path?

Further Readings:

Human Rights Watch: United States: Investigate Bush, Other Top Officials for Torture

American Civil Liberties Union: A Call to Courage: Reclaiming our Liberties Ten Years after 9/11

When do terrorists become terrorists and do they still have human rights?

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Flagg Miller

Le roi est mort; vive le roi! So might go one reading of a paper I am presenting at the upcoming conference “Ten Years Later: Insights on al-Qa`ida’s Past & Future through Captured Records” at the National Defense University at Washington D.C. To be held in the wake of 9/11’s tenth-year memorial events, the conference promises to be an intriguing one, especially since Bin Ladin is dead. My paper, entitled “Revisiting the Origins of al-Qa`ida through Usama Bin Ladin’s Former Audiocassette Collection,” explores the ways his influence as a leader and world-wide terrorist has been a subject of creative animation for some time, however, no more so than in Western narratives focusing on the organization widely thought to be his brainchild: al-Qa`ida itself.

Al-Qa`ida, I argue, transcends the man, as evident in much cited documents that I examine with fresh eyes. Standard accounts of al-Qa`ida’s formation, reported by scholars, journalists and others, are based principally on court documents related to the U.S. government’s prosecutions of bin Laden and one of his associates, Enaam Arnaout, in the early 2000s. Together, these documents indicate that bin Laden and others met in Afghanistan in August 1988 to form al-Qa`ida, or “the base,” that went on to plan and approve major terrorist operations. Other documents, said to corroborate this formation of al-Qa`ida, were released by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The West Point papers are thought to be founding charter papers obtained by U.S. military or intelligence personnel.

These documents all raise questions, however. Although court papers suggest that al-Qa`ida was a world-wide terrorist organization under bin Ladin’s leadership, a closer reading suggests that bin Ladin’s efforts were far more restricted and focused on working with more prominent leaders at the time to set up a specific training camp in Afghanistan. Charter documents reveal that despite his efforts, bin Ladin was quickly marginalized at the camp. Oaths to the “amir” were mentioned as being required of recruits, but I have found no correlation to the “amir” or leader as being bin Laden. Most curious is a stipulation that none of the amir’s security guards can be from Yemen, Saudi Arabia or any of the other Arab Gulf states, countries supplying bin Laden’s most vehement supporters. Some of the confusion may relate to problems with translating the meaning of “the base” (al-qa`ida). “Al-Qa`ida” can refer, of course, to Bin Ladin’s worldwide terrorist organization, but so too can it simply mean a “base” of operations, as was the case for a host of training camps from the 1980s-2000s in Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond that had no significant connection to Bin Ladin or his ideology. So too can “al-qaida” be a general rule for legal reasoning, theological inference or speaking well. My analysis suggests the need to revisit arguments made by prosecutors [in the Arnaout trial] and conclusions drawn from them by wider audiences.

Do terrorists get human rights? By what rationale? The answer to these questions require a lengthier investigation into the ways individuals and social groups become identified with terrorism and, as a consequence, become exceptional targets for disciplinary action. At their best, such investigations produce messy questions about exactly when individuals become terrorists and how their status and power as terror-brokers emerges through competition between diverse communities as they compete for influence. Terrorists are not born lobbing bombs from the crib, of course; their eventual designation as terrorists by international legal institutions is perceived as no less self-evident. As a religious studies professor and anthropologist who has studied and lived in the Arab world for over twenty years, I like to think of myself as fairly open to the possibility that our views of the world reflect our backgrounds and that cross-cultural comparison can promote healthy and ethical engagement with others. The paper I am presenting in Washington D.C. is part of a larger book project that examines the figuration Bin Ladin’s leadership in a set of over 1500 audiotapes that were acquired from Bin Ladin’s former residence in Qandahar, Afghanistan. These tapes were acquired by the Cable News Network after the fall of the Taliban in December 2001 and are currently being digitalized for public research by Yale University. Organized chronologically, my book considers discrepencies between our own narratives of Bin Ladin’s identity and those employed by speakers of the tapes. The lessons of the book, much like my upcoming paper, emerge from recognizing the ways in which complex histories, including our own, are elided in the interest of oversimplified and ethnocentric narratives of Muslims violence and its perpetrators. The United States’ post-9/11 rationale for invading Iraq on the pretext that overthrowing Saddam would strike a blow against al-Qa`ida proves only the most egregious case; links between al-Qa`ida and Saddam proved as tenuous as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Human rights discourses, including those advanced through American institutions of criminal law, special grand juries and military tribunals, are unfortunately not immune to distortions introduced by such narratives. Especially when Al-Qa`ida is involved.