Marefat school students

   The National Constitution Center has just received a grant of $105,000 from the American Association of Museums for a civic photography program that will link high school students from Philly with minority students in Kabul.

    Students from Constitution High School in Philly, where a mostly minority student body focuses on the role of citizens in a democracy, will pair with students from the Marefat High School in Kabul, whose students are members of the Shiite Hazara minority.  They will exchange ideas and photos that portray how they, as minority students, define their role as citizens in their respective countries. The photos will be ultimately used in a joint exhibition to be hosted at the National Constitution center and the National Museum of Afghanistan.

    I visited the Marefat school when I was in Afghanistan in April, and met the students who will take part in the program. Some of them are shown in the photo above. They may look a bit stiff (they aren't used to being photographed) but they broke up in giggles once the camera was off them. And they all spoke in English, with different degrees of fluency, about what the program means to them.

     Having grown up during war and an unsettled postwar, they are just figuring out what citizenship means in their country. The school's terrific founder and director, Aziz Royesh, who has thought deeply on this subject is trying to explain to them the meaning of civic rights - and responsibilities.

    I will write about my meeting with Royesh and the Afghan students in my column on Wednesday.  

     Why did the U.S. military choose last Friday as the date to free five Iranian "diplomats" whom the United States arrested in Irbil, Iraq in January 2007?

     The U.S. military had accused the men of being members of the elite al Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards; al Quds members have armed and trained radical Shiite militias in Iraq.  The Iraqi government, which has close ties to Iran, has been pressing for the release of the men since they were arrested.  

      But why let them go now, in Baghdad, just a day after an Iranian-American academic, Kian Tajbakhsh,  was arrested in Tehran - apparently by the Revolutionary Guards? The Guards have been the military muscle used by the Iranian regime to crack down on post-election protests. 

    They take a hardline position on foreign policy. As I wrote in my column of July 8, the head of the al Quds force, Gen. Suleimani, sent a message to Gen. David Petraeus last year saying that the Quds force controlled Iran's foreign policy on Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. On my last trip to Iran, in summer 2006, one senior Revolutionary Guards officials told me: "You need us more than we need you."

     So, was the release of the Irbil Five meant to signal the Al Quds Force and its parent body, the Rev Guards, that the Obama administration wants to deal? If that was the intent, why let them go at a time when there are no signals that the Guards are interested in compromises with the United States.

      I called Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in Baghdad and asked him what was going on. His reply: "there was no deal. This release has been in the populine. It was part of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) we signed with Washington (last November) that said the United States would hand over all detainees to Iraq; they were included in the handover. The Americans are done with them and it is up to the Iraqi government to decide their fate." (Iraq has already released the men to the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad.)

       But the SOFA, which runs until the end of 2011,  did not specify when the men should be freed.