The Tharwa Review

CIVILIANS DRIVEN FROM GARMSIR BY FIGHTING

Helmand governor says major international operation is causing humanitarian crisis.
By Aziz Ahmad Tassal and Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand, Sefatullah Zahidi in Garmsir, and Abaceen Nasimi in Kabul

Much of the formerly bustling district of Garmsir in southern Helmand province now resembles a ghost town, with villages largely emptied of their populations.

An IWPR reporter visited one village, Loy Kalai, from which almost 4,000 families had fled. More than half the houses were destroyed, and abandoned farm animals were beginning to die.

The smell of decay hung over the area. In one house, a man who had died from shrapnel wounds lay unburied.

"I could not believe what I was seeing," a resident who witnessed the scene told IWPR. "It was a tragedy."

Garmsir district is the focus of a large-scale NATO operation codenamed "Azada Wosa" ("Be Free" in Pashto), launched on April 28 and led by a 2,400-strong United States Marine Expeditionary Unit which arrived in Afghanistan earlier this spring.

Supported by troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, the Marines have spent the last month engaged in a fierce battle with the Taleban in southern Helmand province, attempting to drive the insurgents out of territory they have held these past two years.

TURKEY AND IRAQI KURDS TURN OVER NEW LEAF?

Business appears to trump political differences as long-standing foes build closer ties.
By Azeez Mahmood in Sulaimaniyah

Kurdish leaders are making efforts to build stronger ties with Turkey, in order to boost trade, say analysts

However, some argue that Turkey is only interested in better relations to stem the threat posed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, which is based in northern Iraq, and warn that increased cooperation will not be popular among Iraqi Kurds.

Turkish and Kurdish officials held their first meeting earlier this month, hosted by Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, during which they discussed how to deal with the PKK, as well as Turkish investment in Kurdistan, according to sources close to Kurdish officials.

Also attending the meeting, which was held in Baghdad on May 1, were Kurdistan Regional Government, KRG, prime minister Nechirvan Barzani, Ahmet Davudoglu, chief foreign policy adviser for Turkish prime minister Recep Tayip Erdogan, Turkish special envoy for Iraq Murat Ozcelik, and Turkey's ambassador to Baghdad Derya Kanbay.

Since 1984, the PKK and Turkey have engaged in bloody battles that have claimed thousands of lives in southeast Turkey and northern Iraq. Human rights groups accuse Ankara of oppressing Kurds and other minorities.

Iraqi Kurdish and Turkish leaders have sparred in the past over the PKK’s presence in the north of Iraq. Turkey has long demanded that Iraq expel the group, which is considered a terrorist organisation by both Ankara and Washington.

Zionism and power

Rabbi Michael Cohen

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania—Within the rubric of national sovereignty come many challenges; the use of power is paramount to how a nation defines itself.

One raison d'être for the Zionist movement was the reintroduction of Jewish might back into the vocabulary of world history. Zionism, as well as pan-Arabism and Arab nationalism, were influenced by the late 18th century ideas of democracy and liberty promoted in the American and French revolutions. In addition, early 18th century romanticism and mid-19th century modern nationalism helped the development of these parallel nationalisms in the Middle East.

Woven into this was Zionist thinking that 2,000 years of the Jewish people being stateless and by extension powerless was no longer tenable. The Jewish longing to return to Zion had been carried in Jewish liturgy and ritual since the end of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel following the Bar-Kochba Revolt of 135 CE, and the changing of the name of Israel to Palestine by the Romans in an attempt to cut off all Jewish connections to the land.

The reestablishment of that sovereignty 60 years ago, following the catastrophic destruction of one-third of the world's Jewish population by the Nazis and their collaborators, reconstituted in the state of Israel sovereign Jewish power. That Jewish power allowed Israel to win the war of independence, which began immediately after David Ben-Gurion declared Israel's independence on 14 May 1948.

Misreading the messenger

Lawrence Pintak, Jeremy Ginges and Nicholas Felton

CAIRO and NEW YORK—"Arabic TV does not do our country justice," President George W. Bush complained in early 2006, calling it a purveyor of "propaganda" that "just isn't right, it isn't fair, and it doesn't give people the impression of what we're about."

The president's statement, along with the decision by the New York Stock Exchange to ban Al-Jazeera's reporters in 2003, is a prime example of how the Arab news media have been demonised since the September 11th attacks. As a result, America has failed to make use of what is potentially one of its most powerful weapons in the war of ideas against terrorism.

For proof, in the last year we surveyed 601 journalists in 13 Arab countries in North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The results, to be published in The International Journal of Press/Politics in July, shatter many of the myths upon which American public diplomacy strategy has been based.

Rather than being the enemy, most Arab journalists are potential allies, whose agenda broadly track the stated goals of US Middle East policy and who can be a valuable conduit for explaining American policy to their audiences.

What Syrian-Israeli talks mean

Hasan Abu Nimah

AMMAN—There was a surprise announcement last week that Syrians and Israelis started indirect peace negotiations under Turkish patronage in Istanbul. That was confirmed in both countries' capitals soon afterwards.

Almost simultaneously, the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported that the two sides had already reached understanding as a result of secret talks in Europe two years earlier, between September 2004 and July 2006, and that the two sides would sign an agreement of principles, and once they had fulfilled their commitments, a peace agreement would be signed.

The terms include Israeli commitment to withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June 1967, without agreement on a timetable for the withdrawal. Syria demanded five years while Israel demanded 15.

Although Syrian sovereignty would be acknowledged on the evacuated land, the agreement includes the establishment of a public park on a "significant area of the Golan" for joint Syrian-Israeli use, but the Israeli presence there "will not be dependent on Syrian approval".

The agreement, described as an unsigned "non-paper" also speaks of a demilitarised zone on the Golan; a buffer zone in between the two sides on the basis of a ratio of 1:4 (in terms of territory) in Israel's favour; and Israeli control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and the Lake Kinneret.

CAUCASUS NEWS UPDATE MAY 29

May 29 Four police officers were reported wounded by a bomb blast in South Ossetia.

May 29 Georgian foreign minister Eka Tkeshelashvili held talks with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in Stockholm.

May 29 The European Court of Human Rights held Russia responsible for the presumed death of two Chechen civilians, Lecha and Ibragim Betayev "following their unacknowledged arrest by [Russian] State servicemen" in 2003. The parents of the two were awarded 70,000 euros in damages.

May 28 Both Armenia and Azerbaijan marked the 90th anniversary of their declaration of independence in 1918.

May 27 Officials from the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, PACE, meeting in Kiev, said Armenia had made few tangible steps to comply with a PACE resolution relating to the disputed election and March 1 bloodshed in Yerevan.

May 26 The United Nations said it had concluded that a Russian air force plane shot down an unmanned Georgian spy drone over Abkhazia on April 20. Russia contested the report.

May 26 A court in Moscow ordered the closure of the main opposition website in Ingushetia,

www.ingushetiya.ru.

May 26 The Georgian opposition held a mass rally to demand that the parliamentary election results of May 21 be annulled.

May 26 Georgia marked the 90th anniversary of its declaration of independence in 1918. Polish president Lech Kaczynski was the guest of honour.

May 23 US state department spokesman Tom Casey said that Georgia's parliamentary elections appeared to have gone better than the presidential ones in January.

May 21 Leading Armenian human rights activist Mikael Danielian was lightly wounded when Tigran Urikhanian, the former leader of the Armenian Progressive Party, fired an air gun at him.

COMING UP...

May 30 Twelve European Union ambassadors or senior diplomats based in Tbilisi are due to visit Abkhazia

GEORGIAN OPPOSITION PLANS BOYCOTT

Political standoff continues as opposition plans to boycott new parliament
By Tamar Khorbaladze in Tbilisi

Several of the opposition parties which won seats in Georgia's new parliament are planning to boycott the legislature, alleging that the May 21 parliamentary election was rigged against them.

With the governing National Movement party set to receive 120 out of the 150 seats, according to official results, the confrontation between the authorities and the opposition looks set to continue.

President Mikheil Saakashvili, who said he was surprised by the scale of the victory achieved by his National Movement, said he hoped "the parliament won't be left without representatives of the opposition".

The nine-party coalition United Opposition and the Labour Party, which received 17.7 and 7.4 per cent of the vote, respectively, announced they would not be taking up their seats at a mass opposition rally in Tbilisi on May 26. Tens of thousands of people attended the rally.

"We don't recognise the results of a poll that was rigged by the authorities," said United Opposition leader David Gamkrelidze.

Most of the parties involved then signed a memorandum proposing the creation of an "alternative parliament".

ARMENIAN WAR VETS STILL IN JAIL

Karabakh war veterans' association under pressure after arrests.
By Diana Markosian in Yerevan

One of the lingering consequences of the political crisis in Armenia is that dozens of members of the influential veterans' group Yerkrapah remain in custody, creating a division between between the authorities and men who fought in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict.

The Yerkrapah members were among the opposition supporters detained during or after the March 1 violence that followed the country's disputed presidential election. Ten people died in the centre of Yerevan, eight of them opposition protestors and two law enforcement officers, and dozens of people were arrested.

Fifty-two people are still in custody charged with instigating violence, organising mass disorder in order to "overthrow the constitutional system", or illegal possession of weapons.

Yerkrapah, which in Armenian means "custodian of the land", is a union of volunteers who fought in the Nagorny Karabakh conflict. Founded during the war in 1993, the association supports veterans and their families and seeks to instil patriotic values in young people. It is estimated to have 27,000 or 28,000 members around the country.

Five of its members have so far been convicted by the courts, 24 remain under arrest and four are still wanted by the police.

Dignifying Lebanon's past

César Chelala

New York, New York - The settlement reached in Doha last week between warring factions in Lebanon puts an end to an 18-month national crisis and raises hopes for a stable future for that beleaguered country. It may also make real my father's dream for his country, and prompt a wider movement for peace in the region.

In the 1920s, my father emigrated from Lebanon to Argentina, but not for one day did he stop thinking or dreaming about his beloved country. He was a man of wide cultural interests, but economic setbacks in his new home left him in a precarious position. It affected his health and he died in 1971, relatively young and having never fulfilled his dream to return to his native Lebanon for a visit.

My father had emigrated to Tucumán, a town in Northern Argentina with a substantial Arab and Jewish population. There, he tried to make real his commitment to promoting culture and peace. Together with a group of friends, he founded the cultural Athenaeum Gibran Khalil Gibran, named after the famous Lebanese writer. During the 1950s and early 1960s, famous writers from all over Latin America gave lectures on a wide variety of subjects that brought hundreds of people to the Syrian and Lebanese Society, where the Athenaeum was located.

To the surprise of many, from the stalwarts of that organisation my father was able to obtain permission to allow Jewish professionals and students to attend the lectures. What may seem like a simple action was in fact a notable accomplishment, since it was the first time in the conservative society's history that Jews were welcomed. The memory of lively intellectual discussions created by those lectures persist even today, several decades after the Gibran Athenaeum stopped its activities.

Syria News Briefing No. 11

• BUSH VISIT WON’T AFFECT SYRIA
• SYRIA SEEKS LEGAL REDRESS FOR ASSAULTS IN LEBANON

BUSH VISIT WON’T AFFECT SYRIA

Syrian analysts and activists say President George Bush’s recent visit to the Middle East will not have a significant impact on their country, arguing that the United States leader enjoys little credibility in the region.

Bush made a few public comments on Syria during his five-day trip to the region, which ended on May 18.

Maintaining his administration’s tough stance towards Damascus, Bush urged Arab nations to reject both the Syrian and Iranian governments, saying he envisioned a democratic future Middle East that did not include the current Syrian regime.

The pro-government press in Syria carried several articles attacking Bush's visit and his Middle East policies generally.

Fuad Aliko, a former member of parliament and secretary of the Syrian Kurdish Yakiti party, said he did not believe the remarks represented a major threat to the government.