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Wednesday, January 13, 2010 12:03 AM EST
Qat of nine tales
Sanaa, Yemen – Before the Christmas Day underwear bomber came along and elevated the profile of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, most Westerners probably only thought of Yemen for being the originator of coffee, and for that strange narcotic, qat.
Well, a lot more qat is consumed here than coffee.
I’ve gotten into cabs here in the capital in which the driver had a wad of qat in his cheek, making him look like a chipmunk with a mouthful of acorns. The traffic here is so aggressive that it’s hard to tell if the drug had any effect on his driving.
I went to a pharmacy yesterday to buy some toothpaste – the pharmacist was sitting at the back of the store chewing qat with a friend. He came to the counter with the green stuff packed between his lips and teeth, charming.
My first exposure to what officially is described as a natural amphetamine was at a wedding the day I arrived in Yemen last week. I was invited to tag along with a leading businessman and found myself in an enormous room of several hundred men all lounging on cushions on the floor, peeling off the small leaves on stalks of qat and popping them in their mouths. Once stripped of their leaves, the stalks were just tossed on the floor to be picked up later.
I found myself next to some prominent government, judicial and military figures, all of whom were indulging in the habit. Most had come to the men-only afternoon party with a kilo or more of the stalks.
The leaves are small, about two to three centimetres long, green with some reddish tinge.
The good stuff sells for $30 a kilo in winter, $15 in summer.
You take each stalk, one at a time, hold it at the bottom and delicately pluck off each cluster of leaves. Then, holding half a dozen or so at a time, put them in your mouth between the molars at the side of your mouth. (You don’t chew any big leaves that may be at the bottom of the stalk, they are considered inferior.) You chew them for a little while, try not to swallow them, and then manoeuvre them into your cheek, as you pop in the next bunch. After you’ve held the wad in your mouth for a while (20 minutes or more) you can spit it out into small spittoons that usually are provided.
It tastes like … well, like chewing leaves. Not particularly appetizing, but they say you come to like it. The qat bush grows almost exclusively in Yemen and Somalia – some is grown in Saudi Arabia, but it’s illegal there. It’s a major crop all around this country’s capital, often at the expense of other crops, of food.
Not many women chew qat; young people don’t seem to do it either.
As well, the very religious (salafists, wahhabis etc) don’t chew it as it’s haram, forbidden, in the Koran.
But the overwhelming majority of other Yemeni men chew it. Most chew it daily, usually in small groups, mostly starting about one in the afternoon, and most for about three to four hours at a time.
Some, then return to work, believing their minds are sharper because of it; (which may be why Yemen is in such great shape).
It’s astonishing how prevalent the qat-chew groups are, and at all levels of society. I was invited to drop in on two qat chews, each held in the diwan (sitting room) of a luxurious house. The members of the groups included deputy ministers, former governors, leading businessmen, members of Parliament and members of the Shura Council. At both chews, a leading security official (one of the guys running the secret police etc) had the biggest wad in his cheek of anyone I have seen so far. It looked as if he had a tennis ball in there.
Earlier this week, I tried to make an appointment with a general I had met at the wedding. I called his office a little after 12, noon, and was told he had left for the day. I later learned he usually is in the office only between 10 and 12.
And where does he go when he leaves work? To the President’s residence where a very high-ranking group have their regular qat chew and mull over matters of state.
Link to this postSaturday, December 12, 2009 5:53 PM EST
For Syrians, butting out is hard to do
Butt out
Damascus - Even as Syria is opening up culturally and economically, it’s closing down in another area: smoking.
In October, the country’s parliament passed an anti-smoking law restricting the sales and marketing of tobacco products and prohibiting smoking in public places. For a country as hooked on tobacco as this one, that’s a draconian measure.
It’s hard to think of any other place with which smoking is more closely associated. It’s popular among young and old and with women as well as men. Some 60 per cent of adult men smoke, as do 23 per cent of adult women.
While neighbouring Iraq is worried about the infiltration of insurgents and the smuggling of weapons across its frontier with Syria, Damascus is concerned about the massive amount of contraband cigarettes brought into Syria from Iraq. The French brands Gauloises and Gitanes are among the most heavily smuggled products across the Syria-Iraq border.
More than cigarettes, however, are covered by the smoking ban that commences in April. The narghile, or water pipe, also is being prohibited in public places and, to many Syrians, that is a national travesty. More than 20 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women are regular narghile smokers.
And while people may be able to nip outside to have a quick cigarette, it’s pretty hard to lug a narghile outside.
Cafés such as the al-Rawda thrive on the narghile trade. It’s an old downtown café frequented mostly by men who come to play cards, or backgammon, sip small cups of sweet black coffee, talk and smoke narghile. Decent ventilation keeps the cloud to a minimum, but the sweet and acrid smells of the different scents of tobacco being used is like breathing in a fruit salad.
It’s an unforgettable aroma, and a very pleasing one, even for a complete non-smoker like me.
Syrian men read the newspaper and smoke a traditional waterpipe at a cafe in Damascus.
The owner of al-Rawda told Syria Today, an English-language magazine, that he’ll be able to cope with the new law by designating the café’s courtyard as the smoking area, and all the enclosed spots around the sides as non-smoking. But it’ll be sad to see the atmosphere change, he said.
Nouri Eskandar, 71, has been a regular at the al-Rawda since moving to the capital from Aleppo two decades ago.
A composer of Syriac religious music (he was the first person to write down the music of the Syriac Orthodox faith, a music that had been passed on orally), Mr. Eskandar prefers his cigarettes to the water pipe, but treasures the atmosphere of places such as this.
“A lot of the changes taking place today are positive,” he said, “especially opening up to other cultures.”
“But I worry that we may lose our traditional Syrian character before we know it.”
All the news that’s fit to omit
It takes a while to put your finger on it, but one of the things missing from Damascus’s café life is newspapers. There’s no real reading culture in Syria, not as you’ll find in Beirut, Cairo or Jerusalem. People here sit in cafés empty handed; corner stores sell cigarettes and chips, but no newspapers or magazines. You have to look hard to find either of them.
One of the reasons is undoubtedly the heavy hand of censorship that was, until recently, predominate here since the early 1960s. When people couldn’t read much worth reading, they didn’t bother, and fell out of the habit.
Things are definitely looking up in the reading department, especially for English-language readers. There now are two monthly magazines in English, both surprisingly informative, and, as of this past week there now is an English-language newspaper.
But despite the liberalizing of all the media, the heaviest censor’s hand may be the one that’s self-administered.
A professor here told the story this week about how a producer and reporter from Syria Television had called on him for an interview just prior to the May 6 holiday called Martyrs Day. This occasion marks the 1916 execution by Ottoman authorities of a group of Syrian nationalists.
Mindful that Damascus has been very keen on developing new ties with Turkey after several years of estrangement, the television producer came up with a novel way to address the history of Martyrs Day.
“Could we talk about the holiday without mentioning the Ottomans?” she asked the professor.
“You want me to talk about the execution of Syrian nationalists without mentioning who killed them?” the professor asked. “I’m afraid that can’t be done.”
In the end the spot ran on the news just fine, Ottoman reference and all. “It was just a case of a nervous producer trying to anticipate what her bosses wanted,” he said.
No quarter
Of all the areas in Damascus undergoing change, the Old City is going through the most, and of all the areas inside the walls of the Old City, the old Jewish Quarter is undergoing the biggest transformation.
Once home to about 3500 Jews, the community now numbers fewer than 40. Many of the old homes now house Muslim or Christian families (the quarter stretches between the traditional Christian sector around the Church of St. Paul and the more populous Muslim area around the Umayyad Mosque). Many other of the Jewish homes remain vacant, their doors and windows boarded up or otherwise secured. One house still displays its Hebrew-inscribed lintel over the front door.
Most of the Jewish community left the country in the 1990s after then president Hafez al-Assad made it easier for them to emigrate and take their wealth with them. (Until then, it was possible to leave, but only with substantial limits placed on how much money or valuables they could take along.) Most of the community turned up in the United States, mostly in Brooklyn, New York. Some went on to live in Israel..
The Quarter’s former Jewish school, built only a few years before the departures, now has an Arab owner and it sits mostly empty, people say.
Around the corner from the school is the most dramatic change. The building that once housed the community’s principal synagogue is being beautifully renovated as Beit Farhi, named for the Jewish financier (and adviser to the Ottoman sultan) who lived in it almost two hundred years ago. Overall, the 25,000 sq ft of the original mansion will become a boutique hotel.
Across the narrow road from Beit Farhi is the Talsiman, a gem of a hotel built four years ago from the renovation of two other spacious Jewish homes. Its 17 rooms look out onto a spacious central courtyard.
Everywhere you look in the Jewish Quarter, construction is underway: galleries, restaurants, as well as more small hotels, are being built. In another decade, the Jewish Quarter will be a destination of its own — made possible, ironically, by the exodus of its original inhabitants.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009 4:03 PM EST
Damascus: Plus ca change?
Damascus – Things change slowly in the Middle East; perhaps reputations change slowest of all.
There was a vivid example here last week when reports arrived of an explosion in the Syrian capital that killed three people.
With bombings in several parts of the region a regular occurrence, and Damascus not immune from such attacks, most people immediately assumed some kind of terrorist attack or assassination.
The blast, it soon was revealed, had involved a bus bearing Iranian pilgrims to a site outside the city. It added that three people had been killed.
Aha, most thought: “Iran,” and the plot thickened.
Next came word from Syria’s Interior Ministry that terrorism was NOT involved in the explosion. Perversely, this had the effect of confirming that terrorism must have been involved.
This was not totally unreasonable, since it had been previous government policy to frequently deny any terrorism or military acts carried out in the country, including last year’s car-bomb killing of Imad Mugniyeh, once a leading figure in Hezbollah’s military wing.
Things looked even more convincing when journalists were barred from the scene and images of the blown bus and its shattered windows were shown on state and other Arab television networks. At the same time, the Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the blast was the result of a tire exploding as it was being repaired at a garage. The dead had included the bus driver, a repairman and a boy. No one believed it.
The juxtaposed image and the ministry’s apparently lame explanation did not compute.
The statement seemed completely crippled when a government spokeswoman was asked in a televised interview how a tire explosion could possibly have wrought such damage. “It’s a big bus,” she insisted. “It has big tires.” She added that “It must have exploded when too much air was pumped into it.”
The denial/confirmation seemed valid and journalists set about writing the story with sinister tones.
Then it emerged that a couple of reliable western diplomats had been on the scene prior to the government’s order to bar outsiders. They reported that the site showed no evidence of an explosive device being used and that a police sniffer dog had shown no excitement or other behaviour to indicate explosives. They said that the damage was consistent with an air compressor (rather than a tire) exploding, sending shrapnel through the windows, and killing the people close to the tire.
Turned out the government wasn’t hiding anything after all, even if it offered some lame assumptions as fact.
What has changed
What has changed in the 14 years since I last spent much time in Damascus is the social scene. There are more western shops, more small charming hotels, more foreign culture, and more cafés.
On the unseasonably warm sunny days that have blessed this place most of the last week, people are packing the outdoor cafés, enjoying the good life.
My favourite spot, where I’ve met with several of the people I wanted to interview, is the Downtown Café, located on a small, relatively quiet street that falls on the border of two neighbourhoods built during the French mandate/occupation years from the mid 1920s to late 1940s.
None of the apartment buildings that line the street is more than four storeys high, and each was built to house commercial outlets on the ground floor. Where there is not a café, bar or restaurant, one will find tony fashion shops, mostly for women, shoe stores, lingerie boutiques, even a United Colours of Benetton outlet.
Sitting at the Downtown Café one day, an interviewee pointed out all the cafes and restaurants in view. Rather than competitors, he said, all of them are owned by the same man: the son of a former minister of the interior.
Some things don’t change.
Around the corner, on a lane you’d swear had been transported from the fifth arrondissement in Paris, is a delightful, newly-opened bookstore/café/library called Etana.
Owned by the enterprising Maan Abdul Salam, the place offers you (for a small fee) access to all the books you can’t easily find in Damascus, and a comfortable place to read them while sipping a coffee – no need to purchase them. You can take the book home, if you prefer, just like a lending library, or buy and keep the text. There is a small number of interesting books in English as well.
Upstairs, there are several computer terminals, just like a tasteful Internet café, and an area where kids can play and do crafts.
The shop is closed Fridays, and open Saturday only for programs dedicated to children – story telling, game playing, crafts; all related to books.
It’s the first bookstore of its kind in Damascus, and one you don’t find often anywhere.
Mr. Abdul Salam, who has experienced the frustrations of operating a small publishing house in the television/Internet age, says: “We have to teach the next generation to appreciate books more than this one does.”
From Jerusalem with love
Last evening, on a cool Monday in December, I decided to check out Damascus’s imposing new opera house. Built over several years (there were frequent periods of no activity) the building sits on one of the corners of the massive Umayyad Square (which really is a circle).
Its grounds are rife with modern marble sculptures, and neatly carved out gardens.
One giant bronze sculpture of the late president Hafez al Assad, father of the current president, Bashar al Assad, towers above the rest. (The house is formally called Dar al-Assad for Culture and Arts – meaning the Assad area for culture etc.) Inside, the building has five floors, every one filled with art. There are three concert halls in varying size, and plenty of space for receptions or art shows.
Last night, three programs overlapped: the opening of a one-man show by a prominent Turkish painter; a choral concert of oriental music performed by the Chamber Choir of the nearby High Institute of Music, and a performance of Samuel Beckett’s The Last Tape.
The art show was packed with the usual diplomatic and cultural types, the small theatre that housed the Beckett was full, while the middle-sized auditorium was only about half full for the choir’s performance.
Too bad; it was wonderful. The 12 men dressed in tuxedo, the 11 women in traditional embroidered Arab dress with their hair flowing, were a mixture of Christian and Muslim. They sang beautifully, richly conveying the complexities of traditional Arab music.
The highlight came as the choir introduced its last number, a kind of ode to Jerusalem. As they sang, a slide show of Jerusalem scenes was shone on the back of the stage. A mixture of Christian and Muslim music was blended as the two faiths were portrayed behind the choir.
At the climax, the women held the last note of an Alleluia, while first one, then another and another of the men let out the “Allah hu Akbar” sounds of muezzins, just as one might hear in Jerusalem, or in Damascus for that matter.
It was breathtaking and the audience erupted into sustained applause until the choir repeated much of the song.
There is no denying the attachment for Jerusalem that is held far and wide in the Muslim and Christian world.
Thursday, November 26, 2009 2:23 PM EST
Changing times in Hebron
HEBRON, West Bank - Hebron, the predominantly Palestinian city in the Judean Hills south of Jerusalem, is famous for several things: It’s the burial place of the patriarch Abraham, revered by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike; it’s got an age-old glass-making industry, and it’s the most religious of all Palestinian communities -- the majority of its 166,000 citizens support the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.
Now, Hebron, or Khalil in Arabic (it means friend of God), can be known for one more thing: It is home to the world’s largest dress.
Beit al Tifel, a Palestinian NGO that runs extensive programs for children, recently completed this massive frock – a traditional black and red Palestinian dress, complete with embroidered bodice, that stands more than 32 meters tall!
It took 150 women four months and 62,000 meters of thread, to make the dress, with most of the work going into the traditional embroidery that comprises symbols of many Palestinian communities. More than 1,500 square meters of material was used, and the red, green, white and black colours of the Palestinian flag run down one side.
The dress was unveiled October 25th, laid out on the Hebron soccer field. It measures 18 meters at its narrowest point, and 21 meters at its slightly flared bottom. Observers from the Guinness Book of World Records were on hand to record the event, and Beit al Tifel received its official Guinness certificate this past Tuesday, Nov. 24.
This is the second Palestinian city to set a world record in the past four months. In July, the city of Nablus, another Hamas hotbed in the Samarian Hills north of Jerusalem, created the world’s biggest kanafe, a delicious sweet pastry of hot cream cheese for which Nablus is famous.
In both cases, Palestinian communities were using the most bourgeois means of capturing world attention, while promoting traditional culture at the same time.
It wasn’t that long ago that these same communities were capturing world attention through their armed uprisings against the Israeli occupation.
Times have changed.
AP
A Palestinian man holds a huge traditional embroidered dress as it is presented to the media at soccer stadium in the West Bank city of Hebron. Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:54 AM EST
A quiet remembrance in Gaza
Gaza – It’s 11 a.m. on November, 11, 2009, and this correspondent along with his interpreter Hassan Jaber and driver Ashraf al-Masry (and five lovely lizards standing silently, too), are alone among the neat graves of 22 Canadian service men who died carrying out peacekeeping duties in this area between 1957 and 1967.
The small, tidy cemetery with a stone wall around it and wrought iron maple leaf gates at its entrance, sits at the southeast corner of a massive Commonwealth War Cemetery of 4,000 graves from the First and Second World Wars.
There, three foreign visitors stand silently at the main memorial wall.
Standing on the recently cut Canadian lawn, is a wreath with nine poppies and a red “Canada” ribbon. It apparently was placed here earlier this morning, by a local associate of the Canadian mission in the Palestinian Territories.
It’s a lovely warm day in Gaza today, the temperature in the high 20s and not a cloud in the sky.
Just after our two-minutes of silence, a local resident, Moin Dallul, 60, walks quietly into the cemetery. He pauses before the headstone of Private E.J. Fickling, who died here in 1966; then moves on.
“I come here about once a month,” he explains. “Some times I bring my family. It’s such a quiet clean place.”
That’s certain, in contrast to the overpopulated conditions in the rest of the closed off Gaza Strip.
“It reminds me of our history,” he adds. “And of better days.”
The Fallen
List of dead, with dates they died:
- C.S. Porter, Corporal, 37. April 1959;
- H. Morewood, Major, 45. July, 1959;
- R.H. Allan, Trooper, 24. Nov. 1959;
- A.T. Hurst, Private, 31. Feb. 1960;
- G.A. Gauthier, Corporal, 26. Feb. 1960;
- R.J. Wiley, Trooper, 24. Sept. 1961;
- J.M. Albert, Corporal, 35. Nov. 1961;
- D.S. Roster, Craftsman, 20. Nov. 1961;
- E. Olivier, Corporal, 38. Dec. 1961;
- G.G. Thompson, Sapper, 37. May 1962;
- E.G. Groom, Corporal, 40. Oct. 1963;
- E.D. Harper, DFC, CD Wing Commander, 39. Nov. 1963;
- J.K. Hermann, Sergeant, 33. Dec. 1963;
- L.R. Morin, Private, 31. May 1964;
- P.R. Wallace, Corporal, 33. Nov. 1964;
- A.A. Bons, Trooper, 22. Nov. 1964;
- J.A.D. Lamothe, Private, 20. March 1966;
- R.V. Edwards, Flying Officer, 23. April 1966;
- J.M.L.P. Picard, Flying Officer, 27. April 1966;
- J. Lorienz, Sapper, 33. July 1966;
- P.M. Crouse, Signalman, 25 Aug. 1966;
- E.J. Fickling, Private, 31. Oct. 1966.
The Commwealth and Canadian war cemeteries are located in the Toofah neighbourhood, a poor residential district in northeast Gaza City. They sit about a kilometre from the Israeli border.
Turning off the main street onto a narrow dirt lane, you find yourself flanked by two rows of towering green Cypress trees.
"They were about this high when I planted them," said Ibrahim Jeradeh, motioning to his knee's height. "We got them from Holland."
Mr. Jeradeh, 72, succeeded his father as head groundskeeper of these cemeteries in 1958. He, and now his sons Issam and Mohammed, have cared for these graves amidst all the years of turmoil and conflict since then.
Issam was five when the last of the Canadian soldiers were buried here in 1966.
"I remember them lowering the boxes into the graves by rope," he said, "and then lighting candles.
"It made an impression I'll never forget."
The Canadians have been the only ones buried here in the years since the Second World War. Most of the 4,000 Commonwealth soldiers interred here perished in battles against Turkish forces in the First World War.
There is one Canadian soldier among them: R.J. Bowes, 22, who was killed in fighting in the Second World War.
Five of the headstones in the Canadian graveyard were replaced this year. In 2006, an Israeli bulldozer knocked down the yard's wall and the headstones during an operation against Palestinian militants.
The headstones spent some two years at the Israeli border, until permission was granted for them to pass into Gaza.
Issam Jeradeh, now 48, has been head groundskeeper for seven years, but he started working in the cemetery when he was 15. "When I was very young, I used to play here among the graves with my friends, 'til my father would chase us away," he laughs.
Unlike most Gazans, Issam, his brother and father have no yearning to leave this small strip of two million people.
"Most people say that Gaza is a prison ... or a cemetery," he said. "Not us."
"This place is our life's work," he said, looking out over the rows and rows of tidy graves.
"It is our lives."
The Commwealth and Canadian war cemeteries are located in the Toofah neighbourhood, a poor residential district in northeast Gaza City.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009 10:34 PM EST
Iraq's Turkmen: A voice from the past
Kirkuk, Iraq – Most of the chairs at Abdullah's Restaurant still have the plastic wrappings on them.
The large popular eatery on the northern outskirts of the city of Kirkuk, capital of the ethnically mixed and oil-rich province of the same name, has been reopened for a few months, but people in these parts like to leave the wrappings on things – furniture, gearshifts – as long as they can.
The restaurant, famous for its enormous helpings and excellent grilled fish, closed abruptly last December when it was the target of a suicide bombing. Fifty-five people were killed and 120 injured in an attack that targeted a large private lunch between some officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (the movement of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani) and some prominent Arab tribal leaders.
I stopped by Abdullah's before leaving northern Iraq to meet with a leader of the area's Turkmen community. Riad Sari Kahya is the leader of the Turkmenli Party, one of several Turkmen parties in this province.
Mr. Riad served his people in Iraq's provisional government and helped draft the transitional authority's constitution (the precursor to Iraq's formal constitution).
“The Turkmen people [members of a central Asian race that moved west into Turkey and into what is now Iraq and Syria several hundred years ago] made up almost half the population of the province,” he told me, “before Saddam.”
“The Kurds were about 40 per cent of the population,” he said.
“And the Arabs?” I asked.
“Less than 10 per cent,” he replied. “They arrived here only very lately.”
Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:57 PM EDT
Next year in Ankara
The Kurds of Northern Iraq have a love-hate relationship with Turkey.
On the one hand, they hate how a long line of Turkish governments denied Turkey’s own 12 million Kurds the right to use their Kurdish language, and compelled them to be like Turks. On the other hand, it was to Turkey that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds attempted to flee in 1991 when Saddam Hussein put down their uprising.
It has often been said that Turkey does not want to see an independent state of Kurdistan carved out of Iraq. Such a state, they say, might give an incentive to Turkey’s own Kurds to fight for independence.
To make sure the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) remains a part of a federal Iraq, Turkey has lobbied hard to make sure this oil-rich province of Kirkuk, does not fall into KRG hands, and provide economic viability to an independent state. Ankara insisted, for example, that U.S. forces, when defeating Saddam in 2003, be the ones to occupy both Kirkuk and nearby Mosul, not wanting either to fall under Kurdish administration.
While the main struggle in northern Iraq is between Arab and Kurd, for more than three centuries, tens of thousands of Turkomen (descendents of Ottoman Turks who moved here) also have resided in this area.
Wanting to ensure Turkomen interests also were safeguarded, and a Kurdish state avoided, Turkish President Abdullah Gul travelled to Baghdad in March, the first visit to Iraq by a Turkish leader in 33 years (even though the two states share a lengthy border).
There, he did two things of note: First, he argued for a special status for the province of Kirkuk, and not one within the Kurdish sphere; second, he used the term Kurdistan Regional Government when referring to that Kurdish sphere. The use of such a term crossed a “red line” in Turkish policy, being a form of recognition never before given. KRG President Masoud Barzani was quick to welcome the move, even though the argument for Kirkuk’s special status made the blood of many Kurds boil.
Lest anyone think the Gul remark was a slip of the tongue, this week it was announced that Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would soon be visiting Erbil for meetings with KRG leaders including President Barzani.
I wanted to see whether Kurds here in Kirkuk love or hate Turkey more. I asked several of them the following: What if the government of Iraq became so pro-Iran in its policy that it became a satellite of Tehran (a scenario some envision because of Iraq’s Shia majority). Would you prefer to stay within Iran’s orbit, or would you prefer to become part of Turkey?
Everyone I asked said that, given the choice of Iran or Turkey, they would opt for Turkey.
Sherzad Adil, a Kurdish member of Kirkuk’s provincial council and an ardent Kurdish nationalist, said that “if Turkey were to offer all the basic rights to its Kurds, sure, I’d be happy to join Turkey.”
“In fact,” he added, “if Turkey became a member of the EU, I would RUN to join it.”
“ I’d like to be European,” he said.
Sunday, October 25, 2009 10:11 AM EDT
Keeping safe in Mosul
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
“We are safe now,” said Mirhan, the driver. “I can see our flag.”
Sighting the red, white and green bars with a bright yellow sun in the middle was a huge relief for my Kurdish driver and interpreter Sherzad.
Mosul, as they remind me all the time, is the most dangerous place in Iraq right now. And we had finally put it behind us.
Once the cultural and commercial centre of the entire region, Mosul was supposed to be part of modern-day Syria, until the British changed the map and took charge of the city in 1918 as part of their League of Nations mandate over Mesopotamia.
Today, its neighbourhoods of beautiful old homes are the scene of frequent bombings and assassinations.
As we neared the city from the east, the sheikh we were planning to visit dispatched a truck of Peshmerga (Kurdish guerrilla fighters) to escort us the rest of the way. Rocketing down the highway, with its siren wailing and lights flashing, it was to keep up with it, as the truck forced all other drivers to move to the right and let this important visitor and his powerful entourage pass.
Frankly, I thought we’d all get killed in a traffic accident instead of by a roadside bomb or shooting attack. But we did cover the 20 km to Mosul in record time. And we didn’t have to sit in long checkpoint lineups where one is a sitting duck.
I always hate driving with military or other armed guards, and avoid doing so whenever I can. In seeking to protect you, they unwittingly insulate you from the very people and places you are there to report on. Not only that, they often will serve as a beacon to the very people looking to kill or kidnap you.
In this case, however, there was no choice. My driver and interpreter, two trustworthy, experienced Kurds, said they wouldn’t take me to Mosul unless I followed the advice of the man we were going to meet.
Friday, October 23, 2009 7:46 PM EDT
For Kurds, it has always been a question of land
SULAYMANIYA, Iraq
The Kurds of northern Iraq, are a bit like Palestinians: They are without a country of their own and they cling to the memories of glory days gone by.
One such glorious event is marked by a prominent monument in the mountain pass as you drive from Kirkuk to Sulaymania, in the eastern part of Kurdistan, not far from the Iranian border.
It was here that Sheikh Mahmoud Barzanji is reported to have held off for several days in 1919 British forces then seeking control of all of Mesopatamia.
Sheikh Mahmoud, who would briefly be recognized (from 1922-24) as king of an independent Kurdistan, was wounded in the battle at this place called Takya. He is said to have holed up under a giant boulder that, today, marks the spot.
Photographs of the great leader and other early Kurdish heroes adorn the lobby of the venerable Parezh Hotel in downtown Sulaymania.
But not all lessons of the past are ones the Kurds want to emulate.
Take the civil war that broke out between the two dominant Kurdish movements: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, now President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Jalal Talabani, now President of Iraq.
Their intense rivalry turned into open and deadly conflict in 1994, just three years after a Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein that followed the first Gulf War, and resulted in the United States establishing a protective no-fly zone over the territory of this Kurdish enclave.
It happened, so I learned yesterday, that members of the extended Barzani family owned land east of here, near the Iranian border. However, in the 1970s, the government of Saddam Hussein confiscated the land and later sold it at auction.
The new owners were members of the Talabani family and they enjoyed quiet title until the 1991 Kurdish uprising. Once Kurdish control was exerted over most of Kurdistan, and the two movements were free to move beyond their respective territories (the KDP in the west and the PUK in the east) the former Barzani owners went back to claim their land.
They were greeted with hostility by the Talabanis who had held the land for most of two decades. In the battles that ensued members of each side were killed and others wounded.
That event triggered the civil war.
After two years of fighting, during which the PUK sought help from Iran and the KDP from Saddam Hussein, the two sides settled and, today, operate as partners in a coalition that has had several MPs elected to the national parliament, and that jointly administers the KRG.
The notion of one party reclaiming land that had been confiscated by Saddam Hussein and lived in by others, is exactly the kind of issue that today afflicts Kurds and Arabs along what is known as the Trigger Line in northern Iraq.
Kurdish owned land was taken from its owners during Saddam’s Arabization campaign in the 1970s. The vacated premises were occupied by Arab Iraqis, brought in from the south, and the Kurds fled north to other Kurdish communities.
In 2003, however, with the U.S. defeat of Saddam Hussein, Kurdish forces and, later, civilians, moved into this area and reclaimed it. These disputed territories are the nub of the dispute right now, triggering violence along that dividing line and threatening all-out conflict.
And the lesson of the Kurdish civil war? Well, despite their historic claim, the Barzanis did not regain title of the prized land; the Talabanis got to keep it.
This is not an outcome the Kurds hope to see repeated in the disputed territories.
Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:04 PM EDT
On the streets of Baghdad, it's every man for himself
Mideast bureau chief Patrick Martin returns to Iraq for his fourth visit – his first since 2004 – for a series of reports, blogs and audio diaries from a country emerging from war.
Today he files an audio blog on major infrastructure issues in Iraq.
