A fair and just compromise

NO MATTER what any of the key player in the Kurdish crisis in Iraq does, there is little prospect for resolvign the root problem — the Kurds' quest what they consider as their birthright to independence.
For such is the strength that the Kurds have built over the decades within the region and in Europe. Their "cause" got a major boost when the US backed them against Saddam Hussein after the war over Kuwait in 1991 and gave them a protective umbrella in northern Iraq where they expanded their autonomous regime. Today, the Kurdish area is the most stable part of Iraq.
However, on the other side of the border in Turkey, the Turkish Kurds were restless and they moved into northern Iraq following the ouster of the Saddam Hussein regime. Today, the number of fighters belonging to the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) based in northern Iraq is estimated at more than 3,000. They are waging a cross-border insurgency against the Turkish government.
The PKK has always waved between the goals of expanded autonomy and statehood for Turkish Kurds, but now it seems to have settled for statehood, a goal also pursued by the Kurds of Iraq, Iran and Syria but opposed by all the regional governments.
The latest in the stand-off is that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is willing to give diplomacy a chance despite having a mandate from the Turkish parliament to launch military attacks the PKK fighters in northern Iraq.
Indeed, there could be a diplomatic solution to the problem since the PKK also seems to be ready for a compromise (it has said it would stop cross-border attacks if the Turkish government called off a military incursion into northern Iraq). However, it is highly unlikely that the solution would hold for long since the Turkish government would only step up pressure with a view to rooting out the PKK, which in turn would retaliate with hit-and-run attacks inside Turkey.
It should not be forgotten that Kurds number between eight and nine million in Turkey, and they have always been a thorn on the side of Turkish government since the turn of the last century. It is highly unlikely that they would ever give up their dream of creating a Kurdistan which would account of a major chunk of Turkish territory.
The only solution at this juncture could come only through dialogue. The PKK should renounce its separatist quest and Ankara should address the concerns of its Kurdish people wherever they are legitimate and do not question of Turkey's sovereignty and territorial sovereignty. That should be the compromise that the US should be seeking. Nothing less would work.

Let the prediction be totally wrong

THE MOMENT of decision is close at hand for the US whether to launch military action against Iran in the confrontation resulting from Tehran's refusal to suspend its nuclear programme. That is what European experts would have us following Washington's imposition tough sanctions against Iran last week after the US failed to push through the UN Security Council a third resolution announcing additional UN sanctions against that country.
However, the apt assertion would be that it was never a question for the Bush administration "whether" to launch military action against Iran but "when," and that the nuclear dispute has offered the hawks in Washington the best opportunity to push the confrontation with Tehran towards armed conflict.
As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently declared, Iran definitely stands in the way of the US implementing its vision of the Middle East. Such an affirmation is unlikely to gain international sympathy for the US since the world — particularly the Middle East itself — has seen and is continuing to see in Iraq the best example of the US vision for the region.
In fact, the Bush administration's behaviour after the Sept.11, 2001 attacks has given the world little reason to sympathise with the US. Indeed, the world was shocked and grieved over the death of nearly 3,000 people, the international community remains solidly opposed to such actions wherever they occur as a challenge to humanity. They violate the very basic foundations of what the civilised world believes in.
The post-9/11 US behaviour was and is as if the attacks in New York and Washington offered the perfect pretext for the US to unleash its military and political clout against any country and people that stood in the way of its interests.
It is in this context that the US-Iran "confrontation" should be seen. The dispute over whether Iran seeking nuclear weapons and charges that Tehran is actively supporting the anti-US insurgency in Iraq are only part of the broader picture.
In all fairness, Washington has declared that it is not seeking armed conflict with Iran and favours diplomacy to solve the dispute and the new sactions are aimed at averting military action. We also know that that is the favoured approach of people like Rice, Defence Secretary Robert Gates and a few others in the administration. However, the hawkish camp is definitely gaining in its push for US military action against Iran, and the Tehran regime's defiant rhetoric has already paved the way for it.
Norman Podhoretz, a pre-eminent conservative foreign policy intellectual and associate of the Republican frontrunner for presidency, Rudy Giuliani and, equally importantly, a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest honour, aptly puts it:
"I would say it would take five minutes. You’d wake up one morning and the strikes would have been ordered and carried out during the night."
We fervently hope Podhoretz would prove to be totally wrong.

Oil game stuckwithout rules

The Washington strategists seem to be confident that the oil legislation pending before the Iraqi parliament would definitely be approved, clearing the way for US multinationals to sign exploration and production agreements that would net them tens of billions of dollars while the people of Iraq would get a pittance for their national wealth.
The confidence was reflected in last month's Iraqi announcement that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq will be the last. The catch here is that the UN mandate the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation of Iraq and that is also closely linked, as far as the Security Council is concerned, to the management of Iraqi oil revenues through he "Development Fund for Iraq." Once the UN mandate for a multinational force in Iraq expires, the UN management of the country's oil revenues would also be abrogated although this requires a separate Iraqi move, which should also be coming soon.
Iraq has also announced that it hopes to sign a conventional bilateral security agreement with the United States to replace the existing UN mandate for a multinational security force by the end of 2008.
The oil script is being played out as written by the US strategists but it is currently stuck in the Iraqi parliament, with the government unable to have the assembly debate and approve it, given the reluctance of a majority of members for various reasons.
However, that has not set back the US machinery. The Republican camp in Washington is pinning high hopes on the draft legislation in order to please its financial backers, many of them oil giants and some of them with close ties with senior Bush administration officials. Not that the Democrats could be expected to fight the move; after they too have their own string-pullers in the oil industry.
We have heard arguments in public that the draft legislation is not different from many others in the region. However, in reality it is definitely different.
The draft bill, once approved by the Iraqi parliament, would clear the way for foreign oil companies to sign long-term exploration and production contracts. Compare that with the policy of most other regional governments which bans foreign control over oil development and provides for limited-duration agreements with international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed without any say in oil production. Furthermore, the proposed legislation would place the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.
The key question that is evading an answer and probably causing major headaches in Washington is how to twist the arms of Iraqi MPs to take up the bill and push it through parliament. Definitely, it does not seem like an easy mission under the present geopolitics in strife-torn Iraq, but that is not stopping the US strategists from trying.

Unrealistic hopes in a lost war

Unrealistic hopes in
a game that is lost

SADDAM Hussein met a violent end on Saturday at hands of his arch enemies backed by the United States in what could be easily perceived as the enactment of a Washington-scripted drama.
Saddam, who ruled Iraq with an iron hand for three decades before meeting his Nemesis in US President George Bush, who ordered the invasion and occupation of his country in March 2003, appeared to have sought the image of a martyr for his people in his final days. Indeed, for many he was a hero despite his oppression of his people. His admirers were willing to overlook his mismanagement of his country and the disasters he invited for his people through his military misadventures against Iran in 1980 and against Kuwait in 1990.
Now that Saddam has been executed after being convicted of crimes against humanity, the world is left pondering what impact his death would have on the future of Iraq and the region.
The easiest answer to that is: The Saddam era ended with the ouster of the Iraqi strongman in April 2003, and he lost his political relevance when he was captured in a humiliating fashion by US forces in December 2003.
Saddam's execution could lead to a surge in the guerrilla war that is being waged in Iraq, but the overall crisis in the country since the US invasion was never Saddam-specific.
Today, his execution is seen to have given a political boost to Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki, mainly because he is seen to have had the courage and initiative to sign papers ordering Saddam's hanging early Saturday. A political boost for Maliki is deemed as improving prospects for stabilising the strife-torn country, particularly that the prime minister has reached out to Baathist loyalists of the executed president.
The ideal solution, of course, is for the sectarian leaders of the country to sit down and negotiate a formula for co-existence in light of the new realities that they face in post-Saddam Iraq where sectarianism is fuelling a raging civil war.
However, it might not be as easy as that. Maliki might indeed be successful in bringing in some of the Sunni groups waging the insurgency that has wreaked havoc on the people of Iraq, but that would not root out the real problem.
The ethnic crises in the country has crossed the point of no return. The sectarian bloodshed has pushed beyond redemption all hopes of keeping the country and its people as a single entity as the case was since the early 1900s, when colonial powers imposed their will on the main communities and bound them together. Those bindings disappeared with the US invasion and ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and it is an impossible task for any power on earth to rebind them since it would demand unacceptable and impossible compromises from the three main sects — the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis and Kurds. The Kurds and Shiites want the country's natural resources for themselves and they reject any power- or wealth-sharing with the Sunnis. The Kurds want their own independent entity in the oil-rich north, and the Shiites want the same thing in the south. Thrown into the bargain is a brutal and vengeful campaign of death led by the Shiites against the Sunnis, who also seem have to organised themselves and hitting back wherever they could in the ongoing "ethnic cleansing" in the country.
The Arabs, Muslims and the international community at large want national reconciliation in Iraq so that the suffering of the Iraqis would end, and the sectarian crisis does not spill over the borders of the country.
However, it would remain wishful thinking as long as the US maintains its military presence in Iraq as a colonial power. And it is in the interest of some countries which feel targeted by the US to keep the flames of civil war burning in Iraq so that Washington would remain bogged down and rendered unable to implement what they see as its grand designs for a "new Middle East."
And then there are the "international jihadists" who do not have an Iraq-specific cause but pursue an anti-US agenda around the globe. The US presence in Iraq offers them the reason to continue their version of a "holy war" at the expense of Iraqi lives.
Finally, the biggest challenge the US and the Shiite-led government in Iraq face is yet to materialise itself: The marauding Shiite militiamen whose leader is politically aligned with Maliki but opposes the US presence in the country. Sooner or later, the US forces and government soldiers would have to take on groups like the Mahdi Army and others and this would mean pitting US-backed Shiites against Shiites. Once that happens many other elements would come into play that would totally do away with any hope of salvation and rescue of the country and its people.
This is a reality that Washington strategists would be better off to keep in mind while mapping any plans for Iraq. As it is reported, Bush is determined to pursue the military option to fight off the insurgency in Iraq, but he would find that he has no option whatsoever in Iraq that would help him achieve the neoconservative-drafted strategic and geopolitical objectives in the country.
Bush on Saturday described Saddam's execution as a milestone for democracy in Iraq. Well, the US president is not being realistic, to say the least. The minimum requirements for democracy in any country are stability and security and both elements are not simply elusive in Iraq but are beyond reach. It is a lost game for the US in Iraq, and it was already so with or without Saddam's execution.

try these, but not for the faint hearted

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m24885&hd=0&size=1&l=e

Medha Patkar in Dubai

Medha Patkar

Valedictory function 29/09/2005

These photographs were taken on Sept.29 2005 at the valedictory function of Gulf Today-Our Own Creative Writing competition which saw 250 students from 22 schools taking part. Those in the pictures include Indian Ambassador to the UAE Chandramohan Bhandari, Our Own Engish High School Sharjah Principal Dr Farouq Wasel, UNESCO representative Saif Abdullah, winners of the contest and my wife Chitra and our daughter Vismay.

Anti-War protests Sept.24

With the Jordanian prime minister

The then Jordanian planning minister, Bassam Awadallah, an old and dear friend, introduces me to the then Jordanian prime minister, Faisal Fayez, during a visit a Jordanian delegation paid a visit to Dubai in July 2004.

Honouring medical volunteers

Addressing a meeting where doctors, nurses and other medical staff from several private sector clinics were honoured for having volunteered their services for a free medical camp for the poor in Sharjah in early 2004.

With Murali at Koothapalam launch

The above pictures were taken in March 2002 when Malayalam film actor Murali, a thespian of theatre and national film award winner for best actor, announced the launching of his venture Koothampalam in Dubai offering training in performing arts and in acting for the big screen and television as well as television show presentation. Others in the picture include KPK Vengara, a veteran drama artist, writer and radio programmer in the UAE, and officials of Koothampalam.

KOOTHAMPALAM, a school of performing arts, will be launched on March 11, with training courses in various aspects of production of drama, television shows and films starting immediately.
Koothampalam, which translates as "a forum for performing arts," is the creation of Bharath Murali, one of the best known actors in southern India today.
Murali, who is based in Trivandrum, will shuttle between the UAE and Kerala to personally supervise the training courses to be offered at the institution's premises in Qusais.
Noted figures from the Kerala film and television industry as well as the theatre movement will be regularly visiting the institutions, where skilled professionals in various aspects of drama, television and film production will coach the students.
Admission is under way for students from the age of seven for courses in acting, direction, production, stage settings, accostics and special effects among others. A special course is offered for those who want to be trained in televison presentation, including news reading and hosting of talk shows.
"Kootathampalam is the realisation of an idea that took birth during a theatre camp that I attended in Sharjah more than two years ago," said Murali, who entered the film industry with a rich experience from the drama movement.
The Sharjah camp was attended by dozens of students during school vacation and proved to be a big hit since it was the first such event organised in the UAE, and that too by a thespian like Murali.
The camp was supported by drama enthusiasts not only from the Keralite community but also from UAE nationals, including Fareed Al Ajami.
Murali, winner of the national award for the best actor, announced in December that he was launching Koothamapalam, the first such venture not only in the UAE but in the Gulf,
Murali, a member of the faculty of arts of Kerala University, said he hoped that the courses offered at Koothamapalm would eventually secure recogntion by the Kerala University.
Koothhamapalam classes will be conducted in Qusais. Transport is available for students.
"We have limited seats and we are adopting a first-come-first-serve policy for registration," said Rajesh, co-ordinator of Koothhampalam.
For more details please call: 04 227-3153

Fax numbers:

1. Gulf Madhyamam - fx 04 3908189 (call 050 495 4875)
2. Mathrubhoomi - fx 02 6744053 (call 050 692 8125)
3. Malayalam News -fx 04 3918358 (050 674 8536)
4. Asianet Radio -fx 04 3918045 (call 050 427 6726)
5. Malayalamanorama -call 050 4912 537
6. Radio Asia call 050 798 5387
7. UAQ Radio call 050 797 0366
8. jeevan tv - call 050 588 0324
9. asianet tv - call 050 724 1142
10. kairali - call 050 674 9971

Funny money

This picture did the rounds in late December after the US invaded and occupied Afghanistan hunting for Osama Bin Laden.

Visiting Friends

This photograph's origin — it is taken somewhere in Somalia —  is unknown, but it comes with a note requesting a known friend to offer accommodation to "some" of the sender's friends when they come visiting.

Book release

This photo was taken on the occasion of the release of a book at a function in Dubai in early 2005. This shows yours truly speaking to Dr Shehab Ghanem, the well-known poet of the United Arab Emirates.

Luxury Truck

These two photographs are of a £1 million truck converted as a luxury caravan-style vehicle for an unidentified client from the Middle East by an Austrian company.