Mick Hartley

Moscow-Tehran

Ilan Berman looks at the Russia-Iran connection, and why Moscow may now be having second thoughts on the Faustian bargain it made with Tehran after the collapse of the Soviet Union (via):

Worries over the possibility of Iranian support for radical separatism in Russia’s turbulent “Southern Rim” were at the core of Russian-Iranian contacts a decade ago. Back then, Moscow moved quickly—and successfully—to secure Tehran’s good behavior in exchange for arms and nuclear assistance. But the Russo-Iranian understanding over the “post-Soviet space” could soon become a thing of the past.

For one thing, telltale signs indicate that Iran is expanding its involvement in the spread of radical Islam in the region. In the first part of 2002, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) uncovered new intelligence indicating that elements of Iran’s clerical army, the Pasdaran, were secretly providing training and logistical support for insurgents from the radical al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Iran is likewise suspected of sponsoring the rise of radical religious and separatist movements in neighboring Azerbaijan over the past several years, and of using them as a means to destabilize and pressure the Aliyev dynasty in Baku. This troublemaking has led Russian media outlets to openly question the prudence of continued strategic alignment with Iran.

For another, Iran remains a serious potential threat to stability in the Caucasus. Officials in Moscow understand full well that, despite Iran’s historic abstention from sponsoring separatism in the “post-Soviet space,” Tehran in the future could use support for Chechen insurgents (or other regional radicals) as a blackmail tool against Moscow if it feels threatened by Russia’s strides toward the West, or as a means to blunt international pressure over its nuclear program. Indeed, signs of such activity are already becoming visible; in a November 2005 exposé, London’s influential Sunday Telegraph reported that the Pasdaran has begun “secretly training Chechen rebels in sophisticated terror techniques to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces.” [...]

Can the strategic partnership between Russia and Iran be severed? So far, the United States has not seriously tested this proposition. Instead, for much of the past decade, it has contented itself with superficial (and ultimately self-defeating) discussions with the Kremlin about just one aspect of the Russo-Iranian entente: Iran’s nuclear program. Today, policymakers in Washington should be thinking deeply about a broader sort of dialogue with their Russian counterparts over Iran.

Such a discourse would need to take into account Russia’s legitimate security interests in the “post-Soviet space.” Russia’s recent revival of imperial rhetoric vis-à-vis the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus—and its deepening involvement in regional security constructs like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—reflects a growing fear that America’s new strategic presence in the “post-Soviet space” could turn out to be a permanent affair. This sense of siege, moreover, has only deepened in the aftermath of the “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, and the perceived American connection to these events. Nevertheless, Moscow and Washington share congruent interests on a number of regional security issues, from preventing the growth of radical Islam to combating the rising tide of narcotics flowing from Afghanistan. Whether formal or informal, a Russo-American security arrangement that addresses Moscow’s fears—and capitalizes on such commonalities—could help reduce Moscow’s perceived need for strategic partners such as Iran to counterbalance the United States.

Meeting the More Spiritual Needs

A town in Tibet is to be permanently reminded of its new master:

A huge statue of Mao Zedong, whose Red Armies entered the deeply Buddhist Himalayan region in 1951 to extend Communist Party rule, is to stand in a newly built square in the town of Gongga.

The 7.5m (24½ft) figure, weighing 35 tonnes, is a gift to the small Tibetan town just south of the regional capital, Lhasa, from the central Chinese city of Changsha, where Mao was born.

One government official explained the gift, worth 6.5 million yuan (£465,000): "Tibet does not need only material development, it must also meet the more spiritual needs of its people."

That's quite some irony, coming from the representative of an occupying power which has done its best over the past 50 years to destroy what was one of the most extraordinary religious cultures in the world.

Mao’s newest statue wears a traditional Mao suit. However, Mr Zhu [the sculptor] has changed his posture. "I noticed that he liked standing with both hands behind his back. It made him look more intimate and more easygoing." His features, too, have been altered to suit his Tibetan audience. Mr Zhu said: "I tried to understand how Tibetans feel towards Mao. Because they have deep feelings about Buddha, I tried to make Mao more like that, with a plumper face."

Respecting Nature

I've commented before on Rachel Campbell-Johnston, the Times art critic. Here she is again, recycling the stalest of received opinions with all the enthusiasm of someone just discovering a whole ground-breaking new philosophy.

This time she's musing on nature: the environment and all that. It's a good thing, apparently. Indeed, "the natural world has always been fundamental to art". Well, it's been fundamental to most things, so she's on safe ground there. After a quick word on the wonders of Planet Earth ("a fundamental shift in perceptions seems to be afoot"....people - who'd have thought? - enjoy watching nature programmes!), she's off to a show at the Charing X Gallery where the artists "seek not so much to record the appearance as to capture the spirit of the animals that they meet. They see themselves not as observers but as messengers. They adopt an almost shamanistic role." And here we go, for one of those received opinions which really deserves to be buried:

This takes us back to a time when wild nature was not something to be exploited. It was to be wondered at and feared. This was the world in which our earliest ancestors lived. Just as African Bushmen once journeyed deep into haunted, underground darkness to paint animals on to cave walls, so, with something of the same sense of miraculous purpose, the Planet Earth filmmakers abseil into fissures to discover eerie, otherworldly creatures; so Olly and Suzi sink through holes in the ice to confront the predators of the abyss. Art becomes more than some detached commentary.

It becomes a matter of life and death. It tries to return us to the roots of our relationship with a living planet, to that primal wonder that breeds deep respect.

Our ancestors "wondered at and feared" nature because they had no bloody choice. It wasn't out of a respect for nature so much as a respect for their skins, in a world where they were soft and defenceless and toothsome and there were lots of nasty big animals out there with sharp teeth and claws. Exploit nature? They'd have loved to. That's what all the magic and religion and shamans and all the rest was about - trying to gain some power - any power - over a harsh hostile world. Go back in time and and hand some stone-age hunter a rifle. Would he have sneered at the sudden advantage he'd been given? - launch into some proto-green mystical crap about respecting the spirit of the antelope and not wishing to spoil the bond of respect between hunter and hunted? No chance. He'd have grabbed it, shouted "yeah, who's the boss man now?" and started blasting away at anything that moved. Whenever these one-with-the-earth primitives found themselves in a new continent where the animals hadn't learned to be scared of humans - America, Australia - there was a sudden surge in the number of species that went extinct. When the Maoris reached New Zealand and found all these huge moas wandering around unfazed by their presence, they didn't worry about disrupting the careful balance of the eco-system: they went up to the dozy birds, clubbed them, and gorged themselves on easy meals until there weren't any more of the buggers left. That's how much they respected the glories of nature.

In fact if anything it's surely the other way round. No doubt it's something of an over-simplification to say that before the Romantics people used to shun mountains and wild nature as ugly and frightening, but there's surely some truth in it. Only we moderns go off in search of the world's most desolate places, and only we moderns spend vast amounts of time and effort setting up national parks, trying to preserve endangered species, making films about the beauty of our world - and then build up decadent romantic fantasies about how nasty modern life is, and how our noble ancestors used to live in harmony with nature.

Because It Works

It shouldn't really need saying, but with thinkers of the calibre of Madeleine Bunting around, it obviously does. Andrew Anthony on the importance of the enlightenment (via b&w):

Enlightenment thinkers make an intellectual case against fundamentalism which you can take or leave. Islamic fundamentalists make the case against freedom and rationality by issuing death threats to - and sometimes killing - anyone with whom they disagree. It's a tough one, but I think I know which system I prefer.

What's obvious is that principles that were once taken for granted - freedom of expression, rule of law, secularism, rationality - are now being questioned. Fair enough. Nothing is set in stone. But the questions posed, and the visions offered - censorship, mob rule, religious law, superstition and the privileging of emotion - were adequately dealt with by Enlightenment thinkers. They, after all, had to contend with religious literalism, so it makes perfect sense to refer back to them. "They see the light infused into their understandings, and cannot be mistaken," Locke wrote of religious fundamentalists,"'it is clear and visible there, like the light of bright sunshine; shows itself, and needs no other proof but its own evidence: they feel the hand of God moving them within, and the impulse of the Spirit, and cannot be mistaken in what they feel." Sound familiar?

Furthermore, much of Enlightenment thought has grown to be more relevant. Empiricism, for instance, is an innately democratic idea. Kant argued that an action is right for one person only if it is right for any and all. This is the basis of democratic justice and, indeed, universal human rights. We can engage in debate on what that justice and those rights might entail but out of that debate we can agree, for example, that if it's right for us not be slaves, it is right for all humans not be slaves.

So when Bunting asks why we still hold to an understanding of rationality that is over 200 years old, the answer is that it works. Just as the understanding that the Earth revolves around the Sun works, even though - gulp - it's an even older idea. Rational debate and free expression allow for - indeed positively encourage - new and better ideas and hypothesis, while never settling on a definitive truth. All ideas are permitted but rationality also offers a means of testing their worthiness through open and vigorous debate.

Striking Idiocy

Dalrymple on the French strikes:

Whether they know it or not, the people on the streets in France were demonstrating to keep the youth of the banlieues — who recently so amused the world for an entire fortnight with their arsonist antics — exactly where they are, namely hopeless, unemployed and feeling betrayed. For unless the French labour market is liberalised, they will never find employment and therefore integration into French society. You have only to speak to a few small businessmen or artisans in France — the petits bourgeois so vehemently despised by the snobbish intellectuals — to find out why this should be so. The French labour regulations make employment of untried persons completely uneconomic for them.

It is often pointed out that French unemployment under the age of 26 is the highest in Europe, running at about 25 per cent. Moreover, in the banlieues it is 50 per cent. These banlieues are homes to millions of people, disproportionately young. It follows — does it not? — that there must be a considerable section of the young population in which unemployment is less than a quarter, actually much less. One would hardly have to be de Tocqueville to guess in which section of the young population the unemployment was less: the section from which the demonstrators, or at least their leaders and agents provocateurs, are drawn. In an increasingly desperate situation, the demonstrators are so afraid of the future that they want to hang on to their privileges and job security by hook or by crook, even if it means that the youth of the banlieues will eventually have to be kept in order by the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité, the much-feared riot police, the CRS. There is nothing idealistic or generous about the demonstrators, just as there wasn’t in 1968.

Well actually, yes, there was something idealistic about 1968, however misconceived. The comparison with the present unrest could hardly be more, um, striking. And then, this being Dalrymple, however bad things are in France, they have to be worse over here. But still....when he's good, he's very good.

Delusional Summits

A couple of harsh opinion pieces in Lebanon's Daily Star on the Arab League summit in Khartoum. First, Rami G. Khouri:

Mercifully, perhaps as a sign of God's enduring affection and mercy for the Arab people, the Arab League summit meeting was pared down to a one-day event. Nine Arab heads of state did not even bother to attend. Many of those who did attend, like the Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian presidents, are under immense domestic and global pressure to resign, or to radically change their policies.

The defining collective characteristic of Arab heads of state is an embarrassing combination of irrelevance, their overseeing police-state autocracies, and their razor-thin legitimacy. The Khartoum gathering highlighted the profound pressures and problems that plague most Arab countries: a general lack of rule of law in systems where political, military and economic power are closely guarded in the hands of small numbers of mostly unelected, unaccountable people - often just the men of a single family. Narrow, gun- and clan-based power structures more suited to urban gangland cultures have evolved in the Arab world in the past half-century into prevailing systems of official governance.

And Michael Young:

How morbidly revealing it was that Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum on Tuesday could agree to little of consequence, even as they were hosted by a regime that has efficiently engineered the slaughter and wretchedness of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur. Only in repression, it seems, are the Arab states truly resourceful; in diplomacy, however, it is their cowardice and sterility that consistently prevail. [...]

The true danger for the Arab states is that as they become less relevant in shaping the Middle Eastern agenda, the non-Arab peripheral states - Iran, Turkey and Israel - are becoming more so. Already, the Israeli elections have shown that Israel is united around a unilateral drawing of its border with the Palestinians, and it is persuading the international community of the benefits of this. Meanwhile, the Arabs offered nothing original on the Palestinians in Khartoum, while Arab publicists, forgetting their onetime loyalty to secular nationalist Palestinian slogans, now loudly celebrate Hamas, oblivious to the fact that its calls for a long-term truce give Israel precisely the time it needs to pursue unilateral policies.

As for Iran and Turkey, the first is intimidating and finagling its way toward hegemony in the Gulf region, seeking nuclear weapons, and meddling in Lebanese affairs; the second is slowly integrating into the European Union, whether it becomes a full member or not. The time is fast approaching where the Arab states will be ciphers in their own backyard, pawns or barricades between far more powerful actors. Khartoum would have been a good forum to discuss avoiding this. Instead, like much in Arab politics, it was a costly waste of time.

Nuclear Nightmares

Next month will see the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl. Here's a commemorative photo essay (via).

Holy Fish

Why is Allah sending messages to Liverpool? (via lgf)

A pair of fish which appear to bear the words Allah and Mohammed were hailed as a "message from God" today.

The Oscar fish were spotted in a pet shop in Speke, Liverpool, by 23-year-old Ali Al-Waqedi.

He noticed that the markings on one fish appeared to spell Allah, the Islamic term for God, in Arabic.

He then saw that another fish in the same tank appeared to bear the word Mohammed, the name of the last Islamic prophet, also in Arabic.

Mr Al-Waqedi said: "We only went into the shop because my kids wanted to have a look at the animals. We weren't planning to buy anything.

"We started to have a look at the Oscar fish because they had such an unusual colour.

"Then I saw that one of them had the word Allah. It was so clear, and it made me very happy.

"Then we saw that another one had the word Mohammed, and that was even better. To see the Allah fish was exciting, but to have the Allah and Mohammed fish in the same tank was unbelievable.

"I believe it is a message from Allah to me, a reminder, and it makes my faith even stronger."

Mr Al-Waqedi bought the fish and leant them to a friend, as it is not advisable to place Oscar fish in a brand new tank.

He added: "My friend's house is closer to the mosque than mine, so people hear about the fish at the mosque and go to see them at his house.

"I would say at least one hundred people have been there since I bought the fish last week."

Sheikh Sadek Kassem, imam of Liverpool's Al-Rahma mosque, said: "This is a proof and a sign not just to Muslims, but for everyone."

He quoted a passage from the Koran which suggested Allah will send signs. It reads: "Soon we will show them our signs in the regions, and in their own souls, until it becomes manifest to them that this is the truth."

Last month, a pet shop near Bury, Greater Manchester, discovered an Oscar fish which appeared to have the word Allah on one side and Mohammed on the other.

Update: and don't miss the amazing lion of Baku which (in a clear refutation of Wittgenstein) says the name of Allah (via Tom).

Hound Abuse

Some sloppy editing in this sordid doggy tale from the Telegraph:

Pro-islamic municipalities in Turkey are killing stray dogs, animal rights groups claim.

Municipal workers are hunting, torturing and killing the animals by the hundreds, the campaigners say.

The allegations surfaced when Burcu Isikalp, a young veterinary surgeon, went searching for seven strays she had been caring for near her home in the capital, Ankara. Witnesses told her that municipal workers had taken them away.

She went to Ankara's largest refuse dump, Mamak, where she found one of the strays with hundreds of other dogs. "They were all dead, stacked in large pits," she said. "We also found 10 dead puppies in a bound plastic bag. There is a myth among pious Muslims that dogs are unclean."

Animal rights campaigners who accompanied Miss Isikalp last week said that at least two of the dogs had been sexually abused.

The mayor of Mamak, Gazi Sahin, of the ruling pro-Islamic Justice and Development Party, has denied responsibility.

At least, I think it's sloppy editing. Maybe the mayor has a history of this sort of thing.

Defecting for Jazz

Jazz and totalitarian regimes just don't go together (via):

Each year, more than 1,000 North Koreans defect to South Korea for economic and political reasons, but Kim Chul-woong had a different reason: He wanted to play jazz, a music forbidden in his Stalinist homeland.

Kim, a former pianist who played in a state-run symphony orchestra in Pyongyang, risked his life to come to South Korea in 2002 for the sole purpose of playing jazz, which is ostracized in the North as "U.S. imperialistic reactionary music".

"I liked jazz too much", Kim, 33, said in a recent interview at a coffee shop in northern Seoul. "I needed the freedom of music.

I wanted to play jazz in front of an audience and imagined how great it would be".

A graduate of the North's prestigious Pyongyang University of Music and Dance, Kim was allowed to further his studies at the Tchaikovsky Music Academy in Moscow in 1995 at government expense.

A year later, he came into contact with jazz for the first time.

"One day, one music class was cancelled, so I went to a cafe near my school to drink a cup of coffee, and music (coming) from the speakers there _ a type that I had never heard before _ thrilled me", Kim said.

So, which jazz great did he hear? Bird? Coltrane? Monk? Rollins?

"I asked the cafe owner what kind of music that was, and he replied it was `A Comme Amour' by pop, classical and jazz pianist Richard Clayderman. It was too good, and that began to change my life".

Richard Clayderman? "Too good, and that began to change my life"?? A chilling insight into the cultural desert that is North Korea.