Author: Kalashian Nyrie

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 29, 2004
Peace in Karabakh conflict should be reached without winners,losers
By Sevindj Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman
BAKU, March 29
Azerbaijan pins high hopes that Russia would play a positive role in
the resolution of the Karabakh conflict, speaker of Milli Medjlis,
Azerbaijan’s Parliament Murtuz Aleskerov said at a meeting with Duma
Speaker Boris Gryzlov on Monday.
According to him, Russia that is a co-chairman of the Minsk OSCE
group on Nagorno Karabakh plays an important role in the conflict
settlement. “We hope that using our powers and influence in the
region Russia will try to find ways of a just solution to this
problem,” the speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament said.
During the meeting the sides reached the agreement on the soonest
settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement by peaceful means.
“It is necessary to achieve peace without winners and losers,”
Gryzlov emphasised.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 29, 2004 Monday Home Edition
Veteran disappoints, but newcomer dazzles
by PIERRE RUHE
A couple of decades ago, song recitals were declared dead and all but
buried. Fewer composers were writing for the exposed duo of solo
voice and piano; impresarios found vocalists a tough sell; young
singers didn’t see the benefits of all that discipline.
Well, the rumors were greatly exaggerated. This season in Atlanta has
heard terrific art-of-song performances. Over the weekend, a veteran
and a rookie came to town and, not surprisingly, arrived with
different agendas.
Mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer has been a strong presence at the
Metropolitan Opera for some 15 years. At Emory University, she and
Craig Rutenberg, a lyrical pianist, opened with a pair of “what if?”
composers — music by the wives of great men, women who didn’t
pursue composition as a career, Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler.
Where three Schumann songs from her Op. 12 sounded here like tepid,
nicely wrought parlor songs, Mahler’s set heaved with allure and
personality. In the latter’s “Balmy Summer Night,” Mentzer conveyed a
winking, almost swishy attitude.
Works by Gustav Mahler (earthy) and Eric Satie (cabaret cute) led to
Libby Larsen’s “Love after 1950,” five songs written for Mentzer and
premiered in 2000. Each song gets a treatment: One is blues, another
honky-tonk, a third tango, and so on. Fun to hear and mostly
well-written for the human voice, these songs suffer from Larsen’s
self-conscious, post-modern approach, where the music is remote from
the texts instead of interlocked. And throughout the evening, the
mezzo’s brushed velvety voice sounded a bit weary. It made for a
low-energy recital.
On Saturday, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, making her Atlanta recital
debut, sang with the giddy excitement of a newcomer, without a
horizon in sight. I first heard her in 1997, in a tiny role at the
Glimmerglass Opera, and wrote she was “exquisite in her pure tones,
generating a frisson of interest in her vocal possibilities.” Even
then, it was obvious here was someone special. Now just 29, she’s
starting to win acclaim in the opera house and through CDs.
Yet the first half of her Spivey recital — Grenados, Rossini and
Vivaldi — seemed more about wowing us with her technique than about
singing to her strengths.
Still a growing artist, Bayrakdarian’s vocal timbre is somewhere
between Kathleen Battle’s and Sumi Jo’s, equal parts soul and
diamond-sparkle coloratura. She summoned despair for Vivaldi’s “The
Scorned Wife,” although she left a few tones (like the word “fida”)
curiously uncolored, like it sat between two regions of her voice and
she couldn’t quite reach it. And was it fatigue that caused some
misfiring vocal pyrotechnics in “Buffeted by Two Winds”? Her pianist,
Serouj Kradjian, proved an inadequate accompanist, flashy and
oblivious to the subtleties of the texts.
In any case, after intermission the Canadian-Armenian soprano finally
let us savor more than just her splendid technical gifts: She became
an interpreter and an actress, telling moving stories with her voice
— the crux of a song recital. She was at turns naive and manic in
Tchaikovsky’s “The Cuckoo” — both funny and scary — pronouncing
the bird’s song like an antique clock gone haywire. She sounded like
a non-smoking Edith Piaf for a set of cynical Kurt Weill love songs,
squatting over the low notes with a seductively nasal drawl. Is the
term “vocal charisma” adequate to describe a singer who makes time
stop, who conjures magic? Whatever that intoxicating property is,
Bayrakdarian has it in abundance — the future of the art form.
GRAPHIC: Photo: In her Atlanta recital debut, Canadian-Armenian
soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian sang with the excitement of a newcomer.
When at her best on Saturday, she was magical.; Photo: Susan Mentzer,
a regular at the Metropolitan Opera, sounded a bit weary in her
Friday recital.; Graphic: CLASSICAL REVIEW
Mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer, Friday at Emory University’s Emerson
Concert Hall; and soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, Saturday at Spivey
Hall.

Cyprus Mail, Cyprus
March 25 2004
Representation in federal institutions – The Legislature
By Yiouli Taki
CONSTITUENT state representatives in federal institutions should have
the internal citizenship of the respective constituent state. This is
in line with the provision that political rights in federal elections
will be exercised on the basis of internal citizenship: the people
who will elect the representatives of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot
states in federal institutions will have the internal citizenship of
the relevant constituent state.
Internal citizenship is defined on the basis of residence on the date
the Foundation Agreement comes into effect. Neither of the
constituent states will be obliged to grant internal citizenship to
those who will choose to live in their territory but have the
internal citizenship of the other constituent state.
Thus it is expected that the Turkish Cypriot constituent state will
not grant internal citizenship to Greek Cypriots who choose to reside
permanently on its territory, so as to ensure that only Turkish
Cypriots will vote for or be voted as representatives of the Turkish
Cypriot state. In this way, the equal status of the two constituent
states, as specified through their representation on a federal level,
will be translated as political equality between the two communities.
The Legislature: The House of Representatives and the Senate
The two constituent states will be represented in the House in
proportion to their population, though no state will hold less than
25 per cent of the seats. Of the 48 seats, 36 will go to the Greek
Cypriot state and the rest to the Turkish Cypriots. Decisions will be
taken by simple majority.
Representation in the Senate will be based on the political equality
of the two sides; each constituent state will have 24 seats. There
will be two decision-making procedures according to the matter on the
agenda.
Simple Majority: Standard decisions will be taken by simple majority
of the Senators present and voting, including a quarter of the
senators from each constituent state who are present and voting.
Special Majority: Certain issues will need a special majority of at
least two-fifths (10) of the Senators from each constituent state.
Such issues will include the approval of the federal budget and the
election of the Presidential Council, as well as a series of issues
concerning the vital interests of the two constituent states.
House decisions will need the approval of the two bodies. A special
law will provide for a compromise mechanism between the two bodies.
How are the religious minorities going to be represented on the
Legislature?
The Maronite, Latin and Armenian minorities will be represented by at
least one deputy each. The deputies will be counted amongst the
representatives of the constituent state where the majority of the
members of the respective minority reside.
How are the minority representatives going to be elected?
Members of the relevant minority would have the right to vote for
their deputies irrespective of their internal citizenship.
What is the authority of the Legislature?
The Constitution of the United Republic of Cyprus provides the
following powers for the legislature: 1. It will legislate and make
decisions on issues within its competence 2. It will approve
international agreements that need ratification 3. It will elect and
oversee the Presidential Council 4. It will refer to the Supreme
Court – by special majority – allegations of impeachment regarding
members of the Presidential Council and independent officials for
serious violation of their duties or serious crime. 5. It will adopt
the federal budget.
When will a special majority be needed in decision-making in the
senate?
A special majority will be necessary for: 1. Ratification of
international agreements on issues under the legislative authority of
the constituent states. 2. Ratification of conventions and adoption
of laws and regulations concerning airspace, the continental shelf
and territorial waters of the United Republic of Cyprus, including
the economic and border zone. 4. Adoption of laws and regulations
regarding citizenship, immigration, water resources and taxation. 5.
Approval of the federal budget. 6. Election of the Presidential
Council
You have stressed that political equality between the two communities
is protected through a provision in the UN plan that does not oblige
constituent states to provide internal citizenship to citizens from
the other state. Can you explain?
Political rights during federal elections will be exercised on the
basis of the internal constituent state citizenship status. The only
way for the Turkish Cypriot state to secure that its federal
representatives will be Turkish Cypriots is through the provision
stipulating that a constituent state is not obliged to grant Turkish
Cypriot citizenship to Cypriot citizens holding the internal
citizenship status of the Greek Cypriot state who choose to reside
there permanently, after the Foundation Agreement comes into effect.
Consequently, Greek Cypriots who are granted permanent residency in
the Turkish Cypriot state, will continue to have the internal
citizenship of the Greek Cypriot state.
Thus exercising their voting rights at the federal level in the Greek
Cypriot state: they will be able to elect candidates of the Greek
Cypriot state or run for office themselves. This secures Turkish
Cypriot demands since a primary concern of the Turkish Cypriot
community is that of a situation where Greek Cypriots would be
elected as representatives of the Turkish Cypriot state. The equality
of the two constituent states is thus translated into political
equality between the two communities; this would not have been
possible if Greek and Turkish Cypriots could represent the Turkish
Cypriot state at a federal level.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine
Author(s): Michael Ruse
Metanexus Salus
2004.03.16.
In the op/ed piece below, Michael Ruse, Professor of the Philosophy of
Biology at Florida State University, considers the possible political
and religious issues at stake in the selection of winners of the 2003
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The 2003 prize was awarded to
Dr. Paul Lauterbur and Dr. Peter Mansfield for their work in magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI). Amidst the controversy surrounding the Nobel
committee’s exclusion of Dr. Raymond Damadian despite his groundbreaking
work in MRI, Ruse speculates that Damadian’s exclusion was motivated by
knowledge of his religious commitments, specifically his support of
creation science.
Michael Ruse was born in 1940 in Birmingham, England. He received a B.A.
in Philosophy and Mathematics from Bristol University in 1962, an M.A.
in Philosophy from McMaster University in 1964, and a Ph.D. from Bristol
University in 1970. Ruse has worked at the University of Guelph in
Ontario, Canada since 1965, obtaining the rank of Professor. He has been
a visiting professor and scholar at Cambridge University, Harvard
University, and Indiana University. Ruse is a fellow of the Royal
Society of Canada, the AAAS, Guggenheim, Killam, the John Templeton
Foundation, and a Gifford Lectures. Ruse is the author of many books,
including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. 1979;
Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy 1986; The
Philosophy of Biology 1989; Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in
Evolutionary Biology 1996; Readings in the Philosophy of Biology, 1998
with David Hull; Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social
Construction? 1999; Can a Darwinian be a Christian? The Relationship
between Science and Religion, 2001; The Evolution Wars, 2000; The Nature
of Science, (forthcoming 2001); Darwin and Design: Science, Philosophy,
Religion, 2003; Cloning (edited volume), 2001.
–Editor
The Nobel Prize in Medicine – Was there a Religious Factor in this
Year’s (Non) Selection?
By Michael Ruse
Dr. Raymond Damadian failed to be included in this year’s Nobel honors
for work in Medicine, and feels sore about it. Although he was the
inventor of the first machine that discovers cancers through magnetic
resonance imaging, the award went to two other and somewhat subsequent
scientists, Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield. Notoriously, the Nobel
committees never reveal their deliberations (until everyone is long
dead) and never change their minds. So, although by having taken out
advertisements of protest in the New York Times and the Washington Post
may make him feel somewhat better, and draw attention to his bad luck,
Damadian seems fated to remain with the rest of us who are not Nobel
Laureates. He will join Charles Best of Banting and Best fame who
discovered the significance of insulin treatment for diabetes –
Frederick Banting and his boss J.J.R. McCleod (who was on vacation at
the time) got the award and Best the junior scientist was left out.
But perhaps Dr. Damadian does have reason to feel having been slighted
for the wrong reasons. He is not just an inventor, but also a very
prominent Christian. And not just a Christian of any bland kind, but a
Creation Scientist – one of those people who believes that the Bible,
especially including Genesis, is absolutely literally true – six days of
creation, Adam and Eve the first humans, universal flood, and all of the
rest. It is as least as likely a hypothesis that Damadian was ignored by
the Nobel committee because they did not want to award a Prize to an
American fundamentalist Christian as that they did not think his work
merited the fullest accolade. In the eyes of rational Europeans – and
Swedes are nothing if not rational Europeans – it is bad enough that
such people exist, let alone give them added status and a pedestal from
which to preach their silly ideas. Especially a scientific pedestal from
which to preach their silly anti-science ideas.
Is this unfair? One certainly feels a certain sympathy for the Nobel
committee. Creation science is wrong and (if taught to young people as
the truth) dangerous. It does represent everything against which good
science stands. However, even the best scientists believe some very
strange things, and if we start judging one area of their work in terms
of other beliefs that they have, we could well do more harm than good.
Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist of them all, had some very strange
views about the proper interpretation of such Biblical books as Daniel
and Revelation, and in respects believed things about the universe – its
past and its future – that make today’s Creation Scientists seem
comparatively mild. More recently, Alfred Russel Wallace, the
co-discoverer of natural selection along with Charles Darwin, became an
enthusiast for spiritualism, believing that there are hidden forces
controlling every aspect of life. People knew this and were embarrassed
by it, but it did not stop them from celebrating and praising Wallace’s
great scientific work. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
given Britain’s greatest award for achievement, the Order of Merit.
All of my life I have fought for evolution and against Creationism – in
writings, on the podium, and in court in 1981 as a witness in Arkansas
against a law demanding that Creation Science be taught alongside
evolution in the state supported schools. But as one who loves science
above all and thinks it the greatest triumph of the human spirit – as
one who has no religious beliefs whatsoever – I cringe at the thought
that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his
religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to
deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that
this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason
to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of
the scientific community.

San Diego Union Tribune
March 18 2004
Russian, Armenian community targeted
By Joe Hughes
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Two Russian immigrants have been arrested in connection with a scheme
to defraud members of San Diego’s Russian and Armenian community out
of hundreds of thousands of dollars, police said yesterday.
Yasha Kuper, 55, and his son, Roman Kuper, 28, were held last week,
Detective Christine Gregg said.
Bail for Roman Kuper was set at $1 million. Yasha Kuper posted
$10,000 bail after his arrest, but a second arrest warrant has been
issued and he is scheduled to surrender this week, Gregg said.
Sixteen victims have been identified, but that list will grow, police
said.
“We feel there are many other victims out there who are afraid to
come forward,” Gregg said. “We want these people to contact us if
they have had dealings with the Kupers.”
The Kupers, Gregg said, told victims that they were new to the
country and did not have Social Security numbers or bank accounts.
Victims allegedly were duped into providing their bank account
numbers on the premise that money would be wired from the Kupers’
accounts in Russia to the victims’ accounts here.
In exchange for helping out, the victims were told they could collect
a portion of the Kupers’ funds, police said.
Money was never transferred from Russia, Gregg said, and the victims
later found their accounts had been cleaned out.
Victims were solicited, Greg said, through advertisements placed in
Russian-language newspapers.
The Kupers moved to San Diego from Chicago late last year.
Police ask that anyone who has been victimized in the scam call Gregg
at (619) 528-4100.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
L.L. 50 MILLION IS DONATED TO THE ARMENIAN LEBANESE COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
BY “KHATCHIG BABIKIAN FOUNDATION”
ANTELIAS, LEBANON – Established in 2001, right before the death of Khatchig
Babikian, the former member of Lebanese Parliament and the chairman of the
executive council of the Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, the “Khatchig
Babikian Foundation” will donate 50 Milion Lebanese pounds for the Armenian
community schools in Lebanon for the current academic year.
The president of the foundation is His Holiness Catholicos Aram I. Its
executive committee includes Mr. Andre Tabourian, Mr. Vosgeperan
Arzoumanian, Mr. Yervant Pamboukian, and the three daughters of the late Mr.
Babikian, namely Rane Marie Babikian-Kiwan, Tina Babikian-Assaf and Carole
Kokoni.
Before his death Khatchig Babikian donated to the Foundation the major part
of his assets mainly composed of lands. The capital of the foundation will
increase with the income of the sale of the lands. Only the interests of the
capital will be used for humanitarian, educational and cultural projects.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the history and
the mission of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

PRESS RELEASE
Catholicosate of Cilicia
Communication and Information Department
Tel: (04) 410001, 410003
Fax: (04) 419724
E- mail: [email protected]
Web:
PO Box 70 317
Antelias-Lebanon
HIS HOLINESS ARAM I WILL TAKE PART IN 10th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION
OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA
ANTELIAS, LEBANON – His Holiness Aram I is invited by the government of
Rwanda to bring his participation at the 10th anniversary commemoration of
the genocide in Rwanda, which will take place in Kigali the capital city.
His Holiness’ visit will take place from 18-21 April 2004. He will address
an international conference on “Genocides in the 20th century and lessons to
humanity”. Catholicos Aram I will also address an ecumenical worship on the
stadium of Kigali. In his public interventions His Holiness will refer to
the Armenian Genocide, which is the first Genocide of the 20th century and
the Rwandan genocide being the last.
In his invitation letter to His Holiness the foreign minister of Rwanda Dr.
Charles Murigande writes: “You stood by the people of Rwanda as they
struggled to deal with the terrible consequences of genocide. It therefore
gives me pleasure, on behalf of the people and government of Rwanda, to
invite you to the ceremonies marking the 10th anniversary of the 1994
genocide to be held in Kigali on 7th of April, 2004. Join us to reflect on
how to prevent and banish genocide for ever through active universal
solidarity”.
His Holiness will also meet the president and church leaders of Rwanda.
A high ranking delegation will accompany His Holiness during this visit. It
will include Dr. Sam Kobia, the General Secretary of the World Council of
Churches, Dr. Andre Karamagali, the director of the Department on Africa
affairs, Bishop Dandala, the General Secretary of All Africa Council of
Churches, Ms Teny Pirri-Simonian, the director of Church Relations
Department of the WCC, and Rev. Krikor Chiftjian, the Director of the
Catholicosate’s Information and communication Department.
The visit of His Holiness to Rwanda will follow a visit to Nairobi, Kenya.
The visitation program to Nairobi will include a public lecture on “The
challenges facing the ecumenical movement and Africa”, meeting with church
leaders, visit the headquarters of all Africa Council of Churches, visit
with the president, and address at the ecumenical worship.
##
The Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia is one of the two Catholicosates of
the Armenian Orthodox Church. For detailed information about the Ecumenical
activities of the Cilician Catholicosate, you may refer to the web page of
the Catholicosate, The Cilician Catholicosate, the
administrative center of the church is located in Antelias, Lebanon.

Constructing Kurdistan
Why shouldn’t Iraq become a bi-national federation?
Dr. Brendan O’Leary, the Lauder Professor of Political Science and
director of Penn’s Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical
Conflict, is working until the summer as a constitutional advisor to
the Kurdistan Regional Government. His office is in the Kurdistan
National Assembly at Hewlr, as it is known in Kurdish, or Erbil, as it
is called by Arabs and Turks. Together with Khaled Salih and John
McGarry he is editing The Future of Kurdistan for the University of
Pennsylvania Press.
In the first of three letters, O’Leary describes his impressions ofthe
Coalition Provisional Authority’s conduct. His next letter will focus
on Kirkuk; the last will focus on the nature of Kurdistan.
By Brendan O’Leary
One of the purposes of Penn’s Solomon Asch Center is to assist in the
reduction of national and ethnic conflict, which is why I accepted the
invitation to act as a constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan
Regional Government and the Kurdistan National Assembly. My brief is
to advise on federation, power-sharing, electoral systems, the
protection of minorities,and the planned transitional law.
The Kurdistan entity currently comprises four million people, mostly
Kurds, but also small numbers of Turkomen, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and
Arabs. It was established in strange circumstances after the 1991 Gulf
War. The United States and the United Kingdom had just failed to
support the Kurds’ uprising against Saddam Hussein-though they had
encouraged it. Saddam’s bloody revenge prompted a mass Kurdish exodus
from Iraq that was only halted when international public opinion
forced the U.S. and the U.K. to create a `safe haven’ and a `no fly
zone’ in what was misleadingly called `northern Iraq.=80=9D The safe
haven eventually led to an autonomous Kurdish government, shielded
from Saddam, but without formal international recognition.
The territory of Kurdistan in Iraq is less than the full region where
Kurds are-or have been-demographically dominant, and less than the
unit that Saddam Hussein was willing to concede during autonomy
negotiations with Kurdish leaders between 1970 and 1974.
`Actually existing Kurdistan’ is also much smaller than =80=9CGreater
Kurdistan.’ The latter is the dream of the wider Kurdish nation. It
describes the entirety of `the land of the Kurds’ under the Ottoman
Empire that was partitioned after World War I. It was entirely
digested by four consumers: Turkey, Iran, and the new inventions of
Syria and Iraq (then respectively under the control of the French and
British empires). European decolonization of the Middle East after
World War II left the Kurds as the largest nation in the Middle East
without a state of their own. Since then Kurds have been subjected to
coercive assimilation and expulsion by the four governments that have
attempted to digest them, and to genocidal assaults by both Turkish
and Iraqi governments; and both British and American governments have
betrayed commitments they gave to successive Kurdish parties,
especially the Kurds of Iraq.
Erbil, the place from which I write, was a sea of tranquility by
comparison with the rest of the former Iraq-until February 1 of this
year, when the headquarters of the two main parties, the Kurdistan
Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, were destroyed
by suicide bombers, leaving over 100 people dead. Among those killed
was Sami Abudulrahman, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Regional
Government and the Secretary of the KDP, a man with whom I worked, and
whom I deeply admired. The impact of these bombings on the local
population has been similar to the impact of September 11 in the
U.S. Our negotiating team is still recuperating from our deep losses.
`Well sir, I wouldn’t start from here,’ is the response attributed to
the proverbial Irishman interrogated on the right road to take. True
to my national origins, that’s the first advice I would give American
and British officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of
Iraq, and their overseers in Washington and London.
The CPA is bunkered inside Saddam’s major palace, more insulated from
the surrounding societies than the ousted dictator was. It rapidly
dissipated the goodwill the Coalition enjoyed in liberating Iraq’s
Arabs, Kurds, Chaldo-Assyrians, Turkomen, Muslims, Christians,
Yazidis, and Jews from Saddam and his party, the Ba’athists.
The CPA’s officials mostly can’t speak Arabic, but their decrees are
translated into Arabic. They do not even attempt to have their
regulations translated into Kurdish, though it is the mother-tongue of
between a fifth and a third of the former Iraq’s population. Soldiers,
KRG officials, and NGO personnel tell me that the CPA’s officials
spend more time signing and being lobbied for contracts than in
evaluating their merits. The American Army has a counter-insurgency
program in Arab regions, especially Sunni Arab dominatedregions; the
best that can be said of it is that it is producing more results than
the search for weapons of mass destruction. Judging by their published
or leaked outputs, the CPA has spent little time seriously reflecting
on constitutional reconstruction or design.
British officials of the CPA play to their national stereotypes:
scoffing at Americans’ alleged naÃ’veté behind their backs,
but otherwise displaying full deference towards the world’s
hegemon. They think they have superior wisdom; it’ s true that they
are more accustomed to govern other peoples. The other members of the
`coalition of the willing’ play symbolic rather than substantive
roles: Denmark, for example, has 200 troops in Iraq, rehabilitating
buildings in Basra. The `coalition’ moniker adds a veneer of
internationality to what is in fact government by `the special
relationship’ that the British always want, to the mild embarrassment
of the Americans. Yet there is nothing special about the caliber of
their joint governance. The British are usually a week behind their
American colleagues, holding loyal to a policy line that has often
just been re-appraised, unknown to them, in Washington.
The CPA is mocked even by its own officials as Can’t Provide
Anything. It veers between the options preferred by different factions
in the Republican administration in Washington: those who want a
sustainable democratic and liberal reconstruction of the former Iraq,
and diverse others, mainly in the State department and the CIA, who
are bent on no more than achieving presentable` stability,’ securing
America’s perceived material interests, placating Turkey, a quick
exit, and handing any outstanding embarrassments to that convenient
scapegoat known as the United Nations.
The one achievement of American crisis management that is apparent to
me is that American TV and Web-pages regularly count only the daily
American military war dead-and not the daily toll of local civilians
killed by all agents to the conflict.
The CPA has created a Governing Council which does not govern, and
does not act as a council. Its business is conducted in Arabic. Its
internal procedures are chaotic and opaque, and its resolutions are
frequently vetoed by =80=9CThe Administrator,’ as L. Paul Bremer III
is officially styled. He is said often to remind the Council before it
begins `deliberations,’ through a translator, that he has this veto
power. He is said to be tough, but insensitive. Visiting Kurdistan, he
asked, `Who is that?’ on seeing the ubiquitous portrait of Mustafa
Barzani. This would be analogous to a foreign diplomat visiting
America and asking `Who is that?’ on seeing a portrait of George
Washington. As I write, he has not yet vetoed an outrageous resolution
(passed at the end of December in the absence of representatives from
Kurdistan) repealing secular marital laws that benefit women in favor
of chauvinist propositions from the Shari’a, presumably because he
does not want to hand an issue to Islamists.
There are two merits to the Governing Council. One is that it contains
the embryo of an authentic collective presidency, an institutional
arrangement that might serve a future federation quite well. But given
its overly large composition (25 members plus 25 substitutes), and its
poorly defined relationships to the CPA and 25 `ministries’ in
Baghdad, it does not resemble a functioning executive. The second
merit is the attempt to make it representative=80’in the absence of
the possibility of well-administered elections-of the peoples of the
former Iraq. Shi’a Arabs (13 councilors) and Sunni Arabs (five)
andKurds (five) are on the council in rough approximations to their
estimated demographic shares, and smaller minorities (two) are also
present. But only three womenwere appointed by The Administrator, and
one of them has been assassinated=80’and not replaced.
There was little evidence that the Shi’a or Sunni councilors were
politically representative when they were appointed, though the
perceived power of some them has since grown. The most powerful Shi’a,
Iranian-born Ayatollah Sistani, sits at home issuing fatwas-to which
Governing Council members and Americans feel obliged to respond. The
leaders of the two largest Kurdish parties, Massoud Barzani and Jallal
Tallabani, by contrast, represent organizations that have won the
lion’s share of past votes in Kurdistan. The exiled politicians, Arab
refugees from Saddam’s rule, initially brought in to guide the CPA are
seen, however unfairly, as collaborators.
The CPA’s staff, in the absence of any deep knowledge of the societies
they are charged to govern, and lacking any well-grounded advice from
representative politicians among the Arabs, operate as if they are in
America-on the presumption that a future Iraq should want to be like
the America they think they know. They say that `All should be
Iraqis,’ just as =80=9CWe are all Americans.’ They insist that Iraq
is, or at least should be, a nation, when it is just the remnants of a
state. They make the standard error of students starting Political
Science 001, confusing state and nation (a state is a sovereign
independent territory; a nation is a community with a shared political
identity). Iraq has never been a nation. The Ba’athist regime tried to
make Iraq one nation, an Arab nation. Arabization included expelling
Kurds from Kirkuk, moving Arab settlers from the south to the north,
and genocidal poison gassing. Kurds, a different nation by history,
language and dialects, customs and mores, resisted. Iraq is mainly
bi-national, and no future constitution that fails to respect this
reality will be feasible.
CPA officials think that Iraq should have a federation like
America=80=99s, ` non-ethnic’ and symmetrical-that is with each region
being identical in powers. They forget that in the development of
America’s so-called non-ethnic federation, political care was taken to
ensure that each new state had a white, English-speaking
majority. Trying an analogous model in the former Iraq is a recipe for
armed conflict with Kurdistan. Nevertheless, Mr. Bremer proposed a
model of an 18 `governorate’ federation, based on the provinces of
Saddam Hussein, which would effectively have abolished Kurdistan’s
integrity. In return, he received `a flea in his ear,’ as we Irish put
it, from the Kurd leaders.
The largest rump of the former Iraq, demographically and
territorially, was Arab Iraq. It was the site from which the worst
organized racial and religious bigotry, and grossest abuse of human
rights, were organized by the Ba=80=99athists. By contrast,
Kurdistan, a smaller location, was the site of the most promising
experiments in democratic governance and decent treatment of ethnic,
religious, and linguistic minorities in the 1990s, though it was not
without its own internal conflicts.
Given these realities, and the fact that Kurdistan’s soldiers fought
alongside the Coalition’s forces, one would think that a top priority
of CPA officials would be to protect a better-run region from an
overly strong central government. But not so far. The Administrator,
judging by his November-January proposals, thinks that Iraq’s
federation should be even more centralized than America ‘s. Of course,
his and the CPA’s centralist dispositions donot just flow from
misapplication of lessons from American history. Three other
imperatives matter.
One stems from the management of the black gold: oil. Despite the
well-validated criticism of centralized rentier-oil regimes as recipes
for despotism, corruption, or both, the CPA believes that a
well-managed federal government with monopoly jurisdiction over oil
production and its revenues is the best administrative model
available. A conservative economist willing to confirmthe validity of
this belief should be genetically engineered.
The ugly truth is that the attempted promotion of a centralized
`federation,’ including the centralized control of oil and natural
resources, is motivated by a second imperative: an ill-considered
effort to appease both indigenous Arab Iraqi and wider Arab public
opinion. That policy, so the thinking goes, will coerce Kurdistan’s
re-integration into Iraq-instead ofletting it extend its jurisdiction,
and therefore its tax-base, to Kirkuk (on which more in my next
letter).
This appeasement policy creates tension within Washington. Those who
want the full-scale reconstruction of Iraq as a liberal democracy know
that building on Kurdistan as it is, or as it might fairly be
expanded, makes the most sense; whereas those who prioritize breaking
the Ba’athist resistance and the Al-Qaeda-related pan-Arab networks,
or who are anxious for a quick exit, want to minimize the difficulties
with Arab public opinion. Their focus is often on America’s electoral
clock.
Kurdish analysts of contradictions note that America does not in
general appease Arab opinion in and over Palestine, but rather sides
with Israel, an ethnic and religiously defined state, as its
democratic ally. Yet, as the occupying power in Iraq, they think
America is inclined to sell-out its democratic allies in
Kurdistan. And they find it remarkable that America accuses them of
trying to create an ethnic entity and seeks to calm those inclined to
support Ba’ athists, Shi’a fundamentalists, and the terrorists who
organized September 11.
The last imperative that inclines the CPA towards re-centralizing Iraq
is its officials’ deference towards Turkey, the neighboring state that
still practices coercive assimilation, and still criminalizes requests
for education in Kurdish. Turkey has acknowledged neither the
historical genocide of the Armenians, nor its own genocidal actions
against `its’ Kurds-until recently officially known as `mountain
Turks.’ Turkey is attempting to build a homogenized nation-state
around a Turkish ethos and ethnos. Its officials tell you that
terrorism by the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party of Turkey) is `the
real problem,’ and that a federal Iraq will expand the ambition and
range of Kurdish terrorists. The PKK is indeed a problem, though its
existence and conduct are a predictable reaction to the state it has
raged against. But the PKK is not in any manner supported by the
Kurdistan Regional Government, nor by the two major parties in what
Turkey calls `northern Iraq’-what we here call Kurdistan.
Turkey’s external relations with its neighbors on ethnic matters are
perhaps the exemplary case of national egoism in our world. Its
politicians vary between demanding the recognition of its puppet
protectorate, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or insisting
that any unified Cypriot federation protects its co-ethnics in their
unit, with their own clear majority. But this ethnic stance on Cyprus
does not stop Turkey from having the gall to protest against Kurds in
the former Iraq allegedly constructing an `ethnic unit=80=9D in a
future federation. The CPA defers to Turkish rhetoric, saying, in
English or through Arabic translators, that it does not want an ethnic
federation. Kurds replyby saying that they do not want an ethnic
federation but one that recognizes nationality.
It is disappointing that the culturally blinkered predispositions of
the CPA are reinforced by recent erroneous `wisdom’ in American
political science, one that counsels against `ethnic federations’
(which is how some denigrate Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and
India). It does not follow, of course, that because some bi- or
multi-national federations have failed that all must doso- just as
mono-national federations like that of the U.S.A. are not guaranteed
export successes (see, for example, the history of much of Latin
America).
Successful multi-national or bi-national federations are the products
of voluntary pacts, created by negotiation, and combine both effective
self-government for nations in their territories and power-sharing for
all within the federal government. What is there to be afraid of in
such a vision?
At Penn I tease students by confronting them with the suggestion that
the state they know least about is Canada, and by claiming that if the
political-science wisdom now prevalent in America was right, then
Canada should not exist. As my friend Professor John McGarry of the
Queens University Ontario observes, the Canadian federation is a
bi-national and bi-lingual federation; it has a distinctive society in
Quebec, both in its legal system and in its ethos, but it divides up
English Canada symmetrically; it permits asymmetry in the powers and
policy decisions of its provinces; it leaves the provinces in charge
of natural resources but has formulae for revenue-sharing; since its
foundation it has had no civil war; it has survived as long as the
U.S.A. has survived since its civil war.
In short, the CPA’s Americans shouldn’t start from an American
template, and its British officials, heirs to the inventors of Iraq,
would benefit from humility. They might reflect more vigorously on
democracies that are not part of the coalition-for example, Belgium,
Switzerland, and Canada. India too, from which the British once sought
to govern Iraq, might inform intelligent thinking on the management of
a postcolonial multi-ethnic state. The Administrator has sought to
preclude such discussion of alternative models of federation before
the creation of a transitional law-though he acknowledges that sucha
law will bias the eventual institutional outcomes.
By the time I write my next letter I hope he and his team will have
stopped trying to tell others where to go. It is they who are here on
sufferance, alienating their friends and encouraging their
enemies. They say they want to go, and to return sovereignty to
`Iraqis’ by the summer. The hotel near where I am writing is the
`northern’ post of the CPA. It is completelybooked by its staff for
the next three years. Was that an error in the contract?
Look for Brendan O’Leary’s future letters from Iraq in the`Gazetteer’
section in May/June and July/August.
© 2004 The Pennsylvania Gazette
Last modified 02/27/04