‘I AM NOT RUNNING AWAY’ : BENON SEVAN
By Claudia Rosett
Wall Street Journal , NY
Opinion Journal, NJ
April 1 2006
Meet Benon Sevan, the man at the center of the Oil for Food scandal.
NICOSIA, Cyprus–“Medium or sweet?” asks Benon Sevan. He is inquiring
how much sugar I would like in the Turkish coffee he’s boiling up for
us on his kitchen stove, and I am torn between thanking him for his
hospitality and wondering if he might poison the refreshments. For
the past three years, we have had a somewhat fraught connection, via
a shared interest in the biggest corruption scandal ever to hit the
United Nations–he as a star suspect, and I in writing about it. So
when, together with a traveling companion, I paid a surprise visit
on a recent Sunday afternoon to Mr. Sevan’s current home–here in
the capital of his native Cyprus–I really had little hope that he
would do anything but slam the door on me.
This city of old sandstone walls, street cafes and orange trees is
where the former head of the U.N. Oil for Food program has been living
quietly since he slipped out of New York last year, shortly before
he was accused by Paul Volcker’s U.N.-authorized investigation of
having “corruptly benefited” from the graft-ridden U.N. aid effort
for Iraq. Since then, Mr. Sevan’s name has been in the news, but the
man himself has been all but invisible. He has refused to talk to
the press, and he turned away a group of visiting U.S. congressional
investigators who knocked on his door last October. The U.N., while
paying Mr. Sevan his full pension, has deflected almost all questions
about him. He has not been brought before any court of law. As a
citizen of Cyprus, he is safe on the island from U.S. extradition,
and there is no sign the Cypriot authorities are planning to bring
charges against him.
Yet the questions abound. It was with trepidation that I approached the
nine-story white building where Mr. Sevan now lives, in a penthouse
apartment previously inhabited by his late aunt, a retired civil
servant. Two years ago, as the U.N.’s Oil for Food investigation was
about to begin, she was hurt in a fall into the building’s elevator
shaft, and some weeks afterward she died of her injuries. It later
turned out that Mr. Sevan had declared as gifts from this same
aunt–to whom he was quite close–some $147,000 in bundles of cash
that Mr. Volcker in a report last year alleged were actually bribes
skimmed out of Oil for Food deals. No foul play has been charged in
her death, but it did seem worth taking a close look at the building’s
sole elevator. It appears to have been recently replaced. The new
one, its steel doors gleaming, delivered us smoothly to the small
stone-floored landing in front of Mr. Sevan’s door.
I knocked. The tall, bespectacled 69-year-old answered, wearing a
gray-and-blue T-shirt, warm-up pants, slippers and a thin gold watch.
He recognized me instantly, and protested: “I don’t want to talk
to you. I have nothing to say.” We stared at each other, and he
volunteered: “I am not ashamed to look in the mirror when I shave
myself.” Then: “I am closing the door now.”
But he didn’t. What ensued instead was a quick bargaining session
across the threshold. Recalling a statement released by Mr. Sevan’s
lawyer last August, that he was used by the U.N. probe as a “scapegoat”
to “deflect attention from other, more politically powerful targets,”
I asked if he might like to share his own version of the events and
characters involved in Oil for Food. He replied: “I will write my
story one day.” I offered to buy him lunch, if he’d like to come
out and start telling it now. He declined, saying almost wistfully,
“I used to be the one who bought the lunches.” Then, in friendlier
tone, he added, “I’m sorry I cannot show you Cypriot hospitality
and invite you in for coffee.” After some more dickering, I finally
offered the compromise that I would not ask him to answer questions
on the record about Oil for Food. With that, he ushered us into his
living room for what turned into a 2 1/2-hour chat.
It is a strange limbo in which Mr. Sevan now lives, apparently alone
and with a lot of time on his hands. Just three years ago, he was
running a multibillion-dollar U.N. operation in Iraq, and together
with his wife, Micheline Sevan (who also worked at the U.N.), was
renting a midtown Manhattan apartment for $4,370 per month, owned a
house in the Hamptons, and was jetting around the world on U.N.
business. Today, if Mr. Sevan wishes to remain out of reach of various
criminal investigations spawned by Oil for Food, he is basically
confined to self-imposed exile on Cyprus.
Mr. Sevan denies this, saying, “I am not running away. I always
planned to come back here.” But it’s hard to believe this is the
manner of return he had in mind. His apartment is comfortable but not
plush. There are several rooms and two balconies, but the interior
is an odd mix of slightly shabby furniture inherited from his aunt
and exotic souvenirs of his 40-year U.N. career. In the hallway,
jumbled on a shelf just beside the door, is a heap of Muslim skullcaps
collected during his 1988-92 stint in Afghanistan. His living room
sports two ornate Oriental carpets, but on the day we dropped by Mr.
Sevan had set up next to them a small square laundry rack, on which
he was drying a dozen pairs or so of dark socks, pegged with blue, red
and yellow plastic clothespins. Saying, “I am sorry about the mess,” he
quickly moved the rack outside onto a balcony that looks toward Mount
Olympus, though that afternoon the view was shrouded by storm clouds.
Among the mementoes laid out on a living room sideboard is a long
wooden statuette that Mr. Sevan says he picked up while working more
than 30 years ago for the U.N. in Irian Jaya, Indonesia. He explains
that he has not bothered to display it upright, on the wall, because
he is waiting to move into another apartment in Nicosia, now being
renovated–this one also a penthouse, but better appointed, with a
“wraparound balcony.” The current apartment, which he says he bought
for his aunt–“very cheap,” back in 1967–he plans to keep as well.
He means to use it as “not exactly an office, but somewhere to work.”
He wants eventually to write two books, “one on Afghanistan and one
on Iraq.”
I ask if he is working anywhere at the moment. “No,” he says. But in
keeping with old habits, he gets up early in the morning–“I study.”
He says he needs only about four hours of sleep a night, and “10
minutes meditation after lunch,” which he says served him well while
working at the U.N. office in New York. This rouses the specter of
Oil for Food, and he adds, in one of many protestations of innocence
throughout our conversation, “I sleep at night in peace,” and, more
ominously, “I hope others can sleep at night.”
On the coffee table is a stack of books, the top one titled “Teach
Yourself Modern Greek,” though Mr. Sevan–an ethnic Armenian who
speaks fluent Turkish and English–says he hasn’t been doing much
with this particular volume: “Maybe the cleaning lady put it there.”
Under a window is a flat-screen TV. Mr. Sevan says he doesn’t care
much for its entertainment offerings: “I only watch the news.” When
he gets up to make coffee, I offer a packet of chocolate Easter eggs
I happen to have in my purse. He declines, slapping himself across the
chest and saying “I have gained seven pounds since I came back”–though
for a man pushing 70, he looks fit enough.
In keeping with our devil’s deal, I am not asking about the U.N. But
it is neither out of mind, nor even out of sight. Mr. Sevan’s kitchen
window, above the sink, looks out on the so-called Green Line,
patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers, which runs right through Nicosia,
dividing Cyprus into the Turkish north and Greek Cypriot south–now
the Republic of Cyprus. “It’s a tragedy,” says Mr. Sevan, referring
to the division of the island. I ask if it’s appropriate in this
southern part of Cyprus to use the term “Turkish coffee.” He quips,
“In Greece they call it Greek, in the north they call it Turkish. I
sometimes call it Byzantine.”
Turning to current politics, he asks, “So what’s happening with
America and Turkey? Is America withdrawing its support from Turkey?”
I say I’m not up on the latest, and Mr. Sevan chides me for caring
only about Oil for Food.
The first cup of coffee–small and strong–is quickly gone. Mr. Sevan
offers a second round, and this time pulls out a pack of cigarettes,
noting that once he starts, he tends to smoke them all. Lighting
up, he begins to reminisce about his years working for the U.N. in
Afghanistan, during and just after the 1989 Soviet troop withdrawal.
“Kabul was like a big open target,” he says, recalling the rockets
that would hit the city. He observes that even the dogs learned to
interpret the sounds of an attack: “Incoming, the dogs would howl;
outgoing, they would bark.” He remembers, in particular, landing
at the Kabul airport during that era, in front of a plane that was
shot down on approach, and getting out of his own plane just before
it was hit on the airfield, leaving it looking–he searches for the
simile–“like a honeycomb.”
That memory, and the coffee, reminds him of the terrorist
truck-bombing, in August 2003, of the U.N. offices in Iraq,
post-Saddam, at Baghdad’s Canal Hotel, in which U.N. special envoy
Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed. Mr. Sevan, then wrapping up Oil for
Food, was visiting from his U.N. headquarters and was in the Baghdad
building when it was hit. He says he escaped alive only because he’d
left his desk to see a deputy who was late for a meeting and had the
appeal of keeping an espresso machine in his office: “That’s what
saved my life.”
Mr. Sevan goes into a back room to retrieve some photos of the bomb
damage, and when he returns he is also carrying a cigar. “I need it
for this,” he says, showing one by one some dog-eared paper-printout
photos of the collapsed hotel wall and the interior of his office
there, littered and pocked with debris from the blast. Mr. Sevan says
he decided at that point he’d had enough. He returned immediately
to New York, although Mr. Annan’s former chief of staff, Iqbal Riza,
“called and asked me to stay longer.”
He looks into his empty coffee cup, and we chat about fate, and the
custom of fortune-telling from the shape of coffee grounds. He says
he is resigned to what happens, “I am not born again, but I’ve always
believed in God.”
We get up to go, and Mr. Sevan walks us not only to the door, but
just outside it, to the elevator. We are still saying our goodbyes
as the elevator doors start to snap shut. With his help, we pry them
open long enough for Mr. Sevan to say, “I hope you enjoy your stay
in Cyprus.” And we descend to the small vestibule where, on one of
the battered old wooden mailboxes, the former U.N.
undersecretary-general, alleged bribe-taker, self-described scapegoat
and retired pensioner at the heart of the biggest corruption scandal
in U.N. history has taped his name, perhaps unsure himself whether
it is meant as a gesture of impunity or invitation: “Benon Sevan.”
Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the
Defense of Democracies.
ial/feature.html?id=110008172

ISLAM’S IMPERIAL DREAMS
by Efraim Karsh
Commentary, NY
April 1 2006
When satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper
sparked a worldwide wave of Muslim violence early this year, observers
naturally focused on the wanton destruction of Western embassies,
businesses, and other institutions. Less attention was paid to the
words that often accompanied the riots-words with ominous historical
echoes. “Hurry up and apologize to our nation, because if you do not,
you will regret it,” declared Khaled Mash’al, the leader of Hamas,
fresh from the Islamist group’s sweeping victory in the Palestinian
elections:
This is because our nation is progressing and is victorious. . . . By
Allah, you will be defeated. . . . Tomorrow, our nation will sit on
the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination but a
fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing. Apologize today,
before remorse will do you no good.
Among Islamic radicals, such gloating about the prowess and imminent
triumph of their “nation” is as commonplace as recitals of the long and
bitter catalog of grievances related to the loss of historical Muslim
dominion. Osama bin Laden has repeatedly alluded to the collapse of
Ottoman power at the end of World War I and, with it, the abolition of
the Ottoman caliphate. “What America is tasting now,” he declared in
the immediate wake of 9/11, “is only a copy of what we have tasted. Our
Islamic nation has been tasting the same for more than 80 years, of
humiliation and disgrace, its sons killed and their blood spilled,
its sanctities desecrated.” Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s top deputy,
has pointed still farther into the past, lamenting “the tragedy of
al-Andalus”-that is, the end of Islamic rule in Spain in 1492.
These historical claims are in turn frequently dismissed by
Westerners as delusional, a species of mere self-aggrandizement or
propaganda. But the Islamists are perfectly serious, and know what
they are doing. Their rhetoric has a millennial warrant, both in
doctrine and in fact, and taps into a deep undercurrent that has
characterized the political culture of Islam from the beginning.
Though tempered and qualified in different places and at different
times, the Islamic longing for unfettered suzerainty has never
disappeared, and has resurfaced in our own day with a vengeance. It
goes by the name of empire.
“I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but
Allah.'” With these farewell words, the prophet Muhammad summed up
the international vision of the faith he brought to the world. As
a universal religion, Islam envisages a global political order in
which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or
subject communities. In order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on
all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising “struggle
in the path of Allah,” or jihad. As the 14th-century historian and
philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, “In the Muslim community,
the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the
Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam
either by persuasion or by force.”
As a historical matter, the birth of Islam was inextricably linked
with empire. Unlike Christianity and the Christian kingdoms that once
existed under or alongside it, Islam has never distinguished between
temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of
Muhammad. Having fled from his hometown of Mecca to Medina in 622
c.e. to become a political and military leader rather than a private
preacher, Muhammad spent the last ten years of his life fighting
to unify Arabia under his rule. Indeed, he devised the concept of
jihad shortly after his migration to Medina as a means of enticing
his local followers to raid Meccan caravans. Had it not been for his
sudden death, he probably would have expanded his reign well beyond
the peninsula.
The Qur’anic revelations during Muhammad’s Medina years abound
with verses extolling the virtues of jihad, as do the countless
sayings and traditions (hadith) attributed to the prophet. Those
who participate in this holy pursuit are to be generously rewarded,
both in this life and in the afterworld, where they will reside in
shaded and ever-green gardens, indulged by pure women. Accordingly,
those killed while waging jihad should not be mourned: “Allah has
bought from the believers their soul and their possessions against
the gift of Paradise; they fight in the path of Allah; they kill and
are killed. . . . So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him;
that is the mighty triumph.”
But the doctrine’s appeal was not just otherworldly. By forbidding
fighting and raiding within the community of believers (the umma),
Muhammad had deprived the Arabian tribes of a traditional source
of livelihood. For a time, the prophet could rely on booty from
non-Muslims as a substitute for the lost war spoils, which is why he
never went out of his way to convert all of the tribes seeking a place
in his Pax Islamica. Yet given his belief in the supremacy of Islam
and his relentless commitment to its widest possible dissemination,
he could hardly deny conversion to those wishing to undertake it. Once
the whole of Arabia had become Muslim, a new source of wealth and
an alternative outlet would have to be found for the aggressive
energies of the Arabian tribes, and it was, in the Fertile Crescent
and the Levant.
Within twelve years of Muhammad’s death, a Middle Eastern empire,
stretching from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to northern Syria, had
come into being under the banner of Islam. By the early 8th century,
the Muslims had hugely extended their grip to Central Asia and much
of the Indian subcontinent, had laid siege to the Byzantine capital
of Constantinople, and had overrun North Africa and Spain. Had they
not been contained in 732 at the famous battle of Poitiers in west
central France, they might well have swept deep into northern Europe.
Though sectarianism and civil war divided the Muslim world in the
generations after Muhammad, the basic dynamic of Islam remained
expansionist. The short-lived Umayyad dynasty (661-750) gave way to
the ostensibly more pious Abbasid caliphs, whose readiness to accept
non-Arabs solidified Islam’s hold on its far-flung possessions. From
their imperial capital of Baghdad, the Abbasids ruled, with waning
authority, until the Mongol invasion of 1258. The most powerful of
their successors would emerge in Anatolia, among the Ottoman Turks who
invaded Europe in the mid-14th century and would conquer Constantinople
in 1453, destroying the Byzantine empire and laying claim to virtually
all of the Balkan peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean.
Like their Arab predecessors, the Ottomans were energetic
empire-builders in the name of jihad. By the early 16th century, they
had conquered Syria and Egypt from the Mamluks, the formidable slave
soldiers who had contained the Mongols and destroyed the Crusader
kingdoms. Under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, they soon turned
northward. By the middle of the 17th century they seemed poised to
overrun Christian Europe, only to be turned back in fierce fighting
at the gates of Vienna in 1683-on September 11, of all dates. Though
already on the defensive by the early 18th century, the Ottoman
empire-the proverbial “sick man of Europe”-would endure another 200
years. Its demise at the hands of the victorious European powers of
World War I, to say nothing of the work of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,
the father of modern Turkish nationalism, finally brought an end
both to the Ottoman caliphate itself and to Islam’s centuries-long
imperial reach.
To Islamic historians, the chronicles of Muslim empire represent a
model of shining religious zeal and selfless exertion in the cause of
Allah. Many Western historians, for their part, have been inclined to
marvel at the perceived sophistication and tolerance of Islamic rule,
praising the caliphs’ cultivation of the arts and sciences and their
apparent willingness to accommodate ethnic and religious minorities.
There is some truth in both views, but neither captures the deeper and
often more callous impulses at work in the expanding umma set in motion
by Muhammad. For successive generations of Islamic rulers, imperial
dominion was dictated not by universalistic religious principles but
by their prophet’s vision of conquest and his summons to fight and
subjugate unbelievers.
That the worldly aims of Islam might conflict with its moral and
spiritual demands was evident from the start of the caliphate. Though
the Umayyad monarchs portrayed their constant wars of expansion as
“jihad in the path of Allah,” this was largely a facade, concealing
an increasingly secular and absolutist rule. Lax in their attitude
toward Islamic practices and mores, they were said to have set
aside special days for drinking alcohol-specifically forbidden by
the prophet-and showed little inhibition about appearing nude before
their boon companions and female singers.
The coup staged by the Abbasids in 747-49 was intended to restore
Islam’s true ways and undo the godless practices of their predecessors;
but they too, like the Umayyads, were first and foremost imperial
monarchs. For the Abbasids, Islam was a means to consolidating their
jurisdiction and enjoying the fruits of conquest.
They complied with the stipulations of the nascent religious law
(shari’a) only to the extent that it served their needs, and indulged
in the same vices-wine, singing girls, and sexual license-that had
ruined the reputation of the Umayyads.
Of particular importance to the Abbasids was material splendor. On
the occasion of his nephew’s coronation as the first Abbasid caliph,
Dawud ibn Ali had proclaimed, “We did not rebel in order to grow rich
in silver and in gold.” Yet it was precisely the ever-increasing
pomp of the royal court that would underpin Abbasid prestige. The
gem-studded dishes of the caliph’s table, the gilded curtains of the
palace, the golden tree and ruby-eyed golden elephant that adorned
the royal courtyard were a few of the opulent possessions that bore
witness to this extravagance.
The riches of the empire, moreover, were concentrated in the hands
of the few at the expense of the many. While the caliph might bestow
thousands of dirhams on a favorite poet for reciting a few lines,
ordinary laborers in Baghdad carried home a dirham or two a month. As
for the empire’s more distant subjects, the caliphs showed little
interest in their conversion to the faith, preferring instead to
colonize their lands and expropriate their wealth and labor. Not until
the third Islamic century did the bulk of these populations embrace the
religion of their imperial masters, and this was a process emanating
from below-an effort by non-Arabs to escape paying tribute and to
remove social barriers to their advancement. To make matters worse,
the metropolis plundered the resources of the provinces, a practice
inaugurated at the time of Muhammad and reaching its apogee under
the Abbasids. Combined with the government’s weakening control of the
periphery, this shameless exploitation triggered numerous rebellions
throughout the empire.
Tension between the center and the periphery was, indeed, to become
the hallmark of Islam’s imperial experience. Even in its early days,
under the Umayyads, the empire was hopelessly overextended, largely
because of inadequate means of communication and control. Under the
Abbasids, a growing number of provinces fell under the sway of local
dynasties. With no effective metropolis, the empire was reduced to an
agglomeration of entities united only by the overarching factors of
language and religion. Though the Ottomans temporarily reversed the
trend, their own imperial ambitions were likewise eventually thwarted
by internal fragmentation.
In the long history of Islamic empire, the wide gap between delusions
of grandeur and the centrifugal forces of localism would be bridged
time and again by force of arms, making violence a key element
of Islamic political culture. No sooner had Muhammad died than
his successor, Abu Bakr, had to suppress a widespread revolt among
the Arabian tribes. Twenty-three years later, the head of the umma,
the caliph Uthman ibn Affan, was murdered by disgruntled rebels; his
successor, Ali ibn Abi Talib, was confronted for most of his reign
with armed insurrections, most notably by the governor of Syria,
Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufian, who went on to establish the Umayyad dynasty
after Ali’s assassination. Mu’awiya’s successors managed to hang
on to power mainly by relying on physical force, and were consumed
for most of their reign with preventing or quelling revolts in the
diverse corners of their empire. The same was true for the Abbasids
during the long centuries of their sovereignty.
Western academics often hold up the Ottoman empire as an exception
to this earlier pattern. In fact the caliphate did deal relatively
gently with its vast non-Muslim subject populations-provided that they
acquiesced in their legal and institutional inferiority in the Islamic
order of things. When these groups dared to question their subordinate
status, however, let alone attempt to break free from the Ottoman yoke,
they were viciously put down. In the century or so between Napoleon’s
conquests in the Middle East and World War I, the Ottomans embarked on
an orgy of bloodletting in response to the nationalist aspirations of
their European subjects. The Greek war of independence of the 1820’s,
the Danubian uprisings of 1848 and the attendant Crimean war, the
Balkan explosion of the 1870’s, the Greco-Ottoman war of 1897-all
were painful reminders of the costs of resisting Islamic imperial rule.
Nor was such violence confined to Ottoman Europe. Turkey’s Afro-Asiatic
provinces, though far less infected with the nationalist virus,
were also scenes of mayhem and destruction. The Ottoman army or
its surrogates brought force to bear against Wahhabi uprisings in
Mesopotamia and the Levant in the early 19th century, against civil
strife in Lebanon in the 1840’s (culminating in the 1860 massacres
in Mount Lebanon and Damascus), and against a string of Kurdish
rebellions. In response to the national awakening of the Armenians
in the 1890’s, Constantinople killed tens of thousands-a taste of
the horrors that lay ahead for the Armenians during World War I.
The legacy of this imperial experience is not difficult to discern
in today’s Islamic world. Physical force has remained the main if
not the sole instrument of political discourse in the Middle East.
Throughout the region, absolute leaders still supersede political
institutions, and citizenship is largely synonymous with submission;
power is often concentrated in the hands of small, oppressive
minorities; religious, ethnic, and tribal conflicts abound; and the
overriding preoccupation of sovereigns is with their own survival.
At the domestic level, these circumstances have resulted in the world’s
most illiberal polities. Political dissent is dealt with by repression,
and ethnic and religious differences are settled by internecine strife
and murder. One need only mention, among many instances, Syria’s
massacre of 20,000 of its Muslim activists in the early 1980’s, or
the brutal treatment of Iraq’s Shiite and Kurdish communities until
the 2003 war, or the genocidal campaign now being conducted in Darfur
by the government of Sudan and its allied militias. As for foreign
policy in the Middle East, it too has been pursued by means of crude
force, ranging from terrorism and subversion to outright aggression,
with examples too numerous and familiar to cite.
Reinforcing these habits is the fact that, to this day, Islam has
retained its imperial ambitions. The last great Muslim empire may
have been destroyed and the caliphate left vacant, but the dream
of regional and world domination has remained very much alive. Even
the ostensibly secular doctrine of pan-Arabism has been effectively
Islamic in its ethos, worldview, and imperialist vision. In the words
of Nuri Said, longtime prime minister of Iraq and a prominent early
champion of this doctrine: “Although Arabs are naturally attached to
their native land, their nationalism is not confined by boundaries.
It is an aspiration to restore the great tolerant civilization of
the early caliphate.”
That this “great tolerant civilization” reached well beyond today’s
Middle East is not lost on those who hope for its restoration. Like
the leaders of al Qaeda, many Muslims and Arabs unabashedly pine for
the reconquest of Spain and consider their 1492 expulsion from the
country a grave historical injustice waiting to be undone. Indeed, as
immigration and higher rates of childbirth have greatly increased the
number of Muslims within Europe itself over the past several decades,
countries that were never ruled by the caliphate have become targets
of Muslim imperial ambition. Since the late 1980’s, Islamists have
looked upon the growing population of French Muslims as proof that
France, too, has become a part of the House of Islam. In Britain,
even the more moderate elements of the Muslim community are candid in
setting out their aims. As the late Zaki Badawi, a doyen of interfaith
dialogue in the UK, put it, “Islam is a universal religion. It aims
to bring its message to all corners of the earth.
It hopes that one day the whole of humanity will be one Muslim
community.”
Whether in its militant or its more benign version, this
world-conquering agenda continues to meet with condescension and
denial on the part of many educated Westerners. To intellectuals,
foreign-policy experts, and politicians alike, “empire” and
“imperialism” are categories that apply exclusively to the European
powers and, more recently, to the United States. In this view of
things, Muslims, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, are merely
objects-the long-suffering victims of the aggressive encroachments
of others. Lacking an internal, autonomous dynamic of its own,
their history is rather a function of their unhappy interaction with
the West, whose obligation it is to make amends. This perspective
dominated the widespread explanation of the 9/11 attacks as only a
response to America’s (allegedly) arrogant and self-serving foreign
policy, particularly with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
As we have seen, however, Islamic history has been anything but
reactive. From Muhammad to the Ottomans, the story of Islam has
been the story of the rise and fall of an often astonishing imperial
aggressiveness and, no less important, of never quiescent imperial
dreams. Even as these dreams have repeatedly frustrated any possibility
for the peaceful social and political development of the Arab-Muslim
world, they have given rise to no less repeated fantasies of revenge
and restoration and to murderous efforts to transform fantasy into
fact. If, today, America is reviled in the Muslim world, it is not
because of its specific policies but because, as the preeminent world
power, it blocks the final realization of this same age-old dream of
regaining, in Zawahiri’s words, the “lost glory” of the caliphate.
Nor is the vision confined to a tiny extremist fringe. This we saw in
the overwhelming support for the 9/11 attacks throughout the Arab and
Islamic worlds, in the admiring evocations of bin Laden’s murderous
acts during the crisis over the Danish cartoons, and in such recent
findings as the poll indicating significant reservoirs of sympathy
among Muslims in Britain for the “feelings and motives” of the suicide
bombers who attacked London last July. In the historical imagination
of many Muslims and Arabs, bin Laden represents nothing short of the
new incarnation of Saladin, defeater of the Crusaders and conqueror of
Jerusalem. In this sense, the House of Islam’s war for world mastery
is a traditional, indeed venerable, quest that is far from over.
To the contrary, now that this war has itself met with a so far
determined counterattack by the United States and others, and
with a Western intervention in the heart of the House of Islam,
it has escalated to a new stage of virulence. In many Middle
Eastern countries, Islamist movements, and movements appealing to
traditionalist Muslims, are now jockeying fiercely for positions of
power, both against the Americans and against secular parties. For the
Islamists, the stakes are very high indeed, for if the political elites
of the Middle East and elsewhere were ever to reconcile themselves
to the reality that there is no Arab or Islamic “nation,” but only
modern Muslim states with destinies and domestic responsibilities of
their own, the imperialist dream would die.
It is in recognition of this state of affairs that Zawahiri wrote
his now famous letter to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of al Qaeda
in Iraq, in July 2005. If, Zawahiri instructed his lieutenant, al
Qaeda’s strategy for Iraq and elsewhere were to succeed, it would have
to take into account the growing thirst among many Arabs for democracy
and a normal life, and strive not to alienate popular opinion through
such polarizing deeds as suicide attacks on fellow Muslims. Only by
harnessing popular support, Zawahiri concluded, would it be possible
to come to power by means of democracy itself, thereby to establish
jihadist rule in Iraq, and then to move onward to conquer still larger
and more distant realms and impose the writ of Islam far and wide.
Something of the same logic clearly underlies the carefully plotted
rise of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, the (temporarily thwarted)
attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to exploit the demand
for free elections there, and the accession of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
in Iran. Indeed, as reported by Mark MacKinnon in the Toronto Globe &
Mail, some analysts now see a new “axis of Islam” arising in the Middle
East, uniting Hizballah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, the Muslim Brotherhood,
elements of Iraq’s Shiites, and others in an anti-American, anti-Israel
alliance backed by Russia.
Whether or not any such structure exists or can be forged, the fact
is that the fuel of Islamic imperialism remains as volatile as ever,
and is very far from having burned itself out. To deny its force is the
height of folly, and to imagine that it can be appeased or deflected is
to play into its hands. Only when it is defeated, and when the faith
of Islam is no longer a tool of Islamic political ambition, will the
inhabitants of Muslim lands, and the rest of the world, be able to look
forward to a future less burdened by Saladins and their gory dreams.
Efraim Karsh is head of Mediterranean Studies at King’s College,
University of London, and the author of, among other works, Arafat’s
War, Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography, and Empires of the Sand:
The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East. His new book, Islamic
Imperialism: A History, on which this article is based, is about to
be published by Yale.

REPORT FOCUSED ON LANDMINES’ IMPACT ON ARMENIA TO BE PRESENTED ON APRIL 4
ARKA News Agency, Armenia
March 31 2006
YEREVAN, March 31. /ARKA/. Presentation of report focused on landmines’
impact on Armenia is to be held on April 4, 2006, in the UN Yerevan
Office, UNDP press service told ARKA News Agency. The aim of the
report is to concretize social and economic impact of mines and
still unexploded armament on the republic’s communities. The study
was conducted by the UNDP in 2005.
Armenian Defence Minister Serge Sargsyan, Regional Administration
Minister Hovik Abramyan and UNDP Head Consuelo Vidal will be present
at the presentation.
April 4 is declared the Day of Mine Threat Awareness and will be
marked for the first time this year.

LONDON TREASURES
By Rachel Belton
The Evening Standard (London)
March 31, 2006 Friday
Where: 70 Blythe Road, W14 Telephone: 020 7602 4843 Opening times:
Wed-Sat 7.30am-6.30pm. Closed Sun, Mon, Tues.
Background: Armenian Cypriot butcher Sid Kassabian, along with sister
Rosie and father Michael, started out in Caledonian Road 42 years ago.
Kassabian means “butcher” in Armenian.
Rent: Until 2000, the Kassabians were paying about Pounds 8,000 a
year rent.
That rose to nearer Pounds 10,000. In 2003 they almost went out of
business when Hammersmith and Fulham council threatened to put the
rent up to about Pounds 14,000. That was defeated after the Brook
Green Association organised a 500-name petition.
Why it’s special: An old-style family butcher, it has the custom of
high-profile chefs such as Ross Burden and Annie Bell, and foodwriter
Simon Hopkinson. Mr Kassabian knows all the locals – down to the
names of customers’ grandchildren. His sister will suggest recipes
and advise on cooking techniques for meat.
Bestsellers: Scotch ribs of beef, fresh chicken wings (great for
stock), and premium-quality sausages.
Owner says: “The business has been in the family for over 100 years.
Now we’re concerned the rise of the supermarket will kill off
traditional shops. Customers are lured by the convenience of everything
under one roof.
You won’t get the same quality, but a supermarket can cut prices
in a way a small shop with big overheads cannot. Family businesses
give the community personality. Each year we face a struggle to stay
in business.”

DETENTE FOR GENOCIDE CONTROVERSY
by Dorian Jones Istanbul
The Times Higher Education Supplement
March 31, 2006
Academics have agreed to a unique co-operation over the issue of
Turkey’s genocide against its Armenian population.
The proposal to bring together historians on both sides of the debate
was made at a three-day conference at Istanbul University.
Yusuf Halacoglu, president of the Turkish Historical Society and a
proponent of the view that no genocide occurred, initiated the plan.
“Let’s carry out a project together, dig up common graves if there
are some, to put an end to numerous demagogical arguments,” he said.
The offer was accepted by Ara Sarafian of the Gomidas Institute,
a centre for Armenian study.
Safak Ural, conference organiser, welcomed the initiative: “If we
fail to explain this problem to our own people, we cannot explain it
to others. In order to explain it, we should discuss it.”
Two years ago, a meeting planned between Armenian and Turkish academics
was cancelled, with each side blaming the other for its failure. Such
is the mutual hostility that opposing academics rarely meet.
Mesut Parlak, rector of Istanbul University, described the conference
as the “most comprehensive of all meetings to date”. Boghos Levon
Zekiyan, professor of Armenian Studies at Ca’ Foscari University
in Venice, said the greatest novelty was the fact the conference
had occurred.
“It was the first time a respectable state institution broke the
taboo of the Armenian genocide by giving all invited scholars who do
not share the official Turkish view an opportunity,” he said.
Dozens of invitations were sent to academics who hold the view that
genocide against Armenians occurred in what is now Turkey between 1915
and 1923, although fewer than a dozen attended and only four spoke.
Even so, their presence is seen as a significant change in Turkey,
where until recently to claim genocide had occurred could have led
to prosecution and imprisonment.
Fears that the conference would be marred by nationalist demonstrations
proved unfounded.

BOOK REVIEW: HARDSCRABBLE ROAD
Kirkus Reviews
April 1, 2006
After his road trip to New England (The Headmaster’s Wife, 2005),
Gregor Demarkian, the Armenian-American Poirot, finds his biggest
case waiting back home in Philadelphia.
Every time right-wing radio agitator Drew Harrigan opens his
mouth on the air, he gives five new strangers motives for killing
him. Now he’s sunk to a new low. Arrested by two Philly cops who’ve
found his car full of prescription drugs with nary a prescription,
he’s fingered homeless handyman Sherman Markey as his supplier and
shielded a big asset by deeding a local real-estate parcel to Holy
Innocents Benedictine monastery, where his sister, Mother Constanzia
of the Assumption of Mary, presides. When celebrity-loving Judge
Bruce Williamson sends Drew to rehab, dull-witted, alcoholic Markey
becomes the center of a media firestorm and takes Drew’s place as
the city’s most likely murder victim. It would make sense if Markey
were killed by Drew’s lawyers, who’d prefer to crucify him without
dealing with his sworn testimony; or by Markey’s own legal team at
the Justice Project, who’d find him easier to transform into a martyr
in his absence; or by UPenn professors Jig Tyler or Alison Standish,
for reasons of their own. But things develop along quite different
lines for Gregor, who’s pulled into a case that’s complex mainly
because the people involved are so complicated.
Haddam outdoes herself with a broad canvas that recalls John Gregory
Dunne’s Nothing Lost and the best of P.D. James.
Publication Date: 5/15/2006 0:00:00 Publisher: St. Martin’s Minotaur
Stage: Adult Star: 1 ISBN: 0-312-35373-1 price: $24.95 Author:
Haddam, Jane

BOOK REVIEW: THERE ARE WORSE THINGS I COULD DO
Kirkus Reviews
April 1, 2006
>From Broadway to sitcoms to HBO to off-Broadway in a few short decades.
Though she’s best known as a buxom horror-film action babe and as
Maude’s daughter on the long-running Norman Lear sitcom, Barbeau
delves into far more interesting subject matter here than the usual
warmed-over showbiz anecdotes. Half French-Canadian and half Armenian,
she grew up in California during the 1950s. She started acting in high
school, then moved to New York and entered the off-Broadway/waitress
grind. Barbeau seems lackadaisical about her career; more than once,
she dryly laments opportunities missed because she just wasn’t paying
attention.
So it’s even more surprising than usual that fairly early on she landed
a lucky break — originating the role of Tevye’s second daughter Hodel
in Fiddler on the Roof. That led to originating Rizzo in Grease, after
which she decamped for Hollywood to spend six years with Bea Arthur
on Maude. Barbeau chronicles romances along the way with ’70s icon
Burt Reynolds and the surprisingly decent-sounding John Carpenter,
who directed her in Escape from New York and The Fog.
Her career was hit-and-miss for a while but has perked up in recent
years, with roles on HBO’s Carnivale and in an upcoming off-Broadway
show about Judy Garland. Barbeau’s style can be off-putting, as she
jumps around in time and leavens her narrative with scraps from the
journals she’s kept since childhood. But the refreshing directness of
her approach keeps things moving even when the subject matter is less
than enthralling. She also has a nice way of introducing characters:
“I played a whore in a bordello who’s in love with a legless man.
Alex was the legless man.”
Far from a classic, but better than the standard actor bio.
Publication Date: 5/10/2006 0:00:00 Publisher: Carroll & Graf/Avalon
Stage: Adult ISBN: 0-7867-1637-1 Price: $25 Author: Barbeau, Adrienne

STATE DEPARTMENT ISSUES CONSULAR INFORMATION SHEET ON AZERBAIJAN
US Fed News
March 31, 2006 Friday 8:28 PM EST
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs issued the
following Consular Information Sheet:
COUNTRY DESCRIPTION:Azerbaijan is a constitutional republic with a
developing economy. Western-style amenities are found in the capital,
Baku, but they are generally not available outside that city. Read
the Department of State Background Notes on Azerbaijan for additional
information.
ENTRY/EXIT REQUIREMENTS: A passport and visa are required. Travelers
may obtain single-entry visas for USD 40 by mail or in person from
either the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington, D.C. or any other
Azerbaijani embassy offering consular services. Travelers may also
obtain single-entry, 30-day visas at the airport upon arrival. Visas
are not available at the land border with Georgia. Double-entry,
90-day visas (cost $80 U.S.) and one-year multiple-entry visas
(cost $250 U.S.) are only available through an Azerbaijani embassy
or through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A letter of invitation
from a contact in Azerbaijan is required, and travelers who expect
to travel in the region should request a one-year, multiple-entry visa.
American citizens of Armenian ancestry have had visa applications
denied by the Government of Azerbaijan on the grounds that their
safety cannot be guaranteed.
U.S. citizens who obtain a one-entry visa at the port of entry are
permitted to remain in Azerbaijan for up to one month, after which
an extension of stay must be requested. For persons in Azerbaijan,
visa applications, extensions or renewals are made at the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, Shikhali Kurbanov Str., 4, Baku; tel. (9-9412)
492 34 01. For additional information, please contact the Embassy of
Azerbaijan, 2741 34th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008 (tel.
202-337-3500); e-mail: [email protected]. Visit the Embassy of
Azerbaijan website at for the most current
visa information. See our Foreign Entry Requirements brochure for
more information on Azerbaijan and other countries.
See Entry and Exit Requirements for more information pertaining to
dual nationality and the prevention of international child abduction.
Please refer to our Customs Information to learn more about customs
regulations.
SAFETY AND SECURITY: As a result of conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh
area of Azerbaijan, insurgent forces occupy approximately 15 percent
of Azerbaijani territory (in the southwest along the borders with Iran
and Armenia). A cease-fire has been in effect in the Nagorno-Karabakh
region since 1994, although reports of armed clashes along the
cease-fire line and along the border with Armenia continue.
Anti-personnel mines are a danger in areas close to the front lines.
It is not possible to enter the self-proclaimed “Republic of
Nagorno-Karabakh,” which is not recognized by the United States, from
Azerbaijan. Travelers are cautioned to avoid travel to Nagorno-Karabakh
and the surrounding occupied areas. Because of the existing state
of hostilities, consular services are not available to Americans
in Nagorno-Karabakh.
American citizens of Armenian ancestry considering travel to Azerbaijan
should remain particularly vigilant when visiting the country, as the
Government of Azerbaijan has claimed that it is unable to guarantee
their safety.
A number of political rallies have occurred in Baku in recent months
as a result of the November 2005 Parliamentary elections. While the
majority of these protests were peaceful, some became confrontational
and escalated into violence. Americans are reminded that even protests
intended to be peaceful may turn violent and travelers are advised
to avoid all demonstrations.
For the latest security information, Americans traveling abroad
should regularly monitor the Department’s Internet web site where
the current, Travel Warnings and Public Announcements, including the
Worldwide Caution Public Announcement, can be found.
Up-to-date information on safety and security can also be obtained by
calling 1-888-407-4747 toll free in the U.S., or for callers outside
the U.S. and Canada, a regular toll-line at 1-202-501-4444. These
numbers are available from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time,
Monday through Friday (except U.S. federal holidays).
The Department of State urges American citizens to take responsibility
for their own personal security while traveling overseas. For general
information about appropriate measures travelers can take to protect
themselves in an overseas environment, see the Department of State’s
pamphlet A Safe Trip Abroad.
CRIME: Although the Republic of Azerbaijan has a low rate of violent
crime, incidents of street crime and assaults on foreigners are
common. Visitors should follow the same precautions they would in any
major city. Visitors should not walk alone at night, if possible. All
crime incidents should be reported to the local police and U.S.
Embassy. The Police Office of Crimes by and Against Foreigners has an
English-speaking officer available at all times who may be reached at
(994 12) 490-95-32 or, after hours, at 490-94-52.
INFORMATION FOR VICTIMS OF CRIME: The loss or theft abroad of a U.S.
passport should be reported immediately to the local police and the
nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate. If you are the victim of a crime
while overseas, in addition to reporting to local police, please
contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate for assistance. The
Embassy/Consulate staff can, for example, assist you to find
appropriate medical care, contact family members or friends and
explain how funds could be transferred. Although the investigation
and prosecution of the crime are solely the responsibility of local
authorities, consular officers can help you to understand the local
criminal justice process and to find an attorney if needed.
See our information on Victims of Crime:
cies/emergencies_1748.html.
MEDICAL FACILITIES AND HEALTH INFORMATION: A few Western-type medical
clinics, the quality of which is comparable to those in Western
countries, are operating in Baku. The quality of these clinics
is good. However, medical facilities outside the capital remain
inadequate, unsanitary, and unsafe. There is often a shortage of
basic medical supplies, including disposable needles and vaccines.
Avian Influenza: The WHO and Azerbaijani authorities have confirmed
human cases of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, commonly known as
“bird flu.” Travelers to Azerbaijan and other countries affected by
the virus are cautioned to avoid poultry farms, contact with animals
in live food markets, and any surfaces that appear to be contaminated
with feces from poultry or other animals. In addition, the CDC and
WHO recommend eating only fully cooked poultry and eggs. For the
most current information and links on avian influenza in Azerbaijan,
see the State Department’s Avian Influenza Fact Sheet or visit the
website of the U.S. Embassy in Baku.
Information on vaccinations and other health precautions, such as
safe food and water precautions and insect bite protection, may be
obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s hotline
for international travelers at 1-877-FYI-TRIP (1-877-394-8747) or via
the CDC’s Internet site at For information
about outbreaks of infectious diseases abroad consult the World Health
Organization’s (WHO) website at Further health
information for travelers is available at
MEDICAL INSURANCE: The Department of State strongly urges Americans
to consult with their medical insurance company prior to traveling
abroad to confirm whether their policy applies overseas and whether
it will cover emergency expenses such as a medical evacuation. Please
see our information on medical insurance overseas.
TRAFFIC SAFETY AND ROAD CONDITIONS: While in a foreign country, U.S.
citizens may encounter road conditions that differ significantly
from those in the United States. The information below concerning
Azerbaijan is provided for general reference only, and may not be
totally accurate in a particular location or circumstance.
Driving hazards such as open manholes, debris, sinkholes and potholes
are common. Drivers do not pay attention to traffic regulations,
signals, lanes, pedestrians or other drivers. Drivers often travel
at extremely high speed, and accidents are frequent and often serious.
Driving in Baku should be considered extremely hazardous. Outside the
city, even where roads are present, conditions are similar. Roads are
often in poor repair, unlit, and lack lane markings, traffic signs,
and warnings. Many rural roads are largely unpaved.
Public transportation throughout the country is overcrowded and
poorly maintained. The U.S. Embassy strongly discourages use of the
Baku Metro. Train travel in the Caucasus region is not secure.
Please refer to our Road Safety page for more information.
AVIATION SAFETY OVERSIGHT:As there is no direct commercial
air service between the United States and Azerbaijan, the
U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not assessed
Azerbaijan’s Civil Aviation Authority for compliance with
ICAO international aviation safety standards. For more
information, travelers may visit the FAA’s internet web site at
oversight/iasa.
Travelers on airlines among the countries of the Caucasus may
experience prolonged delays and sudden cancellations of flights. In
addition to frequent delays, flights are often overcrowded with
passengers without seats standing in the aisle along with excess
unsecured cabin luggage. Even basic safety features such as seat
belts are sometimes missing. Air travel to Azerbaijan on international
carriers via the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey is more reliable.
SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: The Republic of Azerbaijan’s economy is mostly
cash-only. Traveler’s checks and credit cards are accepted only in some
hotels and a few restaurants and supermarkets. The national currency
is the manat. An increasing number of commercial establishments have
begun to enforce the requirement that purchases be made with manats.
Azerbaijanicustoms authorities may enforce strict regulations
concerning temporary importation into or export from Azerbaijan of
items such as firearms, religious materials, antiquities including
carpets, medications, and caviar, and any amount of currency over
USD 1000. It is advisable to contact the Embassy of Azerbaijan in
Washington for specific information regarding customs requirements.
Please see our information on Customs Information.
CRIMINAL PENALTIES: While in a foreign country, a U.S. citizen is
subject to that country’s laws and regulations, which sometimes differ
significantly from those in the United States and may not afford the
protections available to the individual under U.S. law.
Penalties for breaking the law can be more severe than in the United
States for similar offenses. Persons violating Azerbaijan’s laws,
even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned. Penalties
for possession, use, or trafficking in illegal drugs in Azerbaijanare
severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and
heavy fines. Engaging in sexual conduct with children or using or
disseminating child pornography in a foreign country is a crime,
prosecutable in the United States. Please see our information on
Criminal Penalties.
CHILDREN’S ISSUES: For information on international adoption of
children and international parental child abduction, see the Office
of Children’s Issues website.
REGISTRATION / EMBASSY LOCATION: Americans living or traveling in
Azerbaijan are encouraged to register with the nearest U.S. Embassy
or Consulate through the State Department’s travel registration
website and to obtain updated information on travel and security
within Azerbaijan. Americans withoutInternet access may register
directly with the U.S. Embassy. By registering, American citizens
make it easier for the Embassy to contact them in case of emergency.
The U.S. Embassy is located at Prospect Azadlig 83;
tel. (9-9412) 498-03-35, 36, or 37; (9-9412) 490-66-71; email:
[email protected]; web site:
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

LYON: LA CONSTRUCTION DU MEMORIAL DU GENOCIDE ARMENIEN SUSPENDUE
Agence France Presse
31 mars 2006 vendredi 3:19 PM GMT
La construction du memorial du genocide armenien, dans le centre ville
de Lyon, qui avait donne lieu a une manifestation pro-turque houleuse
le 18 mars, a ete suspendue sur decision du Tribunal administratif,
a-t-on appris vendredi de source judiciaire.
La decision du juge des referes fait suite a un recours introduit
par l’Association de defense et de protection des places Bellecour
et Antonin Poncet (ADPBAPL), au motif que l’entretien du monument,
une fois acheve, n’etait pas assure.
“Ce monument va denaturer la place Antonin Poncet”, où il doit
etre erige, a egalement fait valoir la presidente de l’ADPBAPL,
Chantal Lefort.
“Les opposants au memorial sont alles chercher un petit point
technique, en rapport avec les statuts de l’Association +Memorial
lyonnais pour le genocide des Armeniens+. Mais celle-ci devrait
rapidement revoir la question et les travaux vont reprendre”, a pour
sa part assure a l’AFP le maire PS de Lyon, Gerard Collomb.
La construction du memorial, dont l’inauguration est prevue le 24
avril, avait provoque une première polemique suite a une manifestation
pro-turque dans le centre de Lyon le 18 mars. Près de 3.000 personnes
avaient alors defile, arborant drapeaux et pancartes dont certaines
indiquaient: “Non au memorial d’un pretendu genocide” ou “Il n’y a
jamais eu de genocide armenien”.
Critique, le prefet du Rhône Jean-Pierre Lacroix avait indique
qu’aucune autre manifestation ne serait plus autorisee. De son côte,
le maire PS de Saint-Priest (Rhône), Martine David, avait fait part
de son intention de s’adresser au ministre de l’Interieur Nicolas
Sarkozy afin que ce type de rassemblement “honteux ne puisse plus
avoir lieu dans notre pays”.
–Boundary_(ID_yKKpCHecSTvG6tnfNtmYOg)–

GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS IN ARMENIANS SAGA
Plainly speaking MWANGI Muiruri
Kenya Times, Kenya
April 1 2006
Unless pigs have wings, all of our political parties are a big joke,
disappointing and outrightly undeserving to form any decent government
for the good of this country.
Consequently, we neither have a distinct governing party nor an agenda
driven Opposition. What we have is a distorted breed of parties in
Government and Opposition. The way it is now is that President Mwai
Kibaki is absurdly and ruling us with his whimsical appointments
in total disregard of who was given the majority mandate to be in
Government. In turn, he needlessly faces opposition from a majority
of those who were elected to be with him in Government.
Our political parties are only good at mutating like amoeba.
Evidence? President Kibaki’s men have just abandoned Narc and formed
a new outfit they have baptised Narc-Kenya. The father and mother of
all parties, Kanu, has just given birth to New Kanu. Narc is dead
and has left many orphans, while the Orange Democratic Movement,
a forum formed to crusade for the rejection of the ill-fated Draft
Constitution, has been registered as a political party in Meru. Where
does this leave the real owners and luminaries of original ODM? My
guess is that perhaps they will opt to register ODM-Party-Kenya.
While these parties are launched with a lot of fanfare, they soon
begin to fade out and get hit by wrangles before mutating. And when
an amoeba mutates in a human body, a litany of health complications
attack. One being your physique expressing that fitness characteristic
of a sickly cow.
It is sad that Kenyans are dreaming of these fragmented parties that
they so support are adequate to make their idolised men and women
ascend to state power. Raw reality is; we are helplessly sinking into
a political quagmire courtesy of the comical nature of our political
parties run by political clowns.
Kanu, Liberal Democratic Party, Ford-Kenya, Ford-P and Democratic
Party-the fair major parties in our political horizons are built on
ethnic concepts and are facing uncontrollable internal turmoil. What
their officials are currently doing is to litter the political arena
with a lot of verbal noise, pretending how united they are, yet they
are mutating amoebas.
If it is Kanu, what segment do we support? Uhuru Kenyatta’s, Nicholas
Biwott’s or the Government affiliated Njenga Karume’s faction?
LDP? Raila Odinga’s segment or that subset which pledges loyalty to
President Mwai Kibaki?
Ford-Kenya? Musikari Kombo’s segment or the Mukhisa Kituyi/Newton
Kulundu/ Moses Akaranga rebellious wing?
DP? Is it chairman-Mwai Kibaki- insisting that the party is dead while
his Secretary-General George Nyamweya insisting that it is alive,
healthy and roaring to go?
Yet, talk is rife of alliances to form formidable coalitions. Which
segment merges with which to carry the day? There are suggestions
that the taxpayer should be funding political parties. How will the
splinter groups agree on what wing of the fragments will retain the
signatory rights to the funds?
That is why most of our politicians-Kibaki among them- have resorted
to discern political parties politics in favour of ethnic politics.
The strength of this form of politics is that; while it is impossible
to impose decisions on enlightened party officials, it is very easy
to amass ethnic backing. Instead of political parties merging to
incorporate diversity of Kenyans and their diverse opinions on the
ideological realm, ethnic chiefs simply negotiate with fellow tribal
chiefs to form alliances.
The scenario now forming is Kenya investing on governments built
on tribal strengths. Woe unto you if your tribe is small! One can
argue-as a counter attack- that it is not sheep, cows and goats that
forms these ethnic groups. That at the end of the day we are talking
of people coming together in those tribal alliances that are flattered
to be a coalition. True.
But when you find these people being grouped together through
inter-tribal negotiations, we are talking of ethnicity not the core
doctrines of building ideological political parties. Since these
outfits cannot use a name of a local resident, they assume all those
funny names that hide the tribal factor in which they are founded on.
That is how they escape their real identities are supposed to be
LDP Raila or Tuju, Ford-K Musikari/Kituyi or Kulundu, Kanu Uhuru,
Kanu Biwott, DP Nyamweya and Narc-K Kibaki.
In the face of Kenyans who are notorious for grabbing the newest
and militantly presented political brand in town, these “astute”
politicians resort to sharing our political power behind our backs-in
boardrooms or restaurants where they craft mischievous Memorandums
of Understandings (MoU) they never intend to honour. They base their
sharing on the big tribes getting the lion’s share while the crumbs
go to the smaller communities. Eventually, they come out holding hands
and belting those sweet sounding tosha slogans to the gullible voters.
It is when those power deals start turning sour that you hear our
leaders tearing at each other in public. It then degenerates to
politics of deceit, hypocrisy and confrontations-like what we are
witnessing now. Unfortunately, this is the status quo that our tribal
chiefs will keep taking us through each time we near an election. The
era of un-honoured MoUs and the government of the day being under
siege from a coalition partner have just begun and not in a hurry to
leave us until when a flash of wisdom assaults voters. The amoebic
characteristics of our political parties sadly underlies the fallacy
that is our fledgling multiparty democracy.
From: Baghdasarian