The Moscow Times

Specter of Genocide

Five new books on Armenia reveal a country focused on its past and a future
yet to be decided.

By Kim Iskyan
Published: September 24, 2004

Reading about contemporary Armenian history is like bearing witness to a
dreadfully mismatched boxing match: Just watching the underdog as he gets
batted about the ring hurts.

For much of the past century or so, Armenia has been the scrawny, bloodied
white guy in the ring, suffering a pummeling at the hands of a range of
foes, from earthquakes to the Ottoman Turks. In the context of the litany of
death, turmoil and pain that has plagued Armenia, that the country is still
standing — as a nation, culture and society — is an impressive feat in
itself.

That, at least, is one of the messages of this impressively depressing
selection of books about contemporary Armenia. Whether Armenia will continue
to stand on its own is another issue altogether.

Any exploration of modern Armenia inevitably begins with the so-called
Armenian Question, as the fate of the Armenian Christian minority living in
19th-century Ottoman Turkey was termed. The solution was a series of mass
killings and massacres of Armenians in the 1890s, leading up to the Armenian
genocide, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians (compared with a
present-day population of roughly 2.5 million) were slaughtered by Ottoman
Turks between 1915 and 1923. One of the aims of Peter Balakian’s “The
Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response” is to showcase
another side to the story by describing the genocide as the first
international human rights cause in the United States.

Balakian’s narrative slips seamlessly from the Ottoman Empire to scenes of
outrage in the United States, primarily among groups of do-gooder northeast
American liberals who were appalled at the human capacity for violence as
displayed in Ottoman Turkey. Although his occasionally florid efforts to
evoke the breathless aura of the era grow a bit tiresome, Balakian does a
fine job of illustrating how the treatment of the Armenians — a small,
inconsequential people on the other side of the world (at a time when
distance mattered, and implied more than mere kilometers) with few links to
the New England upper crust — became a cause celebre.

The passion described by Balakian of the advocates for Armenia seems almost
quaint in the context of the cynicism and ignorance of American — or
European, or Russian, for that matter — society toward human rights
tragedies today. Few people outside of the country have any notion of
Armenia including, perhaps most of all, Russians, who view all of the
Caucasus through the same dark prism. (Even fewer care about, for example,
the ongoing genocide in Sudan.) Balakian’s United States — at least the
narrow slice of activists he addresses — cared about injustice in the world
enough to do something about it.

HarperCollins

The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response
By Peter Balakian
HarperCollins
496 Pages. $23.95

Given the highly emotive nature of the genocide for members of the Armenian
diaspora (of which Balakian is a prominent member), it’s not surprising that
the narrative seems a bit less sure-footed and evenhanded when it comes to
the Turkish side of the equation. One of the undercurrents of “Burning
Tigris” — as well as of Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s devastating “The
Daydreaming Boy,” a novel about, in essence, the impact of genocide on the
individual — is the continued denial by Turkey that any genocide took
place. To Turkey, the event that Armenians call genocide was the unfortunate
function of an environment of conflict in which Christians and Muslims alike
died. Modern-day Turkey would have to overcome generations of indoctrination
to concede officially that its forefathers were racist murderers. Moreover,
Turkish recognition of the genocide could expose the country to the risk of
massive financial (as well as land) reparation claims, similar to those
faced by Germany and German companies.

Balakian frequently equates the Armenian experience with the most undeniable
genocide of all: the Holocaust. The strategy of the Committee of Union and
Progress — the so-called Young Turks who rose to power in Ottoman Turkey in
1908 — was “not unlike the way the Nazi Party would take control”; the
Young Turks’ program of nationalist indoctrination is compared to Adolf
Hitler’s efforts for German youngsters; the cattle cars of the Anatolian and
Baghdad Railways were the predecessors of the mechanism by which the Nazis
deported the Jews. Then there is Hitler’s own comment in August 1939, in
support of his plans to exterminate the Jews (the veracity of which is also
fiercely debated in some quarters): “Who today, after all, speaks of the
annihilation of the Armenians?”

The description of the United States’ ultimate betrayal — opportunistic,
cynical and craven enough to make any reader holding a blue passport with an
eagle imprimatur cringe — of Armenia and the Armenians is taut and
well-paced. In a short epilogue, Balakian points out that U.S.
acknowledgment of the massacre is still held hostage to grubby, ugly
political realities: Despite years of promises (and pressure from the
powerful Armenian-American lobby), the U.S. government has yet to officially
recognize the Armenian genocide for fear of offending Turkey, a critical
NATO ally. In a transparent effort to pander to the Armenian-American lobby,
U.S. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has pledged that his
administration would officially recognize the genocide — then again, so did
George W. Bush, who later backed down in the face of Turkish pressure.
(Balakian, a professor at Colgate University in New York, was recently
instrumental in bringing about a change in the editorial policy of The New
York Times, which now refers to the “Armenian genocide” — rather than, say,
“the tragedy” or “Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915.”)

Riverhead Books

The Daydreaming Boy
By Micheline Aharonian Marcom
Riverhead Books
212 Pages. $23.95

“Burning Tigris” is rigorously researched and annotated, and certainly more
fair and evenhanded than it could have been. But Balakian seems more at home
in “Black Dog of Fate,” his excellent 1997 book about a journey to
rediscover his Armenian roots. His passionate perspective on Armenia and the
genocide is more effective as personal history, a format in which he doesn’t
need to pull any punches.

Marcom’s “The Daydreaming Boy” uses fiction as a sledgehammer to hit home
the micro-level impact of the trauma of genocide. Vahe, a middle-aged member
of the Armenian community in Beirut in the 1960s, is comfortably going about
his business when bits of his thoroughly repressed past — being abandoned
by his mother during the genocide, a brutal childhood spent in an orphanage,
the other Turkish-Armenian boy who took his place as the orphanage’s
resident rag doll — leak into his consciousness like so much buried toxic
waste. Marcom wraps Vahe’s downward spiral in layers of sweeping metaphors
involving an ape at the local zoo, the peasant maid in the apartment below,
and the sea, all underscoring the extraordinary sense of emptiness and loss
that Vahe and, by association, all of Armenia, experienced. Vahe’s own
forgetting — or “unremembering” — is an apparent reference to genocide
denial, but “The Daydreaming Boy” is brilliant writing, with or without the
political context.

University of Virginia Press

“Starving Armenians”: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and After
By Merrill D. Peterson
University of Virginia Press
216 Pages. $24.95

Following in the footsteps of “Burning Tigris,” Merrill D. Peterson’s
“‘Starving Armenians’: America and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1930 and
After” cites many of the same sources and uses some of the same quotations
as Balakian. Peterson’s book is a solid effort, particularly given that the
author is an academic focused on U.S. history of the 19th century. Peterson
went off to Yerevan (copy of Balakian’s “Black Dog” in hand, he reports) as
a Peace Corps volunteer in 1997, only to be sent home a month and a half
later due to poor health. From this experience, it appears, stems his
interest in Armenia.

Readers with little background in the Armenian genocide who are looking for
a more easily digestible account of American involvement with Armenia would
be well served by Peterson’s account. But there are some odd gaps, and
Peterson’s lack of background in Armenia sometimes shows through. His
description of the events of April 24, 1915, the date usually cited as the
beginning of the genocide, when several hundred prominent Armenians in
Constantinople were arrested and killed, is mystifyingly brief. A mention of
the Nagorny Karabakh conflict — the 1991-94 war between Azerbaijan and
Armenia over an enclave in western Azerbaijan — refers to warfare between
Armenians and the Tatars, which is at best an unusual term for Azeris. Some
transliterations into English from Armenian are a bit off. Niggling points
all, though together they raise questions about the accuracy of other
dimensions of the book.

University of California Press

Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope
By Donald E. Miller and Laura Touryan Miller
Univ. of California Press
248 Pages. $29.95

For “Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope,” Donald E. Miller — a
religion professor at the University of Southern California — and his wife,
Lorna Touryan Miller, who is of Armenian descent, interviewed 300 Armenians
in 1993 and 1994 to develop an oral history of the country in the late ’80s
and early ’90s. The four major chapters focus on survivors of the December
1988 earthquake, which killed upward of 25,000 people and destroyed 40
percent of the country’s industrial base; refugees from Azerbaijan who fled
the pogroms that were the precursors to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict; the
impact of the Nagorny Karabakh war; and the incredible deprivation of the
winters in the early 1990s, when Armenia had virtually no power and no heat.

The result is a compelling but overwhelmingly grim collection of anecdotes.
History tends to focus on the broad strokes, while paying short shrift to
the grinding agony of those who are involved in, caught in the crossfire of,
or — most often — innocent bystanders to conflict and tumultuous change.
The Millers’ book is populated with stories of rape and murder, war in all
its cruelty, and children who didn’t know the meaning of the word “meat”
because they had never eaten it.

Particularly depressing are the winters of extreme cold, which sound more
like the medieval world than a country that, just a few years prior, had
been part of the other global superpower. Armenia’s nuclear power plant —
situated not far from a fault line — was shut down in the wake of the 1988
earthquake due to fears of another quake causing a nuclear accident.
Meanwhile, an economic blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan prevented other
sources of energy from entering the country. As a result, citizens stripped
trees bare in the search for anything that could be converted to heat, and
sometimes slept under — rather than on — mattresses in an effort to be
warm. Friends of mine in Armenia — people in their 20s and 30s, not ancient
babushkas retelling family lore — still speak in slightly hushed tones
about the period, and the Millers’ treatment of the topic makes it clear
why.

Many of the underlying messages of “Survival and Hope” are relevant
throughout the former Soviet Union. The evidence of so-called progress —
Pringles in every corner kiosk, construction cranes poking through the
skyline, BMWs competing with Ladas for road real estate — is cosmetic at
best. The tides of change have left behind huge swaths of the population as
a small number of well-connected opportunists grow wealthy at the expense of
everyone else.

For Armenia, in particular, the message is bleak. Roughly 20 percent of the
population (as usual, that segment with the highest levels of experience and
intellect) has emigrated since 1990. Roughly half — or closer to 43
percent, if the latest government figures are to be believed — of the
country labors under crushing poverty. The economic blockade of Armenia by
Turkey and Azerbaijan continues, and the country remains at the mercy of its
wobbly nuclear power plant.

New York University Press

Black Garden:

Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War
By Thomas de Waal
New York University Press
328 Pages. $20

On a more positive note, Armenia and Azerbaijan are not currently at war
over Nagorny Karabakh — the conflict that is the subject of Thomas de
Waal’s compelling and very readable “Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan
Through Peace and War.” Blending history, political science and travelogue,
de Waal meticulously sets the stage for the war, then leads the reader
through a compelling blow-by-blow account, all carefully put into context
and interwoven with fascinating insights and anecdotes.

It is virtually impossible to discuss the Armenian genocide without being
partisan, as the mere use of the word “genocide” immediately defines the
writer’s position. But de Waal proves that mention of the Nagorny Karabakh
conflict has yet to reach that level of shrillness, offering a discussion so
fair and finely balanced that even the most partisan of readers would find
little to criticize. That de Waal has no Armenian or Azeri blood connections
helps, although more to the point is his gift for smooth, engaging
narrative.

The crux of the struggle, de Waal writes, was “the economics and geography
of Azerbaijan on one side … against Armenian claims of demography and
historical continuity,” and that was enough to turn neighbor against
neighbor. One Azeri fighter speaks of his fear that one day he would catch
his childhood Armenian friends in the sights of his rifles. De Waal spends a
fascinating chapter trying to understand how neighbors could so suddenly
become enemies, and comes to the grim conclusion that “no one felt they
personally were to blame.”

Where next for Armenia, given its mosaic of misery over the past century,
its poor current prospects, and the simmering possibility that the Nagorny
Karabakh war flares up again? Part of the answer could be through what the
Millers call a “new type of charity, a new philanthropy” from the vast and
powerful Armenian diaspora, one that would “create jobs, rebuild the
economic infrastructure of the country, and nurture responsible democratic
institutions.” Indeed, today’s Armenian diaspora sends home remittances
equivalent to upward of 10 percent of GDP, secures Armenia developmental
funds, and provides critical expertise to and investment in the Armenian
economy.

But the priorities of the Armenians abroad — such as Turkish recognition of
the 1915 Armenian genocide and the funding of one-off infrastructure
development projects that do little to support long-term economic growth and
development — often conflict with the present-day realities and needs of
the country. The key reference point of the Armenian diaspora is still the
genocide. They are unwilling to forget, and won’t forget. “The past is
always unspoken heavy and ever-present like some invisible unfurled ribbon
and we entangled in it as we are in our own blood,” Marcom writes. But
unless Armenia stops focusing on its painful past, and concentrates more on
improving the prospects for its future, it may not survive many more rounds
in the ring.

Kim Iskyan was based as a freelance journalist in Yerevan, Armenia, from
2002 until earlier this year.

Copyright © 2004 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.

“CHOBANIAN” ESTABLISHMENT OF PARIS TO PUBLISH “THE WHITE BOOK” ON TURKEY

Azg/am
24 Sept 04

On December 17 the EU is to decide whether to start talks over
Turkey’s membership in the Union or not, “Chobanian” establishment of
Paris informs.Most of the international mass media presents modern
Turkey as a country with secular society and a democratic state. They
incessantly claims that Turkey is a country with European perspective
and the issue of its membership is a question of time. But the mass
media overlooks Turkey’s denialist stance in theissue of the Armenian
Genocide and the fact of Armenia’s blockade.

In order to break media’s silence and to open international
community’s eyes “Chobanian” establishment of Paris decided to publish
a book on Turkey titled “The White Book”. The book will be put out in
October.

The book, containing 100 pages, will be delivered to influential
politicians, parliaments of France and other European countries and
also will be set for sale. Many intellectuals, political scientists,
historians and journalists are cooperating in writing the book.

By Petros Keshishian

IRAQI ARMENIAN GEVORG URBANIAN DISCLOSED HIS SECRET

Azg/am
24 Sept 04

Mysterious Pages of Iraqi-Kuwaiti War

Gevorg Urbanian used to work for a Dutch company in Basra (well-known
these days) during the Iraqi-Kuwaiti war. Gevorg had to keep the
secret in the days of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship fearing revenge.

It was in 1990 when one of the Arab workers of the company died. The
president of the company asked Gevorg to transfer the worker’s bodyto
his hometown of Malgiv. But Gevorg failed transferring the body to
Malgiv, and he buried it in the graveyard of Basra. Here the workers
of the graveyard told him abouta mass burial that took place the other
day. “A bus, chock-full of dead Kuwaitis, arrived and they buried the
corpses”. Grave diggers indicated the vast area where the war
prisoners allegedly were buried.

Two years ago Gevorg left for Tehran (his father was a citizen of
Iran) and called the consulate of Kuwait in Tehran and tried to tell
them his secret but nobody listened to him, saying that the consul was
not in the country. Thenhe returned to Baghdad and learnt that the
Kuwaitis of Baghdad were looking for the relatives they lost during
the war. He attempted to inform the staff of Kuwaiti TV that was in
Baghdad to make a film. Bahe Obu Zakaria, of the staff, told him that
they shouldn’t take the relatives back to those days.

Gevorg Urbanian together with his family settled in Armenia this year
after the oppression of Iraq’s Christian population started. 15 days
ago he heard on TV that the Kuwaitis keep on looking for their lost
relatives and even are ready to reward those who may help with
information.

Gevorg Urbanian turned to Azg Daily hoping that his voice will be
heard and that the Kuwaitis will respond. Those who are interested may
contact Azg Daily’ s editorial staff.

By Karine Danielian

ARMENIA-DIASPORA: TOGETHER IN UNISON

Azg/am
24 Sept 04

For a week Armenia and Diaspora were singing together in one
voice. The goal of the initiative was to organize concerts in
Knaravan, newly built villagein Artsakh, in Stepanakert, in Shushi, in
Hadrut and in Yerevan. “Komitas” Chamber United Chorus includes the
members of Aynchar’s “Komitas” Chamber Chorus and the singers from
some of Armenian choruses. Pargev Taslakian, head and conductor of the
chorus, said that this initiative was the first practical step of “One
Nation, One Culture” festival.

“Komitas” chorus has 40-years-old history. Its members are mainly
Musaler dwellers. Being the only professional group in the Middle
East, in 2001, itwas recognized the best among the Lebanese
choruses. It deserved the right to represent Lebanon in international
musical festivals and contests. In 2001, “Komitas” chorus was
recognized the best in the Middle East.

The chorus gave over ten concerts in Armenia. It is invited to Armenia
by “Yerkir” NGO. Knaravan village was built in Nagorno Karabagh at the
initiative of “Yerkir” NGO.

On September 9, the chorus gave its last concert in Yerevan Chamber
Music Hall, performing the unique pieces of Komitas and
Kanachian. “The most important thing was that we could unite and
follow this beautiful path together,” Armen Tovmasian, singer of RA
Chamber Chorus, said after the concert. Pargev Taslakian assured that
they have many joint projects and they will certainly continue
cooperating.

In the August of 2005, “Veha” chorus, headed by Taslakian, will arrive
in Armenia to perform Armenian, European and Arabic pieces.

By Tamar Minasian

The Star Online
Thursday September 23, 2004

Forssell will be out for a month

LONDON: Finland striker Mikael Forssell is to undergo knee surgery
that will keep him out of action for at least a month, his club
Birmingham City said.

`Mikael goes into hospital tomorrow (yesterday) for an exploratory
knee operation which will keep him out for a minimum of four to six
weeks,’ manager Steve Bruce told City’s website.

`We will know by today if there is any damage to his sore knee,’ Bruce
said after City beat fourth division Lincoln 3-1 in the second round
of the League Cup on Tuesday night.

Forssell, in his second season on loan from Chelsea after scoring 17
goals in his first, missed Tuesday’s match and Saturday’s Premier
League game against Charlton Athletic.

The 23-year-old striker, who scored in Finland’s 2-0 win in a World
Cup qualifier away to Armenia on Sept 8, will now miss his country’s
next two qualifiers at home to Armenia and away to Holland next month.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

St.Petersburg Times, Russia
Sept 24 2004

Seeking Women in Wartime Photos
By Irina Titova
STAFF WRITER

A German man is hoping publication of wartime photographs of three
young Russian women associated with St. Petersburg may help explain
how they came into the possession of his late father-in-law.

Eckhard Bernecker, 68, of Hanover, found the photographs among the
belongings of Friedrich Wilhelm Uebel, who was killed in action in
World War II. The fate of the women is unknown.

“We found a picture which poses a riddle,” Bernecker said of one
photograph.

“The picture is worthless to us,” he wrote in a letter to The St.
Petersburg Times. “But I know that during the war a lot of keepsakes
(such as photos) were destroyed. So it could be that ‘Zinochka’ or
‘Panya’ in St. Petersburg [or their descendants] will be grateful for
the photo.”

The woman in the first picture is identified as Panya, which is
likely to be a diminutive of Praskoviya, Osipova. On the back of the
photograph appears a dedication to a friend called Zinochka, a
diminutive of Zinaida.

“To Zinochka, for you to remember me by, Panya Osipova. It is better
to think of me at least sometimes than not at all. Leningrad. Sept.
28, 1941,” Panya’s Cyrillic text reads.

St. Petersburg was known as Leningrad at the time.

The date is just after Hitler’s armies launched a murderous attack on
Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Germans surrounded the city and besieged
it for almost 900 days.

At the bottom of the reverse side there are the German words
“Gruzinerin,” which means “Georgian,” and a word that is difficult to
decipher but looks like “Manuck.”

Another photograph shows a woman in a military uniform. Her name is
hard to decipher, but appears to be either “Tamarochka,” a diminutive
of Tamara, or some other female name that starts with the letter “T.”

The second woman also dedicated her picture to Zinaida.

“To Zinochka from T … If you have time for memories of the past,
remember me, too. 21 Å. Ç. Leningrad Nov. 16, 1941,” the dedication
says.

The code 21 Å. Ç. may be the number of the woman’s military unit.

At the bottom is written the German word, “Armenierin,” or
“Armenian.”

Three young women appear in a third photograph. On the back of that
photograph only the date May 2, 1940 is written. It can be assumed
that one of the women is Zinaida.

Bernecker said he had no idea how Uebel got the pictures. His
father-in-law never fought in northwest Russia or the Baltic States
during the war. He served on the southern front – in the Caucasus and
beside the Azov Sea.

It might be that Zinaida lived or fought in this area too. Bernecker
said Uebel, who served as an armored infantryman (in German:
Panzer-Grenadier), had not left any explanation about the pictures
before he was killed aged 32 on March 16, 1945, in
Neuwied-am-Rhine-River in west Germany.

Uebel’s widow, Lisbeth, now 91, remembers her husband being sent to
fight in the Soviet Union in late summer of 1941.

She said he remained there as a lance corporal in the “orderly room”
for many months until he was wounded in the back. After treatment at
a hospital in Germany he was sent to fight the Allies who were
advancing from the west.

The widow also remembers that Uebel was in Rostov-on-Don “at the foot
of the Caucasian mountains,” and later in Taganrog on the Azov Sea.

Lisbeth Uebel recalls that when her husband had leave at home he
would collect tools for his Russian landlord and fashion magazines
with sewing patters for the landlord’s wife.

Bernecker thinks Uebel brought the pictures of the Russian women home
with him on one of these trips.

Uebel had three children, one of whom, Charlotte, who was eight when
her father died, later became Bernecker’s wife. He said Uebel’s
family had a very difficult struggle to survive in post-war Germany.
It was only with the help of their grandparents that the family
avoided dying of starvation.

Bernecker said his family wants to give the pictures back to people
who are interested in them – be it Zinaida, who likely owned the
pictures before Uebel, or the women pictured in the photos.

Anyone with information about the women in the photographs is asked
to contact The St. Petersburg Times either by writing to us at
telephoning us on (812) 325-6080. Ask for Irina Titova.

Persian Journal
Sept 23 2004

China Inspired Iranian Pottery Craftsmen

CHN

Following the discovery of some white and blue porcelain potteries in
the historical gardens of the northern Iranian city of Behshahr,
experts believe the influence of Chinese porcelain art on Iranian
pottery makers is well-documented.

Abbasabad garden complex in Behshahr dates back to the reign of the
Safavid Shah (king) Abbas. The 500-hectar property is comprised of
several posh mansions, the Freedom Tower, and bath.

“In the latest excavation season, carried out with the intent of
recognizing the intricate irrigation system and the eastern gate,
some porcelain china with Iranian designs and motifs were unearthed,”
said Abdulvahab Musavi-nasab, director of the research center in
Behshahr.

One of the discovered vessels is a 45-cm high earthenware pot which
clearly manifests the influence of the Chinese craft on Iranian
pottery makers. The Abbasabad garden complex is located in the
northern Mazandaran province.
A militant Islamic Sufi order, the Safavids, appeared among Turkish
speaking people of west of the Caspian Sea, at Ardabil. The Safavid
order survived the invasion of Timurlane to that part of the Iran in
the late 13th century.

By 1500 the Safavids had adopted the Shiite branch of Islam and were
eager to advance Shiite Islam by military means. Safavid males used
to wear red headgear. They had great devotion for their leader as a
religious leader and perfect guide as well as a military chieftain,
and they viewed their leaders position as rightly passed from father
to son according to the Shiite tradition.

Under Shah Abbas I, Iran prospered; he also transplanted a colony of
industrious and commercially astute Armenians from Jolfa in
Azerbaijan to a new Jolfa next to Isfahan. He patronized the arts,
and he built palaces, mosques and schools, Isfahan becoming the
cultural and intellectual capital of Iran. Shah Abbas encouraged
international trade and the production of silks, carpets, ceramics
and metal ware for sale to Europeans. Shah Abbas also founded a
carpet factory in Isfahan.

Royal patronage and the influence of court designers assured that
Persian carpets reached their zenith in elegance during the Safavid
period. He advanced trade by building and safeguarding roads. He
welcomed tradesmen from Britain, the Netherlands and elsewhere to
Iran. His governmental monopoly over the silk trade enhanced state
revenues. Merchants of the English East India Company established
trading houses in Shiraz and Isfahan.

After Shah Abbas ousted the Portuguese from the island of Hormuz at
the entrance to the Persian Gulf in 1622, Bandar Abbas (Port of
Abbas) became the center of the East India Company’s trade. But Later
the Dutch East India Company received trade capitulations from Shah
Abbas. The Dutch soon gained supremacy in the European trade with
Iran, outdistancing British competitors. They established a
spice-trading center at Bandar Abbas.

In 1623-24 Shah Abbas I launched an offensive against Ottomans and
established control over Kurdish territories, Baghdad and the Shiite
holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

CanadianChristianity.com, Canada
Sept 23 2004

Comment: Sudan genocide challenges Canadian indifference

By Mel Middleton
ChristianWeek

GENOCIDE is raging in the nation of Sudan. It is now unquestionably
the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today.

Unfortunately, our political leadership is not acknowledging it. The
reason for this is clear. Use of the term ‘genocide,’ under
international law, carries with it an obligation for countries to act
— and action to save African lives carries too few political
benefits.

Following the Nazi holocaust, a shocked international community
cried, “Never again!” Never again would a dictator like Hitler be
permitted to exterminate an ethnic group like the Jews. Never again
would the world stand idly by while hundreds of thousands of people
stood waiting to be slaughtered. Never again would such an evil be
allowed to take root and flourish.

But it has. The list of post-Nazi genocides — including Biafra,
Cambodia, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan — continues to grow. The
international community, including Canada, has yet to demonstrate
that it is serious about stopping genocide.

We recently observed the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan holocaust,
where the world community stood idly by while extremists hacked to
death more than 800,000 people in front of the world’s media. This
genocide was both predictable and preventable, yet the international
community did nothing.

But no politician, no bureaucrat, no western official has paid any
political price for this decision — one which has wrought such
unimaginable suffering on the entire region. U.S. president Bill
Clinton, who led the way in ‘doing nothing,’ was re-elected. UN
bureaucrat Kofi Annan, who gave the orders to ‘do nothing,’ was
promoted to the top UN position of Secretary General.

Recently, the Canadian House of Commons voted to declare the Turkish
slaughter of Armenians to be “genocide.” Yet Canada’s Liberal cabinet
refused to support the motion. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham
urged parliamentarians not to recognize this genocide, fearing that
it might adversely affect trade with Turkey. Canada’s justice
minister, Irwin Cotler, who only a few days before had issued strong
pronouncements about the need to never stand idly by in the face of
genocide, did not even bother to show up for the vote.

With political leadership like this, it is not surprising that
genocide is mushrooming in Darfur, Sudan. As New York Times columnist
Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in an April 14 editorial: “In the last l00
years, the United States has reacted to one genocide after another —
Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Bosnians — by making excuses at the
time, and then saying, too late, ‘Oh, if only we had known!’

“Well, this time we know what is happening in Darfur: 110,000
refugees have escaped into Chad and testify to the atrocities. How
many more parents will be forced to choose whether their children are
shot or burned to death before we get serious?”

On July 9, 2004, Sudan researcher Eric Reeves pleaded with the world
to take action, concluding that if genocide is allowed to take its
ugly course in Sudan, “It will not be because we did not know what
was happening or what needed to be done. It will be because we
ourselves, acquiescing in the face of political obstacles, judged
these African lives not worth saving. It is difficult to imagine an
uglier truth for history to record, but history will have no choice.”

For Canadians, the moral implications of genocide in Sudan are even
more disturbing. It was Canadian oil money and Canadian moral cover
which helped to solidify Khartoum’s brutal stranglehold on power in
Sudan. It was this blood oil, backed by Canada’s banks and the Canada
Pension Plan, which provided Sudan’s military junta with the
resources to purchase the helicopter gunships and other weaponry of
genocide. Sudan’s holocaust is the direct result of failed Canadian
foreign policy.

The real lesson of the tragedy in Sudan is that genocide will
continue to occur until politicians pay a price for allowing it to
occur. As long as turning a blind eye to genocide is the political
path of least resistance, the cry of “never again” will have no
meaning.

For God’s people, who are commanded to “let justice roll down like a
river,” indifference is not a moral option.

Mel Middleton is executive director of Freedom Quest International.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004

Last Days of the Georgian Dukhobors

Squeezed out by their neighbours in southern Georgia, the religious
sect is returning to the land of its forefathers.

By Mark Grigorian in Gorelovka, Georgia (Photographs by Ruben
Mangasarian) (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)

A large loaf of white bread, which our hostess had just pulled out of
the old Russian stove, was lying on the table surrounded by cheese,
tomatoes and sour cream. Suddenly a bottle of `samogon’, strong
Russian homemade alcoholic brew, appeared from nowhere as if by
magic.

`Oh no, don’t pour me any,’ 75-year-old Aunt Niura protested in
embarrassment but took the glass and immediately pronounced a toast.
`To your health! If your health is strong, then everything else will
follow. But if not…’

She was interrupted by her neighbour Nastya, `I just wish that God
keeps at least a handful of people here. Because if everyone leaves,
what will become of all of this?’

`Let’s drink to our dear little corner, to our mountains…’

That little corner is the village of Gorelovka in the mountains of
southern Georgia, home to some of the last members of the Dukhobor
sect to remain in the country. Sadly, they may not last long. Almost
all have close relatives in Russia and almost all are planning to
emigrate.

Only fifteen years ago Dukhobors inhabited eight villages, but today
the community, which once boasted some 7,000 people, shrank to less
than 700.

Dukhobors (the Russian word means `spirit wrestlers’) are ethnic
Russians, representatives of a rare Christian Orthodox sect expelled
to the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century.

They do not recognise the church or priests, but believe that each
man’s soul is a temple. Dukhobors do not worship the cross or icons
and they reject the church sacraments. They believe that Jesus Christ
transmigrated into God’s chosen people – the Dukhobors. The life of
every Dukhobor should serve as an example for others because love and
joy, peacefulness and patience, faith, humility and abstinence, reign
in each believer.

In the late 19th century, having become acquainted with the ideas of
the great writer and pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the Dukhobors refused to
serve in the Russian Tsar’s army. And in 1895 they famously collected
together all their weaponry and set fire to it.

`The Dukhobors put all the weapons into one big pile and lit it up,’
said Tatyana Chuchmayeva, leader of the Dukhobor community in
Georgia. `When the government called in the Cossacks, they stood
around the fire holding each other’s hands and sang psalms and
peaceful songs. All the time the Cossacks were flogging them with
whips.’

Many of those who burned the weapons were punished and around 500
families were exiled to Siberia. However, Tolstoy managed, with the
help of English Quakers, to organise the resettlement of Dukhobors to
Canada where they were spared military service.

Many others stayed in Georgia and survived all the tribulations of
the 20th century.

However, life under independent Georgia has proved the biggest test.
Two censuses conducted in 1989 and 2002 show that of 340,000 Russians
that lived in Georgia in 1989 less than ten per cent – about 32,500
people – remained there thirteen years later. Other ethnic minorities
also left.

Fyodor Goncharov, chairman of the Gorelovka village council, said
that the first wave of emigration occurred in 1989-1991 when the
extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was leader of Georgia. About
half of the Dukhobor population left the region.

In the late 1980s, the Merab Kostava Foundation was set up in Tbilisi
with the stated aim of making Georgians the dominant ethnic group.
They focussed strong attention on the southern province of
Samtskhe-Javakheti, where over 90 per cent were ethnic-Armenians and
the rest, with few exceptions, were Russian Dukhobors.

The Merab Kostava Foundation bought about 200 of the Dukhobors’
houses and gave these to Georgians. Clothes and funds were provided
to the new arrivals.

However, the experiment failed. `They could not endure our living
conditions and ran away from here after one year,’ said Konstantin
Vardanian, a journalist from the local town of Ninotsminda. `During
the first winter they heated their houses with coal and firewood that
the foundation had left for them. Then, after they ran out of coal,
they lived in one room of the house and pulled up floors in the other
rooms and burnt them in stoves. When spring came they all left.’

Local Armenians were alarmed by the Merab Kostava project and one
result was that the Armenian Javakh Committee, founded to fight for
Armenian rights in Javakheti, also began to buy houses from Dukhobors
– just to keep them out of Georgian hands. `It was some sort of
competition, really,’ Vardanian said, with Armenians and Georgians
vying for the same houses in Dukhobor villages.

At first, Armenians enjoyed being neighbours to the Dukhobors.
`Akhalkalaki people always preferred to buy butter, cheese, curd
cheese and other dairy products from Dukhobors,’ remembers Karine
Khodikian, a well-known Armenian writer originally from the local
town of Akhalkalaki. `It was a sign of respect for them, their
cleanliness and tidiness.’

But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians got envious of
the Dukhobors and their apparently orderly, calm lives. `Armenians
saw that the Dukhobor community in Gorelovka was self-sustaining,
they said that Canadians Dukhobors helped it,’ Vardanian said.

Armenians from mountain villages, where living conditions were much
worse than in Gorelovka, began to move into the houses purchased by
the Javakhk Committee and to buy land. They were joined by immigrants
from Armenia who used to live in the city of Gumri and its
neighbouring villages – a region almost entirely demolished by the
1988 earthquake. Relations between the Dukhobors and these newcomers
was far worse than with their old neighbours.

Enterprising Armenians opened small shops and started producing sour
cream, butter and cheese, traditional Dukhobor products. They
purchase milk from the Dukhobors, but the latter are very unhappy
with the buying prices.

`Armenians buy milk in our village,’ said Goncharov. `Then they make
cheese out of it, take it to Tbilisi and sell it. They pay us only 30
tetri for a litre (about 15 cents), while we have to pay 70 or 80
tetri just for one litre of fuel.’

Dukhobor villager Sveta Gonachrova said that her neighbours were
frightened by the incoming Armenians, `You step outside and get
punched in the face.’

Vardanian believes that antipathy between the Dukhobors and Armenians
is not the only reason Dukhobors are leaving, but `it contributed’.

This new wave of emigration has found help from the Russian
authorities.

In December 1998, Russia’s then-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov
signed a decree on assistance to the Georgian Dukhobors and the
Russian parliament, the State Duma passed a special resolution on the
group. The International Organisation for Migration helped with the
resettlement, while Georgia’s emergencies ministry provided buses.

In January 1999, community leader Lyuba Goncharova led a large number
of her community on a journey whose final point of destination was
the Bryansk region of Russia. Many of those left behind are now
seeking help from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi to go and join them.

The remaining Dukhobors say they are worried by Georgia’s new
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom they see as a Georgian
nationalist. There are also rumours in the community – denied by
Georgian officials – that all non-Georgian schools will be closed.

`Saakashvili’s rise to power scares everyone,’ said Chuchmayeva.
`Everyone is panic-stricken. People see what is happening in (South)
Ossetia and feel scared,’ she added in a reference to Saakashvili’s
attempts to restore central authority to that breakaway region.

`Now they are talking about making all schools switch to the Georgian
language… And that scares people. They are terrified that main
subjects in schools will be taught in Georgian from 2006 and our
children will not be able to study.’

Georgia’s minister for refugees and migration, Eter Astemirova, told
IWPR that `the main reason they are leaving, as far as I know, is due
to problems with the local Armenian population. There is no basis to
their worries about the Georgian language or schools’.

Astemirova said the Georgian state was entirely neutral in the
affair. Dukhobors are not helped `to leave or to stay’, she said. `If
there is a problem, we will try to address it. … So far, I don’t
know, because we have no information about Dukhobors.’

The cultural attaché of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, Vasily
Korchmar, said another reason for the Dukhobors’ desire to leave is
the difficult economic situation in Georgia and its tense
relationship with Russia.

Gonachrova agreed that tradition counted for nothing as this
community made up its mind. For young people in particular life is
better in Russia than in Gorelovka, `We are sorry to leave, but what
can one do? There are [proper] conditions for young people in Russia.
Discos and all sorts of amusement. We have nothing.’

Mark Grigorian is a producer with the Central Asian and Caucasus
Service of the BBC World Service in London.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004

Confusion Surrounds Beslan Band

Unanswered questions about the identity of the group who seized the
school in Beslan.

By Timur Aliev, Aslanbek Dadayev and Ruslan Zhadayev in Chechnya and
Ingushetia (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)

Tagir Khachaburov lives alone in a poor whitewashed two-room house
with an overgrown front yard and ramshackle wooden gates in the
Ingush village of Galashki.

His quiet existence was shattered earlier this month by the
accusation that his 32-year-old son had been identified as probably
the most hated man in Russia. Ruslan Khachaburov, nicknamed Polkovnik
(or `Colonel’ in English) had been named as the leader of the
extremist group that seized the school in Beslan on September 1.

Tagir’s bloodshot, tear-filled eyes testify to what he has gone
through in the last three weeks. He explained to IWPR that he had not
seen his son for five years. He said Ruslan had not lived with him
since his marriage broke up when Ruslan was two and the child went to
live with his mother, an ethnic Chechen, first in the Stavropol
region of southern region, then in the Chechen village of Orekhovo.

`When he grew up Ruslan lived in the town of Oryol in Russia,’ Tagir
said. `He ran away from there after he killed two Armenians in
self-defence. After that he was on the run. He last came to see me in
1999 for a few hours. I haven’t seen him since then. When I heard
what happened in Beslan I could not believe that Ruslan could have
been there.’

`He wasn’t a terrorist,’ Tagir went on. `I still can’t believe he was
there. My son isn’t a terrorist. Our politics now is like 1937. They
can pin anything they like on a person to blacken his name.’

Khachaburov said that the Russian security services had taken all the
photographs of his two sons – his other son Bashir was a rebel
fighter and died several years ago – for their investigation into
Beslan. He said he had been constantly raided by the security
services ever since the June attack on the town of Nazran Ingushetia
by Chechen rebels, which resulted in more than 90 deaths and in which
his son’s name first came up.

Khachaburov’s neighbours suffered much more grievously. One of them,
named Beslan Arapkhanov, the father of seven children, lived on the
same street. According to research by the human rights organisation
Memorial, on the morning of July 21 a group of masked men burst into
his house and shot him dead. Then one of the gunmen pulled a
photograph from his jacket and was heard to say that `it’s not him’,
and the group left.

It seems that the group had intended to kill Ruslan Khachaburov and
had picked the wrong target.

Despite this tragedy, Musa Arapkhanov, a cousin of the dead man, told
IWPR that he had doubts that Ruslan Khachaburov had been guilty of
the charges against him and that he was an Islamic extremist or
Wahhabi.

`When he was here last year, he faithfully went to the mosque and did
the zikr [traditional Chechen prayer ritual], which the Wahhabis
don’t do,’ said Arapkhanov.

The North Ossetian authorities have issued a list of 13 names of the
group of around 30 hostage-takers who seized Beslan’s School No. 1 on
September 1. But even the identity of some of those named is not
entirely certain and some relatives are questioning the official
version of events.

Notorious Chechen warrior Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for
the attack last week on the Islamist website Kavkaz Center, which has
since had its activity suspended.

Calling the attack `Nord-West’ in a reference to the Nord-Ost musical
which was playing at a packed Dubrovka theatre in Moscow, when it was
seized by militants in October 2002, Basayev wrote, `Thirty-three
mujahadin took part in Nord-West. Two of them were women. We prepared
four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then
boarded the two airplanes that blew up. In the group there were 12
Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two
Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar, one Kabardinian and one Guran. The
Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal who are practically
Russified.’

Even before Basayev’s letter, the Russian security services had
identified several of the hostage-takers as being associated with
him.

The name of `Polkovnik’ came up from the televised account of the
only surviving hostage-taker Nur-Pasha Kulayev, alleged to have
worked for Basayev. Kulayev said, `We were collected in a wood by a
man who went by the name of Polkovnik and he said we had to seize a
school in Beslan. They told us the order came from Maskhadov and
Basayev. When we asked Polkovnik why we had to do that he replied:
because we had to unleash war across the whole of the Caucasus.’

Nur-Pasha Kulayev’s elder brother Khan-Pasha, who apparently died in
the school, was also said to have been a bodyguard of Basayev.

The parents of the two brothers live in the village of Novy Engeloi
in southeastern Chechnya. They told IWPR that the first they knew
about their sons’ apparent involvement in the Beslan tragedy was when
they saw their younger son on television news saying that he had
taken part in the school seizure and heard that their eldest had been
killed in the siege.

The parents said that Khan-Pasha had been wounded in shooting in the
village in 2001 and went to hospital. There he was suspected of being
a fighter and they did not see him for another three months. When he
came back he had his arm amputated because of gangrene and he was
psychologically disturbed.

The official version of how Kulayev was detained is somewhat
different. In August 2001, the Interfax news agency reported that he
had been seized in the village of Kurchaloi as one of three men in a
group loyal to the Saudi-born fighter Khattab.

The last time the parents saw their two sons was at the end of August
when both men were living in the Ingush village of Malgobek and their
wives had gone to visit relatives in Chechnya.

However, in a statement that, if true, casts doubt on the official
version of events, neighbours in Malgobek firmly told IWPR that the
younger of the two, Nur-Pasha, had been at home in Malgobek on
September 1, when the school siege started. The neighbours did not
want to be quoted by name.

To confuse things further Basayev said in his statement that he had
recruited both brothers to `stand on guard’.

`Everything that the man who swore by Allah that he wanted to live
[in other words Nur-Pasha Kulayev on Russian television] is not
important,’ Basayev said. `I brought the Kulayev brothers and two of
their fellow-villagers into the group at the last minute to make up
numbers at half past four on August 31 and sent them into the
operation at eight o’clock. I personally knew only Khan-Pasha
Kulayev, whose right arm was missing.’

Similar confusion surrounds the involvement of Iznaur Kodzoyev, an
Ingush believed to have been in the group. His fellow-villagers in
the Ingush settlement of Kantyshevo said he was an extreme political
and religious radical. The Ingush interior ministry has linked him to
the June attack on Ingushetia. However, Iznaur’s cousin Aslan
Kodzoyev said he saw him in Kantyshevo on September 2, the second day
of the school siege.

Finally the identity has still not been fully confirmed of the Ingush
man known as `Magas’. At first, he was believed to be a man named
Magomed Yevloyev, but now the official Russian version is that he was
in fact a former 30-year-old Ingush policeman named Ali Taziev.

According to the Ingush prosecutor’s office in 1998, Taziev was
guarding Olga Uspenskaya, the wife of Valery Fateyev, an adviser to
the Ingush president. Uspenskaya, Taziev and one other bodyguard were
snatched by gunmen and held hostage. Uspenskaya herself was freed in
2000, but not the two guards. The body of one of them was later found
and buried and Taziev was generally believed also to have died a
heroic death.

Now the authorities say they believe Taziev is in fact the very same
`Magas’, who allegedly led the raid on Nazran in June and then took
part in the school seizure in Beslan.

In the village of Nasyr-Kort near Nazran, Taziev’s mother Lida has
been sick for two weeks. `Three years ago we were already afraid he
was dead,’ she told IWPR weeping. `We held a wake for him. He can’t
be this Magas. If he was alive he would have come home.’

The work of establishing the true identities of all the
hostage-takers in Beslan has evidently only just begun.

Timur Aliev is IWPR’s Chechnya coordinator. Aslanbek Dadayev works
for Radio Liberty in Chechnya. Ruslan Zhadayev is deputy editor of
the Chechenskoe Obshchestvo newspaper.