Turkey's war on PKK

Cem Uzun reports from Istanbul.

Turkey's invasion of Iraq is continuing, and PKK militants and Turkish soldiers, the sons of poor Turkish families, continue to die. The death toll is 150 and rising at the time of writing.

The fighting is in appalling conditions and scores of Turkish soldiers have been hospitalised with frostbite. No-one can know how many fighters and civilians have suffered the same fate on the “other” side.

Turkish media are filled with nationalistic propaganda. The familiar “precision strike” videos are accompanied by the funerals of the Turkish soldiers who have died, under headings like “Ibrahim was sent to heaven”.

US secretary of defense Robert Gates visited Ankara this week and asked, as did George Bush, that the invasion should be “short”.

The reply from Turkey's chief of the general staff, Buyukanit was, “Short is a relative term, it could mean a day and it could mean a year. We will withdraw when our job is done. How long have you been in Afghanistan?” At the time of writing some troops are returning from Iraq, but it does not look likely that the invasion is over.

Turkey's operations are being supported by instant satellite and electronic intelligence from the US. However, Turkey's invasion threatens to destabilise Northern Iraq into civil war, damaging US interests. The US is threatening to cut off the flow of intelligence if Turkey prolongs the invasion.

However, if the US does cut off intelligence, the Turkish Army will have an excuse for extending their stay to “complete their job”, claiming that without intelligence it will take longer. In this game of chess, people continue to die.

Meanwhile opposition is growing to the invasion inside Turkey. Turkey's Kurds have been protesting since day one. Parents of dead soldiers have started to question why their children have died, questioning army officers who turn up to the funerals about where the officers' own sons did their military service.

A significant turning point came on a live television game program called “Popstar Alaturka”. As part of the nationalistic propaganda campaign the program started with a minute's silence for the “martyrs”, as they are called, of the invasion.

At the end of the minute's silence, jury member and superstar singer (and transsexual) Bulent Ersoy, took the microphone and said, “I am not a mother, and I can never be a mother, but if I were a mother, I would not send my son to fight in someone else's war.”

There has been an instant lynch campaign against Bulent Ersoy and a mainstream media blackout on her replies to criticisms. The public prosecutor has taken out charges against her for “turning the people against the army”.

In a press conference the day after her television appearance, she defended her words, saying, (about the Kurdish problem) “If asking for a solution, rather than death, is a crime, then let them come and hang me right now.”

Now thousands of signatures are pouring into the “No to the military operations” campaign web site in support of Bulent Ersoy and calling for the prosecution of Ersoy to be stopped. The Turkish Human Rights Association and Turkey's Peace Parliament have also come out in support of Bulent Ersoy.

US sends the big guns

It seems the US have decided to send a battleship to sit off the Lebanese coast. The USS Cole, the ship that was almost sunk by Al-Qaeda, will support "democracy" by firing volleys of ballot boxes at Beirut.

Picture is of a big hole in the side of the USS Cole

Abbas: al-Qaeda in Gaza

According to The Times, al-Hayat, and other pro-Israeli rags, Al-Qaeda has set up shop in the Gaza Strip with the help of Hamas. Now call me an old cynic, but does this sound like the desperate ravings of a loser?

Here's The Times report:

Al-Qaeda militants have infiltrated the Palestinian territories with help from Hamas, according to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President.

The charges are the most serious yet in the war of words between Mr Abbas, who controls the West Bank, and Hamas, whose Islamist guerrillas expelled his Fatah-dominated security force from the Gaza Strip last summer.

“Al-Qaeda is present in Gaza and I’m convinced that they [Hamas] are their allies,” said Mr Abbas in an interview with al-Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. “I can say without doubt that al-Qaeda is present in the Palestinian territories and that this presence, especially in Gaza, is facilitated by Hamas.”

Bloodsuckers—number 768

"The US has been building defense hardware for two very different scenarios. One is regular warfare, with huge fleets of aircraft combating huge fleets of enemy aircraft, major tank battles, and navies fighting over all of the oceans.

"We are building equipment like the CVNs, nuclear submarines, the DDX destroyers, LCS ships for littoral warfare, a whole new Army designed around the concept of Future Combat Systems (FSC), the F-22 and the JSF for the Air Force.

"However, we are not fighting that kind of war at this time. What we are fighting now is irregular warfare, like the war in Iraq and the war Israel just recently fought in Lebanon. Snipers, IEDs, booby traps, and house-to-house fighting with an often unidentified enemy are the hallmarks of irregular warfare.

"To fight this kind of war effectively you need unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs), robots, IED countermeasures, sensors, and networking of communications."

Myron Levy, cahirman of Herley Industries, addressing stockholders at the company's annual stockholders' meeting.

"And the innocent pay the price"

A clip from Al-Jazeera's documentary of the civil war shows the fickle nature of the Lebanese political class. They describe the battle of the mountains in the early 1980s.

Elias Attallah (the leftwing military commander, now an M14 coalition MP), Walid Jumblat (then appealing for Syrian intevention in his battle with the Lebanese Forces‚ now an ally of the LF) and the former head of the Communist Party, George Hawi, (a key pro Syrian figure during the war, who was then assassinated by Syria).

The only consistant element to all of this is the final statement, "And the innocent pay the price".

Price of bread

Robert Worth of The New York Times reports on the cycle of inflation and protest sweeping across the Middle East:

Even as it enriches Arab rulers, the recent oil-price boom is helping to fuel an extraordinary rise in the cost of food and other basic goods that is squeezing this region’s middle class and setting off strikes, demonstrations and occasional riots from Morocco to the Persian Gulf.

In Jordan, the cost of maintaining fuel subsidies amid the surge in prices forced the government to remove almost all the subsidies this month, sending the price of some fuels up 76 percent overnight. In a devastating domino effect, the cost of basic foods like eggs, potatoes and cucumbers doubled or more.

In Saudi Arabia, where inflation had been virtually zero for a decade, it recently reached an official level of 6.5 percent, though unofficial estimates put it much higher. Public protests and boycotts have followed, and 19 prominent clerics posted an unusual statement on the Internet in December warning of a crisis that would cause “theft, cheating, armed robbery and resentment between rich and poor.”

In a few places the price increases have led to violence. In Yemen, prices for bread and other foods have nearly doubled in the past four months, setting off a string of demonstrations and riots in which at least a dozen people were killed.

In Morocco, 34 people were sentenced to prison on Wednesday for participating in riots over food prices, the Moroccan state news service reported. Even tightly controlled Jordan has had nonviolent demonstrations and strikes.

In Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, inflation is in the double digits, and foreign workers, who constitute a vast majority of the work force, have gone on strike in recent months because of the declining purchasing power of the money they send home.

The workers are paid in currencies that are pegged to the dollar, and the value of their salaries—translated into Indian rupees and other currencies—has dropped significantly.

Picture: Workers in Egypt demand a rise in the minimum wage. Photo by Mohamed Abul Dahab

Still missing

Mariam Saidi spends her days creating clay busts of her beloved son who vanished without a trace 26 years ago, aged only 16, in the midst of the savage civil war which tore through Lebanon.

Maher had joined the fight against Israeli forces who entered Lebanon and on June 17, 1982, he was barricaded in a science university building alongside other communist party fighters.

The building was attacked by Israeli troops, backed by Lebanese Christian militants and her son was captured.

"They were arrested and transported to a jail controlled by Lebanese forces. Since then, I have heard nothing."

"The Lebanese government is not interested in discovering his fate because many of the people implicated in these disappearances, both government and opposition people, now have senior jobs," she said, adding her son may have been transferred to an Israeli prison.

Snazis vs Nazis

According to Press TV the right wing (pro-Syrian) Syrian Social National Party clashed with the right-wing (whoever pays them) Lebanese Forces in the Koura region (the old frontline between the two):

"Overnight clashes between Samir Geagea's Lebanese Forces and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party have wounded six people in north Lebanon.

"The clash with sticks in the town of Deddeh in the northern Koura province soon turned into exchanges of gunfire that left six people wounded, security sources said Sunday.

"Lebanese army troops and policemen stepped in and contained the fight."

BUT its OK because the economy grew 3 percent last year! And there we all were thinking the country was on the edge of an abyss.

Towards war

"Are we heading towards civil war? In some ways, we've already reached that point," said a businessman who belonged to one of the Christian militias during the war and asked not to be named. "It remains to be seen what form it takes."

The film footage shows the form it will take.

Kuwaitis close shop

According to the AFP: The Kuwaiti embassy in Beirut was evacuated on Thursday after an anonymous threat of a rocket attack, the latest scare in Lebanon as foreign governments act on security amid mounting political and sectarian tensions.

"An unknown man called me and said 'I'm going to fire two rockets at the embassy and destroy it over your heads', then he hung up," embassy charge d'affaires Tareq al-Hamad told AFP. "He didn't give the motive for his threats."

Could it be the country's:
support for the US in its invasion of Iraq;
role in the murder of Hizbollah military leader;
backing for the M14 cabal that rule Lebanon;
or, all of the above?

The picture is of the Lebanese army rushing to defend the embassy in south Beirut

Gaza border still open

An Israeli website reports:

Egypt will not allow the Gaza Strip to remain sealed, Egypt's ambassador to the United States said.

"You cannot punish the people of Gaza if you happen to differ with those who control Gaza," Nabil Fahmy said Feb. 15, addressing the Palestine Center, a Washington think tank. "We in Egypt will not support the starvation of the Palestinian people."

Fahmy suggested that Egypt will continue to allow supplies to reach Gaza through the border it shares at Rafah. However, Egypt is working with Israel, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, the European Union and the United States in efforts to fully open the Rafah border and, if possible, the crossings Gaza shares with Israel. He said Egypt favors allowing P.A. personnel to man the borders.

Iraqi Refugees

It might seem churlish not to give credit to the government's decision to ease the plight of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon—although it doesn't go far enough. According to the Financial Times:

The authorities will soon release hundreds of Iraqis who had been detained because they are in the country illegally, said the regional director of UNHCR, Stephane Jaquemet. The UNHCR and Caritas, the Catholic aid organisation, will help them, as well as tens of thousands of other illegal Iraqi refugees, to regularise their status during a three-month grace period.

But the measures stop short of giving Iraqis special residence permits. Najla Chahda, director of Caritas’ Migrant Centre in Beirut, said that the release and the grace period offered Iraqi refugees, “a chance to feel a bit more comfortable”. She said it was the best they could hope for as long as Lebanon wasn’t prepared to offer special status for refugees.

The UNHCR will give financial assistance and try to help the refugees find employers to sponsor their presence in the country. “My main concern is that many employers will not want to get involved in this,” said Mr Jaquemet. The estimated 400 detainees that are to be released will be given priority.

Lebanon hosts an estimated 50,000 Iraqi refugees, some 80 per cent of whom are thought to be in the country illegally. The number pales in comparison to neighbouring Syria, where estimates go as high as 1.5 million refugees. Most of the Iraqis in Lebanon have illegally crossed the porous border from Syria.

Saudis in a panic

APs Hussein Dakroub writes an interesting piece, Saudi Warnings Mark Lebanon Jitters. The clue is in the last para:

Saudi Arabia is warning its citizens against traveling to Lebanon, the U.S. Embassy is urging Americans to be vigilant and French cultural centers in two major Lebanese cities have temporarily closed.

Lebanon's intractable political crisis is no longer business as usual — not after the slaying last week of a top fugitive Hezbollah commander, Imad Mughniyeh

The Saudi advisory, issued Monday, was clearly prompted by Mughniyeh's Feb. 12 killing in a car bombing in Syria and Hezbollah's subsequent retaliation threat.

"There is a real Saudi fear ... that the entire region might slide into chaos if Nasrallah carried out his threat to retaliate," said Edmond Saab, executive editor of Lebanon's leading newspaper, An-Nahar.

Although the move can be seen as "a precautionary measure to protect Saudi citizens, it is a signal that the region faces threat of chaos starting from Lebanon," Saab told The Associated Press.

The Saudi warning — which was open-ended — is especially significant because the oil-rich kingdom is a major financial supporter of Lebanon, and Saudis make up a large segment of the 1 million tourists who visit annually.

In the cities of Sidon in the south and Tripoli in the north, two French cultural centers have been closed until the end of the month. The U.S. Embassy restricted its personnel around the Feb. 14 anniversary and has been telling Americans here in recent advisories to exercise caution because of security conditions.

Saudi Arabia, the United States and France have been major backers of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora in Lebanon's 15-month crisis, which has been compounded by the failure of rival parliament factions to elect a president since November, when President Emile Lahoud's term expired.

Agri-crisis

Lebanon Food Drink Report paints a bleak picture of structural problems in the agricultural industry:

Much of 2006's harvest was left to rot in the fields, as the bombing campaign forced farmers to abandon their crops. It was near impossible to transport what has been harvested due to the extensive road damage.

This coincided with the peak harvest time for export crops such as fruits and potatoes, therefore robbing many farmers of an important source of income. The presence of tens of thousands of unexploded cluster bombs meant that many farmers have been too scared to enter their fields, particularly after a series of deaths and maimings from these bombs.

Agriculture accounts for almost 70% of total household income in southern Lebanon, and according to the FAO estimates, 25% of cultivated land in the south has been rendered useless until the unexploded bombs can be removed.

Due to this lack of income, many farmers have fallen into debt.

Despite the fact that the agro-food industry employs 25% of Lebanons private-sector wage earners, the industry suffers from a chronic dearth of qualified labour.

Nahr el-Bared

What is wrong with this statement from UNRWA's Karen Abu Zayd?

“We will not only reconstruct the old camp, but also make it a better environment in which our architectural plans ensure that people have access to daylight no matter where they live; there will be ventilation where there was no ventilation before; and we will create open spaces for the benefit of the population, especially the children, while also keeping in mind the legitimate security concerns of the Lebanese army and government.”

Yup its the last part "open spaces" for the children, and err… the "legitimate security concerns of the Lebanese army."

Couched in the happy sounding "space and light" is that the camp will be rebuilt so that it cannot be defended by Palestinians. Refugee camps are built with narrow alleys to help its defenders, so the open spaces will give the advantage to besiegers, whether the army, the Lebanese Froces or other militias.

Assassin strikes resistance leader

Imad Mughniyeh, a major militant figure wanted by the US for his suspected role in the 1983 bombing of US barracks in Beirut, was killed in a car bomb.

The AP news agency has the story.

The attack on the barracks was an audacious act that rescued Lebanon from a prolonged US and French military occupation—and delayed a resurgent US imperialism for at least a decade. There will be reams of editorials on the death of a "master terrorist", but Sursock has no doubt that history will judge Mughniyeh as a patriot and a fighter.

Homeless in Cairo

There are an estimated half a million street children in Egypt. Many of them are in precarious situation and face violence on the streets. This video short looks at the lives of 10-year-old Sayyida, who’s been living rough for at least two years, and single mother Fatma. While they can go to a drop-in centre to get food in the daytime, they face an array of hazards at night in an increasingly hostile environment on the streets.

This video short highlights the dangers faced by people living on Cairo’s streets in a country of some 80 million people bursting at the seams.

Jumblat rant—number 768

More rants from the looney tunes of Lebanese politics. According to the Daily Star Walid Jumblat told a rally of his [not] Progressive [nor] Socialist [or even a] Party rally: "If you want chaos, we welcome chaos. If you want war, we welcome war. We have no problem with weapons and no problem with rockets, we can take the rockets from you. We may have to burn everything, but our existence, our honor, our survival and Lebanon are more important."

Just ot show that Jumblat wasn't messing his militia then opened fire randomly on the local headquarters of the rival Lebanese Democratic Party in Aley, a town outside Beirut.

Meanwhile word from Beirut is that the March 14 cabal have been running around firing guns in the air as a way of inspiring people to mark the anniversary of the assassination of Rafiq Hariri—what's wrong with handing out flyers?