From IWPR:
Georgians, Armenians Bemoan Border Restrictions
Villagers on both sides of the Armenian-Georgian border say new controls are ruining their lives.
By Naira Bulghadarian in Dzyunashogh, and Marika Tsikoridze in Irganchai CRS Number 478, 2009-01-30Dzyunashogh and Irganchai, villages in Armenia and Georgia respectively, are only three kilometres apart, and have always been perfectly suited for trade. Dzyunashogh produces meat, hay and dairy products, while Irganchai can sell fruits, flour and vegetables.
But business between the border villages has been dealt a blow by new rules to prevent smuggling, which mean that villagers must make a 200-kilometre round trip to see their neighbours.
The Armenian and Georgian government finally starting enforcing border controls between the two villages around 18 months ago, more than 16 years after they won independence. They say that the tougher border policing is necessary to ensure national security, but the two villages’ very existences are threatened as a result.
“Imagine, now I will have to go about 100 km instead of 3 km,” said Sashik Grigorian, a 54-year-old resident of Dzyunashogh, as he sat with his wife Angin.
“The authorities thought that big money was being made here, but these few boxes of fruit were only coming to us.”
It has been two years since the Grigorians last planted a large potato crop, as they no longer have anyone to trade with.
“We sold them milk, cheese, butter, meat, wool, potatoes,” said Angin Grigorian nostalgically in words echoed across the border in Irganchai by Selim Osmunov, whose home was almost visible from where the Grigorians sat but which was no longer approachable.
“We took them fruit, vegetables, flour, even clothes and other goods,” he remembered.
“We have no roads, no water, and nearby is the Armenian border. God prevent us getting sick of this life, or our village will slowly empty. Life in Irganchai is a very difficult business, and it’s no accident that they say Georgia starts and ends with Irganchai. We are the gatekeepers of this country, we are right on the border.”
Officials say they sympathise with the villagers, but point out that there are already three official border crossings between the two post-Soviet republics, and that the area between the villages is environmentally protected, meaning that a regular crossing point cannot be built there.
“The process of delineating the borders helps to secure state security. This demarcation process happens in all countries, independent of whether the neighbouring country is friendly or not,” said Tigran Balaian, spokesman for the Armenian foreign ministry.
“The villagers from Dzyunashogh can trade and talk with their neighbours, but only if they cross the state border legally.”
But villagers in Irganchai say the roads connecting them to other places in Georgia are so bad that they are effectively now cut off for much of the year.
“In winter our village is isolated from the rest of Georgia. There is just one road to the regional centre, and that’s destroyed. Before we went to Tbilisi by going through part of Armenia, it was quicker. And now we can’t even put our noses across the border,” said Yakir Khalidov, a vet with 20 years experience and who once treated animals in both villages.
And it is not only medical care that animals are now lacking. The border has also shattered the agricultural balance in the region.
“Our livestock is used to going to pastures over there. Now if our cows go over to that side then the Armenian border guards arrest them and don’t give them back,” said Safir Valiev, one of Khalidov’s neighbours in Irganchai.
“Hungry animals go where the food is. How can a cow know where there is a border, and where there isn’t?”
The problem works in reverse for the Armenian village, where suddenly they have no one to help with the hay harvest.
“In the harvest season our village used to be full of them,” said Borik Ghevondian, who used to let villagers from Georgia cut his hay in return for half of the crop.
Now he is forced to cut the nine hectares on his own, spending money on a tractor and fuel to get the work done on time. And he has been left 300 US dollars out of pocket by his inability to regain a loan he gave to some of his neighbours across the border.
“I can’t imagine how to get the money I lent them,” he said.
The head of the village administration in Dzyunashogh said the numbers show people are now steadily leaving their homes in search of a better life elsewhere in Armenia. In 2005, before the trade had been cut off, there were 91 farmers and 285 families. In the next three years, the number of farmers fell by 16, while 48 people left the village.
Khachik Vardanian was one of the top salesmen in Dzyunashogh, but has lost his trading contacts with counterparts across the border. He used to grow 10-15 tonnes of potato per year and then exchange them for flour, oats and wheat. “I told my partners in Irganchai about the products I needed and they brought them at a low price,” he said.
Villagers in Dzyunashogh even used the services of Georgian mobile operators to communicate with their neighbours in Irganchai at a low cost.
Khachik still calls his neighbours but now he can't take and send orders any more. “I don’t want to smuggle,” he said.
Naira Bulghadarian is a correspondent with Armenianow online, in Vanadzor, Armenia. Marika Tsikoridze is a correspondent of Timer newspaper, which is published with support from IWPR in Georgia’s Kvemo Kartli region.
See the original article post on the IWPR website.
Just when you thought you nothing could be stupider than sea kittens, we have gothic kittens.
See here for the Associated Press article.
More from the stranger than fiction department:
Save The Sea Kittens from PETA
Sea kittens, it turns out, are PETA's new cuddly word for fish.
Here is the Economist article that broke the story.
Chatham House, an organization that sponsors open, free, and anonymous discussionsm, recently published the proceedings of its seminar on the Russian-Georgian war.
If your going to read one document about this conflict, this should be it:
Whither Georgia: The Impact of Russian Actions since August 2008
Here is an explanation of the Chatham House Rule (of anonymity) and here is the Chatham House FAQ.
From Stratfor:
Israel is now in the 12th day of carrying out Operation Cast Lead against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has been the de facto ruler ever since it seized control of the territory in a June 2007 coup. The Israeli campaign, whose primary military aim is to neutralize Hamas’ ability to carry out rocket attacks against Israel, has led to the reported deaths of more than 560 Palestinians; the number of wounded is approaching the 3,000 mark.
The reaction from the Arab world has been mixed. On the one hand, a look at the so-called Arab street will reveal an angry scene of chanting protesters, burning flags and embassy attacks in protest of Israel’s actions. The principal Arab regimes, however, have either kept quiet or publicly condemned Hamas for the crisis — while privately often expressing their support for Israel’s bid to weaken the radical Palestinian group.
Despite the much-hyped Arab nationalist solidarity often cited in the name of Palestine, most Arab regimes actually have little love for the Palestinians. While these countries like keeping the Palestinian issue alive for domestic consumption and as a tool to pressure Israel and the West when the need arises, in actuality, they tend to view Palestinian refugees — and more Palestinian radical groups like Hamas — as a threat to the stability of their regimes.
One such Arab country is Saudi Arabia. Given its financial power and its shared religious underpinnings with Hamas, Riyadh traditionally has backed the radical Palestinian group. The kingdom backed a variety of Islamist political forces during the 1960s and 1970s in a bid to undercut secular Nasserite Arab nationalist forces, which threatened Saudi Arabia’s regional status. But 9/11, which stemmed in part from Saudi support for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, opened Riyadh’s eyes to the danger of supporting militant Islamism.
Thus, while Saudi Arabia continued to support many of the same Palestinian groups, it also started whistling a more moderate tune in its domestic and foreign policies. As part of this moderate drive, in 2002 King Abdullah offered Israel a comprehensive peace treaty whereby Arab states would normalize ties with the Jewish state in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal to its 1967 borders. Though Israel rejected the offer, the proposal itself clearly conflicted with Hamas’ manifesto, which calls for Israel’s destruction. The post-9/11 world also created new problems for one of Hamas’ sources of regular funding — wealthy Gulf Arabs — who grew increasingly wary of turning up on the radars of Western security and intelligence agencies as fund transfers from the Gulf came under closer scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Egypt, which regularly mediates Hamas-Israel and Hamas-Fatah matters, thus far has been the most vocal in its opposition to Hamas during the latest Israeli military offensive. Cairo has even gone as far as blaming Hamas for provoking the conflict. Though Egypt’s stance has earned it a number of attacks on its embassies in the Arab world and condemnations in major Arab editorial pages, Cairo has a core strategic interest in ensuring that Hamas remains boxed in. The secular government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is already preparing for a shaky leadership transition, which is bound to be exploited by the country’s largest opposition movement, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
The MB, from which Hamas emerged, maintains links with the Hamas leadership. Egypt’s powerful security apparatus has kept the MB in check, but the Egyptian group has steadily built up support among Egypt’s lower and middle classes, which have grown disillusioned with the soaring rate of unemployment and lack of economic prospects in Egypt. The sight of Muslim Brotherhood activists leading protests in Egypt in the name of Hamas is thus quite disconcerting for the Mubarak regime. The Egyptians also are fearful that Gaza could become a haven for Salafist jihadist groups that could collaborate with Egypt’s own jihadist node the longer Gaza remains in disarray under Hamas rule.
Of the Arab states, Jordan has the most to lose from a group like Hamas. More than three-fourths of the Hashemite monarchy’s people claim Palestinian origins. The kingdom itself is a weak, poor state that historically has relied on the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States for its survival. Among all Arab governments, Amman has had the longest and closest relationship with Israel — even before it concluded a formal peace treaty with Israel in 1994. In 1970, Jordan waged war against Fatah when the group posed a threat to the kingdom’s security; it also threw out Hamas in 1999 after fears that the group posed a similar threat to the stability of the kingdom. Like Egypt, Jordan also has a vibrant MB, which has closer ties to Hamas than its Egyptian counterpart. As far as Amman is concerned, therefore, the harder Israel hits Hamas, the better.
Finally, Syria is in a more complex position than these other four Arab states. The Alawite-Baathist regime in Syria has long been a pariah in the Arab world because of its support for Shiite Iran and for their mutual militant proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. But ever since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Syrians have been charting a different course, looking for ways to break free from diplomatic isolation and to reach some sort of understanding with the Israelis.
For the Syrians, support for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and several other radical Palestinian outfits provides tools of leverage to use in negotiating a settlement with Israel. Any deal between the Syrians and the Israelis would thus involve Damascus sacrificing militant proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas in return for key concessions in Lebanon — where Syria’s core geopolitical interests lie — and in the disputed Golan Heights. While the Israeli-Syrian peace talks remain in flux, Syria’s lukewarm reaction to the Israeli offensive and restraint (thus far) from criticizing the more moderate Arab regimes’ lack of response suggests Damascus may be looking to exploit the Gaza offensive to improve its relations in the Arab world and reinvigorate its talks with Israel. And the more da mage Israel does to Hamas now, the easier it will be for Damascus to crack down on Hamas should the need arise.
With Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Syria taking into account their own interests when dealing with the Palestinians, ironically, the most reliable patron Sunni Hamas has had in recent years is Iran, the Sunni Arab world’s principal Shiite rival. Several key developments have made Hamas’ gradual shift toward Iran possible:
- Saudi Arabia’s post-9/11 move into the moderate camp — previously dominated by Egypt and Jordan, two states that have diplomatic relations with Israel.
- The collapse of Baathist Iraq and the resulting rise of Shiite power in the region.
- The 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections that put Iran’s ultraconservatives in power and the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose public anti-Israeli views resonated with Hamas at a time when other Arab states had grown more moderate.
- The 2006 Palestinian elections, in which Hamas defeated its secular rival, Fatah, by a landslide. When endowed with the responsibility of running an unrecognized government, Hamas floundered between its goals of dominating the Palestinian political landscape and continuing to call for the destruction of Israel and the creation of an Islamist state. The Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, had hoped that the electoral victory would lead Hamas to moderate its stance, but Iran encouraged Hamas to adhere to its radical agenda. As the West increasingly isolated the Hamas-led government, the group shifted more toward the Iranian position, which more closely meshed with its original mandate.
- The 2006 summer military confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel, in which Iranian-backed Hezbollah symbolically defeated the Jewish state. Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the Israeli military onslaught gave confidence to Hamas that it could emulate the Lebanese Shiite movement — which, like Hamas, was both a political party and an armed paramilitary organization. Similar to their reaction to the current Gaza offensive, the principal Arab states condemned Hezbollah for provoking Israel and grew terrified at the outpouring of support for the Shiite militant group from their own populations. Hezbollah-Hamas collaboration in training, arms-procurement and funding intensified, and almost certainly has played a decisive role in equipping Hamas with 122mm BM-21 Grad artillery rockets and larger Iranian-made 240mm Fajr-3 rockets — and potentially even a modest anti-armor capability.
- The June 2007 Hamas coup against Fatah in the Gaza Strip, which caused a serious strain in relations between Egypt and Hamas. The resulting blockade on Gaza put Egypt in an extremely uncomfortable position, in which it had to crack down on the Gaza border, thus giving the MB an excuse to rally opposition against Cairo. Egypt was already uncomfortable with Hamas’ electoral victory, but it could not tolerate the group’s emergence as the unchallenged power in Gaza.
- Syria’s decision to go public with peace talks with Israel. As soon as it became clear that Syria was getting serious about such negotiations, alarm bells went off within groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which now had to deal with the fear that Damascus could sell them out at any time as part of a deal with the Israelis.
Hamas’ relations with the Arab states already were souring; its warming relationship with Iran has proved the coup de grace. Mubarak said it best when he recently remarked that the situation in the Gaza Strip “has led to Egypt, in practice, having a border with Iran.” In other words, Hamas has allowed Iranian influence to come far too close for the Arab states’ comfort.
In many ways, the falling-out between Hamas and the Arab regimes is not surprising. The decline of Nasserism in the late 1960s essentially meant the death of Arab nationalism. Even before then, the Arab states put their respective national interests ahead of any devotion to pan-Arab nationalism that would have translated into support for the Palestinian cause. As Islamism gradually came to replace Arab nationalism as a political force throughout the region, the Arab regimes became even more concerned about stability at home, given the very real threat of a religious challenge to their rule. While these states worked to suppress radical Islamist elements that had taken root in their countries, the Arab governments caught wind of Tehran’s attempts to adopt the region’s radical Islamist trend to create a geopolitical space for Iran in the Arab Middle East. As a result, the Arab-Persian struggle became one of the key drivers that has turned the Arab states against Hamas.
For each of these Arab states, Hamas represents a force that could stir the social pot at home — either by creating a backlash against the regimes for their ties to Israel and their perceived failure to aid the Palestinians, or by emboldening democratic Islamist movements in the region that could threaten the stability of both republican regimes and monarchies. With somewhat limited options to contain Iranian expansion in the region, the Arab states ironically are looking to Israel to ensure that Hamas remains boxed in. So, while on the surface it may seem that the entire Arab world is convulsing with anger at Israel’s offensive against Hamas, a closer look reveals that the view from the Arab palace is quite different from the view on the Arab street.
See the original article on the Stratfor website.
"Könnten Sie bitte etwas langsamer schießen? Ich bin Ausländer..."
Вот перевод: Вы можете пожалуйста помедленнее стрелять? Я иностранец...
Here's the translation: Could you please shoot a bit slower? I'm a foreigner here...
Update: here's the original source: ВАСИСДАС-2. Nicht schießen!
Khatia, at The Voice Of Colors had this to say about the Gaza conflict: Birthplace Of Jesus - Holy Place For Muslims As Well For Christians.
Typical humanitarianism (and a pretty strange post title too).
First of all the Palestinians are not vanishing, as she put's it, they are growing in numbers, far faster than the Israelis are. Essentially, unless something unexpected happens, the Palestinians will win this conflict, just by waiting a hundred years or so.
And come to think of it, this is a warning to any group who has a high standard of living, next to a group which has a low standard of living (and it's often the case that the low standard of living is caused by the group with the high standard of living): high standards of living lead to low birthrates, low standards of living lead to high birthrates. Be careful. You'd think this wouldn't be lost on a people with as long a history as the Jews, but surprises are everywhere in this world.
Anyway, of course what's going on in Gaza is all Hamas' fault. No state sits back and lets rockets land on it's cities for long. And it's just like in the Georgian war: nowhere is it written that in a war you respond proportionally. War is the antithesis of proportionality. In war (civilian targets and war crimes excluded of course) you try to damage your opponent maximally while suffering losses as minimal as possible. Small weak states must think about this when starting wars with large or powerful states.
It doesn't make any difrence how ineffective the rockets are and how effective the Israeli IDF is: no state in the world doesn't attack its neighbor because the neighbor is weak!
If Hamas doesn't have the sense to make peace with Israel, I hardly think it's fair to reward its stupidity by defending it. Nobody should condemn what Israel is doing in Gaza louder than they were complaining about Hamas' rockets before this latest round started.
An editorial in an Egyptian (Egyptian!) newspaper said it best: if you can't kill the tiger, don't pull its tail. Good for the Egyptians: I guess they've learned their lesson.
P.S. Here's the real question: where the hell is Iran and Hezbollah? I would have thought that a few days after this started, Lebanon (ignore their irrelevant government, the real player in Lebanon is Hezbollah) would have tapped Israel on the shoulder and asked it what's going on (sort of the way Godzilla would have, having come home and having seen you beating it's kid sister up). But it's not happened! What's going on?
Marika Eva posted this charming example of Soviet anti American propaganda (original link here):
Well, I don't know if this is supposed to outrage me or not, but it's not much compared to what we were churning out at the time.
If you want to see what we were printing, check out what the Catholic Guild was publishing in the US for children: This Godless Communism.
Here's a few frames, in case your too lazy to click on the link:
