From Diyarbikkir to Lalish: Walking in the Footsteps of Genocide

“That evening, I found myself exhausted both physically and mentally. But there was one place I still had to visit, an old pedestrian bridge that I describe in my novel.  I thought I would spend some quiet time there, but a wedding was being celebrated on the bridge’s top. The ten- arched bridge, “On Guzlu Copry,” was built by the bishop of Diyarbakkir, Yohanna Z’oro, late in the 4th century, so his parish could cross to the other bank of the Tigris and access the Church of 40 Martyrs. I found to my surprise — and dismay — that a plaque placed on the side of the bridge when it was renovated in 2010 claimed it as the first “Islamic” bridge in Anatolia!”

…learn, learn, learn…

ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY

Iraqi novelist Layla Qasrany traveled to Turkey to commemorate the Armenian genocide and visit sites that had appeared in her most recent novel. A side-trip into northern Iraq, where she visited a Yazidi shrine, brought depressing and hopeful news of ISIS:

By Layla Qasrany

Diyarbakir, Turkey

Diarbakýr, Turkey

We say in Arabic that there are five benefits to travel. No one seems to know just what these are, but I derived many benefits from a trip I took recently. The journey began with my arrival in southern Turkey to attend the commemoration of the centennial of the Armenian genocide, in which we paid tribute to the million-plus souls deported from Diyarbakkir who consequently died in the desert of Syria.  One benefit was that I got to walk in the path of the caravan I depicted in my latest Arabic novel.

The first thing I did on the 23rd of April was…

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European Democracy must protect itself from its own suicidal naivety.

They haven’t understood a thing. The hundreds of thousands of patriots (that is what they call themselves), the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West ―PEGIDA―, haven’t understood a thing.

I mention them because they are the latest fashion in Germany where they have gathered tens of thousands of protestors in just a few months. But we could also be talking about France’s National Front or, simply, of the wave of comments you will find if you peek into any Spanish internet forum where the words ‘immigration’ or ‘Islam’ are mentioned.

Regrettably, those who rush to the street in counter-protests, normally backed (at least in statements) by the governments, demanding the respect, tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, have understood even less.

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Respecting the cannibals.

(…) Because for Europeans, all Islam which is not directly assassinating is “moderate”. It can be as violent as it desires: predicate the mandatory veil for women, half-way or complete; say that women and men should not touch each other; that girls should not learn music; that being gay is bad for health; that all literary or humoristic work which questions the ‘sacred’ must be forbidden; that Koran laws are immutable, divine and must be above each country’s legislation…
An Islamic preacher can say all this and more and will be courted by ministers and presidents which will line up to debate with this ‘moderate Islam’ spokesperson. Many of these preachers would have been thrown into jail in Morocco or Syria for their hate-inspiring discourse, but Europe offered them not only asylum but a tribune, a debate, the position of president of the official Muslims council, the title of Honorary Gentleman and the Queens’ Order.

Yes: Europe has promoted, I don’t know if aware of it or blindly, but in an active and continuous way, a criminal way, the most extreme currents of Islam, financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and their neighbors thanks to the oil tide. From the government elites to the last mayor, the imams, theologians and preachers have been raised to the rank of representatives of the collectives of Maghrebi, Turkish or Pakistani origins. A rank they never had in their countries of origin, a power which they could only acquire thanks to the complicity of European administrations. By a double path: electing them as representatives and by eliminating any alternative ways these collectives may have had for expressing themselves. (…)

I CAN ONLY AGREE.

The whole world says it: Turkey… J’accuse!

Is Turkey collaborating with the Islamic State (ISIS)? Allegations range from military cooperation and weapons transfers to logistical support, financial assistance, and the provision of medical services. It is also alleged that Turkey turned a blind eye to ISIS attacks against Kobani.President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly deny complicity with ISIS. Erdogan visited the Council on Foreign Relations on September 22, 2014. He criticized “smear campaigns [and] attempts to distort perception about us.” Erdogan decried, “A systematic attack on Turkey’s international reputation, “complaining that “Turkey has been subject to very unjust and ill-intentioned news items from media organizations.” Erdogan posited: “My request from our friends in the United States is to make your assessment about Turkey by basing your information on objective sources.”Columbia University’s Program on Peace-building and Rights assigned a team of researchers in the United States, Europe, and Turkey to examine Turkish and international media, assessing the credibility of allegations. This report draws on a variety of international sources — The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, as well as Turkish sources, CNN Turk, Hurriyet Daily News, Taraf, Cumhuriyet, and Radikal among others.

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Research Paper: ISIS-Turkey List | David L. Phillips.

Turkey, ….and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, ….even US and Israel have allowed this evil to grow, in certain moments.

And the worst is Arabs and Muslims themselves doing nothing …because “it’s a CIA/Israeli creation” (¡¡¿¿??!!)

… damn myopic generation of spiritually retarded degenerates.

“Everywhere you see houses and churches on fire”

The year is 2015. It has now been exactly 100 years since the genocide took place. The perpetrators and most of the victims are gone. The Turks and Kurds of today are not the ones guilty of genocide but a process of reconciliation has not occurred.

Some Kurdish leaders and organizations have recognized Kurdish clans’ involvement in the massacre but from the Turkish side there is only silence. It hurts in your heart. But not only the cruel massacres and the holocaust on the Christians; not only did you see your entire family and your relatives killed, thousands of villages being emptied of its indigenous people and your entire history annihilated, but today they say that it never happened. It hurts within you. You can still feel the smell. The process of extermination against you is continued today, 100 years later.

Far from all Turks and Kurds were responsible for the massacre. There are examples of Turkish, Kurdish and Arab families who adopted children or protected persecuted, to save them from a sure death. There are documented cases where governors refused to follow government orders of the massacres. There are also examples of Kurds who protected Christian villages against other Kurds.

The night of April 24, 1915, the first phase of the genocide began when 250 Armenian doctors, lawyers, politicians, government officials, teachers, writers, poets and other intellectuals who could become the core of a future resistance, were arrested overnight and executed within 72 hours. Therefore April 24 is counted as the start of the genocide.

The genocide that destroyed over two million Christians and that emptied the Syriac village of Kerburan, twice. The night is still your friend. For the night is when you still hear your mother’s voice, calling your beautiful name.

The year is 2015, but a part of me died in 1915.

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Reliving the Armenian genocide: “Everywhere you see houses and churches on fire” – Your Middle East.

Armenian women crucified by Kurdish clans in Deir-El-Zor, 1915… but at least they have acknowledged their role in the hell experienced by Armenians 100 years ago. 

Kurdistan… why…. or why not?… and how… and how not?

In respect to regaining the Kurdish Homeland, ISIS / DA’ESH was a gift from heaven as the Kurds are now controlling everything what is rightfully theirs and what the Arabs would never ever have given them. The main reason why the disputed territory question was never resolved is:

The Arabs, the Assyrians and the Turkomans are utterly terrified by the idea to belong to Kurdistan. They fear the Kurds would discriminate against them (which is not so off if you consider that the KDP-part of Iraqi Kurdistan failed to properly protect the Christians, Yezidis and other religious minorities when the Islamic State attacked Kurdistan).

Now that most of the disputed territories are in Kurdish hands, the Kurds are in a much better negotiating position. In the meantime the Iraqi Kurds need to show that the actually mean when they say they are the natural protector of ethno- & religious minorities.

In this respect the Iraqi Kurds can learn from Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) how to govern the newly conquered Disputed Territories, as PYD leaders have worked to create a system of inclusion that works to preserve the diversity of Syrian Kurdistan and maintain a spirit of tolerance in Rojava and Syria. This is why the PYD has reached out to the Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, and Turkoman communities of Syrian Kurdistan to also represent their interests and to be their movement too.

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Why should Kurdistan become an independent country?

Quora

This is a deffinitely interesting answer… worth reading, in my opinion.

This said, with all the limitations and reserves that prudence advices…  I wish some day they have their place to live in safety and prosperity, same as every other people.

Biji Kurdistan!

Daesh Caliphate: The irresistible attraction to the abyss…

Adèle, the fifteen-year-old daughter of a professional couple in Paris who joins Jabhat al-Nusra after an online conversion by her handler “Brother Mustafa.” In a farewell note to her mother she leaves behind, Adèle writes:

My own darling Mamaman (Mamaman à moi)

…Its because I love you that that I have gone.

When you read these lines I’ll be far away.

I will be in the Promised Land, the Sham, in safe hands.

Because its there that I have to die to go to Paradise.

… I have been chosen and I have been guided.

And I know what you do not know: we’re all going to die,

punished by the wrath of God.

It’s the end of the world, Mamaman.

There is too much misery, too much injustice…

And everyone will end up in hell.

Except for those who have fought with the last Imam in the Sham,

Except for us.

Adèle’s family does not know exactly how she first became drawn to Islam. But as with so many other young recruits from Europe, the Internet seems to have played a crucial part. On Adèle’s computer, they discover pictures of her in a black niqab, as well as a record of her online conversion and rapid indoctrination by Brother Mustapha, in a hidden Facebook account in which she calls herself Oum Hawwa (“Mother of Eve”).

Her conversion appears to have been influenced by the sudden death of Cathy, her much-loved aunt, from an aneurysm at the age of forty. In the Facebook dialogue, Mustapha consoles her about her loss and asks: “Have you reflected on what I explained?”

“Yes, thanks be to God, my spirit is clearer. God called aunt Cathy back to bring me closer to Him. He did this so I would see the Signs that the ignorant don’t hear.”

“This is how He tests us,” says Mustapha. “ Everything is written—there is always an underlying meaning. Allah wanted you to learn. But He must send you a trigger so you can leave the ignorance in which you have been kept up till now. Your reasoning is merely human. Allah reasons as Master of the Universe.…”

As Adèle’s engagement strengthens, Mustapha becomes more strident, moving into grooming mode:

When I tell you to call me you must call me. I want you pious and submissive to Allah and to me. I can’t wait to see your two little eyes beneath the niqab.

The story ends tragically: in Syria, the girl is briefly married to Omar, a jihadi chosen by the Emir of her group. Then one day Adèle’s parents receive a text from Adèle’s cellphone: “Oum Hawwa died today. She was not chosen by God. She didn’t die a martyr: just a stray bullet. May you hope she doesn’t go to hell.”

In the hope of retrieving her daughter, Adèle’s mother, Sophie, receives help from Samy, a practicing French Muslim. He has just come back from Syria after failing to rescue his own fourteen-year-old younger brother, Hocine, who also joined al-Nusra. Samy explains the all-embracing ideology that drives the jihadists. After being kidnapped in Northern Syria, Samy had been brought before a leader of the French division of al-Nusra. “There were young French boys everywhere. An entire town of French recruits,” Samy recalls. He is told that the Syrian jihad and the restoration of the caliphate is a prelude to the final battle at the End of Time. He is warned not to listen to the Salafists (orthodox believers) who claim that waging jihad is subject to certain limitations. “God has chosen us! We have the Truth! You’re either with us or you’re a traitor,” he is told, in a phrase that echoes George W. Bush. “Only those who fight with the Mahdi”—the Muslim messiah, who will restore the caliphate—“will enter paradise.”

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Lure of the Caliphate by Malise Ruthven

| NYRblog |

The New York Review of Books.

Mosul Eye: Straight from inside hell.

Destroying Mosul’s Heritage:

We apologize for not updating the page. Like most Iraqis, we have been mourning the unbearable loss of our precious relics. Once again, many unrealistic voices have been asking why the inhabitants of Mosul did nothing to stop the rampage, and once again we will say if stopping the destruction and oppression without arms were possible, 5 million Jews would not have been killed systematically during the Holocaust. There was an average of 10,000 Jews in every concentration camp vs. 50 Nazis. If freeing themselves and fighting back, with their bare hands like many are asking the people of Mosul, were an option, they would have. As for the pythons calling for a nuclear or chemical attack on Mosul, we will ask them to look in the mirror and seek the reason for all the hatred they carry inside. It is beyond shameful that Mosul receives prayers and wishful thoughts from non-Iraqis world-wide whereas Iraqis are calling for genocide of the hostage people of Mosul.

Some notes about the destruction:

1- The footage seen in the video published by ISIS dates back to July-August 2014 and NOT February 2015. We had noted in a previous news brief last August that ISIS had destroyed the Winged Bull at the entrance of “Nirgal Gate” as well as the statues in Mosul’s Museum. We must ask ourselves why ISIS chose this specific date to post the video.

2- 90% of the statues in the museum are indeed not authentic, but rather gypsum versions of the originals which have been moved to Baghdad gradually since April 2003. However, the Winged Bull is authentic. Another important note worth mentioning is the “Yellow Obelisk” of Assyrian King Esarhaddon, and many and many authentic tablets are missing from the video footage. Our inquiries with the Museum’s employees conclude that these pieces were taken out of the Museum since early July following the detaining of the Museum’s manager (Musa’ab Mohammed Jasim) whom we have mentioned in a previous post. The manager was detained after ISIS took over the city in order to identify the exact value of the ancient artefacts. He was released later. Museum administrive Dr. Muntaha also claims the museum is no longer of any value apart from the yellow obelisk and ISIS. The obelisk vanished from the Museum on February 25th one day after German experts in Mosul evaluated its worth. How the German experts entered the city and managed to secure ISIS protection remains a mystery. However, we must wonder if the pro-ISIS propaganda made by German reporter Jurgen Todenhofer last December was part of the bargain. This should be material for a worldwide investigation as to how these Germans accessed the city under ISIS protection. Where are the journalists?

3- Sources tell us ISIS is excavating the areas around monumental sites in Mosul in search of relics, particularly around the location of Jonah’s tomb (previously). Witnesses say ISIS militiamen would spend hours in the site after sunset.

4- ISIS have destroyed 10% of the artefacts they possess. The remaining relics in Nimrod and Hatra are priceless.

5- Further investigations have led to facts that several ancient pieces from Syria and Iraq have been shipped to Turkey through shipping cars that do not belong to ISIS, but to international shipping companies. We have enough evidence to believe that business and trade is continuing between ISIS and Kurdistan & Baghdad.

6- Ancient Syriac, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts preserved in Mosul’s churches have been confiscated by ISIS months ago. These rare scripts constitute a treasure of Christian heritage. Plans are being made to sell them to antique dealers.

7- Two men who appeared in the video of ISIS destroying the relics have been identified. They shall be punished.

8- Final Note: Mosul Eye only posts updates that are well-worth noting. Even if you decide not to believe our news, please take it into serious consideration. We do not collect news for the sake of entertainment or merely reading. Several satellite channels do that. What we offer is by far more than that. We are conveying updates to those whom in concerns and are risking our lives every minute while doing so.

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Mosul Eye

Basic Lessons to understand Middle East. Must read!

Advanced countries have long resolved the debate over the state and its system: The republics are republics, kingdoms are kingdoms, and change, when it happens, targets the rule, not the state or the system itself. But in the Arab countries, the nature of the “state” is still a matter of contention.Some wanted a “unity,” in which mainly the Levant countries that were created by the colonial powers would merge. Others wanted regionalism that is fortified with sectarianism. Between these two desires, some started justifying the colonial “interest” by finding fake historical justifications to consecrate the de facto states.There’s no historical state called Iraq, nor one called Syria, or Lebanon. Those words were used to describe locations, not national identities. Also, there was no state in the Arabian Peninsula, nor on the shores of the Gulf extending from Shatt al-Arab to the Strait of Hormuz, where three countries Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar were established, as well as Oman, which always had different features.Babylon is not today’s Iraq. The Hittites and the Assyrians did not have a “state” — in today’s sense of the word: a specific political entity — even though they had swept the whole Levant and expanded their empires by occupying other peoples’ lands.In the era before Islam, the Levant — specifically most of the so-called “Fertile Crescent,” i.e., Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and part of today’s Iraq — came under the rule of the Greeks, then the Romans, then the Byzantines. When Islam came and spread in the entire Arab region, the state of Islam under the Umayyad dynasty was an empire whose capital was Damascus. Then, with the Abbasid state, the capital became Baghdad. Then the caliphate withered away and was inherited by the Mamluks and the Seljuks, till the Ottoman dynasty came and built their empire under the Islamic banner and the Ottoman sultan.The “states” that we know in the Levant are less than a hundred years old. They were established by colonial powers and weren’t created, in their current borders, by the will of their people, but rather according to the interests of foreign countries that have dominated the region after the defeat of Turkey and Germany in World War I.

via Back to the caliphate

– Al-Monitor

A must read for all those who never go further than

“geez… again those damn mad people killing each other!” 

… spread please. 

Again: What’s Really Really Really Wrong with the Middle East?

Too many people in the Middle East refuse to look in the mirror. They’d rather come up with excuses and justifications as to why others, particularly forces outside their neighborhood, are responsible for their misfortunes. I know all about colonialism, Zionism, imperialism, communism, secularism, Islamism, and every other -ism that’s been marshaled to show why outsiders and not locals deserve the blame for what goes on in the Arab world.

But let’s get real. At some point, as every person knows, there’s an expiration date for blaming your parents for the way you turned out. And in the case of the Arab world, the warranty on coverage for blaming the Mossad, the CIA, America, the Jews, or Bozo the Clown for the absence of democracy, the lack of respect for human rights, and gender inequality has long expired.

To be sure, outsiders still influence the Middle East in very negative ways. But that’s no excuse for believing its people can’t shape their own destiny. After all, that is what the Arab Awakening was supposed to be about. And wouldn’t you know it: the Arab Awakening got hijacked not by Western bogeymen, but by forces within Arab society itself, including Muslim fundamentalists, secular and liberal elements that couldn’t organize effectively, and remnants of the old regimes who hung on to power after the dictators were gone.

via What’s Really Wrong with the Middle East?

 By Aaron David Miller | Foreign Policy

(Art: Bernard Boudon – http://www.cartoonmovement.com/p/977/cartoons?p=2)

To be honest, this article didn’t apport anything new to my personal knowledge, but… I’m sure that many of the opinions enlisted can still be a surprise for MANY middle easterns. Specially most of my beloved saudis.

Female saudis. 

I love to talk and learn from saudi women, honestly…. trying to set the same kind of link with guys tends to be a complete waste of time and fingerprints. Basically because they attach radically to ALL those negative stereotypes that appear on the list… it had to be someone. 

Lessons for New Democracies: The Tyranny of the Majority

Erdogan and Morsy, Chávez and Putin — all are megalomaniacs who cannot or will not distinguish between “the people’s will” and their own. But this is also a disease of young democracies, where the stakes are so high that both ruler and opposition often see compromise as a betrayal of the national interest. This was true even in the first decades of the American republic. John Adams’s rivals accused him of trying to restore monarchic rule; and when Adams’s son, John Quincy Adams, served as president, both his great rival, Andrew Jackson, and Vice President John C. Calhoun insisted that he was planning to subvert the Constitution and impose dictatorial rule. Adams and his allies were convinced with almost equal certainty that Jackson, if elected, would destroy the Union. The concept of legitimate difference of opinion was very slow to take hold.

Nations lucky enough to have a Nelson Mandela or a George Washington receive a lasting lesson in the democratic uses of power. And when, as in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracies emerge from a series of bargains between reformers and the ruling elite, everyone gets the chance to learn the arts of compromise. But when power must be seized through revolutionary action, as in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, the one rule people know is that the winner takes all. How, then, do leaders learn to represent a whole people rather than just the faction that elected them?

They don’t, naturally — but voters can teach them a lesson. Serbs united in 2000 to defeat the authoritarian populist Slobodan Milosevic, who had forged a political majority out of virulent nationalism. But this requires a united and purposeful opposition, which cannot be said either of Turkey’s old-line pro-Ataturk Republican People’s Party or the deeply fragmented opposition to Egypt’s ruling Muslim Brotherhood. It’s not just the ruling party, but the entire political culture, of new democracies which often enables electoral authoritarianism.

via The Tyranny of the Majority – By James Traub

Foreign Policy

One of the first lessons on politics I learnt from history lessons was that Hitler’s NSDAP reached power in 1933 thru legal pseudo-democratic ways,… in 6 years they were again able to face the world’s powers, all this coming from the deepest economy’s catastrophical abyss… and thus earning wide popular suppoert and international admiration. Some other 6 years later everything was ashes… the country, the admiration, and the german selfsteem… not as people, but as humans. And all fruit of a deep national shame.

This process made me learn that the legality of a democracy is not only in the means, but in the behaviour of those who were elected to rule. One can’t be elected democratically to put democracy at risk. 

May it be not the best of systems, but deffinitely the best we have… let’s care for it, sirs. And let’s learn from the past.