Sania Mirza Turns Down Qureshi Partnership
By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
Indian ladies’ tennis star Sania Mirza has reportedly turned down an offer to partner with Pakistan men’s player Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi in mixed doubles despite Qureshi expressing interest in playing alongside the Indian tennis star several times in the past.
Sania is currently mixed doubles partners with India’s Mahesh Bhupathi, who is ranked 15th in the world in doubles, one place behind Qureshi in the mixed doubles competitions on the international circuit. Aisam is currently playing limited mixed doubles events, partnering with the Czech Republic’s Andrea Hlavackova. “I’m playing quite well with Bhupathi in grand slams so I don’t think I need to change anything right now,†Mirza, who is ranked eighth in doubles, told the Express Tribune. “Playing with Aisam right now is not possibleâ€.
Mirza, who is married to former Pakistan cricket captain Shoaib Malik, also ruled out playing in Pakistan in the near future despite an invitation from the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF). The PTF has been keen on getting Mirza to play exhibition matches or give coaching in Pakistan ever since she got married to Malik. The Indian, however, ruled that out too, citing complete absence of international tournaments in Pakistan. “I haven’t asked for a huge pay check in order to feature in charity matches in Pakistan. But as far as competitive matches are concerned, there are, unfortunately, no international tournaments taking place in Pakistan for obvious reasons. So there’s no chance I can play there,†she said.
Mirza also ruled out visiting Pakistan any time soon as her current schedule is full, especially with the 2012 London Olympics just over three months away. She needs to stay in the top-10 till June 11 cut-off date in order to be eligible for the Olympics.
Mirza also confirmed that she has given up playing singles after undergoing her third surgery in the last five years. “Tennis and the surgeries take a lot out of you. I realized at the start of the year that it was impossible for me to pursue a singles and doubles career. Ever since I’ve given up on my singles career, my performance in doubles have improved,†said Mirza, who is currently writing a book on her career and the important phases of her life. “I even reached a career-best seventh in the world and that’s why I’ve decided to concentrate solely on doubles tennis,†she insisted.
14-18
Naim Mustafa Popular in State of Georgia
By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
File: Naim Mustafa, Alpharetta GA Defensive End. |
Only a few days after saying he “really wasn’t a Georgia fan,†one of the state of Georgia’s top college football prospects at linebacker now has the University of Georgia as one of his finalists, along with Georgia Tech University. Naim Mustafaa, a 6-foot-4, 235-pounder from Alpharetta High School, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the two archrivals are his finalists, and that he will make his college decision later this spring,or by early summer, at the latest. Then he corrected himself with the “finalists†terminology. “Georgia Tech and Georgia are at the top of my list. Behind them are Tennessee and Auburn. I’m still going to look at them some. But at the top of my list are Georgia Tech and UGA.â€
What changed with UGA? The Bulldogs reached out to Mustafaa via Facebook last weekend. Apparently, UGA hadn’t been keeping in touch on a regular basis with Mustafaa, which made him think that the Bulldogs were no longer interested. Mustafaa is one of the state’s most heavily recruited prospects with 25 early scholarship offers.
UGA got back into the sweepstakes after recruiting coordinator Rodney Garner had a long conversation over the weekend with the 4-star prospect’s father, Najee Mustafaa, who starred at Georgia Tech under the name of Reggie Rutland and played seven seasons in the National Football League.
The two sides kissed and made up, with UGA saying he was the team’s No. 1 recruiting target at outside linebacker, among other things. Mustafaa liked what he heard so much that he and his family will be taking an unofficial visit with Bulldogs either this Saturday or next. “There was a lot of stuff we had to discuss,†Mustafaa said. “There was a reason they fell off my board. But it was actually just a little miscommunication. It was nothing too serious. We had a good talk, and I’m going to get back down there, talk with their coaches again, and tour the campus.â€
What about Georgia Tech? Mustafaa is high on the Yellow Jackets after making an unofficial visit for last Friday’s spring game. “It was a good experience under the lights last Friday night,†he said. “They had good fan support … Georgia Tech is a great school, and going there would guarantee me a good future. You can go there and play good football and get a good education.â€
The Georgia Tech legacy said his father isn’t pressuring him in any direction. “He’s not pushing Tech, he’s not pushing anybody. That’s why we’re going back to UGA. He wants me to weigh out all of my options. In the end, he wants this to be my decision.†The college football recruiting website Rivals.com gives Mustafaa a three star rating, and also rates him as the 30th best defensive end in the 2013 national football recruiting class.
14-18
UAE & Senegal: Upstart Olympic Entries
By Parvez Fatteh, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
The UAE’s soccer team has been drawn to play Great Britain in this summer’s Olympic Games in London. The UAE will also face Uruguay and Senegal in the group stages of the 2012 Games. The team was drawn to face the hosts in the capital on July 29 in a ceremony at Wembley Stadium in London this week.
Senegal was the last team to qualify for the tournament after defeating Oman 2-0 earlier this week. Senegal will be making their inaugural Olympics appearance in the men’s football tournament and may call upon Newcastle United duo Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse of the English Premier League.
The UAE will begin the tournament with a match against Uruguay at Old Trafford in Manchester on July 26, with their final group match against Senegal at the Ricoh Arena on August 1. The top two teams in the group will qualify for the quarter-finals. It is the first time the UAE have qualified for the tournament, with the former head of Dubai’s Road Transport Authority, Mahdi Ali, taking the reins.
Mexico, South Korea, Gabon and Switzerland are in Group B, while Brazil, Belarus, New Zealand and Egypt are in Group C. Spain, Honduras, Japan and Morocco make up Group D. Argentina won the men’s event at the 2008 Beijing games.
14-18
The Next Republican Party
By Richard Reeves
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) |
LOS ANGELES—Once upon a time there was a political tribe called “liberal Republicans,†led by chieftains named Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Mac Mathias and others. They were generally liberal on social issues and relatively conservative on fiscal issues.
They are extinct now. They were caught in a kind of pincer movement between conservative Republicans demanding ideological purity in their own party and more liberal Democrats, who were able to replace them by attacking them for not being liberal enough, particularly on issues like Vietnam and welfare. They were too liberal for their own party, but not quite liberal enough for the opposition. Some, in fact, like John Lindsay, just gave up and became Democrats. That never really worked, although conservative Democrats from the South, among them Strom Thurmond and Richard Shelby, were able to find Southern comfort in the Republican Party.
Then there were “moderate Republicans,†say, Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. They occasionally voted with Democrats, and harder-line Republicans punished them, driving them out of the party or out of politics altogether.
I have been thinking about those good old days, before politics turned toxic. There was a time, at least in Washington, when people in both parties were often neighbors and friends. Their children went to the same schools and the parents would chat on the sidelines of soccer games and such. They had dinners at each other’s houses, even on holidays like Thanksgiving and Passover. And, yes, they often voted and debated against each other in Congress, then had a drink or two after the last gavel and talked about kids and the country.
No more. The halls of the Capitol are filled with hate and dirty looks.
What got me thinking was an interview in the current issue of Reason magazine with Sen. Jim DeMint, the 60-year-old junior senator from South Carolina, who has become a Republican power by raising money and campaigning for candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah. He is called “Senator Tea Party.†DeMint was interviewed by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, and the headline was provocative enough to get me interested:
“The New Debate in the Republican Party Needs to Be Between Conservatives and Libertarians.â€
So much for moderates and moderation. Gillespie and Welch began their piece with a DeMint remark widely quoted in Republican circles:
“Right after the 2010 midterm elections brought a wave of DeMint-backed tea party freshmen to Capitol Hill, the Palmetto State’s junior senator proclaimed that ‘you can’t be a fiscal conservative and not be a social conservative,’ a comment that was widely viewed as a slap at libertarians. DeMint, a reliable defender of the Patriot Act and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is an avowed opponent of what he calls the ‘destructive forces of secularism.’ He is a staunch pro-lifer, has favored a constitutional ban on flag burning, and is on the record saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to teach in public schools.â€
In the interview, DeMint makes an obvious attempt to make peace with libertarians—who disagree with him on all those conservative personal and military issues—or at least begin a dialogue between the two right wings of his party. Again and again, he praises libertarian icon Ron Paul and says conservatives like himself have got to listen to the cranky old Texas congressman (and father of Rand Paul).
“I don’t like it when folks say I’m Senator Tea Party,†said DeMint. “I didn’t start the tea party, but they came along and they were espousing the same concerns I had. This is a very divergent group of Americans. I find libertarians, conservatives, independents, people who’ve never been involved with politics, some recovering liberals—they’re just concerned mostly about the spending and the debt and the growing, intrusive government. That’s uniting people. They don’t agree on the social issues, they don’t agree on the military and all of those things, but they know our country is in trouble, and that’s why they’re so potent. They are the united aspect of what the Republican Party needs to embrace right now.â€
He emphasizes the issues old-line conservatives agree on, especially smaller and decentralized government, and makes a stab at supporting the individual freedom libertarians adore. Enough. He says much more; he is the man with a plan to create a new, united Republican Party and we will be hearing a lot more of him in the coming years.
© 2012 UNIVERSAL UCLICK
14-18
Art Exhibit Explores the History, Beauty, and Richness of Islam
(Part Two)
By Almas Akhtar, TMO
REVELATIONS is a revolution in contemporary Islamic Art.
This series of paintings tells the story of our Prophet Muhammad (s) starting from the first painting in this series called ‘Revelations’ the message he received from God and the last painting in this series is of the ‘Kaaba’which gives the lesson of ‘tolerance’ and ‘forgiveness’.
The artist is an oncologist by profession who paints as a hobby, he is greatly influenced by the Abstract Expressionist Movement. He thinks art is a medium of expression and paintings reflect your imagination. He throws aside all conventions and allow his creative spirit free reign.
This exhibition is first of it’s kind, it is non-representational but is often combined with geomatric patterns, mystery of mathematical numbers and inscriptions.The large size of the paintings and use of bright colours appeal to the audience. These paintings are abstract and each has a story hidden in it.
The exhibition will take place at Commune Artist Gallery, Karachi during the months of April and May 2012.
14-18
U.S. Firms May Miss Out as Saudi Nuke Plan Advances
By Amena Bakr
Camels are seen near electricity poles erected east of Riyadh April 23, 2012. Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia expects to finalize its atomic energy plans this year. Reuters/Fahad Shadeed |
DUBAI, April 25 (Reuters) – Top oil exporter Saudi Arabia expects to finalize its atomic energy plans this year but the U.S. nuclear industry may miss out on multi-billion dollar contracts to turn it into a reality unless Washington and Riyadh sign a non-proliferation deal soon.
Saudi Arabia has some of the world’s largest oil and gas fields but rapidly rising power demand in the kingdom threatens to absorb much of those reserves unless it can find alternative fuels for its long-term economic growth.
Riyadh, which says electricity demand could soar from around 45 gigawatts (GW) to 120 GW by 2035, commissioned the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) in 2010 to draw up a plan for reducing reliance on oil and gas.
It has signed nuclear cooperation deals with countries able to build reactors, including the United States, France, Russia, South Korea, China and Argentina. And Riyadh needs to move relatively quickly if it is to achieve its goal of opening its first nuclear plant by 2020.
“We expect the current consultation phase with the Council to last for a few more months before we can announce the Kingdom’s energy sources, capacity targets, and milestone regulations,†a KA-CARE spokesman said. “Soon we will be announcing what the energy mix for the reactors will be.â€
U.S. companies lost out to a lower-bidding Korean consortium in the first Gulf region nuclear plant tender in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009. They could be sidelined again until Washington and Riyadh sign a “123 agreement†under the U.S. Atomic Energy Act – opening the door for U.S. nuclear exports.
Nuclear projects tend to progress slowly – thanks to their size, complexity and many safety issues.
A U.S. embassy cable released by Wikileaks warned in 2009 that Saudi Arabia pressing ahead with one of the world’s largest atomic energy programmes without U.S. involvement was a “near-term risk to U.S. interests.â€
But with congress preoccupied with U.S. presidential elections and stopping Iran’s nuclear programme, which it suspects includes weapons development, it is unlikely any deal will be concluded this year.
“There’s high doubt that President Obama or the U.S. congress, which needs to ratify the 123 agreement, will move on this in 2012,†said a source in Washington familiar with U.S. energy policy.
“I think the Saudis will have to wait and see who wins the elections first before they proceed … this may not be until 2014 before the United States considers it.â€
Riyadh, may not wait until 2014 for a U.S. non-proliferation deal and has several other options if the door to U.S. companies remains shut.
“It would constrain American suppliers of reactors or of services, like conversion or enrichment, but as far as anybody else is concerned, no,†Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the World Nuclear Association (WNA), a group representing nuclear power companies around the world, said.
“But there would be plenty of options. Even in a worst case scenario, there are still other avenues of buying equipment and services … It certainly wouldn’t be a show stopper,†he said.
It is unclear how the use of some U.S.-patented technologies by other nuclear plant builders would be affected if the United States and the kingdom do not strike a 123 deal.
The UAE signed the 123 agreement with the United States in early 2009, forfeiting its right to enrich uranium domestically, before awarding a $40 billion contract to a Korean-led consortium later that year.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a key Saudi royal, has said the kingdom would not surrender its right to enrich its own uranium for energy use in the long term, although it expects to have to import fuel in the medium term.
“Early economic studies have indicated that although Saudi Arabia is naturally rich with uranium, using that uranium in Saudi Arabian facilities to produce fuel for electrical generation will not be economically feasible in the foreseeable future,†the KA-CARE spokesman said. “Importing fuel is preferable at this time.â€
While concrete construction plans remain far off, Saudi Arabia has signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with several countries with experience in building nuclear plants – including the United States, France, Russia, South Korea, China and Argentina – over the last few years.
“Each provides us access to valuable technologies and suppliers options,†the spokesman said.
Last year, a KA-CARE official said the country could build up to 16 nuclear power reactors by 2030, but KA-CARE has created many potential energy supply and demand scenarios and the actual number of nuclear reactors will depend entirely on what share of the overall mix the government finally targets.
Nevertheless, under most of the scenarios modelled by KA-CARE, nuclear energy emerged as one of the best ways for generating “baseload†electricity, or the lowest demand seen around the clock, so it seems a significant role in the kingdom’s future power supply is likely.
The Middle Eastern oil giant currently relies on oil and gas-fired power plants to keep a growing population cool in summer, while running energy-hungry desalination plants year round to turn millions of litres a day of seawater into something they can drink.
Khalid al-Falih, the chief executive of state-owned Saudi Aramco, has warned that if left unchecked Saudi energy consumption could sap three million barrels a day from crude available for export by 2028.
Because nuclear power plants are not quickly started or shut down and are generally run at near-full production whenever possible, they are not suited to meeting power demand surges on hot summer afternoons, but they could be well suited to the more stable year round demand from water desalination plants and other heavy industry.
A source familiar with the KA-CARE study said that Saudi Arabia is likely to opt for a mix of large reactors near the coast because water is needed for cooling, while employing smaller portable reactors, such as those offered by Argentina.
Saudi Arabia signed a cooperation deal last year with Argentina’s Atomic Energy Commission and technology firm INVAP, which develops smaller reactors designed for water desalination plants – an option that would likely remain open regardless of any 123 deal with Washington.
Some analysts say Saudi Arabia is likely to pick the foreign partners for its nuclear programme based on how economically attractive the bids are, rather than to cement political alliances.
But builders may seek oil supply assurances from the world’s largest crude exporter, given that their reactors could save millions of barrels of crude a month from Saudi power plant furnaces in decades to come.
“Given Saudi Arabia’s role as an exporter, vendor nations will likely be willing to make financial or other concessions in exchange for some type of supply guarantees,†said Will Pearson, energy analyst at the Eurasia Group.
14-18
‘America is One Big Pothole’
Tenth extension of transportation bill OK’d; states seek stability of long-term funding
The federal transportation bill is being held hostage by the 2012 elections. Or at least that’s the opinion of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. And the result, he says, is that America is “one big pothole.â€
While state and local governments await passage of a new federal transportation bill, the House once again failed to pass its sweeping five-year, $260 billion transportation legislation. Instead, for the 10th time since the Surface Transportation Bill expired two years ago, yet another short-term extension has been approved.
State and local government officials were hopeful to have a long-term bill in place by the end of the congressional session so the funding will be assured through the upcoming summer construction period. States are also looking to see if a provision that gives them more flexibility in how they spend federal transportation funds stays in the bill.
Long seen as a jobs creation bill, Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia said a long-term transportation bill would give states more stability and encourage them to invest in transportation projects knowing the funding is in place for the long haul. He said it would also “provide the certainty that highway and transit contractors desperately need to give them the confidence to hire that one more worker.â€
Since the bill expired two years ago, the House and Senate have not been able to settle their differences – with the Senate proposing a two-year, $109 billion piece of legislation to the House’s five-year proposal. Officials were hoping for a multi-year plan that would stop the seemingly endless extensions. The last multi-year bill was a $286 billion piece of legislation that expired in 2009.
Before the Easter break, Congress approved a last-minute, 90-day extension of the Surface Transportation Act. Without that extension, the program would have expired on March 31. This week’s action would extend the provisions of the program until the end of September.
But this time, House members indicate the extension is the first step toward real debate on a multi-year, long-term transportation bill. The Senate has already passed its version of a bill and members from both the House and Senate are apparently headed toward a conference committee to try to hammer out their differences.
With only 30 days left before the current congressional session ends, passage of a multi-year bill looks doubtful. But the extension at least gives the House and Senate until the end of the fiscal year in September to negotiate a true bill instead of another extension.
Senate leaders already have pledged to appoint Senate conferees quickly and are hopeful the House will do the same.
There are likely to be some contentious elements of the bill that could slow things down. The House extension includes authorization of construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the president opposes and vowed to veto. In addition, the two sides are at odds over funding for the bill. While both chambers want to keep transportation funding at its current levels, the Highway Trust Fund alone will not generate that much funding. So another sticking point will be where additional revenues can be found. While an increase in the fuel tax could help bridge the gap, the House instead favors fees on new oil and gas drilling and the Senate has proposed funding transfers and offsets.
14-18
Community News (V14-I18)
Sohail Quadri elected to Alberta Legislative Assembly
CALGARY,AL–Sohail Quadri, a 40 year old businessman, was elected to the Alberta Legislative Assembly on a keenly fought election. He won on the Progressive Conservative ticket from Mill Wood and easily fended off the incumbent who ran as an independent this time.
A political newcomer, Quadri held a solid lead over the second-place Wildrose candidate, giving the businessman a place as a rookie in Premier Alison Redford’s cabinet.
Aiesha Irvin-Muhammad wins at MWAA meet
ST. LOUIS, MO–St.Elizabeth Academy student Aiesha Irvin-Muhammad is emerging as one of the top high school athletes in the St.Louis area. The junior won the 100, 200 and 400 meters at the Metro Women’s Athletic Association meet.
Her immediate goal now is goal is to get to the Class 3 state meet.
Basheer Abdullah: New US Olympic Boxing coach
The Boxingscene.com portal reports that Basheer Abdullah has been nominated as the U.S.Olympic Boxing team’s new head coach.
He currently serves as the head coach of the U.S. Army World Class Athlete program.
Liaquat Khan wins school council seats
CHICAGO,IL–American Muslims are making their presence felt in mainstream grass roots community involvement. Last week the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) held Local School Council (LSC) elections at 540 schools with nearly 6,500 candidates running for the school-based seats. The LSC election is one of the largest Municipal elections in the United States. Local School Councils consist of six Parent Representatives, two Community Representatives, two teacher Representatives, one non-teaching staff member, the principal, and (in high schools) a student.
Liaquat Ali Khan, owner of the popular Devon Ave. area grocery store Par Birdie Foods, ran as Community Representative from Dewitt Clinton Elementary School Khan was victorious by placing first out of a field of 3 candidates with 98% of the vote. The largest demographic of students at Clinton Elementary is Asian at 40%. “Clinton School was ranked 161 in the entire city by Chicago Magazine. This is very concerning and I will work hard with my fellow LSC officials to improve and raise the school’s standard,†said Liaquat Ali Khan.
Joining Khan at Clinton LSC are Parent Reps. Hadeer Mahmood, Sultana Shareef, Samreen Talat, and Sadath Osmani. Mrs. Osmani served as Chairperson of the LSC in her previous term.
The elder Khan’s son Ahmed Khan was elected as Community Representative at Stone Scholastic Academy. Ahmed Khan also placed first in a field of 3 candidates. The father-son duo were endorsed by Progressive Alliance Political Action Committee (PA-PAC) of Cook County.
Philadelphia Muslims offer reward to catch criminals
PHILADELPHIA,PA–The Philadelphia area has seen a spate in robberies where the criminals donned Islamic veils to conceal their identities. Alarmed by this the area Muslim community has put up a $20,000 reward for catching these criminals who tarnish their faith.
Imam Isa Abdul Hakeem, Secretary of the Majis ash Shura of Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley says criminals need to get the message that they can’t don female Muslim dress to avoid getting caught.
“Robbery and murder are abhorrent to the Islamic way of life,†said Abdul Hakeem. “When criminals disguise themselves as Muslim women they put our women in danger of being stereotyped, victimized and ostracized by society. We regard this act is discriminatory, and regard it as a hate crime towards Muslims.â€
14-18
Syria Violence Rages, France tells UN: Hurry
By Oliver Holmes
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian forces shot dead four civilians on a bus on Wednesday and fighting raged near Damascus, dissidents said, as international pressure mounted on President Bashar al-Assad to honor U.N.-backed ceasefire pledges to order his troops back to barracks.
In the city of Hama, an anti-Assad hotbed, an explosion ripped through a building, killing at least 12 people and wounding dozens more, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Another activist group, the grassroots Local Coordination Committee, said the blast was caused by a rocket launched into the building and put the death toll much higher at 54, including several children.
A third activist source said the explosion may have come from inside the building. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the varying accounts.
There was no comment from Syria’s government, which says it is committed to U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan’s April 12 ceasefire accord, but reserves the right to respond to what it says are continued attacks by “terrorist groupsâ€.
Hama has been hosting a small team of United Nations observers, who are preparing the way for a larger U.N. mission which will arrive to monitor the ceasefire pact.
In defiance of the truce accord, shelling was relentless in Douma, east of the capital, residents said, giving further ammunition to Western states such as France that want broad United Nations sanctions to try to end more than a year of fighting in which 9,000 people have been killed.
As well as urging faster deployment of U.N. monitors, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Paris would push for a so-called “Chapter 7†resolution, which would mean punitive sanctions, next month if Assad’s forces did not pull back.
“This cannot continue indefinitely. We want to see observers in sufficient numbers, at least 300 … deployed as quickly as possible,†Juppe said.
“If that does not work, we cannot allow the regime to defy us. We would have to move to a new stage with a Chapter 7 resolution at the United Nations to take a new step to stop this tragedy.â€
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed when security forces opened fire on a bus at a checkpoint on the main road from Aleppo to Damascus.
An elderly man was also killed, it added, in heavy fighting in the southern city of Deraa, crucible of the anti-Assad revolt that flared 13 months ago after uprisings against autocratic leaders in North Africa and the Middle East.
A woman who visited Douma on Tuesday night said the town had been under constant shelling and was without water, power or mobile phone signal. Pro-government gunmen were wandering the streets, she added, preventing people from leaving their homes.
“There was bombardment all night. Artillery and tanks. We didn’t sleep at all. Not for a moment,†the woman told Reuters in neighboring Lebanon. “Most residents have gone down to live on the ground floor because most of the second and third floors have been hit.â€
U.N. LAMPOONED
There was no mention of the bus shooting or bombardment in Syria’s rigidly controlled media or comment from the authorities in Damascus, which has barred most foreign journalists since the revolt started.
Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, told the Security Council on Tuesday that Syria had failed to withdraw weapons from population centers in violation of the terms of the April 12 truce he engineered.
“Everything we have seen suggests that the Syrians are wanting to play for time and they haven’t any real intention to start a political process and a transition. But we need to call their bluff, as it were, and test that,†a senior Western diplomat told reporters in New York on condition of anonymity.
The latest violence comes two days after 31 people were killed in Hama immediately after U.N. monitors left the area and may prompt more outside pressure on Assad.
Damascus says 2,600 of its security personnel have been killed by the rebel armed groups that operate in parts of the country of 23 million.
“The situation in Syria continues to be unacceptable,†Annan told the 15-nation Security Council. “The Syria authorities must implement their commitments in full and a cessation of violation in all its forms must be respected by all parties.â€
He stressed the need to get “eyes and ears on the groundâ€, but peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said it would take a month to deploy the first 100 monitors of the UNSMIS mission – a time frame that drew derision from ordinary Syrians.
“It takes them a month to arrive? Are they coming on horses?†asked a resident of Homs, a city which has endured constant army shelling. He declined to give his real name.
The reasons for the slow deployment were not clear, although diplomats said Norwegian General Robert Mood, who led a U.N. negotiating team to Syria this month, had been made its head.
So far, there are only 15 unarmed monitors in Syria out of a planned final team of 300, a frustratingly thin presence for the opposition activists who say they have noted some decline in the daily death toll.
In a display of Syrian black humor, some activists have mocked the monitors, appearing on video in spoof blue uniforms and with blacked-out glasses and tissue paper stuffed into their ears – pretending neither to see nor hear anything untoward.
“After one month we will have maybe 1,000 or 2,000 people killed – it’s ridiculous. How can the international community watch without moving quickly?†asked Mousab al-Hamadi, an opposition resident in Hama province, a hotbed of the revolt.
RUSSIAN DOUBTS
Annan said Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem had written to him saying that “the withdrawal of massed troops and heavy weapons from in and around population centers is now complete and military operations have ceasedâ€.
However, Annan’s team cited satellite imagery as evidence that tanks are lurking out of sight on the outskirts of cities. Even Syria’s ally Russia voiced concern.
Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said it would be worrying if Damascus had failed to withdraw troops and weapons.
“If this is the case, if the promise in the letter has not really been carried out, that would mean it is a breach of the promise they made on Saturday,†Churkin said. “I’m certainly going to bring it to the attention of Moscow.â€
Throughout the conflict, Russia has been one of Assad’s few friends, providing protection at the United Nations from any Security Council measures.
For all the rhetoric, France and other Western powers have few tools to dislodge Assad, who succeeded his long-ruling father Hafez al-Assad in 2000 and who has brushed aside all calls to hand over power.
They are particularly wary of military intervention similar to NATO’s Libya air campaign that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi for fear it could draw in powerful Assad allies such as Iran and Hezbollah militants and further destabilize the Middle East.
(Additional reporting by John Irish, Louis Charbonneau and Dominic Evans; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Alistair Lyon/Mark Heinrich)
14-18
The Dividends of the Asia Crisis
Dividends, the most reliable part of investing in equities, started with an Asian connection. They date to 1602 with the creation of the Dutch East India Company, the world’s first stock in the modern sense.
This company was formed after sea merchants were granted exclusive rights by the Netherlands government to establish colonies in Asia (East India) and trade there. While joint ownership in a company wasn’t new then, the innovation to divide profits periodically among all of the company’s stockholders was.
Over time, the concept of issuing dividends to stock owners became general practice. If your great-grandparents and grandparents owned BHP shares they probably held them for the dividends, not capital growth. But from the 1980s, this mindset changed in the US. Companies such as Microsoft decided to reinvest all earnings to generate maximum profit growth and a higher stock price rather than distribute some profits to shareholders (who were often employees). Microsoft now pays dividends but some companies still follow this strategy. Apple, the world’s largest company by market cap, hasn’t paid a dividend for 17 years but plans to from July this year.
Asian companies of yesteryear were generally tightfisted with dividends but more because they were typically family-owned companies with a tendency to waste the cash they generated on non-core operations or on poorly thought-out expansion plans including takeovers. But the Asia crisis helped changed that mentality and the ownership structure of companies; family holdings were diluted and companies were run to please foreign investors.
Now companies in the world’s fast-growing region put a higher priority on paying healthy dividends than do many Western companies. About 80% of Asian companies paid dividends in 2010, according to CLSA Asia-Pacific Capital Markets, compared with only about 60% in 2001. Over that time, the figure for US companies has hovered between 57% and 65%.
More companies paying dividends (and higher dividend-payout ratios from those that have for a while) have boosted the dividend yield on Asian shares. The dividend yield on a stock is a measure of the dividend per share as a percentage of the prevailing share price – it thus changes as share prices move (that is, the ratio rises as stock prices fall).
The average dividend yield for companies in Asia ex-Japan was about 2.6% on April 5, as measured by the MSCI Asia ex-Japan Index. This compares with less than 2% before the Asia crisis struck in 1997 and about 2.2% in 2007, according to Bloomberg data. The dividend yield on Asian shares, it must be said, has increased to around 3% at various times over the past 15 years when share prices tumbled.
The yield offered on Asian shares today compares favourably with the 2% yield offered on US companies in the S&P 500 Index and the 1.9% yield offered by Japanese companies in the Nikkei 225 Index. But it’s less than the 3.9% on the STOXX Europe 600 Index and the 4.7% for the Australian companies in the S&P/ASX 200 Index (which carry franking credits).
The dividend return on European companies reflects the large tumble in European stocks since the global financial and eurozone debt crises erupted from 2008. If you take MSCI data from 1999 to 2011, the total dividend return on Asia ex-Japan shares of 42% far exceeds the total dividend return on European shares (24.1%), US shares (13.6%) and Japanese shares (7%). Australian shares outshone the lot, with a 61.8% total dividend return. (Over this period, Asia ex-Japan and Australian shares were the only categories with positive price returns, as the graph below shows.)
Dividend yields vary across Asia. As measured by their main benchmarks, Taiwanese stocks carried a dividend yield of about 4.4% on April 5 while South Korean and Indian shares offered yields of 1.2% and 1.5% respectively.
Willing and able
In Asia, strong balance sheets, higher returns on equity and the more mature and more stable nature of their businesses have made companies more willing and more able to pay dividends.
Management teams across Asia are more motivated to pay dividends because they better understand that local, and especially foreign, shareholders like to see regular cash returns on their outlays, particularly from cash-rich companies that can easily fund expansion plans from earnings. Companies can pay dividends because profitability is higher now than a decade ago. Companies paid down debt after the Asia crisis and therefore less gross earnings are lost to interest payments.
Slower-growth companies, especially telcos and IT companies, typically have higher dividend-payout ratios in each stock market. After the technology bubble of the late 1990s, tech companies in countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan and Thailand decided they should offer investors a steady stream of returns. Some Taiwanese companies offer dividend yields of around 8% as their businesses are generating strong cash flows and they have no plans to expand capacity to any great extent over the next few years.
The faster-growing companies in Asia generally want to reinvest a sizeable percentage of their earnings to grow their businesses. So they have lower dividends, if any. For companies adding more stores or expanding production capacity, returns to shareholders will come largely from capital gains in stock prices rather than from dividends.
Sometimes higher dividends in Asia compensate for risk. During the political troubles in Thailand in 2010, some companies raised dividend payments to compensate shareholders for the political risks investors faced. In this way, dividends acted as a buffer to returns. But more often they are just part of the general returns of investing in Asian shares.
Given the upbeat economic outlook for Asia, the region’s companies are well placed to produce earnings that will support reasonable dividends and healthy increases in stock prices. That’s just as the Dutch East India Company apparently did for about 200 years after it was founded.
Composition of total returns for Australia, Asia ex-Japan, Europe, Japan and US (1999-2011,%)
Fidelity.com.au
14-18
Twain Shall Meet, in Turkey
By Aijaz Zaka Syed
Kipling was wrong; the East and West can and do meet. They do here in Turkey!
Turkey is a nation forever living in two worlds. And nowhere is it more pronounced than here in the old quarter of Istanbul. Hagia Sophia, the world renowned Orthodox patriarchal basilica, and the magnificent Blue Mosque look like mirror images of each other. They stand in front of each other, only yards apart and forever whispering timeless secrets.
Both boast the identical giant, onion-shaped domes and minarets that are said to have changed the history of architecture.
Successive Turkish sultans renovated and expanded Hagia Sophia, the largest cathedral in the world for a thousand years, when it came into Muslim hands after the fall of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453 A.D. and was turned into a mosque. They fortified the old structure and almost rebuilt it, adding the distinct Islamic minarets, minbar and mehrabs.
The basilica was first built on the orders of Constantius II in 360 A.D. and rebuilt twice by his successors centuries later when it was burned down and ravaged in successive wars. When Constantinople fell to the Muslims after two months of siege, Sultan Mehmed II is said to have gone straight to Hagia Sophia (Aya Sofya in Turkish). He was reportedly shocked to find one of his soldiers hacking the “infidel structure.â€
The Sultan then ordered the conversion of the cathedral into a mosque.
The basilica itself was built on the ruins of a Greek temple. Sophia wasn’t a Christian saint. It’s the name of Greek deity of wisdom. Hence the name Ἁγία Σοφία in Greek. But then this happens all the time. New empires are built on the ruins of old ones. Old ideas give way to new ones.
For 500 years under the Ottomans, Hagia Sophia wasn’t just one of the most magnificent mosques in Muslim lands, it served as a model for other mosques and architectural marvels across the empire. If you are intrigued by the striking resemblance that the Blue Mosque, built by Sultan Ahmet in 1616 A.D., bears of Hagia Sophia, more such surprises await you all across Istanbul.
From Suleimanya mosque, where Suleiman the magnificent is resting after building a great empire spread across three continents, to Shezade, Rustem Pasha and Kilic Pasha mosques, the Hagia Sophia motif and European-Islamic fusion seems to run through all of Ottoman architecture. Indeed, these mosques, disconcertingly identical in design and color, dot Istanbul’s entire skyline, confusing all new arrivals.
Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum in 1934 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk after five centuries of Islamic worship, much to the outrage of Muslims around the world. The founder of modern Turkey, however, was determined to make a clean break with the Muslim past and reinvent the country as a secular Western nation.
Today, Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque stand together as they celebrate the meeting of the East and West and two great civilizations and faiths. The endless march of international visitors that passes through Istanbul and Turkey pays respects at both the shrines. Pope Benedict XVI and President Obama were the last prominent visitors.
Situated at the confluence of three continents and home to three great civilizations — Roman, Byzantine and Islamic — no city or country boasts a richer history than Istanbul and Turkey.
If you love history, like I do, you would love Istanbul. Straddling two continents and enveloped by three seas, the city is a historian and photographer’s delight. With its peaks and valleys and a breathtaking landscape dotted by opulent Ottoman palaces, mosques and both modern and traditional buildings, Istanbul captivates you with the very first look. Crossing and re-crossing those imposing bridges on the Bosporous, you seldom realize when you have crossed from Asia into Europe or the other way around. I haven’t come across a more majestic and picturesque city. London, Paris and New York can go take a hike.
No wonder many a filmmaker has tried to capture the magic of the great city — from Sean Connery-starrer From Russia With Love to the new Bond epic Skyfall. Great cities like Istanbul don’t reveal their charms to the dead eye of a movie camera though. You’ve got to live the magic to believe it.
This encounter of the East and West and Islamic way of life and Western outlook manifests itself in every respect, from food and culture to architecture and from arts and sciences to geopolitics.
Turkey does this balancing of two worlds rather well. Ataturk tried hard and nearly succeeded in banishing Islam and every association with it, including Arabic and Persian, and Westernizing the very way of life of a country that for centuries ruled and led the Islamic world.
Wearing of hijab was a crime until recently in a country that is 99 percent Muslim. For all practical purposes, Turkey became a Western country in every sense of the term, from its liberal way of life to cultural and sartorial choices.
After Ataturk’s departure, his legacy was fiercely protected by the military for nearly six decades. However, it seems, the great leader couldn’t quite succeed in his goal.
Of course, even today, save for those magnificent mosques, there’s little to suggest this is a Muslim country that ruled a vast empire stretching from Europe in the north — from Greece to Hungary to Transylvania — to Africa in the south to Himalayas in the east. (The Turks had reached as far as Vienna but retreated twice. If they had succeeded, who knows how Europe would have looked today!)
Muslim states as far as India and Far East remembered the Ottoman caliph in Friday sermons as the “defender of faith and inheritor of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) mantle. In today’s Turkey, young people in school uniform — the size of girls’ miniskirt would be a red rag to the Taleban — still behave just as they do in the West, openly exchanging sweet nothings and much more.
Yet it’s not the same Turkey that Ataturk left behind. Islam has made a quiet but decisive comeback. And it’s not just demonstrated in the fact that the Islamists have firmly taken charge of the republic and have coaxed the meddlesome military genie back into its bottle. Neither is it seen in those colorful burqas and scarves that a growing number of Turkish women are increasingly taking a liking to. Better halves of both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul proudly wear their hijab. This would be unthinkable a decade ago.
The long dormant Islamic spirit of the Turk has awakened. From confronting Israel on its crimes against a long tormented people to holding the butchers in Damascus to account, the new Turkey has reclaimed its pride of place once again in the Islamic world. From Palestine to Libya and from Egypt to Syria to Iran, Erdogan’s country is increasingly asserting itself and ever so defiantly, much to the concern of some of its allies.
But the new Turkey is also building on its strong bonds with the West as it eyes a bigger role on the world stage, befitting its size and growing political and economic clout. Already a member of the NATO, it commands the largest military force in the alliance after the United States. Its aspirations to join European Union have been resisted by former allies, Germany and France, raising the specter of a Muslim takeover of Christian Europe. Given the current economic mess in the elite club and a fast aging and dwindling population though, it’s not Turkey that needs Europe but the other way round.
The once sick man of Europe is in the pink of health today. Turkey hasn’t just survived the 2008 meltdown, it’s one of the fastest growing economies with Turkish investments now flooding the vast neighborhood from Central Asia to Middle East to Africa. Iqbal, the Asian poet philosopher, believed that the country where his spiritual guide Rumi lays buried would rise again soon. That time seems to have arrived.
I do not know where Turkey goes from here. But it finds itself in a unique position to act as the much-needed bridge between Islam and Christianity whose followers would soon constitute half of the world’s population. There has never been a greater need for peace and understanding between Abraham’s children. And there cannot be a better peacemaker than Turkey. Kipling was wrong. The East and West can and do meet. They do here in Istanbul.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Gulf-based commentator. Write him at aijaz.syed@hotmail.com
14-18
Afghan Lies Mirror Vietnam Deception
By Gwynne Dyer
Afghan president Hamid Karzai (R) shakes hands with Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce at the presidential palace in Kabul April 24, 2012. REUTERS/Ahmad Massoud/Pool |
LONDON — In the midst of the Taliban attacks in central Kabul on Sunday, a journalist called the British embassy for a comment. “I really don’t know why they are doing this,†said the exasperated diplomat who answered the phone. “We’ll be out of here in two years’ time. All they have to do is wait.â€
The official line is that by two years from now, when U.S. and NATO forces leave Afghanistan, the regime they installed will be able to stay in power without foreign support. The British diplomat clearly didn’t believe that, and neither do most other foreign observers.
However, Gen. John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, predictably said that he was “enormously proud†of the response of the Afghan security forces, and various other senior commanders said that it showed that all the foreign training was paying off. You have to admire their cheek: Simultaneous attacks in Kabul and three other cities prove that the Western strategy is working.
The Taliban’s attacks in the Afghan capital on Sunday targeted the national parliament, NATO’s headquarters, and the German, British, Japanese and Russian embassies. About a hundred people were killed or wounded, and the fighting lasted for 18 hours. There was a similar attack in the center of the Afghan capital only last September. If this were the Vietnam War, we would now have reached about 1971.
The U.S. government has already declared its intention to withdraw from Afghanistan in two years’ time, just as it did in Vietnam in 1971. Richard Nixon wanted his second-term presidential election out of the way before he pulled the plug, just as President Barack Obama does now.
The Taliban is obviously winning the war in Afghanistan now, just as North Vietnam was winning in South Vietnam then. The American strategy at that time was satirized as “declare a victory and leave,†and it hasn’t changed one whit in 40 years. Neither have the lies that cover it up.
The U.S. puppet government in South Vietnam only survived for two years after U.S. forces left in 1973. The puppet government in Kabul may not even last that long after the last American troops leave Afghanistan in 2014. But no Western general will admit that the war is lost, even though their denial means that more of their soldiers must die pointlessly.
“It’s like I see in slow motion men dying for nothing and I can’t stop it,†said U.S. Army officer Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who spent two tours in Afghanistan. He is consumed by outrage at the yawning gulf between the promises of success routinely issued by U.S. senior commanders and the real situation on the ground.
To be fair, none of those generals was asked whether invading Afghanistan was a good idea. That was decided 10 years ago, when most of them were just colonels. But if they read the intelligence reports, they know that they cannot win this war. If they go on making upbeat predictions anyway, they are responsible for the lives that are wasted.
Davis wrote two reports on the situation in Afghanistan, one classified and one for public consumption. The unclassified one began: “Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth when communicating with the U.S. Congress and the American people as regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable.â€
Davis gave his first interview to the New York Times in early February, and sent copies of the classified version to selected senators and representatives in Congress. But no member of Congress is going to touch the issue in an election year, for fear of being labeled “unpatrioticâ€.
So, U.S., British and other Western soldiers will continue to die, as will thousands of Afghans, to postpone the inevitable outcome for a few more years.
It’s not necessarily even an outcome that threatens American security, for there was always a big difference between the Taliban and their ungrateful guests, al-Qaida. The Taliban were and are big local players in the Afghan political game, but they never showed any interest in attacking the United States. Al-Qaida were pan-Islamist revolutionaries, mostly Arabs and Pakistanis, who abused their hosts’ hospitality by doing exactly that.
It was never necessary to invade Afghanistan at all. Senior Taliban commanders were furious that al-Qaida’s 9/11 attacks had exposed them to the threat of invasion, and came close to evicting Osama bin Laden at the Kandahar jirga (tribal parliament) in October 2001. Wait a little longer, spread a few million dollars around in bribes, and the U.S. could probably have had a victory over al-Qaida without a war in Afghanistan.
It’s much too late for that now, but al-Qaida survives more as an ideology than as an organization, and most Afghans (including the Taliban) remain profoundly uninterested in affairs beyond their own borders. Whatever political system emerges in Afghanistan after the foreigners go home, it is unlikely to want to attack the U.S. Pity about all the people who will be killed between now and then.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.
14-18
India, Pakistan Try Trade Route to Fix Ties
ATTARI: In a cavernous warehouse in north India, workers grade and blend mounds of tea for shipping to Dubai, Europe, and Singapore – just about anywhere around the globe, except for the country right next door, Pakistan.
Decades of conflict have decimated trade between the two neighbours. Now, with peace efforts between the rivals stalled, officials are hoping that trade could lead the way to easing tension.
They have promised to throw open their economies to each other by the end of the year and have already liberalised some commercial ties. A new border depot for trade was inaugurated recently.
India’s Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said that investment “can form the basis for building political trustâ€.
The three wars they fought did not dampen Pakistanis’ craving for India’s green tea nor Indians’ longing for Pakistani dates and nuts.
So, Indian traders routed their Pakistan-bound products by ship via Dubai in a 28-day journey that is 40 times as expensive as trucking it over their shared land border.
Rakesh Arora, one of north India’s biggest tea suppliers, can’t sell to the world’s second largest tea-buying market barely 30 kilometres away from his warehouse. Instead, Pakistan buys tea from faraway Kenya.
The two sides hope that they can quadruple trade that reached $2.8 billion last year by setting aside their competing claims to the Kashmir region and other thorny disputes to focus on restoring economic links.
“What India and Pakistan are doing is long overdue,†says Rajinder Goel, president of the Amritsar Tea Traders Association.
In recent months, Pakistan drastically reduced the number of Indian products barred from the country and said it will eliminate the bans completely by the end of the year. It also said it planned to grant India “Most Favoured Nation†status, which would reduce tariffs. New Delhi gave the same status to Pakistan in 1996.
India said this month it would lift the ban on Pakistani investments, held a Pakistani trade fair in the capital and is talking of exporting electricity and petroleum to the energy-starved country. Both countries’ central banks are exploring opening branches across the border. Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said they were close to an agreement on visas to make it easier for business leaders to cross the border and stop forcing them to report to police.
And India unveiled a new customs depot at the Attari border, which separates India’s Punjab region from the Pakistani Punjab.
In the 100-acre hangar-like warehouse, neatly stacked rows of cardboard cartons filled with dried fruit and nuts stretched to the ceiling awaiting customs checks. An army of blue-uniformed porters waited to load them onto trucks for the vast Indian market.
Nearby, trucks from Pakistan unloaded cement and building supplies bound for India’s booming construction industry.
Like other produce traders, Om Prakash Arora Lati had faced immense losses when his fruit and vegetables rotted in the intense summer heat due to delays at the old checkpoint.
“Now we can clear customs formalities in hours instead of days,†said Lati, president of the Indo-Pak Exporters Association.
Rajdeep Singh Uppal, who has been trading with Pakistan for nearly two decades, said the number of trucks that crossed the border jumped in the very first week of the new customs post. It has “smoothed the movement of trucks from this endâ€, he said, “Now we want Pakistan to scale up its facilities.â€
Indian merchants also hope to use the land crossing to reach markets in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and across Central Asia. “The possibilities are endless,†Uppal said.
The trade optimism has also spurred demands for more crossings along the 2,900-kilometre border, and at least four possible sites have been identified, in the Indian Punjab and Rajasthan.
The decision to set aside differences and push ahead with commerce is a formula India has employed before. Despite their own border dispute, trade between India and China has boomed over the last decade.
However, long-time Pakistan watchers remain cautious. Another attack reminiscent of the 2008 siege of the Indian city of Mumbai by terrorists could push the countries back to the brink, analysts say.
There are also doubts about how far the Pakistan Army will let its civilian leadership go in restoring ties.
“Despite the presence of a civilian regime in Pakistan, it is more than apparent to most observers where power remains ensconced,†Sumit Ganguly, a political science professor at the Indiana University, wrote in the Asian Age newspaper.
But the army has sent its own signals it wants better relations, with army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani calling for demilitarisation of the disputed Siachen Glacier and for greater emphasis on development and peace.
When Pakistan’s commerce minister opened his country’s trade fair in Delhi this month, Ghazala Rahman, a Pakistani furniture designer, lamented it was the first time in 35 years her country’s top business official had come.
“We share so much — the same language, the same culture, the same history. I see it as 35 wasted years,†Rahman said.
Haseeb Bhatti, a surgical instrument maker from Sialkot, said the two sides have to learn to trust each other again after decades of conflict.
Yet, Bhatti speaks with nostalgia and hope.
“On clear days, when I look at the skies above Sialkot stretching as far as Jammu in India, I wonder, who raised these borders and caused these divides?â€
14-18
India, Pakistan Try Trade Route to Fix Ties
ATTARI: In a cavernous warehouse in north India, workers grade and blend mounds of tea for shipping to Dubai, Europe, and Singapore – just about anywhere around the globe, except for the country right next door, Pakistan.
Decades of conflict have decimated trade between the two neighbours. Now, with peace efforts between the rivals stalled, officials are hoping that trade could lead the way to easing tension.
They have promised to throw open their economies to each other by the end of the year and have already liberalised some commercial ties. A new border depot for trade was inaugurated recently.
India’s Commerce Minister Anand Sharma said that investment “can form the basis for building political trustâ€.
The three wars they fought did not dampen Pakistanis’ craving for India’s green tea nor Indians’ longing for Pakistani dates and nuts.
So, Indian traders routed their Pakistan-bound products by ship via Dubai in a 28-day journey that is 40 times as expensive as trucking it over their shared land border.
Rakesh Arora, one of north India’s biggest tea suppliers, can’t sell to the world’s second largest tea-buying market barely 30 kilometres away from his warehouse. Instead, Pakistan buys tea from faraway Kenya.
The two sides hope that they can quadruple trade that reached $2.8 billion last year by setting aside their competing claims to the Kashmir region and other thorny disputes to focus on restoring economic links.
“What India and Pakistan are doing is long overdue,†says Rajinder Goel, president of the Amritsar Tea Traders Association.
In recent months, Pakistan drastically reduced the number of Indian products barred from the country and said it will eliminate the bans completely by the end of the year. It also said it planned to grant India “Most Favoured Nation†status, which would reduce tariffs. New Delhi gave the same status to Pakistan in 1996.
India said this month it would lift the ban on Pakistani investments, held a Pakistani trade fair in the capital and is talking of exporting electricity and petroleum to the energy-starved country. Both countries’ central banks are exploring opening branches across the border. Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said they were close to an agreement on visas to make it easier for business leaders to cross the border and stop forcing them to report to police.
And India unveiled a new customs depot at the Attari border, which separates India’s Punjab region from the Pakistani Punjab.
In the 100-acre hangar-like warehouse, neatly stacked rows of cardboard cartons filled with dried fruit and nuts stretched to the ceiling awaiting customs checks. An army of blue-uniformed porters waited to load them onto trucks for the vast Indian market.
Nearby, trucks from Pakistan unloaded cement and building supplies bound for India’s booming construction industry.
Like other produce traders, Om Prakash Arora Lati had faced immense losses when his fruit and vegetables rotted in the intense summer heat due to delays at the old checkpoint.
“Now we can clear customs formalities in hours instead of days,†said Lati, president of the Indo-Pak Exporters Association.
Rajdeep Singh Uppal, who has been trading with Pakistan for nearly two decades, said the number of trucks that crossed the border jumped in the very first week of the new customs post. It has “smoothed the movement of trucks from this endâ€, he said, “Now we want Pakistan to scale up its facilities.â€
Indian merchants also hope to use the land crossing to reach markets in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and across Central Asia. “The possibilities are endless,†Uppal said.
The trade optimism has also spurred demands for more crossings along the 2,900-kilometre border, and at least four possible sites have been identified, in the Indian Punjab and Rajasthan.
The decision to set aside differences and push ahead with commerce is a formula India has employed before. Despite their own border dispute, trade between India and China has boomed over the last decade.
However, long-time Pakistan watchers remain cautious. Another attack reminiscent of the 2008 siege of the Indian city of Mumbai by terrorists could push the countries back to the brink, analysts say.
There are also doubts about how far the Pakistan Army will let its civilian leadership go in restoring ties.
“Despite the presence of a civilian regime in Pakistan, it is more than apparent to most observers where power remains ensconced,†Sumit Ganguly, a political science professor at the Indiana University, wrote in the Asian Age newspaper.
But the army has sent its own signals it wants better relations, with army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani calling for demilitarisation of the disputed Siachen Glacier and for greater emphasis on development and peace.
When Pakistan’s commerce minister opened his country’s trade fair in Delhi this month, Ghazala Rahman, a Pakistani furniture designer, lamented it was the first time in 35 years her country’s top business official had come.
“We share so much — the same language, the same culture, the same history. I see it as 35 wasted years,†Rahman said.
Haseeb Bhatti, a surgical instrument maker from Sialkot, said the two sides have to learn to trust each other again after decades of conflict.
Yet, Bhatti speaks with nostalgia and hope.
“On clear days, when I look at the skies above Sialkot stretching as far as Jammu in India, I wonder, who raised these borders and caused these divides?â€
14-18
Increased Sun Intensity Requires Vigilance
By Karin Friedemann, TMO
Facial redness has always been a problem for me. When I was a kid my friends used to call me Rudolph because my nose would get so red in the Michigan winter cold. In summer, I was always freckled and pink-faced. It didn’t cause me any discomfort, just mild embarrassment. In fifth grade, I remember thinking I better marry a darker man because I wanted to protect my future descendants from ozone layer depletion. Probably a wise idea, since the sun is so much stronger now than when I was a kid. I have no idea what’s in those chemtrails either but I don’t think it’s good for my skin. Our skin is the only thing protecting us from this world.
I noticed a huge shift in skin health between youth and adulthood. Before age 20 I used to spend a lot of time in the sun outdoors and would attain a bronze color on my arms without any problem. As an adult, the combination of hijab and the housewife lifestyle made my skin extremely sensitive. At first I really liked the effect. No longer mousy brown, my hair went a shade darker while my skin became white like the moon. I looked like Snow White! But I also developed vitamin deficiency and became weak. If a family member forced me to enjoy a nature trail and a waterfall, I’d find myself covered with moles and would seriously regret it.
Around the time of the first Gulf War, it seemed like the sun got really bright. I remember being in college 20 years ago. I left my classroom and walked a couple blocks to the bus stop. By that time, my face was quite red and sunburned and stayed that way for a few days! The intensity of sunlight has continued to be much brighter than what I feel comfortable with. It is physically painful to me to go outside without sunglasses on a sunny day. My son, who has dark eyes, has similar complaints.
Now that I am a mother of four, we are still struggling over skin problems. When my son was a baby, he’d get a red face rash just from touching a soft polyester fleece blanket. Now at 13, he has some kind of acne rash caused by dry inflamed skin. The winter cold makes everybody’s cheeks red and sore, especially the baby. I suffer from rosacea in the nose and cheeks, which comes from my German side of the family. It can sometimes become quite painful and had kept me up at night feeling my capillaries exploding until I discovered a French ointment that costs $40 for 2 oz. I seem to have an allergy to the antibiotic cream that the doctor had prescribed.
Whether we blame genetics or the environment, facial redness is incurable. All you can do is regulate it, avoid triggers like extreme temperatures or caffeine and alcohol, and try to eat a good diet and drink lots of water. I am so thankful that there are so many choices of skin products out there. One of the most beautiful things about capitalism. My personal favorite is a Chamomile Primrose salve marketed online by Common Sense, a Christian hippie community-based business. I often meditate upon the suffering of women in Afghanistan or Native People anywhere, as their faces turn to leather in the wind, sun and rain. As I understand, the early Muslims used olive oil as a skin salve. There is even a commonly accepted religious ruling that applying olive oil to the skin does NOT break the Ramadan fast. That’s how important it is to moisturize!
Like prayer, the most important thing about any healthcare regime is that it needs to be applied regularly. No dermatologist in the world can help you if you don’t actually apply the prescribed lotion. Likewise, we know the importance of eating avocados and carrots, but the knowledge doesn’t help you. Eating in abundance the good food from Mother Earth helps you and your children to enjoy a better life!
Yet, I think we need to take the issue of moles caused by sunlight seriously. Hijabi women should find some way to privately expose their neck and shoulder area to sunlight on a regular basis. In my experience, this is the part of the body most sensitive, even more so than the face. I have read that people who are infrequently exposed to the sun, such as office workers, are more likely to experience skin cancer than construction workers who work in the sun without a shirt.
By the time I was thirty, I had developed a brown spot the size of a quarter on my left cheek. My mother had the same spot in the exact same place, although she was at least forty when it happened. The only thing I can think of is that it was caused by driving a car. Another argument against women driving cars LOL!!! But it’s true, that intense sunlight pouring in through one window will age your skin.
One of the blessings of living in an informed culture is that we can learn from our elders, and we can apply what we learned to future generations. I have learned from the mistakes of my youth the importance of sunscreen. We are so blessed to live in a country where sunscreen is available. Otherwise, all women would have to wear a burqa to preserve their beauty.
14-18
Dispatches From Cairo: Sand and Political Excitement Fill the Air as Election Nears
By Lauren Unger-Geoffroy
The latest public survey statistics, taken this month before the eliminations, showed 28 percent of Egyptians supporting the disqualified Salafist Abu-Ismail and 39 percent backing the last major candidate standing, Amr Moussa.
Moussa has been a front-runner since the early days of the revolution and was the people’s favorite to replace Mubarak at that time. His good track record as a onetime secretary-general of the Arab League, an ambassador and a foreign minister make him a reassuring choice. In agreement with all the other candidates in their criticism of Israel, Moussa has said that the controversial 1978 Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel is not sacred. Attempts to discredit Moussa through website reports that Moussa’s half brother is the son of a Jewish woman failed when the assertions were shown to be false.
There is one remaining significant Islamist candidate, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, but he does not have a comparable following. The rest of the vote in the public survey was split among more than 15 others who at that point had survived as registered candidates.
The presidential election will take place May 23 and 24. In the span of a few weeks, hundreds of proposed candidates were narrowed down first by requiring 30,000 specifically distributed voters’ signatures, the backing of 30 members of the Parliament or the endorsement of a represented party. This allowed only about two dozen to apply for registration. Though most of the rejections were appealed in the allotted two days, the appeals have failed, and the rejected applicants seem to be definitively out. The final candidates will be announced next Thursday, only three weeks before the election. However, until May 22 a committee will accept objections that might exclude candidates.
The differences between the concurrent presidential campaigns of Egypt and the United States are so vast that they almost defy comparison. On the one hand, there’s the USA dragging its big bully of a body, bulging unhealthily under a corrupt, capitalist, bipartisan system, through multimillion-dollar lobby-funded ad onslaughts, primaries and other costly campaign stages toward its far-off November election media fantasia. On the other, there’s Egypt scurrying and choosing quickly among a jumble of aspirants. Critics of Egypt’s embryonic electoral approach may have some valid complaints, but the nation’s post-revolutionary system has some virtues that will be appreciated by many campaign-weary Americans.
Despite the springtime sand-haze now obscuring Cairo, activists plan to continue coming out in numbers on Fridays, in protests and displays of solidarity, to show they are not to be ignored again.
The stumbling new democracy of Egypt appears for the moment, barring another wave of confrontation knocking it off its feet, and despite the continuing menace of foreign influence, to be en route to a plateau where it can catch its breath, Insha’Allah.
The view of Cairo since Wednesday has been through a fog of blowing dust. Under that veil, the calls to prayer have been muted and voices have been muffled on the street, which remain busy even though some residents are staying indoors. Many of those who ventured out in the hamseen, or sandstorm, wrap their faces in scarves and wear glasses or goggles. Inside, behind windows, the light is filtered through a golden mist as I write this. Beautiful, though the particles penetrate everywhere, blowing in through cracks, covering everything with dust.
There will be many speeches in the forum of Tahrir as the election approaches, but we hope there will not be violence. Today the air is full of the stinging, ancient Egyptian sand that makes people wrap their scarves around themselves in ways that obscure their differences.
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Leftovers
By Sumayyah Meehan, TMO
Imagine that the only food that you could provide for your family were leftovers that a host of strangers had already eaten. The issue of hygiene would be foremost in most parents’ minds since children, especially, are more susceptible to disease than adults are. But what if you did not have a choice other than to feed your family tainted leftovers? The shame and humiliation of not being able to provide the basic human necessity of food to your loved ones would drive most people to the brink of despair.
For Mohammed, an Indian father of three who lives in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), feeding leftover food to his wife and three young daughters has been their only option for survival. He revealed his ordeal to a local newspaper in the sheikdom. For the past year and a half, Mohammed’s only recourse has been to collect leftover meals from a wedding hall near the family’s home. Having befriended some of the workers at the hall the family receives alerts whenever a wedding is held. Then once the guests leave, the family collects leftover food from the celebration. The food is stored in plastic bags and frozen. It sustains the family, but just barely, until the next wedding takes place.
The family lives in a dilapidated apartment that is falling apart. Their two school aged daughters attend school but are often mocked because their uniforms are in tatters. It has been almost too much to bear as Mohammed confessed to contemplating suicide on many occasions. The love of his daughters and worrying about their future is the only thing that has stopped him from ending his life. “My three daughters, aged nine, seven and two push me to keep trying my best to survive,†he shares.
The story of Mohammad is one that plays out all across the region as poor laborers struggle to meek out a living amidst the glittering shopping malls and towers of the wealthy Gulf region. However, in Mohammad’s case, he had a series of extenuating circumstances that magnified the struggles he was already grappling with. He was lured by a friend into investing in a shady business deal that wiped out his personal savings and caused him to become indebted to a loan shark. Trouble back home around the same time, forced Mohammad to bring his wife and family to live with him in the UAE.
There is a glimmer of hope for the family to get out of their precarious situation. A local UAE charity called Valley of Love has begun offering charitable services to the family. However, the family’s circumstances are still dire. Citizens and expatriates in the UAE are looking for ways to help the family. The Valley of Love organization is currently accepting donations on the family’s behalf.
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In Egypt Presidential Race: Battle Joined on Islam’s Role
By David D. Kirkpatrick
CAIRO — He has argued for barring women and non-Muslims from Egypt’s presidency on the basis of Islamic law, or Shariah. He has called for a council of Muslim scholars to advise Parliament. He has a track record of inflammatory statements about Israel, including repeatedly calling its citizens “killers and vampires.â€
Mohamed Morsi is also a leading candidate to become the country’s next president.
Mr. Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant Islamist group, declared last week that his party platform amounted to a distillation of Islam itself.
“This is the old ‘Islam is the solution’ platform,†he said, recalling the group’s traditional slogan in his first television interview as a candidate. “It has been developed and crystallized so that God could bless society with it.†At his first rally, he led supporters in a chant: “The Koran is our constitution, and Shariah is our guide!â€
One month before Egyptians begin voting for their first president after Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Morsi’s record is escalating a campaign battle here over the place of Islam in the new democracies promised by the Arab Spring revolts.
Mr. Morsi, who claims to be the only true Islamist in the race, faces his fiercest competition from a more liberal Islamist, Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a pioneering leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was expelled from the group in June for arguing for a more pluralistic approach to both Islam and Egypt. He is campaigning now as the leading champion of liberal values in the race.
Both face a third front-runner, the former foreign minister Amr Moussa, who argued this week that Egypt cannot afford an “experiment†in Islamic democracy.
The winner could set the course for Egypt’s future, overseeing the drafting of a new constitution, settling the status of its current military rulers, and shaping its relations with the West, Israel and its own Christian minority. But as the Islamists step toward power across the region, the most important debate may be the one occurring within their own ranks over the proper agenda and goals.
Mr. Morsi’s conservative record and early campaign statements have sharpened the contrast between competing Islamist visions. The Brotherhood, the 84-year-old religious revival group known here for its preaching and charity as well as for its moderate Islamist politics, took a much softer approach in the official platform it released last year. It dropped the “Islam is the solution†slogan, omitted controversial proposals about a religious council or a Muslim president and promised to respect the Camp David accords with Israel. Its parliamentary leaders distanced themselves from the Salafis, ultraconservative Islamists who won a quarter of the seats in Parliament.
The Brotherhood’s original nominee was its leading strategist, Khairat el-Shater, a businessman known for his pragmatism. He had close personal ties to Salafi leaders, but he did not leave much of a paper trail besides an opinion column in a Western newspaper stressing the Brotherhood’s commitment to tolerance and democracy. Mr. Shater was disqualified last week because of a past conviction at a Mubarak-era political trial. In his short-lived campaign he stressed the Brotherhood’s plans for economic development and rarely, if ever, brought up Islamic law.
By contrast, Mr. Morsi, 60, is campaigning explicitly both as a more conservative Islamist and as a loyal executor of Mr. Shater’s plans. He campaigns with Mr. Shater under a banner with both their faces, fueling critics’ charges that he would be a mere servant of Mr. Shater and the Brotherhood’s executive board.
But Mr. Morsi is also courting the ultraconservative Salafis, whose popular candidate, Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, was also disqualified. Mr. Morsi may be tacking to the right to court the Salafis as a swing vote in the contest with Mr. Aboul Fotouh, or he may merely be expressing more conservative, older impulses within the Brotherhood.
“Some want to stop our march to an Islamic future, where the grace of God’s laws will be implemented and provide an honest life to all,†he proclaimed Saturday night at his first rally, in a Nile delta town.
“Our Salafi brothers, the Islamic group, we are united in our aims and Islamic vision. The Islamic front must unite so we can fulfill this vision.â€
Although he received a Ph.D. in engineering at the University of Southern California in 1982, Mr. Morsi spent the past decade as a public spokesman for the Brotherhood’s political wing, where he left a far more extensive and controversial record than Mr. Shater did. Last year, for example, Mr. Morsi led a boycott of a major Egyptian cellphone company because its founder, Naguib Sawiris, a Coptic Christian, had circulated on Twitter a cartoon of Mickey Mouse in a long beard with Minnie in a full-face veil — a joke Mr. Morsi said insulted Islam.
When the Brotherhood first considered trying to start a political party under Mr. Mubarak, in 2007, Mr. Morsi was in charge of drafting a hypothetical platform. One provision called for restricting the presidency to Muslim men. “The state which we seek can never be presided over by a non-Muslim,†he said at the time on the group’s Web site, arguing that the Brotherhood wanted both a tolerant constitutional democracy and an expressly “Islamic state.â€
In “a state whose top priorities include spreading and protecting the religion of Allah,†he said, Islam assigned the president some duties and powers that “can’t be carried out by a non-Muslim president.â€
Another provision called for a council of scholars to advise Parliament on fidelity to Islamic law. But unlike Iran’s Guardian Council, he said, it would be independent of the state, and its findings would be nonbinding.
Mr. Morsi also brings to the race a reputation as an enforcer of Brotherhood rules of obedience, even in politics. When a group of young online activists known as the Brotherhood bloggers argued that the platform Mr. Morsi oversaw contradicted the group’s stated commitment to pluralism, Mr. Morsi met with a group of them at his office.
“He said, ‘This is the Muslim Brothers’ interpretation of Islam, and this is Islam, and it’s nobody else’s business,’ †recalled Mohamed Ayyash, a former Brotherhood blogger who helped organize the meeting.
“He said: ‘You can’t talk like that. You can’t talk to the media.’ â€
“He said, ‘This is Islam the way the Muslim Brotherhood sees it,’ †Mr. Ayyash recalled. (The Morsi campaign declined to comment on the meeting.)
Mohamed Habib, a former deputy chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood who years ago appointed Mr. Morsi to oversee its political arm, said, “There is no doubt that Morsi is more conservative than the conservatives†in the Brotherhood, including Mr. Shater.
The presidential race is now shaping up in some ways as a rematch of the internal debate over that hypothetical platform. Mr. Aboul Fotouh, Mr. Morsi’s current opponent in the presidential race, was one of the few Brotherhood leaders who openly opposed the scholars council and presidency restrictions. Two years later, he was removed from the executive board in a conservative purge.
While Mr. Morsi has the Brotherhood’s organization behind him, Mr. Aboul Fotouh is considered more charismatic and carries strong Islamist credentials. While Mr. Morsi was working toward his engineering degree in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, Mr. Aboul Fotouh was founding an Islamist student movement that went on to merge with and revitalize the more established Muslim Brotherhood. He stood up to former President Anwar el-Sadat in a face-to-face confrontation at Cairo University.
Mr. Aboul Fotouh, a physician, also led the Brotherhood-dominated doctors’ syndicate, which ran the field hospitals during the protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak last year.
Addressing a crowd of thousands last week in Imbaba, a poor neighborhood of Cairo, Mr. Aboul Fotouh all but brushed off questions about Islamic law.
“Egypt has been proud of its Islamic and Arabic identity for 15 centuries,†he said. “Are we waiting for the Parliament to convert us?â€
Besides, he said, the correct understanding of Islamic law should not be reduced to penalties or restrictions but should mean “all mercy and justice.â€
As at many stops, Mr. Aboul Fotouh was also asked to confront rumors circulated in an online video — by Brotherhood operatives, his supporters charge — that if elected president, he would order the arrest of all the group’s members.
After the overthrow of Mr. Mubarak, Mr. Aboul Fotouh said, the Egyptian public would never allow another president to detain Islamists, leftists or anyone else for political reasons. “If he did this, the Egyptian people would be the ones to detain him!â€
As for his former colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Aboul Fotouh said he believed that they should be treated just like any other nonprofit group. “They have to be legal associations and to work with transparency and clarity,†he said repeatedly. “All associations and all parties are equal before the law.â€
To the Brotherhood, though, it was also a threat. The enforcement of Western-style financial and disclosure requirements could force the Brotherhood to separate its political party from its charitable and preaching organizations, depriving the party of much of its financing and clout while simultaneously diminishing the Brotherhood board’s control of the party.
As for Mr. Aboul Fotouh, Mr. Morsi suggested that he had brought on his own expulsion by defying the Brotherhood, in part by running for president. When a member breaks away, Mr. Morsi said in the interview, “we don’t blame him; we pity him.â€
Mayy El Sheikh and Dina Salah Amer contributed reporting.
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