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Travels in the Kurdish Blogosphere

Deborah Ann Dilley · 13:03 · Middle East & North Africa

Welcome back to the Kurdish Blogosphere!

Originally announced on the Kurdistan Bloggers Union was the creation of the Kurdistan Blog Count this week. Modeled loosely after the Iraq Blog Count, it intends to monitor and catalog the Kurdistan blogs out there in the world wide web. Other items announced on the Kurdistan Bloggers Union is the creation of a new KBU badge available for download.

Charles from the Is-Ought Problem has an excellent post about what happens when you use the “wrong” term in reporting about Kurdistan. The topic of Kurdistan in general is sensitive to say the least, and critisim about terminology used is given from all sides of the movement. As subject to this critisim often as your weekly author, I have come to the conclusion that if I anger someone, I anger them, but I try not too. Objectivity in this topic comes at a price, and with the excellent work that we have seen in the two-three weeks on this particular blog, I hope that Mr. Chapman does not give up his quest.

In honor of Human Rights Day, Bleak Blogorrhea gives us a link to a report done about the Human Rights violations in Eastern Kurdistan (Western Iraq). The report was submitted by the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, which nicely has their website translated into English if you are interested in reading the report.

Roj Bash! posts about a purported dispute between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Amnesty International, they promise a more detailed analysis on the subject soon.

Vladimir From Holland to Kurdistan has reports about the upcoming Iraqi elections. The first is an article from Ara Alan on why he is voting for 730. The second is a report about the Kurdish expat voing in Holland.

Rasti is a relatively new Kurdish blog. The author has been quite proliferic with his writing since he began to write. He has an interesting commentary on the state of the PKK in Turkey at the moment, and how no matter what is done the Kurdish Question in Turkey will always be tied to the PKK. He also has some very cogent analysis on the history of the PKK involvement in Turkey.

Pearls of Iraq posts about Islamic peacebuilding programs in Iraq and types about the rural building being done in the small town of Kalar in Northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan).

The last two bloggers on our list for this week have something in common, they are both giving detailed information about the upcoming Iraqi elections on December 15th (tomorrow!): Hiwa Hopes and the Iraqi Vote. Either later this evening or tomorrow at the lastest you can expect an detailed analysis of the Iraqi elections from the bloggers persceptives. Hiwa has been covering the elections from a Kurdish Iraqi POV, from party manifestos to allegations of who will be and will not be allowed to vote. The Iraqi Vote's coverage is a bit more holistic, and for the purposes of the post on the Iraqi elections, we will be drawing heavily from the information from that particular blog. The Iraqi Vote poignantly addresses the importance of the upcoming elections:

On December 15, 2005, the people of Iraq will vote for the first, permanent, democratically-elected government ever. This government has the most grand task of completing the skeleton that we call a constitution. As a result of the October 15th vote, the constitution was passed, but what kind of a constitution is it? Almost every article in the constitution says that it will be made permanent by a law, a law that will likely be voted on by the next government and the next government will be formed as a result of a general election due in only six days.

It is possible that this election will be the last one that matters because Iraq is likely to become a decentralized, federal state in which regional politics will be far more important than national politics. This fact is already evident in the absence of one of Iraq's most powerful politicians, Mr. Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

In the next four years, Iraqi politics is likely to shift from a national to a regional focus where elections in the regions would become more important than the national elections. However, that remains to be determined and it is wholly dependent on the results of next Thursday's vote.

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Voices from the Horn of Africa and Sudan

Chippla Vandu · 08:45 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Our look at what bloggers in the Horn of the African continent and Sudan are saying begins in Darfur and with some good news. Sleepless in Sudan is reporting that the ban on commercial traffic in one of the refugee camps called Kalma has been lifted. In its own words:

“…there's some more good news from Kalma camp this week - the ban on ‘commercial traffic' between the camp and Nyala town (which lies around 15km to the North-West of Kalma) is about to be lifted. The aid agencies who work inside Kalma camp have been struggling to get this result for months - since the governor of South Darfur first instituted the ban seven months ago, it has created a lot of problems for the people of Kalma camp.”

But not all news from Darfur is good news. Sudan: The Passion of the Present quotes an International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) report which states the Darfur remains a volatile region:

“Over the past two weeks, armed clashes have occurred near Al Geneina (Western Darfur) and Gereida (Southern Darfur), where the situation remains precarious. ICRC operations in the west of Western Darfur remain suspended in the wake of recent security incidents that have targeted the organization and continue making it difficult for its staff to go about their work in safety.”

Ethiopian bloggers seem focused on the ruling government of their country, with a lot of disapproval, that is. Ethiopundit in an article entitled “Washington's Lethal Delusions of Stability” appears angry with Western nations for their supposed bias towards the ruling party of Prime Minsiter Meles Zenawi which it (Ethiopundit) has no love for. Ethiopian Paradox comes out even harsher against Mr. Zenawi’s government in a thought-provoking piece called “SOS Ethiopia: 115,000 political prisoners at a Nazi-style concentration camp” where it states:

“Almost four weeks after the popular revolt in Addis Ababa in November of 2005 in which more than 100 people were killed according to human right groups, shocking news is slowly emerging indicating that more than 43,000 political prisoners have been detained in open air prisons (read Nazi-style concentration camps) in the Dedessa valley of South West Ethiopia”

Meskel Square takes a look at corruption in Ethiopia, which has for the first time being included in Transparency International’s annual Global Corruption Barometer, and appears surprised at the “relatively high figures that came up in some of the corruption categories for” Ethiopia. The author of Meskel Square had always seen Ethiopia as only marginally corrupt compared to other African countries, yet finds solace in the Transparency International report which shows that both Ethiopia and Nigeria are making some good progress in tackling corruption.

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Voices From Zimbabwe Plus

Zimpundit · 08:15 · Sub-Saharan Africa

Zimbabwe: With the elections gone and the country firmly in their grip, the ruling ZANU-PF unravelled their newest ploy to silence hostilities from their own citizens. Trevor Ncube, the publisher of two of Zimbabwe's independent newspapers The Independent and The Standard, and leading South African titles the Mail and Guardian, had his passport seized at the Joshua Nkomo Airport in Bulawayo last week. News reports speculate that the government has put together a list of 64 opponents and critics whose passports must be withdrawn immediately upon detection by border enforcement officers. Human rights activists and Civil rights leaders have however pointed out that the specific constitutional provision enabling the government to curb the travels of citizens whose travels “pose a threat to national security” is yet to be ratified by parliament making a law.

Meanwhile ZANU-PF is holding its' People's Congress in Esigodhini, a small town in Matabeleland where they've failed to mobilize any grassroots support. This is Zimbabwe notes how unusual it is for the people of Buluwayo to have the presidential motorcade commandeering city streets in the nation's second city.

“People in Bulawayo just aren’t used to motorcades.

On the way home tonight, friends were forced to veer off the main road into the lane for oncoming traffic. rgm had a fabulous day of ranting at the zanu thug congress in Esigodini and the mob were on their way home.”

Burundi: Agathon Rwasa is furious at the UN Burundi office for having nothing to say on International Human Rights day in light of the fact that several FNL leaders were captured with UN uniforms in their posession a month ago.

DRC: Sahara Sara reports an earthquake in eastern Congo that didn't get much coverage in MSM.

Adventures of a Retired Armchair Traveler contemplates the culpability of a DRC citizen convicted in Australia of spreading HIV, making this crucial distinction,

“In this story, there is not enough information to know whether the man that was jailed did what he did intentionally. Knowingly is not the same. Knowingly means that he had received a positive diagnosis and subsequently had unprotected sex with the two women mentioned in the article. Intentionally was how our character was infecting sex partners, which is much more insidious and scary.

Malawi: Mike of Hacktivate reports on Malawi's first blogger meet up.

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Air Plane Crash: Anger & Sorrow

Farid Pouya · 02:36 · Middle East & North Africa

A military transport plane crashed in a residential district in Tehran, at 6th of December, killing more than 100 people including many journalists and reporters who were air plane passengers.
Iranian government tried to blame pilot and American embargo as reasons for this tragedy but voices raised among bloggers, journalists a few pro republic Islamic sites such as Baztab ( I will talk about it below) and even some deputies in parliament against goverment’s negligence and irresponsible act. A new blog was created by brother of one of the victims to follow all news concerning this crash and to see where investigation leading us. Thanks to a Persian blog new reporter I came to know this blog: A Throat full of blades (Persian). Blogger says after all these days military reponsibles did not apologize yet. On his posts he has replaced the word comment by cry/shout. Let’s see why people are so angry with Iranian government:

Is sanction against Iran one of the causes of the last plan crash in Tehran Tuesday? asks Omid Memarian, journalist & Blogger. He answers

“Some of the Iranians bloggers have mentioned that US is responsible for the plane crash in Tehran and some of the others believe that’s the Tehran officials who don’t care about the health of the people in different ways…..I think both are true. There is no doubt about that Iranian government does not care about the health of the citizen. Tehran has been for two days off because of the air pollution. Is it the American sanction effects? Many people die during the year time because of the air pollution. Iran has the most died number of the road accidents in the world as the statistics indicate. Are Americans involved in that?….So, mismanagement and bad governance which is all over the country affected the people widely“.

Why this trip to Chahbahar was so important that a second pilot was found to send all these journalists to that place? Zeytoun asks. According to this blogger, They(journalists) were send to film a military demonstartion of followers of leader and arriving late could be considered as an insult to Leader. She thinks is why they were send at any price to that place.(Persian)

Why Clerics are silent asks pejvake khamoush a reformist cleric & blogger based in Qom. Our planes are out of order and both pilotes and passengers are responsible. He says why clerics don't talk about it to stop this kind of tragedies.(Persian)

Shahram Kholdi, UK based blogger says:

“There are rumours that when the IRIAF Hercules C-130 attempted emergency landing, the landing was delayed by the Mehrabad control tower because a “high ranking official's” plane was about to take off at the same time“.

Kossof , journalist blogger, writes:

“Thousands of mourners flooded central Tehran on Thursday for a funeral ceremony for at least 108 people killed in Tuesday's plane crash that the families of victims have blamed on poor safety procedures“.

According to Bazatb, (an Iran based popular conservative news site), many experienced managers and specialists in air industry were recently replaced by new faces without any experience. Baztab continues that this changing in industry can create more insecurity and risk for airplanes. (Persian)

May be we can conclude with Iran based blogger, Mr Behi, that air plane crash in Tehran: He says