Friday, March 28, 2014

A Look back at Crimea and Russian & Ottoman Empires

A Look back at Crimea and Russian & Ottoman Empires

 

Whenever driving from Ankara to Bursa ( the first Ottoman capital ) or  Kutahya , centre of Ottoman ceramics ,I always stopped by Eskisehir for lunch, where Tatars sell fried slim-rolled bread of wheat and cheese , somewhat like puris in India, except it is very delicious. Yes, I missed Indian pickle called achaar, which actually comes from the Turkish verb achak, which opens (the appetite)

 

CimmeriansBulgarsGreeksScythiansGothsHunsKhazars, Kievan Rus'Byzantine Greeks, KipchaksOttoman Turks, Golden Horde Tatars and the Mongols each controlled Crimea in its earlier history. In 13th century, it was controlled by the Venetians and the Genoese. Before that Greek colonies of western Asian Minor coast had their trading posts.

 

They were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th to 18th centuries, the Russian Empire in the 18th to 20th centuries, Germany during World War II and the USSR during the rest of the 20th century .Crimea a part of Russian Soviet republic was gifted by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to Ukraine .

  

However like others in India I learnt about Crimea from our school textbooks about the British nurse Florence Nightingale, who nursed allied troops in the war against Russia for the Ottoman Empire of which Crimea was then a part. However after the roll back of the Ottoman Empire, Crimea became part of the advancing Czarist Empire.

 

Like other later empires say of the British, French and other European powers and after World War II, USA the links and residual connections between the Imperial power and their former colonies remain intact in some form or the other. Citizens from former European colonies migrated to the European nations and now USA .The migration continues even today, to which the former colonial masters are now putting up strong resistance , except for those who are highly qualified ..

 

As the Ottoman Empire started shrinking, its subjects, especially the Muslims started migrating to Ottoman heartland ie Anatolia and even to the Balkans provinces /Velayat .The Ottoman policy was to scatter migrations from its former territories, not only in Anatolia, but also to its Arab provinces, an example being the Cherkes and Chechens from Caucasia settled around Amman, the capital of the Kingdom of Jordan, where they form the Royal guards of the Hashemite ruler. Crimean Tatars are one of the diverse peoples comprising the modern nation of Turkey.

 

However, Turkey's alliance with Western powers against Russian expansionism had some reasons behind the Crimean War (1853–1856). Ottoman Turkey had been in conflict with Russia, and after the war broke out, Russia lost to an alliance of Ottoman Turkey, France, Britain and Sardinia.

And the Crimean War transformed the region. With this defeat, Russia ceased for a time to be a security threat in the Black Sea and to Turkey. Because of wars , battles and population exchanges and mass movements  the present-day states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine, along with the Crimean and Caucasus regions, underwent changes  in large and small ways.

 

From the Ottoman Empire more than 25 new states have emerged so far and counting. Later we will look at the problems because of the Crimea Tatars in Turkey.

 

The Crimean War represented one of the main causes of the demise of the Concert of Europe, the balance of power that had dominated the continent since the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

 

There are many intriguing elements in the current conflict between the West and Russia over Crimea. Some believed that the post–Cold War period had ended, but the international system is now on the brink of a "neo–Cold War." In fact for US led West the Cold War never finished , and the former tried to strangle the Russian people .Promises made when USSR allowed German re-unification  not to extend NATO east of Germany were broken with impunity .Ukraine is another  stark example .

 

According to a Turkish analyst, the US and Europe do not recognize the so-called referendum backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin that garnered 95% approval, (it was similar to elections in Serbia, Georgia and in Ukraine earlier).Putin then signed a decree annexing Crimea to Russia. What can Turkey, as the spokesman for its Tatar kin, and the Western world, which considers the referendum illegal, can do now .Go to war with Russia as during 1853–1856? , with serious problems at home and abroad with all its neighbors, courtesy, a hot headed and maverick prime minister.

 

It is agreed that a war is not in the cards and that the United States and the rest of the West would   commit themselves to what remains of Ukraine. In short, they will try to live with the loss of Crimea. Russia therefore stands today as a country not to be contained by British, French and Turkish troops by declaring war as in the mid-1850s.

 

Another striking difference between the 19th and 21st centuries is that in 1856 in the aftermath of the Crimean War, France emerged as the ascendant power in Europe. Since WWII, the United States has surpassed Britain as a power, while in the Crimean crisis, Germany, not France, is the ascendant in Europe. Also, Turkey of the 21st century, until recently criticized because of its foreign minister's pursuit of "neo-Ottoman" policies, does not possess the same clout as the 1850s Ottomans in international or regional politics.

 

The Turkish public, preoccupied with rough and turbulent domestic politics, has not taken note of this shortcoming, but the international actors reaping the by-products of the crisis — Russia and Ukraine and Syria — could not have missed it. Last week, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, at a joint press briefing in Turkey with the Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Cemiloglu [formerly Jamilev], said Crimea belonged to Ukraine and declared Russian claims to Crimea illegal. The Tatars today constitute only 10% of the Crimean population as result of ethnic cleansing that peaked during the Stalin era.

 

Movement of Populations post Crimean War ;

 

The flow of populations became a torrent after the Crimean War following new persecutions elsewhere in Europe. The war itself led the Russians to change their relatively tolerant policy toward the Tatars and Circassians into one of active persecution and resettlement from their original homes to desolate areas in Siberia and even farther east. (This was repeated during World War II) The result was mass migration into Ottoman territory, often with the encouragement of the Russians, who were glad to get rid of the old population to Russianize and Christianize the southern areas of their new empire.


From individual accounts it appears that the numbers were immense. Some 176,700 Tatars from the Nogay and Kuban settled in central and southern Anatolia between 1854 and 1860. Approximately a million came in the next decade, of which a third were settled in Rumeli, the rest in Anatolia and Syria. From the Crimea alone, from 1854 to 1876, 1.4 million Tatars migrated into the Ottoman Empire.

Even Slavic migration begun before the Crimean War intensified - Cossacks who fled from the Russian army settled as farmers in Macedonia, Thrace and western Anatolia. Bulgarians settled in the Crimea to replace the Tatars returned to their homes in the Ottoman Empire from an alien environment.

 

The mass migration of Muslims continued, though at a somewhat less intense pace, during the early years of Abdulhamit II, mostly in consequence of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1888 and the autonomy given to Bulgaria and Romania, Austrian control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the cession of northern Dobruca to Romania and northern Macedonia to Serbia. Official statistics estimated that over a million refugees entered the empire between 1876 and 1895. The number of male Muslims doubled during the years from 1831 to 1882, with the proportion of Muslims to non-Muslims increasing substantially.

The immigrants were settled widely throughout the empire, many in villages that had been abandoned and some in eastern Anatolia, particularly in Cilicia (Adana region) and Arab lands like Syria, sometimes leading to conflict and problems. The lands could not have been intensively cultivated and the rural middle class built up had it not been for the tremendous influx of refugees who provided the necessary labor and males for future wars.

Amazons in Ottoman Harems!

 

But the ingress and intermingling of Caucasian people with the Turks is much deeper among its elite. "Young girls of extraordinary beauty, plucked from the slave market, were sent to the sultan's court, often as gifts from his governors. Among the singular, lasting privileges of the valide [mother] sultana was the right to present her son with a slave girl on the eve of Kurban Bayram [sacrificial day]. The girls were all non-Muslims, uprooted at a tender age. The sultans were partial to the fair, doe-eyed beauties from the Caucasus region. Circassians, Georgians and Abkhazians were proud mountain girls, believed to be the descendents of the Amazon women who had lived in Scythia near the Black Sea in ancient times and who had swept down through Greece as far as Athens, waging a war that nearly ended the city's glamorous history.

 

"Now they were being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. A customs declaration from around 1790 establishes their worth at about 20 percent to 40 percent of a horse. The promise of a life of luxury and ease overcame parental scruples against delivering their children into concubinage. Many Circassian and Georgian families encouraged their daughters to enter that life willingly. They were immediately converted to Islam and began an arduous training in palace etiquette and Islamic culture." (From Harem by Alev Lytle Croutier).

Lucie Duff Gordon also reported it in her 1864 travel diary. While the earlier mothers of sultans were Greek or Serbian princesses married to the rulers, after the capital shifted to Constantinople, everyone was a member of the harem under valide sultana's control, with those giving birth to children, especially boys, jumping up in the harem hierarchy.

Many of the mother sultanas were Circassians and Georgians, one even French, Aimee de Rivery. They exercised great influence over their sons, now the sultan. The harem politics also became a reason for the decline of the empire. The word odalisque literally "woman in the room", comes from oda (room). But harem life was embellished by feverish European imagination, whose rulers were no less sensual, but lacked wealth and culture at that time.

In friendly arguments with Turkish friends, mostly diplomats, I would tease them, "What do you mean you are a Turk. You don't even look like a Turk. They are chinky-eyed and have little hair on their face. Of course you speak good Turkish, as you have been practicing it for 500 years." This devastating repartee usually ended the argument. Most would smile and happily admit that his grand uncle or grandmother came from Circassia or Bosnia. During the days of the empire, the elite called itself the Ottomans. The word Turk was reserved for the village yokel and a term of contempt. It was Kemal Ataturk who bestowed dignity on the word Turk.

 

Turkey boasts of over forty civilsations .The Turkic tribes entered Anatolia only in 11 century and

İn 1453 conquerred  the Byzantine capital Constantinople when it became the Ottoman Istanbul, with the 6th century magnificent St. Sophia Church converted into a mosque .But Turkey and Istanbul has monuments and ruins from its millennium and half long Roman and Byzantine past (Turkey has more Greek monuments than Greece and more Roman sites than Italy). It has many historic Christian places, ie Chalcedon, Nicomedea, Nicea or all the churches of revelation; for, Asia Minor as Turkey was then known was also a cradle of Christianity.  Also Testament's Mount Ararat and Noah's Ark with ruins of beautiful Armenian Churches and Urartian monuments in the region of Kars and Van. The fabled Pontus Trabzon ,Sumela monastry on  the Black Sea coast of the Golden Fleece, whence emerged Xenophon and his ten thousand after an arduous journey through Kurdish speaking lands. Divrigi, with its masterpieces of pre-Ottoman architecture. Amazon Queen founded Sinop, the birthplace of cynic Diogenes who told off Alexander the Great for shutting out his sunlight.

 

K.Gajendra Singh 28 March, 2014.Mayur Vihar Delhi.

 

For full article click

 

 

Below is an article which I had written when a number of Russian citizens in Caucasus had carried out terrorist attacks in Moscow and other places .The article includes the migration of Turks and other Muslims, not only from what was the Soviet Union, but even from East Europe. It also gives a glimpse about Turkish elite's fascination with fair colored young girls from Caucasia and Balkans.

                                                                     

Turkey and the Central Asian ethnic octopus
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL18Ak03.html

By K Gajendra Singh  ,Bucharest (Romania)                                18 December, 2003

Once again, Chechen suicide bombers have struck in the center of Moscow, on December 10, this time to influence the outcome of parliamentary elections in Russia. An earlier devastating attack on a train near Chechnya on December 5 killed over 40 persons and injured hundreds more.

Russia has many millions of Muslim citizens. Tragically, these bleeding attacks are not expected to be the last. Chechens and other tribes around the Black Sea and the Caspian and the mountainous Caucasian region which separates Russia and the Middle East and Anatolia migrated here and have established deep roots. Like sleeper cells put in place over the centuries, their presence could have ramifications beyond their borders and serious implications for the region.

In the Caucasian region - which includes southwest Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia - not only do the geological plates grind against each other, making the area earthquake prone, strategically the tectonic plates of kingdoms and empires have rubbed against each other throughout history. Powers and states have always interfered with each other, and they still do so. Earlier the actors were Turks and Mongols from Central Asia and then the Ottoman and Safavid empires. Later, the Russians replaced the Mongols and the Turks, and after World War I the British from the southeast. Now, the United States has taken over the mantle from the British in this Great Game.

The region remains very important and dangerous, with complex linkages and relationships between the people of Turkey and the people of the Caucasian region. These ties were established when the Ottoman empire was shrinking, and they are deep and abiding.

But after World War I, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the creation of the Turkish republic in Anatolia by Kemal Ataturk saw outside contact with the Muslim peoples of not only Central Asia but the Caucasian region cease almost altogether. Ataturk jettisoned the Ottoman religious heritage and he forced Turks to look West and become Westernized, modern and secular citizens in an effort to reach the levels of contemporary European civilization. During my first tenure in Ankara (1969-73), there was little real interest or even material available on Central Asia. Pan-Turkic leaders like Alp Aslan Turkes were looked on with suspicion.

The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Turkey's historical enemy, pleased the Turks to no end. It opened the floodgates of exchanges and relations between the Turks of Anatolia and the Turkic people of Central Asia and the Caucasus. There were delegations galore, with the two "lost people" hugging each other, with many Central Asian leaders bending down to touch the soil of Turkey with their foreheads on first arrival. The initiative to bring the Turkic countries together was taken up by president Turgut Ozal, but unfortunately he died in 1993.

Migration and intermingling among Turks and Caucasians
From the mid-19th century, tens of thousands of refugees flooded into the Ottoman empire in flight from oppression and massacres. The Ottoman countryside had been largely depopulated since the 17th century as the result of misrule and the ravages of war, famine and plague. So the Refugee Code (Muhadrin Kanunnamesi) of 1857 granted plots of state land to immigrant families and groups. They were given exemptions from taxes and conscription for six years if they settled in Rumeli (the European part ) and for 12 years if they opted for Anatolia. They were to cultivate the land and not to sell or leave it for 20 years and they had to become the subjects of the sultan, accepting his laws and justice.

They had freedom of religion, whatever their faith, and were allowed to build churches if none were available. News of the decree spread widely through Europe and met with a ready response from various groups unable to find land or political peace at home. Almost to the end, the Ottoman rulers were tolerant of other religions. It is the West which exploited ethnic and religion-based nationalism to break the Ottoman empire and divide Hindustan, Palestine, Cyprus and other regions. But the same right is denied to the north Irish, Basques, Corsicans, Sardinians and others.

A Refugee Commission (Muhacirin Komisyort) established in 1860 in the trade ministry became an independent agency in July 1861. It was a belated response to the influx. Most of the refugees came from the Turkish, Tatar and Circassian lands being conquered by the Russians to the north and west of the Black Sea and the Caspian. Even though there was no official Russian policy of driving these Muslims from their homes, the new Christian governments imposed in the Crimea (1783), in the areas of Baku and Kuban (1796), in Nahcivan and the eastern Caucasus (1828), and finally in Anapa and Poti, northeast of the Black Sea, following the Treaty of Edirne (1829), made thousands of Muslims uncomfortable enough to migrate, without special permission or attraction, into Ottoman territory.

Even hundreds of Russian "Old Believers" had fled from the reforms of Peter and Catherine, settling in the Dobruca and along the Danube near the Black Sea. Between 1848 and 1850 they were joined by thousands of non-Muslim immigrants, farmers as well as political and intellectual leaders fleeing from the repression that accompanied and followed the revolutions of 1848, especially from Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. While many of these were absorbed by Ottoman urban life, many were settled as farmers or managers of the farms being built by large landowners, contributing to both estate-building and the improvement of cultivation.

The flow became a torrent after the Crimean War following new persecutions elsewhere in Europe. The war itself led the Russians to change their relatively tolerant policy toward the Tatars and Circassians into one of active persecution and resettlement from their original homes to desolate areas in Siberia and even farther east. (This was repeated during World War 2) The result was mass migration into Ottoman territory, often with the encouragement of the Russians, who were glad to get rid of the old population to Russianize and Christianize the southern areas of their new empire.
From individual accounts it appears that the numbers were immense. Some 176,700 Tatars from the Nogay and Kuban settled in central and southern Anatolia between 1854 and 1860. (I always stopped by Esksehir for lunch, where Tatars sell fried thin-rolled bread like puris in India, except it is more delicious). Approximately a million came in the next decade, of whom a third were settled in Rumeli, the rest in Anatolia and Syria. From the Crimea alone, from 1854 to 1876, 1.4 million Tatars migrated into the Ottoman empire.

Even Slavic migration begun before the Crimean War intensified - Cossacks who fled from the Russian army settled as farmers in Macedonia, Thrace and western Anatolia. Bulgarians settled in the Crimea to replace the Tatars returned to their homes in the Ottoman empire from an alien environment. The mass migration of Muslims continued, though at a somewhat less intense pace, during the early years of Abdulhamit II, mostly in consequence of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1888 and the autonomy given to Bulgaria and Romania, Austrian control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the cession of northern Dobruca to Romania and northern Macedonia to Serbia. Official statistics estimated that over a million refugees entered the empire between 1876 and 1895. The number of male Muslims doubled during the years from 1831 to 1882, with the proportion of Muslims to non-Muslims increasing substantially.

The immigrants were settled widely throughout the empire, many in villages that had been abandoned and some in eastern Anatolia, particularly in Cilicia (Adana region) and Arab lands like Syria, sometimes leading to conflict and problems. The lands could not have been intensively cultivated and the rural middle class built up had it not been for the tremendous influx of refugees who provided the necessary labor and males for future wars.

But the ingress and intermingling of Caucasian people with the Turks is much deeper among its elite. "Young girls of extraordinary beauty, plucked from the slave market, were sent to the sultan's court, often as gifts from his governors. Among the singular, lasting privileges of the valide [mother] sultana was the right to present her son with a slave girl on the eve of Kurban Bayram [sacrificial day]. The girls were all non-Muslims, uprooted at a tender age. The sultans were partial to the fair, doe-eyed beauties from the Caucasus region. Circassians, Georgians and Abkhasians were proud mountain girls, believed to be the descendents of the Amazon women who had lived in Scythia near the Black Sea in ancient times and who had swept down through Greece as far as Athens, waging a war that nearly ended the city's glamorous history.

"Now they were being kidnapped or sold by impoverished parents. A customs declaration from around 1790 establishes their worth at about 20 percent to 40 percent of a horse. The promise of a life of luxury and ease overcame parental scruples against delivering their children into concubinage. Many Circassian and Georgian families encouraged their daughters to enter that life willingly. They were immediately converted to Islam and began an arduous training in palace etiquette and Islamic culture." (From Harem by Alev Lytle Croutier).

Lucie Duff Gordon also reported it in her 1864 travel diary. While the earlier mothers of sultans were Greek or Serbian princesses married to the rulers, after the capital shifted to Constantinople, everyone was a member of the harem under valide sultana's control, with those giving birth to children, especially boys, jumping up in the harem hierarchy.

Many of the mother sultanas were Circassians and Georgians, one even French, Aimee de Rivery. They exercised great influence over their sons, now the sultan. The harem politics also became a reason for the decline of the empire. The word odalisque literally "woman in the room", comes from oda (room). But harem life was embellished by feverish European imagination, whose rulers were no less sensual, but lacked wealth and culture at that time.

In friendly arguments with Turkish friends, mostly diplomats, I would tease them, "What do you mean you are a Turk. You don't even look like a Turk. They are chinky-eyed and have little hair on their face. Of course you speak good Turkish, as you have been practicing it for 500 years." This devastating repartee usually ended the argument. Most would smile and happily admit that his grand uncle or grandmother came from Circassia or Bosnia. During the days of the empire, the elite called itself the Ottomans. The word Turk was reserved for the village yokel and a term of contempt. It was Kemal Ataturk who bestowed dignity on the word Turk.

Turkey and Central Asia
President Ozal's successor, Sulieman Demirel, did not have his vision or drive with regards to Central Asia and the whole thing came to a standstill, although after initial resistance to Turkish aggression Turkic leaders felt more comfortable in an institutional relationship with Turkey. In any case, even if Turkey had wished for a bigger role in Central Asia, it did not have the wherewithal to play it. Many Central Asian leaders to whom power fell like manna from heaven in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union were confused and rudderless. They were cautious and wanted good relations with all. The US encouraged Turkey and was afraid that Russia would try to come back, which it tried in some ways, but the horse had already bolted the stable.

Fears that Iran would spread its version of fanatic Islam and support anti-US regimes also proved farfetched. After an eight-year exhausting war with Iraq in the 1980s, in which Iran lost a million young people, there was little energy or money left to spread its message of Shi'ite revolution. Except for the Azeris and some other pockets, most people in Central Asia are Sunni Muslims, closer to the more mystic Sufi way of life. They have a very high level of education and a lifestyle of drinking and good living. With deep-grained nomadic habits, they could not easily be led to Islamic fundamentalism. It was ill-conceived US, Saudi and Pakistani policies that brought Wahhabi Islam to Central Asia.

Except for the Caspian basin for its energy resources and in Kyrgyzstan, the American leadership soon lost interest. The Caspian basin has between 60 to 200 billion barrels of oil. The US courted Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev, touting him as a democrat and helped his country join the World Trade Organization in 1998. The reason was to have a friendly regime with freedom to base personnel and sensing equipment to monitor China, next door. Akayev has proved no different than leaders of other Central Asian republics in terms of his record on democracy though.

The early 1990s were a very opportune moment for Turkey, which under the dynamic leadership of Ozal had successfully undergone a decade of economic reforms and had opened its economy to the West, especially Europe. The country had many trained managers and experts who, because of ethnic, linguistic and religious similarity, became advisers and even ministers in the new Turkic governments in Central Asia. Both at state level and in the private sector, Turkey made large investments in Central Asia and Azerbaijan. The Turkish government provided loans amounting to US$750 million to Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. Turkish private investment runs into billions of dollars. Turks have established industries and run hotels and other businesses.

Turkey also arranged to train 10,000 students and teachers from the new republics. Turkish as spoken in the Republic has been purified by excluding many Arabic and Persian words. Many European words, especially from French (almost all in the game of bridge) have been added. The Azeri language is quite similar to Turkish, as well as the Turcoman language. The languages spoken by Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and in Kazakhstan are somewhat different. Originally, Soviet Russians prescribed Latin script for the Central Asian languages, but when Ataturk changed to the Latin script from Arabic, the Russians changed to Cyrillic. Many Turks have opened schools in Central Asia, too. Turkey has also started beaming Avrasia TV programs to Central Asia, but with uneven results.

But Turkey's efforts to create an area of influence in Central Asia were opposed by the newly independent leadership. A loose organization of Turkic states exists without having achieved much. The old Baghdad pact was joined by the new Central Asian republics and became the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). To soothe the Russians, a Black Sea organization was also created, but it remains equally ineffective. Tansu Chiller, who had still not shot to fame by becoming the first woman prime minister of Turkey, told me that Central Asian governments did not repay Turkish loans, while they paid back Western ones. I had also been told that the new leadership in Central Asia would like to establish authoritarian political regimes and try to follow the capitalist system of East Asia. It has certainly succeeded rather well in its first objective.

Problems in the Caucasus
Soon nationalist Russian politicians, ex-communist cadres, ambitious Russian generals, local mafia and international oil executives all entered the fray to play their part for personal or national gains on the Caucasian chessboard.

Even Turkey was put in an embarrassing situation when Azeri president Heydar Aliyev, who died last Friday at the age of 80, accused a Turkish group in 1995 of trying to overthrow him with the help of his opponents in the capital Baku. But generally Demirel, a believer in the status quo, was helpful to Aliyev. Himself sent packing twice by the armed forces when prime minister, Demirel suggested to Aliyev to go on television and take other steps to control rebellions in Baku. This was a technique King Carlos of Spain had used successfully to quell rebellion by his armed forces.

East and south Turkey and the Kurdish rebellion
From 1984 to 1999, Abdullah Ocalan led the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) rebellion for a Kurdish state in the southeast of Turkey, a campaign that cost over 35,000 lives, mostly Kurds, including the lives of more than 5,000 Turkish soldiers. To control and neutralize the rebellion, thousands of Kurdish villages were bombed, destroyed, abandoned or relocated; millions of Kurds were moved to shanty towns in the south and east or migrated westwards. The economy of the region was shattered. Half of the Kurdish population now lives in western Turkey, making Istanbul the second largest Kurdish city after Diyarbakir. With a third of the Turkish army tied up in the southeast, the cost of countering the insurgency amounted to between $6 billion to $8 billion a year. After the capture of Ocalan in 1999 and the passage of laws last year to ease the lives of Kurds, things have now quieted.

The war in the 1980s between Iraq and resurgent Shi'ite Iran helped the PKK to establish itself in the lawless Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. The PKK also helped itself with arms freely available in the region during the eight-year war. After the 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war, with lack of legitimate authority and absence of possible Turko-Iraqi joint offensives against the Kurds in the north of Iraq, the Kurdish rebellion blossomed most violently. Turkey crossed over quite deep into north Iraq from time to time for punitive attacks on PKK hideouts and formations, despite the usual international furor. It even bombed some border areas in Iran too, where the PKK might have taken shelter.

The attempt by the Turkish armed forces and the establishment to clear east and south Turkey of Kurdish rebels (and populations) , has made it easy for groups to move around from one country to another, notably from Turkey to Iran and Afghanistan and from Azerbaijan to Chechnya.

Once, while I was able to drive along the sea coast from Baku to the border with Daghestan, I was advised not to go towards Gynza, towards the border with Georgia. It was a dangerous area under Surat Hassonov, a mafia chief and smuggler and once prime minister of Azerbaijan under Aliyev. There are many such areas in the region, and mafia teams in the import and export business do not pay customs duties. Even ministers are involved. The bludgeoning truck-based trade between Turkey and the Central Asian republics via Azerbaijan and Iran, without proper police control, means control by the mafia and freedom of movement for those who are determined or prepared to pay up.

Political-police-mafia link in Turkey
In a notorious case, an automobile crashed at Susurluk in western Anatolia on November 3, 1996. In the accident, Haseyin Kocadag, director of the Istanbul police academy, Abdallah Catli, a "Grey Wolf" ultra-nationalist militant and gangster who was implicated in seven murders in 1978 and convicted on drugs charges in Switzerland, and Catli's mistress, Goncas, were all killed in the same car. The driver of the car was Sedat Bucak, a ruling True Path party deputy and Kurdish chieftain heading a large gang of "village guards" (that is, pro-government Kurdish militiamen paid for and trained by the armed forces), who was the only occupant to survive. The crash suggested credible links between the security forces, the "Grey Wolves", organized crime and pro-government Kurdish chiefs.

In the beginning of November 1998, 25 prosecutions were launched covering murder, gangsterism and narcotics smuggling, in which 75 suspects were charged and the parliamentary immunities of both Bucak and of Mehmet Agar, the minister of interior, was lifted. But after two years, only two relatively low-ranking police officers had been convicted. Most of the alleged ringleaders in these crimes remained at large, some abroad, with even diplomatic passports. Inquiries revealed nothing concrete, but it emerged that the police regularly used mafia hit men to kill PKK people.

Istanbul bombs
The human bombers who destroyed two synagogues in Istanbul last month have been traced to Bingol, a small dusty town near the Iranian border. It means 1,000 lakes, and includes lake Van. I spent four quiet days in 1969 looking around the region, including lake Van, as the guest of its vali (governor) Kemal Ozturk, a very charming and gracious host, with evenings beginning with high officials - including the military chief - at 6pm and ending two hours past midnight. I found the same kind of lavish hospitality, now declining in Turkey, at Babur University as well as at private homes in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley city of Andijan (the birth place of Babur, the founder of the Moghul Empire in India ) which I visited in 1998.

By the 1990s Bingol had become Kurdish rebel-infested and dangerous. When I revisited nearby cities like Diyarbakir, the main Kurdish stronghold, by 4pm before sundown everyone, including the police, would retire for the day, thus leaving most of the countryside in south and east Turkey for rebels and others to roam about and transfer personnel and arms.

Nearby is the city of Batman, which had become the center of the Turkish Hezbollah. Unfortunately, the Turkey establishment helped this organization by encouraging some of its units in the region in the mid-1990s to eliminate PKK guerillas or sympathizers in southeast Turkey. The Turkish Hezbollah is quite different from the Lebanese one, and was reportedly helped by the Iranians. Only when Hezbollah started creating cells in Istanbul and west Turkey was the experiment abandoned, but the cat was out of the bag.

Jordan connection
Despite very strong control by the security establishment in Jordan, mostly manned by loyal tribesmen, the country with nearly a 60 percent population of Palestinian origin remains a place of acute underground activity. Daily killings and counter-killings across the border in the occupied West Bank and Gaza make things worse. It is a stronghold of Muslim Brotherhood, which did very well in 1990 elections, with King Hussein even including some of them in the cabinet to face Western criticism of not joining in the coalition against Saddam Hussein.

The United Kingdom and the United States blatantly encouraged Islamic and obscurantist groups to counter nationalist and socialist regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s, when Iran's Shi'ite revolution unnerved everyone. But for the Western support to Islamic elements, it would have led to more equitable and democratic regimes in the region. So the current talk by Western leaders and the media of ushering democracy into the region is absolute humbug. And nobody is fooled, except sometimes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times.

Jordan has produced many well-known jihadis, like Ibn-al-Khatib. There are now two new factors. The reported linkages between Jordanians of Caucasus origin and Chechens. Most of them are Circassians, known as Cherkess. It could be a very dangerous development because the Cherkess are the Hashemite kingdom's palace guards and hold important key positions in the police establishment and elsewhere.

Although only about 15,000 in number, a seat in parliament is reserved for them. After World War I, when Emir Abdullah, son of King Hussein of Hejaz and great great-grandfather of King Abdullah, stopped at Amman to reclaim Syria, which had been promised by the British to the Arabs for revolting against the Ottomans, the Cherkess community, which had been established since the 19th century, was the first to express its loyalty to him. Although the Cherkess community has remained loyal, there are now murmurs of disaffection. The number of Circassians in Syria is much higher, but then Syria exercises very strict control over such groups. Thoughtless efforts by the US neo-conservatives to destabilize Syria would have devastating consequences.

The late King Hussein, before dying of cancer in 1999, to further strengthen the British and the American motivation to protect the kingdom and his dynasty, at the last minute removed his younger brother, Crown Prince Hassan, married to late Indian chief justice Shri M Hidayatullah's niece, and instead made his son Abdullah the Crown Prince. Abdullah was the eldest son of the late king and his second wife Toni, a British citizen who embraced Islam and remained Queen of Jordan until 1972 when she and the late king divorced.

The US embassy in Amman, Jordan's capital, which I visited just before leaving in 1992, is like a fortress, replete with underground chambers. During the 1990- 91 Gulf crises and war, King Hussein adroitly remained neutral, much to the anger of the Anglo-Saxons, but the masses remained peaceful and under control. King Abdullah is not as nimble or experienced, and many Jordanians feel that he is siding with the Americans and extending them help, so there remains a danger to the throne. Such warnings were conveyed by attacks on the embassy of Jordan in Baghdad.

K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador (retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August 1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic Studies.



 

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Paris Dinner for Sardar Khushwant Singh

 

Paris Dinner for Sardar Khushwant Singh

His greatest virtue was that he was no hypocrite in a country of prudes ruled by the pieties of hypocrites

 “Here lies one who spared neither man nor God/ Waste not your tears on him, he was a sod/ Writing nasty things he regarded as great fun/ Thank the Lord he is dead, this son of a gun.” Khushwant Singh’s self written obituary in advance.*

 

Just prior to the 1975 Emergency, while posted as Counsellor  at the Indian embassy in Paris, one day Vijay Kumar, Second Sec came rushing after a protocol visit to Orly airport . He said that by the Air India flight Sardar Khushwant Singh had also come and was checked in at the Hilton Hotel. I had read his masterly book ‘The History of the Sikhs ‘and also a somewhat naughty book, by those times ‘A train to Pakistan.’ I used to wonder if it was the same person who wrote the two books.

 

I telephoned Khushwant Singh and said that I was happy he was in Paris and invited him for dinner. He responded that he had come to participate in a seminar against Indian government's policy. I said India was a free country. Next day I drove over to the hotel and fetched him to my flat on Boulevard Suchet, just across the Bios de Boulogne. Vijay Kumar and wife of the defence adviser also joined us for dinner.

 

After we settled down with a whiskey each, I requested him not to write anything about our conversation in his travelogue or articles as it would inhibit free discussion. After some persuasion he grudgingly agreed. We talked about the political situation in France and in India a general way. I then complained to him that he need not have embarrassed in his article, Amb TN Kaul, whom he sighted at a London theatre screening,’ I am curious (Yellow)’, a soft porn film of that era. He said that Kaul whom he knew well was trying to avoid him and deserved to be exposed. I then took up the other story he had written about Ramesh Sanghvi after his death that he would be having a premier brand Scotch with Angel Gabriel in heaven in a somewhat derogatory way. I insisted that it was unfair to write such things about a person who could not respond. He grudgingly saw my point.

 

Ramesh Sanghvi and I had become good friends after his visit for the non-aligned summit in October 1964 at Cairo, where I was posted as assistant press attaché .During my transit stay over at Bombay on return to Delhi from my post in Algiers in end 1965, he took me over to his well equipped posh flat. He was a very prosperous and successful bar at law and wrote on foreign affairs for the very popular weekly Blitz. We also met with his sick wife and his young sickly looking boy.

 

At the dinner, in spite of our insistence Khushwant Singh took just two whiskeys .His usual quota as I would learn later his flat across New Delhi's Khan Market. I am convinced that it was a brag that he could out drink, when young .This is typical of many who believe that an ability to out drink is a sign of virility or manliness. Unfortunately, those who can often imbibe more than a few drinks could end up as alcoholic’s .After the dinner, at Khushwant Singh’s insistence; Vijay Kumar drove him back to the Hilton.

 

A few weeks later, Air India‘s airport manager at Orly, who had just received the latest copy of the Illustrated Weekly of India by AI flight, telephoned me excitedly and said that in Khushwant Singh's column he has very favorably wrote about my welcome hospitality from someone he did not know .But what he had written about Vijay Kumar, was not flattering. Soon Vijay Kumar was in my office afraid that Amb DN Chatterjee would be annoyed when he reads this. Khushwant Singh had written that Vijay Kumar had intentionally driven him via Bois the Boulogne, where ladies of the night display their wares until sunrise for those interested in such pleasures. In fact, Khushwant Singh had insisted that he be taken via the Bois. I assured Vijay Kumar not to worry, I will explain it to the ambassador, which I did soon, at which the ambassador expressed hope that nothing had been written about him.

 

A few months later I had gone to collect a senior external affairs official and Minister YB Chavan's private secretary for a quiet dinner at my flat .The two requested permission and Chavan agreed  as there was no program that evening. But to my great surprise Chavan exclaimed , oh Gajendra Singh, his hospitality is very well known. Quite apparently while many denied but most read the travel notes and articles by Khushwant Singh. Later we went to Lido nightclub, a done thing in those days by almost all visitors to Paris. Watch this space for more on this.

 

I then met him at National Defence College in New Delhi in 1976  where he had come to deliver a lecture.

 

I later got in touch with him when posted in Ankara for some material on my article ,’Influence of Turkic languages in the evolution and development of Hindustani languages , because I agree with him that both Urdu and Hindi have emerged out of Hindustan’s main language Hindustani . ‘He did not provide much material, but he was very appreciative of the article and wrote back.”

 

“Thanks for your scholarly thesis.... I  read with renewed  interest  your  paper  on  the  influence  of  Turkish on our language.......  -  a  lot of erudition has gone into it-- we can discuss it when  you  come  to Delhi..... “(S. Khushwant Singh”. He also suggested that I go over to some US institute to do a scholarly book on the subject.

 

http://tarafits.blogspot.in/2011/08/commentsturkic-language-influence-on.html

 

Khushwant Singh also requested for some jokes about a tall well built sturdy community of Turkish citizens mostly resident along the Black Sea , but like the Sikhs of India have rustic sense of humour , are great builders , drinkers and dancers too .I did send him some material , which he used and thanked me .

 

As for Khuswant Singh’s travels around the world , when I sent him my ‘Travelogue to Timbuktu ‘, in 1990s he wrote back ,as usual ,a short hand written almost illegible note ,”It exists !I thought it was a verbal expression “ (It was used by Turkish Daily News and Asian Age, New Delhi among others).

 

http://tarafits-archives.blogspot.in/2010/01/travel-to-timbuctou.html

 

At the end of my diplomatic career in Ankara in 1996, I stayed abroad for almost 12 years as a freelance journalist .But sometimes during my visits to India, I went over to him for a drink or two and met with some of usual friends and others who visited him for publicity .He never took more than two drinks after a couple visits or so I would always carry a bottle of whiskey, otherwise he was quite capable of writing that I went over to drink his whiskey.

 

Apart from self publicity, many who dropped at his flat were sure that he would write about them. That was okay, but then he even wrote about those who brought him butter, mangroves and other things. I wrote that this did not behove him. He did not reply, but I did not notice any such things later on.

 

Whatever else you might say about him, he was a real brave writer, calling a spade a spade, courageous, but not greatly gifted as most of his writings are of not of great literary value .Yes he was an excellent journalist which provide lot of discussion, gossip and entertainment .Like many of his generation, say Kuldip Nayar, he used to write his articles and the get them typed .All his replies to my letters were written by him in almost illegible hand.

 

Yes, there will be better writers and even journalists but the Lord will not send down another one like Khushwant Singh.

 

* In June 1983, with my children Bulbul and Tinoo , I visited in north Romania along the border with Ukraine , a Merry Cemetery at Sapantsa ,a small town . In 1935 a local wood-carver Stan Ion Patras started writing funny epitaphs on crosses. So every grave in the cemetery has blue cross with colourful painting and several witty verses about the life of the deceased.

 

Amb(retd)K.Gajendra Singh ,23 March , 2014, Mayur Vihar, Delhi-91.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Crimea Votes Overwhelmingly to Rejoin Mother Russia .

 Crimea Votes Overwhelmingly to Rejoin Mother Russia


Updates from media reports

 

(Note; Pre Kennedy was ready for a nuclear war with Russia when in 1962 Moscow installed missiles in Cuba .Since centuries Russia Mediterranean fleet is anchored at the Sevastopol harbor .In September last year ,Putin saw off Obama in Syria where Russia has a naval base at Tartus .Loss of Sevastopol and Tartus will upset the strategic MAD equation)

 

It is understood that Russia and china have sold some of the US securities as a counter to US threat of sanctions.US GDP is $16 trillion and debt is 17 trillion. Only purchase of securities is keeping US Dollar afloat )

 

A day after a West contested referendum, legislators in Crimea moved swiftly on Monday to begin the process of splitting from Ukraine, with the regional Parliament declaring that Crimea is an independent state, with special status for the city of Sevastopol.

 

While the ballot on Sunday has been rejected in the West and by the government in Kiev, the legislators asserted that the laws of Ukraine no longer applied to Crimea and that state funds and all other state property of Ukraine in Crimea had been transferred to the new state. They also announced that the Ukrainian authorities had no power in Crimea.

 

The Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has been renamed the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, and legislators formally appealed to Russia to accept Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.

 

As tensions mounted over Russia’s next moves, the Ukrainian Parliament in Kiev approved a presidential decree authorizing the call-up of 20,000 reservists to the armed forces and another 20,000 to a newly formed national guard.

 

But European leaders meeting in Brussels made clear that they were not considering a military response. “We are not looking at military options here, this is not about a Crimean war,” Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain said in a radio interview.

 

The referendum — in which 96.77 percent of voters supported breaking from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation — was greeted as a triumph in Moscow on Monday, and lawmakers there promised to move quickly to adopt legislation to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation. “Crimea returns to Russia!” a headline in Komsomolskaya Pravda said, while Nezavisimaya Gazeta declared that “Kiev lost Crimea.”

 

(Note; Perhaps only Crimean Tatars did not come out to vote with over 80% casting the votes)

 

A member of Parliament announced that President Vladimir V. Putin would deliver an address to lawmakers on the situation in Crimea on Tuesday. Mr. Putin told President Obama on Sunday that the vote was legal and cited the independence of Kosovo — which Russia has not recognized — as the precedent for Crimea’s secession, the Kremlin said in a statement.

 

“The referendum was organized in such a way as to guarantee Crimea’s population the possibility to freely express their will and exercise their right to self-determination,” the Kremlin’s statement on the latest of a series of conversations between the two leaders said.

 

Mr. Putin also continued to raise the issue of violence and protests in other parts of Ukraine, which have stoked fears that Russia could move forces beyond Crimea. He told Mr. Obama that “the current authorities in Kiev have so far failed to demonstrate the ability and desire to rein in the ultranationalist and radical groups that are destabilizing the situation in the country and terrorizing ordinary people, including the Russian-speaking population and Russia’s compatriots,” the Kremlin statement said.

 

The Russian Foreign Ministry published a lengthy statement on Monday outlining its proposals for resolving Ukraine’s political crisis, saying that the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had presented them to his counterparts in Europe and the United States a week ago.

 

The proposals — including the recognition of Crimea’s right “to determine its own destiny” — contradicted many American, European and Ukrainian positions, making it unlikely that Russia would win broad diplomatic support, even though it endorsed the creation of a “contact group” of diplomats to mediate.

 

Crimean parliament formally applies to join Russia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26609667

 

(In 2003 , 98% of speakers on BBC supported US-UK led illegal invasion of Iraq. It was the worst broadcaster of all western corporate/Govt  channels .On US channels, 90% speakers , mostly connected with military-industry complex egged on favouring the barbaric invasion and brutal occupation which has devastated Iraq and almost 1.5 million Iraqis have died )

 

Below for dates etc and numbers

 

Crimea's parliament has formally declared independence from Ukraine and asked to join the Russian Federation.

 

It follows Sunday's controversial referendum which officials say overwhelmingly backed leaving Ukraine.

 

The government in Kiev has said it will not recognise the results. The US and EU say the vote was illegal and have vowed to impose sanctions on Moscow.

 

The Crimean peninsula has been under the control of pro-Russia forces since late February.

Moscow says the troops are pro-Russian self-defence forces and not under its direct control.

The crisis follows the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych on 22 February, following months of street protests and deadly clashes.

Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has called the vote "a circus performance" which had been backed up by "21,000 Russian troops, who with their guns are trying to prove the legality of the referendum".

Continue reading the main story

Crimea's declaration

According to the declaration approved by Crimean MPs, the region:

becomes an independent state and applies to formally join Russia, with some autonomy

will adopt the Russia rouble as its currency within a month will move to Moscow time (GMT+4 and two hours ahead of Kiev time) on 30 March will offer Crimean soldiers the chance to join Russian military The vote was boycotted by many among Crimea's minority Ukrainian and Tatar population, and the election process has been widely criticised.

 

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev has formally approved the partial mobilisation of 40,000 reservists, in response to what it called the "war-time situation".

 

Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov described the referendum as a "great farce" which "will never be recognised either by Ukraine or by the civilised world".

 

According to the vote in Crimea's parliament on Monday, Ukrainian laws now no longer apply in the region and all Ukrainian state property belongs to an independent Crimea.

 

The region will adopt the Russian currency, the rouble, and will move to Moscow time - two hours ahead - by the end of March.

 

The document approved by MPs also appealed to "all countries of the world to recognise it as an independent state".

 

The Crimean peninsula, which borders Ukraine and Russia, has been under the control of pro-Russian armed forces since late February.

 

Russia officially insists the troops are not under its command but are pro-Russia self defence forces. Kiev says Crimea - which has a majority ethnic Russian population - is under military occupation.

 

Tatar boycott

The referendum on breaking from Ukraine and joining Russia was called by the Crimean parliament in early March, with voters asked to choose between joining Russia, or having greater autonomy within Ukraine.

 

There was no option for those who wanted the constitutional arrangements to remain unchanged.

Daniel Sandford reports from Crimea: ''Wild scenes in Simferopol''

 

Ukraine's chief electoral official, Mikhail Malyshev, said the vote was nearly 97% in favour of joining the Russian Federation, with a turnout of 83%.

 

But Crimea's Tatar population - about 12% of the population - said they would boycott the vote, fearing their lives would be worse under the Kremlin.

 

The Tatars were deported to Central Asia by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in 1944. They were only able to return with the fall of the Soviet Union and many want to remain in Ukraine.

 

Many ethnic Ukrainians - who make up 24% of the population - also said they would not vote.

Continue reading the main story

Crisis timeline

21 Nov 2013: President Viktor Yanukovych abandons an EU deal

Dec: Pro-EU protesters occupy Kiev city hall and Independence Square

20-21 Feb 2014: At least 88 people killed in Kiev clashes

22 Feb: Mr Yanukovych flees; parliament removes him and calls election

27-28 Feb: Pro-Russian gunmen seize key buildings in Crimea

6 Mar: Crimea's parliament votes to join Russia

16 Mar: Crimea voters choose to secede in disputed referendum

17 Mar: Crimean parliament declares independence and formally applies to join Russia

Ukraine crisis timeline

Wording of ballot paper

Law and order breakdown

Is Russian intervention legal?

EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels are discussing the bloc's response, including imposing a visa ban and an asset freeze against a number of Russian officials.

 

The bloc has already suspended talks on an economic pact with Russia and an easing of visa restrictions.

 

Speaking in Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the "so-called referendum" was "illegal under the constitution of Ukraine and under international law".

 

"I call upon Russia yet again to meet with Ukrainian leaders and to start a dialogue with them, and to try to move to de-escalation, please, as quickly as possible. We've seen no evidence of that," she told reporters.

 

She said the EU "can't simply sit back and say this situation can be allowed to happen", but that ministers needed to think carefully about what their response should be.

The White House has described Russia's actions in Crimea as "dangerous and destabilizing", and said the international community would not recognise the results of a poll "administered under threats of violence".

 

US President Barack Obama has warned Moscow that Washington is also ready to impose "costs" over its actions in

 

Below Click for write up and map of Crimea

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26609667

 

Ukraine.Map of Crimea

 

 

A hardhitting piece by my friend Pepe ,

 

THE ROVING EYE
Russia 1, Regime Changers 0
By Pepe Escobar 
AsiaTimes 17 March 2014.
Let's cut to the chase - short and sweet. 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/CEN-01-170314.html


1. The Obama administration's "strategic" gambit to subcontract the State Department's "Khaganate of Nulands" to extricate Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence - and ultimately annex it to NATO - by instrumentalizing a coalition of willing neo-nazis and fascists with a central bank veneer (prime minister "Yats"), is in utter shambles. 

2. Moscow's counterpunch was to prevent in Crimea - as intercepted by Russian intelligence - a planned replay of the putsch in Kiev. The referendum in Crimea - 85% of turnout, roughly 93% voting for re-joining Russia, according to exit polls - is a done deal, as much as the oh-so-democratic European Union (EU) keeps threatening to punish people in Crimea for exercising their basic democratic rights. (By the way, when the US got  Kosovo to secede from Serbia, Serbians were offered no referendum). 

3. The main rationale for the whole US "strategic" advance - to have their proxies, the regime changers in Kiev, cancel the agreement for the Russian naval base in Sevastopol - is up in smoke. Moscow remains present in the Black Sea and with full access to the Eastern Mediterranean. 

And the rest is blah blah blah. 

All aboard the Finland station 
The US State Department has practically agreed to a federal and in fact Finlandized Ukraine [1] which, by the way, is the solution being proposed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov right from the start, as this Russian white paper attests. US Secretary of State John Kerry - as when Moscow saved the "red line" Obama administration from bombing Syria - will go on overdrive to steal all the credit from the Russians. US corporate media will duly buy it, but not independents such as Moon of Alabama. [2] 

This - sensible - road map implies, among other crucial points; strong autonomous regions; Russian reinstated as an official language, alongside Ukrainian; and most of all political/military neutrality, that is, Finlandization. To get there will be the mission of a support group - once again, proposed by Moscow from the start - with the US, EU and Russia as members. 

All that finally sanctified by a UN Security Council resolution (true, it could go spectacularly wrong, and most of all sabotaged by the "West".) And all that, as well, without Moscow having to officially recognize the regime changers in Kiev. In a nutshell; Moscow called Washington's bluff - and won. 

So after all that barrage of ominous threats including everyone from Obama, Kerry and assorted neo-con bomb-firsters down to minions such as Cameron, Hague and Fabius, the meat of the matter is that the Obama administration concluded it would not risk a nuclear war with Russia for the Khaganate of Nulands - especially after Moscow made it known, discreetly, it would create the conditions for eastern and southern Ukraine to also secede. 

Sweden, for instance, proposed an arms embargo on sales to Moscow. Paris took a quick glance at its industrial-military complex interests and immediately said no. Only the brain dead entertain the notion Paris and Berlin are willing to jeopardize their trade relations with Russia. As well as the notion that Beijing would ever join sanctions against fellow Group of 20, BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation Organization member Russia just because what they perceive as an increasingly irrational - and dangerous - Washington said so. 

And yet, Western hysteria of course will persist unabated. In the US, where it matters, the meme of the subsequent days will be, inevitably, who lost Syria and who lost Ukraine. 

Here's the record. Dubya launched two wars. He (miserably) lost both. 

Obama attempted to launch two wars (Syria and Ukraine). He - lucky for him - lost both even at the "attempt" stage. Assorted neo-cons and the whole exceptionalist brigade are predictably livid. Expect the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal to go ballistic. And expect US ambassador to the UN Samantha "R2P" Power to wish she were Sinead O'Connor singing Nothing Compares to You. 

It's a gas, gas, gas, not!
The Kiev regime-changers are already announcing their intentions, as in Right Sector capo and confirmed neo-nazi Dmytro Yarosh saying, "… Russia makes money sending its oil through our pipelines to the West. We will destroy these pipelines and deprive our enemy of its source of income." 

That's a brilliant strategy straight from the Khaganate of Nulands playbook. So homes and the whole industrial base in Ukraine should be out of (cheap, discounted) gas, not to mention great swathes of Germany, so the neo-nazis can claim "victory". With friends like these … 

Gazprom's executives are not exactly raising an eyebrow. Russia is already shipping roughly half of its gas to Europe bypassing Ukraine, and after South Stream is completed in 2015, that percentage will increase (EU "sanctions" against South Stream are just empty rhetoric.) 

The regime changers will be trying to wreak havoc in other fronts as well. The new Ukrainian parliament has voted to assemble a 60,000-strong National Guard crammed with "activists". Guess who will be in charge; the new security chief, Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the neo-nazi Social-National Party. And his deputy happens to be none other than Yarosh, the leader of the paramilitary Right Sector. Feel free to add your own custom-made Hitlerian metaphors - even as the risk persists of Ukraine breaking apart. Which is not necessarily a bad deal. Let the "democratic" EU pay Ukraine's gas bills. 

Notes:
1. Lavrov, Kerry agree to work on constitutional reform in Ukraine: Russian ministry, Reuters, March 16, 2014.
2. Ukraine: U.S. Takes Off-Ramp, Agrees To Russian Demands, Moon of Alabama, March 16, 2014. 

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
 

Ukraine: U.S. Takes Off-Ramp, Agrees To Russian Demands

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/03/ukraine-us-pulls-back-agrees-to-russian-demands.html#more

March 16, 2014

There was another phone call today between Secretary of State Kerry and the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. The call came after a strategy meeting on Ukraine in the White House. During the call Kerry agreed to Russian demands for a federalization of the Ukraine in which the federal states will have a strong autonomy against a central government in a finlandized Ukraine. Putin had offered this "off-ramp" from the escalation and Obama has taken it.

The Russian announcement:

Lavrov, Kerry agree to work on constitutional reform in Ukraine: Russian ministry

(Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed on Sunday to seek a solution to crisis in Ukraine by pushing for constitutional reforms there, the Russian foreign ministry said.

It did not go into details on the kind of reforms needed except to say they should come "in a generally acceptable form and while taking into the account the interests of all regions of Ukraine". 
...
"Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov and John Kerry agreed to continue work to find a resolution on Ukraine through a speedy launch of constitutional reform with the support of international community," the ministry said in a statement.

The idea of "constitutional reform" and the "interests of all regions" is from the Russians as documented in this Russian" non-paper".

The non-paper describes the process of getting to a new Ukrainian constitution and sets some parameters for it. Russian will be again official language next to Ukraine, the regions will have high autonomy, there will be no interferences in church affairs and the Ukraine will stay politically and militarily neutral. Any autonomy decision by the Crimea would be accepted. This all would be guaranteed by a "Support Group for Ukraine" consisting of the US, EU and Russia and would be cemented in an UN Security Council resolution.

It seems that Kerry and Obama have largely accepted these parameters. They are now, of course, selling this solution as their own which is, as the "non-paper" proves, inconsistent with the reality.

Here is Kerry now suddenly "urging Russia" to accept the conditions Russia had demanded and which Kerry never mentioned before:

Secretary of State John Kerry called on Moscow to return its troops in Crimea to their bases, pull back forces from the Ukraine border, halt incitement in eastern Ukraine and support the political reforms in Ukraine that would protect ethnic Russians, Russian speakers and others in the former Soviet Republic that Russia says it is concerned about.

In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, their second since unsuccessful face-to-face talks on Friday in London, Kerryurged Russia "to support efforts by Ukrainians across the spectrum to address power sharing and decentralization through a constitutional reform process that is broadly inclusive and protects the rights of minorities," the State Department said.

Obama has given up. His empty threats had now worked and he now has largely accepted the Russian conditions for the way out of the crisis.

The U.S. plot to snatch the Ukraine from Russia and to integrate it into NATO and the EU seems to have failed. Russia taking Crimea and having 93% of the voters there agree to join Russia has made the main objective of the U.S. plans, to kick the Russians out of Sevastopol and thereby out of the Middle East, impossible.

The Russian (non public) threat to also immediately take the eastern and southern provinces from the Ukraine has pushed the U.S. into agreeing to the Russian conditions mentioned above. The only alternative to that would be a military confrontation which the U.S. and Europeans are not willing to risk. Despite the anti-Russian campaign in the media a majority of U.S. people as well as EU folks are against any such confrontation. In the end the U.S. never held the cards it needed to win this game.

Should all go well and a new Ukrainian constitution fit the Russian conditions the "west" may in the future well be allowed to pay for the monthly bills Gazprom will keep sending to Kiev.

It will take some time to implement all of this. What dirty tricks will the neocons in Washington now try to prevent this peaceful outcome?

Posted on March 16, 2014 at 02:34 PM |