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Sunday, December 19, 2010

[chottala.com] Syria and the six seas



Syria and the six seas

19/12/2010 07:35:00 PM
No wonder the Five Seas policy is gaining momentum among all countries being engaged by the Syrians. The Umayyads did it 1,200 years ago - there is no reason why the Syrians cannot do it tod ... 

Syria and the six seas

19/12/2010 07:35:00 PM GMT 

By Sami Moubayed

 

(AFP) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

This December, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited Ukraine and France. For obvious reasons, international media were more interested in taking photos of the Syrian leader walking down a cobbled street from his hotel to the Elysee Palace, than in his groundbreaking visit to Kiev where he walked the red carpets with President Victor Yankovych.

In France, the never-ending and snowballing crisis of Lebanon was on the table - issues of the past that never seem to die in the Middle East. In Ukraine, however, the two leaders spoke not of the past, but of the future.

Few cities, after all, come close to matching the grandeur and magic of Paris but also, few countries in today's world have the potential of Ukraine.

Syrian-Ukraine relations - at first glance, a very specific topic - are actually worthy of observation because they are part of a wider futuristic vision being mapped out for the region by Damascus.

The relationship, it must be noted, was not born yesterday and dates to 1992 when Syria was the first Middle East country to recognize Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union. A Syrian embassy quickly followed and so did a 2004 visit to Damascus by then-president Leonid Kuchma.

Apart from Ukraine's political and social influence (as well as being home to 5,000 Syrians), the country is viewed as a strategic power corridor for the transfer of oil and gas from Central Asia and the Middle East, to Europe. The two countries have, over a 20-year period, signed agreements in different fields ranging from medicine and sports to agriculture, customs, education, technology, and transport. The trade volume between them currently exceeds US$1.5 billion.

Other countries are no doubt are closer to Syria in terms of proximity, and have larger trade volumes. But Ukraine is crucial in Syria's "Five Seas Policy", a vision to link trade, technology and infrastructure between the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Gulf Sea.

Such a policy, which now carries Assad's signature, is not new and it existed during the heyday of the Umayyad Dynasty (661-750), when it was actually six rather than five seas, reaching as far as the Baltic Sea where the Umayyads - the first great Muslim dynasty to rule the Empire of the Caliphate - reached as merchants, rather than politicians or military conquerors.

That empire covered more than five million square miles, around one trillion hectares, reaching far and wide with trade routes and political influence felt throughout India, China, North Africa, and Spain.

Damascus, the legitimate child and former capital of that Empire, sees it as very possible to re-connect the six seas in today's world. This policy envisions a network of operations all running through Syria for the transfer of oil and gas, goods, manpower, and ideas, connecting the Caucasus in the north with the Arab Gulf in the south, Iran in the east, and Europe in the west.

Assad, who first envisioned this approach during a 1999 visit to the emirates, has made numerous trips to countries that matter in the Five Seas policy, Azerbaijan on the Caspian, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine on the Black Sea, and Cyprus, among others, on the Mediterranean. Collectively if these countries are linked via Syria, they add up to a human cluster of no less than 288 million people - a bloc that cannot be ignored, and perhaps not defeated.

During his visit to Azerbaijan in the summer of 2009, Assad outlined the need to develop a physical link between all these countries, in ports, roads, railways, and pipelines, in order for the Five Seas policy to reach fruition.

Once that happens, it would be too difficult - perhaps impossible - for countries like the US to isolate a country like Syria, since any damage would have a domino effect, reverberating in Turkey, Iraq, Romania, Azerbaijan and Ukraine. Well aware of the need to invest in infrastructure, the upcoming five-year economic plan in Syria allocates approximately $75 billion for the purpose.

Already, for example, Azerbaijan gas is coming to Syria via Turkey, while there is talk of jumpstarting the Banias-Kirkuk (Iraq) oil pipeline, disrupted by the Americans in 2003, which has a capacity of 1.2 million barrels per day.

For decades, whenever the outside world was mentioned, the first thing that came to the mind of the Arabs was Great Britain, France, or the superpower that replaced them after World War II, the United States.

Five years ago, Syria's relations with all three countries hit rock bottom, during the difficult years of the George W Bush White House. A new foreign policy took shape in Damascus, with a doctrine that the outside world does not stop at the gates of Paris, London, and Washington.

There was an entire world out there filled with heavyweight nations willing to step into the oversized shoes of the Western world. The list of potential allies was long - Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela and Argentina in Latin America, onto Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, India, China, in the East, and countries like Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Romania, and Bulgaria.

All of these countries were willing to do business with Syria, with no preconditions. These countries had emerging and very promising economies, were willing to engage, and happened to share views on topics that were dear to Syria's heart, vis-a-vis for example, liberation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

No wonder the Five Seas policy is gaining momentum among all countries being engaged by the Syrians. The Umayyads did it over 1,200 years ago - there is no reason why the Syrians cannot do it again, today.

-- Sami Moubayed is editor-in-chief of Forward Magazine in Syria. This article appeared in Asia Times on December 17, 2010 entitled, "Syria sets sail on six seas"

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Syria-and-the-six-seas-.html

 



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[chottala.com] Bangladesh Genocide Archive : Women in 1971



An online archive of chronology of events, documentations, audio, video, images, media reports and eyewitness accounts of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh in the hands of Pakistan army.

Women in 1971

women-in-71.jpg

Gen. A. A. Khan Niazi did not deny rapes were being carried out and opined, in a Freudian tone, "You cannot expect a man to live, fight, and die in East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, would you?"

Atrocities against Bengali women:

As was also the case in Armenia and Nanjing, Bengali women were targeted for gender-selective atrocities and abuses, notably gang sexual assault and rape/murder, from the earliest days of the Pakistani genocide. Indeed, despite (and in part because of) the overwhelming targeting of males for mass murder, it is for the systematic brutalization of women that the "Rape of Bangladesh" is best known to western observers.

In her ground-breaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller likened the 1971 events in Bangladesh to the Japanese rapes in Nanjing and German rapes in Russia during World War II. "… 200,000, 300,000 or possibly 400,000 women (three sets of statistics have been variously quoted) were raped. Eighty percent of the raped women were Moslems, reflecting the population of Bangladesh, but Hindu and Christian women were not exempt. … Hit-and-run rape of large numbers of Bengali women was brutally simple in terms of logistics as the Pakistani regulars swept through and occupied the tiny, populous land …" (p. 81).

rape1.jpg

Typical was the description offered by reporter Aubrey Menen of one such assault, which targeted a recently-married woman:

Two [Pakistani soldiers] went into the room that had been built for the bridal couple. The others stayed behind with the family, one of them covering them with his gun. They heard a barked order, and the bridegroom's voice protesting. Then there was silence until the bride screamed. Then there was silence again, except for some muffled cries that soon subsided. In a few minutes one of the soldiers came out, his uniform in disarray. He grinned to his companions. Another soldier took his place in the extra room. And so on, until all the six had raped the belle of the village. Then all six left, hurriedly. The father found his daughter lying on the string cot unconscious and bleeding. Her husband was crouched on the floor, kneeling over his vomit. (Quoted in Brownmiller, Against Our Will, p. 82.)

"Rape in Bangladesh had hardly been restricted to beauty," Brownmiller writes. "Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted … Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use." Some women may have been raped as many as eighty times in a night (Brownmiller, p. 83). How many died from this atrocious treatment, and how many more women were murdered as part of the generalized campaign of destruction and slaughter, can only be guessed at.

Despite government efforts at amelioration, the torment and persecution of the survivors continued long after Bangladesh had won its independence:

Rape, abduction and forcible prostitution during the nine-month war proved to be only the first round of humiliation for the Bengali women. Prime Minister Mujibur Rahman's declaration that victims of rape were national heroines was the opening shot of an ill-starred campaign to reintegrate them into society — by smoothing the way for a return to their husbands or by finding bridegrooms for the unmarried [or widowed] ones from among his Mukti Bahini freedom fighters. Imaginative in concept for a country in which female chastity and purdah isolation are cardinal principles, the "marry them off" campaign never got off the ground. Few prospective bridegrooms stepped forward, and those who did made it plain that they expected the government, as father figure, to present them with handsome dowries. (Brownmiller, Against Our Will, p. 84.)

Source: Gendercide Watch

Books:

* Genocide in Bangladesh (1972) by Kalayan Chaudhury, Orient Longman, pp 157-158

Rape of Dhaka University students in 1971

" …..Some army officer raided the Rokeya Hall, the girls' hostel of Dacca University, on October 7, 1971. Accompanied by five soldiers, Major Aslam had first visited the hostel on October 3, and asked the lady superintendent to supply some girls who could sing and dance at a function to be held in Tejgaon Cantonment. The superintendent told him that most of the girls had left the hostel after the disturbances and only 40 students were residing but as a superintendent of a girls' hostel she should not allow them to go to the cantonment for this purpose. Dissatisfied, Major Aslam went away. Soon after the superintendent informed a higher army officer in the cantonment, over the telephone, of the Major' s mission.

However, on October 7, at about 8 p.m. Major Aslam and his men raided the hostel. The soldiers broke open the doors, dragged the girls out and stripped them before raping and torturing them in front of the helpless superintendent. The entire thing was done so, openly, without any provocation, that even the Karachi-based newspaper, Dawn, had to publish the story, violating censorship by the military authorities. In seven days after liberation about 300 girls were recovered from different places around Dacca where they had been taken away and kept confined by the Pakistani army men. On December 26, altogether 55 emaciated and half-dead girls on the verge of mental derangement were recovered by the Red Cross with the help of the Mukti Bahini and the allied forces from various hideouts of the Pakistani army in Narayanganj, Dacca Cantonment and other small towns on the periphery of Dacca city.

women-fighters.jpg

"Although thousands of young Hindu women were killed, the most attractive among them were captured to become sex slaves in the military cantonments. When the girls tried to hang themselves with their clothing, their garments were taken away from them. Then, when they tried to strangle themselves with their long black hair, they were shaved bald. When they became five or six months pregnant, they were released with the taunt: 'When my son is born, you must bring him back to me'." (Daktar: Diplomat in Bangladesh by Dr. Viggo Olsen).

Articles:

* Abortion team to travel to Bangladesh -The Bryan Times, February 10, 1972

* The Rape of 71: The Dark Phase of History -Dr. M A Hassan

…..We have collected numerous evidences on the rape, molestation and torture of Bangalee women by the Pakistani army. Rauful Hossain Suja, the son of martyr Akbar Hossain of Pahartali, Chittagong, went to the FOY'S LAKE KILLING ZONE to look for his father's dead body. They found dead bodies of approximately 10,000 Bangalees, most of them were brutally slaughtered. In their desperate search for their father's dead boy, they found dead bodies of 84 pregnant women whose abdomens were slashed open. This type of brutality took place almost every where in Bangladesh. Raped women were also locked up naked in various military camps so as to deny them termination of their anguish through suicide.

As per our statistics on the abortion centers and hospitals around the country, less than 10% of the total raped women visited those centers. In most cases the abortions were done locally and efforts were taken to keep those incidents secret due to social situation. The doctors and specialists, like Dr Anwarul Azim, involved in the hospitals and abortion centers agreed to this statistical information. In reality the raped women who became pregnant after September and less than three months pregnant in early 1972, they did not go the abortion centers and hospitals at all. In our account, the number of women of this category was at least 88,200. Moreover, in those three months, raped 162,000 women and 131,000 Hindu refugee women simply disappeared, assimilated into the vast population, without any report at all.

* The Beswas Village – By Afsan Chowdhury:

"I came out and saw the army. They wanted to go inside. I put my hands up like this and said there was no one inside. They flung me away into the yard and dragged my husband and son outside. They shot them both right there, there.

They killed every male in the village, every male. When the army was gone, there was not a single man left to bury the dead. We had to drag the bodies ourselves and bury them."

* Against Our Will : Men, Women and Rape – By: Susan Brownmiller

A stream of victims and eyewitnesses tell how truckloads of Pakistani soldiers and their hireling razakars swooped down on villages in the night, rounding up women by force. Some were raped on the spot. Others were carried off to military compounds. Some women were still their when Indian troops battled their way into Pakistani strongholds. Weeping survivors of villages razed because they were suspected of siding with the Mukti Bahini freedom fighters told how wives were raped before their eyes of their bound husbands, who were then put to death. Just how much of it was the work of Pakistani "regulars" is not clear. Pakistani officers maintain that their men were too disciplined "for that sort of thing".

* – John Hastings, A Methodist missionary worked in Bangladesh for 20 years:

"I am certain that troops have raped girls repeatedly, then killed them by pushing their bayonets up between their legs."

– (from Newsweek)

* War babies: The question of national honor – By Bina D' Costa

* Ethical Issues Concerning Representation of Narratives of Sexual Violence of 1971 – By Nayanika Mookherjee

* War of Symbols: How today's generation remembers 1971 - By: Dr. Meghna Guhathakurta

* The Lessons We Never Learn – By: Hameeda Hossain

"It has now become a ritual, come December and March, to bemoan why no justice was exacted from the Pakistan military and its collaborators, for the crimes of genocide and mass rape, committed in 1971. This is not for lack of evidence."

* Distances by Rahnuma Ahmed -on a picture of an women recovered from an Army camp in 12th december 1971 taken by Naibuddin Ahmed:

Girls had been discovered in the bunkers, which were next to the university guesthouse. He went on, I went and found her, she was lying like that. People were milling around her, they were in front of her, they were behind her. I asked them to move, I made some space, and then I took photographs. Girls had been discovered in the bunkers, which were next to the university guesthouse. He went on, I went and found her, she was lying like that. People were milling around her, they were in front of her, they were behind her. I asked them to move, I made some space, and then I took photographs.

War rape intimidates the enemy, says Sally J Scholz. It demoralises the enemy. It makes women pregnant, and thereby furthers the cause of genocide. It tampers with the identity of the next generation. It breaks up families. It disperses entire populations. It drives a wedge between family members. It extends the oppressor's dominance into future generations.

One of the 400,000 birangonas (brave women), who were raped during the war
Photograph: Naib Uddin Ahmed/Autograph ABP & Guardian UK

Historical Documents:

Dr Davis's Report on Repression of Bangalee Women in 1971

Rapes of Bangladesh – By: Audrey Mennen
A New York Times article from 1972

Story of Victims Part 1 and 2 – By Kalyan Choudhury

Tales of Endurance and Courage – Aasha Mehreen Amin, Lavina Ambreen Ahmed and Shamim Ahsan

Other Related Articles

  • Interview of a survivor
  • Yasmin Saikia's research
  • Tormenting 71
  • Bangladesh Liberation War Rape Victims Demand Justice from Pakistan
  • Women fighting for Bangladesh honoured three decades later
  • Bangladesh's Women Warriors Call For Justice
  • Ground breaking daughters of East Bengal
  • Listen to the true story of an anonymous soldier
  • Taramon Bibi-from cook to a brave fighter
  • More about Taramon Bibi in bangla
  • captain sitara-a great doctor ,a greater warrior
  • More about captain sitara in bangla
  • More about women's contribution
  • The warriors of hills
  • how much a mother can tolerate?
  • Tales of the Biranganas

    Rape Denials:

    * Indian scholar sifts 1971 fact from fiction – Khalid Hasan

    * The continuing rape of Bangladesh – Mashuqur Rahman

    * The continuing rape of our History – Mashuqur Rahman published in the Daily Star

    * Sarmila Bose's "Research" Exposed – Mashuqur Rahman

    * Skewing the history of rape in 1971 A prescription for reconciliation? – Nayanika Mookherjee

    Courtesy: Drishtipat, The heroines of 1971, Muktadhara

  • 1 Response

    1. » বীরাঙ্গনা নারী এবং যুদ্ধ শিশুরাঃ পাপমোচণের সময় এখনই»মুক্তমনা বাংলা ব্লগ:

      [...] এম এ হাসানের তার প্রবন্ধ 'The Rape of 1971: The Dark Phase of History' তে বলেন যে, সারা দেশের গর্ভপাত [...]

      Posted on January 25th, 2009 at 11:51 pm

    Source: http://www.genocidebangladesh.org/?page_id=20

     

     

    Complete Time Line:

    http://www.genocidebangladesh.org/?page_id=4

     

     

     



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    [chottala.com] Koko Matters: WB-UNODC publication cites Koko's bribery case



     

    WB-UNODC publication cites Koko's bribery case

    Sunday, December 19, 2010

     

     

    Bss, Dhaka

    A World Bank-UNODC publication mentioned the alleged embezzlement of several million dollars by former prime minister and BNP chief Khaleda Zia's younger son as an example of stealing national assets.

    Titled "Asset Recovery Handbook," the publication was released two days ago in Vienna and obtained by BSS. It was prepared under the Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) Initiative of the WB in association with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

    The 270-page book cited Arafat Rahman Koko's case on page 53 and page 196 while discussing the issues relating to prosecution of accounting and establishing jurisdiction for legal proceedings.

    On both pages, it referred to the bribery case of Siemens from where Koko allegedly embezzled several million US dollars, costing the national interest.

    On page 53, the handbook said Siemens and its subsidiaries in Argentina, Bangladesh and Venezuela bribed public officials to secure government contracts.

    "Bribes were accounted for as payments to consultants, who subsequently channelled them to the public officials," it said.

    It is also mentioned in the book that Siemens pleaded guilty to the charges of conspiracy and violations of books and records and internal controls provisions in a plea agreement that resulted in a $450 million.

    The book on page 196 goes further with the reference of the action of the US Department of Justice stating: "In 2009, the US Department of Justice filed a confiscation action against bribery proceeds paid (in Singapore, with US currency) by a foreign company to the son of the former prime minister of Bangladesh".

    Earlier, media reports said the US authorities on January 8, 2009, moved a legal process in a court in the District of Columbia to recover funds worth $3 million, allegedly obtained by Koko from Siemens and kept with a Singapore-based bank.

    [The Daily Star too published a report on the scam on December 23, 2008, carrying the headline "Foreigner spilled the beans".]

    The World Bank publication was released two weeks after a special Judge Court of Dhaka framed charge against Koko and Ismail Hossain Saimon, son of former shipping minister late Akbar Hossain in the same case.

    The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed the case on March 17 last year with the Kafrul Police Station of the city accusing Koko and Saimon of laundering $9 lakh 32 thousand 672 and Singapore $ 28 lakh 84 thousand 604.

    The issue of repatriation of siphoned off money surfaced in Bangladesh during the past military-backed interim administration in 2007- 2008 when officials said they estimated millions of dollars were smuggled out by influential but corrupt people.

    The corruption suspects at that time, however, were forced to return $129 million.

    Former World Bank vice president Praful C Patel at that time said Bangladeshi assets had either been stolen or smuggled outside the country for the last several years while "corruption had eaten up nearly three percent of the country's growth rate".

    The Breton Woods institution released the handbook to guide developing countries recover money stolen by individuals and institutions while it was prepared by an international team of experts, drawing on the experience of a wide range of countries and legal traditions.

    Designed as a quick reference, it describes approaches to recovering proceeds of corruption located in foreign jurisdictions, identifies the difficulties that practitioners are likely to encounter, suggests strategic and tactical options to address the challenges, and introduces good practices.

    The WB publication suggested strengthening of international cooperation for recovering such stolen assets.

    It said the embezzlement of national assets costs developing countries $20 to $40 billion every year while developing countries over the past 15 years could recover only $5 billion.

     http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid=166515

     

     

    Related:

    Koko's kickbacks

    World Bank has offered its assistance to recover the wealth siphoned off ...

    WB refers to Koko's graft case as example - Bangladesh Sangbad ...

    WB refers to Koko's graft case as example of stealing national assets. DHAKA,
    Dec 18 (BSS) - The World Bank (WB) has released a publication mentioning the ...
     
    Sunday, January 11, 2009

    US moves to confiscate Koko's stashed money

    Forfeiture action sought against Koko's accounts in Singapore

     
     


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