Meymand Village

The village of Meymand in Iran’s Kerman province is said to be continuously inhabited for the last 3000 years, with a history of habitation stretching back to prehistory. The village has a unique architecture of natural and man-made caves used by locals for housing. The area around the village is of anthropological significance due to the discovery of carvings made by ancient peoples on the cave walls of depicting local fauna.

The current population is around 150, and consists of a people who have a semi-nomadic lifestyle, spending their winters in the village itself.

Dynamic tensions between religion and politics in Iran

Though the tumultuous events following the June 2009 presidential election in Iran has brought political tensions and oppositions to the surface, there have been a long-standing differences within and between public, religious, and power elite groups contesting such issues that touch on the very practice and framework of political life. A central question remains the form, substance, and practical application of government and governance.

Sheikh Chafiq Jeradeh, the director of the Institute of Sapiential Knowledge for Philosophical and Religious Studies in Beirut, has written a brief article regarding the dynamic tension between state and religion in Iran. This article is published on Conflicts Forum. Conflicts Forum is founded and directed by Alastair Crook, who has had a career as a British Diplomat and member of the secret service (MI6). Below is an excerpt from Sheikh Chafiq Jeradeh’s article:

[U]ntil now, the tension between the underlying religious principles and contemporary structures of statehood and the international order have not been satisfactorily resolved.

…These tensions however are evident today in Iran: They have given rise to a strand of thinking within society that seeks to place doctrinal religion within a secular framework – this, in addition to their desire to establish the political structures on a similar secular basis. This has caused the religious parties to react in two ways:

• Firstly it has led some to wall themselves in behind the Wilayat al-Faqih formula and to reject any new thinking about this concept arising in the Iranian intellectual or political arena.
• Secondly, it has led to a wider discussion regarding the relationship between Islam and Wilayat al-Faqih. The object of this discussion is centred on how to Islamise contemporary institutional systems of governance, whilst another strand is moving in the opposite direction: It looks at how to revise the concept (Wilayat al-Faqih) better to reflect contemporary reality, and its needs.

This is the real dilemma facing the present al-Wali al-Faqih (the Guardian Jurist, i.e. Imam Khamenei) and the institutions affiliated with him.

Secondly – During Imam Khamenei’s rule, some circles began to discuss the following issues:

1. Does the concept of Wilayat presuppose a tradition of (cognitive) knowledge of its own, which in itself enables the Wali (Supreme Leader) to lead and to manage the actuality? Or, does it require some additionally acquired expertise in governance, as well as the special vision, which only spiritual attainment can provide?
2. Does Wilayat al-Faqih have one form, and one form only – the one presented by late Imam Khomeini, or there are other possible forms that Imam Khamenei can reveal?
3. Finally, does the concept rest on a basis of popular acceptance and commitment within the ranks of the Iranian elites? Or; does its basis lie in the emotional circumstance of revolution? This is an important point that needs to be clarified – for the answer to this question will spell out for us the possibilities for dissension between Iranian elites and the popular will.

Land mines threaten ‘4 million Afghans’

A pile of land mines

“Since 1979 an estimated 640,000 mines have been laid,” according to a video clip by the UK’s Guardian showing a de-mining program in rural Afghanistan.  The country is one of the most mined in the world, with farms, orchards, water sources, towns, and cities covered by this dangerous and indiscriminate killer. The mining of the country has been persistent since the the 1979 Soviet invasion of the country, running through the civil war and the current war. Resources for de-mining resources are hard to come by in the already strained country, and, since mines are hidden, it is never clear to locals what patch of earth may be deadly often until they suffer the serious consequences of an explosion. The capital city of Kabul has been no exception, mines are found even there.  Doctors Without Borders explains this: “The capital, Kabul, was mined heavily by mujaheddin commanders after the Soviet withdrawal. Between 1992 – 95, Kabul became the focus for severe fighting between rival mujaheddin factions battling over control of the city. Large parts of the city – particularly western Kabul – were mined as a result of house-to-house fighting.”

“Most of the landmines in Afghanistan were emplaced during the Soviet occupation and the subsequent communist regime between 1980 and 1992. Landmines were also used in the internal fighting among various armed groups after 1992, particularly in Kabul city and its outskirts. The Taliban claimed to have stopped use in 1998, though some allegations persisted. The Northern Alliance admitted to use in 1999 and 2000, but said it stopped in 2001, despite evidence to the contrary.” (Landmine Monitor Report 2001, pp. 497-500)

The use of cluster bombs has exasperated the problem, with unexploded munitions adding another layer of danger. “One particularly deadly unexploded munition was the BLU-97 bomblet, which was dispensed from the U.S. CBU-87 and CBU-103 cluster bombs.”

According to Doctors Without Borders, “Minefields have been laid by both Soviet and Afghan forces, and mines have been used in all phases of the Afghan conflict: in vast quantities during the Soviet occupation, during the power struggle between mujaheddin commanders after the Soviet withdrawal, and now during fighting between Taliban forces and other Afghan commanders.”

158 countries have signed on to a Mine Ban Treaty. Russia, US, China, and India have refused to sign the treaty. “Landmines are known to have caused 5197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which links some 1000 activist groups.” (The Daily Telegraph)

“The United States has not used antipersonnel mines since 1991, has not exported them since 1992, has not produced them since 1997, and has no plans for future procurement,” according to Human Rights Watch. Despite this they have refused to sign on to the treaty, sometimes mentioning that doing so would undermine their efforts in the  DMZ line between North and South Korea, an area that is heavily mined.  Every other NATO member has endorsed the treaty.

A representative of the permanent mission of Afghanistan to the UN made the following statement on October 30, 2009:

Since 1979, it has been estimated that over 640,000 mines have been laid in Afghanistan; and that as recently as 2008, 4,924 hazardous mine areas remained in the country. These areas comprise an estimated 720 kilometers of land, threatening over 2,220 communities and 4 million Afghans. Further, 75% of these impacted communities are found in 12 of the country’s 34 provinces. Many Afghan farmers have also lost their farms and so their livelihoods, as 75.6% of this mine territory is used for agriculture. Afghanistan remains one of the most heavily contaminated countries in the world, and there are still over 700 kilometers of land contaminated by an estimated 56 different types of land mines.

Afghanistan continues to experience daily reminders of the mines’ lethality: from January to July 2008, in a mere six months, 1445 victims of mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) were reported, and 50% of these were children. 2.7% of Afghanistan’s population has been labeled as “severely disabled” and 9% of these disabilities have been attributed to landmines.

Known Landmine Problem in Afghanistan (as of December 2001) [MAPA Monthly Progress Report, December 2001]

Area (sq meters)	Agriculture	Residential	Irrigation	Road	Grazing	Total Area (Square meters)
Total mined area cleared (All high priority)	98,022,000	29,185,000	8,414,000	29,820,000	74,175,000	239,618,000
High priority area remaining to be cleared	162,618,000	16,058,000	3,090,000	34,538,000	143,699,000	360,011,000
Low priority area remaining to be cleared	26,029,000	126,000	582,000	7,135,000	343,416,000	377,288,000
Total mined area remaining to be cleared	188,647,000	16,184,000	3,672,000	41,673,000	487,115,000	737,299,000

Zbigniew Brzezinski: US or Israeli war on Iran ‘would be a disaster’ and Eurasia’s importance for global power

Zbigniew Brzezinski has been influential in US foreign policy since his role as US president Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. He continues to maintain formal and informal influence to this day. He is also well known as the Author of the book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, in which he famously stated that “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.” In the videos included in this post, he speaks regarding the geostrategic importance of Eurasia in (US) global dominance.

Excerpts from the above video:

“If the conflict spreads, we’re going to be alone… The Russians aren’t going to be with us, the Europeans aren’t going to be with us…”

“The Chinese are getting more involved in the Iranian economy because they need energy.”

“Don’t trifle with the silly notion ‘we’ll just bomb them and the problem is solved.’ It’s a false analogy.

The Real News interview with Brzezinski also includes the following on the war in Afghanistan. Highly recommended viewing.

Yemen in the media

Al Jazeera’s program, the Listening Post, has salient insight and analysis on how the media covers news and the rising conflict in Yemen.

The video clip recommends the following blogs to learn news of and from Yemen:

Waq al-Waq

Nasser Arrabyee

Sana’a Bureau

Below a map showing Yemen’s location

The dead rising: Afghanistan

Afghans are dying in record numbers. The number of dead civilians has increased in 2009 over the previous year. According to a UN report, at least 5,978 were injured or killed in 2009. Afghans have endured some three decades of warfare, and millions of them live a difficult existence as refugees in Pakistan and Iran. This is a terrible toll on a country that has an estimated population of 28.4 million (2009, CIA Factbook). It is no surprise that under such hardship and faced with such ongoing tragedy, people would demand better and would seek a minimum of peace by decrying the current situation and system that has enabled, maintained, and deepened such atrocity, by blaming all sides involved, the Taliban, the government, and foreign occupation forces. The issue comes to a boil when it seems that no one is taking very serious and immediate steps to eliminate deaths caused by their actions, and that the killing of civilians would constantly remain the subject of ‘investigation’ rather than a concerted effort to halt one’s own party from being a cause of casualties. This issue has persisted now since the 2001 invasion of the country, and it appears that the discourse on the subject is one of investigation (tied to the very act of denial of one’s own responsibility), followed by (when caught literally red-handed by video evidence or accounts of casualties) promises of reductions in the number killed. That anyone can speak of reductions over a very serious attempt to bring the number down to nothing seems to me evidence of detachment from those suffering from violence, as if some cold calculus has been conducted that judges a certain number of children and adult dead in pursuit of a political-military goal as arbitrarily acceptable: this of course defined by those who hold the guns.  The people, then, must indeed be glad that their superiors in power can make such efficient decisions and are technically-minded enough to be able to act upon them. If the people cannot realize or appreciate this, well, then that must be evidence simply of the correctness of their not being in charge — what a privilege indeed to have the aid, and rule, of men with guns.

Civilian casualties of war (deaths only)
Month	2007	2008	2009
January	50	56	141
February	45	168	149
March	104	122	129
April	85	136	128
May	147	164	271
June	253	172	236
July	218	323	198
August	138	341	33
September	155	162	336
October	80	194	162
November	160	176	165
December	88	104	164
TOTAL	1523	2118	2412
Source: UNAMA

Excerpt from IRNA:

At least 5,978 civilians were killed or injured in 2009, UNAMA said in a report entitled Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict 2009. “UNAMA Human Rights [unit] recorded a total of 2,412 civilian deaths between 1 January and 31 December 2009. This figure represents an increase of 14 percent on the 2,118 civilian deaths recorded in 2008,” said the report released on 13 January 2010.

…UNAMA blamed Taliban insurgents for 1,630 civilian deaths (67 percent of the total recorded deaths) in 2009.

…Civilian casualties resulting from military operations by pro-government Afghan and foreign forces dropped by 28 percent in 2009 compared to 2008, according to UNAMA. In total 596 civilian deaths (25 percent of total) were attributed to Afghan and foreign forces.

Over 180 deaths could not be attributed to any of the conflicting parties and resulted from cross-fire or unexploded ordnance.

Civilian casualties of war (deaths only)
Month	2007	2008	2009
January	50	56	141
February	45	168	149
March	104	122	129
April	85	136	128
May	147	164	271
June	253	172	236
July	218	323	198
August	138	341	33
September	155	162	336
October	80	194	162
November	160	176	165
December	88	104	164
TOTAL	1523	2118	2412
Source: UNAMA

Iran facing a growing water crisis

Karaj Dam in Iran

“Unsustainable development has increased the country’s water demand to a maximum level, causing the water level of underground resources sink to its lowest level – from 50 meters to 300 meters,” according to the general director of Iran’s Meteorological Organization, Parviz Rezazadeh.  According to an Iranian report from 2008, “per capita water quota will be below 1,000 cubic meters by 2050.” Iran has a wide range of climates by region, and an unevenly distributed population, creating additional problems around the issue of water distribution.  About half of the population lives in regions that contain over 70% of the water resources, in the north and west. The stress on adequate renewable sources of water is made worse by Iran’s growing population.  Continued stress on underground sources of water threaten to eliminate their very availability, and a little over half of the country’s water needs were estimated to be met through the use of these aquifers (same source as above).

The above tables and image are from a 2005 report written by Kaveh Madani Larijani.

Guidebook to Iran: from World War II, by the US Army

The U.S. military, during World War II, printed a series of pocket books for its fighting troops. These booklets, each specific to a country, give pointers on how to behave when in the stationed nation, what some of the overall objectives are, and gives cultural guideposts that may be used to navigate a foreign terrain.

A collection of this books is available at the Southern Methodist University digital collection in the US.

The Pocket Guide to Iran can be viewed on this site as a PDF.

Here are some excerpts from the guide:

You’ve heard a lot of talk in this war about life lines — the sea lanes and the land routes by which military supplies flow into the combat zones to be turned against the enemy. Iran is much more than a life line. It is a major source of power that keeps the United Nations’ military machine turning over — oil.

Because of its prime strategic value, Iran is the only country in the world where the armies of the United Nations — Great Britain, Russia, and the United States — are operating in daily touch with each other.  (from pages 1 to 2)

A great deal of our success or failure may depend on whether the Iranis like us. If they like us, they can help us in countless ways. If they don’t, they can cause trouble. If they are doubtful, your friendly acts may win their confidence. (from page 8)

The Lovers’ Wind | باد صبا

“A well- known French filmmaker, Albert Lamorisse, under the aus- pices of Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Art, produced the poetic film “Lovers’ Wind” (1969). Eighty-five percent of this dramatically visual film is shot from a helicopter, providing a kaleidoscopic view of the vast expanses, natural beauty, historical monuments, cities and villages of Iran. The “narrators” of the film are the various winds (the warm, crimson, evil and lovers’ winds), which accord- ing to folklore, inhabit Iran.” (quote from Iran Archive / MMOH13 YouTube Channel)

The video is in Farsi but highly visual.

Malek Korshid: A classic Iranian tale put to animation

[Vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/8617433%5D

Ali Akbar Sadeghi’s Malek Khorshid (from 1975) is based on one of the tales from the very famous Iranian epic of kings, Shahnameh. “Ali Akbar Sadeghi… is best known for pioneering a style that mixed traditional Persian coffeehouse painting and the surreal.” (from Ubu Web where you can also read the transcript of an interview)

The epic of the Shahnameh is written by the renowned Hakim Abol Qasem Ferdowsi Tusi. You can read the epic, in English, at the Iran Chamber Society.