FIRE WITH FIRE

Today Iran convicted two Kurdish journalists of crimes against Islam and the state and sentenced them to death. Click here to read the full story.

The two journalists were convicted of moharebeh, Arabic for fighting, according to judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi. In Iran the term is used to describe major crimes against Islam and the state. The men's crimes and details about how their sentences will be carried out have not been disclosed. However, the journalists were arrested as activists during the 2005 Kurdish protests in Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan, an Iranian province on the Iran-Iraq border.

Despite Tehran's constant pressure on journalists and news media to tow the party line, imprisonment and conviction, much less a death sentence, are rare. Tehran likes to flaunt its tolerance and freedom of speech to the outside world, even if the reality inside its borders is more myth than fact.

Analysts wonder if the incident signals the beginning of a new crackdown against rebellious Kurds inside Iran. The Kurds, whose domain straddles Iran, Iraq and Turkey, have long sought autonomy and national unity. Concerned Turks are massing military units along Turkey's Kurdish border with Iraq. While Turkey says its goal is to prevent Kurdish rebels from slipping across Iraqi borders into Turkey, some analysts believe Turkey is positioning itself to invade Iraq and solve its problem with the Kurds by subjugating them under iron Turkish rule.

Whatever the truth, the killing of Kurdish journalists for nebulous political crimes is sure to fan the flames of Kurdish rebellion.

Labels: Iran, Iran judiciary, Iraq, Islam, journalists, Kurdistan, Kurds, Turkey

Posted by The Watcher at Tuesday, July 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

"The leader of an al-Qaida umbrella group in Iraq threatened to wage war against Iran unless it stops supporting Shiites in Iraq within two months, according to an audiotape released Sunday," the Associated Press reported earlier this week. Click here to read the whole article.

In a bizarre 50-minute audiotape posted on a terrorist website, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Sunni splinter group Islamic State in Iraq, threatened to launch an attack against Shiite-dominated Iran saying, "We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you."

Sunnis and Arab countries doing business with Iran were also given a two month warning to cease and desist. "We advise and warn every Sunni businessman inside Iran or in Arab countries especially in the Gulf not to take partnership with any Shiite Iranian businessman -- this is part of the two-month period," al-Baghdadi said. Kurds were also condemned for supporting Iraq's Shiite government.

In my opinion, this ridiculous farce underscores the impossibility of ever finding a common ground in which Iraqis could live in peace. There will never be respect or acceptance between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. While, as a Westerner, I fail to comprehend the importance of what seems to me to be minute differences in religious and political philosophy and the fanatical fervor with which centuries old slights dictate current behavior in the Middle East, it is clear to me that no side in this unlikely threesome is willing to compromise.

In all the chaos and highly charged emotion rampant in Iraq, it is only a matter of time before a loose cannon like al-Baghdadi sets off the bomb that breaks the camel's back and ends any semblance of political cooperation in that part of the world. As the rage of Iran or Turkey scream down upon Iraq, devouring its borders, peace may finally come to this divided country. But it will be the iron-fisted "peace" of a new Saddam.

Labels: invade Iran, Islamic State of Iraq, Kurd, Shiite, Sunni, Turkey

Posted by The Watcher at Thursday, July 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments | links to this post