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Category: Russian Federation

Kazan Tatars, Muslims and Shamans Present Three New Challenges to Moscow

Paul Goble

Vienna, April 10 – Three very different actions by the Kazan Tatars, a major Muslim Spiritual Directorate, and the shamans of the Russian Federation both reflect the unintended consequences of Moscow’s approach to ethnic and religious issues and present new challenges to the Russian government that it may find difficult to dismiss out of hand.
First of all, having secured Moscow’s agreement to declare Kazan “the third capital” of Russia, some Kazan Tatars are now seeking to have the central government declare their language “the second state language of Russia” because the Tatars are the second largest language community there and serve as Russia’s bridge to other Turkic-speaking peoples.
The World Forum of Tatar Youth, which has organized this effort and put up a special website (uzebez.org/) to press its case, seeks more than just recognition. It hopes to use this campaign to reverse recent cutbacks in Tatar language use outside of Tatarstan because unlike other nations in Russia, most Kazan Tatars live beyond their republic’s current borders.
And to that end, the group plans an online petition campaign, something that will both raise national awareness among young Tatars (another goal of the group) and challenge Moscow’s policy under Putin and Medvedev of cutting back the national component of education in many areas (mariuver.wordpress.com/2009/04/09/tatar-2-gosjazyk/#more-7442).
Second, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the European Part of Russia has pub two books by Said Nursi on its list of “approved Islamic literature,” even though these and other works of the Islamic writer have been declared “extremist” by Russian courts and are included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials (www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=29686).
On the one hand, this action by the MSD reflects a widespread view among many Muslim leaders that Russian courts lack the expertise to decide who is “extremist” among Muslims. And on the other, the timing of this action appears to be a protest against the composition of the new justice ministry group that is supposed to provide such testimony.
However that may be, at least some Muslims close to the Russian government, including Mufti Mukhammedgali Khuzin, who is himself a member of that new justice ministry group, say that the MSD’s actions represents “a challenge to the leadership of the country” (www.interfax-religion.ru/print.php?act=news&id=29689).
Such “a demonstrative approval of materials which form the ideological foundation of the Nurjilar organization, which the Supreme Court recognized last year as extremist, is an unconcealed challenge and may be considered as spitting in the face of the Russian powers that be,” Khuzin told Interfax.
At the very least, this decision of the MSD for the European Part of Russia, especially given the prominence of that group within the Union of Muftis of Russia and its authority among many Muslims as a traditional rather than radical forum, will spark new tensions between the government and Muslim leaders, at a time when Moscow would like to avoid them.
And third, there is another emerging challenge, although it may seem extraordinarily distant from Russia’s corridors of power. The shamans of Russia have announced plans to hold the “first popular elections of the Supreme Shaman of Russia,” thus creating a leader who could speak for them in Moscow (www.shamanstvo.ru/choice.htm).
In recent months, shamans in Siberia and the Far East have been among the leaders of protests against the destruction of the environment by Russian officials and Russian firms, and with a popularly elected leader, they are likely to demand that they should be represented in Russia’s Inter-Religious Council as one of the country’s “traditional” religions.
Patriarch Kirill, who in his earlier incarnation as the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s External Affairs Department took the lead in organizing that group and using the term “traditional” to embrace only Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, will thus face a new test, especially since many in Russia see shamanism as part of their heritage.
But Moscow is unlikely to make a concession on this point because many would see the addition of yet another “traditional” religion as opening the way for the inclusion of other groups, including Catholics and Protestants, and that could destroy precisely the exclusionary, religious “power vertical” in which both Kirill and the Kremlin have invested so much.

http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/04/window-on-eurasia-kazan-tatars-muslims.html

April 11, 2009
Are Turkey And Armenia About To Normalize Relations?

In September, Turkish President Abdullah Gul (left) accepted Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian’s invitation to attend a soccer match between their countries.

April 02, 2009

There are increasing hints that Turkey and Armenia could soon announce a deal reopening their border — which has been closed since 1993 — and restoring diplomatic relations.

Regional analyst Richard Giragosian, director of the Yerevan-based Armenian Center for National and International Studies, discusses the possibilities of such a deal with RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel.

RFE/RL: You are one of an increasing number of regional analysts who see a forthcoming accord between Ankara and Yerevan. Why is that?

Richard Giragosian: We see broader developments that have moved both parties, Armenia and Turkey, much closer to forging a historic agreement. These broader trends include not only Russian support for such an initiative but we also see [that] the upcoming visit of U.S. President [Barack] Obama to Turkey [on April 6-7], the recent visit of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Turkey, and several months of secret negotiations and diplomatic negotiations between the Armenians and Turks in Switzerland have paved the way for a historic breakthrough agreement.

RFE/RL: There are some additional variables to consider that might increase pressure to reach agreement, including Obama’s campaign promise to support a Congressional resolution that would recognize as genocide the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the period of World War I, and the upcoming Armenian Remembrance Day on April 24, which the White House traditionally marks with a statement. How soon do you think a Turkish-Armenian accord might be announced?

Giragosian: We see leaks of such a deal in the Turkish media and it seems both sides are now preparing their respective societies to brace for an announcement that possibly could come as early as April 16, when the Turkish foreign minister arrives in Armenia in the form of a meeting of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation organization.

However, I do not expect a breakthrough agreement to be unveiled during the April 16 meeting. It seems more likely that Turkey will decide to wait until after April 24 in order to exert maximum leverage over the Obama administration to refrain from recognizing the “Armenian Genocide” in his April 24 statement.

Thawing Relations

RFE/RL: If there is an announcement of an accord, what points might it include?

Giragosian: Several elements will be announced, starting with an agreement to open the long-closed border between Armenia and Turkey, followed by an agreement to move toward diplomatic relations, with the Turkish ambassador in Georgia most likely assuming the portfolio of representing Turkey in Armenia.

Third, we see an agreement as well to form a large, all-encompassing governmental commission to resolve several issues, most importantly including the “Armenian Genocide” issue. And fourthly, we do see signs of a possible Turkish unveiling of a new document or road map on Nagorno-Karabakh committing all sides to work within the OSCE Minsk Group mediation process and committing all sides to working hard to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is the last frozen conflict in the region.

RFE/RL: How much opposition is there in Turkey and Armenia to an accord?

Giragosian: Once the agreement is announced publicly, this will invite confrontation with powerful vested interests. On the Turkish side, the vested interests which will oppose this will perhaps be a nationalist reaction against normalization. From the Armenian side, the Armenian government will have to deal with the Armenian diaspora, which has taken the lead role in terms of Armenian nationalism on this issue and the lead role in genocide-recognition efforts.

All Sides In Favor

RFE/RL: You are in Yerevan. What is motivating the Armenian government to pursue an accord at this time?

Giragosian: The timing is both ironic and inductive to normalization and an agreement, mainly because it is this Armenian government that is much less popular and much less legitimate than any previous Armenian government, making its desire for a foreign-policy success even more profound.

The Armenian government, embattled by a political internal stalemate, needs a foreign-policy success to distract international attention and divert it away from domestic shortcomings and also to endow it with a degree of legitimacy, which it lacks.

RFE/RL: And what about the Turkish side?

Giragosian: We also see, for the first time, that it is in Turkey’s national security interest to open the border, to stabilize the restive Kurdish regions of eastern Turkey, which, after the war in Iraq, is even a larger concern for Turkey.

RFE/RL: Finally, what is Russia’s position on a Turkish-Armenian accord? In the past, Moscow — which has strong ties with Yerevan — has been seen as against it. Has that changed?

Giragosian: The key difference here is that after the war in August [in South Ossetia between Russia and Georgia], the Russians are now supporting the process, unlike in the past, and in fact they are also looking to use open borders between Armenia and Turkey to their own economic benefit by virtue of their control over energy and telecommunications in Armenia, but also to further isolate and marginalize Georgia, which is in their strategic interest.

But despite the negative agenda I do think that, regardless of the motivations, that the end result is a net benefit for all sides.

https://www.rferl.org/a/Are_Turkey_And_Armenia_About_To_Normalize_Relations/1600894.html

April 2, 2009
TRADE WITH ARMENIAN DIASPORA

business mans view of ……..

As Turks and Armenians wait for 24th April to see whether U.S. President Barack Obama will utter “genocide”, a new period takes start for Turkish-Armenian relations. Business worlds of two countries launch different projects one after another.

President of Turkish-Armenian Business Development Council (TABDC) Kaan Soyak said that there are many projects are waiting to be launched. Soyak stated that “qualified industrial zone” with Armenia and customs free exportation to Russia might form good chances for Turkish businessmen. Soyak said that the biggest trade initiative between two countries will be exportation of Turkey to Armenian diaspora of 7 million population in the World. Soyak said that Turkey will be able to reach Brazil, Argentina and Canada markets through Armenian diaspora in those countries, by establishment of good relations with Armenian diaspora. Soyak underscored that Armenia is the most active country in Caucasus in which Turkey can boost its volume of trade and said, “Now the amount of exportation to Armenia is about $100 million. This amount could be increased to $500 million in short term.

Establishment of relations with Armenian diaspora and with usage of qualified industrial zone this amount would be even much higher.”

Kaan Soyak believes that Turkey and Armenia will make a new start if American President Barack Obama does not use the word “genocide” during his speech on 24 April. Turkish and Armenian businessmen are on the alert for possible opening of Turkey-Armenia state border and they have projects ready to be launched in case. Soyak said that the process that is started by Yerevan visit of President Abdullah Gul last year, made Turkish and Armenian businessmen to take action. Soyak said, “There were many projects on our agenda. Their infrastructures are completed, now the project that we deal with is reaching Armenian diaspora.”

Soyak said that Armenian diaspora is the richest diaspora in the World after Jewish diaspora. He said, “There are 1.2 million Armenian in U.S. and 2 million in Russia. Besides we are interested in the diaspora of Canada, Argentina and Brazil. These people speaks Turkish language with Anatolian dialect and their economical status are very well. More than any other thing, they are ready to cooperate with Turkey.”

Soyak said that Turkey can reach to the markets that it cannot find place for itself with the help of Armenian diaspora. He said that this new markets can form a new hope against recession.

March 31, 2009
RUSSIA: MOSCOW HOSTS CONFERENCE ON AFGHANISTAN

RIA Novosti

Russia is ready to actively contribute to normalization of the situation in Afghanistan, President Dmitry Medvedev said Friday in a welcome message to the participants of an international conference, RIA Novosti reports.

The Moscow conference on Afghanistan was held under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – a regional security organization comprising Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The conference participants – SCO ministers and representatives of G8 members, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Iran, the UN, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the OSCE, the EU and NATO – gathered to discuss the situation in Afghanistan and in the Middle East and work out a strategy of fight against terrorism and drug production.

The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

“I am convinced that the conference results will become a weighty contribution to the efforts by member countries and observers of the SCO, other states and international organizations to assist Afghanistan,” said the president’s message, which was read by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“For its part, Russia is ready for active joint steps aimed at normalizing the situation in the country and ensuring its peaceful and creative development,” it said.

Medvedev said the conference was a very important event and noted that its participants would have to discuss a number of serious problems touching upon the interests of Afghanistan and other countries.

The president said Russia is interested in wide cooperation with the international community to resolve Afghanistan’s problems.

Lavrov, heading the Russian delegation, said the SCO and CSTO proposed forming belts of drug, terrorist and financial security in Afghanistan.

The Foreign Ministry said Lavrov would attend an international conference on Afghanistan in The Hague on March 31, which will bring together foreign ministers of states involved in Afghanistan, as well as representatives of international organizations.

“The minister will outline the main results of the conference on Afghanistan in Moscow,” the ministry said.

At Friday’s conference in Moscow, a Chinese deputy foreign minister said China had provided $180 million assistance to Afghanistan and written off all its outstanding debts.

The Turkish foreign minister said Turkey intended to contribute to SCO efforts on an Afghan settlement and an Iranian deputy foreign minister said it was time to switch over from declarations to actions in the Afghan settlement.

March 30, 2009
A New World Order

An end of hubris

Nov 19th 2008
From The World in 2009 print edition

America will be less powerful, but still the essential nation in creating a new world order, argues Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state and founder of Kissinger Associates

Reuters

The most significant event of 2009 will be the transformation of the Washington consensus that market principles trumped national boundaries. The WTO, the IMF and the World Bank defended that system globally. Periodic financial crises were interpreted not as warning signals of what could befall the industrial nations but as aberrations of the developing world to be remedied by domestic stringency—a policy which the advanced countries were not, in the event, prepared to apply to themselves.

The absence of restraint encouraged a speculation whose growing sophistication matched its mounting lack of transparency. An unparalleled period of growth followed, but also the delusion that an economic system could sustain itself via debt indefinitely. In reality, a country could live in such a profligate manner only so long as the rest of the world retained confidence in its economic prescriptions. That period has now ended.

Any economic system, but especially a market economy, produces winners and losers. If the gap between them becomes too great, the losers will organise themselves politically and seek to recast the existing system—within nations and between them. This will be a major theme of 2009.

America’s unique military and political power produced a comparable psychological distortion. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union tempted the United States to proclaim universal political goals in a world of seeming unipolarity—but objectives were defined by slogans rather than strategic feasibility.

Now that the clay feet of the economic system have been exposed, the gap between a global system for economics and the global political system based on the state must be addressed as a dominant task in 2009. The economy must be put on a sound footing, entitlement programmes reviewed and the national dependence on debt overcome. Hopefully, in the process, past lessons of excessive state control will not be forgotten.

The debate will be over priorities, transcending the longstanding debate between idealism and realism. Economic constraints will oblige America to define its global objectives in terms of a mature concept of the national interest. Of course, a country that has always prided itself on its exceptionalism will not abandon the moral convictions by which it defined its greatness. But America needs to learn to discipline itself into a strategy of gradualism that seeks greatness in the accumulation of the attainable. By the same token, our allies must be prepared to face the necessary rather than confining foreign policy to so-called soft power.

Every major country will be driven by the constraints of the fiscal crisis to re-examine its relationship to America. All—and especially those holding American debt—will be assessing the decisions that brought them to this point. As America narrows its horizons, what is a plausible security system and aimed at what threats? What is the future of capitalism? How, in such circumstances, does the world deal with global challenges, such as nuclear proliferation or climate change?

America will remain the most powerful country, but will not retain the position of self-proclaimed tutor. As it learns the limits of hegemony, it should define implementing consultation beyond largely American conceptions. The G8 will need a new role to embrace China, India, Brazil and perhaps South Africa.

The immediate challenge

In Iraq, if the surge strategy holds, there must be a diplomatic conference in 2009 to establish principles of non-intervention and define the country’s international responsibilities.

The dilatory diplomacy towards Iran must be brought to a focus. The time available to forestall an Iranian nuclear programme is shrinking and American involvement is essential in defining what we and our allies are prepared to seek and concede and, above all, the penalty to invoke if negotiations reach a stalemate. Failing that, we will have opted to live in a world of an accelerating nuclear arms race and altered parameters of security.

In 2009 the realities of Afghanistan will impose themselves. No outside power has ever prevailed by establishing central rule, as Britain learnt in the 19th century and the Soviet Union in the 20th. The collection of nearly autonomous provinces which define Afghanistan coalesce in opposition to outside attempts to impose central rule. Decentralisation of the current effort is essential.

All this requires a new dialogue between America and the rest of the world. Other countries, while asserting their growing roles, are likely to conclude that a less powerful America still remains indispensable. America will have to learn that world order depends on a structure that participants support because they helped bring it about. If progress is made on these enterprises, 2009 will mark the beginning of a new world order.

Source: www.economist.com, Nov 19th 2008

“New World Order” transmutes into “Age of Compatible Interest”

March 29, 2009
ARMENIA RUSSIA TO MINE URANIUM STIRS

Marianna Grigoryan 3/26/09

It is not just railways, energy and telecommunications that unite Russian and Armenian business interests. This summer, a controversial joint project to mine uranium is expected to break ground; a prospect that some Armenian environmentalists warn could turn Armenia into “an environmental disaster zone.”

The project, launched in February 2008, means fuel for Armenia’s nuclear power plant and for export. Details about financing are sketchy, although Armenia and Russia were originally said to be equal partners in the venture. Russia’s atomic energy agency, Rosatom, has claimed that it will put in “several million dollars” for research up until 2010. But the joint enterprise handling the project cannot elaborate.

Exploration began last fall in the southern region of Syunik, known for its metal ore riches. The project has so far relied primarily on Soviet-era data. Rosatom Senior Director Sergei Kirienko projected in 2008 that the sites could contain “up to 60,000 tons” of uranium ore.

Academician and geochemist Sergei Grigorian, who oversees the geological survey of the Syunik uranium deposits, told EurasiaNet it is still too soon to speak about exact figures concerning the deposits. The work, though, he affirmed, “is on the right track.”

“I personally suspended exploration work [at this same location] during the Soviet era, because I believed the exploitation of uranium mines [in Armenia] was senseless since there were larger deposits in other Soviet republics,” said Grigorian. “But today, when uranium costs up to $300 per kilogram, exploitation of the [Armenian] deposits will bring benefits, if the ore is used carefully.”

The director of the joint company set up to oversee the project, the Armenian-Russian Mining Company, adds that for the next two years the focus will be on geological surveys alone.

“We can’t tell the exact amount of available deposits, but the extraction will cover quite a large territory in both the northern and the southern regions of Syunik,” said director Mkrtich Kirakosian. The start of underground survey work, originally expected for this spring, “might be somewhat delayed” some months as the project waits for government authorization for the work, he added.

Despite the lack of specifics, environmentalists are already issuing dire warnings. Syunik already is home to the copper mining works of Kapan and Kajaran. Inga Zarafian, chairman of the non-governmental organization Ecolur, said that opening a uranium mine in the area would greatly increase the ecological hazards.

Traces of heavy metals such as mercury and arsenic have already been found in the hair of children living near what is expected to be the uranium project’s primary mining site, Lernadzor, some three kilometers away from Kajaran. Surveys by the Armenian National Academy of Science’s Ecosphere Research Center show that ground radiation in the area exceeds the permitted level by more than three and a half times; ground contamination by heavy metals is several times higher than allowed.

Given the risks, public discussions on the mining project are a must, Zafarian affirms. “Talking about this tomorrow may be too late,” Zarafian said. “The territories are already environmentally endangered. . . . Now, they are going to exploit uranium mines there. Imagine what’s going happen to the place!”

Lernadzor village head Stepan Poghosian says that locals are worried about the health risks once actual mining begins. “Everybody knows what uranium is. . . . People don’t want to live in a place that may cause diseases in their children,” Poghosian said. “The exploitation of uranium is not rain, a mudslide or hail, things that villagers can handle.”

Both experts involved in the survey work and the Ministry of Environmental Protection insist that the project involves no hazards, and that mining operations will be “transparent.”

The uranium deposits are mostly hidden within the ground’s crust and will be extracted via tunneling, said survey overseer Grigorian, who seconds the call for a public hearing on the matter. “The mining might be dangerous if it were, say, in the basin of Lake Sevan, but there is no such danger because Syunik is a mountainous region,” said Grigorian. “Maybe a very small area is threatened there, at the entrance to the tunnel, but the rest of the work will be done underground. So, the population’s fears of radiation are groundless.”

Armenian-Russian Mining Company Director Kirakosian echoes that line. “It’s too soon to talk about environmental problems because, so far, it’s just about the survey,” he said, adding that all work follows existing legislation and “observes all environmental requirements.”

Environmentalist Hakob Sanasarian, chairman of the Greens’ Union of Armenia, counters that uranium prospecting at the Syunik site was stopped for a good reason during the Soviet era. “The suspension . . . was not a decision that just happened,” Sanasarian said. Grigorian, who worked on the site in Soviet times, however, maintains that the work stopped only because other sites had larger deposits. “The environmental hazards threaten to cause genetic modifications in humans, as well as cancer, and other defects. Nature will have its revenge one day.”

Meanwhile, local residents say they are left in a quandary about whether to go or to stay. “I don’t know what is going to happen,” said Lernadzor’s Petrosian. “We have lived here our whole lives . . .”

Editor’s Note: Marianna Grigoryan is a freelance reporter based in Yerevan.

Posted March 26, 2009 © Eurasianet

Source: www.eurasianet.org, 26 March 2009

March 27, 2009