From The Times
June 19, 2007
Muslim world inflamed by Rushdie knighthood
Ben Hoyle
Sir Salman Rushdie celebrates his 60th birthday today in familiar circumstances: he is once again the subject of death threats across the Islamic world.

Eighteen years after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill him, a government minister in Pakistan said yesterday that Rushdie’s recent knighthood justified suicide bombing.

The question of blasphemy in The Satanic Verses, Rushdie’s 1988 tale of a prophet misled by the devil, remains a deeply sensitive issue in much of the Muslim world and the author’s inclusion in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last week has inflamed anti-British sentiment.

Gerald Butt, editor of the authoritative Middle East Economic Survey, told The Times: “It will be interpreted as an action calculated to goad Muslims at a time when the atmosphere is already very tense and Britain’s standing in the region is very low because of its involvement in Iraq and its lack of action in tackling the Palestine issue.”

Hardliners in Iran revived calls for his murder yesterday. Mehdi Kuchakzadeh, a Tehran MP, declared: “Rushdie died the moment the late Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] issued the fatwa.”

The Organisation to Commemorate Martyrs of the Muslim World, a fringe hardline group, offered a reward of $150,000 (£75,000) to any successful assassin.

Forouz Rajaefar, the group’s secretary general, said: “The British and the supporters of the anti-Islam Salman Rushdie could rest assured that the writer’s nightmare will not end until the moment of his death and we will bestow kisses on the hands of whomsoever is able to execute this apostate.”

Effigies of Rushdie and the Queen were burnt in Pakistan, where presidential elections at the end of the year have destablised an already volatile political climate. Hundreds of protesters in Multan, Karachi and Lahore set fire to British flags and chanted “Death to Britain, death to Rushdie” and Islamist leaders called for nationwide protests after Friday prayers.

Ijaz-ul-Haq, the Religious Affairs Minister, told the assembly in Islamabad that the award of the knighthood excused suicide bombing. “If somebody has to attack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet then it is justified,” he said.

He later retracted his statement, explaining that he had intended to say that knighting Rushdie will foster extremism. “If someone blows himself up, he will consider himself justified. How can we fight terrorism when those who commit blasphemy are rewarded by the West? We demand an apology by the British government. Their action has hurt the sentiments of 1.5 billion Muslims."

Pakistan’s national assembly earlier unanimously passed a resolution condemning Rushdie’s knighthood, which it said would encourage “contempt” for the Prophet Muhammad.

Rushdie was forced to go into hiding for almost a decade after the Ayatollah Khomeini issued the death sentence over The Satanic Verses.

On Valentine’s Day in 1989 the spiritual figurehead of the Iranian revolution pronounced on Teheran radio that: “The author of The Satanic Verses, which is against Islam, the Prophet, the Koran, and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death.”

In Britain, the subsequent hate campaign helped to politicise and radicalise a generation of young British Muslims. The taxpayer is believed to have spent more than £10 million protecting Rushdie.

Only Khomeini had the power officially to lift the fatwa and he died without doing so, but in 1998, the Iranian Foreign Minister promised his British counterpart, Robin Cook, that Iran would not implement it.

Gradually, Rushdie emerged back into the literary spotlight and in recent years has appeared at events in London and New York, where he now lives.

It is understood that when he is in this country, Rushdie continues to receive round-the-clock police protection.

Muhammad Ali Hosseini, Iran’s foreign affairs spokesman, said on Sunday that the knighthood “will definitely put the British officials in confrontation with Islamic societies. This act shows that insulting Islamic sacred values is not accidental. It is planned, organised, guided and supported by some Western countries.”

China defends its role in Africa
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has rejected criticism that his country is only interested in Africa because of its huge wealth of raw materials.
He told a meeting of the African Development Bank in Shanghai that China was committed to helping the continent develop socially and economically.

He also called on rich nations to do more to assist Africa, by helping with aid, trade and debt relief.

This is the first time the ADB's annual meeting has been held in Asia.

It is a sign of China's growing importance for the continent, say analysts.

'Reduce debt'

"We are truly sincere in helping Africa speed up economic and social development for the benefit of the African people and its nations," Wen Jiabao said.

This is an implicit rejection of criticism that China is only interested in Africa because of its resources, the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Shanghai says.

"Africa needs to rely on itself to sustain development but international support and systems are also indispensable," Mr Wen told delegates at the start of the two-day meeting.

"We call on the international community to deliver on aid pledges to Africa and reduce and cancel African debt."

Mr Wen also called for increased market access and technology transfers.

No strings

China gets about a third of its oil from African countries, as well as other natural resources, which have helped fuel the country's dramatic economic transformation.

More than 700 Chinese companies are active in Africa. China's trade with the continent has quadrupled in the past six years to $55bn (£28bn).

Beijing has already written off almost $1.5bn in debt to Africa and says it will write off a similar amount again.

However, it has been criticised for having a no-strings lending policy in Africa, which critics say supports repressive regimes and hinders good governance on the continent.

China was recently accused of breaching a UN embargo by continuing to supply arms to Sudan - a key supplier of its oil - to the troubled region of Darfur.

Although it rejected the claims, Beijing has since appointed a special envoy to focus on the Darfur situation.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Sudanese students flock to learn Chinese
By Lewis Machipisa
BBC News, Khartoum

Products, companies and restaurants from China have flooded into Sudan in recent years and now the Chinese language has become the latest import.

During a recent language competition, Khartoum University resembled a province in China. Everything became Chinese. The students even laughed in Chinese.
The relaxed mood with which the 100 or so students spoke and joked in Chinese at the Chinese Bridge Speech competition suggests that learning Chinese could be the next big thing in Sudan.

First the students had to compete to see who had become the most proficient in the language. In this category the competition was tough.

Then the students had to prove they could even sing in Chinese - most sounded atrocious.

Foreign draw

More than one billion people around the world speak Chinese as their native tongue.

With China's economy rising fast, the country's government believes that 100 million foreigners will soon be speaking their language.
Among those will be Ayat, a student in Khartoum.

"China is now a big country economically. There are lots of Chinese companies in Sudan so there is a big choice for us to work for the Chinese as translators,'' she says, describing Chinese as a "beautiful language''.

Tong Xiaofeng, a Chinese professor at Khartoum University, says most of the Sudanese students in his class are motivated by money.

"Chinese is mostly welcome because nearly 100% of students who graduate from the department get jobs with Chinese companies," he says, specifically in the oil industry, telecommunications and as travel agents.

China's oil interests in Sudan, already substantial, continue to grow.

Sudan sells about 60% of its oil to China, while Sudanese imports currently make up 5% of China's oil and the China National Petroleum Corp owns 40% of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company - the main player in Sudan.

In addition, another Chinese company is constructing a 1,500km (932 mile) pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where they are also building a tanker terminal.

Proven reserves

Sudanese production and export of light, sweet crude oil - the most easily refined, and therefore most desirable, oil - have risen rapidly in the last few years.

When I graduate, I want to go to China and do my masters there
Halid Sulema
Sudan's energy ministry reports production of some 500,000 barrels per day. Sudan has proven reserves of at least 563 million barrels of oil, with the potential for far more in regions of the country made inaccessible by conflict.
It is this projected oil boom, led by Chinese firms, that has caught the eye of many Sudanese students, and there is also a booming telecommunications sector.

The Chinese government is all for using language as a way of spreading its influence around the world.

By 2008, an estimated 120,000 students will travel from abroad to go to college at a Chinese university, up from 8,000 less than a decade before.

It will provide scholarships for good students to go to its universities.

Halid Sulema is one of the students eyeing that chance.

"When I graduate, I want to go to China and do my masters there. I hope to get a good job with a Chinese company in the end."

Bye, Bye, Gaza
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 18, 2007

"Bye, bye, Gaza.” So declared terrified Palestinians this weekend, as they fled from what, after six days of street fighting between rival Hamas and Fatah cadres, has effectively become the realm of the Islamic terrorist organization.
They have the right idea. Although Hamas has offered amnesty to its political opponents, Gazans are unwilling to credit the offer. That’s not especially surprising. By now, few require edification about what Hamas means when it proclaims that the “era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.” It means, for instance, that prisoners can expect the treatment afforded 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard. After seizing Swairiki last week, Hamas fighters bound his hands and legs, then “freed” him in the following manner: by hurling him to his death from a 15-story apartment complex in Gaza City. Cases like these contribute to the minimum of 120 people who have been killed in the recent carnage unleashed by Hamas. Measured by the unebbing flood of refugees from Gaza, many Palestinians consider the era of Islamic justice and rule far more desirable in principle -- after all, they did vote to elect Hamas -- than in practice.

Abbas’s Fatah seems bent on capitalizing on that hard fact. While Hamas was crushing the remaining pockets of resistance in Gaza this weekend, Fatah forces moved to assert control over the West Bank. In his boldest move, Abbas expelled Hamas from the Palestinian Cabinet and decreed an “emergency government,” with himself in command. The ploy is clear enough: To send the message that Fatah, unlike its bloody-minded counterpart in Gaza, is a force for moderation and compromise; that it is the true representative of the Palestinian people; and that the international community’s assorted diplomats should address themselves -- and their aid packages -- to its offices.

Will it work? Fatah cannot be disappointed with the early evidence. Hardly had Abbas ousted Hamas from the Palestinian Authority this weekend than the American consul general in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, turned up at Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah to announce that the United States would suspend its economic embargo, a response to the election of Hamas in 2006, just as soon as the new emergency government is appointed. The European Union has similarly pledged to work with a Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Even Israel is on board. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert kicked off his trip to the U.S. on Sunday by hailing the emergence of a new Palestinian government as a victory for peace. In Fatah, Olmert said, he saw “an opportunity that has not existed for a long time.”

What Olmert could have possibly had in mind is unclear. Proof of Fatah’s moderate credentials, which supposedly make it a credible partner for negotiations, is nowhere to be found. In his enthusiasm for Fatah, for instance, Olmert declined to mention that it remains an umbrella organization for terrorist factions committed to and, indeed, actively seeking Israel’s destruction. Just last Saturday, one of these factions, the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, launched an attack on an Israeli military post near Gaza using a jeep disguised as a television vehicle. The European Union has had its own runs-ins with Fatah terrorists. To take one recent example, in January of 2006, Fatah militants stormed the EU’s offices in Gaza after the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammed in a Danish newspaper. One might think that such incidents would cast doubt on the popular narrative that Fatah represents the “peaceful” and “secular” alternative to Hamas. Instead, faced with two uninspiring choices among the Palestinian leadership, the international community has mistakenly invested its hopes in the one with better public relations.

Aside from being misguided, calls for negotiations with Fatah are a diversion from the more important work at hand. Now that Gaza has officially become “Hamastan,” emphasis should be placed on isolating Gaza. Properly, Israel has already taken action in that direction, declaring Gaza a “terrorist entity,” locking down the Gaza border, and deploying troops along its perimeter. Even more encouraging is a new report in the Times of London that Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defense minister, is considering an invasion of Gaza, with 20,000 troops, to lay waste to Hamas’s military capability. That still doesn’t address a central problem -- the smuggling of weaponry into Gaza across the porous Egyptian border -- but suggestions from senior Israeli military figures that IDF troops may be deployed along the Egyptian border indicate that Israel is at least serious about eliminating any potential threat from Gaza.

None of this will please Israel‘s hardened critics. In its latest policy brief, Amnesty International lays out what will likely be the theme of human-rights watchdogs who specialize in depicting Palestinians as blameless victims of Israeli injustice. Waving aside Israeli concerns about security, the group concludes that border closures, as “well as other forms of restrictions on freedom of movement of people and goods,” can under no circumstances be imposed “on whole communities.” Similarly, count on self-appointed global consciences -- a certain ex-president comes to mind -- to claim that Israel’s isolation of Hamas, rather than the campaign of terror that makes it imperative, is the true cause of conflict in Gaza.

But here is the good news: In the new security environment, these positions are unlikely to garner a substantial following. Most reasonable observers recognize that there are authentic threats to Israeli security and that no country could countenance an open border with a failed state presided over by terrorists. Both the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and after a flurry gruesome reports about revenge killings and public executions in Gaza, none of the prominent players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are ready to reconsider their view. No one wants to see undue suffering befall Gaza’s residents, of course, but in this instance the suffering is largely self-imposed. Unsettled though the future course of Palestinian politics remains, it seems clear how the civilized world is prepared to greet the Hamas terror state. In short: Bye, bye, Gaza.

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