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Ed Webb

Dented plaque, creaking hospital and Queen's complex legacy in Aden - Al-Monitor: Indep... - 1 views

  • A battered plaque in a rundown hospital and a crackly, black-and-white newsreel are all that remain of Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 visit to Aden, the war-torn Yemeni city whose troubles are a reminder of Britain's complicated legacy in the Middle East.
  • mildew, emaciated children and the stench of urine, as the under-equipped facility grapples with an impossible workload in the face of a long-running conflict.
  • British colonialism is inextricably linked with the Middle East partly because of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, when Britain and France carved up much of the region between them amid the collapse of Ottoman rule during World War I. Many Arab leaders remain close to British royalty, however. After the queen's death this month at 96, sombre tributes were offered by monarchies that thrived under British protection.
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  • A lesser-noticed tribute also arrived from the separatist leader of Aden, the southwestern port city and the seat of the British colony that later became South Yemen until unification with North Yemen in 1990.
  • Aidarus al-Zubaidi, president of the Southern Transitional Council, tweeted that he was "deeply saddened" by the queen's death and extended his "heartfelt condolences".The sentiments were incongruous in a city that, nine years after the young queen's visit, orchestrated an armed revolution that eventually won independence in 1967, an uprising that is celebrated each October 14.
  • "Those who glorify the period where the British were in Aden, either are young and are unaware of the reality of what was happening in Aden and in the south back then, or are old people reacting to the reality we are living right now which is very tiring,"
  • There was never a form of colonialism that respected humanity,
  • the policies "didn't focus on the aspirations of Adeni people"
  • Aden bears the scars of conflict. Homes are pockmarked by bullet holes, buildings lie in rubble and water and electricity are intermittent, the result of infrastructure trashed by fighting.
Ed Webb

Tehran strikes Kurdish opponents in Iraq as protests over Mahsa Amini's death convulse ... - 0 views

  • Iran unleashed a wave of missiles and drones on the headquarters of three separate Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraqi Kurdistan today, killing at least nine people and wounding 32 others, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq’s Ministry of Health said, adding that it expected the death toll to rise.
  • An estimated 10 million Kurds, mainly Sunnis, who make up around a tenth of Iran’s population have long been denied political and cultural rights. At least 1,500 Kurdish activists were arrested in the last days’ tumult. The Kurdish majority areas in the country’s northwest, alongside Balochistan in the southwest, are among the least developed. The demonstrations over Amini’s murder first erupted in Tehran but rapidly spread to Iranian Kurdistan.
  • Persian demonstrators are chanting “Kurdistan is the eyes and the light of Iran,” Mohtadi noted. “The Kurds, instead of being perceived as the usual suspects, are now hailed as being at the vanguard of popular protests. It’s unprecedented,”
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  • Iraq’s Foreign Ministry and the KRG condemned Iran over its actions, as did the United States, Germany, the UK and the United Nations. “Attacks on opposition group’s through the Islamic Republic of Iran’s missiles, under any pretext, is an incorrect stance that promotes a misleading interpretation of the course of events,” the KRG stated in an oblique reference to Iran’s efforts to scapegoat the Iranian Kurds for the mass protests inside its own borders.
  • Lawk Ghafuri, a KRG spokesman, told Al-Monitor that media reports suggesting that Iran had also targeted the PKK’s Iranian branch known as The Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK, had come under any Iranian fire were inaccurate. The party is mostly shunned by other Iranian Kurdish groups because of its links to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union but has broader global reach than any other Kurdish group in the world. At least 12 Kurdish prisoners were executed in Iran in June alone, according to the Paris-based Kurdish Human Rights Network — one of them over alleged connections to the PKK.
  • The regime is under mounting pressure. They fear for many reasons that Kurdistan could be a point of departure for the liberation for the rest of Iran,” said Asso Hassan Zadeh, an Iranian Kurdish analyst and former deputy leader of the KDPI. “We have more connections with the rest of the world than other parts of Iran, and the role played by the Kurds in the current protests helps explain the reaction,”
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