Common Ground News Service
Partners in Humanity (CGNews-PiH)
for constructive & vibrant Muslim-Western relations
21 - 27 March 2007
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Inside this edition
1) The US-Pakistan tango by Muqtedar Khan and Kamran Bokhari
Muqtedar Khan, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and Kamran Bokhari, a senior analyst on the Middle East and South Asia with Strategic Forecasting Inc., consider the current dynamics of US-Pakistan relations. Stressing the imperative of a shift in strategy to better serve the interests of both countries, they recommend a specific course of action to follow in each case.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 20 March 2007)
2) “Politics and interests” not a ready scapegoat by Ahmad Suaedy
Ahmad Suaedy, Executive Director of the Wahid Institute in Jakarta, explores the results of a recent GlobeScan/PIPA survey that finds that a majority of respondents believe that conflict can be avoided when it comes to tensions between Western and Muslim societies. He looks at why the results in Indonesia were so different from those of the other 26 countries polled, and what this means for ongoing work to improve Muslim-Western relations.
(Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 20 March 2007)
3) A more Islamic Islam by Geneive Abdo
Geneive Abdo, the author of “Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11”, examines the predominance of voices from the secular Muslim minority in North America in Western media over those of the mainstream Muslim majority. She is concerned that the secular Muslim voice is being portrayed because it more closely represents “a Western vision for the future of Islam”, rather than the more prevailing Muslim view that advocates a “middle ground — one that fuses aspects of globalisation with the Islamic tradition.”
(Source: Washington Post, 17 March 2007)
4) Women in Muslim countries call for greater reform by Basma Al-Mutlaq
Basma Al-Mutlaq, who holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and Feminist Literature in the Middle East from SOAS, London University, relates Qatari Sheikha Mozah Al-Mesned’s recent comments on the need for both political and cultural solutions to current Muslim-Western tensions and calls for more critical thinking. The author then compares the progress of Qatar in this respect with fellow Arab state, Saudi Arabia, noting a need to move beyond the old fears of neo-colonialism in order to implement progressive change.
(Source: Arab News, 14 March 2007)
5) To avoid “us vs. them” in Balkans, rewrite history by Nicole Itano
Nicole Itano, a Christian Science Monitor correspondent, describes the success of a recent project in the Balkans to reshape national identity by changing how history is taught in order to promote mutual understanding about controversial periods in the region’s history. Although these projects are facing different challenges along the way, the efforts, where successful, can go a long way in encouraging reconciliation rather than division.
(Source: Christian Science Monitor, 14 March 2007)
1)The US-Pakistan tango
Muqtedar Khan and Kamran Bokhari
Newark, Delaware and Toronto - Are US-Pakistan relations undergoing a significant transformation?
There are clear indications that Washington is dissatisfied with the status quo and is seeking to ratchet up additional pressure to make Pakistan more compliant and responsive to America’s security interests. It is also possible that US-Pakistan relations may become the battleground where Democrats settle political scores with the Bush administration.
US-Pakistan relations since 2001, when Pakistan abandoned its support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and began cooperating with the US, have been based on the singular principle of the US demands, and Pakistan complies.
Nearly six years after 9/11, Bin Laden is still hiding somewhere in Pakistan, the Taliban has regrouped and reconsolidated - reportedly in Pakistan - and Washington is having second thoughts about the honesty and the utility of Pakistani compliance.
Following the Democratic takeover of the US Congress last November, there has been increasing pressure on the Bush administration to re-evaluate its relationship with Pakistan. The most prominent move in this regard is the bill approved by the House in January which stipulates that continued financial assistance to Pakistan be contingent upon a certification from the president of the United States that the South-West Asian state of Pakistan is doing its utmost to contain the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. A milder version of the bill is currently being debated in the Senate.
The thinking behind these moves in the US legislature is informed by two emerging developments. The first relates to the growing debate within the United States with regards to an exit strategy on Iraq: the logical consequence of the moves to pull out/draw down troops from Iraq is the refocusing of US attention on the original theatre in the US war against militant jihadism - i.e. Afghanistan and the unfinished business of hunting down the Al-Qaeda leadership.
The second reason pertains to the administration being visibly unhappy with the performance of its reluctant ally in the so-called “war on terror”, and the visit by Vice President Dick Cheney himself to Pakistan to tell the General how things stood between them. In public, the administration is still defending President Musharraf as an important ally in the war on terror, but clearly the Mush-Bush pie is turning sour.
It is in this dual-faceted context that the question of Pakistan’s performance (or the lack thereof) comes into question. Given that the Taliban insurgency has exhibited phenomenal growth in recent years, especially during 2006, there is a concern that the government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is allowing the Pashtun “jihadists” and their transnational allies to use Pakistani soil as a launch pad for attacks in Afghanistan and beyond.
Is the Musharraf regime doing all it can in the war against terrorists? How much can and should the United States demand from Pakistan? And perhaps most importantly, what can and should Islamabad do with respect to both issues?
The domestic political climates in both the United States and Pakistan are also transforming the premise of their relationship. The United States is being pushed to demand more and Pakistan is being cornered into a situation where it can deliver less.
As far as Pakistan’s track-record is concerned, clearly it has significantly aided US efforts to disrupt the Al-Qaeda network’s ability to operate. In this regard, Pakistan has incurred the loss of several hundred of its soldiers as well as the domestic instability that President Musharraf’s government continues to deal with. That said, the Pakistanis have not been able to block Taliban activity within their borders. In fact, the last three years have seen the Talibanisation of the Pashtun-dominated areas on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan.
The US-Pakistan alliance is critical to the stability of South Asia, to the success of US objectives in Afghanistan and to the ongoing effort to combat Al-Qaeda. Positive US-Pakistan relations are also important for the United States given its myriad problems and low approval ratings in the broader Muslim world. Pakistan needs US economic and military aid to keep up with a rapidly growing India. Without US support, Pakistan will find its geopolitical interests dangerously exposed and without Pakistani assistance, the United States will find it impossible to deal with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Washington must realise that Pakistan is not just a vendor to whom foreign policy tasks can be outsourced. It has its own national interests, its domestic political imperatives and geopolitical concerns. Yes, it must be pressured to do more, but without jeopardising its domestic stability or long-term utility to the United States. Democrats in particular must not use it as a proxy to attack President Bush, for they may inadvertently do much harm to US interests by undermining US-Pakistan relations.
Pakistan, on the other hand, must realise that it has to do more, at home as well as abroad. At home it must step up its efforts at de-Talibanisation and re-democratisation of its polity. Abroad, it must work to improve the basis of its relations with Washington, which is critical to its long-term geopolitical and economic well-being. It must work towards the consolidation of US-Pakistan relations and step up its efforts to answer its numerous critics within the Washington Beltway.
It is in the interest of all that Pakistan remain a stable country, a strong ally of the United States and a bulwark against extremism in its region.
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* Muqtedar Khan teaches at the University of Delaware and is a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kamran Bokhari is Senior Analyst on the Middle East and South Asia with Strategic Forecasting Inc. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 20 March 2007 www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
2)“Politics and interests” not a ready scapegoat
Ahmad Suaedy
Jakarta - Tensions between the West and Muslim communities are undeniable, especially in the aftermath of 9/11. Indications of this can be observed in our daily life: articles in newspapers and magazines, books, as well as public discussions. The question is not whether tension exists, but how high it’s running, what are its main causes, and can it be defused?
A survey conducted by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) from the University of Maryland between November 2006 and January 2007, as recently reported by the BBC, found that the majority of Western and Muslim respondents think the tension has roots in “politics and interests” (52%), rather than “religion and culture” (29%). The majority also argues that conflict can be avoided (56%), with only a small percentage replying that it is unavoidable (28%).
These findings, based on feedback from 28,000 respondents from 27 Asian, African and European countries, are very stimulating and provide a measure of hope that the majority of populations around the world reject an inherent “clash of civilizations” theory and feel that the fractures plaguing Muslim-Western relations can be healed.
However, a unique difference can be seen in the poll results of Indonesian respondents. On the one hand, 51%, believe that conflict between the Muslim world and the West is unavoidable while only 40% say that common ground can be found. Yet on the other hand, only 35% blame “differences in religion and culture” while 56% point to “political power and interests” as being at the roots of tension between Muslims and the West, closely matching average global responses.
This anomaly reminds us that although people believe that these tensions between Muslims and Westerners are caused primarily by political power and interests, we shouldn’t underestimate these problems. Furthermore, the difference in the Indonesian results suggests that we should question the global assumptions that are apparent in the GobeScan poll results from the other 26 countries that “differences in religion and culture” is what have made Muslim-Western conflicts unavoidable and that “political power and interests” automatically leads to easy opportunities for finding common ground.
Looking back at the history of Muslim-Western conflicts, we can easily find that “political power and interests” as causes of violence go back much further than motives of “religion and culture”. What we have come to know as Muslim-Western conflicts are initially related to the discovery of oil in Arab countries in the beginning of the 20th century, creating tensions between the United States and Europe, on the one hand, and parts of the Arab world. This was soon masked by slogans and campaigns that gave rise to phrases such as “Western civilization” and “Muslim civilization”. As a result, conflicts between Arab states and Western countries suddenly shifted from struggles against international power (related to oil) to being portrayed as tensions between the Western/Christian and Muslim civilizations.
This terminology was formalized in 1993, when Samuel Huntington came into the spotlight with his article “Clash of Civilizations?” published as a reaction to Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book, The End of History. The “clash of civilization” concept has influenced intellectuals and decision-makers and dominated cultural and political life in all “civilizations” around the world - Muslim, Western, Confucian, Japanese, Hindu, Orthodox, Fundamentalist, Latin American, African etc. – and is gripping ever tighter in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy.
This new trend has swept under the rug the concepts of a clash of classes, economies, capitals, powers or other instruments that can be categorized as “political power and interests” that have previously influenced the global perception of Muslim-Western conflicts, and has reinterpreted them as “differences in religion and culture”. As a result, tensions are broadening and entering areas that were unthinkable before, such as fashion (the use of headscarves and other religious apparel) and art (from cartoons to opera).
Through this short history of Muslim-Western conflicts, it seems clear that the “clash of civilizations” is a disguise, one that camouflages the age-old contest of political power and special interests which has been a leitmotiv in these conflicts. Perhaps the real question is: what makes respondents around the world feel that if the roots of Muslim-Western tensions were political power and interests, then it becomes easier to find common ground and heal wounds?
Without intending to be overly pessimistic, it is important not to become blindly optimistic about the results of the GlobeScan-PIPA poll that seem so exhilarating and hopeful, but to continue the hard work necessary to improve Muslim-Western relations. A tremendous number of ongoing tasks await us. Though the belief that tensions affecting Muslim-Western relations can be eased is a substantial asset in this struggle, it is important to be prepared for what in actuality may be a very difficult task. The hope from this poll can be found in the knowledge that “goodwill” and the desire for peaceful resolutions to existing tensions can still be found in the hearts of human beings, and these traits must be put to work consistently and patiently towards this constructive end.
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* Ahmad Suaedy is Executive Director of the Wahid Institute in Jakarta, Indonesia. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 20 March 2007 www.commongroundnews.org Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
3)A more Islamic Islam
Geneive Abdo
Fort Lauderdale, Florida - A small group of self-proclaimed secular Muslims from North America and elsewhere gathered in St. Petersburg recently for what they billed as a new global movement to correct the assumed wrongs of Islam and call for an Islamic Reformation.
Across the state in Fort Lauderdale, Muslim leaders from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Washington-based advocacy group whose members the “secular” Muslims claim are radicals, denounced any notion of a Reformation as another attempt by the West to impose its history and philosophy on the Islamic world. The self-proclaimed secularists represent only a small minority of Muslims. The views among religious Muslims from CAIR more closely reflect the views of the majority, not only in the United States but worldwide. Yet Western media, governments and neo-conservative pundits pay more attention to the secular minority.
The St. Petersburg convention is but one example — it was carried live on Glenn Beck’s conservative CNN show. Some of the organisers and speakers at the convention are well known thanks to the media spotlight: Irshad Manji, author of “The Trouble With Islam” and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian and author of “Infidel” were but a few there claiming to have suffered personally at the hands of “radical” Islam. One participant, Wafa Sultan, declared on Glenn Beck’s show that she doesn’t “see any difference between radical Islam and regular Islam.”
The secular Muslim agenda is promoted because these ideas reflect a Western vision for the future of Islam. Since the September 11 attacks, everyone from high-ranking officials in the Bush administration to the author Salman Rushdie has prescribed a preferred remedy for Islam: reform the faith so it is imbued with Western values — the privatisation of religion, the flourishing of Western-style democracy — and with rulers who are secular, not religious, Muslims. The problem with this prescription is that it is divorced from reality. It is built upon the principle that if Muslims are fed a steady diet of Western influence, they too will embrace modernity, secularism and everything else the West has to offer.
Consider the facts: Islamic revivalism has spread across the globe in the past 30 years from the Middle East to parts of Africa. In Egypt, it is hard to find a woman on the street who does not wear a headscarf. Islamic political groups and movements are on the rise — from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Even in the United States, more and more American Muslims, particularly the young, are embracing Islam and religious symbolism in ways their more secular, immigrant parents did not.
I travelled to Florida to serve as the keynote speaker at an annual convention hosted by CAIR. On my way to the event, I spoke with Imam Siraj Wahaj, a charismatic intellectual from the Masjid Al-Taqwa in Brooklyn who has thousands of followers here and abroad. His words summarised the aspirations of mainstream Muslims in the United States and around the globe: “What we need to do is borrow those attributes from the West that we admire and reject those that we don’t. That is the wave of the future.”
Already, signs support Imam Wahaj’s words. Muslims living in the West and those in the Muslim world are searching for this middle ground — one that fuses aspects of globalisation with the Islamic tradition. For example, Muslim women have far greater access to higher education today than ever before. In Iran, there are more women than men in universities, a first in the country’s history. But as increasing numbers of Muslim women become more educated, majorities are becoming more religious while also taking part in what are called Islamic feminist movements, which stretch from Egypt to Turkey and Morocco.
These women, who often wear headscarves to express their religiosity, have found this grey area between modernity and traditionalism. They are fighting for more rights to participate in politics and greater equality in “personal status” laws — the right to gain custody of children or to initiate divorce — but also view Islam as their moral compass.
Similarly, the political future of the Arab world is likely to consist of Islamic parties that are far less tolerant of what has historically been the US foreign policy agenda in the region and that domestically are far more committed to implementing shari‘a law in varying degrees.
In Europe and the United States, where Muslims have maximum exposure to Western culture, they are increasingly embracing Islamic values. In Britain, a growing number of Muslims advocate creating a court system based upon Islamic principles.
What all this means is that Western hopes for full integration by Muslims in the West are unlikely to be realised and that the future of the Muslim world will be much more Islamic than Western.
Instead of championing the loud voices of the secular minority who are capturing media attention with their conferences, manifestos and memoirs, the United States would be wise to instead pay more attention to the far less loquacious majority.
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* Geneive Abdo is the author of “Mecca and Main Street: Muslim Life in America After 9/11.” This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Washington Post, 17 March 2007, www.washingtonpost.com
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
4)Women in Muslim countries call for greater reform
Basma Al-Mutlaq
London - At a meeting held at London’s Chatham House on Feb. 14, Sheikha Mozah Al-Mesned, wife of the emir of Qatar, said that there needs to be a major reciprocal awakening in order to arrive at a better understanding between Muslim societies and the West.
The sheikha — who is the consort of the emir of Qatar, Chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, President of the Supreme Council for Family Affairs and Vice Chairperson of the Supreme Education Council — began her speech by rejecting the “faulty terminology” describing Muslim-Western relations, and stated her objective to deconstruct the current paradigm of the clash of civilizations by emphasising common goals and an awakening of alliances.
She also underlined the importance of both political and cultural solutions to current tensions and warned that in order to build an alternative reality, there needs to be an engagement in critical thinking.
Sheikha Mozah highlighted the positive exchanges that existed between Muslim and European civilizations in the past, as well as conflicts that took place. The challenge for now, she said, is to establish a “global ethic” and to confront the problem of political disenchantment, especially among the young. She added that the answer lies in educational reform, although education without new avenues for political mobilisation is no guarantee for non-violence. She also said that the media was greatly to blame for prioritising violence.
Credit should be given to Sheikha Mozah for her charismatic presence and her enthusiasm in representing her country in a positive light. When asked about the situation of women in Qatar, she simply answered by pointing out two young women sitting in the front row and said, “These two women are ministers in Qatar. I need not say more.”
The emancipation and empowerment of women in Qatar would never have been achieved without, firstly, Sheikha Mozah’s philanthropic and effective role in pushing Qatari women forward, and secondly, Qatari people’s readiness for and compliance with these changes. The Qatari example is unprecedented in the region given the time and scale of such profound changes and its major accomplishment lies primarily in achieving an equilibrium by preserving its Muslim identity whilst adopting a progressive policy — a policy that grants women equal rights as citizens.
The success of women in countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar makes many women in neighbouring Saudi Arabia look at their own meagre achievements, especially in the public arena. Women in Saudi Arabia, who have made significant contributions in the areas of business, education and culture, still lack recognition and equal remuneration and struggle for visibility. Even in the medical fields, where Saudi women have habitually flourished, women are persistently denied positions of power.
As is commonly reported, religion dominates almost every aspect of life in Saudi Arabia, making it almost impossible for women to question their rights for fear of being stigmatised, ostracised and “accused” of being liberal and secular. We can, however, question some of the misrepresentations of Islam and the prevailing social practices that have filtered through society, such as forced marriages, forced divorces, violence against women, guardianship (a woman has to be chaperoned by a male relative and show a permit signed by her guardian at every port) and biased divorce and child custody laws.
It is crucial to modify social and cultural patterns by means of drawing a line between religion and social practices; between an interpretation of Islam that enhances women’s position in society and social practices that are stifling and oppressive. What women are demanding in the majority of Muslim countries is a rethinking of their position in society and the proper observation of both the rights and obligations of men and women in Islam.
Yet the rationale of the measured and cautious change taken by most of the Muslim countries may be attributed to their fear of neo-colonialism. The international focus on the “women issue” has been recognised by many Muslim countries as a true post-colonial challenge. For how can we have progressive change without complying with Western laws exemplified in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and yet preserve our cultural identity which colonialism has consistently sought to annihilate?
It is vital at this point to scrutinise the milieu of Islamic radicalism which has prevailed in the Kingdom during the past few decades, and which has created a purely patriarchal society that sees women as a symbol of Islam to be secluded and protected from an evil world.
As a nation we tend to think of ourselves in terms of binary opposites: man/woman, good/bad, superior/inferior. In other words, people have been seduced into the trap of binary thinking. Labour law in Saudi Arabia, therefore — in a reflection of the public mood — has prescribed women to certain spaces and jobs. Article 150 prevents women from working at night and Article 149 empowers the minister of labour to declare certain industries “hazardous” and thus unsuitable for women.
Modest results have been reached by the Labour Ministry — in an attempt to negotiate new spaces for women in the country — such as allowing women lawyers to work in law firms. Reforms in Saudi Arabia may be taking place, and severe strictures on women are easing to some extent, but residues of tenacious radicalism still exist.
The Kingdom must internalise moderation and normalise life for current and futures generations by committing its energies instead to real and urgent reform.
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* Basma A. Al Mutlaq has a Ph.D. in Comparative and Feminist Literature in the Middle East from SOAS, London University. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Arab News, 14 March 2007, www.arabnews.org
Copyright permission has been obtained for publication.
5)To avoid “us vs. them” in Balkans, rewrite history
Nicole Itano
Athens - The year was 1453. Ottoman troops under Sultan Mehmet II captured the Byzantine city of Constantinople – present-day Istanbul – and changed the region forever.
Ask a Greek student of history, and you’ll likely hear of the event as the tragic fall of a great Christian city. Ask a Turk, and you’ll probably hear of the glorious conquest for a rising Muslim empire.
In this still-fragile region, history is often served up as a nationalistic tale that highlights the wrongs perpetrated by others. Now a group of historians from across the region is trying to change the way the past is taught in Southeast Europe – from Croatia to Turkey – in an effort to encourage reconciliation rather than division.
“History plays an important role in shaping national identity,” said Christina Koulouri, the editor of a series of new history textbooks and a professor of history at the University of the Peloponnese in Greece. “We want to change history teaching because we are concerned about the joint future of the Balkans and we think mutual understanding can be promoted through better history teaching.”
More than 60 scholars and teachers from around the Balkans have joined to create a new series of history books that tackle some of the most controversial periods in the region. The books, which are being translated into 10 regional languages, present history from various perspectives and excerpt historical documents to challenge interpretations of key events like the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople.
Most students, Ms. Koulouri says, know little about their neighbours, despite the region’s intertwined past and the relative youth of most of the countries that exist today. Schools typically use government-issued texts in which wars – and there have been many in the region over the centuries – are portrayed in “us versus them” terms with ancient wrongs visited again and again.
The Joint History Project, run by the Greek-based Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (CDRSEE), has translated the books into Greek, Serbian, and Albanian, and has begun training teachers how to use them.
Dubravka Stojanovic, a professor of history at the University of Belgrade, has witnessed first hand how history is used for political means. Under Slobodan Milosevic, the country’s textbooks were changed in 1993, during the Bosnian war.
“The aim of that change was to show that the peoples in ex-Yugoslavia lived in constant conflict since the 12th century or so,” she says. “The intention was to show that the war was something normal; that it was the normal state of things for Serbians and Croats to hate each other.”
Now, says Dr. Stojanovic, who is editor of the Serbian editions of the series and who helped organise some of the first teacher-training efforts in Serbia, the texts are being changed again, this time to vilify communists.
The Serbian government originally supported the CDRSEE’s books, and the minister of education appeared at their national launch. But after critics accused the books – and their editor – of being anti-Serbian, the government withdrew its support.
Stojanovic and others are now waiting to see what will happen when a new government is formed, a process that has stalled as political parties negotiate new coalitions in the wake of recent elections.
For organisers, though, the project is not just a matter of putting better books into teachers’ hands. It requires them to begin teaching in an entirely new way.
Across much of the region, history is taught largely as a series of facts that students are expected to memorise and regurgitate. The joint history project wants students to analyse the past for themselves. With its focus on cultural and social history, it tries to humanise groups who may have often been thought of as enemies.
“We also like to include children and women in history, not just soldiers and politicians and big men,” explains Koulouri. “We try to show that these experiences are not exclusive to one nation.”
Not everyone is ready to listen to that perspective. In Greece, a debate is raging over a new history textbook for 12-year-olds, which some groups accuse of softening the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire. The powerful Greek Orthodox Church and nationalist groups want the book removed and say that the CDRSEE’s books – which have been approved but are not the official curriculum – are guilty of the same sins.
One of the project’s biggest barriers is finding funding to complete translation into the region’s remaining languages and providing enough training. Nenad Sebek, CDRSEE’s director, estimates that it needs an additional $1 million in funding. But, she says, donors are losing interest in the region, even though many of its conflicts still simmer: Cyprus remains divided; Kosovo’s final status is still uncertain; and tensions occasionally flare between Greece and Turkey, who are both members of NATO but share a land-mined border.
“The international interest, specifically the American interest, has shifted elsewhere,” he says. “It’s too early for the donors to pull out…. All you need to do is look at Kosovo, or even Bosnia.”
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* Nicole Itano is a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) and can be accessed at www.commongroundnews.org .
Source: Christian Science Monitor, 14 March 2007, www.csmonitor.com
Copyright © The Christian Science Monitor. For reprint permission contact lawrenced@csps.com
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