Pundit
JF-Expert Member
- Feb 4, 2007
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Ikulu yetu kweli ilisema hivi anavyosema Makwaia Wa Kuhenga? I am particularly interested in the bold part.Kama ni kweli kwa mara nyingine katika kipindi kisichozidi wiki moja Ikulu yetu inatuonyesha jinsi ilivyo na watu mediocre, kwanza katika
"fireside chats" za Kikwete za kila mwezi (kusema kuna mambo matatu halafu kuongelea mawili) halafu na hili la kudanganya kitoto kuhusu ujio wa rais wa Uturuki.Unaweza kuona hili ni suala dogo lakini tusipojali haya mambo tunayoona madogo kama kumwambia Bush "We are glad to se you go" na hili la "tumem-disinvite rais wa Uturuki" siku moja yatakuja kutuletea a diplomatic scandal.
When an Occupied Country is Also Invaded
The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
OPINION
3 March 2008
Posted to the web 3 March 2008
As you may have followed the news, the Turks have announced that their military incursion of northern Iraq when they deployed their air and ground forces is over. They have claimed: "mission accomplished".
That mission was to cut off the offensive capability of the Kurdish Workers Party known as the PKK, which is considered a "terrorist" organisation by the Turkish Government.
But what had been puzzling and disturbing in the last fortnight to men of conscience (not business people up for a fast buck regardless of the price!) is why a country subjected to so much suffering, bloodshed, killings and maiming such as Iraq should be subjected to another invasion by its neighbour on the north with the occupying power in that country, the United States of America, looks on?
Whatever the sources of your news you have been sampling in the last fortnight, you will have discovered that as usual as in any war, it is ordinary people who are at the bashing end. I watched my Aljazeera Global television news network and I was shocked to see what was going on in that part of the world. The pounding by Turkish warplanes of that mountainous area had continued unabated so did the shrapnel fall onto innocent women and children.
But the Turks were licking their wounds too, caskets after caskets were being offloaded somewhere in Turkey for burial. Suddenly there was a terse announcement from Tanzanian State House that the Turkish President due in Tanzania for an official visit will not be coming after all - and I was startled to follow the announcement on my car radio that it was his host, the Tanzanian President who had called off the visit citing other commitments!
I chuckled beside myself at the clumsiness of whoever made the press release announcing the cancellation of the visit. "If you invited someone to visit you, how then do you call off that visit less than twenty four hours before the arrival of your guest and you still want the public to believe you it was you and not your guest who had cancelled the visit?"
But I knew that it was the expected guest who had cancelled the visit and for the simple reason that he would not be understood in his own country to be in Tanzania at a time caskets of his dead troops were being flown for burial. But this is beside the point. But it is a point still - as we will see at the conclusion of this perspective - if the quotation given at the beginning of this perspective is anything to go by.
So back to the main theme of this perspective: why should an occupied country such as Iraq be subjected to more invasions in the very naked eyes of the occupying power?
The answer to this question is simple. At the bottom line of the United States relations with other countries of the world are primarily its interests and the safeguarding of those interests must be affected regardless of who gets hurt.
Before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, there was the Kurdish problem both in Northern Iraq and in Turkey's southeast fringes. A dispatch before me says the Kurdish Workers Party (the PKK) has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast region, which is Kurdish populated. And the claim for autonomy has been there since 1984.
In the old good days, people fighting for self rule, autonomy or outright independence have been known as freedom fighters and their forces known guerilla forces. But there is no such branding these days. These days such people must be "terrorists"!
So it is not difficult to see why it has been easy for Turkey to convince the United States to look away as its army moved to crush Kurd "terrorists" inside Iraq.
But this "offer" has not been for nothing: it was Turkey which facilitated its military bases as a launch pad during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq ostensibly to check "weapons of mass destruction" but effectively to occupy the oil-rich country.
Turkey, as all knowledgeable people know is a key ally of the United States and, as would add one such a knowledgeable voices: "the two countries have had a strategic dimension based on the need for determining mutual interests for more than 50 years".
Taking this factor of strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States under consideration, the heading of this perspective - 'When an already occupied country is invaded' is made superfluous because it is not a farfetched assumption that Turkey also occupies Iraq by proxy.
This brings us to the forthcoming visit of the Turkish President to this country, which may have come hot in the heels of the departure of the United States President George W. Bush who was also here on a four-day state visit. The questions are: Why should leaders of two countries, which are strategic allies militarily, want to visit our country almost within a very short span of time? Are the visits a mere coincidence?
As quoted at the beginning of this perspective, a weekly tabloid had quoted a Presidential Spokesman here as saying: "What does peace in Iraq has to do with the lives of the poor people of Tanzania?"
The tabloid quoted the spokesman as having reported the fury of his Boss, the President upon the news of demonstrations having taken place to oppose the Bush visit: "I have never seen the President so livid with rage. This man (Bush) is bringing us lots of money and then you set ablaze his national flag. Is it not tantamount to torching one's own luck?"
It is high time those in the leadership of this country realised that there will always be thinking Tanzanians who will never consider themselves different from other occupied people elsewhere. There will always be Tanzanians who will always question why an already occupied country should be subjected to continued invasions.
Even those who donate lots of money to this country will privately have nothing but utter contempt to a people and leadership with no conscience of their own.
Makwaia wa Kuhenga is a senior journalist and author
"fireside chats" za Kikwete za kila mwezi (kusema kuna mambo matatu halafu kuongelea mawili) halafu na hili la kudanganya kitoto kuhusu ujio wa rais wa Uturuki.Unaweza kuona hili ni suala dogo lakini tusipojali haya mambo tunayoona madogo kama kumwambia Bush "We are glad to se you go" na hili la "tumem-disinvite rais wa Uturuki" siku moja yatakuja kutuletea a diplomatic scandal.
When an Occupied Country is Also Invaded
The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
OPINION
3 March 2008
Posted to the web 3 March 2008
As you may have followed the news, the Turks have announced that their military incursion of northern Iraq when they deployed their air and ground forces is over. They have claimed: "mission accomplished".
That mission was to cut off the offensive capability of the Kurdish Workers Party known as the PKK, which is considered a "terrorist" organisation by the Turkish Government.
But what had been puzzling and disturbing in the last fortnight to men of conscience (not business people up for a fast buck regardless of the price!) is why a country subjected to so much suffering, bloodshed, killings and maiming such as Iraq should be subjected to another invasion by its neighbour on the north with the occupying power in that country, the United States of America, looks on?
Whatever the sources of your news you have been sampling in the last fortnight, you will have discovered that as usual as in any war, it is ordinary people who are at the bashing end. I watched my Aljazeera Global television news network and I was shocked to see what was going on in that part of the world. The pounding by Turkish warplanes of that mountainous area had continued unabated so did the shrapnel fall onto innocent women and children.
But the Turks were licking their wounds too, caskets after caskets were being offloaded somewhere in Turkey for burial. Suddenly there was a terse announcement from Tanzanian State House that the Turkish President due in Tanzania for an official visit will not be coming after all - and I was startled to follow the announcement on my car radio that it was his host, the Tanzanian President who had called off the visit citing other commitments!
I chuckled beside myself at the clumsiness of whoever made the press release announcing the cancellation of the visit. "If you invited someone to visit you, how then do you call off that visit less than twenty four hours before the arrival of your guest and you still want the public to believe you it was you and not your guest who had cancelled the visit?"
But I knew that it was the expected guest who had cancelled the visit and for the simple reason that he would not be understood in his own country to be in Tanzania at a time caskets of his dead troops were being flown for burial. But this is beside the point. But it is a point still - as we will see at the conclusion of this perspective - if the quotation given at the beginning of this perspective is anything to go by.
So back to the main theme of this perspective: why should an occupied country such as Iraq be subjected to more invasions in the very naked eyes of the occupying power?
The answer to this question is simple. At the bottom line of the United States relations with other countries of the world are primarily its interests and the safeguarding of those interests must be affected regardless of who gets hurt.
Before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, there was the Kurdish problem both in Northern Iraq and in Turkey's southeast fringes. A dispatch before me says the Kurdish Workers Party (the PKK) has been fighting for autonomy in Turkey's southeast region, which is Kurdish populated. And the claim for autonomy has been there since 1984.
In the old good days, people fighting for self rule, autonomy or outright independence have been known as freedom fighters and their forces known guerilla forces. But there is no such branding these days. These days such people must be "terrorists"!
So it is not difficult to see why it has been easy for Turkey to convince the United States to look away as its army moved to crush Kurd "terrorists" inside Iraq.
But this "offer" has not been for nothing: it was Turkey which facilitated its military bases as a launch pad during the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq ostensibly to check "weapons of mass destruction" but effectively to occupy the oil-rich country.
Turkey, as all knowledgeable people know is a key ally of the United States and, as would add one such a knowledgeable voices: "the two countries have had a strategic dimension based on the need for determining mutual interests for more than 50 years".
Taking this factor of strategic partnership between Turkey and the United States under consideration, the heading of this perspective - 'When an already occupied country is invaded' is made superfluous because it is not a farfetched assumption that Turkey also occupies Iraq by proxy.
This brings us to the forthcoming visit of the Turkish President to this country, which may have come hot in the heels of the departure of the United States President George W. Bush who was also here on a four-day state visit. The questions are: Why should leaders of two countries, which are strategic allies militarily, want to visit our country almost within a very short span of time? Are the visits a mere coincidence?
As quoted at the beginning of this perspective, a weekly tabloid had quoted a Presidential Spokesman here as saying: "What does peace in Iraq has to do with the lives of the poor people of Tanzania?"
The tabloid quoted the spokesman as having reported the fury of his Boss, the President upon the news of demonstrations having taken place to oppose the Bush visit: "I have never seen the President so livid with rage. This man (Bush) is bringing us lots of money and then you set ablaze his national flag. Is it not tantamount to torching one's own luck?"
It is high time those in the leadership of this country realised that there will always be thinking Tanzanians who will never consider themselves different from other occupied people elsewhere. There will always be Tanzanians who will always question why an already occupied country should be subjected to continued invasions.
Even those who donate lots of money to this country will privately have nothing but utter contempt to a people and leadership with no conscience of their own.
Makwaia wa Kuhenga is a senior journalist and author
