Valentina Pasquali

Originally published in the Miami Herald’s blog dedicated to LGBT issues

Istanbul – Mirroring Turkey’s difficult yet unyielding progress towards equality for all its citizens, Istanbul’s sixth annual gay pride parade took place successfully Sunday after policemen in combat gear initially threatened to prevent the participants from marching down Istiklal Caddesi, the city’s central pedestrian street. After much quarreling and an hour’s delay, the marchers – numbering about 3000 – were finally allowed onto Istiklal. Colorful but definitely not as bold as fellow demonstrators in New York or San Francisco, they chanted political slogans and sang cheerful songs, while holding signs and the traditional rainbow flag. Tourists and curious spectators watched the parade making its way to Galatasaray Square. Heavy humidity leftover from the afternoon’s quick Mediterranean storm had everybody gasping for air, while the old-time tram that still whistles along Istiklal struggled to find a breach in the crowd.

Key to the resolution of the initial dispute with the police force was, perhaps, the intervention of two foreign g

uests attending the parade. The presence of Mechtild Rawert, Social Democrat (SPD) MP from Germany’s National Parliament, and Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk – the slain gay-rights leader from the ‘70s –and himself an internationally renowned gay rights activist, lent an international touch to the event and made sure that the police relented eventually.

Between Turkey’s bid to gain full European Union membership and its overall effort to present itself as the beacon of modernity in the greater Middle East, authorities here certainly did not want international headlines on the country’s controversial human rights record. “The fight for human rights in Turkey is a key issue towards EU membership. I have personally witnessed the progress achieved in the last few years, but there is more to be done,” said Rawert, the MP from Germany.

For Milk — who attended other events part of a weeklong series of panel discussions, award ceremonies, and film screenings culminating in Sunday’s parade — Turkey represents a great opportunity for the LGBT movement worldwide. “I think Turkey has a tremendous potential to act as a modern, civil and human rights bridge between west and east,” Mr. Milk said. “I came because I believe that success of the LGBT community here will resonate throughout the world,” he added.

While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey — the country’s Ottoman rulers legalized it in 1858 — it remains a taboo in this conservative Muslim-majority society. Gay men and women who choose to come out of the closet risk being shunned by their families and friends, and fear discrimination. As a result, most Turkish homosexuals still choose not to disclose their true sexual preferences.

In 2005, a survey of the LGBT community in Istanbul conducted by LAMBDA – one of the two oldest gay rights organizations in Turkey — found that 83% of those interviewed preferred to hide their sexual orientation from all or some of their family members. 40% of interviewees also confessed to reluctantly forcing themselves into heterosexual relationships.

“There is discrimination everywhere, it’s hard to describe. It’s in the insults and the general unwelcoming atmosphere,” explained pride participant Zefer Çeler. A thirty-five years old professor of politics at Istanbul’s Yildiz University, Çeler has even seen friends lose their jobs due to their sexual preferences.

“When I walk down the street holding my girlfriend’s hand, or if I ever kiss her in public, people will always comment, sometime they can even try to hurt you,” said Burcu Ersoy, a twenty-nine years old activist who came from Ankara to attend the parade.

Turkey’s LGBT movement has achieved some success in the last couple of decades and they are now better able to organize. “I’d call the 1990s the decade of the movement’s foundation-building, when we created a platform for LGBT people to come together and discuss their experiences with one another,” explained Oner Ceylan. Ceylan, thirty-seven years old, is an interpreter by day and gay rights activist by night. The 2000s became, always according to him, “the years of visibility,” with gay rights organizations sprouting up in many Turkish cities and the community finally taking to the street with the g

ay pride parade, which began in 2004.

But there is little doubt that the movement is only at its inception. The LGBT community has achieved relatively little in terms of human and civil rights. There is no law on the books that protects homosexuals from discrimination in employment, education, housing, health care, public accommodations or credit. Turkey’s family law does not recognize same-sex marriages, civil unions or domestic partnership. The Turkish Council of State has ruled that homosexuals should not have custody of children. And the military bars LGBT people from serving in its ranks.

Members of the LGBT community here also continue to suffer from various forms of persecution. For example, when the country’s vague ‘public order, obscenity and morality’ laws are used by the police force to harass transsexuals on the streets. And hate crimes, particularly stabbings of gays are still not officially recognized by Turkey’s legal system as a form of especi

ally heinous crime. Rather, offenders often get reduced sentences for having harmed or killed a member of the LGBT community, with the courts open to accepting the defense’s claim of “provocation” under article 29 of the Turkish Criminal Code.

While coming out into the open was the key to Harvey Milk’s success — he relentlessly pushed all of California’s closeted gays to declare themselves to their relatives, friends and colleagues — his nephew Stuart thinks that this message might be premature here in Turkey, because of the particularly frightening consequences members of the LGBT community could face.

But there are other ideas that the Turkish gay movement can take from its American counterpart, for example active political engagement. “After the 1980 military coup, most progressive opposition groups in Turkey opted out of the system, giving up on elections and politics,” said Cihan Hüroglu, twenty-eight years old gay pride parade organizer. To this day, Hüroglu believes, the political left in Turkey does not encourage its youth to get involved. “The American tradition is different, more open to civil and political participation at the grassroots level,” Hüroglu continued, explaining that they invited Stuart Milk “to give us inspiration.”

The fact that three MPs from the National Parliament in Ankara attended a panel discussion held as a part of Gay Pride Week on Friday is testimony to the fact that Turkey’s LGBT movement is moving in the right direction. Two came from the left-leaning Kurdish-friendly Democratic Society Party (DTP) and one from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party. However, nobody was there to represent the AKP (Justice and Development Party), the moderate Islamist ruling party.

Bruce A. Williams is a Professor of Media Studies & Sociology at the University of Virginia. In the past, he has taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, and the London School of Economics. His current research interests focus on the role of a changing media environment in shaping citizenship in the United States. He has received funding for this research from the National Science Foundation and the Cultures of Consumption Research Program of the University of London. He has published three books and more than forty scholarly journal articles and book chapters. Professor Williams recently came back from a trip to Israel where he attended an international media studies conference on media coverage of crises and conflicts. In this interview with Valentina Pasquali, Professor Williams offers his assessment of the quality of the coverage provided by U.S. media on the ongoing conflict in Gaza, a coverage that he says he has been following “obsessively.”

Valentina Pasquali (VP): There has been some criticism of the U.S. media coverage of the ongoing Israeli ground invasion of Gaza. What is your assessment? Do you find there to be biases in the way American media have been covering the conflict?

Bruce Williams (BW): As an academic, I don’t think the word bias is a useful one. I believe that anytime you tell a story, whether you are a journalist or anybody else trying to describe world events, you always have a perspective. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a neutral, objective perspective.

Rather, I can point out some of the things that I noticed in the coverage, especially in comparison to what I was watching and reading while in Israel. Please note that I don’t know Hebrew and, as such, I was following things on the English-language versions of the Israeli media, such as the Jerusalem Post, or on Sky News and Fox on the satellite.

I think that there are stark differences in the coverage in the United States and in Israel, at least as far as I’ve been able to see. But I wouldn’t capture them by saying than one is more biased than the other. I think they are just different.

The coverage that I saw in Israel very much emphasized the Israeli perspective, for example, in the very prominent, very individualized coverage dedicated to the soldiers who got killed. In the coverage that I’ve been following in the American media instead, I think the stories reflect the numbers. U.S. coverage talks a lot more about Palestinian deaths and Palestinian casualties, and this is a reflection of the difference between almost over 900 dead on the Palestinian side — by most accounts — as opposed to 13 dead — all of whom but three were soldiers — on the Israeli side. In the American coverage there seems to be more attention for Palestinian deaths because they so far outnumber Israeli deaths.

VP: Do you have an example of this?

BW: I’ll give you one that I was struck by when I was in Israel. The same day the U.N. school was hit by the IDF and 30 people seeking shelter there lost their lives, a rocket from Gaza destroyed a kindergarten in southern Israel. True, there were no casualties on the Israeli side, because the school was closed. But I happen to know that the Israeli Minister of Education was there that day debating whether she should open the schools or not. To me, the idea, on both sides, that schools can be destroyed is an important issue. I would have liked to at least see a brief mention of that in the American coverage. Maybe I missed it, but I did not. I recognize it is difficult for journalists, because the fact of the matter is that 30 Palestinians who thought they were safe and sheltered under U.N. protection were killed, while nobody was killed in the Israeli kindergarten. But it seems to me that one can at least point to that connection.

VP: What do you think of the prohibition to access Gaza imposed by the Israel Government on foreign journalists?

BW: To back up one step, I think the Israeli Government had a very well defined media strategy when it came to this conflict. It was not going to repeat what it saw as the mistakes made in the invasion of Lebanon. There was an attempt to keep reporters out, to tightly cover all of the information and images that were coming out of Gaza. Both in the U.S., and, for what I was able to see, in Israel, there were rather frustrated reporters having to stick by the military and having to take pictures from quite the distance.

Initially, over a short period of time, this led to the ability of the Israeli Government to shape the kind of coverage that they were getting. Overtime, however, such tight control has eroded. As a result, now we are getting some rather horrific images coming out of Gaza, images that are being shown on Al-Jazeera and in general produced by the Palestinians themselves.

My impression is that the media strategy that the Israeli Government developed was rather sophisticated and, for a short period of time, effective. However, I believe that the reality of media coverage of conflicts today is that any strategy that aims to control information has a pretty short lifespan.

My own sense is that the Israeli Government media strategy was designed for a very brief war, or incursion, one in which you get in, you do what you planned on doing as quickly as possible, then you get out and declare victory. But the longer this military campaign goes on, the more it tilts the coverage, and increasingly places the whole idea behind it in a pretty unfavorable light.

In this case, like in many military adventures, things can get out of control very quickly. What you are seeing now, I believe, is what is sometimes referred to as “mission creep.” You go in, you have pretty well defined goals to achieve, and, if you are initially successful, then you create many new goals. For someone who studies media, if we put aside the military and political issues that are raised, it is very clear that the longer this goes on, the more the coverage is going to support the Palestinian perspective.

VP: How do Israeli journalists feel about their own government media strategy? Are they frustrated or do they think they have sufficient access to information?

BW: I think they are also very frustrated. I think that journalists, whether they are Israeli, American or anyone else, want to be there, want to see it for themselves. What is interesting is that, at a time like this when Israeli public opinion is still overwhelmingly in favor of this conflict, Israeli journalists would be unlikely to write very critical things, even if they were given access. However, I think they feel incredibly frustrated that they are not given access.

VP: You mentioned that one important reason why the coverage has been changing and tilting towards a more pro-Palestinian perspective is the fact that images from Gaza have increasingly been broadcasted out by Al-Jazeera and by the Palestinians themselves. Do you think that U.S. media organizations are doing all they can to get access?

BW: What truly strikes me is that the situation in Gaza looks a lot like the situation journalists face in Baghdad. There, as long as you stay inside the Green Zone, you are relatively safe. At the same time, the more you stay inside the Green Zone, the more what you see, what you say, and what you can write is shaped by what the American and Iraqi governments want you to see, say and write.

However, if you leave the Green Zone, the work becomes very dangerous. There already are many dead journalists to prove this.

I would imagine that Gaza is also a pretty dangerous place to be. It is hard to say what more journalists could actually do a situation that appears so dangerous and volatile.

I read the New York Times the closest, the Washington Post coming second. My opinion is that the Times’ coverage has been of a very high-quality, even-handed but realistic. I also think that, like in much of the rest of the coverage, overtime it has become more and more critical of Israel.

VP: The assumed notion that the U.S. media coverage is tilted towards a pro-Israeli perspective seems to have roots in opinion pieces and editorial pages rather than news coverage. Do you agree?

BW: I kind of disagree. However I can see why it could look that way from a Palestinian perspective.

Moving away from the day to day newsgathering that gets done, I think it is important to point out that, unlike many previous actions taken by the Israeli Government, including the invasion of Lebanon, Israel enjoyed this time an unusual amount of international support, right from the get-go.

I believe that is because of Hamas. It is certainly not surprising that the United States would aggressively defend Israel’s right to act and denounce Hamas. The European Union was also very supportive of Israel’s right to intervene. This is a result of the fact that Hamas controls Gaza and the recognition that it was Hamas that ended the cease-fire with Israel.

All this said, I was struck by how even-handed The New York Times was in its own editorial pages. From the very beginning The New York Times recognized Israel’s legitimate right to act but also urged them to get out quickly and to deal seriously with the Palestinian issue.

The paper was very much in line with this idea that Israel had a very short window of time to act. They needed to do what they needed to do very quickly and then they had to put broader attention to a real peace settlement.

But, as I said, I do understand where some of the concerns could come from. To go back to something I said before, to the long-term threat of the rockets that get launched from Gaza: in the end I think that they pose very little real risk to the Israeli citizens. I don’t know how many Israelis have been killed by these rockets, but I’m sure it’s a pretty small number. I don’t want to minimize this. I certainly wouldn’t want to live thinking whether there was someone that would try to mortar Charlottesville, Virginia, every day. It is an intolerable situation. But this amounts to a sort of existential crisis, a crisis of how people feel as they try to live an ordinary life.

Living in the Gaza Strip for the same kind of ordinary Palestinian citizens, instead, is a nightmare. It’s not an existential question; it’s a question of starvation, of not having a job, and not having any sense of what a future could look like. From the perspective of ordinary Palestinians, the situation just seems to keep getting worse and worse. We are further away from having a Palestinian Government that can speak for all Palestinians in some kind of a peace settlement. We are further away from this than we were five years ago, further away that we were even three weeks ago. That is a horrible situation.

VP: Do you think that this even-handedness is true only for the New York Times? Or does it apply in general to the U.S. media?

BW: To be honest I have not seen the Wall Street Journal editorial page, but I think the Washington Post has been pretty even-handed. With the exception of maybe Fox News, I think there is recognition that Israel has a right to defend itself, but, at the same time, that it has an obligation to do this very quickly and that it must deal soon with some kind of serious attempt to negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

In any case, I think that, by far, the best and most interesting coverage I heard is on National Public Radio. For example, NPR recently interviewed Mustafa Barghouti, who is someone that I have actually met and I have huge respect for. He is not politically affiliated either with Hamas or Fatah. In this respect, he speaks for a Palestinian view that I agree with. One of the things he said in his interview with NPR is that Israel and the United States have tried to turn Hamas into the bad guys and Abbas into the good guy. At the same time, it’s not like they have done anything that would lead Abbas to succeed.

In another story that I heard on NPR just this morning, Palestinians in the occupied territories were being interviewed and said what Barghouti has been saying, that there are many more military checkpoints now that they were a year ago. And the truth is that, no matter what Ehud Olmert has said, he has not closed down not even the settlements his own government declared illegal. From this perspective, there is a feeling of real hopelessness now.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York City. His research and teaching encompass the history of the modern Middle East with an emphasis on the emergence of national identity and the involvement of external powers in the region. He is particularly interested in the role of the press in the formation of new publics and new senses of community. An American of Palestinian descent, Professor Khalidi has often been an outspoken voice in the debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this phone interview with Valentina Pasquali he expresses his criticism for the coverage of the ongoing Israel invasion of Gaza offered by the U.S. media, which he calls “one-sided” and “unbalanced.”

Valentina Pasquali: What is your opinion of the coverage of the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza provided by the U.S. media?

Rashid Khalidi: I find the coverage absolutely appalling, extremely one-sided and not meeting the lowest of journalistic standards. It consists of a mere repetition of Israeli talking points, without any attempt to determine whether they are accurate or inaccurate. There is also a lack of proper coverage of the Gaza side, despite the fact that the majority of the casualties are in Gaza.

The U.S. media has quietly submitted to the Israeli-mandated blockade of Gaza that has kept journalists out for well over a month before this invasion began. The American media has been systematically manipulated with the talking points that are being distributed by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which have become the backbone of the American coverage. This is actually one of the best examples of media manipulation I have ever seen. And it is all part of the Israeli planning for the offensive.

What is interesting is that the Israeli media has covered extensively this effort to ensure an Israeli spin to this operation. But nobody talks about it here in the U.S.

For example, in keeping with the recommendations of the Winograd Commission — this looked into the Israeli failure in Lebanon in 2006 and determined that Israel had failed to control the message — the Israeli Government set up the National Information Directorate, under the control of the Foreign Ministry, six months ago. This has been planning for the management of the invasion’s PR for months.

We are now seeing it put in practice. I have received, through my own sources, some of the daily briefings with bullet points sent out to the media by the Foreign Ministry and the game played by Israel is very clear. This is amply covered in the Israeli media, even in English, and yet the U.S. media chooses to look at things in the way the Israelis want them to. This interview is the first to date where anybody even asks me about this issue.

VP: Do you find any specific U.S. outlet being more of a victim of such manipulation or is this a general trend?

RK: It is a general trend. Television is particularly vulnerable, but I find it across the board, in commentary on television, in commentary on the newspapers and in the general daily news coverage. The bottom line is that you cannot cover a conflict if your journalists are not allowed to be on the ground. U.S. media are submitting to this ridiculous blockade since November and they are covering exactly what Israel wants them to cover. As a result there is an inherent built-in bias. You don’t have journalists on the frontline covering the deaths of over six hundred people. And the four or five Israelis that have been killed have been covered by hundreds of journalists. There are no western journalists, except one working for Al-Jazeera, in the whole of the Gaza Strip.

VP: Do you see any qualitative difference between opinion pieces and straight-out reporting?

RK: Some of the reporting has been better than average. I have actually not seen much in the way of opinion pieces on the American media that reflect anything but an Israeli point of view. There might have been, but I haven’t noticed. Instead, some of the reporting from stringers inside Gaza, for example in the New York Times, has been adequate.

VP: What do you think of Israeli media coverage of the invasion, of the English-language media especially?

RK: The media coverage is much better in Israel, especially when it comes to the print press. There is a greater variety of commentary in the Israeli media. I have read at least eight-twelve opinion pieces which are far more hard-hitting than anything I’ve seen in the American media. I’m currently writing an op-ed for the New York Times and, if they publish it, I think it will be the first piece in the U.S. media.

VP: What do you think is the effect of this kind of coverage on the American public and, as a result, on the political debate in the U.S.?

RK: It reinforces the universal pro-Israel bias of the American political class. We are at a point where you have to watch the Daily Show to get a sense of how unbalanced the American coverage is. On Monday they had a very amusing piece showing how one-sided the American coverage, on both the Republican and Democratic side, has been on this issue.

VP: Given the restrictions that the Israeli Government is trying to impose on foreign media, what would you say American media organizations should do that they are not doing?

RK: They should not cover any story unless they are allowed to go in. Any self-respecting journalist should demand that their editors and publishers insist on access to both sides, which is been denied only by Israel, as a condition for covering the side that dominates the battlefield, which is the Israelis.

VP: Would you want to add any other thought?

RK: I would want to add that images tent to trump words. And the images that Israel produces and that might engender sympathy are few and far between, whereas the images that come out of Gaza in spite of this systematic, and quite cynical, censorship have been heart rending and have balanced out to some degree the spin that has dominated the written media or the television. You can see in the front page of the New York Times the day it published the image of the dying Palestinian child. Even in the very limited coverage of the carnage in Gaza that is allowed in the American media, the images outweigh the words. Israel is suffering the same kind of problem it had in 2006, in 1982 during the invasion of Lebanon, and during the first couple of years of the intifada in 1987-1988, when the images outweighed all the lies and the spin and the manipulations. This might happen now again, it depends on how long this operation continues.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Birmingham, Alabama – It is a hot southern Sunday morning in Birmingham, Alabama, and the downtown is deserted. At the foothill of the city’s high-rises, small groups of people stroll slowly on the empty streets and quietly into the side door of 16th Street Baptist Church. A brown-brick building, from the sixties, marked by a blue neon sign, the church stands at the center of a neighborhood of car dealerships, gas stations and auto-parts shops. Plastic bags fly along the jagged sidewalks swept up by a warm breeze. All businesses are closed in a sign of respect for the Day of the Lord, which around here is exclusively dedicated to prayer. Only the Civil Rights Institute next door–a museum commemorating the struggles that stormed through Birmingham in the 1960s and finally led to the abolition of segregation– is open for visits.

Contrary to the sleepy neighborhood, the basement of 16th Street Church is bustling with activity. Congregants are wrapping up Sunday school and preparing for service. Young girls wearing summery old-fashioned taffeta dresses stream out of their classes side by side their brothers in suits and ties. Elegant women stand on the laminated floor and compliment each other’s outfits. Two older men sit chatting on a fake 70s-style leather couch, while local notables in framed photos hang from the walls watching over them.

16th Street Baptist Church is a cultural landmark and a symbol of African-American Alabama. On September 15 1963, in the midst of Birmingham’s racial turmoil, a bomb exploded here killing four young girls. Reverend Martin Luther King spoke to a crowd of 8,000 at the funeral that followed. Joan Baez recorded the song “Birmingham Sunday” chronicling the aftermath of the bombing. And in 1997, film director Spike Lee shot a feature-length documentary, “4 Little Girls,” about the racially motivated attack on that fateful Sunday.

It is no surprise then that this congregation takes particular pride in the history of its church. “I’ve been a member here for many years,” says 43 year-old Marvin Hicks, a Birmingham-native who relocated to the town of Jamison, about an hour south, three years ago. Mr. Hicks still drives the forty-something miles to Birmingham at least twice a month to attend service at 16th Street Church: “This place has a good history, and good singing,” he adds with a smile.

Mass certainly rises to meet expectations.

Four women open the service singing a bluesy Christian hymn. The congregation rises from the red velvety benches and sings along; the more fervent worshippers dance. One of the four singers, a young large woman begins shaking uncontrollably as if possessed by unnatural and unseen forces. Her hypnotic quivering continues until she almost faints on the first-row bench. A man tries to reanimate her with a fan. The whole scene is repeated only minutes later, when the young lady resumes singing with the choir.

Pastor Arthur Price Jr. takes to the pulpit and asks his parishioners to pray for those who are sick, to pray for the country, the city, and the Presidential election. “Make sure you are registered to vote,” Reverend Price says, “You can’t be a member of 16th Street and not be registered; too many people have paid an awful price so that we could enjoy this privilege.” On a Sunday when thirty-three pastors across the country decided to officially endorse either John McCain or Barack Obama–in violation of churches’ tax free status–this is the only reference to politics and the presidential campaign in Reverend Price’s sermon, otherwise focused on the reality of “pain” which he asks his congregation to accept as just another part of life.

“I have Republicans, Democrats and Independents in my congregation. I certainly can’t tell people who to vote for,” explains Reverend Price, a native of Philadelphia who moved to Birmingham six years ago from a church in Buffalo, New York. He is convinced that this campaign will be historic no matter who wins: “As a congregation that is predominantly African American, we are undoubtedly proud of the Democratic nomination of the first African American candidate for President. Having said that, it is also exciting to think that the next Vice-President could be a woman.”

Rev. Price points out that there are only a few non-African American members of 16th Street Church, between five and ten out of a total of over three hundred. None are here today. His parishioners range, from the homeless to the cardiologist.

Despite the fact that 16th Street Church maintains a strictly non-partisan approach, Reverend Price says that he talks to his congregation about issues that are important. “We talk predominantly about economic issues, such as homelessness and equal housing for the poor. We also talk about the war in Iraq,” Reverend Price adds. The ongoing economic crisis has begun to take a toll on the community and Reverend Price recently started noticing that people are coming out to church less frequently, for example, cutting down on the Wednesday night bible study, and are giving less in donations.

Marvin Hicks is one of the members of the congregation who is feeling the downturn. He is particularly hit by the rising gas prices. “I work as a truck-driver all across Alabama and my gas bill is now about $600 a month,” says Hicks. His company pays him by the hour, gives him health care benefits, but does not pay for the gas he uses. As a result, the $600 a month must come out of his pocket. Married to an accountant, and a father of three, Mr. Hicks is an Obama supporter: “I’m going to go for change and stick with Obama,” he avows.

“I find the economic situation troubling, but I haven’t yet felt any direct impact,” says Valisa Brown, a medical researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Mrs. Brown has been a member of the church for ten years and she is here today, like every Sunday, with her husband, an assistant principle at a local high school, and their two boys aged two and five. “I found this church like many others do; I came here as a tourist and liked the Pastor and the things that were going on here,” Mrs. Brown explains.

She confesses to be very excited about the Presidential campaign and says that, had there been no kids, she would have splurged and gone with her husband to Denver for the Democratic National Convention: “If Barack wins, my children will only know a country where a person that looks like them is the President.”

Mrs. Brown grew up in a town in rural Alabama that relied on the logging industry and on a clothing factory that closed down while she was in high school. Her grandparents raised her. Her grandfather worked in a company that made paper products while her grandmother cleaned houses.

After graduating high school in 1988, Mrs. Brown put herself through college thanks to scholarships and earned a B.A. from the University of Alabama Tuscaloosa and a Master in Public Health from UAB. “I hope that my children will be able to see that there is life beyond Alabama, that their opportunities are limitless, that they can do whatever they want to do and be whatever they want to be,” Mrs. Brown declares.

Obama’s story, she think, will only help illustrate the possibilities.

Growing up in a community plagued by poverty, for both African Americans and Caucasians, she says she didn’t feel as many tensions in rural Alabama. However she remembers the day her grandfather received a Klux Klux Klan pamphlet in the mail supporting a candidate for a local election. “Racism is always there,” says Mrs. Brown recalling the times when she has walked into a shoe store for shopping and other costumers have automatically assumed that she is an employee. “I have a $200 purse on my arm, how do you think that I work here?” she says with laughter.

More than on the streets, at the workplace, or in school, it is in the churches that Mrs. Brown sees the strongest racial separation: “They’ve always said that the most segregated time of the week is Sunday,” she concludes before heading out for lunch with her family.

“This is a militant church, and it will be triumphant.”

Valisa Brown might very well be right. The Presbyterian mega-church Briarwood lies only a few miles outside Birmingham and it offers an insight into a very different reality. Briarwood, started in 1960, is considered the flagship establishment of the Presbyterian Church of America, an organization founded in 1973 by a group of 250 churches that thought that mainstream Presbyterianism was too liberal.

The congregation counts approximately 4200 members. The church includes a Christian school, serving 1900 students from kindergarten through 12th grade, and a seminary. In 1988, Briarwood moved to a huge $32 million campus on the hills overlooking I-459, and in 1998 a $5.5 million expansion was added.

This October construction on another $28.8 million expansion will begin. “We need more room because we don’t fit anymore,” says Stan Goebel. “We need new parking lots, more offices for the staff, and we are going to build a new 32000 square feet youth center,” adds Goebel, who is a missionary of Briarwood, and walks the projects in Birmingham to talk to people about Jesus.

As the sun slowly sets on the hilly suburbs of Birmingham, big SUVs drive into the wide tree-lined parking lot outside the church. Older couples, families with young children, and teenagers stream into the redbrick building. The 6pm Sunday service is only the last of a long series–Briarwood offers regular mass at 8am and 11am, and then so-called ethnic masses in Spanish, Korean and Japanese throughout the day. “At some point I remember learning that Briarwood has about 1000 weekly activities,” says Glenda Wood, a homemaker who volunteers at the church about 15 hours a week, and is shuffling a big cart filled with binders around the spacious lobby.

The inside of the church is adorned with a shiny-white plaster octagon, encompassing a large stage which holds the pulpit. Two huge flat-screen televisions hang on each side of the stage and during mass display the lyrics of the poppy Christian songs played by a young man with a guitar and a woman with a violin.

The TVs also display a PowerPoint presentation that summarizes the points made by Pastor Harry Reeder as he gives his sermon. There is no mention of politics or current events in Reverend Reeder’s homily and the Pastor exclusively concentrates on complicated theological issues that are occasionally hard to follow.

The church teaches strict bible-based theology and focuses on missionary activity and outreach: “This is a militant church,” says Pastor Reeder in his sermon, “And it will be triumphant.” Briarwood is even known for something called Embers to Flame, re-energizing teams that this congregation sends out across the United States and the world to revitalize churches in crisis.

“We believe that the gospel of Jesus saves people. We try to reach out to others and see who responds,” says Reverend Harry Reeder who took over as Senior Pastor at Briarwood nine years ago.

Like Reverend Price of 16th Street Church, he has decided not to endorse a candidate from the pulpit today: “I believe I have a right to do it if I so choose, but I don’t think it’s fair to my congregation. We don’t tell people how to vote,” says Rev. Reeder.

But just like the 16th St. church, he also talks to his parishioners about issues that he deems important. “We believe that the sanctity of life should be protected, and so should the sanctity of marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Finally we focus on mercy, in addressing problems such as the AIDS epidemic,” Rev. Reeder states.

Briarwood has a set of ethnic congregations, created for those members who would rather worship in their native language. Nevertheless, this church has only a few African American members: “We are getting more diverse but we are not as diverse as I would like. African Americans are probably about 10% of our congregation,” Rev. Reeder maintains.

Tonight, only the pianist is African American. In any case, Pastor Reeder explains that he is not a proponent of the concept of race: “The bible says we are one race, people made in the image of God.”

While it is not easy to speak with regular churchgoers, one is immediately approached by many who are directly engaged in the activities of the church and who are more than happy to volunteer information.

Biker and missionary Stan Goebel, who came to mass in his leather pants and carrying his helmet, says he likes Briarwood because it is an encouraging, nurturing church. A 55 year-old son of a minister, never married, Mr. Goebel started his outreach activities in 1979. He sees the economic crisis hitting the poor neighborhood he walks and even the bikers he hangs out with who “are not riding anymore as they used to because of rising gas prices.”

Mr. Goebel admits to not having followed much of the Presidential campaign: “In general I’m more of a McCain man, because of his stance on abortion and homosexuality,” he maintains, adding that he also likes Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin because she is a sharp woman with good values.

Sitting with her three children on the next bench, 35 year-old Jacklynn Gothard is also a Sarah Palin fan. A graduate of Mississippi State University and a nurse at Brookwood Medical Center, Mrs. Gothard is married to a preacher who recently moved to Briarwood from Chicago, IL. “I will vote and I will vote Republican,” Mrs. Gothard states. She says her vote will be more of a vote against Barack Obama, whom she doesn’t trust for the “nebulous platform of change he advances,” than a vote for John McCain.

Mrs. Gothard doesn’t have a specific viewpoint on the war in Iraq, but she is worried about the economy. Like many others in this spread-out town where people need cars to go about their daily schedules, the Gothards have been feeling the impact of rising gas prices and have started clustering different activities together so as to reduce the number of trips they take. As a result, Mrs. Gothards will vote on the basis of issues such as energy independence.

As a Christian conservative, she also looks for a candidate that shares her pro-life view and her understanding of marriage—a union between a man and a woman. Asked about what she hopes for the future, Mrs. Gothards says: “I want clear-cut values; not a future where there are no absolutes anymore and our kids grow up without foundations.”

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Saint Paul, MN – A group of Republican conservative Catholics gathered at the Cathedral of Saint Paul on Sunday afternoon to take a guided tour of the church, go to the 5 o’clock Mass and network amongst themselves, as part of an effort to coordinate and make sure that the Catholic voice has a platform in the upcoming presidential elections. “Our end-goal is to find the candidate that is going to stand for Catholic values,” Dorothy Fleming told me during the reception that followed Mass.

Ms. Fleming is Deputy Chair of the Minnesota State Republican Party and a national delegate to the Republican Convention. “There are certain issues that are non-negotiable for us, such as marriage, abortion, active euthanasia and embryonic stems research,” she explained to me, emphasizing the joy of most conservative Christians in hearing that John McCain’s had picked Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. “We’re very proud of John McCain’s strict pro-life record,” Ms. Fleming said, “and Sarah Palin definitely sealed the deal.” Many of those gathered at the Cathedral on Sunday see her staunch advocacy against abortion as Gov. Palin’s strongest credential: “Moreover she really put her money where her mouth is: she knew her boy was going to have problems but she gave life to him nevertheless and loves him no less than the others,” Dorothy Fleming argued, referring to the now well-known story of the Governor’s youngest being born with Down Syndrome.

“We are thrilled with Sarah,” agreed Sheryl Holland, an alternate delegate from Texas, “she proves that we are not the same-old Republicans.” Many of the arguments Republicans make for Gov. Palin resemble closely those that Democrats advance in support of Barack Obama: “I’m impressed at how quickly she rose from very humble beginnings; she really shows that in America everybody can make it,” Ms. Holland said. “I’m in love with our Republican ticket,” echoed life-long Republican Toni Anne Dashiell, delegate and President of the Texas Republican Women, “I can’t imagine any stronger team of President and Vice-President to represent change and reform.” According to Ms. Dashiell, Gov. Palin has already had an enormous effect on women voters, including on those Democrats who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

“I’ve already met three Democrats that are going to vote for Sarah. She is a well-rounded person, a woman that is a mother, a leader and willing to challenge corruption. And she can tell our young girls, yes you can be strong women,” Ms. Dashiell concluded.

Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin appears to have warmed the hearts of all Conservative Christians and not just the women: “I’m extremely happy with this year’s ticket,” Mike Fleming, husband of State Party Deputy Chair Dorothy told me, “and Sarah is exactly what we needed.” During Mass, volunteer usher at the Cathedral and Republican voter Michael Seitz also confessed to be thrilled with McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick. “What Sarah has been able to do in just two years is impressive. And the way she has shown love for all forms of life is fantastic. Democrats use rape, incest or deformation of some kind to justify abortion. Instead Palin, knowing she was going to have a baby with Down Syndrome, decided to keep him. Having someone who can show the world what Americans are like and what love really is, is incredible. She is the best person on the planet, she is like Mother Theresa,” Mr. Seitz gushed.

Moreover, nobody seems concerned about Gov. Palin’s young age — she is only forty-four — and little experience in politics. On the contrary, many see it as an asset and, once again, they offer the same reasoning that Democrats have when defending Barack Obama from precisely the same accusation: “Look at Lincoln,” Michael Seitz said, “he was only in Congress for two years and yet he’s considered one of our best presidents ever.”

Beyond the enthusiasm for Sarah Palin, the delegates gathered at the Cathedral also shared a deep appreciation for President Bush — whose approval ratings are at historic lows. “I’m very pleased with President Bush, I think he handled some very difficult situation very well, which he will only be given credit for twenty years from now,” Sheryl Holland told me.

Barack Obama’s decision to run in 2007, combined with the Illinois Senator’s plan to withdraw troops from Iraq, was precisely what motivated Ms. Holland to get actively involved in Republican politics. “My husband died in Iraq and I really don’t agree with Obama’s plan of getting out of there,” Ms. Holland said.

“I think George W. Bush has been our best President and the one who is more like Lincoln than any other, because he looks at the big picture,” Michael Seitz believes. He said he is particularly pleased with Bush’s Middle East policies: “Despite the fact that the terrorists behind September 11th were all Saudis, you couldn’t really start with Saudi Arabia. You had to start with either Iraq or Iran. President Bush decided to start with Iraq and I think that if we can bring democracy to Iraq then Saudi Arabia will also be forced to become a democracy. And it is also one more country between Israel and Iran,” Mr. Seitz explained. His son is in the Army and served three different tours in Iraq, and he acknowledged “that’s my personal sacrifice.”

Even on the economy, conservative Christians defend President Bush’s record, assessing that, after all, the economy is not in as bad of a shape as the media depict it to be.

This mix of faith and politics is as evident as ever in this gathering of conservative Christians active in national politics. Inquiring with both the Cathedral Public Relations point person Caroline Will and, later, with the Archbishop John C. Nienstedt, about the fact that the event took place in a church and how it came about, I was told that it was the Republican delegates who had reached out to the Church, and not vice-versa, and had made all the arrangements for the reception. “They have been extremely careful to make sure that the Mass would only be a regular one at a regularly scheduled time,” Ms. Will added.

Nevertheless the reception took place on the Cathedral ground and it was the Archbishop who gave Mass, something he normally doesn’t do. During his homily he openly greeted the Republican National Convention and welcomed the delegates. Talking with him at the reception, the Archbishop assured me that he would have done exactly the same with a group of Democrats and that he is happy that the Republican Convention is in Minneapolis only because it gives locals a chance to show visitors some of the Minnesota’s warmth and hospitality. “We came here to pray, this was not political, our job is to bring people to Heaven” the Archbishop said. “If you heard my homily,” he added, “you noticed I said that the Church stands ready to help all people finding the way to serve God.” In his homily, the Archbishop also talked about the “ongoing defense of the rights of the unborn, without which all other rights will never be truly fulfilled.” The question is whether abortion issue can be viewed as politically neutral. Considering the heated debate between pro-life and pro-choice activists, that is, at least, debatable.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Denver, CO – In an election year when both the Republican and the Democratic parties are courting religious voters, the first ever Democratic Interfaith Gathering officially kicked off the week of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) on Sunday.

In a carefully orchestrated display of party unity and simultaneous acceptance of divergent world-views, a remarkable line-up of speakers, from imams to rabbis to pastors to nuns, took the stage to talk about the sacred responsibilities that the American people have today towards their children, their neighbors, the world and their nation. Readings from the holy texts of all religions, from the Koran to the Bible and including one delivered by a student at the University of Denver from the Metta Sutra – a Buddhist scripture – eased the transitions from one speaker to the next, while interludes of musical performances by Emmy Award winner Richard Smallwood & Vision reminded the audience of America’s long-lasting gospel tradition.

“Democrats are, have been and continue to be people of faith,” Reverend Leah D. Daughtry, CEO of the 2008 DNC, said opening the meeting. “People of faith are, have been, and continue to be Democrats,” she continued, reclaiming the right for her party to cater to faith-based voters. Most speakers stirred away from controversies and focused on those principles that run common through all religious traditions, such as love and service. “What we’re celebrating today is that there absolutely is in our party an intersection between faith and politics,” Colorado Governor Bill Ritter pointed out in his welcome address. Govt. Ritter then read a passage by prominent Czech human rights activists turned President Vaclav Havel; “Genuine politics — even politics worthy of the name — the only politics I am willing to devote myself to — is simply a matter of serving those around us.”

Nonetheless, a few speakers – all of whom had been given a blank slate to discuss the issues that are dearest to them – addressed without hesitation more controversial points, such as abortion. Bishop Charles E. Blake, of The Church of God in Christ, didn’t hide his struggle of conscience as a pro-life Democrat and acknowledged the fact that his view on the topic are divergent from those officially sanctioned by the party. “I’m sure our party understands our pain,” Bishop Blake told the audience, but then proceeded to explain that, despite these differences, he stands with the Democratic Party as the one that better serves the interest of the people, of all those who have already been born. He also highlighted his hope that Barack Obama will keep the promise to try reducing the number of abortions by offering alternatives to struggling mothers.

Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian Muslim Relations and the first woman ever to become President of the Islamic Society of North America, speaking about America’s sacred responsibility to the world, emphasized the need for humility, but wasn’t shy of praise for America. “This is still the best place in the world to practice our faith,” Dr. Mattson said. She also addressed openly issues of radical Islam and terrorism; “I acknowledge that much evil in this world is done in the name of my religion.” In denouncing the crimes that have been committed instrumentally under the banner of Islam, Dr. Mattson also talked about her pride in the American-Muslim community, for how hard it strives to defend the security of the United States, through dedicated work in local communities and by serving in the US Army at home and abroad.

The loudest applause came when Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book Dead Man Walking from which the homonymous movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn was adapted, took the stage. “Isn’t it the time for our nation to be converted from violence to dialogue and diplomacy with our adversaries? Isn’t it the time that we institute a Peace Academy alongside all of our military academies, that our children learn in school about non-violent conflict resolution?” she asked rousing the audience’s enthusiasm. More skepticism, however, surrounded her long and passionate advocacy against the death penalty, the trademark of her activism, and her ardent criticism of those traits of the American mind that make the death penalty still legal. “It is in our country’s DNA to kill the enemy as the only way to be secure,” Sister Prejean said. “We must take the death penalty entirely off the table as a punishment,” she pledged extending to everyone her invitation to become a nation of peace. After all, one needs to remember that, to this day, over sixty percent of Americans support the capital punishment and they are not exclusively Republicans.

In faith-based issues as in most other areas, the Democratic Party is trying to adhere to Barack Obama’s message of unity and dialogue, displaying intensely an image of harmonious diversity. Walking outside the Wells Fargo Theater, Betty Vanderkooi from Denver told me; “If only the world were always this way.” The question still stands if the country as a whole is ready to embrace the same ideals.

In the meanwhile, right-wing pro-life activists crashed the beginning of the meeting to protest Barack Obama’s position on abortion; “Barack Obama is a baby killer,” screamed a young man from the audience, before being escorted out by the police. More pro-life activists stood outside the Colorado Convention Center, where the Interfaith Gathering took place, and held large banners displaying extremely graphic photos of the corpses of late-term aborted babies while calling abortion a modern holocaust on their loudspeakers.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Dennis Kux is Senior Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. A retired State Department South Asia specialist, who served in Pakistan from 1957 to 1959 and 1969 to 1971 and became the U.S. ambassador to the Ivory Coast from 1986 to 1989, he has written histories of U.S.-India and U.S.-Pakistan relations. The New York Times called his book India and the United States: Estranged Democracies, 1941-1991 “the definitive history of Indo-American relations.” Ambassador Kux spoke with Washington Prism about the current situation in Pakistan, the historical roots of today’s problems and the future of the country.

Valentina Pasquali (VP): In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the novelist Salman Rushdie said that the roots of modern Pakistan’s problems can be traced back to partition. Rushdie says, “What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You’re all Muslim, so now you’re a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: Oh no, we’re not… It’s much more important for Punjabis to be Punjabi and Sindhis to be Sindhi . . . Religion doesn’t offer enough of a common basis.” Do you agree with this assessment? Are ethnic and religious identities the most important hindrances to Pakistan’s development?

Dennis Kux (DK): I think that this is overstated. It is true that there are strong regional feelings but I don’t think the place is going to come apart. Moreover, the one virtue of the current national government is that all the regions are included, so that nobody can say they were left out.

Pakistan’s main problem has been its lack of self-identity, of a positive self-identity. Pakistan has always acted on the basis of a negative identity, on the premise that A) it is not India and B) it is terribly threatened by India. In short, the rivalry with India is still a major driver. It has been the rationale for heavy military spending, which has diverted important resources from basic infrastructure.

This has allowed the military to run foreign policy, and also to some extent interfere in domestic policy. Since the late 1970s the army has seen itself as not only the protector of Pakistan, but also as the protector of a Pakistani ideal, which they have defined as an Islamic state – not necessarily a Taliban state but one with a heavy dose of Islam. Basically, one can say that this approach, and the effort in using different terrorist groups as proxies in the struggle with India and for Afghanistan, has backfired. Pakistan has raised hell in Kashmir, but it hasn’t moved things toward a settlement. And in Afghanistan getting the Taliban in was hardly a positive achievement. But Pakistan thinks that the US is not going to stay in Afghanistan and fears that if the US leaves the place will fall apart again and the Iranians will come in with their friends, the Russians with their friends and above all the Indians. So they want to have their friends there, the Taliban.

Nonetheless, one can argue that supporting the Taliban now, which certainly some elements of the military are doing, is undercutting what you think Pakistan would aim at, trying to find a modus vivendi with India and having better relations with Afghanistan.

VP: Given this history of Pakistan’s spasms of democracy, and the military’s periodic intervention, how do you assess Pakistan’s national elections that took place in January? How solid do you think the new coalition government is?

DK: The elections provided a new opportunity for Pakistan. The people rejected President Musharraf and picked two parties, Benazir Bhutto’s People’s Party (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), which are secular, middle-of-the-road, slightly left of center.

The PPP and the PML-N said they were going to get together, and they did, forming a grand coalition. They also brought in the local party who won the elections in the Northwestern frontier provinces, which is a secular party that beat the religious leaders. And they are trying to bring in the secular party from Karachi.

They agreed on two main points: they would be for a more democratic government and that they would reinstate the judges that Musharraf had fired. But they disagreed on how to do that. I think part of the disagreement is that Sharif, who was in jail for treason and was thrown out of the country by Musharraf, has an issue with the President and just wants him out. Zardari, on the other hand, is someone who may suffer personally if some of Musharraf’s decisions are rolled back, because he was given an amnesty and there are questions on whether the amnesty was legal.

Nawaz Sharif’s ministers recently pulled out of the cabinet, but his party remains part of the coalition for now. It is important to note that the PML-N has formed the government in the Punjab, the largest province. Punjab is very important — it has 60% of the population and even more of the economy. If Nawaz Sharif was to pull out of the central government, it would make the situation very complicated with two different parties ruling Lahore and Islamabad. It’s a recipe for troubles.

There is also the added complication that the lawyers, who sparked the difficulties for Musharraf last year when they protested the firing of the Chief Justice, are now protesting again because the judges haven’t been reinstated. They have the support of Nawaz, but only partial support from the PPP.

The role of the army also remains unclear. Musharraf, to some extent, is on his own, the army did pull back at the time of the elections, which is why we had free elections. But it’s not clear exactly what they are going to do, they are feeling that their image is tarnished by the Musharraf years and they feel this was good time to pull back and let other people hold the bag. Especially since the economy, which was supposedly in good shape, has gone very bad: inflation is way up, there are power shortages, and food prices have increased significantly.

In general the situation is fairly unstable, which is too bad because what Pakistan needed was stability, political stability.

VP: Do you see this current government as a potentially trustworthy partner for the US?

DK: We don’t know if Pakistan is a trustworthy partner. It is especially unclear when it comes to terrorism and civilians-dictated policies to fight it. If you look at the ongoing negotiations with the Taliban, you’ll notice that different people say different things and it is hard to predict where these are headed.

The US certainly doesn’t like that Pakistanis say, “This is a political question and we can work something out that will take care of the problem of people crossing over the border.” The fear here is that they will make a deal which will provide peace in Pakistan but then leave it open for the Taliban and Al Qaeda to continue attacking Afghanistan from the sanctuaries in Pakistan. That’s a big worry here in the United States.

Now, the difficulty is to getting Pakistanis to do what you want them to do and the dilemma is; “How do you apply pressure, should you apply pressure?”

VP: How do you evaluate President Musharraf’s position today? How much longer do you think he will remain a key political figure in Pakistan? What is his relationship to the United States?

DK: President Bush called Musharraf last week. We’ve been criticized for supporting Musharraf too much, but I think now it comes down to Bush’s loyalty to his friend.

Musharraf’s position is much weaker. He doesn’t command all the levers of power anymore, the situation is more fractured.

It all depends on what sort of an agreement the coalition parties reach, if any. If they don’t, he may well stay on, just because he is there. Nawaz Sharif talks about impeaching him, but that is possible although the military might not want to see their former chief put through that process, it reflects badly on the army as well.

Basically Musharraf is one of the three big players. You have Zardari, you have Sharif and you have Musharraf. One of them is going to go. It is not entirely clear who it will be. It is not going to be Zardari. More likely we will see Musharraf ease out or retire, (there were rumors last week that he was thinking of retiring), or we will see Sharif quitting the government. If this is the case, then the PPP will have to try forming a coalition with the former Musharraf group, which will make for a strange affair.

VP: Would it be accurate to say that for the stability of Pakistan the best solution would be that Musharraf voluntarily retires?

DK: It would be good for the country if the government stays together and tries to work through this next term. No political government has last through a whole term, ever.

VP: In recent years, the Bush Administration has chosen Musharraf as its direct interlocutor in Pakistan. How do you judge such policy? And considering the new government and Musharraf’s increasing difficulties, what do you think the new Administration should do?

DK: There has been the feeling that the Bush Administration has put a lot of his currency on Musharraf. Part of the reason was that they liked him, but they also feared that, a fear that Musharraf himself promoted, if he went out the religious parties would be the big gainer. The good news out of the recent elections is that the religious party did very badly, much worse than what they did in 2002. They won 60 seats in parliament then, and this year they only won 5. They went from 11% to 2.2% of the vote. This showed that the public in Pakistan is not pro-Islamist at all. However, the Islamist parties are still able to make a lot of noise, and they are all in part affiliated with the various terrorist groups.

Today, of the two predominant personalities, Zardari is seen as the more accommodating to the United States, in part because the US helped arrange an agreement between President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto when she came back and was granted amnesty. But Nawaz Sharif was not part of it and he was, wrongly I think, seen as being anti-American. He is perhaps more nationalist than Zardari, but really he is more of a smart politician than anything else.

In any case, both of the parties have been pushing for talks with the militants claiming this to be the best way to try to solve these problems. The US doesn’t see it in the same light. Our concern is that in the negotiations, as in the deal that Musharraf worked out two years back, the government simply agrees to pull out and let the militants and the terrorists do whatever they want as long as they leave the Pakistanis alone. The US is concerned about an agreement which does not end the use of Pakistan as a safe-haven. The government spokesman just said that they will take care of that but so far it hasn’t happened.

In Pakistan we are faced with a real problem. The US is dependent on the Pakistanis, and they partly help, but they are also a part of the problem at the same time. The question is,
“how do you balance this off, with your aid? Should you be more discriminating, should you put more conditions on the aid?” I think what we should be trying to do is to strengthen the institutions, but you can’t do it until they settle down and stop fighting.

VP: The International Herald Tribune recently wrote, “The car bomb that went off Monday at the Danish Embassy in Islamabad was only the latest of several recent signs pointing to Pakistan as a nexus for terrorism and religious extremism.” What shall the US and the international community make of such nexus? How dangerous is Pakistan with regard to international terrorism?

DK: It is a complex situation. One can say that Musharraf either played a double game or he wasn’t able to deliver on at least part of his agreement with the US and, although he provided help and did a lot of things against Al Qaeda, he didn’t do much against the Taliban. And he allowed them to reestablish themselves.

This is partially due to the fact that the military has used these terrorist groups as proxies for Pakistan over the years, not unlike what the US did in the 1980s with the Mujaheddin. Today’s militants belong to the same groups, in various and different forms, that were used against India in Kashmir. Then there is the Taliban, which although not a creature of Pakistan was greatly supported by Pakistan.

Musharraf had a lot of strong words but the actions haven’t been as strong and now we see the consequences. By not acting more firmly earlier and then by acting unwisely a couple of years ago when he sent a lot of soldiers into the tribal areas where they hadn’t been before, and did very badly, we have a situation now which is very troubling, and an area that provides a sanctuary for all sort of terrorists.

Now, the new government claims that it wants to change its approach, but their first move is to try to negotiate. The US keeps repeating that the negotiations have failed. There is significant lack of communication and of agreement between us and the Pakistanis.

VP: Speaking of security-related issues; how do you view the situation in the tribal areas? How should we understand the relations between terrorist organizations and their militants and tribal leaders who simply do not abide by constitutional rule? Are those inherently connected, or are they two separate problems facing the Pakistani government?

DK: I think the situation varies from place to place. The tribal areas, both culturally and legally, are in fact not fully part of Pakistan. The laws that apply elsewhere don’t apply there, so they are used to this independent existence. People see them simply as they are — an autonomous part of Pakistan. They have a long history of fighting against outside authority. Many live off smuggling. The region is perceived as backward and the economic situation there is much worse than the rest of Pakistan.

As far as their links with terrorism, I think it is all one big challenge. And I also don’t think there is much difference among the different groups and organizations in the various parts of the country. They are different but they work together. It is hard to differentiate between the Pakistan Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda, other groups working from Uzbekistan.

VP: Much of the international debate on Pakistan revolves around security issues. However, the country has been struggling with rising food prices, energy shortages, and an economy that for the first time in years is expected to grow less than 6%. How serious do you think these issues are? Is the new government addressing them effectively?

DK: The economic difficulties are very important. We see, right now, 12-13% inflation. The present government will start to be blamed for this if they don’t do a better job. To some extent they are prisoners of what happened in the rest of the world. But they are, in a way, the victims of the failure of the past military government. This did a good job at a macro level, but they didn’t take advantage of it to tackle some of the underlying problems — education, health, infrastructure, etc.

Moreover, they continue to have only limited trade with India, which means they have lost the opportunity to gain access to the Indian market, which would be good because the Pakistanis have a comparative advantage in certain areas.

The civilian government should really be focusing on this rather than to keep fighting among themselves. Recently they put out a budget, but it wasn’t very realistic. On paper it balances everything but it’s hard to say whether it will prove effective. It withdrew a lot of subsidies, it supposedly raised taxes, increased the tax base, but it’s not clear what kind of effect it will have. The trouble is that they say they are going to implement the reforms, they pass laws, and then nothing happens.

VP: In the same interview mentioned above, Salman Rushdie speaks about his 1983 novel Shame, which he wrote about Pakistan, and says that it is even more relevant today; “Corruption, power, generals, the whole thing. Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse.” Do you agree? In conclusion, are there reasons to be optimistic and what instead are the biggest hurdles ahead for Pakistan?

DK: “Pakistan is not different, it’s just worse,” I would agree with that.

The thing that is clearly worse is this threat of terrorism. In 1983 we didn’t have entrenched terrorist groups that were ruling parts of the country and now we do have that. They are trying to assert themselves, mainly in the Pashtu areas. That’s certainly an important threat and something that we didn’t have in 1983.

We also have insurgencies in Baluchistan. They have existed for a while and they rarely have accommodated well within the national government. Recently the biggest grievance is about the big blue-water port that is being built in the city of Gwadar. The Baluchis say that they are not going to get any benefit out of it. Moreover, the military was very heavy handed in dealing with the tribes, which helped cause uprisings in Baluchistan. However, it was a political insurgency and not a movement to try to separate from the state or to impose Sharia law; they were looking for more autonomy.

I guess one has to be pessimistic. Pakistan just has continuing problems. I don’t think the state will collapse but I don’t see the civilian government doing what they really need to do. In the end, we will have to see how they come out on the courts issue. This is a fairly important problem, how they deal with the Constitution, with issues that are still on the table and haven’t been resolved. They agreed together that they would solve the court problem but they have missed the deadline.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Washington D.C. – The Dalai Lama is a small man with an exquisitely Asian sense of humor wrapped in a simple burgundy drape. He often interrupts his speech with laughter looking sincerely entertained by the situation. Three big men dressed in expensive western-style suits surround him. They casually drop typically American jokes as they talk but the truth is that they seem to take themselves very seriously.

Last week’s conversation with the Dalai Lama was organized jointly by Asia Society, the Brookings Institution, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), three among the most important non-profit institutions in Washington D.C. The three men sitting at the sides of His Holiness were Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, Chairman of Asia Society and former assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs under President Carter; Strobe Talbott, President of Brookings and deputy Secretary of State under Bill Clinton; and Richard Armitage, trustee of CSIS and deputy Secretary of State under the Bush Administration. They are “three refuges from the State Department” as Armitage himself said in an attempt to find common ground with a man who’s lived in exile for almost fifty years.

The ballroom of the Park Hyatt, an upscale hotel in the business district of the national capital, is packed with approximately three hundred guests, sitting on the expensive velvet that covers the chairs lined up under the room’s massive chandeliers. Most people in the audience belong to the upper level management of oil companies, sit on the boards of prestigious charity foundations, or work as high-level officials for different branches of the federal government. Thursday morning they took a break from their important lavishly paid jobs to come listen to the small Asian man talking about compassion. They also positioned themselves well enough to maybe have a picture taken with Richard Gere, who was sitting in second row looking devotedly at the Dalai Lama.

The striking contrasts marking the event did not end with the appearance of things, but instead ran as a thread through the morning. Here there was, a man who preaches detachment from material possessions as a means to spiritual elevation speaking in the world-capital of consumption. At one point the Dalai Lama couldn’t resist the irony of the situation and shouted; “the American way of life; always consume, consume, consume. Maybe think more!”

Through the conversation, Armitage, Holbrooke, and Talbott took turns in questioning His Holiness on the most diverse array of issues. They asked him about the protests in Burma, about the 17th Congress of the People Republic of China, about the melting ice cap, and about the role of the United States in world politics. They wanted him to play the part of the expert on everything. But he is not. He is the head of Lama Buddhism, the current of Buddhism that developed in the high Himalayan peaks. He has risen to global fame because of his own personal experience. He was exiled from China in 1959 at a time when China was taking the final measures to enforce its rule over Tibet. He’s a superb speaker, who’s gained worldwide respect for the simplicity and wisdom of his words.

Yet he is not an expert on Burma. So he shared his sympathy with the monks protesting in the street of Yangoon – “of course this is very sad, very sad, and their purpose, an open society or democracy, very right” – but when Holbrooke asked him; “Do you think the outside world can affect this situation inside Burma?” the Dalai Lama replied; “My answer is I don’t know.”

His Holiness is also not a scientist who holds the secret to the cure against global warming and resorted to give simple advices as a way to exemplify his thoughts when questioned on this matter. “From early morning, I think everybody takes a bath, or a shower,” he said speaking on individual responsibility towards the environment; “At least in the last few decades, I never take a bath.  Only shower. It’s a small contribution,” he continued laughing as he described his personal effort to preserve water.

Faced with crossfire of questions on hard-politics the Dalai Lama often reacted by telling stories. For example he recalled of the time he visited the township of Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the years following the end of the Apartheid. During that trip he met with a teacher and asked him about his students and their progress; “He told me with some sign of sadness, their brain is inferior.  He believed that.  I was shocked,” His Holiness told the audience at the Park Hyatt. “So I argued with him.  This is absolutely wrong.  As far as brain is concerned, white people, black people, or yellow people, they are all the same, the same human being, same brain, same potential.” Throughout the morning His Holiness aimed at emphasizing the importance of education. “We must educate the future generations,” he repeated over and over.

One of the main political goals of the event was to give the Dalai Lama yet another chance to highlight how he does not challenge China’s sovereignty over Tibet but only asks for a larger degree of autonomy of the region. Strobe Talbott very pointedly asked: “Is it your position that Tibet is and will continue to be within the People’s Republic of China?” “Give us meaningful autonomy and we are fully committed to remain happily within People’s Republic of China,” was His Holiness response.

For as straightforward as this approach might seem, there in the words of the Dalai Lama lay the biggest and saddest contradiction of the morning. Despite reiterating his commitment not to seek independence, he effectively pledged for a degree of autonomy that would put the whole administration of Tibet in the hands of Tibetans, substantially border lining independence. “Tibetan Buddhism or Tibetan spirituality, Tibetan culture, education, and economy, these should handled by Tibetans,” the Dalai Lama stated Thursday.   A fair request in the opinion of many, but not in that of Beijing, which is in Tibet precisely for the purpose of managing the region’s precious resources to China’s advantage. It is in this perspective that the PRC’s resistance to a return of the Dalai Lama should not be seen as too much of a surprise, although His Holiness makes his best effort to deny the accusation of being a “splitist.”

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism

Lhasa, Tibet –  “Nima,” calls a male voice from the outside, “Nima…”
Nima comes and goes from the tent where I sit sipping yak milk tea; she ensures that all of the guests always have their cups full, and hurries towards the many voices that keep calling her name. She is just eighteen, and she has been working here only since March, but it seems like she has already become a pillar for this small community of workers of the local tourism industry.

My journey across Tibet has taken me all the way to this campsite on the north face of Everest. The highest peak in the world shines right above us as the snow that covers its summit reflects the sunrays. I warm up next to a fire stove while smoke and the smell of coal fill the air inside the tent. The sign that stands outside the entrance calls this Hotel de California. We are lodging in one of several similar tents, dark green on the outside, which are lined up on both sides of the road for the length of a few hundreds feet. Each one of them is a different establishment, and each one of them carries an alluring name; Everest Holiday Inn, Gourmet Hotel, Rainbow Hotel. On the inside the furnishing is not as glamorous as these names try to suggest. There are simply a few couches around the perimeter, coffee tables decorated in traditional Tibetan style, woolen rugs and blankets to help keep the guests comfortable, and the stove in the middle. The restrooms, serving the whole campsite, are just another tent that hides a hole in the ground within.

Nima rests for a moment, chats with a coworker, and swallows a spoonful of tsampa, roasted barley flour that is Tibet’s staple food. It is her first season working at Hotel de California and she will return home in October, to a small village about 30 miles away. Her round face is dark red and the skin on her cheeks appears burned, thickened to look like leather; “it’s the cold, the wind, the sun that do this,” she says gloomily. Nima confesses that she does not particularly like this job; “I like to go to school, I really like it.” Unfortunately she has completed compulsory education last year and after returning home to spend the winter months unemployed she will come back to Everest once again, to cook and pour yak milk tea into the cups of tourists.

A short yet breathtaking hike to a 17,000 feet altitude connects this campsite to the actual Everest Base Camp. From there climbing expeditions launch their ascent to the summit during the spring months. Base Camp is just a rocky field in the midst of snow-covered peaks and earthy hills, and it is sided by a river the waters of which flow down directly from the glaciers higher up on Everest. As a reminder that this is still Chinese territory, there is a military post of the PLA – the army – and a pole with the red flag of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). China Mobile provides cell phone coverage and the logo of the 2008 Beijing Olympics printed on every sign.

“The flag and the PLA station were not there until recently,” Rinzen explains as we relax in our tent. “They were put up after the protest by the American students.” Rinzen is the guide that has accompanied us on the road from Lhasa. He is a short, bony, opinionated Tibetan of 21 years of age, who suffers with motion sickness and has spent most of the driving time to here asleep on the front seat of the land cruiser. He is making reference to an incident of this past April. Three Americans and a Tibetan-American who belonged to the activist movement Students for Free Tibet arrived here at the campsite, hiked the three miles to Everest Base Camp, and in protest against the Chinese rule over Tibet, they held up a banner that said “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008,” mimicking the motto of the upcoming Olympic Games that will be held in Beijing next summer. Ever since, the government has been cracking down on foreign tourism to the region, it has toughened the regulations to enter the region, and it has made it more dangerous for the Tibetans themselves to move around. “I have not been up to Base Camp since,” Rinzen admits.

Because of the newly imposed restrictions and because of the general difficulties upon which foreigners will undoubtedly stumble when trying to travel to Tibet, a trip to this region begins a long time before the moment one finally steps on a train, especially for those waiguoren (in Chinese literally “people from outside countries”) who reside in China. It is a process that can be extremely nerve wrecking, but it is also illuminating on how China works nowadays.

My personal journey to this fairy-tale land to the west of the PRC started on a mid-spring morning, as I was sitting in my Chinese Diplomacy class at Fudan University. At the time I was an international student in Shanghai taking courses in English on the country’s politics.

That Tuesday morning the professor lowered her voice as she started giving an overview of the situation in Tibet. She turned her eyes down to the sheets of paper where her assistant had typed up the notes for the lecture, and began to read from what sounded like a script. “The Peaceful Liberation of Tibet in 1951 by the People’s Republic of China freed the Tibetan people from the barbarous feudal system based on servitude that had subjugated them until then,” she recited. Then she listed a few examples of the good that the Chinese government is doing for Tibet: “Beijing is successfully developing the region economically, bringing infrastructures, such as roads, schools, and hospitals, and promoting increased trade.”

As I sat there and listened to the professor praising Chinese intervention in Tibet, I started conceiving the plan to go see the region with my eyes. I wanted to try grasping where the balance lies, between the Chinese effort to develop the region and to improve the locals’ standards of living, and the cultural violence imposed on a peaceful people of mountain shepherds and devotes of Lama Buddhism.

To my misfortune, and due to the sensitivity of the Tibet issue, the Chinese government tries to discourage the journeys of foreigners to the province to the best of its abilities. I therefore had to embark upon a winding path of confused and often contradicting regulations, the only road that could have taken me to Lhasa.

First they told me I needed a specific government-sponsored travel permit in order to buy train tickets to Lhasa. Then they told me I needed to have the train tickets in hand in order to apply for the permit. At one point they said that the train tickets had apparently all been bought off, disappearing in the pockets of the many tourists and businessmen who travel to Tibet over the summer. Then they said that, maybe, some of these train tickets would have reappeared if only I was willing to purchase an all-inclusive week-long tour of Tibet that I did not have the money to afford.

Despite all the apparent complications, as with everything in China, patience and some stubbornness will usually get you where you want. My story is one of chasing permits and train tickets halfway across the country. Overall it took me close to a month and several trips to different cities in order to organize my journey. Over that rainy June I sent countless emails to tour operators and talked to everyone I knew who had traveled to Tibet in the previous months. Everyone had a different story and never a useful advice. Then I coincidentally met up with a travel agent that went by the English name of Sonia in Chengdu, home of the Pandas and capital of Sichuan Province, and with another one called Dawn in Beijing. And all of a sudden I found myself holding the permits and the tickets in hand.

I finally set off from Beijing West train station on the evening of July 1st, accompanied by a friend. It was the one-year anniversary of the inauguration of the railway line connecting the capital to Lhasa.

The Beijing-Lhasa train and the tracks upon which it rides are considered a marvel of technology. They take passengers to the Himalayas, the highest mountain chain in the world, they run on permafrost, an unstable surface that melts with rising temperature, and the last stretch of their route lies between 15,000 and 17,000 feet above sea level.

The many years and the many engineers that took to bring the project to completion gave the Chinese and the Tibetans an easier means to travel to and from Tibet. Prior to the railway line people had to choose between an eight-day journey on buses or expensive plane rides. Now one can do the trip in just two days and at a reasonable price.

Supporters of this technological wonder claim that this will mitigate the geographical remoteness of Tibet and that the train will bring wealth and development to the province, will make it easier for Tibetans to move to other parts of China, and will facilitate communication, understanding, and integration. Critics of the railway believe that the government-funded the project has a less noble goal in mind. By making transportation more easily accessible, Beijing aims to speed up the colonization of Tibet. Now that even lower class workers can afford the train tickets more people will likely take advantage of the government incentives offered to those ethnically Han who choose to go re-settle in Tibet.

Despite the ultramodern engineering behind its construction the interior of the train is not particularly fancy, although it is definitely newer and significantly more comfortable than most other trains in China. The cars are of three kinds. There are the “soft-sleepers,” the most expensive ones. Each cabin in these compartments accommodates four beds, has doors that close, a TV screen and some other amenities, and normally houses foreign tourists. The “hard-sleepers,” in which we are traveling, have six beds per room, no doors, and are populated with Chinese on vacation and others on business. Finally there are the compartments that lodge the “hard-seats,” regular seating Chinese style, meaning that they are literally hard, seats in a 90 degrees position that do not lean back, not even an inch. Here the darker faces of the Tibetans appear, mostly young students, a few families, and monks wrapped into their dark red drapes.

The train ride is forty-seven-hour long, many people crammed in a relatively small space together. By mid-day of the second day boredom takes over the train and would overtake the spirit of even the most enthusiastic traveler. The toilets have become filthy, toilet paper disappeared a while ago, every book has now been read, food eaten, and every conversation had. In the meantime, Altitude Mountain Sickness (AMS) has begun to affect many passengers while the train runs at increasingly higher altitudes. People lay down in silence on their narrow beds and show sign of distress, their skin having turned to a yellowish tone, and bags under their eyes having grown bigger and darker.

Rose, an older woman in our room, in her sixties, has been feeling sick since the morning. She and her husband come from Tianjin, the third largest city in China located in the northeast of the country. They recently retired and they have joined a group of fellow retirees for a vacation in Tibet. They have been married for thirty-three years and they have one daughter – and one only – because of the One-Child Policy. They are also the grandparents of one only granddaughter because of the same reason. They worked in international trade before retirement, managing transportation for import-export to Japan, Korea, and the US. However they do not speak a word of English.

The doctors who work on the train came to see Rose a few hours ago, they measured her temperature and her pressure, and they pulled out a thin plastic tube, attached it to the plug for oxygen and inserted it in her nose. She is just now lying on her bed half-asleep, her husband looking over her with a concerned look in his eyes.

AMS has also hit Jasmine, who is sharing our compartment and sleeps on the top bed. Jasmine is 12 year-old and travels with her mother Katherine. The two now live in Beijing, where they relocated a few years ago. Despite being born in Tibet, Nina never acclimatized to altitude and never was able to adjust to it. Hence, leaving their husband/father in Lhasa, where he works as a performance artist, the two of them moved to the capital and only come to Tibet for visits three times a year.

While her daughter rests Katherine tells us her story. “My family originally comes from Jangsu province, I was born there,” she begins. Jangsu province is located along the east coast of the country. “When I turned thirteen, my parents decided to move to Tibet.” These were the years followed 1979, when the central government was in the midst of the launch of the reforms that since then have opened China to the outside world. At that time Beijing started offering economic incentives to those people who were willing to relocate to Tibet and help “develop” this “backward” province. “My parents decided to take advantage of these opportunities and so we moved,” Katherine recalls.

In an effort to kill some time I take a stroll through the train. The passengers in the “hard-seats” compartment seem now even more crowded than they were yesterday, when I took my first walk across the cars. The impression is probably created by the positions that the people have taken on to try surviving the journey. Very few are still seating upright. Some have ended lying down on the floor to give relief to their backs. Others have reclined backward and forward on the laps of their neighbors and have dropped their heads onto the arms and legs of strangers. The smell of instant noodles, sweat, and feet has grown pungent.

The state-of-the-art PA system, which has been alternating radio shows and music for the duration of the trip, is now playing an enthusiastic explanation of the marvelous engineering that gave birth to this train and to the tracks. A deep, charming voice, gives an overview of the history of the project in proper English. “This railway line has brought luck and happiness to the Tibetan people,” the voice claims. It also tries to present a defense – although frankly unconvincingly – against the accusations that the railway has had a negative environmental impact on this land. “The ecosystem,” the P.A. recites, “has shown to have changed not too much.”

I return to my car and the last few hours of the journey I get lost looking at the scenery that runs outside the windows of the train. The smooth profile of the surrounding hills, in earthy colors and covered by barely any vegetation, is punctuated by herds of Yaks grazing peacefully. In the distance snow-capped mountains create the background of such inspiring views, as the train rides by scattered lakes of crystal-clear waters.

We step off of the train in the evening, around 9 o’clock Beijing time. But Lhasa is still traversed by sunlight. China is on one time-zone but the size of the country makes it so that in provinces such as Tibet, all the way to the West, the sun rises and sets with a few hours delay. We are immediately hit by the brisk air and the transparent light of the high mountains, our heads slightly dizzy due to the altitude.

The unique magic of this land unfolds at once before our eyes. We drive by the Potala Palace, the former residence of the Dalai Lama and today a museum. The palace emerges in its thirteen stories from the top of a rocky hill at the heart of the city. Its outside walls painted in white and burgundy-red, and steep steps climbing up to its top, the Potala looks like a beautiful creature from the under world. When, at dusk, it is lit up to remain the only visible sight in the pitch-black darkness of the Himalayan night, the palace becomes the core of a poetic world that slowly comes to life.

The first twenty-four hours of my stay in Tibet I am uncritically carried away by this ethereal atmosphere. I arrived in Lhasa prepared to witness the worst kind of colonization on the part of the Chinese because of what I had heard from people who had traveled there in the months prior to my trip. I was expecting to be overwhelmed, and severely troubled, by the growing presence of modern, yet characterless, concrete buildings, tacky neon lights in blue, green and red, and PLA uniforms on the corners of every street. My pessimistic expectations made it so that the first impact works for me as somewhat of a relief. In the end, I think to myself as I walk around the city, there still exists a whole Tibetan quarter in the old part of town, there are Buddhist temples in all directions, and the Potala still stands in all its magnificence.

However the more my outsider’s eyes become accustomed to the translucent light of the Himalayas, to the vivid colors of the sky, the mountains, the temples, and the mandalas, once I begin to awaken from that state of dreamy blindness that caught me at the arrival in Lhasa, I start to notice the mounting encroachment of which this land of shepherds and pilgrims has been made the target.

To their misfortune, Tibetans sit on sizable reserves of precious resources and at the crossroads of important trade routes and international borders. It is no coincidence that the name given by the Chinese to the province is Xizang, literally meaning “western treasure house”. Because of its key location, the men of neighboring countries have for centuries dreamt of possessing this territory, militaries have studied strategies on how to invade, governments have laid out plans to promote colonization, engineers have sat in their laboratories to try to come up with ways to make more easily accessible this vast, remote territory hidden between the highest peaks in the world.

The Mongols tried in the thirteen and fourteen hundreds, the Nepalese attempted in 1855, the British gave it a shot at the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, after several other efforts throughout history, the Chinese succeeded when they “peacefully” liberated Tibet in 1951. Today the occupation of this land is embodied in the unusually high concentration of government buildings, in the presence of military establishments everywhere, in the many red flags of the PRC blowing in the wind. And so the Tibetan essence of Lhasa is increasingly suffocated by the unstoppable growth of the yet another, average, mid-size, Chinese town, while the heart and arteries of the Tibetan soul of the city remain anchored to the last standing incarnations of its cultural heritage, the Potala and the Bakhor.

The Bakhor is a corridor of narrow pedestrian streets surrounding Jokhang Temple, among the most sacred destinations for Tibetan pilgrims. A maze of pebbled lanes, the Bakhor marks the area where the locals live. The houses here are built on two, maximum three stories, in grey bricks, and the frames of the windows and doors are decorated by wooden carvings and painted in bright colors. White cotton curtains embroidered with geometric shapes in blue hang from the doorways. Shops selling yak butter and yak meat are lined up along the streets, together with vendors of Buddhist artifacts and local crafts. Thousands of pilgrims wearing traditional clothes stroll by at any time of the day as they complete the Kora, the clockwise tour around the Jokhang Temple. Although most of them walk it is not unusual to see some kneeling down in the way prescribed by traditions. At every step these people bend on their knees and then, in a smooth progression, they slide down on their torso until they touch the ground with their faces. They slowly get back up just to start the whole procedure again with the following step.

Coincidentally I visit the Potala Palace on the birthday of the Dalai Lama, today exiled in Dharamshala, India. Contrary to my expectations nothing and nobody around me bear signs of excitement or anxiety for such celebration, not the pilgrims, not the guards. It almost seems like people have forgotten and the place is open for business as usual. The Potala is a museum, and an expensive one to say the least. The entrance ticket is 100 Yuan (about $13). In any case far more expensive than a Tibetan from the countryside can afford. This place also remains the destination of a religious pilgrimage among the most significant for the people of Tibet. The interior is filled with a sour mix of tourists and the endless stream of monks and devotes who say their chants, light up candles, and make offers. They prey to a hollow altar of devotion, to the remaining semblances of a world that does not exist anymore. They hope to earn their graces, and maybe even access their nirvana, by visiting the sterile rooms of a museum.

Lhasa being the capital of the province it is also the place where the Chinese presence is more visible and oppressing. Traveling away from it towards smaller towns by names such as Shigatse, Gyantse, and Shigar, we finally experience more of that sense of remoteness and isolation that one would expect being typical of this region. Nevertheless the Chinese already control the largest share of the tourism industry, owning most of the guest houses and small restaurants on the way. Instead, a fairly equal share of Chinese and Tibetans work as driver and guides taking tourists to those spots where they are not allowed to go unaccompanied.

The Everest region is among these restricted areas. The drive from Old Town Tingry, the last village before the wilderness, to Everest Base Camp is a long, difficult, off-road journey that takes us straight into the arms of the mountain. The fifty miles land-cruiser trip on rugged terrains and through river crossings brings us through breathtaking views to the Hotel de California where Nima is pouring yak milk tea into our cups.

As we sit around to rest and warm up our guide Rinzen shares some of his feelings about the Chinese. “I don’t like them,” he states, leaving little doubts as to his opinion on the matter. Rinzen explains the rivalry and the animosity that exits between Tibetan drivers and guides and their Chinese counterparts. “For a Chinese driver,” Rinzen says, “it’s far more complicated to take tourists here. If his vehicle breaks down at one of those river crossings nobody will stop to help him.” He recalls an episode to illustrate his point; “One time a Chinese driver whose vehicle got stuck offered to pay 30,000 Yuan (about  $450) to a Tibetan that was passing by, but the guy turned down the money and left the Chinese there,” Rinzen continues. “For us Tibetans,” he says, “It’s easier, we have each others.” It might not be much but it is what they have left.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism – Persian Edition

Washington D.C. – In April 2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from Germany became the new Pope of the Catholic Church with the name of Benedict XVI. Prior to his election Ratzinger had been a well-known Catholic theologian and he had often been viewed as a defender of traditional Catholic doctrine. Reaffirming these beliefs, a few decisions made recently under his papacy have some observers wondering if the Vatican has chosen to turn the clock back in time.

On July 7th official steps were taken towards re-adjusting the Church’s liturgy so as to accommodate the requests of traditionalist Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI decided to welcome the long-standing demands of the most conservative wing of devotes and eased the restrictions on the use of an older rite in Latin as the source of the Mass – restrictions which had been in place for forty years.

The prohibition to local priests to celebrate the traditional Mass in Latin unless specifically authorized to do so by their bishop came as one of the results of the Second Vatican Council, a round of reforms that was launched in 1962 under the papacy of Pope John XXIII and that marked a decade of transformations within the Catholic Church aimed at modernizing the internal hierarchies and the liturgy, but also the relationships that the Vatican entertained with other faiths.

Among the changes implemented, the Vatican II (another name for the Second Vatican Council) decided then to start promoting the incorporation of vernaculars (local languages) in the celebration of the Mass. This move was intended to encourage more participation on the part of the local communities and was aimed at reaching out to a larger number of people that did not understand Latin and might have been put off by its use.

The use of the Tridentine Rite – as the traditional Mass is known – was increasingly restricted in the following years and came to be an available option only in the case that the locals demanded it and after the bishop had granted official permission.

The changes sealed by the Vatican at the beginning of this past July reverse some of the changes implemented forty years ago and allow priests to celebrate the Mass in Latin once again without needing authorization.

The Vatican defends this decision as simply dealing with liturgical matters internal to the Catholic Church. Dr. Joseph Komonchak, Professor of Religious Studies at Catholic University of America in Washington DC, told Washington Prism; “I honestly believe that this decision only has value within the Catholic Church.” He said in a phone interview; “It is a step that was taken to reconcile with the Church those Catholics that have wondered off nostalgic of the older rite.”

“I doubt that the celebration of the Latin Liturgy will have any effect in the United States,” Mike Goggin of the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington says. “People here are not asking for it and most priests were educated after its introduction and are not really familiar with it,” the Assistant Director of the Washington DC-based organization tells Washington Prism in a phone interview. “Overall, if this decision by the Vatican brings more people back to church in places like Europe, as a Roman Catholic I think that this is all for the better,” Goggin continues.

However, this move by Pope Benedict XVI might bear significance that goes beyond the private theological workings of the Vatican. In fact, despite the efforts by the Church to reassure that no major change is underway, many constituencies are worried that the document signed by Benedict XVI on July 7th sends worrisome signals.

In particular the Jewish community was very critical of the adjustment of the liturgy.

Eric J. Greenberg, Director of Interfaith Policy at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), told Washington Prism: “ADL and the Jewish community are not concerned specifically with the Latin Mass. What concern us, instead, are the references made to the Jews that are part of the Latin liturgy.”

The most prominent problem is a verse about the conversion of the Jews that is present in the Good Friday prayer.

In a phone interview Greenberg said: “For the Jewish community this decision was eye-opening and upsetting. We had come to believe that the Vatican had finally dismissed the idea of converting the Jews, a mission that has created so much suffering and so many deaths for our people throughout the last 2000 years. To hear it again was traumatic.”

“I think the decision by the Pope was received in the worst possible light,” Dr. Komonchack replied. “The problem with the Jewish community can be easily dealt with by changing the texts of those specific prayers and I do believe that the Vatican is willing to take the right steps toward a solution.”

However many within the Jewish community do not seem convinced of the good intentions of the Vatican. Greenberg of ADL recalls in our phone conversation: “I personally was on the phone with colleagues of the Catholic Church since March and April, as the first news came out about the eventuality that this document would be released. It was no surprise to the Vatican, or to the Pope, that the prayer in question would have represented a problem. The surprise was that it was in the Pope’s power to delete the reference from the liturgy but he did not. This was a shock.”

The question that is at stake now is whether or not this decision must be interpreted as a signal that Benedict XVI is aiming at taking the Catholic Church down a new and more conservative path, disregarding the consequences that such choice could have on interfaith relations.

“I see no signs that this pope wants to go back on Vatican II. I do not believe that he is more conservative than his predecessor John Paul II,” Joseph Komonchack told us. “I simply feel that this issue has been exaggerated by all sides.”

However even among Roman Catholics there are some worries. Mike Goggin’s admits; “Personally I have some concerns. Although this is not a huge surprise since we have known the profile of this Pope for a long while before he became the Pope.”

In fact, Benedict XVI’s track record might suggest at least some caution.

In 2000, for example, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger authored a controversial document on inter-faith dialogue known as Dominus Iesus in which he made the argument that salvation can only come through the Catholic Church.

Following the July 7th decision Benedict XVI took another few controversial steps.

On July 10th he issued a statement from his vacation retreat in the Italian Alps saying that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true Church, and that the Protestant Churches are not. “Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” said the document. The others “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense” because they lack apostolic succession, meaning they cannot trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.

Finally this past week the Pope met with Reverend Tadeusz Rydzyk, head of the Polish Radio Maryja that has become known for using its broadcasts as a way to express feelings considered anti-Semitic. Following the meeting, the Vatican immediately released a statement trying to distance itself from the actions of Reverend Rydzyk saying that the fact should not “imply any change in the well known position of the Holy See and the relations between Catholics and Jews.”

The intervention of the Vatican apparently did not come quickly enough to prevent reactions from representatives of other faiths. “These incidents together certainly create concerns within the Jewish Community and when they happen one after the other they certainly raise questions about what is going on, about how the Pope truly feels about Jewish and about where the Catholic Church his heading under his papacy,” Greenberg told Washington Prism.

Representatives of the Muslim community in Washington DC have been less vocal during this recent turmoil. “As far as the use of Latin I would bet that no Muslim would have a problem with it,” Mohamed Nimer, of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) – a leading advocacy organization in Washington DC-, said in a phone interview. “I think that they would feel like they really have no saying in such a matter.”

Nevertheless Benedict XVI has aroused Islamic discontent not too long ago. Specifically, a heated controversy was spurred by a lecture that the Pope gave in January 2006 at the University of Regensburg in Germany. Many were offended by the use of a quote by the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus in 1391 saying; “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

“After the incident in 2006 there have been conciliatory moves on the part of the Pope and this has quieted things down,” Nimer, Director of Research at CAIR, told Washington Prism. “However some questions remain as far as where this Pope stands on Vatican II, especially as far as the recognition that was officially given then to Islam and to other faiths.”

“Has the progress, the openness of the previous Pope been lost? Quite possibly so” Mike Goggin says on the phone, “especially as far as ecumenism.”

On the topic of Catholic-Muslim relations, CAIR will host a panel next Tuesday to discuss the current status of things. Two eminent guest speakers will attend to represent the two faiths. Father Francis Tiso, Associate Director for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America and former President of the Islamic Society of North America, will offer their views at an event that is part of the ongoing effort “to keep improving Catholic-Muslim relations in the US,” as Nimer told us.

Originally reported and written for Washington Prism