KESULTANAN SIBOLGA

Bertani Itu Indah

2009-10-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

Banyak generasi muda sekarang ini menghindar untuk menjadi petani. Sehingga mereka memaksa untuk kuliah setinggi-tingginya. Anehnya sebagian besar mengambil jurusan insinyur pertanian. Alhasil, melamar kerja di perusahaan perkebunan dan pertanian dan kahirnya menjadi petani lagi.
satu hal yang tidak dipungkiri adalah bahwa potensi pertanian Indonesia belumlah dimaksimalkan untuk kemakmuran. Ilusi bahwa menjadi petani itu adalah hina merupakan sebuah jebakan yang membuat keropos kualitas hidup orang Indonesia.

Di Barat saja, banyak orang kaya yang memaksakan diri menjadi petani, di kebunnya, di halaman rumah atau di pot-pot di depan rumah. So Ayo bertani, mumpung tanah Indonesia masih subuer.

IDe

Gallakkan Wisata Pantaia Barat Sumut Dengan Sail Barus

2009-09-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

Industri wisata di pantai barat bisa dimulai dengan mengdakan even Sail Barus seperti Sail Bunaken tahun ini. Pasti Mantap

Penggunaan Terumbu Karang ancam kerusakan pulau banyak

2009-07-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

Penggunaan terumbu karang dan pasir laut untuk material bangunan di sekitar lokasi proyek pembangunan yang bersumber dari dana pemerintah akan merusak lingkungan di Pulau Banyak, Aceh Singkil.

Kepala Kampung Pulau Baguk, Kecamatan Pulau Banyak, Assuhaili Y, tadi siang, di Singkil mengeluhkan penggunaan terumbu karang dan pasir laut di sekitar lokasi proyek pemerintah dijadikan bahan material bangunan.

Trade Ministry Opens International Franchise Conference

2009-06-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

The Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu opened an international conference at Jakarta Convention Center, today (19/6) in Jakarta. The Conference will last for three days (19-21 June) and has 175 companies from the Asia Pacific region participating.

Pemkab dan Dinhut Tapsel "main mata" dengan PT OPM

2009-06-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

Pengrusakan kawasan hutan di Tapanuli Selatan (Tapsel) yang dilakukan oleh PT Ondop Perkasa Mandiri (OPM) dilakukan secara terkoordinasi dan terorganisir lintas instansi pemerintah kabupaten dan pemerintahan provinsi.

Kasat Lantas: Penerima dan pemberi suap akan dipidana

2009-06-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

Operasi Patuh Toba 2009 yang dilaksanakan satuan polisi lalu lintas (Polantas) Kota Medan, yang dimulai hari ini hingga dua minggu kedepan, diharapkan tidak ada oknum kepolisian yang menerima suap dari para pelanggar disiplin berkendaraan.

"Jika ada oknum aparat khususnya Satlantas Medan yang meminta sejumlah uang kepada pelanggar disiplin segera dilaporkan ke Satlantas Medan," kata Kasat Lantas Medan, Kompol Sabilul Alif, kepada Waspada Online di Medan, sore ini.

Ekonomi Pasar: Boleh Saja, Asal Fair !

2009-06-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

Lihat lengkapnya di blog Jusuf Kalla.

Prabowo: BIN Jangan Terlibat Politik

2009-06-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Cawapres Prabowo Subianto meminta kepada Badan Intelejen Negara (BIN) untuk tidak terlibat dalam politik praktis. Utamanya menjelang pemilihan presiden pada 8 Juli nanti.

Lihat Di sini

Sudah 60 Naskah Melayu Indonesia Diboyong ke Malaysia

2009-06-02T04:58:00.000-07:00

Hanya dalam hitungan lima tahun terakhir, sudah 60 naskah Melayu kuno Indonesia berpindah tangan ke Malaysia. Padahal naskah Melayu itu dibuat sekitar tahun 1800-an. Negara tetangga itu masih akan terus memburu dokumen cagar budaya Indonesia.

Lihat di sini

SBY: Perang adalah Jalan Terakhir

2009-06-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

Kapal perang Malaysia terus memasuki wilayah perairan Indonesia di blok Ambalat. Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) menegaskan, perang dengan Malaysia adalah jalan terakhir jika cara lain sudah tidak bisa dilakukan lagi.

Lihat di sini

Elnusa handles Pertamina`s geoscience project worth Rp626.85 B

2009-05-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

PT. Elnusa Tbk (ELSA), a national company providing integrated oil and gas services, is handling a number of geoscience projects of state oil and gas company PT Pertamina worth Rp626.85 billion.

"Under the project, we are optimistic to earn a projected Rp3.02 trillion by the end of this year," Vice President and Corporate Secretary of Elnusa Agus Gunawan said in Jakarta Sunday.

Some of the geoscience projects handled by Elnusa is the Rengasdengklok-Bekasi block worth Rp 347.55 billion, Karang Makmur-Jambi block Rp 105 billion, Suban Siarak-Sumatera Selatan block Rp 50.4 billion, Randugunting-East Jawa block Rp 67.2 billion, and the Bernai project in South Sumatra worth Rp 55.65 billion.

Ditinggal Istri, Ayah Perkosa Anak Kandung

2008-11-27T04:34:00.000-08:00

Ditinggal pergi istri hingga puluhan tahun, seorang ayah berinisial HS (35) warga Desa Hutaginjang Kecamatan Barus Utara, Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah (Tapteng) tega memperkosa anak kandungnya sendiri, sebut saja namanya Bunga (10).

Perbuatan bejat sang ayah ini dilakukan terhadap anak kandungnya sendiri hingga lima kali sejak Pebruari hingga November 2008. Akibat perbuatannya itu, penderes karet ini pun ditangkap Polisi.

Posko I Siaga Bencana Alam Angin Puting Beliung di Kelurahan Pasir, belum ada menerima bantuan

2008-11-27T04:24:00.000-08:00

Hari kedua pasca angin puting beliung disertai hujan deras yang memorak-morandakan pemukiman di tepi pantai dan di atas permukaan laut di wilayah perbatasan Kota Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah, belum ada bantuan yang tersalur ke Posko I Siaga Bencana Alam di Kelurahan Pasir Bidang Kabupaten Tapteng.

Kesenian Wayang di Sumut Mulai Dipinggirkan

2008-11-27T04:18:00.000-08:00

Wayang yang dikenal sebagai salah satu jenis kesenian etnis Jawa, kini mulai dipinggirkan di Sumut. Kesan ini terlihat ketika Sabtu malam yang baru lalu digelar pertunjukkan wayang di salah satu rumah di Marelan, Medan, sehubungan dengan hajatan perkawinan. Berbeda dengan pesta perhelatan di tempat-tempat lain yang lazimnya menggelar musik keyboard tunggal dengan biduan dang-dut atau lagu-lagu pop, keluarga Margono yang “punya gawe”, justru menghibur tamunya dengan wayang kulit dengan lakon “Arjuna Wiwaha”.

Sumber

Sebanyak 105 pelajar Sumut ikuti Popwil di Batam

2008-11-14T17:16:00.000-08:00

Sebanyak 105 pelajar Sumatera Utara dipastikan akan mengikuti Pekan Olahraga Pelajar Wilayah (Popwil) Sumatera 2008 yang akan digelar di Batam, Kepulauan Riau, 2-9 November 2008.

Sekretaris Kontingen Sumut, Josua Sinurat mengatakan di Medan, Kamis, atlet tersebut direncanakan berangkat Rabu (29/10) dengan menggunakan pesawat.

Menurut dia, pada Popwil 2006 di Sumbar, kontingen Sumut berhasil menduduki peringkat II dengan meraih tujuh medali emas dua medali perak dan 11 medali perunggu.

Pertamina gelar Olimpiade Sains Nasional

2008-11-14T17:13:00.000-08:00

Sebanyak 42 mahasiswa di Sumatera Utara mengikuti Olimpiade Sains Nasional tingkat Perguruan Tinggi se-Indonesia 2008 yang digelar Pertamina dan Universitas Indonesia (UI) di Universitas Sumatera Utara (USU), Senin lalu .

"Kerjasama pelaksanaan Olimpiade Sains Nasional yang baru pertama kali digelar dimana dananya diberikan Pertamina merupakan wujud kepedulian perusahaan terhadap pendidikan nasional.Olimpiade itu dilakukan serentak di 31 kota di tanah air," kata External Relation Pertamina Pemasaran Region I, Fitri Erika, di Medan, Rabu.

Pemko Tebingtinggi bangun Rusunawa senilai Rp120 M

2008-10-09T06:22:00.001-07:00

TEBINGTINGGI - Pemerintah Kota Tebingtinggi dalam bulan ini segera merealisasikan pembangunan rumah susun cara sewa alias Rusunawa berbiaya Rp120 miliar di Kel.Tebingtinggi, Kec. Padang Hilir. Bersamaan dengan itu juga, pelaksanaan proyek PNPM pada 27 kelurahan, telah dimulai pekerjaannya.

Demikian informasi yang diperoleh di Dinas Kimpraswil, Rabu (8/10), terkait dengan pelaksanaan dua proyek yang dibiayai pemerintah pusat itu. Rusunawa yang akan dibangun itu terdiri dari dua blok bertingkat. Setiap blok terdiri dari 96 pintu dengan total keseluruhan 192 pintu.

Pemko Tebingtinggi bangun Rusunawa senilai Rp120 M

2008-10-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

Upaya adu domba umat beragama, Kapoldasu harus bersikap tegas

2008-09-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

Ketua Bidang III Ima Tapteng Dr. Ramlan Sitompul meminta agar Kapoldasu bertindak tegas terhadap upaya-upaya adu domba antar umat beragama yang dikemas dalam Provinsi Tapanuli di Sumatera Utara ini.

"Kita dari Ima Tapteng-Sibolga mengharapkan agar Kapoldasu untuk bersikap tegas terhadap upaya memecah belah antar umat beragama di Sumatera Utara ini yang dikemas dalam Provinsi Tapanuli," kata Dr Ramlan Sitompul menyikapi Tim Observasi Protap yang dilakukan Tim Depdagri, staf Gubsu yang melibatkan Pemko Sibolga dengan mengundang beberapa anggota DPRD Sibolga, Rabu (24/9) sehingga mengakibatkan unjuk rasa yang hampir berujung menchaoskan Kota Sibolga.

Selain itu, Ima Tapteng-Sibolga juga meminta Gubsu untuk menindak tegas stafnya yang ikut menghadiri pertemuan itu karena staf itu akan mengancam jabatan Gubsu dan Wagubsu yang diketahui masyarakat sangat aspiratif menyikapi kepentingan masyarakat.

Dengan realita itukan sudah jelas, ada upaya dari pihak-pihak tertentu untuk memecah belah dan tidak mengkondusifkan daerah Kota Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah yang selama ini sangat tentram.

Menurut Ramlan Sitompul yang dikenal aktivis pemuda itu, saat Gubernur Sumatera Utara dijabat Alm.T. Rizal Nurdin beliau telah membentuk tim independen yang melakukan survey untuk kelayakan Provinsi Tapanuli. Tim yang dibentuk itu adalah lembaga yang kredibel di Indonesia yakni LSI (Lembaga Survey Indonesia). Hasil survey menyatakan Provinsi Tapanuli tidak layak dan laporannya telah diserahkan ke DPR-RI juga Depdagri.

Namun setelah T. Rizal Nurdin meninggal dunia, Rudolf Pardede yang sebelumnya menjabat Wagubsu menjadi Gubsu membentuk tim baru yang hanya bekerja di belakang meja mengubah hasil Survey LSI menjadi layak.

Kemudian penggagas Provinsi Tapanuli menyusun proposal serta struktur organisasi yang menyertakan lambang-lambang yaitu berupa rumah adat Batak dan di puncak rumah adat Batak itu terdapat lambang salib.

"Hal ini sangat melukai masyarakat umat beragama lainnya yang ada di Sibolga-Tapanuli Tengah dan dengan kenyataan ini bisa membahayakan dan berpotensi terjadinya konflik Horizontal," tegasnya sambil meminta kembali agar Kapoldasu cepat mengatasi ini, karena selama ini Sumatera Utara kondisi keamanannya sudah sangat kondusif dan kerukunan umat beragama di Sumut selama ini sudah sangat tertata dengan baik sehingga dapat dijadikan contoh bagi daerah lain.

Lebih lanjut dikatakan Ramlan Sitompul yang juga mantan anggota KPU Sibolga itu, 2006 lalu di Hotel Polonia Medan diadakan pertemuan antara tokoh masyarakat, anggota DPRD, Bupati Nias (acara itu dilaksanakan STPDN Sibolga Tapanuli Tengah, Pakpak Barat, Dairi dan Nias) pada saat itu telah diambil sikap dan kesepakatan, menolak bergabung dengan Provinsi Tapanuli. Bahkan wakil rakyat lewat lembaga resminya DPRD Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah telah mengeluarkan surat yang menolak dibentuknya Provinsi Tapanuli.

Jangan Pilih

Ima Tapteng Sibolga yang merupakan Ikatan Masyarakat Tapanuli Tengah-Sibolga mengimbau kepada seluruh masyarakat Kota Sibolga dan Kab. Tapanuli Tengah agar tidak memilih politisi (Caleg) dari partai manapun yang mendukung Protap.

"Kita dari Ima Tapteng Sibolga mengimbau dan mengajak masyarakat Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah untuk tidak memilih politisi (Caleg) dari partai manapun yang mendukung pembentukan Protap, pada Pemilu 2009 mendatang, karena mereka itu nantinya bukan memikirkan kemajuan pembangunan kedua daerah ini termasuk masyarakatnya, namun mau menjual kedua daerah ini dan ini harus menjadi pemikiran serius masyarakat Sibolga-Tapanuli Tengah," kata Ramlan.

Sementara itu Ketua DPD PAN Kota Sibolga Manahan Dalimunthe mengatakan, DPD PAN Kota Sibolga tetap komit menolak Protap. Keputusan itu sesuai dengan hasil Rakerwil PAN di Parapat 2007.

"Menurut pemikiran saya Protap bukan satu-satunya cara untuk mensejahterakan masyarakat Kota Sibolga disebabakan masih banyak lagi cara lain untuk memajukan Kota Sibolga tergantung bagaimana kepala daerah dan DPRD untuk mengelola kota ini dengan baik, oleh sebab itu baik pribadi maupun partai kita tetap komit menolak Protap karena pembentukan Protap hanya digulirkan oleh orang yang gila jabatan bukan untuk kepentingan masyarakat," tegasnya.

Kehadiran tim observasi Protap dinilai hamburkan uang negara

2008-09-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Kehadiran tim observasi Protap di Kota Sibolga dan Kabupaten Tapteng lebih banyak mudaratnya daripada manfaatnya karena tidak menghargai umat muslim yang sedang melaksanakan ibadah puasa.

"Kita tahu masyarakat Kota Sibolga sudah jelas-jelas menolak protap tetapi kenapa Pemko Sibolga nekad melakukan pertemuan dengan tim observasi Depdagri Protap bahkan di saat umat muslim sedang berpuasa."
Hal itu ditegaskan anggota DPRDSU dari PAN Rafriandi Nasution, MT kepada Waspada melalui telepon selulernya, kemarin, menyangkut kehadiran tim observasi Protap Depdagri diusir masyarakat Kota Sibolga.

Dikatakan Rafriandi, kehadirannya tim Depdagri hanya buang-buang uang Negara dan terkesan dipaksakan untuk memenuhi keinginan kelompok-kelompok tertentu. Seharusnya kehadiran mereka bukan memancing amarah masyarakat di Kota Sibolga apalagi waktunya bertepatan di Ramadhan, mereka datang hanya bertemu dengan para pejabat bukan dengan masyarakat.

Kunjungan tim Protap seharusnya bisa mengakomodir aspirasi seluruh elemen masyarakat termasuk kaum minoritas yang harus dilindungi.

Depdagri harus bijaksana dalam menyikapi persoalan jangan melukai dari kelompok manapun dan tetap menjaga nilai-nilai persatuan dalam ke-Bhineka Tunggal Ika-an.

Secara terpisah anggota DPRD SU dari Partai Golkar H Syukran J Tandjung, SE mengatakan Sibolga perlu perluasan Kota bukan Protap yang hanya menambah masalah bagi masyarakat.

Dirinya juga mengaku prihatin masalah perluasan Kota Sibolga ke daerah Tapteng, saja belum juga selesai di mana kedua daerah masih punya hubungan emosional yang kuat. Seharusnya kedua pemimpin di dua daerah saling bersinerji dan bekerja sama dan bukan mempertahankan egonya masing-masing yang berdampak pada percepatan roda pembangunan.

"Mulai dari awal kita tetap komit menolak Protap mengingat kultur, infrastruktur, kekayaan alamnya yang tidak mendukung, bila Protap dipaksakan akan menambah beban bagi pemerintah pusat," jelas Syukran.

Sementara anggota DPRD Kota Sibolga dari PKS Jansul Perdana, SAg dan Arifin Azwar Tp Bolon dari Partai Demokrat mengaku heran kenapa Kota Sibolga masuk daerah cakupan Protap padahal DPRD sudah tegas menolak. Mereka juga mengaku keberatan atas sikap Walikota Sibolga tidak menindahkan interupsi dari dewan saat pertemuan waktu lalu yang seharusnya DPRD tidak diundang.

Dikatakan, dalam pertemuan tersebut DPRD Sibolga tidak mengetahui SK apa yang diberikan oleh Walikota Sibolga kepada tim Mendagri di mana pertemuan berjalan singkat akibat adanya aksi massa.

Dikatakan kedua anggota DPRD Sibolga tersebut mereka meminta kepada pimpinan DPRD untuk membahasnya kembali dan meninjau ulang SK Cakupan dan isinya apa bahkan Sekda sendiri tidak mengetahui isi surat.

Pelaku bisnis Sibolga Tapteng H. Nasrul Tanjung juga Ketua DPC PPM Tapteng mengaku secara ekonomi Protap tidak menguntungkan bagi masyarakat Sibolga Tapteng. "Elit-elit politik jangan membicarakan Protap, saat ini masyarakat sekarang sudah susah tidak lagi memikirkan Protap tetapi bagaimana masyarakat itu bisa makan," jelasnya.

Percepatan pembangunan bukanlah di tingkat provinsi tetapi di tingkat kabupaten yang bersentuhan langsung dengan masyarakat dan kita lihat beberapa pemekaran provinsi makin mundur ketimbang pemerakan Kabupaten. "Kita salut dengan Kabupaten Sergai laju pertumbuhan pembangunannya sangat pesat dan hal tersebut hendaknya dijadikan sebagai contoh bagi pejabat bukan sibuk mengurusi Protap," jelasnya mengakhiri.

Transnistria: The New State in Europe

2008-08-20T10:27:00.001-07:00

Its an Amazing Country

Albania: Truely Europe

2008-08-20T10:27:00.000-07:00

More Images
More Photos

Mega Proyek Iran Menandingi Dubai

2008-08-12T02:25:00.000-07:00

Kish Free Trade Zone merupakan mutiara Iran yang menandingi Dubai. Gedung ini rencanya akan menjadi hotel bintang tujuh kedua di dunia selain hotel yang diDbai

More

Kayak

2008-08-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

Kayak, Mengarungi lautan

Menang Lagi

2008-08-05T19:32:00.001-07:00

Menang Lagi

Super Karate

2008-08-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Wowww

Hore Kami Menang

2008-08-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

Lautan Luas

2008-08-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

Mengharungi Lautan Luas

Sebuah Kegembiraan

2008-08-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yang dirayakan dalam kehidupan

Menuju Kemenangan

2008-08-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

Itulah Cita-cita semua orang

Bola Volley

2008-08-05T19:16:00.003-07:00

Banyak negara sekarang berusaha mengharumkan negaranya dengan olahraga.

Berlari Sekencangnya

2008-08-05T19:16:00.002-07:00

Kalau mau mencapai tujuan dengan cepat

Olahraga membuat Tubuh Sehat

2008-08-05T19:16:00.001-07:00

Tim Squash Malaysia

2008-08-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

banyak orang yang tidak mengenal apa itu olahraga squash. Di Malaysia, Tim Squash mereka bahkan sudah menguasai banyak medali... Termasuk di Islamic Womens games eperti gambar di sampng

Real Estate Investing in UAE: Berinvestasi di UAE

2008-06-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

View our database of carefully selected investment properties in the United Arab Emirates

Summary:

Overseas investors have been permitted to purchase property in Dubai from nominated residential developments since 2002. A number of real estate projects are already available and others are on track.

Rating: 5 Stars

UAE Dirhams:

Linked to the US$. Living costs are reasonably high for the region but not compared to Western Europe. However, the infrastructure is superb with excellent amenities.

Economic Climate:

Dubai has experienced remarkable economic growth in the past two decades. Investment by foreign companies has been encouraged by a free trade zone philosophy and the creation of flexible industry specific operational centres such as the Internet and Media Cities. Dubai’s GDP on average increases by 7-8% a year.

Taxes:

There are no income or property related taxes although there are fees for residence visa renewal of US$1,360 every 3 years which does permit the holder to work. The property ownership legislation is still in a state of change.

Popular Investment Areas:

The projects in vogue are The Springs, The Greens, Dubai Marina, Emirates Hills, Meadows and Arabian Ranches. Two man made islands, The Palm will become the ultimate luxury address.

Price Ranges:

Apartment sales exceeded 1,500 in 2002. Dubai property costs approximately $1,000 per square metre as compared with London UK at $5,000 per square metre. Pricing ranges are variable on a project by project basis.

Back to the Top

Budgetary Guide:

Apartments: 1 bed US$ 100,000 +, 2 bed US$ 159,000+, 3/4 bed to luxury up to US$ 835,000. Medium Villas US$ 122,00 to 240,000. Larger Villas US$ 272,000 to 497,000.The Palm: Apartments US$ 177,000 +, Townhouses/Villas US$462,000 to 1,264,000.

Overseas Investors:

May purchase property freehold on specific developments as well as on a 99-year leasehold basis.

Service Fees:

Fees are not an issue as there are no taxes. Sign the contract make an initial payment of 10% of the buying price then two further payments 10% to an agreed timetable over period of months.

Mortgages:

Mortgages are becoming more freely available on a 10 to 15-year basis and interest rates are linked to those in the US. Current quotes are 6.5%.

Information:

http://www.getyourmoneyworking.com

Golden Opportunity to Live or Invest in Holy city of Makkah

2008-06-29T18:29:00.000-07:00

JIZAN

Jizan Economic City

Jizan University

RABIGH

King Abdullah Economic City

MADINA

New Towers at Haram Central Area

Dar Al Qiblah

Salam Mall

Al Noor Mall

Madinah Knowledge City

MECCA

Le Meriden Towers

Jabal Khandama

Abraj Albait

Jabal Omar Project

Shamiyah Development Project

Abrar Tower

Haram Tower

Haram Tower 2

Mashair Tower

Ajyad Tower

Ajyad Hospital

Mutlaq Tower

Maad Palace Hotel

AlSafa Tower

Aziziyah hotel

Saudia Tower

Other Towers In Mecca

Jamarat Bridge

RIYADH

Riyadh Technology Park

Ghadir Project

Faisal University

Anoud Tower

Anoud Tower 2

AlWassil Tower

Bait Towers

Centria Mall

Rajhi Tower

Jawharat Al Mamlakah

Riyadh Municipality

Meridian Hotel

B&D Tower

Olaya Center

Riyadh Business Park

Granada Office Park

King Abdullah Financial District

Benaa City

Panorama Mall

Durrat Arriyadh

Riyadh Train

JEDDAH

Nakheel Project

Jawharat Mall and Towers

OIC Headqurater

Jeddah Riviera Center

Diar Al Bahr Tower

Masarat Tower

Farsi Towers

Lamar Towers

Al Jawharah Tower

SREDCO Tower

Lina Towers (Golden Twin Towers)

Dream Tower

PME Tower

Huda Tower

Huda Plaza

Red Sea Mall

Jeddah Airport

Jeddah Raceway

KHOBAR

Hokait Tower

Ma'alam Tower

Qahtani Tower

Movenpick Hotel

Sofitel Hotel

Al Khobar Complex Center

Qafari Tower

Suwaikat Tower

Unamed Tower

City Fanar

Dorrat Al Khoba

Grand Mall

Rashid Mall Expanssion

DHAHRAN
Jarir Plaza

Mall of Dhahran Expansion
x

TAIF

Taif Heart Tower

HAIL

Hail Economic City

Hail University

Dammam

Rajhi Towers

Investasi Ritel Perumahan di Jordan

2008-06-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

Sekarang ini semakin banyak orang Indonesia yang berinvest di Jordania. Khususnya mereka dari golongan menengah.

Alasan utamam berinvestasi di Jordan adalah karena Jordan mempunyai potensiyangs angat unggul dalam pariwisata. Pariwisata Jordania tidak saja meliputi objek-objek wisata rohani Islami, seperti napak tilas perjalanan perdagangan Nabi Muhammad SAW dan beberapa mesjid-mesjid tua tapi juga bagi ummat kristiani.

Jordania mempunyai Mounth Nebo, Baptist Site dan lain sebagainya. selain yang klasik seperti kota petra dan lain sebagainya.

Mereka yang invest dalam real estate seperti apartmen dapat menyewakan kembali apartmentnya kepada para turis Indonesia yangdatang berikutnya. Jordan juga dikenal sebagai pusat ilmu pengetahuan dengan berdirinya banyak universitas di Jordania

Berikut beberap artikel mengenai kondisi real estate di Jordania:

Late last month, King Abdullah II launched the 'National Housing Initiative,' which is a multi-billion dollar project that aims to build 120,000 properties throughout the kingdom for low and limited-income Jordanians.

In a move that highlights the kingdom's commitment to the programme, the government plans to give away huge parcels of land to private sector property developers to kick start the initiative.

A new body, affiliated with the Housing and Urban Development Corporation, is being set up to oversee the programme. Meanwhile, construction of the first 20,500 housing units, which will range in area from 100 square metres to 160 square metres and be offered at affordable prices, is expected to begin later this year.

Limitless enters Jordan
Another recent boost to the Jordan real estate market came from UAE developer Limitless, which said it will be spending $300m to build two residential towers in Amman.

The launch of Limitless Towers came just a few weeks after the developer, a unit of Dubai World, established new operations in Jordan, where it is planning a number of projects to add to its rapidly expanding international portfolio.

'Jordan's fast-growing economy, changing real estate requirements, convenient location and stability make it a firm favourite as a new market for Limitless,' said Bahaa Abouhatab, Country Manager for Limitless in Jordan. Limitless plans to invest a total of $1 billion in Jordan over the next few years, Abouhatab told Gulf News.

Limitless Towers, which will be over 200 metres in height, will be the tallest in Jordan and among the tallest twin buildings in the Middle East. The project will feature the world's highest suspended swimming pool - 125 metres high - connecting the two towers. The glass-bottomed pool, which will be accessible from the 40th floor of each building, will provide a panoramic view of Amman and the surrounding landscape.

Limitless also claims that the towers will be the first 'green' building in Jordan. The project will adopt a number of eco-friendly initiatives in its design, construction, and maintenance in hopes of achieving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) accreditation.

Mawared touts projects
Jordan's surging real estate market was touted at the recent Jordan Economic Forum held in Amman. The National Resources Investment & Development Corporation, better known as 'Mawared', unveiled a model of the King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz City that is currently under construction in Zarqa. The planned city covers over 25 million square meters and is expected to house over 400,000 people in over 70,000 residential units of between 100-160 square meters each.

Akram Abu Hamdan, Mawared's Director General, said the project will include hotels, schools, and hospitals, along with commercial, retail and entertainment centers, all of which are aimed at stimulating the economy of Zarqa and raising the standard of living in the area. 'Jordan is experiencing a period of unprecedented growth, and the development of real estate represents is one of the main ways in which the Kingdom will maintain its momentum for continued economic growth and remain investment-friendly for foreign investors,' he noted.

Taameer Jordan Holdings also used the forum as a showcase for one of its major projects, the Ahl Al-Azim development, which is another large housing project targeting low and medium income segments in Jordan. The development is located in the Al Jiza district and will offer around 16,000 housing units.

The housing units are being offered at affordable payment terms, and the project as a whole is being developed in collaboration with the Jordan Housing and Urban Development Corporation.

AME Info tried to contact Limitless for this report but was unable to get a response.

Saudis pour billions into `City of Knowledge` on holy site

2008-06-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

06/29/08 15:06

Medina, Saudi Arabia (ANTARA News) - Saudi Arabia is pouring billions of dollars into Medina, burial place of the Prophet Mohammed and the cradle of Islam, to turn the religion's second holiest site into a high-tech bastion.

The so-called Knowledge Economic City (KEC) is the fourth in a series of projects launched by the oil powerhouse in December 2005 aimed at attracting foreign investment and bolstering development.

It is being promoted by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and financed by the private sector a few miles from the centre of Medina and the Mosque of the Prophet, a top pilgrimage destination.

SAGIA governor Amr al-Dabbagh told AFP that the projects were inspired by some 3,000 "special economic zones" that exist around the world to promote investment.

"In our case we call them Economic Cities because they have more ingredients," he said. "They are places where people can work, enjoy life and make money."

KEC is the latest in a series of mammoth development schemes in the kingdom, where the first project known as King Abdullah Economic City is being built at Rabigh on the west coast.

The KEC is being built around a special theme to promote knowledge and sciences with through education, health and information technology.

The history of Medina was one of the reasons it was chosen to host the new city.

Medina is a cradle of Muslim civilisation and the birthplace of Islam along with Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, which is also in the Hijaz in western Saudi Arabia.

"Medina was the springboard for Islamic civilisation," said Tahir Mohammed Bawazir, chairman of Knowledge Economic City Developers Company Ltd. "This is the place where it all started. So there is history."

The Prophet Mohammed fled along with the first followers of Islam from Mecca to Medina -- which means "city" in Arabic -- in 622 AD to escape persecution. His tomb is in Medina.

The KEC project's backers hope that Medina's rich past will attract Muslim scientists as well as companies wanting to do business with the Arab and Muslim world, bolstering development on all fronts.

"It's an attractive proposition for people to live here," said Bawazir.

Question marks

But there are also question marks over the real aim of these artificial cities emerging from the Saudi sands, and also over their long-term viability.

"They are into buildings. They are into real estate. Real estate is something they do well," one Asian professor teaching in a Saudi university said about the promoters of KEC and the other so-called "economic cities."

For him KEC is just that, a real estate project rather than a bid to develop scientific knowledge or boost the economy.

"So they do it in different places under different names," he said on condition of anonymity.

The construction drive coincides with an unprecedented economic boom generating colossal oil revenues for Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter.

Saudi Arabia earned 194 billion dollars in oil income in 2007 and it is estimated that combined revenues for 2008 and 2009 will amount to 700 billion dollars because of the skyrocketing cost of crude.

But the head of the state-run SAGIA insisted that the projects "are all developed by the private sector."

"Our role is to iron out any obstacles and ensure that the environment is pro-business," Dabbagh said.

It is estimated that the KEC, expected to house 130,000 people, will cost eight billion dollars.

Dabbagh said that SAGIA is also conducting feasibility studies on two other projects "to see if they are commercially viable."

By the year 2020 new cities that have mushroomed from the Saudi desert could be home to 4.8 million inhabitants and generate 1.2 million jobs.

Employment is a high political and economic priority for the authorities of the kingdom in which half of the total population of around 23 million is under 18.

Expatriates make up more than a quarter of Saudi Arabia's total population, according to official figures published in September 2004.

Why The Iraqi Occupations? It's The Oil Stupid

2008-06-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

Why The Occupations?
It's The Oil Stupid

"Robert Baer, a former CIA spy who presents a television documentary on the history of suicide bombing, says he knew the practice would come to the UK. And it’s not the West’s values, but its foreign policies, that are to blame.... 'The other one thing is, ‘they hate us’, which is just total bullsh**.' [he says] Is it? 'Yes,' he says, 'it is.' In a school run by Hezbollah, he asked a class dominated by the daughters of 'martyrs' if they watched US television. 'Everybody raised their hand. And what did they watch? Oprah. I said, ‘How can you watch this cr**?’ And they said, ‘No, she’s great. We love Oprah.’..... So, it wasn’t our values. It wasn’t Western values. It’s Western presence. They want us to get out.'..... There is, however, a three-letter reason why the US will not impose a peace plan on Israel and leave the region. Baer, the author of Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, well knows what it is. 'I don’t think any American politician, however at fault we are in Iraq or anywhere else, can say, ‘All right, let the crazies have the oil fields’, because oil at $200 a barrel would put us into a depression.' So because the American economy is at stake, we can’t get out even to save our skins? 'That, I believe, is your classic paradox.' "
Suicide bombing is a virus that’s here to stay
London Times, 2 August 2005

"... we've been in the Middle East more than 50 years. We've been in the Middle East ever since the -- however you would like to call the dependency upon oil has developed. And our forces have been there either as naval, air or land forces in one way or another for an awful long time. And once the British pulled out the Arabian gulf, it became more and more necessary for us to provide more and more force in the region..... And ultimately, it comes down to the free flow of goods and resources on which the prosperity of our own nation and everybody else's depends upon.... We need to maintain a presence that protects the small nations and ensures the continued stability of the region and the flow of those resources that are essential to our well-being."
General John Abizaid, Commander of the United States Central Command overseeing US operations in Iraq, confirming to a US Congressional Committee that the United States needs permanent military bases in Iraq in order to maintain access to Gulf oil

"The super-giant fields of southeastern Iraq are the largest concentration of super-giants to be found anywhere in the world....unlike neighbor Saudi Arabia, Iraq has been unable to deploy the latest technology, such as 3-D seismic, to find its reserves. Present reserve estimates of Iraq's oil are based on 2-D seismic technology from the 1980s. Still, the estimated success rate in Iraq ranges from one in two in the Mesopotamian Basin to one in four in the western and northwestern stable platform, with the overall success rate exceeding 72 percent - perhaps the highest success rate achievable anywhere in the world. Oil exploration costs are among the cheapest globally, with the current cost estimated at around 50 cents per barrel....To date, petroleum geologists have delineated and mapped over 526 prospects - drilling 131 prospects to discover 73 major fields. They have identified some 239 as having a high degree of certainty, but those prospects remain undrilled. Thirty fields have been partially developed and only 12 fields are actually onstream. Undrilled structures and undeveloped fields could represent the largest untapped hydrocarbon resource anywhere in the world.....Clearly, large parts of Iraq are still virgin - its large hydrocarbon reserves are still waiting to be developed to their full potential, while most other Middle East countries are fully exploiting their reserves. The main challenges facing the new Iraqi authority are to establish law and order as well as security. Once these issues are resolved, Iraq will perhaps be the most exciting place on Earth with regard to oil development and exploration....International oil companies are looking forward with great anticipation to the opening of Iraq, as they have been waiting for the past 40 years. Hopefully, Iraq will soon be able to offer them acreage, thereby allowing proper development of its huge potential. Open and fair competition will enable oil companies to apply the latest technologies in the search for, and development of, the country's hydrocarbon resources - thus helping Iraq realize its full hydrocarbon potential."
Assessing Iraq’s Oil Potential
Geotimes, October 2003

"Brigadier-General James Ellery CBE, the Foreign Office’s Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since 2003, confirmed the critical role of Iraqi oil reserves in potentially alleviating a 'world shortage' of conventional oil. The Iraq War has helped to head off what Brigadier Ellery described as 'the tide of Easternisation' – a shift in global political and economic power toward China and India, to whom goes 'two thirds of the Middle East’s oil'. After the 2004 transfer of authority to an interim Iraqi civilian administration, Brigadier Ellery set up and ran the 700-strong security framework operation in support of the US-funded Reconstruction of Iraq. His remarks were made as part of a presentation at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), University of London, sponsored by the Iraqi Youth Foundation, on 22nd April.... 'The reason that oil reached $117 a barrel last week', he said, 'was less to do with security of supply… than World shortage.' He went on to emphasise the strategic significance of Iraqi petroleum fields in relation to the danger of production peaks being breached in major oil reserves around the world. 'Russia’s production has peaked at 10 million barrels per day; Africa has proved slow to yield affordable extra supplies – from Sudan and Angola for example. Thus the only near-term potential increase will be from Iraq,' he said. Whether Iraq began 'favouring East or West' could therefore be 'de-stabilizing' not only 'within the region but to nations far beyond which have an interest.'.... Brigadier Ellery’s career in the British Army has involved stints in the Middle East, Africa, Bosnia, Germany and Northern Ireland. 'Iraq holds the key to stability in the region,' he said, 'unless that is you believe the tide of ‘Easternisation’ is such that the USA and the West are in such decline, relative to the emerging China and India, that it is the East – not the West – which is more likely to guarantee stability. Incidentally, I do not.' Iraq’s pivotal importance in the Middle East, he explained, is because of its 'relatively large, consuming population' at 24 million, its being home to 'the second largest reserve of oil – under exploited', and finally its geostrategic location 'on the routes between Asia, Europe, Arabia and North Africa - hence the Silk Road.'.... Brigadier-General James Ellery is currently Director of Operations at AEGIS Defence Services Ltd., a private British security firm and US defence contractor since June 2004. In April this year, the same month as Ellery’s SOAS lecture, AEGIS won the renewal of its US defence department (DoD) contract for two more years, which at $475 million is the single largest security contract brokered by the DoD. The contract is to provide security services for reconstruction projects in Iraq conducted by mostly American companies..... During his April presentation at SOAS, AEGIS director Ellery declared, 'Iraq promises a degree of prosperity in the region as it embarks on massive Iraqi-funded reconstruction, a part of which will raise Iraqi’s oil production from 2.5 million bpd today to 3 million by next year and maybe ultimately 6 million barrels per day.'”
Ex-British Army Chief Confirms Peak Oil Motive for War; Praises Fraudulent Reconstruction Programs
Atlantic Free Press, 18 June 2008

"The invasion of Iraq by Britain and the US has trebled the price of oil, according to a leading expert, costing the world a staggering $6 trillion in higher energy prices alone. The oil economist Dr Mamdouh Salameh, who advises both the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation (Unido), told The Independent on Sunday that the price of oil would now be no more than $40 a barrel, less than a third of the record $135 a barrel reached last week, if it had not been for the Iraq war.... Dr Salameh, director of the UK-based Oil Market Consultancy Service, and an authority on Iraq's oil, said it is the only one of the world's biggest producing countries with enough reserves substantially to increase its flow. Production in eight of the others – the US, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico – has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point at of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped some 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this had now fallen to just two million barrels. Dr Salameh told the all-party parliamentary group on peak oil last month that Iraq had offered the United States a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened up 10 new giant oil fields on 'generous' terms in return for the lifting of sanctions. 'This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price,' he said. 'But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil.'"
Oil: A global crisis
Independent On Sunday, 25 May 2008

Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet
US Department Of Energy, September 2004

Strait of Hormuz
In 2003, the vast majority (about 90%) of oil exported from the Persian Gulf transited by tanker through the Strait of Hormuz , located between Oman and Iran. The Strait consists of 2-mile wide channels for inbound and outbound tanker traffic, as well as a 2-mile wide buffer zone. Oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz account for roughly two-fifths of all world traded oil, and closure of the Strait of Hormuz would require use of longer alternate routes (if available) at increased transportation costs. Such routes include the approximately 5-million-bbl/d-capacity East-West Pipeline across Saudi Arabia to the port of Yanbu, and the Abqaiq-Yanbu natural gas liquids line across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea. The 15.0-15.5 million bbl/d or so of oil which transit the Strait of Hormuz goes both eastwards to Asia (especially Japan, China, and India) and westwards (via the Suez Canal, the Sumed pipeline, and around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa) to Western Europe and the United States.

Bab al-Mandab
Oil heading westwards by tanker from the Persian Gulf towards the Suez Canal or Sumed pipeline must pass through the Bab al-Mandab. Located between Djibouti and Eritrea in Africa, and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, the Bab al-Mandab connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Any closure of the Bab al-Mandab could keep tankers from reaching the Suez Canal/Sumed Pipeline complex, diverting them around the southern tip of Africa. This would add greatly to transit time and cost, and effectively tie up spare tanker capacity. In December 1995, Yemen fought a brief battle with Eritrea over Greater Hanish Island, located just north of the Bab al-Mandab. The Bab al-Mandab could be bypassed by utilizing the East-West oil pipeline. However, southbound oil traffic would still be blocked. In addition, closure of the Bab al-Mandab would effectively block non-oil shipping from using the Suez Canal, except for limited trade within the Red Sea region.

Suez/Sumed Complex
After passing through the Bab al-Mandab, oil en route from the Persian Gulf to Europe must pass either through the Suez Canal or the Sumed Pipeline complex in Egypt. Both of these routes connect the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez with the Mediterranean Sea. Any closure of the Suez Canal and/or Sumed Pipeline would divert tankers around the southern tip of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope), adding greatly to transit time and effectively tying up tanker capacity.

Other Export Routes
Small amounts of oil from the Persian Gulf were exported via routes besides the Strait of Hormuz in 2003. This oil was exported mainly via pipeline from Iraq's Kirkuk oil region to the Turkish port of Ceyhan and by truck to Jordan.

The Potential Importance Of Syria As A Transit Route

<<<---- To USA and Europe

Blue = Pre-War Iraqi Oil Transit Route To Meditteranian Via Arabian Peninsula And Suez Canal (Suez Cannot Take Largest Tankers)
Red = Post-War Potential Alternative Route Via Syria/Lebanon/Israel

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan....He said it with reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."
'Winning Modern' Wars (page 130), General Wesley Clark

"Rice will not leave Washington until later today, and it was clear from her pronounced lack of urgency that President George W Bush had torn up previous manuals for Middle East crisis intervention. The White House played down the seriousness of the Lebanon crisis, characterising the death and destruction as the 'birth pangs of a new Middle East'. Officials argued that it was pointless to negotiate with Hezbollah and that only its eradication could create the necessary conditions for a durable political settlement. The crisis was 'an opportunity, not a setback', insisted one senior US official."
Hell in the Holy Lands
Sunday Times, 23 July 2006

"Israel stands to benefit greatly from the US led war on Iraq, primarily by getting rid of an implacable foe in President Saddam Hussein and the threat from the weapons of mass destruction he was alleged to possess. But it seems the Israelis have other things in mind. An intriguing pointer to one potentially significant benefit was a report by Haaretz on 31 March that minister for national infrastructures Joseph Paritzky was considering the possibility of reopening the long-defunct oil pipeline from Mosul to the Mediterranean port of Haifa. With Israel lacking energy resources of its own and depending on highly expensive oil from Russia, reopening the pipeline would transform its economy.... All of this lends weight to the theory that Bush's war is part of a masterplan to reshape the Middle East to serve Israel's interests. Haaretz quoted Paritzky as saying that the pipeline project is economically justifiable because it would dramatically reduce Israel's energy bill. US efforts to get Iraqi oil to Israel are not surprising. Under a 1975 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), the US guaranteed all Israel's oil needs in the event of a crisis. The MoU, which has been quietly renewed every five years, also committed the USA to construct and stock a supplementary strategic reserve for Israel, equivalent to some US$3bn in 2002. Special legislation was enacted to exempt Israel from restrictions on oil exports from the USA. Moreover, the USA agreed to divert oil from its home market, even if that entailed domestic shortages, and guaranteed delivery of the promised oil in its own tankers if commercial shippers were unwilling or not available to carry the crude to Israel. All of this adds up to a potentially massive financial commitment. The USA has another reason for supporting Paritzky's project: a land route for Iraqi oil direct to the Mediterranean would lessen US dependence on Gulf oil supplies. Direct access to the world's second-largest oil reserves (with the possibility of expansion through so-far untapped deposits) is an important strategic objective."
Oil from Iraq : An Israeli pipedream?
Jane's Foreign Report, 16 April 2003

"The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister's Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a 'bonus' the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram. The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years. The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter. National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky said yesterday that the port of Haifa is an attractive destination for Iraqi oil and that he plans to discuss this matter with the U.S. secretary of energy during his planned visit to Washington next month. Paritzky added that the plan depends on Jordan's consent and that Jordan would receive a transit fee for allowing the oil to piped through its territory. The minister noted, however, that 'due to pan-Arab concerns, it will be hard for the Jordanians to agree to the flow of Iraqi oil via Jordan and Israel.' Sources in Jerusalem confirmed yesterday that the Americans are looking into the possibility of laying a new pipeline via Jordan and Israel. (There is also a pipeline running via Syria that has not been used in some three decades.) Iraqi oil is now being transported via Turkey to a small Mediterranean port near the Syrian border."
U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan
Haaretz, 1 August 2007

"Iraqi and Syrian oil ministers agreed on Wednesday to repair and subsequently reopen a key pipeline between their two countries that connects Iraq's oil-rich Kirkuk region and a Syrian port. The agreement between Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani and his Syrian counterpart Sufian Allaw came at the end of a three-day visit here by a top Iraqi delegation, headed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The 880-kilometer (550 mile) pipeline links Iraq's northern oil fields to the Syrian port of Baniyas, and reopening it would allow Iraq to use a second export terminal on the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, Iraq exports nearly all its oil through the Persian Gulf. The main export pipeline from Kirkuk to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been mostly closed due to sabotage. The pipeline to Baniyas was built in the 1950s but was bombed by U.S. forces during the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein."
Iraqi, Syrian oil ministers agree to reopen key pipeline
Associated Press, 22 August 2007

Guardian - Comment Is Free
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/michael_meacher/2007/03/the_recent_cabinet_agreement_i.html

[extracts]

The rape of Iraq's oil

The Baghdad government has caved in to a damaging plan that will enrich western companies.

Michael Meacher

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March 22, 2007 1:30 PM | Printable version

The recent cabinet agreement in Baghdad on the new draft oil law was hailed as a landmark deal bringing together the warring factions in the allocation of the country's oil wealth. What was concealed was that this is being forced through by relentless pressure from the US and will sow the seeds of intense future conflict, with serious knock-on impacts on the world economy.

The draft law, now before the Iraqi parliament, sets up "production sharing partnerships" to allow the US and British oil majors to extract Iraqi oil for up to 30 years. While Iraq would retain legal ownership of its oil, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP that invest in the infrastructure and refineries would get a large share of the profits.

No other Middle Eastern oil producer has ever offered such a hugely lucrative concession to the big oil companies, since Opec has always run its oil business through tightly-controlled state companies. Only Iraq in its present dire condition, dependent on US troops for the survival of the government, lacks the bargaining capacity to resist.

This is not a new plan. According to documents obtained from the US State Department by BBC Newsnight under the US Freedom of Information Act, the US oil industry plan drafted early in 2001 for takeover of the Iraqi oilfields (after the removal of Saddam) was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, calling for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oilfields.

This secret plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. However, Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA, who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. As Ariel Cohen of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation later told Newsnight, an opportunity had been missed to privatise Iraq's oilfields.

Now the plan is being revisited, or as much of it as can be salvaged after the fading of American power on the battlefield made enforced sell-off impossible. This revision of the original plan has been drafted by BearingPoint, a US consultancy firm, at the request of the US government. Significantly, it was checked first with Big Oil and the IMF and is only now being presented to the Iraqi parliament. But if accepted by the Iraqis under intense pressure, it will lock the country into weakness and dependence for decades. The neo-cons may have lost the war, but they are still manipulating to win the most substantial chunk of the peace when and if it ever comes....

....in neo-conservative eyes Iraq was also required as an alternative to Saudi Arabia to provide a military base for the US to police the whole of Gulf oil. It was no longer possible for the US to maintain troops in Saudi Arabia for that purpose without risking the collapse of the dictatorial Saudi regime and its giant oil assets falling into the hands of Islamic extremists. The removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia was the principal demand contained in Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1996. This was why, shortly after invading Iraq, the US announced that it was pulling its combat troops out of Saudi Arabia, thereby meeting Bin Laden's principal pre-9/11 political demand. But unfortunately for the US, al-Qaida is now seeking the removal of US troops from Iraq as well.

Above all, the policy is flawed by its extreme short-sightedness. Even if the US were to win its war in Iraq, which now looks virtually impossible, its incremental gain before the oil runs out would be short-term, while its exposure to intensified and unending insurgency because of perceived US seizure of Iraqi oil rights, especially if extended to Iran, would be disproportionately enormous both in the Middle East and maybe also at home. It is diametrically the opposite of the policy to which the whole world will be forced ineluctably by the accelerating onset of climate change. Perhaps the single greatest gain of the west learning this lesson of weaning itself off its oil addiction is that it would end this interference in the internal affairs of Muslim countries simply because they happen to have oil - the central cause of world conflict today.

"Oil ruled the 20th century; the shortage of oil will rule the 21st.... Last Tuesday the lead story in The Financial Times was the latest report from the International Energy Agency. The FT quoted the IEA as saying: 'Oil looks extremely tight in five years’ time,' and that there are 'prospects of even tighter natural gas markets at the turn of the decade'. For an international agency, that is inflammatory language.... 27 of the 51 oil-producing nations listed in BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy reported output declines in 2006. One projection of world crude oil production actually forecasts a 10 per cent reduction in total world output between 2005 and 2015. That would be a revolution..... Some analysts think that the peak oil moment has already been reached; some still think that it will not come until 2020 – which is itself only 12 years away. Market trends and the statistics both support the IEA’s view that consumption is accelerating and supplies falling faster than expected. Of course, if the 'crunch' point is only five years’ away for oil, and closer for natural gas, it has, for practical purposes, already arrived....The shortage of oil and natural gas, relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. Political motivations are always mixed, but oil is an essential national interest of the United States. If the US is now deciding to withdraw from Iraq, the price will have to be paid in terms of loss of access to oil.... The world is coming to the end of the age of oil, which produced its own technology, its balance of power, its own economy, its pattern of society. It does not greatly matter whether the oil supply has peaked already or is going to peak in five or 12 years’ time. There is a huge adjustment to be made. There will be some benefits, including higher efficiencies and perhaps a better approach to global warming. But nothing will take us back towards the innocent expectation of indefinite expansion of the first months of the new millennium."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007

"I fear we're going to be at war for decades, not years ..... one major component of that war is oil."
James Woolsey, Former Director of The CIA
Report On The Annual Policy Forum Of The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)
Washington, 6-7 December 2004
RenewableEnergyAccess.com, 14 December 2004

"Iraq can be seen as the first battle of the fourth world war. After two hot world wars and one cold one that all began and were centered in Europe, the fourth world war is going to be for the Middle East."
Former Director of the CIA, James Woolsey
NATO conference, Prague, November 2002

"[BP's] Lord Browne's said that most exploration for new supplies had halted [in Iraq] when the Iraqis nationalised their industry.... he believed there was a plenty of oil and gas waiting to be discovered in Iraq and that BP should be in prime position to capitalise [after a war with Iraq] because it had found most of the country's oil before being thrown out in the 1970s.... Lord Browne will be listened to carefully in Downing Street because the BP executive team has such close links with the UK government that it was once dubbed Blair Petroleum."
BP chief fears US will carve up Iraqi oil riches
Guardian, 30 October 2002

"Saddam Hussein sits and smiles as the price of his oil - as well as that of his neighbors' (which, he doubtless believes, he may again be able to seize) -- skyrockets, giving him more to spend on his military forces, including longer range ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. He can be confident that within the next decade or two - the period during which most independent assessments of reserves suggest that world petroleum production will begin to decline - the world's sharply increasing demand for petroleum will increasingly have to be satisfied by him and his neighbors, to their great profit.... Although all these serious [economic, environmental and social] problems may at first seem unconnected, Mr. Chairman, they in fact all have essentially the same cause - over-dependence by the rest of the world on petroleum-derived products that will increasingly have to come from the very troubled and unstable Middle East."
James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA
Statement to Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Unites States Senate, 11 April 2000

"... the mideast will increasingly become the source of the world's oil, and this is a strategic problem for us and for many other countries."
James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA
Interview with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Post: June 7, 2000

"In one of his longer ruminations, in May 2004, Rumsfeld considered whether to redefine the terrorism fight as a 'worldwide insurgency.' The goal of the enemy, he wrote, is to 'end the state system, using terrorism, to drive the non-radicals from the world.' He then advised aides 'to test what the results could be' if the war on terrorism were renamed. Neither Europe nor the United Nations understands the threat or the bigger picture, Rumsfeld complained in the same memo. He also lamented that oil wealth has at times detached Muslims 'from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world. Too often Muslims are against physical labor, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,' he wrote. 'An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.' If radicals 'get a hold of' oil-rich Saudi Arabia, he added, the United States will have 'an enormous national security problem.'"
From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld
Washington Post, 1 November 2007

"At the time of the US invasion, Vice-President Dick Cheney and other senior US officials boldly predicted that production would exceed three million barrels a day within eight months, generating more than enough money to rebuild Iraq. They underestimated the desperate state of Iraq’s oil infrastructure after 23 years of war, sanctions and postinvasion looting. 'It was held together with bits of string and chewing gum,' said one US official. Even now the facilities that The Times visited in Kirkuk this week were shockingly corroded and dilapidated. The Bush Administration also failed to foresee the virulence of the insurgency. The website Iraq Pipeline Watch records 466 attacks on oil infrastructure or employees since 2003, and that is probably a fraction of the real total. US officials reckon as many as half the industry’s most skilled workers fled Iraq, or were killed, as Iraq descended into mayhem. The insurgents have used the oil that was supposed to finance the country’s reconstruction to fund their efforts to destroy it. They and other criminals have routinely tapped into the pipelines to steal oil, hijacked tankers and diverted huge amounts of oil from production facilities with the help of corrupt employees.... The Oil Ministry will soon invite bids from international oil companies to increase output from Iraq’s half-dozen poorly-managed, investment-starved 'super-giant' fields from early next year. That would more than double production to six million barrels a day within three or four years, Hussain al-Sharistani, the Oil Minister, told The Times. Thereafter, multinationals will be invited to develop new fields. Competition will be intense, with no guarantee that Western companies will prevail. 'Everybody in the world, more than 45 companies, have approached us . . . the Chinese, Russians, Indians, Brazilians,' Mr al-Sharistani said. "
Beneath the desert sands flows lifeblood of economic recovery
London Times, 1 February 2008

"The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News, 10 January 2004

BBC, March 2005 - Bush Administration Made Plans For War And Iraq's Oil Before 9/11 Attacks

"In a world of looming shortage, Iraq represented a unique opportunity. With 115bn barrels, it had the world's third biggest reserves, and after years of war and sanctions they were the most underexploited. In the late 1990s, production averaged about 2m barrels, but with the necessary investment its reserves could support three times that..... Cheney knew, fretting about global oil depletion in a speech in London the following year, where he noted that 'the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and lowest cost is still where the prize ultimately lies'. Blair too had reason to be anxious: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999, while the petrol protests of 2000 had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious. Britain's and the US's fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely accepted that Blair's commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush in Texas in April 2002. What is less well known is that at the same summit, Blair proposed and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent liaison dedicated to 'energy security and diversity'. Its existence was only later exposed through a freedom of information inquiry. Both governments refuse to release minutes of Dialogue meetings, but one paper dated February 2003 notes that to meet projected demand, oil production in the Middle East would have to double by 2030 to more than 50m barrels a day. So on the eve of the invasion, UK and US officials were discussing how to raise production from the region - and we are invited to believe this is coincidence. The bitterest irony is, of course, that the invasion has created conditions that guarantee oil production will remain hobbled for years to come, bringing the global oil peak that much closer. So if that was plan A, what on earth is plan B?"
The real casus belli: peak oil
Guardian, 26 June 2007

"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of supply are, is a vital strategic question...The Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential Library, Texas
10 Downing St, Press Release, 7 April 2002

AFTER THE INVASION OF IRAQ
"The UK is a net exporter of oil, so we have no need of the Iraqi oil."
British Prime Minister, House of Commons, 14 April 2003

BEFORE THE INVASION OF IRAQ
".... our energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister, Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper, February 2003

"The shortage of oil and natural gas, relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. "
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007

"When Tony Blair became Leader of the Opposition in 1994, he — like Margaret Thatcher — knew little about foreign policy. What he did have was a series of instincts about how the Major Government and the international community had handled affairs in Bosnia, and he wasn’t impressed. Ever the anti-fatalist, once in office he was inclined to see such problems as requiring a solution. And passing across his desk in autumn 1997 were a series of intelligence reports concerning the dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and his weapons of mass destruction. 'We cannot let him get away with it,' he told Paddy Ashdown that November..... As the Kosovo crisis developed, Blair had delivered a major foreign policy speech in Chicago that spring. This address outlined a doctrine of liberal interventionism, arguing that there were circumstances when, though its interests were not directly threatened, the international community might intervene in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. The speech singled out two major villains: Milosevic and Saddam..... By Christmas 2001 the Taleban were defeated and Bin Laden was on the run. Now, the question was, what came next? The American answer, by early 2002, was Saddam. Our man at the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, was, he told me, very surprised because he couldn’t see the relevance of Iraq to 9/11. What had changed, Greenstock thought, was the calculus of opportunity — Bush could now get support for action against Iraq that would previously have been opposed by the American people. In London, Tony Blair was thinking about Iraq in a slightly different way. To him, according to Sir David Manning, his foreign policy adviser, it was the calculus of risk that had altered with the attack on America. The nightmare was the confluence of WMD with terrorism; nuclear programmes were believed to be up and running in Libya, Iran and North Korea, and Saddam’s continued defiance of UN resolutions seemed to confirm intelligence reports of continuing WMD capacity. Worse, the existing sanctions regime against Iraq was crumbling. 'What you could get away with before 9/11,' explained David Manning, 'was no longer acceptable.'.... When war came it was the 'coalition of the willing'. Bush had phoned Blair two days earlier to tell him that Britain could stand aside if it meant saving Blair’s premiership. 'I said rather than lose your Government,' Bush told me, 'be passive, you know we’ll go without you if need be.' Blair refused. I asked him why. His answer was impassioned. 'Because I think this is the most fundamental struggle of our time and there is only one place to be which is in the thick of it and trying to sort it out.' Some, including Colin Powell, have subsequently criticised Blair for never really facing Bush down. I put Powell’s words to Blair. 'It wasn’t a bargaining chip for me,' he replied. 'I wasn’t in a position where I was negotiating with him (Bush) in order to get him to do something different. In my view if it wasn’t clear that the whole nature of the way Saddam was dealing with this issue had changed I was in favour of military action. And, I am afraid, in one sense it is worse than people think in so far as my position is concerned. I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now.'”
Tony Blair: The war? I believed in it, I believed in it then, I believe in it now
London Times, 17 November 2007

"Tony Blair has admitted for the first time that he ignored the pleas of his aides and ministers to deter President Bush from waging war on Iraq because he believed that America was doing the right thing. And he has acknowledged that he turned down a last-ditch offer from Mr Bush to pull Britain out of the conflict. He has also revealed that he wishes he had published the full reports from the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) instead of the infamous September dossier about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that so damaged him, and was almost certainly one of the factors that contributed to him leaving office sooner than he wanted. In frank remarks in a BBC documentary, Mr Blair confirmed openly the belief of many of his closest supporters that he never used his position as America’s strongest ally to try to force Mr Bush down the diplomatic rather than the military route....In return for promising Mr Blair that he would try to help get a second resolution at the UN, he also won Mr Blair’s pledge that if he got 'stuck' in the UN, war would be the only way out. Mr Blair later suggested that Mr Bush tried for a second resolution as a 'favour' to him."
Tony Blair: ‘I wanted war – it was the right thing to do’
London Times, 17 November 2007

"Former House Speaker [and Republican] Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging a 'phony war' on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001.

A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil...."
Gingrich says war on terror 'phony'
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3 August 2007

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

Ex-CIA Chief Predicted 'Peak' Oil Crisis In 1999 CFR Paper

"Now most Americans accept seven damning facts: (1) President Bush did little or nothing about terrorism before 9/11, (2) there was no Iraqi threat to the United States, (3) the Bush administration began plotting to invade Iraq early in their term, well before 9/11, (4) there is no evidence of an Iraqi hand in 9/11, or of any significant support to al Qaeda, (5) there were no weapons of mass destruction and the White House and Pentagon justified their claims about WMD by citing phony evidence from Iraqi exiles to whom they paid millions of dollars, (6) the Bush administration had no real plan to administer Iraq after the invasion, and (7) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored professional military advice and sent too few troops to Iraq to protect our forces.... There is at least one momentous error that is inescapable: President Bush has sowed the seeds of current and future terrorism against the United States by his needless, counterproductive, deceitful invasion of Iraq.... It pains me that so much of what I wrote in this book is coming to pass.... It is a war we are losing, as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some even develop a respect for the jihadist movement."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Foreword To The Paperback Edition
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004

"On the morning of the 12th [September 2001], DOD's [Department of Defense] focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda. CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said, for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, with out a state sponsor - Iraq must have been helping them. I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he had said in April, we must go after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back. By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq.'... Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he said, had better targets. At first I thought he was joking. But he was serious and the President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004

"Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. 'Look', he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do and all .... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way....' 'Look into Iraq, Saddam,' the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open. Paul Kurtz walked in, passing the President on the way out. Seeing our expressions, he asked, 'Geez, what happened here.' 'Wolfowitz got to him, ' Lisa said shaking her head."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004

Iran Too

"Q: And what are the stakes here? The diplomatic effort has been going on for a long time and it has not worked. In fact, Iran has gone in the other direction. So what are the stakes here?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, remember where Iran sits. It's important to backup I think for a minute and set aside the nuclear question, just look at what Iran represents in terms of their physical location. They occupy one whole side of the Persian Gulf, clearly have the capacity to influence the world's supply of oil, about 20 percent of the daily production comes out through the Straits of Hormuz."
Interview of US Vice President Dick Cheney
ABC News (Australia), 23 February 2007

Gulf Oil
Post Berlin War Era

"For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
Dick Cheney, Chief Executive of Halliburton, now Vice President of the United States
Speech at London Institute of Petroleum, Autumn Lunch 1999

"Optimists about world oil reserves, such as the Department of Energy, are getting increasingly lonely. The International Energy Agency now says that world production outside the Middle Eastern Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) will peak in 1999 and world production overall will peak between 2010 and 2020. This projection is supported by influential recent articles in Science and Scientific American. Some knowledgeable academic and industry voices put the date that world production will peak even sooner—within the next five or six years. The optimists who project large reserve quantities of over one trillion barrels tend to base their numbers on one of three things: inclusion of heavy oil and tar sands, the exploitation of which will entail huge economic and environmental costs; puffery by opec nations lobbying for higher production quotas within the cartel; or assumptions about new drilling technologies that may accelerate production but are unlikely to expand reserves. Once production peaks, even though exhaustion of world reserves will still be many years away, prices will begin to rise sharply. This trend will be exacerbated by increased demand in the developing world....."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"The United States cannot afford to wait for the next energy crisis to marshal its intellectual and industrial resources.... Our growing dependence on increasingly scarce Middle Eastern oil is a fool's game—there is no way for the rest of the world to win. Our losses may come suddenly through war, steadily through price increases, agonizingly through developing-nation poverty, relentlessly through climate change—or through all of the above."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power... The group was never secret about its aims. In its 1998 open letter to Clinton, the group openly advocated unilateral U.S. action against Iraq.... Of the 18 people who signed the letter, 10 are now in the Bush administration. As well as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they include Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ... "
Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?
ABC News, 10 March 2003

"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding..... It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard."
Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, 26 January 1998
Signed by: Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber., Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick

"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
US Ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright,
in response to a question about the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children
as a result of US/UK pressured international sanctions against Iraq
CBS-TV '60 Minutes', 15 May 1996

The Occupation Of Saudi Arabia

"....[After the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait] President Bush was hesitant about how America should respond. His foreign policy alter ego, Secretary of State Jim Baker, and his Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, were reluctant to act. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, thought that Iraq had just changed the strategic equation in a way that could not be permitted. So did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two argued that nothing stood between the advance of units of the Iraqi army in Kuwait and the immense Saudi oil fields. If we did nothing in response to Iraq's seizing Kuwait, Saddam Hussein would think that he could get away with seizing the Saudis' eastern oil fields. If that happened, Baghdad would control most of the world's readily available oil. They could dictate to America. Reluctantly, Bush and his team decided that they needed to defend the Saudi oil fields, and do so quickly. They needed Saudi permission for the defensive deployment, but there were some in the Pentagon and White House who thought U.S. forces needed to protect the Saudi oil with or without Saudi approval. The mission to persuade the Saudi King to accept U.S forces was given to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He assembled a small team, including Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Central Command head Norman Schwarzkopf, Sandy Charles of the NSC, and me, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs... Cheney concluded the presentation, promising that U.S forces would come only to defend the Kingdom. President Bush wanted the King to know that he had the President's word that the U.S. forces would leave as soon as the threat was over, or whenever ordered to do so by the King. ..... Unknown to the Americans at the time, the intelligence chief, Prince Turki, had been approached by the Saudi who had recruited Arabs to fight in the Afghan War against the Soviets, Usama Bin Laden........ When Kuwait was invaded, he offered to make them available to the King to defend Saudi Arabia, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. After we left the palace, perhaps bin Laden was told of the King's decision. His help would not be required. He could not believe it; letting nonbelievers into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques was against the beliefs of the Wahhabist branch of Islam. Large numbers of American military in the Kingdom would violate Islam, the construction magnate's son thought. They would never leave."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 3, Unfinished Mission, Unintended Consequences
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004

"For just so long Kuwait, a small country at the head of the Persian Gulf, had been set free and independent from its long-time British protector. And during that time Kuwait had developed its oil fields and become immensely rich. Saddam Hussein claimed that Kuwait was part of Iraq. To have and to hold it would put him on the way to achieving something that the Soviets had yearned for right after the Second War and been denied by the intervention of the United Nations, which was to be sovereign of the Gulf - and so, as Churchill foresaw and warned about, soon to be able to conquer Europe without a war by possessing 60% of the oil Western Europe lived by and so be able to dictate to countries like Britain, France, Germany, that they should abandon their precious democratic ways and get themselves governments friendly to Iraq.....[Following Saddam's invasion of Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is - called a dawn meeting of the National Security Council at which the likely commander of any military action, one General Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the United States might fight for Saudi Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the press there was no thought of American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted to impose a total embargo on Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half day out to keep a promise to the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in Aspen, Colorado, a resort town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting fettle than all but one of his own advisers. She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia from invasion later on. ..... What so swiftly transformed the views and policy of the United States and the onlooking allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi Arabia, that once he held Kuwait there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC Online, 24 June 2002

"Energy is vital to a country's security and material well-being. A state unable to provide its people with adequate energy supplies or desiring added leverage over other people often resorts to force. Consider Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, driven by his desire to control more of the world's oil reserves, and the international response to this threat. The underlying goal of the U.N. force [in the 1991 Gulf war], which included 500,000 American troops, was to ensure continued and unfettered access to petroleum...."
Richard G. Lugar and R. James Woolsey (Former Director of the CIA)
The New Petroleum - Foreign Affairs January/February 1999

"We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy."
Dick Cheney, US Secretary of Defense 1990
New York Times, 24 February 2006

"America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations in Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks. The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq. Withdrawal of 'infidel' American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was 'irrelevant'.... Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military 'footprint' in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of 'infidels' in the birthplace of Islam. That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks. Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been 'dictated' by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was 'irrelevant', there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia."
America to withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"America's announcement of its intention to withdraw its military bases from Saudi Arabia [following the moving of US troops into Iraq] answers Osama bin Laden's most persistent demand. More than any other cause it was the presence of 'crusader' forces in the land of Islam's holiest sites - Mecca and Medina - that turned bin Laden from Afghan jihadi [and US ally] into an international terrorist [and US opponent]. A wealthy Saudi with royal connections, bin Laden fell out with the House of Saud largely because it permitted US bases in the country. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered his own forces to the Saudi regime to help expel the Iraqis from the Gulf. He was enraged when the Saudi royal family turned instead to Washington and more than 500,000 US troops were sent. The same year the Americans arrived, bin Laden fled Saudi - where he faced house arrest - and established his base in Sudan. He and his al-Qa'eda forces moved to Afghanistan in 1996, issuing the first of his international fatwas through the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. After railing against the persecution of Muslims around the world, bin Laden stated: 'The latest and greatest of these aggressions incurred by Muslims since the death of the Prophet … is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places - the foundation of the House of Islam, the place of the revelation, the source of the message and the place of the noble Ka'ba, the Qiblah of Muslims, by the armies of the American Crusaders and their allies. We bemoan this and can only say 'No power and power acquiring except through Allah'. '.... The US withdrawal from Saudi will not be enough to satisfy bin Laden or his followers. It may, however, make life easier for the Saudi regime, which has been struggling to quell growing dissent within the kingdom over the presence of 'infidel' soldiers."
Bin Laden's main demand is met
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"A defector from Osama bin Laden's terrorist army has given an American court rare details of how the group works. A secret informant said the Saudi multi-millionaire's organisation was helped by the Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and the Sudanese government. Giving evidence at the trial of four men accused of the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, Jamal Ahmed Fadl said he had been one of the earliest members of al Qaeda - 'The Base'.Fadl, whose identity was kept secret until he went into the witness box, has been working with American intelligence as an informer since 1996. The 38-year-old Sudanese former militant told the court in New York that he joined bin Laden in 1989 when he decided to set up al Qaeda following the defeat of Soviet forces by Islamic militants in Afghanistan. Fadl quoted bin Laden's vow to end the presence of American troops in his Saudi homeland, quoting the fugitive terrorist as saying: 'We have to cut the head off the snake and stop them.' Fadl told the jury.'The snake is America.' He described the political structure of al Qaeda, which he said was involved in operations from Chechnya to Yemen. He said bin Laden moved his headquarters to Sudan in 1989 and in 1991 declared war on America after it established bases in Saudi Arabia. He was incensed by the presence of 'infidels' on territory sacred to Muslims. Fadl told the court: 'He said, 'They can't let the American army stay in the Gulf, taking our oil, taking our money. We have to do something to take them out. We have to fight them'."
Bin Laden 'wanted to behead the US snake'
Daily Telegraph, 19 June 2001

"The London cell had a vital part to play. Allegedly led by Fawwaz, its primary role was to spread bin Laden's message around the world, usually through Arab media outlets, a large number of which are based in London. In 1996 he received and distributed bin Laden's 'declaration of jihad against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy mosques'. In February 1998, following a flurry of calls from bin Laden's satellite phone, Fawwaz arranged for the publication of a fatwa on all Americans, issued in the name of the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders."
Worldwide trail of bloodshed that leads to suburban London
Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2001

"During the 1980s, resistance fighters in Afghanistan developed a world-wide recruitment and support network with the aid of the USA, Saudi Arabia and other states. After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, this network, which equipped, trained and funded thousands of Muslim fighters, came under the control of Osama bin Laden..... After graduation, Bin Laden became deeply religious. His exact date of arrival in Pakistan or Afghanistan remains disputed but some Western intelligence agencies place it in the early 1980s. Azzam and Prince Turki bin Faisal bin Abdelaziz, chief of security of Saudi Arabia, were his early mentors, and later Dr Ayman Zawahiri, became his religious mentor. In 1982-1984 Azzam founded Maktab al Khidmatlil-mujahidin al-Arab (MaK), known commonly as the Afghan bureau. As MaK's principal financier, Bin Laden was considered the deputy to Azzam, the leader of MaK. Other leaders included Abdul Muizz, Abu Ayman, Abu Sayyaf, Samir Abdul Motaleb and Mohammad Yusuff Abass. At the height of the foreign Arab and Muslim influx into Pakistan-Afghanistan from 1984-1986, Bin Laden spent time traveling widely and raising funds in the Arab world. He recruited several thousand Arab and Muslim youths to fight the Soviet Union, and MaK channeled several billion dollars' worth of Western governmental financial and material resources for the Afghan jihad. MaK worked closely with Pakistan, especially the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the Saudi government and Egyptian governments, and the vast Muslim Brotherhood network.....At the end of the campaign Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia where he helped Saudi Arabia to create the first jihad group in South Yemen under the leadership of Tariq al Fadli. After Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the failure of Saudi rulers to honor their pledge to expel foreign troops when the Iraqi threat diminished led Bin Laden to start a campaign against the Saudi royal house. He claimed the Saudi rulers were false Muslims and it was necessary to install a true Islamic state in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime deported him in 1992 and revoked his citizenship in 1994. Meanwhile, the National Islamic Front, led by Hasan al Turabi, came to power in Sudan and sent a delegation to Pakistan. Bin Laden had moved his infrastructure of well-trained and experienced fighters from Pakistan to Sudan beginning in 1989 and remained there until international pressure forced him to return to Afghanistan."
'Blowback'
Jane's Intelligence Review, 1 August 2001

Gulf Oil
Cold War Era

"In light of the subsequent history of Iraq, it seems almost unthinkable that 30 years ago Britain sold millions of pounds of military equipment to the country's Baathist government. Foreign Office papers, just released by the National Archives in London, show that defence sales to Iraq in 1976 amounted to an estimated £70m. At this time, Saddam Hussein was the de facto leader of Iraq - taking on a more prominent role than the ageing president, Gen Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr - before formally taking power in 1979. ....in April 1976 - a month after the Memorandum of Understanding was signed - a note from the British foreign and defence secretaries seems to contradict the idea of restricting the supply of defence equipment to Iraq. Their memo to other ministers reads: 'The confidence engendered by a more comprehensive supply of defence equipment is likely to have a favourable effect upon general commercial relations between the two countries.' Their note continues with a statement sure to interest critics of the current conflict who suggest that the UK and US intervention was motivated by oil in Iraq. 'We could lose the goodwill we have been slowly and painfully trying to build up since the resumption of diplomatic relations aimed at gaining access to large projects and the Iraqis' huge oil wealth.' It adds: 'In light of the above considerations, it is recommended that we should tell the Iraqis that we would be prepared to supply the optical version of Rapier [surface-to-air missile], the Scorpion family of armoured vehicles and the 105mm Light Gun.'"
UK arms sales to 'respectable' Iraq
BBC Online, 28 December 2007

"The National Security Archive at George Washington University today published on the Web a series of declassified U.S. documents detailing the U.S. embrace of Saddam Hussein in the early 1980's, including the renewal of diplomatic relations that had been suspended since 1967. The documents show that during this period of renewed U.S. support for Saddam, he had invaded his neighbor (Iran), had long-range nuclear aspirations that would 'probably' include 'an eventual nuclear weapon capability,' harbored known terrorists in Baghdad, abused the human rights of his citizens, and possessed and used chemical weapons on Iranians and his own people. The U.S. response was to renew ties, to provide intelligence and aid to ensure Iraq would not be defeated by Iran, and to send a high-level presidential envoy named Donald Rumsfeld to shake hands with Saddam (20 December 1983). The declassified documents posted today include the briefing materials and diplomatic reporting on two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, reports on Iraqi chemical weapons use concurrent with the Reagan administration's decision to support Iraq, and decision directives signed by President Reagan that reveal the specific U.S. priorities for the region [which included] preserving access to oil...."
U.S. DOCUMENTS SHOW EMBRACE OF SADDAM HUSSEIN IN EARLY 1980s
DESPITE CHEMICAL WEAPONS, EXTERNAL AGGRESSION, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
US National Security Archive, George Washington University, Press Release 25 February 2003

"An investigation of US corporate sales to Iraq, headed by Republican Congressman Donald Riegle and published in May 1994, listed some of the biological agents exported by US corporations with George Bush's approval as head of the CIA and later as vice-president under Ronald Reagan. The Iraqis are reported to have acquired stocks of anthrax, brucellosis, gas gangrene, E. coli and salmonella bacteria from US companies."
Who Armed Iraq?
Janes Defence News, 17 March 2003

"Iraq started the war [with Iran] with a large Soviet-supplied arsenal, but needed additional weaponry as the conflict wore on. Initially, Iraq advanced far into Iranian territory, but was driven back within months. By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq... The U.S., which followed developments in the Iran-Iraq war with extraordinary intensity, had intelligence confirming Iran's accusations, and describing Iraq's 'almost daily' use of chemical weapons, concurrent with its policy review and decision to support Iraq in the war... Following further high-level policy review, Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 114, dated November 26, 1983, concerned specifically with U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq war.... It states, 'Because of the real and psychological impact of a curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf on the international economic system, we must assure our readiness to deal promptly with actions aimed at disrupting that traffic.' It does not mention chemical weapons.... Soon thereafter, Donald Rumsfeld .... was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish 'direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,'..."
Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984
US National Security Archive, George Washington University, 25 February 2003

"A victory by Tehran, which seemed imminent, would pose a major threat to US interests in the Gulf, such as access to the region's oil.... For the next five years, Washington would quietly ensure that Saddam received all the military equipment he needed to stave off defeat, even precursor chemicals that could be used against Iranian soldiers and Kurdish civilians.... How much more of this intimate relationship Saddam will recall when he gets a public forum is undoubtedly a concern of many current and past administration figures.... the CIA was tasked to ensure that its former charge not run short of either weapons or vitally needed intelligence on the disposition of Iranian forces, a task, according to a 1995 affidavit by Teicher, that then CIA director William Casey took to with abandon. Casey, for example, used a Chilean arms company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that he thought would be particularly effective against Iranian 'human wave' tactics. In addition to the credit, equipment and covert military assistance, Saddam also received diplomatic help from Washington at the United Nations and elsewhere in fending off condemnations of his use of banned weapons during the war, as well as efforts in Congress to cut off US help. The CIA was still providing intelligence and other help when Saddam used poison gas that killed some 5,000 Kurdish non-combatants in Halabja in March 1988."
Rumsfeld and his 'old friend' Saddam
Inter Press Service, 17 December 2003

"United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report. While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a [failed] CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.... According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.... Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of 'real power,' according to this official.... In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed 'close ties' with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party 'as its instrument.' According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a [failed] U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim.... during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.... In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup.... Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions. Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End....The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980."
Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot
United Press International, 11 April 2003

"Iraq's story is the tragic tale of a country conceived and baptized by an imperialist power for its own aggrandizement that now may come to a crashing end because of the imperialist lust and hubris of another. The inability of Iraq's current parliament, under American military occupation, to hammer out a constitution that would satisfy the aspirations of all of its major ethnic and sectarian segments — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — is a reflection of its artificial and perennially tenuous common identity. It was a castle built on sand dunes that was bound to collapse one day. Britain carved Iraq out of three Mesopotamian vilayets (provinces) of the vanquished Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I for its own political and economic convenience. Oil, the 20th-century's most prized natural resource, had been discovered at Kirkuk, in the then vilayet of Mosul, before World War I broke out, just as it had been struck, earlier, at Masjid-e-Suleiman in Persia, today's Iran. Britain had to have its hands on the newly discovered black gold, necessitating its complete political mastery of the region surrounding the Persian Gulf. Hence the three vilayets of Mosul in the north, Baghdad in the centre and Basra in the southern part of Mesopotamia were cobbled together to midwife the birth of Iraq. Knowing they couldn't get the disparate constituents of their artificial national entity to agree on a local ruler, the British imperialists imported a king for the new country from the Hejaz, the western end of today's Saudi Arabia, where earlier they had bribed and cajoled its Ottoman-appointed sharif (vassal) to throw in his lot with them against his paymasters. The ruling family of Iraq was transplanted from the Hejaz and one of the sons of the sharif was proclaimed King of Iraq. The British didn't fancy democracy for Iraq in the way their spiritual progeny, George W. Bush, does. They opted instead for strongman rule in Iraq in order to give themselves unhindered access to its fabulous riches for full exploitation. The Iraqis, themselves, experimented off and on with parliamentary democracy — but not federalism — without much success. Iraq was stalked and enthralled by one strongman after another, both during the monarchical and post-monarchical periods. The rise of Saddam Hussein in 1979 brought this process to its zenith. Of course Iraq's ersatz unity came at the cost of wanton disregard, and at times brutal suppression, of the rights of its Shiite majority over a span of eight long decades. Surprisingly, nobody in the outside world ever felt a pang of sorrow for the wilful disenfranchisement of Iraq's majority population the way voices of concern have been raised in world capitals about the rights of its Sunni minority, now deemed threatened. Bush and his neo-cons were the first to pay lip service to the rights of the Iraqi Shiites in order to swing the majority behind their plans for the newly conquered country. But the neo-cons were either too ignorant or too naive not to realize that the majority would want to have its own way, and dictate its own agenda, which is quite a fundamental norm of democracy throughout the world. The Iraqi Shiites have the bitter lesson of history on their side not to put their faith in the unalloyed concept of a unitary Iraq that treated them as second-class citizens and grew powerful at the expense of their resources, while they grovelled in misery and penury. By the same token, the Shiites have the example of the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq during the years since the end of the 1991 Gulf War as a powerful magnet to attract them. The Kurdish areas thrived and prospered in virtual isolation from Baghdad because of the American canopy over their heads. Hence the Shiite insistence that a democratic Iraq must be pegged on a federal system, giving its three constituent units the right to safeguard and promote their own economic and political destiny. There is every reason to fear that the Oct. 15 referendum mandated by the American-imposed interim constitution may well see the Sunnis reject the new draft constitution. Ironically, the Bush neo-cons had woven the veto provision into the interim constitution to conjure up a shield for their Kurdish proteges. Now the Sunnis may wield it to torch the Bush dream of a united and democratic Iraq. The biggest losers would be none other than the Americans, who thought of turning Iraq into the launch pad of Pax Americana in that part of the world."
Karamatullah K. Ghori is a former Pakistani diplomat who served as ambassador to Iraq from 1996 to 1999
Iraq: A nation built on sand
Toronto Star, 1 September 2005

"The Suez Crisis, which occurred 50 years ago, was the full stop at the end of the British Empire. In 1945, at the close of the Second World War, Britain still governed the world’s largest Empire, with an independent Commonwealth of the Old Dominions. The Raj ruled India. Britain enjoyed a strong influence in the oil-rich Middle East and was still a genuine world power, behind the United States and the Soviet Union.... If one had to pick a day for the end of the British Empire, it might be July 26, 1956, the day that President Nasser of Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal.... In 1956 I was writing leaders for The Financial Times. I had been commissioned to write a brief life of the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, a man whom I liked and admired. I had also become involved as an assistant speech writer to Eden, specialising in economic policy..... In July to November 1956 I was a convinced advocate of Eden’s Suez policy.....Middle Eastern oil was as essential, in 1956 as now, to the economy and security of the United States, Europe and world trade. So long as Britain had influence in the Middle East, Britain would remain a real world power. Yet Britain could not maintain that influence without American support. Nasser’s nationalisation of the canal was a direct challenge to the West. Eden believed that the challenge had to be met. Eisenhower and Dulles, his Secretary of State, were not prepared to meet it; at the Suez Canal Users Conference held in London it became apparent that American policy could not be trusted. Dulles promised action, which he failed to take. The shift of Western power in the Middle East should have been a relay race, in which Britain would transfer the baton to the United States. Eden was willing to transfer the baton in August 1956 but Eisenhower, with his re-election campaign much in mind, was not ready to take the transfer. Only in October did Eden adopt the joint Anglo-French-Israeli plan that was indeed a disaster. Eisenhower had made the mistake of leaving Eden with no better option. The world community had an essential interest in the free flow of oil through the canal. That could have been secured only by joint Anglo-American action. Eisenhower decided against such action; Dulles’s conduct convinced Eden that he personally was hostile and untrustworthy. The Suez Crisis was indeed the end of the Empire, but it was a blunder of American policy, for which the United States is still paying a very high price."
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Suez: why I blame it on Ike
London Times, 24 July 2006

How Britain Conspired With Israel And France To Create And Incident That Would Allow The Invasion Of Suez - Click Here

"Fifty years ago this week, the CIA and the British SIS orchestrated a coup d'etat that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. The prime minister and his nationalist supporters in parliament roused Britain's ire when they nationalised the oil industry in 1951, which had previously been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company [later renamed as BP]. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil reserves. The British government tried to enlist the Americans in planning a coup... The crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under the Shah... The author of All the Shah's Men, New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, argues that the coup planted the seeds of resentment against the US in the Middle East, ultimately leading to the events of September 11.... The coup and the culture of covert interference it created forever changed how the world viewed the US, especially in poor, oppressive countries. For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth."
The spectre of Operation Ajax
Guardian, 20 August 2003

More Details
New York Times document web archive - Click Here
US National Security Archive at George Washington University - Click Here

Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran
By James Risen
New York Times, 16 April 2000

"If the 15 British sailors currently held by Iran's revolutionary guards are shocked by the hostility to Britain shown by their captors, it will be less surprising to British diplomats engaged in the delicate process of securing their release. Hostility to all things British is, as every foreign office mandarin knows, the default mode of Iran's staunchly anti-western political leadership. From its perspective, Britain - along with America - is in the vanguard of 'global arrogance', Iranian political shorthand for the contemporary western interventionism whose alleged goal is to dominate and control the resources of developing nations such as Iran.... But this is not just President Ahmadinejad. The antipathy goes back to colonial times, and the long and tortured history of British intervention in Iran. This anti-British sentiment is shared by ordinary Iranians. Its resonance defies boundaries of age, education, social class or political affiliation. In the eyes of a broad cross-section of the population, Britain - as much, or even more than, the US - is the real enemy. Four decades after the sun set on its imperial might, the Machiavellian instincts of the 'old coloniser' are believed to be alive, well and still acting against the interests of Iran. For every mishap - whether a bombing, rising living costs or simply the advent of an unpopular government - a hidden British hand is often thought to be at work..... In 1901, William Knox D'Arcy, a London-based lawyer and businessman, was granted exploration rights in most of Iran's oil fields for the princely sum of £20,000. It took several years for D'Arcy's investment to bear fruit but when it did - after he struck oil in Masjid-e Suleiman in 1908 - its effect was enduring and fateful. It turned out to be the world's largest oil field to date and a year later, D'Arcy's concession was merged into the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC). In 1913, with war clouds gathering in Europe, the British admiralty - under Winston Churchill - discarded coal in favour of oil to power its battleships. To safeguard the decision, the government bought a 51% stake in APOC. The importance of oil - and Iran - in British imperial expansion was now explicit. It was a priority of which Churchill, for one, would never lose sight.... anger over the arrogant behaviour of the now-renamed Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - it later became BP - was leading inevitably to a fateful confrontation between Britain and Iran. Resentment over Iran's paltry share of company profits had festered for years. In 1947, out of an annual profit of £40m, Iran received just £7m. Iranian anger was further fuelled by the treatment of oil-company workers who were restricted to low-paid menial jobs and kept in squalid living conditions, in contrast to the luxury in which their British masters lived. Attempts at persuading the oil company to give Iran a bigger share of the profits and its workers a fairer deal proved fruitless. The result was a standoff that created conditions ripe for a nationalist revolt. Into this ferment walked Mohammad Mossadegh, a lawyer and leftwing secular nationalist politician fated to go down as perhaps Iranian history's biggest martyr before British perfidy. Mossadegh was elected prime minister in 1951 advocating a straightforward solution to the oil question - nationalisation. It was a goal he carried out with single-minded zeal while lambasting the British imperialists in tones redolent of a later Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Within months, he had ordered the Iranian state to take over the oil company and expelled its British management and workers. The company and the British government reacted furiously. The Labour government of Clement Attlee imposed a naval blockade in the Gulf and asked the UN security council to condemn Iran. Instead, the council embarrassingly came out in Iran's favour. Meanwhile, Mossadegh - who often did business in his pyjamas - embarked on an American tour in the naive belief that the US would back him against the British 'colonisers'. It was a serious misjudgment. The oil company's executives were clamouring for a coup to overthrow Mossadegh. Attlee rebuffed the idea but when a Conservative government took office in October 1951, led by Churchill, it fell on more sympathetic ears. With British power in decline, however, Churchill was unable to mount such a venture alone. American help would be needed. The result was Operation Ajax, a CIA-MI6 putsch that co-opted a loose coalition of monarchists, nationalist generals, conservative mullahs and street thugs to overthrow Mossadegh. With the economy teetering in the face of the British blockade, Mossadegh was ousted after several days of violent street clashes. The shah, at that time a weak figure, had fled to Rome fearing the coup would fail. When he heard the news of Mossadegh's demise, he responded: 'I knew they loved me.' He subsequently returned to install a brutally repressive regime - maintained in power by the notorious Savak secret police -backed to the hilt by both America and Britain for the next 25 years.... After the revolution, the Islamic authorities continued to draw on national resentment at more than a century of British interference, damning Britain as the 'little Satan' (the US was the 'Great Satan'). Such feelings were further fed by London's support for Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, despite Baghdad having started the war and subsequently resorting to chemical weapons. London and Tehran were at loggerheads again in 1989 after the revolution's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa (religious edict) sentencing the British author, Salman Rushdie, to death for blasphemy over his novel, The Satanic Verses. The antipathy resurfaced most recently in June 2004 in an incident with uncanny parallels to the current stand-off. Then, eight British sailors were seized and paraded blindfold on state TV after allegedly straying into Iranian waters in the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the 15 currently in detention were intercepted and arrested last Friday. On the previous occasion, the Britons were released following an apology from the foreign secretary at the time, Jack Straw.... The British RAF personnel and marines in Iran's captivity may well be oblivious to the long-accumulated resentments that have provided the backdrop to their detentions. Perhaps they are learning something of this tortured history from their captors."
A bitter legacy
Guardian, 30 March 2007

Gulf Oil
Early 20th Century

"It would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but one of Ireland’s most republican counties is celebrating the life of the founder of Britain’s intelligence agencies. William Melville was born in the Kerry village of Sneem to a publican’s family and fled his roots to forge a stellar career in London as a detective fighting terrorism. When he 'retired' in 1903 from the Metropolitan Police at the height of his fame, he went on to establish the forerunner of MI5, providing the inspiration for James Bond’s boss in Ian Fleming’s books.... In 1903 Melville announced that he was retiring to spend more time with his family and garden. Instead he moved into offices in Victoria Street, adjacent to Scotland Yard, and under the nameplate William Morgan, General Agent, created a cover story that allowed him to gather intelligence for the War Office. He reported under the alias 'M'. In that year the War Office set up a Directorate of Military Operations and Melville was head-hunted for the role of field operative to act as a controller for agents abroad as well as to undertake missions himself. One of his first was to help to secure British access to Persian oil. In this he succeeded by derailing French negotiations and allowing a British syndicate to seal the deal. The company that emerged from the machinations became BP. In 1909 the Secret Service Bureau was set up to coordinate intelligence work under two sections, home and foreign, which became, respectively, MI5 and MI6. As the bureau’s chief detective, Melville set up a register of aliens to track suspicious foreigners."
M: Britain's first spymaster was an Irishman who played patriot game
London Times, 2 July 2007

"At the beginning of the 20 Century King Edward VII ruled over a vast empire with interests in every part of the world. India became increasingly important because it was the second pillar of British power in the world. Moving the Indian army about was extremely important in extending British interests and British influence across the globe and the Suez canal was of course the quick way to do that. It's very important for the British geopolicital position to ensure the Suez canal remains safe and secure. With this aim in mind Britain had become the only European power to establish a major foothold in the Middle East, in the principalities around the Persian Gulf, in Aden, and in Egypt.... Pouring over a map of the Levant, Sykes and Picot personally drew in the areas they wished to see under their control. Their secret deal amounted to the virtual carve up of the Middle East.... [France was to have Greater Syria and] ... the area... known as Iraq with its strategic ports, railways, and oil... was to be under British rule. ... Palestine.... was envisaged as an international zone, except for Haiffa. What the British wanted was the oil of Iraq and they concentrated on getting Iraq and getting a way from Iraq to the Meditteranian in order to transport this oil. So they got Haiffa on the Palestinian coast and they got most of Iraq. ... Unaware of these secret dealings behind their backs Hussein and Feisal proclaimed independence and in June 1916 attacked the Turkish troops... The Turkish garrason at Mecca was soon overun and the sea port at Jiddha seized... In a pincer movement Britain had launched a campaign from the south west to ensure control of the Suez canal and the Levant, and from the South East it was fighting to secure the oil wells of Iraq... In the east the Ottoman area of Messoptamia, which included the oil fields of Mossul, was given to Britain as the mandate for Iraq. ... this was basically the importance of the Sykes-Picot agreement, to divide what was called the fertile crescent between Iraq and Syria, and let Britain get access to the oil of the area and be able to exploit it in the future...."
Promises & Betrayals
The History Channel & Gulf Research Center
Content Productions 2002
Broadcast Monday 14th March 2005 on History Channel - 53 Minutes

"This lucid film [Promises & Betrayals] recounts the complicated history that led to the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. In the words of the former British Ambassador to Egypt, it is a story of intrigue among rival empires and of misguided strategies. It is often claimed that the crisis originated with Jewish emigration to Palestine and the foundation of the State of Israel. Yet the roots of the conflict are to be found earlier. In 1915, when the Allies were besieged on the Western front, the British wanted to create a second front against Germany, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. Turkish nationalism had spread to the rest of the Ottoman Empire and the British exploited this feeling. They promised Arab groups their own independent states, including Palestine. Secretly, the Allies planned to carve up the Ottoman Empire: France would get 'Greater Syria;' Britain would get Iraq for its oil and ports, and Haifa, to distribute the oil; Palestine would be an international zone; Russia would get Constantinople. The next British government under Lloyd George believed that 'worldwide Jewry' was a powerful force, and that the Jews in the new Bolshevik government could prevent the Russian army from deserting the Allied side. This mistaken strategy, along with other factors including the persuasiveness of Chaim Weitzman, led to the Balfour Declaration in 1917, which endorsed a national home for the Jews in Palestine. At the same time, the Arab leader Shariff Hussein was promised that Palestine would be part of a new Arab state. This contradiction has contributed to the ongoing struggle for control in the Holy Land."
(With Prof. Lieven, London School of Economics; Prof. Choueiri, University of Exeter, and other academics)
Britain and the Struggle for the Holy Land
Film Makers Library, Middle East Studies

"[Gertrude Bell] was one of the world's most powerful women at the beginning of the 20th century, a key shaper of the version of the Middle East over which our soldiers are killing and dying, for us, right now.....In 1914, the British indeed brought war to Mesopotamia. From their long-held (since the 17th century) base in Basra, they sent an army north along the Euphrates River toward Baghdad. But here's where things stop looking like an old Imperial expedition and more like the nightmare battlefield of the 20th century. Over three months, the British lost 25,000 men during a siege at Kut. It was, at the height of British power, the nation's biggest military disaster to that time. Iraq was a battleground in the First World War for one reason. As Wallach describes the British position at the beginning of the war, their 'unrivaled navy delivered goods around the world and brought home three-quarters of (the country's) food supply. To maintain its superiority, in 1911 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had ordered a major change, switching the nation's battleships from coal-burning engines to oil. Far superior to the traditional ships, these new oil-burning vessels could travel faster, cover a greater range, and be refueled at sea; what's more, their crews would not be exhausted by having to refuel, and would require less manpower.' Wallach continues, 'Britain had been the world's leading provider of coal, but she had no oil of her own. In 1912, Churchill signed an agreement for a major share in the Anglo-Persian oil company, with its oil wells in southern Persia and refineries at Abadan, close to Basra. It was essential for Britain to protect that vital area...the British either wouldn't or couldn't put together an Iraqi government. In truth, they weren't totally convinced they wanted to sponsor an Iraqi state at all. Churchill favored letting most of Iraq go, fortifying only the oil fields near Basra.... Many officials wanted to pull out of Mesopotamia altogether, except for the Persian Gulf. Bell and a few others, like T.E. Lawrence, argued for making and backing an Arab kingdom in Iraq. Bell's party eventually persuaded Churchill that Arab monarchies with British power behind them would make for a more stable region, cheaper in the long run as a provider of oil.... Carefully drawing a red line across the face of it, [Sir Percy Cox] assigned a chunk of the Nejd to Iraq; then to placate Ibn Saud, he took almost two thirds of the territory of Kuwait and gave it to Arabia. Last, drawing two zones, and declaring that they should be neutral, he called one the Kuwait neutral zone and the other the Iraq neutral zone. When a representative of Ibn Saud pressed Cox not to make a Kuwait neutral zone, Sir Percy asked him why. 'Quite candidly,' the man answered, 'because we think oil exists there.' 'That,' replied the High Commissioner, 'is exactly why I have made it a neutral zone. Each side shall have a half-share.' The agreement, signed by all three sides at the beginning of December 1922, confirmed the boundary lines drawn so carefully by Gertrude Bell. But for seventy years, up until and including the 1990 Gulf War involving Iraq and Kuwait, the dispute over the borders would continue.' With the creation of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq, the map of the modern Middle East was complete. The British managed to keep their royal surrogates in Iraq until 1958, when military officers shot the young king (Faisal's grandson), his regent and prime minister."
Gertrude Bell and the Birth of Iraq
Anderson Valley Advertiser, 26 May 2004

"Less than a year ago it seemed that Indian soldiers might actually be sent off to support the military occupation of Iraq by the United States. Elections have set aside that discussion, and I hope it has been buried forever. Once before during World War I, India's manpower had been used with profligacy to extend another superpowers' quest for oil and influence in Iraq — then made up of the three Ottoman vilayets of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad. Of the roughly 1.3 million Indian combatants and non-combatants sent overseas to fight for the British empire, the largest chunk were routed to Mesopotamia. The refineries of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Abadan provided a crucial reason for seizing Basra. In 1911, recognising the vital importance of oil for the British navy, Winston Churchill had acquired 90 per cent stake for the British government in this corporation. Easy victories at the outset encouraged the idea that the Indian Expeditionary Force could march right up to Baghdad."
Iraq: on duty once again?
The Hindu, 21 May 2004

"In late 1915 and early 1916, a British official and a Frenchman hammered out an understanding for the postwar order in Mesopotamia. Known by their names as the Sykes-Picot agreement, it rather casually assigned Mosul in northeatern Mesopotamia, one of the most promising potential oil regions, to a future French sphere of influence. This 'surrender' of Mosul immediately outraged many officials in the British government, and strenuous effort was thereafter directed towards undermining it. The issue became more urgent in 1917 when British forces captured Baghdad. For four centuries, Mesopotamia had been part of the Ottoman Empire. That Empire which had once stretched from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf, was now over, a casualty of war. A host of independent and semi-independent nations, many of them rather arbitrarily drawn on the map, would eventually take its place in the Middle East. But, at the moment, in Mesopotamia, Britain had the controlling hand. It was the wartime petroleum shortage of 1917 and 1918 that really drove home the necessity of oil to British interests and pushed Mesopotamia [Iraq] back to center stage. Prospects for oil development within the empire were bleak, which made supplies from the Middle East of paramount importance. Sir Maurice Hankey, the extremely powerful secretary of the War Cabinet, wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour that, 'oil in the next war will occupy the place of coal in the present war, or at least a parallel place to coal. The only big potential supply that we can get under British Control is the Persian [Iranian] and Mesopotamian [Iraqi] supply.' Therefore, Hankey said, 'control over these oil supplies becomes a first-class British war aim.' But the newly born 'public diplomacy' had to be considered..... Foreign Secretary Balflour worried that explicitly pronouncing Mesopotamia a war aim would seem too old-fashionably imperialistic. Instead, in August 1918, he told the Prime Ministers of the Dominions that Britain must be the 'guiding spirit' in Mesopotamia, as it would provide the one natural resource the British empire lacked. 'I do not care under what system we keep the oil,' he said, 'but I am quite clear it is all-important for us that this oil should be available.' To help make sure this would happen, British forces, already elsewhere in Mesopotamia, captured Mosul after the armistice was signed with Turkey."
Daniel Yergin - The Prize, 1991
First published in Great Britain by Simon and Schuster Ltd, 1991

"In 'Imperial Quest for Oil: Iraq 1910-1918,' the German historian Helmut Mejcher detailed the policy debate that took place within the British government. 'There is no military advantage in pushing forward in Mesopotamia,' Sir Maurice Hankey, the Secretary of the War Cabinet, wrote to Lloyd George. However, Hankey went on, 'would it not be an advantage, before the end of the war, to secure the valuable oil wells in Mesopotamia?' Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, derided Hankey’s 'purely Imperialist War Aim,' but Lloyd George followed Hankey’s advice, and in the fall of 1918 British troops marched into Mosul. Under the San Remo Agreement, which was completed in 1920, the northern province became part of Iraq, a League of Nations protectorate under British control. Faisal, the third son of Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, was installed as king of the new country. The French, who considered Mosul to be within their colonial sphere of influence, demanded compensation for the British démarche, and they obtained a promise that Paris would receive a quarter of any future Iraqi oil revenues. Meanwhile, Walter Teagle, the formidable head of Standard Oil of New Jersey, America’s largest oil company (and the precursor of ExxonMobil), headed for London to stake his firm’s claim. 'It should be borne in mind that the Standard Oil Company is very anxious to take over Iraq,' Sir Arthur Hirtzel, a British colonial officer, warned his colleagues. Before the war, an Armenian entrepreneur named Calouste Gulbenkian had established the Turkish Petroleum Company, with the backing of Royal Dutch/Shell and Anglo-Persian (later renamed British Petroleum), to explore for commercial deposits of oil in Mesopotamia. In 1925, King Faisal granted the Turkish Petroleum Company a monopoly on oil exploration in Iraq for seventy-five years, along with the sole authority to determine how much oil would be pumped and at what price it would be sold. In return, the government in Baghdad would get a small royalty on each barrel produced. This one-sided arrangement became the model for subsequent deals between Western oil companies and Arab governments in the nineteen-thirties and forties. The Turkish Petroleum Company quickly struck oil. In October, 1927, a team of geologists was drilling near Kirkuk, a hundred and fifty miles north of Baghdad. One morning, a roar was heard in the drilling area, and a great gusher burst from the ground, carrying rocks fifty feet above the derrick. 'The countryside was drenched with oil, the hollows filled with poisonous gas,' the energy expert Daniel Yergin recounts in 'The Prize,' his panoramic history of the oil industry. 'Whole villages in the area were threatened, and the town of Kirkuk itself was in danger. Some seven hundred tribesmen were quickly recruited to build dikes and walls to try to contain the flood of oil.' Intensive discussions followed about how to restructure the now immensely valuable Turkish Petroleum Company. In July, 1928, the interested parties agreed to divide the business between its founder, Gulbenkian, who got five per cent of the equity, and four Western companies: Royal Dutch/Shell, Anglo-Persian, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, and an American consortium led by Teagle’s Standard Oil. In 1929, three years before Iraq gained independence, the Turkish Petroleum Company was renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company, but the Westerners remained in control—a situation that prevailed for decades. As the twentieth century progressed, the United States gradually usurped Britain’s role as the dominant military power in the Middle East. Economic self-interest drove this strategic shift. In 1940, the United States produced two-thirds of the entire world’s oil supply. During the Second World War, however, fears arose that American reserves might eventually be depleted, and Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, published an article entitled 'We’re Running Out of Oil!' When American officials began to look covetously at Britain’s Middle East reserves, Winston Churchill was moved to write to Franklin D. Roosevelt and point out that some people in London feel 'that we are being hustled.' In one of a series of cables, Roosevelt tried to reassure Churchill: 'Please do accept my assurances that we are not making sheep’s eyes at your oil fields in Iraq or Iran.'”
Beneath The Sand
New Yorker, 14 July 2003

"Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first world war. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start. The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south. When Iraqi tribes stood up for themselves, we unleashed the flying dogs of war to "police" them. Terror bombing, night bombing, heavy bombers, delayed action bombs (particularly lethal against children) were all developed during raids on mud, stone and reed villages during Britain's League of Nations' mandate. The mandate ended in 1932; the semi-colonial monarchy in 1958. But during the period of direct British rule, Iraq proved a useful testing ground for newly forged weapons of both limited and mass destruction, as well as new techniques for controlling imperial outposts and vassal states. The RAF was first ordered to Iraq to quell Arab and Kurdish and Arab uprisings, to protect recently discovered oil reserves, to guard Jewish settlers in Palestine and to keep Turkey at bay. Some mission, yet it had already proved itself an effective imperial police force in both Afghanistan and Somaliland (today's Somalia) in 1919-20. British and US forces have been back regularly to bomb these hubs of recalcitrance ever since. Winston Churchill, secretary of state for war and air, estimated that without the RAF, somewhere between 25,000 British and 80,000 Indian troops would be needed to control Iraq. Reliance on the airforce promised to cut these numbers to just 4,000 and 10,000. Churchill's confidence was soon repaid. An uprising of more than 100,000 armed tribesmen against the British occupation swept through Iraq in the summer of 1920. In went the RAF. It flew missions totalling 4,008 hours, dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds for the loss of nine men killed, seven wounded and 11 aircraft destroyed behind rebel lines. The rebellion was thwarted, with nearly 9,000 Iraqis killed. Even so, concern was expressed in Westminster: the operation had cost more than the entire British-funded Arab rising against the Ottoman Empire in 1917-18. The RAF was vindicated as British military expenditure in Iraq fell from £23m in 1921 to less than £4m five years later. This was despite the fact that the number of bombing raids increased after 1923 when Squadron Leader Arthur Harris - the future hammer of Hamburg and Dresden, whose statue stands in Fleet Street in London today - took command of 45 Squadron. Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night 'terror' raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 'with excellent moral effect'. Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used 'against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment'. He dismissed objections as 'unreasonable'. 'I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes [to] spread a lively terror ' In today's terms, 'the Arab' needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job."
Our last occupation
Guardian, 19 April 2003

"The most important news from Iraq last week was not the much ballyhooed constitutional pact by Shias and Kurds, nor the tragic stampede deaths of nearly 1,000 pilgrims in Baghdad. The U.S. Air Force's senior officer, Gen. John Jumper, stated U.S. warplanes would remain in Iraq to fight resistance forces and protect the American-installed regime 'more or less indefinitely.' Jumper's bombshell went largely unnoticed due to Hurricane Katrina. Gen. Jumper let the cat out of the bag. While President George Bush hints at eventual troop withdrawals, the Pentagon is busy building four major, permanent air bases in Iraq that will require heavy infantry protection. Jumper's revelation confirms what this column has long said: The Pentagon plans to copy Imperial Britain's method of ruling oil-rich Iraq. In the 1920s, the British cobbled together Iraq from three disparate Ottoman provinces to control newly-found oil fields in Kurdistan and along the Iranian border. London installed a puppet king and built an army of sepoy (native) troops to keep order and put down minor uprisings. Government minister Winston Churchill authorized use of poisonous mustard gas against Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and Pushtuns in Afghanistan (today's Taliban). The RAF crushed all revolts. It seems this is what Jumper has in mind. Mobile U.S. ground intervention forces will remain at the four major 'Fort Apache' bases guarding Iraq's major oil fields. These bases will be 'ceded' to the U.S. by a compliant Iraqi regime. The U.S. Air Force will police the Pax Americana with its precision-guided munitions and armed drones. The USAF has developed an extremely effective new technique of wide area control. Small numbers of strike aircraft are kept in the air around the clock. When U.S. ground forces come under attack or foes are sighted, these aircraft deliver precision-guided bombs. This tactic has led Iraqi resistance fighters to favour roadside bombs over ambushes against U.S. convoys. The USAF uses the same combat air patrol tactic in Afghanistan, with even more success. The U.S. is also developing three major air bases in Pakistan, and others across Central Asia, to support its plans to dominate the region's oil and gas reserves."
U.S. the New Saddam
Toronto Sun, 4 September 2005

"During World War I (1914-18), strategists for all the major powers increasingly perceived oil as a key military asset, due to the adoption of oil-powered naval ships, new horseless army vehicles such as trucks and tanks, and even military airplanes. Use of oil during the war increased so rapidly that a severe shortage developed in 1917-18. The strategists also understood that oil would assume a rapidly-growing importance in the civilian economy, making it a vital element in national and imperial economic strength and a source of untold wealth to those who controlled it. Already in the United States, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil Company, was the world’s richest person. The British government, ruling over the largest colonial empire, already controlled newly-discovered oil in Persia (now Iran) through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Since Britain lacked oil in the home islands, British strategists wanted still more reserves to assure the future needs of their empire. An area of the Ottoman Empire called Mesopotamia (now Iraq), shared the same geology as neighboring Persia, so it appeared especially promising. Just before war broke out in 1914, British and German companies had negotiated joint participation in the newly-founded Turkish Petroleum Company that held prospecting rights in Mesopotamia. The war ended the Anglo-German oil partnership and it exposed the territories of the German-allied Ottoman Empire to direct British attack. As war continued, oil seemed ever more important and shortages ever more menacing to the imperial planners. ...... To this end, British forces raced to capture the key northern city of Mosul several days after the armistice was signed. Britain thus outmaneuvered the French, establishing a military fait accompli in the oil zone of Northern Mesopotamia. The French were furious. France, too, lacked oil fields in its home terriorites, and its politicians and imperial strategists saw Mesopotamia as a key resource for France’s future industrial and military might. In the months after the armistice, nothing caused greater friction between the two allies than the oil question. During the Versailles Peace Conference, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his French counterpart Georges Clemenceau nearly came to blows over Mesopotamian (Iraqi) oil, according to eyewitness accounts. US President Wooddrow Wilson apparently intervened and only barely restrained them.... Finally, in the secret San Remo Agreement of 1920, the two rivals agreed to give Britain political control over all Mespoltamia, in return for France taking over the German quarter share in the Turkish Petroleum Company. All this before a drop of oil had been discovered in the disputed territory! The French government was not satisfied with its secondary role in world oil, fearing the might of the big British and US companies. In an effort to strengthen and 'liberate' France, the government in Paris set up the Compagnie Francaise des Pétroles in 1924 to take up the French share in Mesopotamia – now a British colony renamed Iraq . Further French legislation in 1928 referred to the company as an instrument to curtail 'the Anglo Saxon oil trusts' and to develop Mesopotamian oil as a strategic resource of the French empire. The uneasy settlement between the British and the French did not end the great power dispute over Iraq’s oil, however. The United States government and US oil companies were furious at the Anglo-French agreement, which left nothing for them! Before the end of 1920, following the companies’ strategic prompting, the US press began to denounce the Anglo-French accord as 'old-fashioned imperialism.' In Washington, some talked of sanctions and other measures against these ungrateful recent allies. Relations between Washington and London cooled swiftly and a young State Department legal advisor named Allen Dulles drew up a memorandum insisting that the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) concession agreement with the dismembered Ottoman Empire was now legally invalid and would no longer be recognized by the United States. Soon London bowed to this transatlantic pressure and signaled that it was ready for a deal that would give the US a 'fair' share. In response, Washington told its major oil companies that they should act as a consortium in future negotiations. Walter Teagle, Chairman of Jersey Standard (later Exxon), the biggest US company, took the lead role as negotiator for the consortium. Thus began lengthy secret talks in London. No oil had yet been found, but prospects had brightened. In October 1927, the British exploration team under D’Arcy hit a gusher, proving oil reserves in large quantities near Kirkuk in northern Iraq. In July 1928, the quarreling parties finally reached a famous accord, known as the 'Red Line Agreement,' which brought the US consortium into the picture with just under a quarter of the shares and an agreement to jointly develop fields in many other Middle East countries falling within the red line marked on the map by the negotiators. Throughout this phase, as in all later phases of Iraq’s oil history, major international powers combined national military force, government pressure and private corporate might to win and hold concessions for Iraq’s oil. The defeated and dismembered Ottoman Empire and its defeated ally Germany lost all oil rights they might otherwise have claimed. At the same time, the three victors of the war – Britain, France and the United States – shared out Iraqi oil among themselves on a basis of relative power. The dominant colonial power, Britain, came out with nearly a half share, while the two lesser powers on the regional stage – the US and France – each won close to a quarter share."
Great Power Conflict over Iraqi Oil: the World War I Era
Global Policy Forum, October 2002

"The U.S. is playing today roughly the same role with respect to Iraq’s oil riches that Britain did early last century. History has a habit of repeating itself, albeit with different nuances and different actors. In this two-part series, we shall review the intricacies of oil-related events in Iraq .... Discovery of oil in 1908 at Masjid-i Suleiman in Iran – an event that changed the fate of the Middle East – gave impetus to quest for oil in Mesopotamia. Oil pursuits in Mesopotamia were concentrated in Mosul, one of three provinces or 'vilayets' constituting Iraq under the Ottoman rule. Mosul was the northern province, the other two being Baghdad (in the middle) and Basra (in the south) provinces. Foreign geologists visited the area under the disguise of archeologists. For a good part of the last century, interests of national governments were closely linked with the interests of oil companies, so much so that oil companies were de facto extensions of foreign-office establishments of the governments. The latter actively lobbied on behalf of the oil companies owned by their respective nationals. The oil companies, in return, would guarantee oil supply to respective governments – preferably at a substantial discount..... Among the foreign powers the British, seeing Iraq as a gateway to their Indian colony and oil as lifeblood for their Imperial Navy, were most aggressive in their pursuits in Mesopotamia, aspiring to gain physical control of the oil region. Winston Churchill, soon after he became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, declared oil to be of paramount importance for the supremacy of the Imperial Navy. Churchill was educated about the virtues of oil by none other than Marcus Samuel, the founder of Shell. During the war, Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary of the War Cabinet, advised Foreign Secretary Arthur Belfour in writing that control of the Persian and Mesopotamian oil was a 'first-class British war aim.' Britain captured the towns of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, capitals of the provinces bearing the same names, in November 1914, March 1917 and November 1918, respectively. Mosul was captured 15 days after Britain and Turkey signed the Mudros Armistice ending hostilities at the end of the war, an event that drew protests from the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne Peace Conference four years later. In 1913 Churchill sent an expeditionary team to the Persian Gulf headed by Admiral Slade to investigate oil possibilities in the region. More or less coincident with Admiral Slade expedition, Britain signed a secret agreement with the sheikh of Kuwait who, while ostensibly pledging allegiance to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul, promised exclusive oil rights to the British. Kuwait became a British protectorate in November 1914. The British were so concerned about the security of their oil supply prior to the war that they wanted to have guaranteed British dominance in any oil company exploiting Mesopotamian oil. The government favored Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC, predecessor of BP) over Royal Dutch/Shell (RDS) in TPC. APOC, already holding oil concession in Iran but not one of the original participants in TPC, was 100 percent British while RDS, an original participant, was 40 percent British....World War I augured another fundamental change in the oil scene in Mesopotamia: assertiveness on the part of the American government for an 'open-door policy' on oil concessions. Forcefully advanced by President Wilson, the policy meant equal access for American capital and interests. The policy was in response to reluctance of European oil companies to welcome American companies to the Mesopotamian oil scene....A rising demand for oil, fuel shortages and price increases during the war, and rumors of depleting domestic resources soon after the war rallied the American administration to give active support to American oil companies in search of foreign oil. Mesopotamia would not be a preserve for the European oil interests, Washington decided. The British initially tried to foil the American efforts by stonewalling American requests and by refusing access to American geologists who wanted to survey oil potential in the region. Britain’s tactics drew strong protest from Washington. The American government withheld its recognition of the Draft Mandate for Iraq on the grounds that it sanctioned discrimination against nationals of other countries. The San Remo agreement, in particular, caused consternation in Washington and catapulted the State Department and American oil companies into action. Walter Teagle, the head of Jersey (later Exxon), became the spokesperson for American corporate oil interests.....The Lausanne Peace Conference held in November 1922-February 1923 (1st session) in Switzerland marked the height of political brinkmanship and skullduggery in oil politics. The 'Mosul question,' i.e. whether Mosul belonged to Turkey or whether it would be included within the borders of a newly created Iraq, was taken up by a special Council dealing with territorial issues. The Turkish delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Ismet Pasha, came to the Conference with explicit instructions from Ankara to keep Mosul within Turkey, in accord with the National Pact ('Misak-i Milli') adopted by the last Ottoman parliament in January 1920. The British had a totally different agenda..... Lord Curzon argued that the policy of His Majesty’s Government on Mosul was not in any way related to oil, that instead it was guided by the desire to protect interests of Iraqi people consistent with its mandatory obligations, that he had never spoken to an oil magnate or an oil concessionaire regarding Mosul oil, but that a company called TPC had obtained a concession from the Ottoman government [in June 1914] before the war that his government had concluded was valid, that his government and TPC had no monopolistic designs on Iraqi oil, and that the Iraqis would be the chief beneficiaries of oil exploitation in Iraq. He added that Turkey would benefit as well. Considering British governments past knee-deep involvement in Mesopotamian oil, and TPC’s monopolistic charter (see below) and exclusionary tactics, it was almost surreal that Lord Curzon would make such statements, including the intimation that he was unaware of oil-related developments surrounding Mosul. At the time of the Lausanne Conference the British, Dutch, French and American oil companies were negotiating the future of TPC in London, and Lord Curzon was kept fully informed on the progress of these negotiations. The American observer at the Conference was bemused at Lord Curzon’s high-principled claims. In a vague, convoluted language, he remarked that the character of TPC concession should be evaluated by an impartial tribunal and that his government had not given up on the 'open-door' policy. In a subsequent diplomatic note to Britain, the State Department expressed its discomfort on some of the claims made by Lord Curzon at the Conference. Lord Curzon also misled and appeased a war-weary British public by making similar statements in British press. The British public was longing for peace and did not want a new military conflict for the sake of oil. Similar attempts by the government at the Parliament were less successful. Some members of the Parliament expressed deep skepticism on Britain’s motivations on Mosul, including one MP who complained about the 'vein of hypocrisy' running through Britain’s policy on Mosul. The government repeatedly ignored requests from MPs to produce the so-called oil concession agreement, or state clearly its terms.... in 1921, when Lord Curzon was already the Foreign Minister, Whitehall was forced to admit that the TPC concession was on shaky legal grounds. That did not deter Lord Curzon from making his preposterous claims a year later at Lausanne. With no solution in sight, and after receiving veiled threats from Lord Curzon on renewed hostilities in Iraq (which prompted a worried France to urge Turkey not to turn down the British proposal), Ankara reluctantly agreed in March 1923 to British proposal to refer the Mosul question to the League Nations for arbitration if direct negotiations with Britain failed. These talks, indeed, bore no fruit, and Britain took the Mosul question to the League of Nations. When the Lausanne Conference (2nd session) ended in July 24, 1923, the communiqué issued officially recognized these developments. The British, however, failed in their efforts to have inserted into the treaty a clause indicating Ankara’s acceptance of the so-called TPC concession. In January 1923, Britain, as the mandatory power, pressured Iraq to forego its right to 20 percent participation in TPC, voiding the provision that was included in the 1920 San Remo Agreement signed with France....In March 1925, TPC concluded an oil concession agreement with Iraq. The agreement, to be in effect for 75 years, stipulated that TPC would be and remain a British company registered in Great Britain....Discovery of the Kirkuk field was the second major oil-related event in the Middle East history after Masjid-i Suleiman in Iran. The event marked the fulfillment of a long-hoped dream for the TPC partners and shaped the destiny of Iraq, in fact the Middle East, until our times. The field, with reserves of 16 billion barrels, or 2150 million tons, lived up to expectations as to its immense size. In June 1929 TPC changed its name to Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)."
Oil in Iraq: The Byzantine Beginnings
Global Policy Forum April 25, 2003

"In April 1932, a British-dominated international consortium, British Oil Development Company (BODC), obtained a 75-year oil concession for territory lying west of Tigris and north of 33rd parallel. The consortium was intended to be a competitor to IPC in Iraq. Ten years later, before it would start production, BODC was bought out by Mosul Petroleum Company (MPC), a fully owned subsidiary of IPC. Likewise, in December 1938, Basra Petroleum Company (BPC), another subsidiary of IPC, obtained a 75-year concession for the rest of Iraq. Thus all of Iraq, with the exception of the 'transferred territory,' came under IPC’s control. Competition was entirely eliminated. IPC was not meant to be a profit-making enterprise. It operated as a production and transport company that delivered oil to its shareholders at export terminals (initially Haifa in Palestine and Tripoli in Lebanon) in proportion to participation interest. The partners were charged a nominal fee for the oil. Real profits were made by the partners which shipped, refined and sold the oil in foreign markets. (Until 1948 some of the crude was refined in Haifa). Until 1940 or so, IPC maintained a strategy to delay production in Iraq. The strategy was aimed at protecting the interests of the British, American and Dutch partners, who had crude production of their own in areas outside Iraq and wanted to shield such production from competition. CFP and Gulbenkian, who had production interests only in Iraq, opposed the delay strategy; but with their minority shareholding, they had limited success. For good reason, the policy of retarding production irritated the Iraqi government as well. During its operation IPC was frequently at loggerheads with the Iraqi government on a number of issues. The oil revenue structure, the pace of oil development, building refineries, participation in shareholding, and representation at company’s board, were the chief areas of dispute. The disputes led to nationalization of Iraq’s oil industry in 1972.... As destiny would have it, Iraq’s oil development was affected not so much by internal conflicts but by external factors. Iraq significantly benefited from the Iran oil crisis in the early 1950’s, but suffered during the Suez crisis. The biggest setbacks were during the Iraq-Iran war and the Gulf War. And now, the American-led Iraq War has brought a new era of destruction and uncertainty. The players in the big Mesopotamian oil game included an assortment of foreign countries and nationalistic oil companies that had a symbiotic and at times incestuous relationship with each other. What lip service was paid to free trade and competition, both in word and on paper, was soon discarded and forgotten when rhetoric clashed with self-interest. In many ways, these were not glorious days for the oil companies. Nor were the governments that knowingly supported the monopolistic designs and sometimes clandestine undertakings of these companies without blame..... Judging the players, the British played big poker and won. For Britain, oil was an instrument of imperial ambitions, and at times blood was the sacrifice that had to be accepted – e.g., 2500 British lives lost during the internal uprising in Iraq in 1920. The British camouflaged their true intentions on oil through pretexts, e.g., their righteous claim of being the trustees of Iraqi people’s rights on oil. The Americans were more open in their intentions, although their tacit acceptance of the self-denial clause left them cold and dry on charges of hypocrisy. Lacking the colonial over-drive of the British, and having relinquished Mosul to British control in San Remo in return for the German share in TPC, the French were relegated to play second fiddle in the big Anglo-American grab for oil in the Middle East. The French never trusted the British, and later the Americans, but were reconciled to their dominance on matters of oil. As for the Dutch, they were the easiest winners. Thanks to 40 percent British share in RD Shell, the Dutch virtually got a free ride on the back of the British. At the beginning of WWI, RD Shell acquiesced to British control in order to operate freely on the high seas.....The Turks were the big losers in the oil game. The major reason for that, of course, was defeat during WWI and the headaches that the defeat brought. But Turks, the Ottoman Turks in particular, trailed the West in science and technology, which put them behind in appreciating the strategic value of oil. It is a poignant historical irony that at the time Admiral Slade expedition was surveying the Persian Gulf region for oil on instructions from Winston Churchill in 1913, Grand Vizier (Chief Minister) Mahmut Sevket Pasha, in blissful ignorance, was telling his cabinet in Istanbul that Qatar and Kuwait were 'unimportant desert' sheikdoms that were not worth creating conflict with Britain."
Oil in Iraq: The Byzantine Beginnings
Global Policy Forum, 26 April 2003

How Britain, Not Saddam,
Was The First To Gas The Kurds

"Winston Churchill's finest hour may, yet again, be upon us. More than 50 years after he won the war and lost the election, Churchill is the man of the moment. On the night of September 11 his biography was on the bedside table of the then New York mayor, Rudolph Giuliani; now his bust sits on the Oval office desk of George Bush....There is a certain irony in the timing of this transatlantic adulation. As Tony Blair and Bush trot the globe warning of the evils of chemical weapons, Churchill hardly stands out as a role model. As president of the air council in 1919, he wrote: 'I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisonous gas against uncivilised tribes.' A few years later mustard gas was used against the Kurds."
Churchill - the truth
Guardian, 30 September 2002

"Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq? If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious 'Chemical Ali' -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong. The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier. Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes. Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands. These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed. The Halabja atrocity remains murky. The CIA's former Iraq desk chief claims Kurds who died at Halabja were killed by cyanide gas, not nerve gas, as is generally believed. At the time, Iraq and Iran were locked in the ferocious last battles of their eight-year war. Halabja was caught between the two armies that were exchanging salvos of regular and chemical munitions. Only Iran had cyanide gas. If the CIA official is correct, the Kurds were accidentally killed by Iran, not Iraq. But it's also possible al-Majid ordered an attack. Kurds in that region had rebelled against Iraq and opened the way for invading Iranian forces. What's the difference between the U.S. destroying the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah and Saddam destroying rebellious Halabja? What difference does it make if you're killed by poison gas, artillery or 2,000-pound bombs? 'Chemical Ali' was a brute of the worst kind in a regime filled with sadists. I personally experienced the terror of Saddam's sinister regime over 25 years, culminating in threats to hang me as a spy. Saddam Hussein and his entourage should face justice. But not in political show trials just before U.S.-'guided' Iraqi elections nor in Iraqi kangaroo courts. They should be sent to the UN's war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where Saddam should be charged with the greatest crime he committed -- the invasion of Iran, which caused one million casualties. Britain, the U.S., Kuwait and Saudi Arabia convinced Iraq to invade Iran, then covertly supplied Saddam with money, arms, intelligence, and advisers. Meanwhile, Israel secretly supplied Iran with $5 billion US in American arms and spare parts while publicly denouncing Iran for terrorism. Who supplied 'Chemical Ali' with his mustard and nerve gas? Why, the West, of course. In late 1990, I discovered four British technicians in Baghdad who told me they had been 'seconded' to Iraq by Britain's ministry of defence and MI6 intelligence to make chemical and biological weapons, including anthrax, Q-fever and plague, at a secret laboratory at Salman Pak. The Reagan administration and Thatcher government were up to their ears in backing Iraq's aggression, apparently with the intention to overthrow Iran's Islamic government and seize its oil. Italy, Germany, France, South Africa, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Brazil, Chile and the USSR all aided Saddam's war effort against Iran, which was even more a victim of naked aggression than was Kuwait in 1991. I'd argue senior officials of those nations that abetted Saddam's aggression against Iran and supplied him with chemicals and gas should also stand trial with Ali and Saddam. What an irony it is to see U.S. forces in Iraq now behaving with much the same punitive ferocity as Saddam's army and police -- bombing rebellious cities, arresting thousands, terrorizing innocent civilians, torturing captives and sending in tanks to crush resistance. In other words, Saddamism without Saddam. A decade ago, this column predicted that when the U.S. finally overthrew Saddam, it would need to find a new Saddam. Finally, let's not forget that when Saddam's regime committed many of its worst atrocities against rebellious Kurds and Shiites, it was still a close ally of Washington and London. The West paid for and supplied Saddam's bullets, tanks, gas and germs. He was our regional SOB. Our hands are very far from clean."
Eric Margolis - West Has Bloodied Hands
Toronto Sun, 19 December 2004

"Speaking of biochemical war in Mesopotamia/Iraq, [T.E] Lawrence wrote several newspaper editorials on the subject. In a letter to the Sunday Times of London, Lawrence, using a sharp and twisted wit, spelled out to the British public what Churchill had been privately considering. At this writing, Lawrence had no foreknowledge of the plans of the Colonial Office for biochemical war to be waged on Mesopotamia. 'How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of a form of Colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?' Lawrence asked. 'It is odd we do not use poison gas on these occasions. By gas attacks, the whole population of offending districts [in Iraq] could be wiped out neatly; and as a method of government it would be no more immoral than the present system.'"
A long history of conflict
WorldNetDaily, 31 August 2000

"Britain bears some responsibility for the Kurdish problem. It ignored the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which promised Kurds their independence, and surplanted it with the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey, leading to the division and subjugation of the Kurdish people. Restive Kurds in Iraq subsequently were bombed and gassed into acquiescence by the RAF and British Army. Mr Talabani now looks to the British to make amends by safeguarding the rights of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. 'When I met Tony Blair once, I told him that as a student I had taken part in many demonstrations saying ‘British go home’,' he said."
Kurd who will seal Saddam's fate
London Times, 24 February 2005

"Even in the darkest days of 1940, working in the government bunkers beneath central London with German bombs raining down on the city above, Wendy Maxwell had no doubt the Allies would win World War Two. The source of her optimism was the man her boss worked with day and night, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. 'Even through the evacuation from Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the blitz, the fall of Singapore we never, never thought we wouldn't win,' she told Reuters on Wednesday at the opening of the first museum in Britain dedicated to Churchill. He insisted that the museum did not gloss over Churchill's multiple mistakes in his long career – including the disastrous Dardanelles Campaign in 1915 during World War One and using gas against Kurds in 1920 during the British occupation of Iraq."
Britain opens museum of Winston Churchill's life
Reuters, 9 February 2005

"Citing Churchill to support Bush’s war to rid Iraq of alleged weapons of mass destruction was particularly ironic in light of Churchill’s own record with respect to WMDs in Iraq. As colonial secretary in 1919, Churchill wanted to use gas against the ‘unco-operative Arabs’ in Iraq. He explained, in terms that Saddam might have used to justify his gassing of Iraqi Kurds, ‘I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.’"
Churchill for dummies
The Spectator, 24 April 2004

"Laid waste, a chaotic post-invasion Iraq may now well be policed by old and new imperial masters promising liberty, democracy and unwanted exiled leaders, in return for oil, trade and submission. Only the last of these promises is certain. The peoples of Iraq, even those who have cheered passing troops, have every reason to mistrust foreign invaders. They have been lied to far too often, bombed and slaughtered promiscuously. Iraq is the product of a lying empire. The British carved it duplicitously from ancient history, thwarted Arab hopes, Ottoman loss, the dunes of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Kurdistan at the end of the first world war. Unsurprisingly, anarchy and insurrection were there from the start. The British responded with gas attacks by the army in the south, bombing by the fledgling RAF in both north and south....Adding bomb-racks to Vickers Vernon troop car riers, Harris more or less invented the heavy bomber as well as night 'terror' raids. Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 'with excellent moral effect'. Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used 'against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment'. He dismissed objections as 'unreasonable'. 'I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _' In today's terms, 'the Arab' needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job."
Our last occupation: Gas, chemicals, bombs: Britain has used them all before in Iraq
Guardian, 19 April 2003

"Recently, Winston Churchill's grandson published an article in the Wall Street Journal titled: 'My grandfather invented Iraq.' In the article he mentions: 'My grandfather's experience has lessons for us'. What he failed to disclose was that this so-called 'invention' was connected with treachery and betrayal. Britain which built an empire through cruel, greedy and dishonest schemes now behaves self-righteous, making every attempt to conceal the toxic passages of history. It is therefore worthwhile to scrutinize historical facts to understand today's crisis in Iraq, because history ignored will lead to history repeated. Forces and events that contributed to the creation of Iraq are highly controversial. The Sykes-Picot Agreement, Paris Peace Conference, and Cairo conference are genres of political dominance of the imperial powers, which shifted borders and annexed territories inventing conceptions of dependency through mandates and protectorates. When the British first entered Basra in 1914, their real intentions were to protect the potential oil fields and secure communications routes to India... Britain merged the provinces Baghdad, Basra and Mosul into a new entity, the state of Iraq, inhabited by three different groups of people: Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. Problems appeared as the British administration did not give administrative posts to the local people. Soon imperial order penetrated at all levels. Under the British rule the Iraqis were subjected to pay more taxes than to the Ottomans. They armed themselves and revolted against the British rulers in 1920. To crush the rebellion Churchill, at that time the Secretary of State for War, introduced new tactics - bombing as means of shock and awe. He encouraged the usage of mustard gas stating: 'I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas, I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes'. He argued that gas fired from ground-based guns or dropped from aircraft, would cause only discomfort or illness but not death. Others protested saying gas would permanently damage eyesight and kill sickly persons and children who are most vulnerable to such a situation. Churchill remained unimpressed arguing that the usage of gas is a 'scientific expedient' and it 'should not be prevented by the prejudices of those who do not think clearly'.... In 1920, the Times published an article from the English diplomat, T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia, who gave a full account of the circumstances in Iraq: 'We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil....We keep 90,000 men with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats and armoured trains... Our government is worse than the old Turkish system... We have killed about 10,000 Arabs in this rising summer... How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of imperial troops, tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?.'.... The parameter for Iraq's future was set at the Cairo Conference. Churchill's main ambition was to preserve the route to India, protect potential oil resources and control Iraq politically through the British mandate."
The origins of shock and awe
Sunday Observer (Sri Lanka), 23 April 2003

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Baru Raya: Persian Influence

2008-01-29T00:17:00.000-08:00

PERSIAN PRESENCE IN ISLAMIC COMMUNITIES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA.

A cohesive, comprehensive, and chronological account of the Persian cultural presence in Southeast Asia is difficult, if not impossible, to present due to the diverse and multifaceted nature of the Southeast Asian communities.

Perhaps the most comprehensive study to date of Southeast Asia's early maritime contacts with its regional neighbors, as well as with East Asia and the Middle East, has been carried out by Jacq-Hergoualc¿h (idem, tr. Victoria Hobson, The Malay Peninsula. Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (100 BC-1300 AD)), which partly supersedes an earlier work by Wheatley (idem, The Golden Chersonese). In the following, attention will therefore be given to some of the most striking features of those Persian influences on Southeast Asian Islamic culture.

Persian influences are particularly discernible in the vocabulary of the two dominant languages of this region, i.e. Malay (the lingua franca of the Muslims in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago), and Thai or Siamese (from the 16th century and the Ayutthaya period onwards).

To begin with Siam, present-day Thailand, it is deplorable that to the knowledge of the present writer, there exists no comprehensive study of Persian elements in this language. Modern Thai does contain several words of Persian origin which are in current use: for example, the Thai words dork kulaap or kulaap ("rose," from Persian gola@b, "rosewater"), or angun ("grape," from Persian angur). The Thai words for "cabbage," kalam plii, and "cauliflower," kalam dork, contain the Persian loanword kalam, "cabbage."

The Persian word for "cauliflower" is gol-e kalam, literally "the flower of the cabbage" which is the exact meaning of the Thai equivalent kalam dork. However, the most widely used Persian loanword is the Thai expression farang, meaning "European." Its origins date to the conflict between the early Arab Muslims and their "Frankish" adversaries. The guava fruit, for instance, brought to Siam by the Portuguese, is still called in Thai ton farang ("Frank's tree"; Harris, "The Persian Connection: Four Loanwords in Siamese", pp. 9-12). As pointed out in THAILAND-IRANIAN RELATIONS, these Persian elements in the Thai vocabulary are to be traced back to the time of the establishment, in the 16th century, of a highly influential and thriving resident colony of Persian-speaking merchants in Siam's then capital of Ayutthaya (see Subrahmanyam, "Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation").

Although I have presented elsewhere a more detailed outline of the political and cultural contacts between Siam and the Persian-speaking world, especially Safavid Persia (Marcinkowski, "The Iranian-Siamese Connection"; idem, From Isfahan to Ayutthaya), it is still necessary to address at least some of the most important issues here, since they seem to set Siam apart from developments in the Malay-Indonesian world.

It is significant that since the 15th century Ayutthaya itself has been known by a Persian epithet, i.e. ˆahr-e na@v (q.v., "City of Boats and Canals") among Persian and other Muslim merchants around the rim of the Indian Ocean (Browne, pp. 397-98; Ebn Mohammad Ebra@him, The Ship of Sulayman, tr. John O'Kane). Beyond that, several corruptions of that Persian expression were current among Western mariners and other visitors to Southeast Asia the 17th and 18th centuries (Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, pp. 795-96, s.v. "Sarnau, Sornau"). Another important result of the presence of Persian merchants in the Ayutthaya kingdom is the introduction of the office of ˆaykò al-Esla@m in the early 17th century in order to cater to the religious needs of Siam's growing Persian community. This office, known in Thai as Chularajmontri, was held by the descendants of its first holder, all Shi¿ites, until 1945 (Marcinkowski, "Iranians, Shaykh al-Islams and Chularajmontris"; Yusuf, "Islam and Democracy in Thailand: Reforming the Office of Chularajmontri /Shaykh al-Isla@m").

Persians held highly sensitive and responsible offices in the Siamese court and administration, resulting in a further increase of Persian cultural influences, as exemplified in Siam's royal court customs, selected features of architecture and mural painting, and in the diet and apparel of her rulers (THAILAND-IRANIAN RELATIONS, with detailed bibliographical references; Marcinkowski, "The Iranian-Siamese Connection"; Ringis, Thai Temples and Temple Murals; Aasen, Architecture of Siam. [see index, s.v. "Persian," in the latter two works]). Close diplomatic contacts between Isfahan and Ayutthaya were reflected in the exchange of several embassies between the courts of Safavid Persia and Siam between the 1660s and the 1680s.

The last embassy, sent by the Safavid Shah Solayma@n (q.v.), was documented by Ebn Moháammad Ebra@háim's Safine-ye Solayma@ni (q.v.) or Ship of Solayman. Despite its occasional tendentiousness with regard to Buddhism and Thai culture, this report is a source of prime importance since it constitutes the only extant Persian source on those contacts (Marcinkowski, "'Holier Than Thou': Buddhism and the Thai People in Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim's 17th-Century Travel Account Safineh-yi Sulaymani"). From it we learn that Persian dignitaries at the Siamese court, in turn, served as Ayutthaya's ambassadors to the Shah, a circumstance that was also recorded by Engelbert Kaempfer, who visited Persia and Siam (Kaempfer, Am Hofe, p. 199; Aubin, "Les Persans", pp. 121-22).

Safine-ye Solayma@ni also refers to the religious life in the resident Persian Muslim community of Ayutthaya, such as the public performance of ta¿ziyas, for which we have also a detailed eyewitness account from the French Catholic missionary Guy Tachard, who was present at the same time in the Siamese capital (Tachard, A Relation of the Voyage to Siam, pt. 2, pp. 214-15; see also SHI'ITES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA).

Apparently, these ceremonies were not only tolerated but also sponsored by King Narai the Great (r. 1656-88), Siam's Buddhist monarch. Moreover, from these accounts we can infer that the majority of the Muslims residing in the Ayutthaya kingdom were Twelver Shi'ites. However, it is remarkable that, given the religious freedom enjoyed by Ayutthaya's Persian Muslim community, we have no information today (whether in Persian or Thai historical writing or from archeological remains) on their intellectual activity there: we do not know the names of religious scholars, whether there existed religious institutions beyond those connected with the above-mentioned mourning ceremonies, whether there were connections with Shi¿ite scholars in India or Persia, or whether Persian Shi¿ite culture in Siam was dominated by Sufism and philosophy or by traditional legal thought. These matters would be important to know, particularly in the light of Isfahan's intellectual tradition during the 17th century in what is generally known as "high Sufism" and philosophy, and its supposed antagonism to the legalistic tradition The absence of such sources might be attributed to the conquest of Ayutthaya by Burmese invaders in 1767, which resulted in the total destruction of the city and its monuments, and the almost complete annihilation of Thai literary and historiographical sources, a disaster that also affected its foreign communities, among them the Persians. Thus, we can only assume that the presence of Islam in the Ayutthaya kingdom might have been marked by Persian cultural influences on Islamic scholarship as well. Such influences appear to have affected the mystical thought of the enigmatic Malay Sufi poet H®amzah Fansáuri (see below). The end of the Ayutthaya kingdom in 1767 also resulted in the end of Persian cultural dominance among its Muslims. However, the descendants of some of the original Persian traders, members of the Bunnag, Siphen and Singhseni families, continued to be in positions close to the throne into the 20th century. The Muslim community of present-day Thailand, although not ethnically homogeneous, is culturally dominated by southern Thailand's Malays who adhere firmly to the Sunni Shafi¿ite legal school (RISEAP, ed., Muslim Almanach Asia Pacific, entry "Thailand"; Omar, "The Muslims of Thailand"). The cultural and religious perspective of the latter is directed towards neighboring Malaysia and the Arab world rather than toward Persia.

To sum up, we do have some knowledge of diplomatic contacts between Siam and Persia in the 17th century, and of the stages of the immigration of Persians to Ayutthaya, but we know nothing about their intellectual contribution. It remains to be mentioned that since the 1990s the Iranian embassy in Bangkok has organized several conferences dealing with Siamese-Iranian connections (see THAILAND-IRANIAN RELATIONS), besides publishing Thai translations of classical Persian literature, such as the poetry of Hafez, Sa'di, and others.

A somewhat different picture emerges with regard to Persian cultural influences among the Muslims of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago. Persian cultural elements appear to be predominant in the classical as well as the contemporary Malay language. Several studies of varying scholarly quality have been published during the last decades: Muhammad Abdul Jabbar Beg's Persian and Turkish Loan-Words in Malay (see bibliography) cannot be considered an academic work since it is based mostly on guesswork about the etymology of words of supposedly Persian origin. More scholarly and comprehensive is the work by K¨uæ-Haikal AÚza@d (idem, Va@‘eha@-ye fa@rsi-ye dakil dar zaba@n-e mala@yu, with further references to studies written in Malay-Indonesian), who himself has a good command of Malay-Indonesian. Loanwords from Arabic and Sanskrit in classical as well as contemporary Malay/Indonesian are doubtlessly more numerous than those of definitely Persian origin. However, the frequent occurrence of the latter in daily usage, such as shah ("king," only when added to the names of the Malay rulers, otherwise raja), gandom ("wheat"), angur ("grape") or dewan ("assembly-hall," e.g. Dewan Rakyat, the Malaysian Parliament), may serve to indicate that the Persian lexical presence in the Malay language is by no means marginal.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Alessandro Bausani published a series of pioneering studies that address not only the issue of Persian vocabulary in Malay, but also that of the heka@yat genre in classical Malay literature (see bibliography). The heka@yat genre reveals strong Shi¿ite elements that evoke the epic struggle between the Umayyads and early Shi¿ite archetypal figures such as Moháammad Ebn al-Háanafiyya (s. SHI'ITES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA with further references; Baried, "Shi¿a Elements in Malay Literature"; also Winstedt, A History of Classical Malay Literature, and Roolvink, "Indonesia. vi-Literatures", for a general introduction).

The advice- or nasáiháat genre of classical Persian literature, too, is well represented in classical Malay literature. An example is the Ta@j al-Sala@táin by Bokòa@ri al-Jawhari (of Johore in southern Malaya?) from the 17th century, rendered into Malay from an unknown Persian source for the rulers of the Acheh sultanate of Sumatra. The presentation of its topics reveals a close relation to earlier Persian patterns, such as Nezáa@m al-Molk's Sia@sat-na@ma, from which the author translates generous selections, besides using the Persian expression nowruz (q.v.) when referring to the beginning of a new year. (Winstedt, A History of Classical Malay Literature, p. 96; idem, "Taju's-salatin", pp. 37-38; van Ronkel, "De Kroon der Koningen"; Romanized Malay ed.: Bukha@ri al-Jauhari, Taj Us-Salatin, ed. Khalid M. Hussain). Similar in character, although more encyclopedic, is Busta@n al-Sala@táin by Nur-al-Din Ra@niri, Fansáuri's fierce legalistic adversary. This work was also written at Acheh, about the middle of the 17th century (Winstedt, A History of Classical Malay Literature, pp. 100-101; Romanized Malay ed.: Siti Hawa Haji Salleh, ed., Bustan al-Salatin). Close adherence to their Persian models makes both works appear to be faithful translations from Persian language and thought into an intellectually less elaborate Malay setting. It should be noted that Ra@niri, who was well read in the Persian scholarly tradition, was born in India (on Ra@niri, see Al-Attas, A Commentary on the Háujjat al-Sáiddiq of Nur al-Din al Ra@niri, pp. 3-48). Moreover, both works refer extensively to the topic of the "Just King," as exemplified by Anoshervan (q.v.), the archetypal ruler of Sasanian Iran. Recently, the concept of the "Just King" and its correlation to topics in several Islamic and pre-Islamic literatures of Southeast Asia has been studied extensively by Setudeh-Nejad (see bibliography).

The issue of Persian cultural influences in Southeast Asia is also closely related to the ongoing dispute among scholars concerning the historical course of the Islamization of that region. At times ideologically over-weighted, the polemical debate has focused so far on the questions of the origin of Islam in Southeast Asia, whether from Arabia, India, or Iran, and of the time when the coming of Islam to the region was supposed to have taken place (see e.g. Al-Attas, Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, and Drewes, "New Light on the Coming of Islam to Indonesia?"). I do not intend to contribute further to that discussion here (see Gordon, ed., The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago, with detailed bibliography on that issue). In fact, the vast majority of the Muslims in what is now Malaysia and Indonesia are Shafi¿ite Sunnis. The same is the case with the Muslims of southern India, contrary to northern India, where the Háanafite School is prevalent. One has also to consider the circumstance that South India was also the seat of the Twelver Shi¿ite kingdom of Golconda, which lasted until the 1680s.

Persian influences on Islamic religious thought in Southeast Asia (on particularly Shi¿ite elements therein see also SHI'ITES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA) are substantial with regard to the Acheh sultanate, which was able to proceed to a dominant position at the Straits after the fall of Malacca in 1511 had caused the latter's peninsular Malay successor states to lapse into a period of isolation. According to Hurgronje, who wrote at the beginning of the 20th century, Moháarram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar, used to be called Asan-Use‚n by the Achenese, in commemoration of the Prophet's two grandchildren H®asan and H®usayn, whereas they referred to the 10th of that month as Achura (idem, tr. A. W. S. O'Sullivan, The Achenese, vol. 2, pp. 202-206). He adds that some of the Achenese, although Sunnis, used to perform mourning ceremonies reminiscent of those in Shi'ite countries, although on smaller scale. He adds (ibid, p. 206) that the Achenese used to consider the first ten days of Moháarram as unlucky, but opts for a South Indian connection rather than in favor of a direct link to Persia.

At any rate, Persian influences in Acheh, which had close maritime and trade links with India and the Persian Gulf region, are more apparent in 17th-century Islamic thought and mysticism. Háamza Fansáuri (fl. 2nd half of the 16th century), the enigmatic Malay mystical poet, was the main exponent and disseminator of wojudiya-thought, the pantheistic teachings of Ebn al-'Arabi (q.v.) in the region during that time (for a good introduction see Al-Attas, Ra@niri and the Wujudiyyah of 17th Century Acheh). The majority of modern scholars now seem to hold that Fansáuri was born in the Siamese capital Ayutthaya, (ˆahr-e na@v), although his family background stems from Barus (Fansáur) in north-west Sumatra (Marcinkowski, "The Iranian-Siamese Connection", pp. 27-28; Al-Attas, "New Light on the Life of Hamzah Fansuri"; idem, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri [intro.]; for a different view see Brakel, "The Birth Place of Hamza Pansuri"). Besides his native Malay, he had a thorough knowledge of Arabic and Persian. In some of his works, he quotes from the masters of classical Persian mysticism such as ˆabestari, either in Persian, or in Malay translation (Osman bin Bakar, "Sufism in the Malay-Indonesian World", pp. 284 ff.). From references in his work, it appears that he had visited Mecca, Medina, and probably also Iraq (including, perhaps, the holy shrines there). Fansáuri flourished during the rule of Sultan ¿Ala@÷ al-Din Re¿a@yat ˆa@h (r. 1588-1604), to whom he refers in his poems. This ruler encouraged Sufis and was known for his liberal interpretation of Islam, which set him apart from his successors who were under the influence of legalistic scholars, often from India, such as Ra@niri (d. 1658). The conflict between Ra@niri and Fansáuri exemplifies the issue of "orthodox" or "sober" Sufism, as promoted about the same time in India by Sirhindi (d. 1624), and "heterodox", "pantheistic" Sufism, and broadened the conflict from India to Southeast Asia (Vakily, "Sufism, Power, Politics, and Reform: Al-Rânîrî's Opposition to Hamzah al-Fansûrî's Teachings Reconsidered"). The "purifying" activities of Ra@niri and his royal patrons, however, might have had a reverse effect, because mysticism among the Malays since then has been characterized by a relapse into superstition and even animism (Al-Attas, Some Aspects of —Sáufism, as Understood and Practised Among the Malays, 97-102).

Persian cultural influences are also discernible with regard to the Malay principality and trade emporium of Malacca, a state which lasted from the early 15th century to 1511 when it was conquered by the Portuguese (Andaya, "Malacca"; Muhammad Yusoff Hashim, tr. D. J. Muzaffar Tate, The Malay Sultanate of Malacca). Although Malacca was at least nominally a vassal of Siam, which also claimed the suzerainty over the entire Malay Peninsula (Wyatt, "The Thai 'Palatine Law' and Malacca"), it was able to establish itself as the foremost power in the Archipelago, giving the propagation of Islam in the region a vigorous new impetus (for convenient introductions see Gordon, ed., and Al-Attas, "Indonesia. iv-History: (a) Islamic period"). At that time, Persian was the lingua franca in the Indian Ocean trading world and a Persian-speaking merchant community was present in Malacca. The office with the Persian title of ˆa@hbandar ("harbor master"), known in many of the Indian Ocean trade ports as well as in several parts of the Ottoman Empire, was also established in Malacca. It has attracted the attention of several Western scholars (see Andaya, "The Indian 'Saudagar Raja' (The King's Merchants) in Traditional Malay Courts"; Moreland, "The Shahbandar in the Eastern Seas": Raymond, "Sha@hbandar: In the Arab world"; Hooker, "Sha@hbandar: In South-East Asia"; Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, pp. 816-17, s.v. "Shabunder", with detailed references, and ibid, p. 914, s.v. "Tenasserim"). The office appears to have been known in the Indian Ocean region as early as about 1350 (Yule and Burnell, Hobson-Jobson, pp. 816, s.v. "Shabunder", referring to Ebn Batátáutáa's visit to the Malabar coast in southern India).

The introduction of steamships to the Indian Ocean region by the British and Dutch colonial powers in the first half of the 19th century facilitated the contacts of Southeast Asian Muslims with the Arab lands of the Middle East, in particular with the sacred places on the Arabian peninsula and the study centers in Egypt. Returning pilgrims and religious students began to spread puritanical ideas, particularly Wahhabism, in the Archipelago. Philosophical Sufism in the tradition of Fansáuri and his followers again became increasingly associated with heresy and deviant thought, such as Shi¿ism "from Persia." This constricting development is currently continuing and it affects negatively the general climate of stability and scholarship. To the knowledge of the present writer, for instance, the only university-level institution in Malaysia that teaches Persian is the broad-minded International Institute of Islamic Thought of Civilization (ISTAC) at Kuala Lumpur. At the time of writing, however, the future course of this institution, too, was uncertain.

Bibliography (see also the bibliographies in SAFINE-YE SOLAYMANI, SHI'ITES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, THAILAND-IRANIAN RELATIONS):

(a) Persian cultural influences in Siam/Thailand: C. Aasen, Architecture of Siam. A Cultural History Interpretation, Kuala Lumpur, 1998. Jean Aubin, "Les Persans au Siam sous le regne de Narai (1656-1688)," Mare Luso-Indicum 4, 1980, pp. 95-126. E. G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia. Volume III: The Tartar Dominion (1265-1502), Cambridge et. al., 1984 (repr.), pp. 397-98. J. Harris, "The Persian Connection: Four Loanwords in Siamese," Pasaa [Bangkok, Chulalongkorn University Language Institute] 16, 1986, pp. 9-12. Ebn Mohammad Ebra@him [Mohammad Rabi' b. Mohammad Ebra@him], The Ship of Sulayman, tr. John O'Kane, New York, 1972. E. Kaempfer, Am Hofe des persischen Großkönigs (1684-85). Das erste Buch der Amoenitates Exoticae, German intr. and tr. Walther Hinz, Leipzig, 1940. p. 199. M. I. Marcinkowski, "The Iranian-Siamese Connection: An Iranian Community in the Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya," Iranian Studies 35, 2002, pp. 23-46. Idem, "Iranians, Shaykh al-Islams and Chularajmontris: Genesis and Development of an Institution and its Introduction to Siam," Journal of Asian History 37, 2003 (in press). Idem, "'Holier Than Thou': Buddhism and the Thai People in Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim's 17th-Century Travel Account Safineh-yi Sulaymani" (forthcoming). Idem, From Isfahan to Ayutthaya, Contacts Between Iran and Siam in the Seventeenth Century (forthcoming). F. Omar, "Shaykh Ahmad: Muslims in the Kingdom of Ayutthaya," JEBAT Journal of the History Department Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 10, 1980-81, pp. 206-14. Idem, "The Muslims of Thailand: A Survey," in Andrew D. W. Forbes (ed.), The Muslims of Thailand, 2 vols, Gaya (Bihar/India), 1988, vol. I, pp. 1-30. R. Ringis, Thai Temples and Temple Murals, Kuala Lumpur, 1993. RISEAP [Regional Islamic Da¿wah Council of Southeast Asia and the Pacific] (ed.), Muslim Almanach Asia Pacific, pp. 206-20 (on Thailand). S. Subrahmanyam, "Iranians Abroad: Intra-Asian Elite Migration and Early Modern State Formation," Journal of Asian Studies 51, 1992, pp, 340-63. S. Setudeh-Nejad, "An Interpretation of Thai History Regarding some 'Sasanian'-based Characteristics Assimilated in the History of Thought, Cosmology and Cultural Heritage of the Siamese People since Ancient Times," in: Proceedings of the 8th International Thai Studies Conference, January 9-12 2002, Nakhorn Phanom, Thailand, organized by Ramkhamheng University, (unpublished), pp. 132-74. G. Tachard, A Relation of the Voyage to Siam, Performed by six Jesuits, sent by the French King, to the Indies and China, in the Year, 1685, Bangkok, 1999 (repr.), pp. 214-15. H. Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson. The Anglo-Indian Dictionary, Ware (UK), 1996 (repr.), pp. 795-96, s.v. "Sarnau, Sornau"). I. Yusuf, "Islam and Democracy in Thailand: Reforming the Office of Chularajmontri/Shaykh al-Isla@m," Journal of Islamic Studies [Oxford] 9, 1998, pp. 277-98.

(b) Persian influences in Malay/Indonesian language and literature: S. M. N. al-Attas, Concluding Postscript to the Origin of the Malay Sha'¿ir, Kuala Lumpur, 1971. B. Baried, "Shi'a Elements in Malay Literature," in Profiles of Malay Culture. Historiography, Religion and Politics, ed. Sartono Kartodirdjo, Jakarta, 1976, pp. 59-65. A. Bausani, "Note sulla struttura della hikayat classica malese," Annali del Instituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli [AIUON] n.s. 12, 1962, pp. 153-92. Idem, "Note sui vocaboli persiani in malese-indonesiano," AIUON n.s. 14, 1964, pp. 1-32. Idem, "Note su una antologia inedita di versi mistici persiani con versione interlineare malese," AIUON n.s. 18, 1968, pp. 39-66. Idem, "Un manoscritto persiano-malese di grammatica araba del xvi secolo," AIUON n.s. 19, 1969, pp. 69-98. Idem, "Is Classical Malay a 'Muslim Language'," Boletin de la Asociacion Española de Orientalistas 11, 1975, pp. 111-21. M. A. J. Beg, Persian and Turkish Loan-Words in Malay, Kuala Lumpur, 1982. L. F. Brakel, "Persian Influence on Malay Literature," Abr Nahrain 9, 1969-1970, pp. 1-16. Bukha@ri al-Jauhari, Taj Us-Salatin, ed. Khalid M. Hussain, Kuala Lumpur, 1992, 2nd ed. M. K¨uæ-Haikal AÚza@d, Va@‘eha@-ye fa@rsi-ye dakil dar zaba@n-e mala@yu, Tehran, 1378/1999. [Nur al-Din Ra@niri:] Siti Hawa Haji Salleh (ed.), Bustan al-Salatin, Kuala Lumpur, 1992. Ph. S. van Ronkel, "De Kroon der Koningen," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van het Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschapen, Batavia, 41, 1899, pp. 55-69. R. Roolvink, "Indonesia. vi-Literatures," in: The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 2, 1986, pp. 1230-35. R. Winstedt, "Taju's-salatin," Journal of the Singapore Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 81, 1920, pp. 37-38. Idem, A History of Classical Malay Literature, Kuala Lumpur, 1996.

(c) Persian influences in Malay/Indonesian history and culture: Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia, ed. Ahmad Ibrahim, S. Siddique, Y. Hussain, Singapore, 1990. B. W. Andaya, "The Indian 'Saudagar Raja' (The King's Merchants) in Traditional Malay Courts," Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society [JMBRAS] 51, 1978, pp. 13-55. Eadem, "Malacca," in The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 6, pp. 207-14. S. M. N. al-Attas, Preliminary Statement on a General Theory of the Islamization of the Malay-Indonesian Archipelago, Kuala Lumpur, 1969. Idem, "Indonesia. iv-History: (a) Islamic period", The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 2, pp. 1218-21. G. W. J. Drewes, "New Light on the Coming of Islam to Indonesia?" in Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia, ed. Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique, and Yasmin Hussain, Singapore, 1990, pp. 7-19. G. Ferrand, "L'e‚le‚ment persan dans les textes nautiques arabes," JA 214, 1924, pp. 193-257. A. Gordon (ed.), The Propagation of Islam in the Indonesian-Malay Archipelago, Kuala Lumpur, 2001. M. B. Hooker, "Sha@hbandar: In South-East Asia," in: The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 9, pp. 194-95. M. Jacq-Hergoualc¿h, The Malay Peninsula. Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (100 BC-1300 AD), tr. Victoria Hobson, Leiden, Boston and Cologne, 2002 [HO, section 3, vol. 13: South-East Asia]. C. S. Hurgronje, The Achenese, 2 vols., tr. A. W. S. O'Sulluvan, Leiden, 1906. G. E. Marrison, "Persian Influences in Malay Life (1280-1650)," JMBRAS 28, 1955, pp. 54-69. W. H. Moreland, "The Shahbandar in the Eastern Seas," JRAS n.s. 52, 1920, pp. 517-33. Muhammad Yusoff Hashim, The Malay Sultanate of Malacca, tr. D. J. Muzaffar Tate, Kuala Lumpur, 1992. A. Raymond, "Sha@hbandar: In the Arab world," in: The Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 9, pp. 193-94. S. Setudeh-Nejad, "Islamicised Manifestations of Persian Cosmology in the Javanese Notion of Ratu Adil, and Other Aspects of Statecraft in Southeast Asia," IC 75, 2001, pp. 13-25. D. K. Wyatt, "The Thai 'Palatine Law' and Malacca," Journal of the Siam Society 55, 1967, pp. 279-86. Zakaria Ali, Islamic Art in Southeast Asia, 830 A.D.-1570 A.D. Kuala Lumpur, 1994.

(d) Persian influences on Malay/Indonesian Islamic mysticism: S. M. N. al-Attas, Some Aspects of S®u@fism, as Understood and Practised Among the Malays, ed. Shirle Gordon, Singapore, 1963. Idem, Ra@n^r^ and the Wuju@diyyah of 17th Century Acheh, Singapore, 1966. Idem, "New Light on the Life of Hamzah Fansuri," JMBRAS 40, 1967, pp. 42-51. Idem, The Mysticism of Hamzah Fansuri, Kuala Lumpur, 1970. Idem, A Commentary on the ¿H®ujjat al-S®iddiq of Nur al-Din al-Ra@n^r^, Kuala Lumpur, 1986. L. F. Brakel, "The Birth Place of Hamza Pansuri," JMBRAS 42, 1969, pp. 206-12. A. H. Johns, "Malay Sufism as Illustrated in an Anonymous Collection of 17th Century Tracts," JMBRAS 30, 1957, pp. 3-111. Muhammad Bukhari Lubis, The Ocean of Unity, Wa‘dat al-Wuju@d in Persian, Turkish and Malay Poetry, Kuala Lumpur, 1994, pp. 266-309 on Malay mystical poetry. Osman bin Bakar, "Sufism in the Malay-Indonesian World," in Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, New York, 1997, pp. 259-89. A. Vakily, "Sufism, Power, Politics, and Reform: Al-Rânîrî's Opposition to Hamzah al-Fansûrî's Teachings Reconsidered," Studia Islamika [Jakarta] 4, 1997, pp. 117-35.

(M. ISMAIL MARCINKOWSKI)

2 February 2004

Berdagang Di Internet

2008-01-17T15:19:00.001-08:00

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ITB: Menuju Teknologi Antariksa

2007-07-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

Disiplin teknik Penerbangan di ITB telah dikembangkan jauh sebelum tahun 1997 dan semula bernaung di bawah Departemen Teknik Mesin. Pendidikan teknik penerbangan mencakup pengetahuan tentang analisis, perancangan dan operasi pesawat terbang dan wahana antariksa yang meliputi aspek–aspek aerodinamika struktur dan material, mekanika terbang, sistem pesawat dan sistem transportasi. Lulusan Departemen Teknik Penerbangan dapat bekerja di berbagai bidang yang berkaitan dengan kedirgantaraan.

AALAHMAKSS, KORUPSI 56 MILYAR!!!!!!! BANGKRUT TAPANULI

2007-07-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

29 Jun 07 23:28 WIB
Korupsi Rp56 M Di Pemkab Tapteng
Mantan Wabup Tidak Di Libatkan Dalam Pengelolaan Anggaran

Tapteng, WASPADA Online
Mantan Wakil Bupati Tapanuli Tengah (Tapteng), H. Jamaludin Pohan mengaku tidak pernah dilibatkan dalam pengelolaan anggaran Pemkab Tapteng. "Saya tidak pernah dilibatkan dalam hal itu," kata Pohan, Jumat (29/6), ditanya wartawan, tentang adanya laporan LSM terkait dugaan korupsi senilai Rp56 miliar di Pemkab Tapteng pada APBD 2006.

Menurutnya, selama menjabat Wakil Bupati periode 2001-2006, dia tidak pernah dilibatkan dalam pengelolaan anggaran. Bahkan pada 2004 dia tidak menjabat lagi, karena mencalonkan diri sebagai anggota DPRD pada Pemilu 2004.

"Bahkan selama 2003-2004, anggaran rutin rumah tangga wakil bupati tidak dicairkan lagi, karena ketika itu saya sudah mengundurkan diri dari jabatan wakil bupati. Apalagi dana Rp30 miliar dituduhkan kepada saya untuk kepentingan pribadi, sedangkan masa itu bukan lagi menjadi pejabat di Pemkab Tapteng," jelasnya.

"Biarlah hukum dan masyarakat menilai kebenarannya, dan terimakasih saya ucapkan kepada Bupati Tapteng, Tuani Lumban Tobing yang telah memaparkan masalah itu," katanya. Sebagaimana diberitakan, sorotan dugaan korupsi di Pemkab Tapteng saat ini mencuat. Sementara kalangan menilai Kejatisu lamban menangani kasus itu.

Berbagai laporan pengaduan, seperti dugaan korupsi Rp2 miliar di Pemkab Tapteng sudah dilaporkan LSM Aurel Citra Independent (ACI) Tapteng, beserta data autentik ke Kejatisu. Selain itu, LSM Pijar Keadilan Sibolga juga melaporkan dugaan korupsi pada APBD 2006 sebesar Rp56 miliar dikelola Dinas Jalan dan Jembatan Pemkab Tapteng.

Desak
Di tempat terpisah, beberapa kalangan di Tapteng minta ketegasan Kejaksaan Tinggi Sumut segera menuntaskan kasus dugaan korupsi yang sudah dilaporkan oleh LSM. Ketua PPM Kecamatan Sorkam Barat, Aidan Hutagalung, mengharapkan Kejatisu segera menindak lanjuti laporan itu. "Jangan di petieskan."

Meida Hutagalung

2007-07-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

29 Jun 07 23:27 WIB
Kunker DPRD Sibolga Di Nias
Selama 2007 PAD Nias Bertambah Rp981 Juta

Sibolga WASPADA Online
Kunjungan kerja DPRD Sibolga ke Nias guna penambahan PAD (Pendapatan Asli Daerah) kemungkinan menuai hasil. Demikian Wakil Ketua DPRD Sibolga, DR (Hc) Meida R Hutagalung, SH didampingi Wakil Ketua Komisi II, Hamzah Zeb Tumory dan anggota Komisi II lainnya, Riswan Chaniago, Ongli Siregar, Jumat (29/6), usai kunjungan kerja ke Nias, Kamis (28/6).

Dia mengatakan, selama 2007 Nias berhasil menambah PAD Rp981 juta lebih melalui Perda nomor 9 tahun 2002 tentang retribusi hasil bumi. "Ini yang akan diterapkan di Sibolga." Tapi yang akan diterapkan bukan dari retribusi hasil bumi, melainkan dari kelebihan muatan truk yang masuk melalui Pelabuhan Sibolga. "Begitupun, nanti secara teknis akan kita lakukan studi kelayakan tentang rencana ini," jelasnya.

Pemaparan Kadis Pendapatan Nias, F. Lahagu, SE, melalui kerjasama dengan Pelindo, Pemkab Nias mampu mengumpulkan Rp981 juta lebih, walau operasionalnya baru diaktifkan Maret lalu. Mereka mampu menghasilkan rata-rata Rp10 juta perhari, atau sekira Rp 250 juta per bulan. "Kita telah melihat praktek operasional timbangan itu, bahwa 1 truk pengangkut karet saja bisa kena retribusi Rp496 ribu."

Belum lagi hasil bumi berupa nilam, coklat dan lainnya, dimana Nias menerapkan pungutan retribusi berdasarkan standar harga komoditi. "Sebagai langkah awal, kita akan libatkan sejumlah instansi seperti Pelindo, Administrator Pelabuhan, Dinas Pendapatan, Dinas Perhubungan dan lainnya.

Mustafa Sibuea Dan Masyarakat Sibolga

2007-04-08T02:58:00.000-07:00

06 Apr 07 11:17 WIB
Tolak Protap Adalah Harga Mati
Sibolga WASPADA Online

Memunculkan kembali wacana pembentukan Protap, akan menimbulkan konflik di masyarakat Sumut yang dari dahulu selalu menjaga suasana kondusif. Terlebih-lebih adanya oknum yang pro Protap mengeluarkan statemen dengan ancaman serta mendiskreditkan anggota DPRD-SU yang notabene putra daerah Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah, membuat berang masyarakat Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah.

"Kami masyarakat Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah siap mendukung pernyataan H. Sukran Tanjung yang menolak Protap. Kalau memang harus berdarah kita juga siap melayani karena menolak Protap adalah harga mati bagi masyarakat Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah, baik itu yang ada di daerah ini mau pun di perantauan." Demikian ditegaskan Ketua Forum Komunikasi Masyarakat Sibolga Tapanuli Tengah, Drs. H. Mustafa Sibuea, bersama Ketua Pengurus Pusat Majelis Budaya Pesisir Dan Pariwisata Sibolga-Tapteng Pantai Barat Sumut, Radzoki Nainggolan, SE, Ketua Ikatan Mahasiswa Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah, Mazuddin, Ketua Ikatan Masyarakat Sibolga-Tapteng, dr. Emirtaris Psb, Spb, Ketua Gema Peta Kusnan Effendy, ST, Ketua Hikbar Sumut, Drs. Sarkawi Simbolon, Ketua Ikatan Masyarakat Sorkam Sumut, Drs. Ali S. Hutapea kepada Waspada, Jumat (6/4).

Menurut mereka, masyarakat Sibolga dan Tapanuli Tengah dari dulu sudah bulat menolak wacana Protap. Sebab itu masyarakat tidak akan pernah takut dengan ancaman walau sekali pun dengan darah karena memang pendirian Protap akan membawa kesengsaraan bagi masyarakat, disebabkan dipicu orang-orang serakah akan jabatan dan proyek, tanpa memikirkan masyarakat yang saat ini ekonominya sudah semakin morat-marit.

Lebih lanjut ditegaskan, hendaknya oknum mengatasnamakan pro pendirian Protap berjuang dengan cara terhormat, bukan dengan premanisme yang akhirnya memecah-belah masyarakat Sumut yang benar-benar cinta ketentraman. "Di Sumut sudah tidak ada lagi yang menginginkan cara-cara premanisme yang tidak berpendidikan."

Bank Islam Bangun Sibolga

2007-03-24T11:06:00.000-07:00

IDB Kuncurkan Rp80 M Kembangkan PPN Sibolga di Tapteng

Mar 24, 2007 at 08:31 AM
Pandan, Tapteng (SIB)

Islamic Devolepment Bank (IDB) menguncurkan dana Rp 80 miliar untuk pengembangan kawasan Pelabuhan Perikanan Nusantara (PPN) Sibolga di Jalan Gatot Subroto Pondok Batu Sarudik di Kecamatan Pandan Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah (Tapteng).

“Pengembangan kawasan PPN meliputi penambahan dermaga, jalan colt storage dan fasilitas pendukung lainnya termasuk laboratorium perikanan,” kata Kepala PPN Sibolga Henri Batubara didampingi staf DKP (Departemen Kelautan dan Perikanan) Soedaryanti usai mengikuti ekspos PPN di aula kantor Bupati Tapteng, Kamis (22/3).

Menurutnya, kuncuran dana tersebut akan segera terealisasi dalam waktu dekat ini guna pemenuhan fasilitas kepada para nelayan di daerah itu. “DKP melakukan pengembangan kawasan PPN guna memberikan dan menyediakan kelengkapan faslitas pendukung bagi nelayan dalam menjalankan aktifitas masing-masing,” katanya.

Pergantian Nama PPN Sibolga Jadi PPN Pandan Sudah Diproses

Menyinggung pergantian nama PPN Sibolga menjadi PPN Pandan sesuai dengan usulan Ketua DPRD Tapteng H Maratua Siregar, Batubara menambahkan, pergantian nama tersebut sudah dalam proses di DKP dan telah diajukan ke men-PAN di Jakarta. Diharapkan tidak lama lagi nama PPN Sibolga telah menjadi PPN Pandan.

Ekspos dihadiri unsur Muspida, anggota DPRD Tapteng dan pimpinan instansi di lingkungan Pemkab Tapteng. Pemkab Tapteng sebelumnya telah merespon pengembangan kawasan PPN dengan memperbaiki sarana infrastruktur fasilitas jalan hotmix sepanjang 2 Km menuju PPN.

Bupati Tapteng Drs Tuani Lumbantobing pada kesempatan tersebut menyambut baik rencana pengembangan PPN seraya menjelaskan pengembangan tersebut dapat diselaraskan dengan konsep Tapanuli Growth. “PPN telah dipersiapkan sebagai kawasan bisnis perikanan hasil laut jenis tuna,” katanya seraya menambahkan Pemkab bersedia menyediakan lahan dan fasilitas lainnya guna mendukung pengembangan tersebut.

Konsultan PPN dari PT Perencana Jaya Basuki menjelaskan, potensi perikanan di wilayah Pantai Barat Sumatera Utara mencapai 536 ribu ton pertahun namun yang tergali sesuai data 2004 masih 204 ribu ton pertahun, sedangkan sekira 300 ribu ton pertahun lagi masih berpotensi untuk dikembangkan. “Keadaan ini memerlukan pembenahan yang baik termasuk pengembangan kawasan PPN yang akan dijadikan pusat pelabuhan dan pendaratan ikan,” katanya.

HUT Tapteng: Perenungan Sejarah Yang Diabaikan

2007-03-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

HUT Tapteng Tahun Ini Dirayakan Semarak dan Bakal Dihadiri Mantan Bupati dan Ketua DPRD

Mar 22, 2007 at 08:04 AM
Tapteng (SIB)

Setelah hampir 41 tahun sejak terbentuknya Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah (Tapteng) tanggal 24 Agustus 1946 tidak pernah diperingati hari ulang tahunnya (HUT-nya). Tahun ini HUT Tapteng akan dirayakan dengan penuh semarak. “Penetapan tanggal HUT Tapteng mengacu pada tanggal pelantikan Bupati Tapteng pertama yang jatuh 24 Agustus 1946”, kata Bupati Tapteng Drs Tuani Lumbantobing di hadapan anggota DPRD, Selasa (20/3) pada bagian acara penyampaian jawaban Bupati atas pandangan umum anggota DPRD terhadap nota keuangan RAPBD 2007 dan rancangan 21 Ranperda yang diajukan eksekutif ke DPRD Tapteng.

Kata Tuani Lumbantobing, perayaan HUT Tapteng tahun ini akan dilaksanakan dengan penuh semarak dan bakal dihadiri mantan Bupati maupun mantan ketua DPRD Tapteng sejak tahun 1946.

Di samping itu, kata Bupati, HUT Tapteng tahun ini juga akan dirangkai dengan pemberian nama-nama jalan di ibukota kabupaten yang diambil dari nama-nama pahlawan, tokoh nasional maupun nama-nama mantan Bupati yang pernah bertugas di Tapteng.” Pokoknya, karena baru kali ini HUT Tapteng diperingati, maka perayaannya pun akan diupayakan dengan penuh semarak dan melibatkan seluruh masyarakat Tapteng,” cetusnya.

Di kesempatan itu, Bupati Tuani Lumbantobing juga sampaikan rencana mendirikan radio Pemkab yang akan ditempatkan di samping sekretariat PKK (di samping gedung serba guna) Pandan. Diharapkan, dengan beroperasinya radio Pemkab pada tahun ini, akan dapat menjembatani peluang percepatan program Tapanuli Growth, sebab radio Pemkab Tapteng rencananya akan mampu menjangkau hingga NAD.

Bupati Tuani Lumbantobing juga menyinggung soal mutasi yang akhir-akhir ini dilaksanakan adalah rangkaian penyegaran dan proses pengabdian seorang PNS dalam mendukung program pembangunan Tapteng .” Any time , pejabat dijajaran Pemkab sebagai abdi Negara harus siap diangkat dan diganti dari jabatannya. Sepanjang tidak menyalahi mekanisme dan ketentuan yang berlaku, maka kapan saja PNS harus siap dicopot dari jabatannya kalau memang yang bersangkutan tidak mampu menjalankan tugas dan amanah yang diberikan kepadanya”, katanya.

Ia juga ingatkan seluruh PNS di jajarannya agar tidak mencoba-coba terlibat dalam berbagai bentuk pelanggaran hukum, termasuk judi, sebab taruhanya PNS akan dipecat.” Bila ada pejabat maupun PNS yang terlibat main judi, maka saya akan langsung pecat yang bersangkutan, sebab itu akan merusak citra Pemkab dan PNS sebagai abdi Negara”, tegasnya.

Bupati juga menganjurkan agar seluruh PNS Tapteng tidak berada di warung-warung selama jam kerja, sebab PNS digaji Negara untuk memberikan pelayanan optimal terhadap masyarakat dan bukan justru sebaliknya menghabiskan jam kerja PNS di warung-warung.

Dalam bagian jawabannya, Bupati Tuani Lumbantobing juga mengutarakan maksud pengadaan lembaga perizinan ‘satu atap’ untuk memudahkan proses investasi dan perizinan di Tapteng.” Kita harus upayakan agar setiap orang maupun investor dapat memperoleh berbagai kemudahan fasilitas dalam hal pengurusan izin di Tapteng “, katanya.

Ke depan harus memiliki balai latihan kerja (BLK) dalam upaya mempersiapkan tenaga kerja yang terampil dan tangguh, khususnya menyiapkan tenaga tehnik sipil yang selama ini cukup terbatas di Tapteng, katanya.

Pawai Taaruf

2007-03-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

Seluruh Etnis dan Agama di Sibolga Ikut Pawai Ta'aruf

Mar 17, 2007 at 08:30 AM
Sibolga (SIB)

Penyelenggaraan Musabaqah Tilawatil Qur’an (MTQ) ke – 35 Kota Sibolga telah memberi kesemarakan kehidupan keagamaan. Hal itu ditandai dengan keterlibatan seluruh unsur etnis dan agama dari tengah-tengah masyarakat untuk mensukseskan kegiatan itu.

“Mari kita jadikan MTQ sebagai sarana pendidikan agama guna memberi sandaran batin yang kuat dan kokoh bagi masyarakat dalam menghadapi perubahan-perubahan sosial yang terjadi saat ini,” kata Walikota Sibolga Drs Sahat P Panggabean MM dalam sambutannya pada acara pembukaan MTQ ke-35 Kota Sibolga, Kamis (15/3) malam di Lapangan Simare-mare di Jalan Sutomo Sibolga.

Ia mengajak seluruh warga berdoa bersama bagi korban musibah bencana yang terjadi silih berganti di negeri ini agar diberi kesabaran dan ketabahan. Demikian juga halnya dengan Kota Sibolga agar terlepas dari segala musibah sehingga masyarakat tetap aman, damai dan kondusif, penuh kasih sayang dan tali persaudaraan dan bersatu padu.

“Pelaksaan MTQ ini bukanlah kegiatan seremonial untuk menyeleksi peserta MTQ ke tingkat Propinsi akan tetapi lebih dari itu mampu menyentuh pribadi setiap generasi muslim agar tidak hanya pandai baca dan tulis al-qur’an,” katanya seraya menambahkan tetapi mampu menerjemahkan, menafsir dan memahami makna terkandung dalam bacaan tersebut serta mengaplikasikannya dalam kehidupan sehari-hari.

Ketua Panitia Assisten I Pemko Sibolga Syaiful Bahri Hasibuan SH dalam laporannya menjelaskan, pelaksanaan MTQ akan berlangsung selama 3 hari, Kamis (15/3) hingga Sabtu (17/3) di Lapangan Simare-mare Sibolga dan di Gedung Nasional Sibolga.

“Cabang yang dipertandingkan meliputi tilawatil mujawad putra/putri golongan anak-anak, remaja dan dewasa, tartil qur’an putra/putri tingkat anak-anak, hifzil qur’an satu juz dan tilawah putra-putri, syarhil qur’an, fahmil qur’an/cerdas cermat kandungan al-qur’an, khattil qur’an putra/putri golongan tulisan naskah, hiasan, mushaf dan dekorasi, pemilihan da’i cilik (Pildacil),” katanya seraya menambahkan peserta berjumlah 108 orang terdiri dari 27 orang /kecamatan se-Kota Sibolga masing-masing Kecamatan Sibolga Utara, Kecamatan Sibolga Kota, Kecamatan Sibolga Selatan dan Kecamatan Sibolga Sambas. Turut memberi kata sambutan Ketua LPTQ (Lembaga Pengembangan Tilawatil Qur’an, red) Kota Sibolga Drs H Dahwir Nasution.

Acara pembukaan ditandai dengan pemukulan bedug oleh Walikota Sibolga didampingi unsur Muspida di antaranya Ketua PN Dj Pasaribu, Ketua DPRD Syahlul Situmeang, Kejari Chairuddin Sipahutar SH, Kasrem 023/KS Letkol Harly Suharto dan lainnya dilanjutkan dengan pembacaan ayat suci al-qur’an, pengibaran bendera MTQ, pelantikan tim juri, penyalaan kembang api dan penyerahan piala bergilir dari Kecamatan Sibolga Sambas kepada Ketua Panitia.

Wakil Walikota Sambut Pawai Ta’aruf

Sebelumnya, Kamis (15/3) siang sekira pukul 15.00 WIB Ketua Panitia melepas pawai ta’aruf yang diikuti oleh barisan seluruh etnis dan agama yang ada di Kota Sibolga termasuk barisan remaja mesjid, anak sekolah, alim ulama dari Stadion Horas Sibolga dan disambut oleh Wakil Walikota Sibolga H Afifi Lubis SH MM didampingi unsur Muspida Kota Sibolga di depan Mesjid Agung Jalan Diponegoro Sibolga.
Rute pawai melintasi jalan-jalan protokol di kawasan perkotaan, meskipun diguyur hujan barisan tersebut tetap bersemangat dan mendapat perhatian dari masyarakat Kota Sibolga yang mengelu-elukan sepanjang jalan dari pelataran rumah dan gedung yang dilintasi.

Menanti Kab. Barus Raya: Aspirasi Yang Terpendam

2007-03-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

Kalangan Pemuda Minta Pemekaran Daerah Simalungun Cukup Dua Kabupaten Saja
26 Jan 2004 10:06:07 AM

Jakarta (LIN). Pengurus Komisi Pusat Upaya Penyelamatan Aset Siantar-Simalungun (UPASS) Irwansyah Damanik SH, dan Koordinator Forum Lintas Pemuda Simalungun (Forlips) Ir Agustinus Sihaloho, secara terpisah menyebutkan pemekaran daerah Simalungun tidak cukup hanya didasarkan pada alasan percepatan pertumbuhan ekonomi daerah atau percepatan pembangunan, melainkan juga harus didasari pada target keutuhan sendi sosial budaya karena Simalungun kini telah merupakan daerah heterogen.

Irwansyah Damanik dan rekannya Tanjung mengatakan di Medan, idealnya Simalungun cukup dimekarkan menjadi dua kabupaten saja, bukan tiga. Pihak pengambil keputusan dalam hal ini jangan hanya mendengarkan suara legislatif (DPRD) saja, melainkan juga suara rakyat di lapangan.

Mereka mengemukakan hal itu menanggapi adanya desakan atau gagasan sekelompok masyarakat daerah ini agar daerah Simalungun dimekarkan menjadi tiga kabupaten dengan alasan topografi atau rentang jangkauan pembangunan. Pihak DPRD Simalungun yang dipimpin Wakil Ketua Ngatijan Thoha dalam rapat panitia khusus (Pansus) Pemekaran Simalungun, Kamis (15/1) lalu, memang belum memutuskan apakah Simalungun akan dimekarkan menjadi dua atau tiga kabupaten.

Menurut Irwansyah, daerah Simalungun cukup dimekarkan menjadi dua kabupaten saja, yaitu menjadi Kabupaten Simalungun dan Simalungun Hataran. Secara topografis dan geografis, pemekaran menjadi dua kabupaten itu akan menjadikan kedua "Simalungun" memiliki kekuatan potensi ekonomi yang sama sehingga akan bersaing dengan sehat, misalnya dari sumber perkebunan, pariwisata, pertanian, jasa, niaga, dsb.

Hal senada juga disebutkan Agustinus Sihaloho dari Forlips, bahwa pemekaran daerah Simalungun menjadi dua kabupaten merupakan pilihan dan keputusan tepat karena relatif sesuai dengan latar belakang sejarah (historical background). Selain itu, potensi ekonominya akan tampak berimbang. Misalnya Kabupaten Simalungun akan memiliki objek wisata Danau Toba di Parapat, dan Kabupaten Simalungun Hataran akan memiliki objek wisata Danau Toba di Haranggaol.

Dengan dominasi potensi agrobisnis, Simalungun yang satu memiliki perkebunan sawit, dan Simalungun yang satu lagi memiliki perkebunan teh. Sihaloho mengatakan kalau soal nama, kami cenderung mengusulkan nama kabupaten baru hasil pemekaran Simalungun ini adalah Kabupaten Sidamanik atau Kabupaten Purba Raya, dengan alasan perlunya monumentasi pelestarian nama dan perjuangan Raja Simalungun pada zamannya.

Bersama Simalungun, kini terdapat lima daerah yang sedang berjuang memekarkan diri, yaitu Asahan untuk membentuk Kabupaten Batubara, Tapsel untuk Angkola Sipirok, Tapteng untuk Tapanuli Barat atau Barus Raya, dan Kabupaten Nias untuk Nias Barat dan Kota Gunung Sitoli.

Pilgub

2007-03-14T02:40:00.000-07:00

14 Mar 07 08:16 WIB
Pilgub, Pembuktian Komitmen Umat
WASPADA Online

Oleh Ali Akbar M. Ag
Saat ini, menjelang Pemilihan Kepala Daerah Sumatera Utara telah ramai pemberitaan tentang tokoh-tokoh yang dicalonkan atau mencalonkan diri dan akan menduduki kursi jabatan kepemimpinan daerah ini. Hampir setiap hari semua terbitan media massa cetak memuat berbagai aktivitas mereka. Dengan tidak menyebutnya sebagai kampanye dini, nuansa dari fenomena istilah itu tetap kental terasa.

Telah menjadi hal yang dimaklumi bersama bahwa umat Islam yang menempati jumlah penganut terbesar di daerah Sumatera Utara ini. Meskipun demikian, ternyata umat Islam belum dapat dikatakan mampu menentukan arah dan corak pembangunan di daerah sendiri. Dengan istilah lain, tidak ada korelasi yang signifikan antara jumlah yang besar dengan jaminan kelapangan, keleluasaan, kesuksesan dan kesejahteraan kehidupan. Padahal, logikanya dengan aset yang demikian kuat (jumlah penganut yang besar) umat Islam mampu menguasai, menentukan dan mengarahkan setiap aspek dari kehidupan mereka. Mengapa bisa terjadi demikian, pasti ada masalah. Keruwetan masalah itu akan coba diurai secara singkat di bawah ini.

1. Persatuan Dan Kesatuan (Jama'ah)
Siapa pun tidak dapat memungkiri, saat ini umat Islam sedang bermasalah dengan persatuan dan kesatuannya. Walaupun ada konsep jamaah yang telah diterapkan oleh Nabi Muhammad SAW sejak awal mula gerakan dakwah beliau dan terbukti telah sukses di pentas peradaban dunia, namun umat saat ini seolah telah melupakannya bahkan, ada kesan menghapuskannya. Jamaah, hanya digunakan dalam konotasinya pada istilah salat yaitu salat berjamaah, tidak lebih. Padahal salat adalah miniatur kehidupan seorang muslim dalam setiap harinya. Malah, istilah jamaah islamiyah yang dihembuskan dari negeri seberang sana menjadi semacam stigma yang menjadi bumerang bagi umat. Mengapa ditekankan untuk berjamaah, itu tidak lain berarti dalam kehidupan seorang muslim di luar shalatpun umat harus berjamaah.

Tidak banyak yang dapat diharapkan dari kondisi umat yang terpecah belah seperti ini. Para ustadz sibuk dengan urusan ceramah dan kegiatan "dakwah" mereka, pemimpin negeri beserta pembantunya sibuk dengan urusan rapat dan kunjungan-kunjungan mereka, rakyat sibuk dengan urusan "cari makan" mereka belum lagi bencana dan musibah yang mereka hadapi. Wakil rakyat juga sibuk dengan urusan mereka di gedung megah. Semua sibuk dengan urusan sendiri. Pertemuan-pertemuan silaturahmi dilakukan hanya untuk kepentingan pragmatis sang sponsor dan tidak sampai pada hakikatnya yaitu menjalin komitmen bersama untuk menuju Allah SWT. Kalaupun dikatakan demikian, kita tetap merasa duka karena itu akhirnya teringkari.

Padahal, dengan jamaah Rasulullah SAW telah mengajarkan pola hidup yang memudahkan dan mensejahterakan. Dengan jamaah umat menghadapi masalah ekonominya, masalah sosialnya, masalah pendidikan dan sebagainya yang terhimpun dalam masalah pemilihan pemimpin untuk meningkatkan kualitas secara kolektif, bukan pribadi atau kelompok

2. Pengetahuan
Setiap kandidat berasal dari latarbelakang kehidupan, keluarga, kemampuan, motivasi serta visi dan misi yang berbeda-beda dalam mengikuti pencalonan kursi Cagub/Cawagub. Perlu penelusuran secara seksama terhadap berbagai latar belakang tersebut. Track record (catatan kehidupan) masing-masing pribadi kandidat dapat diketahui melalui media massa atau melihat langsung, maka sebagai warga negara yang merasa bertugas dan bertanggung jawab setiap rakyat harus mengetahui dengan mencari tahu bagaimana profil calon pemimpin mereka dan bagaimana para kandidat bersosialisasi dengan masyarakat di sekitarnya. Dari sanalah dapat diketahui seberapa besar komitmen serta ambisi seseorang untuk menjadi gubernur dan wakil gubernur. Istilah membeli kucing dalam karung tidak akan terjadi bila kita benar-benar mengetahui pribadi dan sosialisasi dirinya dan keluarganya. Tidak adanya atau kurangnya pengetahuan tentang hal ini mungkin yang menjadi salah satu masalah tersebut.

Begitu kompleksnya permasalahan yang tersisa dari pemerintahan daerah sebelumnya, membutuhkan visi dan misi yang kuat dan terwujud dalam teknis-teknis pelaksaan secara matang dan berkesinambungan. Dalam hal ini yang mampu kita amati dan nilai adalah langkah-langkah konkrit apa saja yang akan mereka lakukan untuk kemajuan dan kesejahteraan masyarakat Sumatera Utara ke depan.

3. Motivasi (niat) dalam memilih
Tidak dapat dipungkiri, para kandidat membangun ikatan-ikatan emosional, ikatan komersial bahkan magis- untuk mendulang suara konstituennya. Dengan menggunakan slogan-slogan yang dikemas apik sehingga menarik perhatian, dari mereka yang menggunakan simbol-simbol keagamaan, mengusung simbol-simbol kebudayaan sampai istilah "pemimpin yang keren". Boleh-boleh saja pemilih merasa sreg dengan seorang pemimpin karena merasa pas dengan suguhan berbagai iklan.

Namun ikatan logis rasional yang diperoleh dari informasi-informasi berbagai media mengenai Cagub/Cawagub adalah lebih mendekatkan kepada keberhasilan kita dalam memenangkan calon pemimpin yang mampu menghadapi segala masalah dalam pemerintahannya ke depan.

Didasari dengan keinginan untuk merubah tatanan kehidupan di negeri ini kepada yang lebih baik, niat memilih adalah yang paling utama dalam menghadapi pemilihan Gubernur. Dengan niat yang tulus mudah-mudahan dapat menjaring pemimpin yang setidaknya mampu membawa masyarakat Sumatera Utara pada kehidupan yang wajar dan layak, tidak perlu muluk-muluk. Jadi, bukan motivasi yang berhubungan dengan kepentingan pribadi dan pragmatis semata.

4. Memilih Yang Tepat
Berbagai fenomena yang terlihat sekarang ini, bahwa umat Islam secara meluas diperebutkan suaranya bagaikan memperebutkan sepotong kue. Manuver politik para kiai yang menggunakan fatwa-fatwa serta simbol-simbol keagamaan yang bagi sebahagian orang membingungkan. Terpecahnya elit politik islam kepada beberapa kubu. Kenyataan ini menjadikan umat Islam seperti terombang-ambing dalam menyikapi Pilkada Gubsu April 2008 yang akan datang.

Masyarakat dituntut untuk bersikap arif dan bijaksana serta tidak terpengaruh oleh berbagai isu politik yang mengambil keuntungan pribadi semata. Perlu pembedaan antara Islam formal dan substansial, bahwa Islam formal adalah menggunakan simbol-simbol keagamaan untuk kepentingan politik tertentu, sedangkan Islam substansial adalah Islam yang menjadi arah hidup dan aturan-aturan yang dijalankan dalam kehidupan sehari-hari.

Bila agama dimanfaatkan sebagai komoditas politik yang menghantarkan seseorang menjadi pemimpin (oportunis), akan lahir pemimpin yang penuh kepura-puraan. Kesempatan berkuasa akan dijadikan ajang pengembalian kerugian-kerugian yang selama ini telah dikorbankan untuk mengantarkannya pada kursi kegubernuran.

Pilihan yang tepat tentunya berbeda pada masing-masing pemilih, namun setelah melalui niat dan usaha untuk mengetahui, memahami pilihan yang terbaik, selanjutnya diperlukan sikap pasrah dan tetap melakukan kontrol/pengawasan pada jalannya pe-merintahan tersebut.

5. Peran Kontrol
Adalah naif bagi kita menyerahkan urusan berat bangsa ini pada pemimpin yang tidak memiliki integritas dan kepribadian pada rakyat. Mereka yang menjadikan kekuasaan sebagai tujuan dan bukan sebagai alat untuk mencapai tujuan bersama harus selalu ditekan dan dikritik. Bagaikan lingkaran, posisi kunci gubernur adalah posisi sentral dimana rakyat beredar mengitari di sekelilingnya. Memang, para pemimpin harusnya diberikan pemahaman bahwa jabatan kekuasaan bukanlah posisi yang tenang, sejuk dan nyaman. Sebaliknya, adalah kursi yang penuh dengan duri apabila tidak dijalankan dengan niat tulus dan kesungguhan.

Selain menjalankan peran kontrol/pengawasan, sebagai rakyat yang memiliki dan ikut serta dalam jalannya roda pemerintahan, yang terpenting tentunya adalah turut mendoakan agar para pemimpin itu tetap dalam komitmen memajukan bangsa.

Komitmen
Setidaknya, ketiadaan hal-hal yang di atas itulah yang menjadi penyebab masalah yang dihadapi umat saat ini. Walaupun umat disibukkan oleh kegiatan sehari-hari namun sebagai warga masyarakat dari suatu negara tentunya menginginkan tatanan hidup aman, damai dan sejahtera agar keberlangsungan kehidupan tetap terjaga. Tetap mengedepankan eksistensi keislaman mereka secara berkualitas dalam pentas peradaban di dunia. Oleh karena itu perhatian pada terbentuknya suatu komunitas beradab adalah harga mati yang tidak dapat ditawar-tawar lagi. Untuk sampai pada cita-cita tersebut secara bersama-sama diupayakan agar mendapatkan pemimpin umat yang kredibel dalam menjalankan tugas dan fungsinya memotori gerak untuk mensejahterakan umat pada khususnya dan masyarakat Sumatera Utara pada umumnya.

Idealnya, masyarakat juga tidak akan mau mengambil risiko sedikit pun dalam Pilkada Gubsu akan datang dengan memberi kesempatan pada setiap kandidat untuk menggunakan politik uang (money politics) seperti lumrah terjadi pada masa-masa sebelumnya. Karena dengan politik uang, jabatan dipandang tidak lebih dari sekedar barang yang diperjual belikan. Urusan jabatan adalah bisnis menguntungkan. Calon pejabat dalam hal ini tak ubahnya sebagai kapitalis yang ingin mengeruk keuntungan sebesar-besarnya. Oleh karena itu biasanya setelah menjabat, sang pembeli jabatan tersebut pasti akan fokus mengembalikan modal yang telah dikeluarkan (investasi) di awal masa jabatannya. Dengan demikian, komitmen, visi dan misi apa lagi yang tersisa dan diharapkan dari seorang pemimpin untuk masyarakatnya?.

April 2008 adalah saat-saat menentukan dalam Pemilihan Kepala Daerah sebagai event penting untuk menentukan arah pembangunan daerah Sumatera Utara. Tentunya harapan pada perubahan kepada yang lebih baik akan segera terwujud dan harapan itu tidak akan tercapai bila dipimpin oleh mereka yang menjadikan kekuasaan sebagai alat memperkaya dan memperbesar diri serta keluarga dan kerabatnya. Diperlukan kesamaan pandangan dan kenginginan untuk melahirkan pemimpin yang memiliki integritas kepribadian baik dan memihak rakyat.

Kekecewaan dan penyesalan akibat salah memilih orang yang tepat untuk dijadikan pemimpin tentunya tidak ingin terulang lagi dan lagi di masa yang akan datang. Sekali lagi, kebersamaan dan kekompakan atau kesatuan dan persatuan adalah modal dasar dalam hal ini.

Penutup
Kalau saat ini sedang marak berita tentang Cagub dan Cawagub, tidak ada salahnya bila berbagai pemberitaan itu dapat memberi efek positif bagi masyarakat yaitu mengingatkan akan tugas dan tanggung jawab mereka sebagai pihak yang paling menentukan kesuksesan pemilihan. Dengan demikian masyarakat memiliki tenggat waktu yang cukup untuk bersiap-siap menghadapi tugas dan tanggung jawabnya yang ditunaikan hanya lima tahun sekali.

Kesiapan tersebut penting, karena akan menentukan Sumatera Utara lima tahun ke depan bahkan tahun-tahun berikutnya. Pastinya, masyarakat tidak akan memberikan suaranya pada orang yang dianggap tidak layak, tidak berkompeten atau memiliki cacat riwayat hidup. Sebagai pemimpin masyarakat Sumatera Utara, calon Gubernur Sumatera Utara adalah orang yang paham betul akan masalah-masalah daerah, solusi tepat penyelesaiannya dan potensi-potensi kedaerahan yang menantang untuk diekspos hingga go International. Walaupun momentum yang akan kita sambut yaitu pemilihan kepala daerah langsung (Pilkada) April 2008 merupakan pemilihan kepala daerah secara langsung yang baru pertama kali kita lakukan, namun itu adalah kesempatan bagi kita sebagai warga negara untuk membuktikan tugas dan tanggung jawab tersebut.

* Penulis adalah Dosen di IAIN Sumatera Utara.

Nelayan Sibolga

2007-03-14T02:30:00.001-07:00

Tuesday 13 March 2007
Pemko Sibolga Serahkan Perahu bagi NelayanBantuan perahu yang diberikan kepada nelayan tradisional, merupakan salah satu bukti kepedulian pemerintah kepada masyarakat pesisir Kota Sibolga yang mayoritas menggantungkan hidupnya dari hasil nelayan. Para nelayan yang menerima bantuan diharapkan dapat memanfaatkannya, guna meningkatkan pendapatan dan ekonomi keluarganya ke arah yang lebih baik di masa mendatang.

Hal tersebut dikatakan Walikota Sibolga Drs Sahat P Panggabean MM yang disampaikan Wakil Walikota Sibolga H Afifi Lubis SH MM pada acara penyerahan bantuan 20 unit perahu boat kutuk-kutuk bantuan Pemko Sibolga dan 25 unit boat fiberglass bantuan Departemen Sosial RI, Senin (12/3) di Pelabuhan Sibolga.

Dikatakan Afifi, para nelayan yang telah menerima bantuan jangan lagi bermalas-malasan mencari nafkah untuk menutupi dan memenuhi kebutuhan keluarganya agar menjadi lebih makmur dan sejahtera, karena Pemko Sibolga tidak akan memberikan bantuan yang tidak bermanfaat kepada masyarakat. Bantuan tersebut akan tetap dimonitor di lapangan, sehingga tidak dapat disalahgunakan oleh si penerima ataupun pihak lainnya.

Pemberian bantuan perahu kepada nelayan ini merupakan kegiatan lanjutan dari program pemberdayaan fakir miskin (P2FM) yang dicanangkan oleh Departemen Sosial RI melalui Pemerintah Kota Sibolga dengan menggunakan dana APBN dan APBD Kota Sibolga TA 2006.

Ditambahkannya, keterlambatan pemberian bantuan perahu tersebut diakibatkan oleh beberapa faktor, salah satunya adalah terbatasnya bahan baku yang digunakan untuk membuat perahu baik kayu maupun fiberglass, sehingga dalam proses pembuatannya memakan waktu yang cukup lama, dan bagi yang belum menerima bantuan ini tetapi namanya sudah terdaftar agar tetap bersabar.

Dalam laporan Kakan Pemberdayaan Masyarakat Kelurahan (PMK) Kota Sibolga Josua Hutapea SSos mengatakan, bantuan perahu bagi nelayan tersebut merupakan program penanggulangan kemiskinan dan program pemberdayaan fakir miskin (P2FM) melalui kantor PMK Kota Sibolga Departemen Sosial RI.

“Sedangkan perahu nelayan yang terbuat dari fiberglass untuk program P2FM dari dana APBN 2006 sebanyak 115 unit, baru 20 unit yang diserahkan dan sisanya sebanyak 95 unit lagi menyusul kemudian,” katanya.

Tigor Manalu >> Global | Sibolga

PNS Bolos

2007-03-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 14 March 2007

Satpol PP Pemko Sibolga Razia Pelajar dan PNS Bolos

Mulai bulan Janurai sampai Februari 2007, Satuan Polisi Pamong Praja (Satpol PP) Pemerintah Kota Sibolga, merazia 20 orang siswa yang bolos pada jam mata pelajaran sekolah dalam operasi kasih sayang siswa pelajar dan 14 orang Pegawai Negeri Sipil atau Tenaga Harian Lepas (PNS/ THL) yang sering mangkal di kedai kopi dan pasar pada jam kerja dalam operasi razia pembinaan terhadap PNS dan THL di Kota Sibolga.

"Kita tidak pandang bulu dalam melakukan razia, siapapun kalau memang melanggar kita akan razia, dan kita berikan pembinaan,khususnya bagi anak-anak sekolah dan bagi PNS/THL akan kita laporkan ke dinas masing-masing," ujar Kepala Satuan Polisi Pamong Praja Pemerintah Kota Sibolga Singkat Sijabat SSos kepada Global, Selasa (13/3).

Dijelaskannya, untuk tahun 2006 saja, dalam operasi kasih sayang siswa pelajar di wilayah Kota Sibolga yang terjaring pada jam mata pelajaran sebanyak 146 orang dengan rincian pada bulan Februari 40 orang, Maret 22 orang, April 9 orang, Juli 13 orang, Agustus 28 orang, September 22 orang November 6 orang, Desember 6 orang dan bulan Januari, Mei, Juni dan Oktober nihil.

Sementara razia dan pembinaan terhadap PNS/THL yang terjaring di kedai kopi dan pasar pada jam kerja sebanyak 39 orang yaitu PNS 28 orang dan THL 11 orang. Dan dengan rincian pada bulan Mei 7 orang, Juni 23 orang, Juli 3 orang, September 3 orang, Oktober 3 orang. Sedangkan pada bulan Januari, Februari, Maret, April, Agustus, November dan Desember nihil, katanya.

Untuk tahun 2007 mulai bulan Januari sampai Februari, Satpol PP Sibolga sudah menjaring 20 orang siswa yang bolos pada jam mata pelajaran sekolah dalam operasi kasih sayang siswa pelajar dengan rincian bulan Januari sebanyak 11 orang dan Februari 9 orang. Sedangkan PNS/ THL yang terjaring dalam razia di kedai kopi dan pasar pada jam kerja 14 orang, dengan rincian bulan Januari sebanyak 3 orang dan Februari 11 orang.

Sebenarnya, kata Sijabat, razia ini kita laksanakan guna meningkatkan disiplin anak-anak sekolah agar dapat belajar dengan baik di sekolah masing-masing. Mereka diharapkan menjadi anak-anak pintar dan meneruskan pembangunan bangsa ini.

"PNS/THL agar betul-betul menggunakan waktu bekerja dengan efektif, kalau kita lihat sering PNS/THL tidak bekerja sungguh-sungguh dalam melayani masyarakat pada dinas kerja masing-masing. Seharusnya mereka dapat menjadi teladan bagi masyarakat," ujar Singkat Sijabat.

Diakuinya, dalam melakukan razia kasih sayang siswa pelajar ada hambatan yaitu pada saat petugas Sat Pol PP yang bekerjasama dengan Dinas Pendidikan melakukan razia di lapangan, para pemilik warung selalu melindungi siswa yang bolos, sehingga siswa tersebut tidak dapat ditangkap petugas, tetapi semuanya dapat kita atasi dan lancar-lancar saja, ungkap Sijabat.

Ditambahkan Sijabat, operasi kasih sayang siswa pelajar dan operasi razia pembinaan terhadap PNS dan THL akan terus dilaksanakan sesuai dengan surat edaran Walikota No 800/583/2006, tanggal 16 Mei 2006 perihal penertiban dan razia terhadap PNS/THL Pemko Sibolga dan surat edaran Walikota Sibolga No 800/584/2006, tanggal 16 Mei kepada Sat Pol PP Kota Sibolga untuk melaksanakan penertiban dan razia terhadap PNS/THL Kota Sibolga yang berkeliaran di warung kopi atau pusat perbelanjaan pada jam dinas, tanpa izin dari atasannya.

Tigor Manalu >> Global | Sibolga

DPRD Tinjau Pembangunan Ruang Operasi RSU Sibolga

2007-03-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Friday 09 March 2007

DPRD Tinjau Pembangunan Ruang Operasi RSU Sibolga

Pembangunan empat unit ruang operasi RSU Ferdinand L Tobing Sibolga masih kurang layak, bila disesuaikan dengan pedoman pembuatan ruang operasi standar kesehatan nasional. Tetapi pembuatan ruang operasi ini juga sudah cukup baik dapat mencapai 80 sampai 90 persen, bila kita bandingkan dengan rumah sakit di Penang.

Hal tersebut dikatakan anggota DPRD Kota Sibolga dari Komisi III Hj Nur Arifah Amd bersama H Kasim Sinaga dan Bismar Panjaitan kepada Global saat melakukan peninjauan pembangunan ruang operasi RSU Ferdinand L Tobing Sibolga, Kamis (8/3).

Dijelaskan, pelaksanaan pembangunan empat unit ruang operasi tersebut yang saat ini dalam tahap dikerjakan, masih ada beberapa yang kurang memenuhi kriteria. Seperti pembuatan keramik dinding yang seharusnya pada dinding tidak ada skat dan harus mulus. Sehingga saat pembersihan dinding mudah dan tidak akan meninggalkan noda atau bakteri di dinding.

"Begitu juga masalah luar ruangan masih kurang dan tinggi ruangan harus mencapai 4 meter, tetapi ini masih kurang," ujar Nur Arifah yang diamini rekannya.

Hal ini sudah diberitahukan oleh DPRD Sibolga kepada rekanan yang menangani proyek dan pihak konsultan, agar merubah pembangunan ruang operasi dan ruang sterilisasi udara. "Memang bila kita bandingkan bangunan sebelumnya, sudah ada yang dirubah. Tetapi memang dari bestek atau gambar yang kita lihat usulan dari provinsi, itu jelas kurang standar," ujar Nur Arifah.

Usai melakukan peninjauan ketiga anggota DPRD Kota Sibolga tersebut mendatangi Direktur RSU Ferdinad L Tobing Sibolga Dr Lubuk P Saing SPD untuk berbincang-bincang seputar kekurangan di rumah sakit tersebut.

Direktur RSU Ferdinad L Tobing Sibolga Dr Lubuk P Saing SPD mengatakan, pembangunan empat unit ruang operasi masih dalam tahap dikerjakan. Pihaknya akan berupaya melakukan pembenahan untuk RSU kebanggan warga Sibolga ini dari tenaga medis maupun alat-alat medis.

"Kita telah mengajak para dokter-dokter spesialis untuk mau ikut mengabdi di rumah sakit ini. Saat ini sudah ada dokter yang mau mengabdi di rumah sakit ini, salah satu dokter bedah, yaitu Dr Didung Sinulingga. Selain itu masih ada 2 orang lagi dokter spesialis,” katanya.

Diakui hingga kini, RSU Dr Ferdinad L Tobing masih banyak kekurangan dokter spesialis dan inilah yang akan menjadi PR bagi pimpinan rumah sakit untuk melakukan pembenahan. Tidak saja menyangkut tenaga perawat dan fisik bangunan terus dilakukan perbaikan dan pembenahan, sehingga orang yang berobat ke rumah sakit dapat merasa nyaman dan lekas sembuh.

“Dalam program kerja kita juga, pihak RSU Dr Ferdinand L Tobing Sibolga berencana akan melakukan operasi katarak gratis," ujarnya.

Dalam kesempatan tersebut, anggota DPRD Kota Sibolga Bismar Panjaitan memberikan usulan kepada Direktur RSU Ferdinad L Tobing Sibolga Dr Lubuk P Saing Spd agar nantinya pihak rumah sakit dapat memikirkan parit pembuangan limbah cair diganti dengan baru. Tidak seperti sekarang ini banyak parit pembuangan limbahnya berkelok-kelok, sehingga membuat limbah tersebut tersendat-sendat.

"Tetapi kalau parit limbah dibuat berbentuk bulat, maka aliran limbah akan berjalan lancar dan terhindar dari kumpulan sarang nyamuk atau penyakit lainnya," katanya.

Global | Sibolga

Hari Jadi Kota Sibolga akan Dikemas Meriah

2007-03-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

Saturday 10 March 2007

Hari Jadi Kota Sibolga akan Dikemas Meriah

Peringatan Hari Jadi Kota Sibolga ke-307 pada tanggal 2 April 2007 yang akan dirangkai berbagai kegiatan lomba dan sekaligus, pemberian piagam penghargaan bagi para tokoh masyarakat Sibolga yang sudah ikut serta berpartisipasi aktif membangun Kota Sibolga Nauli.

"Bahkan peringatan hari jadi ini, kita upayakan akan lebih meriah dibandingkan tahun 2006 lalu dan dipastikan pagelaran tari etnis Tionghoa akan dapat memukau masyarakat Sibolga," ujar Walikota Sibolga Drs Sahat P Panggabean MM melalui Kabag Humasy Edison Sitorus kepada Global, Jumat (9/3) di ruang kerjanya.

Dijelaskannya, peringatan ini direncanakan akan dihadiri Gubernur Sumatera Utara Rudolf Pardede dan dari Jakarta di antaranya Jenderal (Pur) Faisal Tanjung, Ir Akbar Tanjung, Ny Maraden Panggabean dan beberapa Walikota Sibolga pendahulu termasuk mantan walikota Sibolga Edward Simanjuntak dan para pengusaha dari provinsi Sumatera Utara serta keturunan Tuanku Dorong Hutagalung sebagai pendiri Sibolga.

Peringatan Hari Jadi Kota Sibolga akan diawali dengan sidang paripurna istimewa DPRD dan pembacaan naskah hari jadi oleh tokoh masyarakat Sibolga Drs H Raja Jafar Hutagalung yang dilanjutkan dengan ziarah dan tabur bunga di makam pendiri Sibolga Tuanku Dorong Hutagalung.

Selain itu, Pemko Sibolga juga akan mengadakan pameran pembangunan yang diikuti dari luar daerah seperti Pemkab Tapanuli Utara, Humbahas, Tobasa, Samosir, Madina, Padangsidempuan, Tapsel dan Pakpak Barat. Sebelum puncak hari jadi, mulai tanggal 21 Maret 2007 ini sudah mulai dilaksanakan lomba di antaranya, lomba gerak jalan, lomba lari 10 km, gerak jalan santai, napak tilas, sepakbola dan tenis meja antar kabupaten dan kota.

Selanjutnya penilaian terhadap tokoh-tokoh masyarakat yang aktif membangun Kota Sibolga, penilaian terhadap PNS berprestasi, penilaian stand terbaik, penilaian penampilan etnis terbaik, lomba perahu antar kelurahan, lomba melukis dan karya tulis tentang pelestarian lingkungan hidup bagi para wartawan dan anak-anak sekolah, lomba lagu muspida, lomba kebersihan kelurahan dan kantor.

Pemko Sibolga juga melaksanakan hiburan rakyat dengan penampilan kreasi seni antar kecamatan dan pemberian bingkisan kepada tokoh masyarakat, pemuda, adat, agama di setiap kecamatan se-Kota Sibolga.

Masyarakat Kota Sibolga harus ikut serta berpartisipasi menyukseskan Hari Jadi Kota Sibolga ini, melalui pembersihan lingkungan di setiap rumah penduduk dan membuang sampah pada tempatnya, serta menanam tumbuh-tumbuhan di depan rumah penduduk. Hal ini dimaksudkan untuk menciptakan Kota Sibolga menjadi NAULI (Nyaman,Aman, Unggul, Lestari dan Indah).

Global | Sibolga

Tapanuli Growth

2007-03-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

Tapteng Harapkan Pemprovsu Beri Perhatian Pembangunan Tapanuli Growth

Pandan, (Analisa)

Kepala Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Bappeda) Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah Drs Tonggo Napitupulu MM mengharapkan pemerintah Provinsi Sumatera Utara (Pemprovsu) melalui Badan Perencana Pembangunan Daerah Sumatera Utara (Bappedasu) memberikan perhatian serius dalam memajukan dan menciptakan pembangunan di Tapanuli Tengah sebagaimana tertuang dalam konsep pembangunan ‘Tapanuli Growth’, demi percepatan pembangunan di pantai barat sejajar dengan pantai timur Sumut.

Hal ini disampaikannya pada acara Musyawarah Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Musrenbangda) Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah di aula Bina Graha Pemkab Tapteng di Pandan, beberapa waktu lalu yang dihadiri Kepala Bidang Kerjasama Pembangunan dan Teknologi Drs Hasni Anggraini Lubis mewakili Kepala Bappedasu Drs RE Nainggolan MM, Wakil Bupati Tapteng Ir MA Effendy Pohan, unsur Muspida plus Tapteng, para Kadis, Kabid dan Kabag Pemkab Tapteng, para Camat, Ketua KNPI Tapteng, ketua-ketua LPM se-Kab. Tapteng serta tokoh masyarakat dan agama.

Menurut Tonggo, Kabupaten Tapanuli Tengah memiliki keterbatasan baik sumber daya manusia (SDM) dan sumber daya alam (SDA) yang mengakibatkan terjadinya kemiskinan yang cukup besar hingga mencapai 50 persen, demikian juga dengan tingkat pengangguran yang mencapai 30 persen dari total jumlah penduduk Tapteng sebanyak 280 ribuan jiwa.

“Dengan keterbatasan tersebut, banyak tantangan dan masalah yang dihadapi daerah ini untuk melaksanan pembangunan, baik pembangunan di bidang SDM, sarana dan prasarana, perekonomian, pertanian, kehutanan dan perkebunan, perikanan, infrastruktur dan pariwisata,” ungkapnya.

Keterbatasan yang dimiliki Tapteng, ujar Tonggo, dapat dijadikan sebuah potensi yang harus dikembangkan.

“Dan satu-satunya program yang bisa mengatasi semua permasalahan ini adalah konsep pembangunan Tapanuli Growth yang digulirkan oleh Bupati Tapteng Drs Tuani Lumbantobing MSi. Konsep ini merupakan konsep yang cukup pantas diterapkan di daerah ini, untuk mengejar ketertinggalan dari daerah lain terutama pantai timur bagian Sumatera Utara,” tutur Tonggo yang juga mantan Sekretaris Daerah Kabupaten Toba Samosir (Tobasa) ini.

KURANG TANGGAP

Oleh karena itu, dia mengharapkan Bappedasu dapat memberikan perhatian terhadap konsep ini untuk mendukung pembangunan di pantai barat Sumut. Karena, dia melihat, selama ini Bappedasu sepertinya kurang tanggap terhadap konsep yang dinilai sangat strategis ini.

Sebelumnya, Kepala Bappedasu yang diwakilkan oleh Kepala Bidang Kerjasama Pembangunan dan Teknologi Dra Hasni Anggraini menyebutkan, berdasarkan Grand Strategy dan program prioritas pembangunan Provinsi Sumatera Utara tahun 2008, serta dalam upaya pemberhasilan target-target pembangunan ekonomi maupun kesejahteraan masyarakat sebagaimana tercantum dalam Rancangan Perencanaan Jangka Menengah Daerah (RPJMD) transisi Sumut 2006-2009, dia mengharapkan Pemkab Tapteng dapat mempedomani dan menyelaraskan program atau kegiatan pembangunan daerah Tapteng dengan pembangunan yang dibentuk pemerintah tingkat I Sumut.

“Begitupula dengan program pembangunan yang merupakan komitmen bersama seperti Tapteng yakni program Agromarinepolitan agar diimplementasikan dengan benar dan yang tak kalah pentingnya adalah kebijakan dan program Presiden RI yang mencanangkan pro poor, pro Growth dan pro job agar benar-benar diterapkan,” katanya.

Dra Hasni Anggraini pada pertemuan itu juga mengatakan, pembangunan jalan baru pada ruas jalan Rampa hingga Poriaha atau Mungkur, Tapteng sepanjang 18 km akan dipertimbangkan sebagai jalan alternatif (Sibolga-Tapanuli Utara) dengan status jalan Nasional.

“Untuk itu diharapkan kepada Pemkab Tapteng agar mempersiapkan ruas jalan dimaksud, sehingga memenuhi kriteria teknis jalan arteri primer,” tandasnya.

Sosialisasi BMT di Tanah Batak

2007-01-30T11:10:00.000-08:00

BMT Center Terbitkan Pedoman Akad

JAKARTA -- Baitulmal wattamwil (BMT) Center berencana menerbitkan pedoman akad bagi BMT akhir Maret 2007. Hal tersebut bertujuan agar seluruh produk dan transaksi keuangan mikro syariah BMT dilakukan sesuai kaidah syariah sebenarnya. 'Target kita pedoman akad akan dihasilkan akhir Maret. Selanjutnya, April langsung kita cetak,' kata Sekretaris Jenderal BMT Center, Ahmad Sumiyanto kepada Republika, Ahad, (7/1).

Menurut Sumiyanto, pembuatan pedoman akad sangat penting bagi perkembangan BMT. Hal tersebut karena beberapa alasan. Salah satunya adalah masih banyak BMT yang memiliki perbedaan penerapan akad dalam sejumlah produk simpanan dan pembiayaan mereka. Bahkan, kata dia, perbedaan juga terjadi pada pemahaman teoritis mengenai akad.

Selain itu, menurut Sumiyanto, pentingnya pembuataan akad bagi BMT karena lembaga keuangan mikro syariah (LKMS) tersebut tidak dapat disamakan dengan lembaga keuangan syariah (LKS) lainnya seperti bank dan asuransi syariah. Kata dia, BMT memiliki penerapan akad berbeda dalam sejumlah produknya dibandingkan LKS lain. 'Ini karena segmentasi pasar B

Terkait penerbitan pedoman akad, Chief Secretary Officer (CSO) BMT Center, Noor Aziz menyebutkan tengah membentuk kelompok kerja (Pokja). Pembentukan ditargetkan rampung pada 15 Januari 2006. Selanjutnya, pada awal Maret mendatang, Pokja bersama dengan BMT Center akan menyelenggarakan lokakarya validasi hasil rumusan pedoman akad BMT.

Menurut Noor, Lokakarya akan diikuti oleh seluruh anggota BMT Center. Selain itu, lokakarya juga akan diikuti oleh Dewan Syariah Nasional Majelis Ulama Indonesia (DSN MUI). 'Jadi, setelah divalidasi bersama dalam lokakarya, naskah pedoman akad akan ditandatangani DSN,' katanya.

Rencananya, Noor menyebutkan, sebagai tahap awal, pedoman akad akan dipergunakan bagi 96 anggota BMT Center. Selanjutnya, pedoman dipersilakan untuk digunakan anggota BMT lainnya.

Ketua Yayasan Pusat Inkubasi Bisnis Usaha Kecil (Pinbuk), Muhammad Amin Aziz menyambut rencana pembuatan pedoman akad bagi BMT. Ia mengakui selama ini cukup banyak BMT yang belum sesuai dalam menerapkan akad bagi produk mereka. Karena itu, pembuatan pedoman akad diharapkan dapat meningkatkan tingkat kesesuaian syariah produk BMT. 'Saya kira ini penting sekali bagi perkembangan BMT,' tandasnya. aru

Sumber:republika.co.id ( )

Tapanuli Harus Kembangkan Internet Listrik

2007-01-30T10:55:00.000-08:00

VOIP Merdeka, Awal Sukses Internet Listrik

Inno Widhi Nugroho

KETIKA Telkom menaikkan tarif pelayanannya awal tahun ini, para penggagas layanan VOIP Merdeka berinisiatif menggelar layanan telekomunikasi yang "merdeka" dan "gratis". Layanan ini terbebas dari jaringan Telkom karena dibangun berbasis Internet.

Sebenarnya VOIP Merdeka tidaklah sepenuhnya "gratis", karena yang gratis hanyalah proses komunikasinya saja di Internet. Biaya akses Internetnya tetap harus dibayar kepada ISP-ISP tempat kita berlangganan.

Karena itu, jika kita beruntung memiliki sambungan Internet berkecepatan tinggi seperti Wave-LAN (nirkabel) atau serat optik, kita akan dapat memanfaatkan VOIP Merdeka secara maksimal. Mereka yang tidak kebagian layanan Internet nirkabel atau serat optik masih dapat memanfaatkan layanan Internet dial-up lewat TelkomNet Instan.

Tetapi rugi menggunakan VOIP Merdeka untuk berkomunikasi dengan rekan-rekan dalam zona lokal dengan TelkomNet Instan, sebab tarif yang dikenakan lebih mahal dari tarif lokal biasa. Akses Internet 1 jam lewat TelkomNet Instan dikenai biaya Rp 9.900, padahal tarif lokal hanya Rp 200 per 3 menit atau sekitar Rp 4.000 per jam.

Sebenarnya ada alternatif lain bagi sambungan Internet yang cepat dan mudah, terbebas dari jaringan Telkom, yaitu lewat Internet listrik. Adalah PLN melalui anak perusahaan, ICON+, yang mengembangkan layanan komunikasi internal ini sejak lama dan menawarkan kelebihan kapasitasnya kepada masyarakat.

Melalui ICON+, PLN melebarkan sayap bisnisnya ke bidang telekomunikasi dan memanfaatkan teknologi DPLC (digital power line communication) sebagai alternatif komunikasi lewat jaringan listrik. ICON+ berhasil mengujicobanya di kompleks perumahan PLN di daerah Duren Tiga, Jakarta, dan warga dapat mengakses layanan Internet kecepatan tinggi tanpa menanggung pulsa telepon yang banyak.

Keuntungan Internet listrik pada kemudahan akses, asal ada sambungan PLN, kecepatan akses yang lebih tinggi-teknologi DPLC bisa mencapai 2,4 MBps-dan murah karena terbebas dari jaringan Telkom. Sebenarnya ada peralatan lagi yang diperlukan untuk memungkinkan akses Internet listrik ini, yaitu concentrator dan modem listrik yang sedang diupayakan untuk diproduksi secara murah.

Daerah cakupan tak menjadi masalah karena ICON+ menggunakan jaringan PLN yang area layanannya mencapai hampir seluruh Nusantara. Hampir dapat dipastikan seluruh pelanggan listrik PLN akan dapat memanfaatkan layanan Internet listrik ini, yang berarti juga membuka peluang memperbesar jumlah pengguna VOIP Merdeka.

Diharapkan dalam waktu dekat akan ada peraturan yang mendukung keberadaan layanan VOIP Merdeka ini. Sesuai dengan regulasi yang berlaku, VOIP Merdeka bebas berkomunikasi apabila sebatas sesama pengguna Internet. Oleh karena software yang digunakan untuk mengonversi suara adalah NetMeeting dari Microsoft, dipastikan VOIP Merdeka akan menggairahkan kembali industri komputer di Tanah Air.

PARA pengguna layanan VOIP juga akan meng-upgrade PC-nya demi kelancaran komunikasi via VOIP Merdeka. Juga untuk kebutuhan sarana gatekeeper (sentral telepon VOIP Merdeka), sementara peran serta ICON+ diharapkan hanya sebagai media saja.

Penerapan tarif flat diperkirakan menjadi faktor penting dalam pertumbuhan komunikasi via VOIP Merdeka ini karena akan dirasakan murah oleh masyarakat yang membutuhkan layanan telekomunikasi. PT PLN pun akan mendapat tambahan penghasilan dari bisnis Internet listrik yang diharapkan akan menutup kerugiannya selama ini, bahkan bukan tidak mungkin PLN akan untung dari operasional bisnisnya.

Dapat dipastikan VOIP Merdeka akan menjadi killer application (fitur layanan yang memberikan pendapatan relatif lebih besar dibandingkan dengan fitur layanan lainnya) bagi layanan Internet listrik. Pada akhirnya, PLN juga akan mampu mempertahankan pasokan listrik yang diperlukan oleh seluruh masyarakat Indonesia juga oleh pengguna Internet listrik.

Dilihat lebih jauh, penggabungan VOIP Merdeka dengan layanan internet listrik akan mempercepat penetrasi layanan telekomunikasi di Indonesia. Oleh karena indikator dari penetrasi telekomunikasi adalah jumlah telepon, berarti dengan VOIP Merdeka dan Internet listrik akan terdapat sekitar 30 juta sambungan telepon baru (asumsi jika seluruh pelanggan PLN mengakses layanan VOIP Merdeka lewat Internet listrik).

Suatu peningkatan penetrasi yang luar biasa bila dibandingkan dengan saat ini yang hanya sekitar 8 juta sambungan telepon. Oleh karena itu, perkembangan VOIP Merdeka perlu disadari oleh banyak pihak. Adanya dukungan yang meluas akan membantu perkembangan telekomunikasi di Indonesia.

Inno Widhi Nugroho Mahasiswa Manajemen Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Airlangga

Pemda Tapanuli Harus Pikirkan Internet Murah

2007-01-30T10:30:00.000-08:00

'Pemerintah Harus Buka Akses Internet Murah'
sumber : detik.com, 09-01-2004

JAKARTA, Menteri Negara Komunikasi dan Informasi (Meneg Kominfo), Syamsul Mu'arif menegaskan pemerintah harus membuka akses internet dan telekomunikasi yang lebih murah. Hal itu dilakukan jika pemerintah berpendapat penyebaran telekomunikasi dan informatika lebih utama daripada pendapatan negara. Syamsul mengungkapkan hal itu di acara pemaparan hasil sidang WSIS (World Summit on Information Society) di Gedung Lembaga Indformasi Nasional, Jl Medan Merdeka Barat, Jumat (09/01/04). "Pilihannya, akses yang murah untuk semua penduduk dengan mengurangi pendapatan dari telekomunikasi atau mempertahankan pendapatan tapi mengerem penyebaran telematika," jelas Syamsul.

Menurut Syamsul, pemerintah harus memperhatikan amanat WSIS yang berbentuk Deklarasi Prinsip dan Rencana Aksi. "Pada tahun 2015, lebih dari separuh penduduk Indonesia harus memiliki akses pada internet, sedangkan sekarang baru 1% penduduk, itu berarti harus ada peningkatan lima puluh kali lipat," ujarnya.

WSIS adalah KTT PBB untuk Masyarakat Informasi yang digelar di Jenewa, Swiss, 11-14 Desember 2003. Pada acara itu, Syamsul ditunjuk Presiden Megawati Soekarnoputri untuk memimpin delegasi RI. Syamsul mengaku untuk memenuhi target-target WSIS Indonesia harus bekerjakeras. Untuk itu pihaknya akan bekerjasama dengan unsur swasta dan civil society (akademisi dan lembaga swadaya masyarakat). Bersama-sama, ketiga unsur tadi akan menyusun strategi pelaksanaan target-target WSIS. Dalam hal piranti lunak yang akan digunakan, Syamsul juga melirik open source sebagai solusi yang lebih murah dibandingkan piranti berlisensi. "Seandainya kita memiliki kemampuan, hal itu (penggunaan open source -red.) bisa dilakukan," tambahnya.

Sementara itu, Syamsul juga melihat Warnet (warung internet) sebagi potensi untuk penyebaran telematika yang baik. Ia mencontohkan, komputer yang nanti akan digunakan oleh KPU dalam Pemilu 2004 bisa diimanfaatkan sebagai Warnet ketika tidak didayagunakan.

Menurutnya, jika hal itu tidak dilakukan dikhawatirkan komputer tersebut akan menjadi besi tua. "Jika dibisniskan akan ada maintenance dan kondisinya terjaga," ujar Syamsul.

Onno W. Purbo, pakar teknologi informasi dari Indonesia, mengatakan bahwa target-target WSIS mampu dicapai meskipun pemerintah tidak mengeluarkan biaya sedikitpun. "Syaratnya, bangsa ini diizinkan membangun infrastruktur sendiri," ujar Onno dalam acara yang sama.

Kebebasan Pers

2007-01-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

PERNYATAAN MENYAMBUT HARI KEBEBASAN PERS DUNIA (WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY)-3 Mei 2005
ANCAMAN TERHADAP KEBEBASAN PERS DILAKUKAN SECARA LEGAL

“Setiap orang memiliki hak atas kebebasan menyampaikan pendapat dan berekspresi; hak tersebut meliputi pula kebebasan untuk menyampaikan pandangannya tanpa campur tangan dan hak untuk mencari, memperoleh dan menyebarkan informasi dan gagasan melalui media apapun serta tanpa ada batasan apapun juga” (Pasal 19 Deklarasi Universal Hak Asasi Manusia)

Jika pada era Orde Baru lalu pengekangan pers dilakukan lembaga-lembaga pemerintah, seperti Departemen Penerangan dengan SIUPP-nya, Kepolisian dan militer dengan intimidasi melalui telpon dan mendatangi kantor redaksi, kini kebebasan pers diancam dengan RUU Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana (KUHP). Represi pada kebebasan pers makin nyata. AJI JAKARTA bersama Koalisi Pembela Pasal 28 UUD 1945 menemukan bahwa dalam RUU KUHP terdapat 49 pasal yang bisa digunakan untuk memenjarakan wartawan. Jumlah pasal tersebut lebih banyak dari pasal yang ada dalam KUHP yang sekarang berlaku, yakni 37 pasal.

Diantara 49 pasal RUU KUHP yang membahayakan kebebasan pers tersebut adalah pasal-pasal yang berkaitan dengan keamanan negara. Pasal-pasal serupa juga sudah ada dalam KUHP lama (yang diundangkan sejak tahun 1915 oleh pemerintah kolonial Belanda) dan seharusnya sudah dicabut karena bertentangan dengan demokrasi dan Hak Asasi Manusia. Pasal itu diantaranya:

-Pasal 218 yang berbunyi: “Setiap orang tanpa wewenang membuat, mengumpulkan, mempunyai, menyimpan, menyembunyikan, atau mengangkut gambar potret, gambar lukis atau gambar tangan, pengukuran, penulisan, keterangan, atau petunjuk lain mengenai suatu hal yang bersangkutan dengan kepentingan pertahanan keamanan negara, dipidana dengan pidana penjara paling lama 2 (dua) tahun atau denda paling banyak Kategori III.”

-Pasal 226 yang berbunyi: “Setiap orang yang mengumumkan, memberitahukan, atau memberikan surat, berita, atau keterangan mengenai suatu hal kepada negara asing atau organisasi asing, padahal mengetahui bahwa hal tersebut harus dirahasiakan untuk kepentingan negara, dipidana dengan pidana penjara paling singkat 1 (satu) tahun dan paling lama 7 (tujuh) tahun.”

-Pasal 227 yang berbunyi: “Setiap orang yang mengumumkan, memberitahukan, atau memberikan kepada orang yang tidak berhak mengetahuinya, seluruh atau sebagian surat, peta bumi, rencana, gambar atau barang yang bersifat rahasia negara yang berhubungan dengan pertahanan dan keamanan negara terhadap serangan dari luar, yang ada padanya atau yang diketahuinya mengenai isi, bentuk, atau cara membuat barang rahasia tersebut, dipidana dengan pidana penjara paling lama 4 (empat) tahun atau denda paling banyak Kategori IV.”

Jika pasal-pasal yang bekaitan dengan keamanan dan rahasia negara seperti di atas masih dipertahankan, maka para jurnalis tidak akan bisa menjalankan liputan-liputan investigatif. Lebih-lebih pasal-pasal seperti itu termasuk pasal karet yang bisa menimbulkan tafsir ganda, sehingga sangatlah mudah menjerat wartawan yang kritis dengan jalur hukum.

Pasal karet serupa juga terdapat dalam pasal 271 ayat (1) RUU KUHP: “Setiap orang yang menyiarkan, mempertunjukkan, atau menempelkan tulisan atau gambar " sehingga terlihat oleh umum, memperdengarkan rekaman sehingga terdengar oleh umum, yang berisi penghinaan terhadap kepala negara sahabat atau orang yang mewakili negara sahabat di negara Republik Indonesia dengan maksud agar isi penghinaan diketahui umum, dipidana dengan pidana penjara paling lama 4 (empat) tahun atau denda paling banyak Kategori IV”.

Pemda Tapanuli Harus Pikirkan Telepon Murah

2007-01-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

Mengembangkan VoIP di Jaringan RT-RW-Net
14/09/2006

Belakangan ini teknologi Voice over Internet Protocol atau VoIP kembali marak setelah menggebrak masyarakat Indonesia pada bulan Juni 2003, pada saat penulis bersama Onno W Purbo melakukan roadshow memperkenalkan teknologi yang disebut VoIP Merdeka dan RT-RW-Net di sembilan kota di Indonesia.

Kebangkitan kembali teknologi VoIP Merdeka disebabkan oleh kemajuan tekniknya, di mana standar yang digunakan mengalami perubahan besar dari standar H.323 menjadi standar Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Standar H.323 merupakan standar dasar dari Uni Telekomunikasi Internasional (ITU) yang memungkinkan kita mengirim suara, video, dan data melalui jaringan berbasis Internet Protocol (IP), sementara SIP adalah protokol untuk mengawali, mengubah, dan mengakhiri suatu kegiatan yang berhubungan dengan sistem multimedia seperti video, suara, pengiriman pesan, online game, dan virtual reality. Standar SIP dikembangkan oleh Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) dan kelompok Multiparty Multimedia Session Control (MMUSIC) Working Group.

Sebetulnya, pada saat yang sama sudah dikembangkan teknologi yang disebut VoIP Rakyat, dan VoIP Merdeka yang berbasis H.323 tidak dikembangkan lagi oleh komunitasnya, sehingga akhirnya mailing list voipmerdeka@yahoogroups.com malah mendukung teknologi SIP dalam VoIP Rakyat tersebut.

Kunci berkembangnya teknologi SIP adalah peranti lunak Asterisk, yaitu program berbasis Open Source yang berfungsi sebagai private branch exchange (PBX), perangkat pengendali saluran telepon yang masuk ke dalam gedung. Asterisk yang berbasis Linux dikembangkan oleh Mark Spencer, mahasiswa dari Universitas Auburn, Alabama, Amerika Serikat, yang kemudian membangun perusahaan Digium Inc yang menjadi besar dan mendukung perkembangan Asterisk-nya.

Keuntungan penggunaan VoIP adalah harga yang lebih murah dibandingkan dengan teknologi lama PBX, mudah digabungkan dengan aplikasi lain, misalnya, dengan peranti lunak untuk meninggalkan pesan, menghitung biaya percakapan dan membagi data ke program sejenis Customer Relationship Management (CRM), serta berbasis teknologi IP yang lebih mudah untuk diatur dan dipantau.

Teknologi VoIP juga memiliki kelemahan-kelemahan, di antaranya adalah realibilitas belum bisa mengikuti standar telekomunikasi 5 (9's) atau 99,999 persen nyala dengan down time atau mati sekitar 30 menit setahun, kesulitan untuk menggabung dengan teknologi yang sekarang sudah dipakai, serta daya tahan belum teruji dibandingkan dengan teknologi PABX yang sudah dipakai lebih dari 30 tahun.

Pengembangan RT-RW-Net

Ide membangun VoIP di jaringan RT-RW-Net sudah lama dilontarkan, hanya kita butuh waktu untuk penerapan teknologi karena jumlah penggunanya masih sangat kecil dan teknologi ini sering kali menyerempet aspek legalitas.

Pembangunan jaringan RT-RW-Net yang paling murah dan meriah adalah dengan menggunakan kabel UTP yang dimasukkan ke pipa paralon, digelar dari rumah ke rumah dengan rentangan maksimum 100 meter, di mana di setiap titik digunakan switch ethernet untuk menguatkan sinyal sehingga dapat mencapai jarak yang lebih jauh. Kabel yang sudah terpasang ini dapat dimanfaatkan untuk penyambungan pesawat telepon biasa melalui perangkat yang biasa dikenal dengan nama analog PBX, harganya Rp 2 juta hingga Rp 3 juta untuk saluran tambahan antara empat sampai delapan telepon, dan perangkat telepon sebanyak dua atau empat buah.

Kabel UTP Category 5 yang digunakan dalam jaringan ini terdiri dari delapan kabel berwarna-warni, dengan hanya empat kabel yang digunakan untuk keperluan jaringan komputer, sementara empat kabel lagi tidak dipakai untuk jaringan karena mengacu pada standar Universal Service Ordering Code dan United States Code of Federal Regulations. Dua pasang kabel ini biasanya dipakai untuk kontrol dalam satu jaringan PBX dan catu daya perangkat tambahan. Biasanya juga, empat kabel sisa dari delapan kabel standar UTP RJ-45 dipakai untuk Power Over Ethernet (POE), yaitu menyalurkan listrik sekaligus ke perangkatnya dengan menggunakan satu kabel yang digabung dengan penyaluran data.

Kita memanfaatkan empat kabel tersebut untuk disambung ke pesawat telepon biasa, tepatnya digunakan dua kabel untuk disambung ke PBX seperti terlihat pada gambar. Kabel RJ-45 yang berwarna biru dan biru-putih dikeluarkan dari konektor RJ-45, lalu disambung ke RJ-11.

Dua kabel ini dapat jalan di jaringan kabel UTP sepanjang 100 meter, dan jangan dipakai jika sudah melewati switch ethernet, karena sinyal dari PBX-nya sudah tidak dapat diteruskan lagi.

Dengan membangun kabel-kabel seperti ini, kita sudah memiliki satu jaringan telepon di perumahan, di mana masing-masing tetangga dapat berkomunikasi dengan bebas tanpa perlu menggunakan Public Switching Telephone Network (PSTN). Jadi, Pak RT dapat menelepon Pak RW tanpa perlu membayar pulsa.

Memasok PBX ke VoIP

Jaringan telepon lokal yang sudah tersambung dari rumah ke rumah sebetulnya dapat dimanfaatkan layaknya sebuah wartel, yaitu satu saluran telepon tersambung ke PSTN dimanfaatkan oleh beberapa telepon yang masuk ke extension dari PBX. Cara ini sebetulnya merupakan solusi terhadap kurangnya saluran telepon di banyak tempat di negara ini.

Yang menarik dari konfigurasi jaringan terpasang adalah kemampuan untuk menggabung jaringan suara melalui PBX dengan jaringan internet melalui switch ethernet menjadi satu dengan menggunakan peranti sejenis Internet Telephony Gateway (ITG). Dengan tersambungnya ITG ke jaringan internet, semua pemakai sistem yang sama akan dapat saling berhubungan dengan lebih leluasa dan tidak perlu membayar pulsa, kecuali jika mereka menelepon ke jaringan PSTN.

Variasinya, dengan menambah satu peranti access point berbasis teknologi nirkabel (wireless LAN), pengguna di sekitar jarak 200 meter dapat menggunakan WiFi Phone secara lebih bebas, sama seperti penggunaan telepon seluler.

Teknologi ini jika dikembangluaskan pada semua jaringan RT-RW-Net yang ada di Indonesia akan menjadi sesuatu yang sangat bermanfaat dan cakupan peneleponnya menjadi besar serta membuka peluang bagi warnet-warnet untuk memberikan layanan tambahan bagi pelanggannya, menelepon kepada sanak saudara di tempat yang berbeda. Teknologi ini memungkinkan untuk menggabung teknologi wartel dengan warnet.

Michael Sunggiardi Managing Director PT Bonet Utama Bogor

Sumber: Kompas.com (edisi cetak)

Men-Digitalkan Bonapasogit

2007-01-30T09:44:00.000-08:00

Membangun RT-RW-NET, sama saja dengan membangun provider. hanya perbedaannya adalah dari ijin dan perangkat. Sejak dulu kita sudah familiar dengan dial-up, dan saat ini koneksi semacam itu makin berkembang, walapun dengan produk dan kualitas yang berbeda tetap saja menggunakan Account manajemen untuk melakukan perhitungan koneksi.

Setelah munculnya warnet dan hotspot, perburuan program billing system semakin sengit. bahkan banyak yang membuat program dan merapuk keuntungan besar. Konsep billing dan accounting pada Hotspot sederhana dan Warnet cenderung lebih sederhana, karena sifatnya hanya membaca traffic di gateway dengan script programming. akan tetapi untuk membuat perhitungan accoutnting kelas Dial-up, hostpot besar, RT-RW-NET dan Provider, membutuhkan dukungan software yang luar biasa ribet .

Kenapa dibilang ribet ??

Karena hasil programnya aja nich, biasanya harganya untuk featured sederhana saja seharga minimal US$2000, belum lagi yang kompleks.

AAA

Dalam Network Manajemen, AAA berfungsi untuk melakukan Atorisasi pengguna, Authentifikasi Anggota dan Accounting. Sehingga tiga fungsi tersebut dapat dipadukan dalam sebuah aplikasi yang dinamakan RADIUS.

Hampir semua Provider telekomunikasi komersil menggunakan metode ini. Possisinya paling strategis, sehingga saking strategisnya bisa menjadi sangat sensitif bagi pengguna layanan komunikasinya. Sebut saja beberapa waktu yang lalu banyak terjadi keluhan pelanggan Speedy mengenai banyaknya kekurangan - kekuranagan pada perhitungan pengunaan Internet mereka.

Featured yang semakin banyak saat ini menuntut ketelitian dalam pengembangannya, sehingga jangan sampai terjadi lagi ketidak puasan pelanggan gara - gara masalah ketidakakuratan dalam perhitungan penggunaan.

Sesuai dengan namanya, RADIUS (AAA) server dapat bekerja simultan dengan cermat. perhitungan penggunaan yang dapat dilakukan :

Based Traffic :misalnya speedy, GPRS , Dll.
Based Times : Misalnya dial-up, RT-RW-NET, Dll.
Aplikasi Radius

Aplikasi Radius terdiri dari 2 bagian.

Radius Client : biasanya terletak / diinstallkan pada Router atar RAS Modem, fungsinya untuk menghimpun informasi dari semua informasi jaringan yang ada di router tersebut.
Radius Server : Biasanya terletak di NOC sebuah Provider, dapat dilengkapi dengan Database server, agar bisa lebih terstruktur dokumentasinya, dan berisi dari semua Informasi yang dikirimkan oleh radius client.
Hubungan antara radius Client dengan Radius Server dilakukan melalui saluran IP Direct yang di allow oleh Radius Server, serta ditambah Data Secret sebagai Authentifikasinya.

Data yang terkumpul dari Client, pada radius server di bagi menjadi urutan - urutan yang akan diperlukan oleh Administrator jaringan, misalnya : Waktu koneksi, Lama koneksi, Besarnya download, upload, Dan lain - lain. yang semuanya real time dilakukan selama koneksi berjalan lancar.

Banyak sekali Aplikasi Radius, dan bahkan sudah banyak yang sekaligus dimodifikasi dengan Billing Systemnya sekaligus. Akan tetapi untuk Radius Opensource yang Recommended dan sempurna, kita bisa menggunakan Freeradius atau Openradius.

Billing System

Setelah dibangun Radius Server, maka langkah selanutnya adalah membuat Billing system. Billing system dapat dibangun dengan membuat aturan - aturan batasan dari data - data yang sudah terkumpul di radius. Aplikasi Billing System dapat dibangun dengan menggunakan PHP dan databasednya menyatu dengan databased dari radius Server, misalnya menggunakan MYSQL. Aplikasi Apache, PHP, Mysql dapat disatukan dengan Aplikasi Radius Server didalam satu mesin.

Sumber: http://asul.wordpress.com

Haji Pandan

2006-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

Bupati dan Muspida Tepung Tawari 46 Calon Jemaah Haji Tapteng

Dec 10, 2006 at 08:51 AM
Tapteng (SIB)

Bupati Tapteng Drs Tuani Lumbantobing MSi , Kasrem 023/KS Kolonel CZI Aditiawarman , Wakil Bupati Ir MA Effendy Pohan dan unsur Muspida plus, Jumat (8/12), di Aula Bina Graha Pandan menepungtawari 46 orang calon jemaah haji asal Tapteng yang rencananya akan diberangkatkan dari Mesjid Raya Pandan pada tanggal 13 Desember 2006 mendatang.
Acara tepung tawar calon jemaah haji Tapteng diawali dengan pemberian upa-upa kepada perwakilan jemaah oleh ketua TP.PKK Tapteng Ny Tuani Lumbantobing didampingi ketua Persit KCK Koorcab Rem 023 PD-I/BB Ny Aditiawarman, istri Wakil Bupati Ny Effendy Pohan dan anggota DPRD Hj Halimahtusaddiah Nasution. Tepung tawar dan pemberian upa-upa kepada calon jemaah haji Tapteng dipandu tokoh masyarakat Sibolga/Tapteng Drs Radja Jafar Hutagalung. Tepung tawar juga dirangkai dengan pemberian bingkisan dan uang saku kepada 46 orang calon jemaah haji asal Tapteng dari Bupati dan Muspida plus.

Bupati Tapteng Drs Tuani Lumbantobing dalam sambutannya mengatakan, sebagai bentuk komitmen Pemkab dalam upaya peningkatan iman dan taqwa , khususnya peningkatan kualitas ulama dan ustadz , maka Pemkab bekerjasama dengan MUI setiap tahunnya senantiasa memberangkatkan calon jemaah haji dengan dana APBD. Pada tahun 2008 mendatang, jumlah calon jemaah yang diberangkatkan melalui dana APBD akan ditingkatkan menjadi 15 orang.

Dikesempatan tersebut, Bupati juga menyinggung pembangunan embarkasi haji di Pinangsori pada tahun ini sudah mulai dikerjakan dengan anggaran pembangunan tahap pertama sebesar Rp 2 M dari total anggaran rencana pembangunan embarkasi Rp 45 M. “Saya mengharapkan, kiranya sebelum masa jabatan saya berakhir pada tahun 2011, pesawat jenis boing telah dapat memberangkatkan calon jemaah haji asal pantai barat dari embarkasi haji di Pinangsori-Jeddah, cetus Tuani yang disambut tepuk tangan seluruh calon jemaah haji Tapteng dan undangan.

Sebelumnya, Kepala Staf Haji Tapteng Drs Azwar Pohan dalam laporannya mengatakan, jemaah haji Tapteng pada tahun ini 46 orang terdiri dari 28 laki-laki dan 18 perempuan.Dari 46 calon jemaah haji Tapteng, usia tertua atas nama Fatimah Pasaribu (78) asal Kecamatan Sorkam dan termuda atas nama Suharni (38) asal Kecamatan Badiri.
Dia menerangkan, calon jemaah haji Tapteng tergabung dalam kloter 17 bersama Tanjungbalai dan Tebingtinggi. Rencananya, calon jemaah haji asal Tapteng akan diberangkatkan ke Medan pada tanggal 13 Desember 2006 .Selanjutnya, sebelum calon jemaah haji asal Tapteng diberangkatkan menuju Jeddah pada tanggal 19 Desember, calon jemaah terlebih dahulu akan memasuki Asrama Haji tanggal 18 Desember 2006 mendatang, ujar Azwar Pohan yang juga adalah Kakandepag Tapteng.

Di tempat yang sama, Ketua MUI Tapteng H Ngadiman KS dalam sambutannya secara khusus mengucapkan terima kasih kepada Bupati Tapteng yang begitu besar memberikan perhatiannya terhadap peningkatan Iman dan Taqwa melalui pemberian fasilitas keagamaan berupa pengalokasian dana APBD kepada para ulama dan ustadz yang ingin menunaikan ibadah haji.

Ia mengatakan, untuk tahun ini Pemkab sebenarnya telah mengalokasikan dana bagi 12 orang ulama dan Ustadz di Tapteng, tapi berhubung dikarenakan kehabisan kuota haji , maka MUI Tapteng terpaksa hanya bisa memberangkatkan 9 orang calon jemaah haji.
Diharapkan, calon jemaah haji asal Tapteng dapat menjadi haji Mabrur dan nantinya dapat ikut berperan dalam meningkatkan kualitas iman dan taqwa di Tapteng, khususnya dalam mendukung program keagamaan yang giat-giatnya dilakukan Pemkab saat ini, imbau H Ngadiman KS .

Turut memberikan sambutan pada acara tepung tawar calon jemaah haji Tapteng , Danrem 023/KS Kolonel CZI Aditiawarman dan Norman SH mewakili Ketua DPRD Tapteng.

Festival Ramadhan Ala Hutagalung

2006-12-11T20:35:00.000-08:00

“Balimo-limo” Budaya Pesisir Sibolga-Tapteng Sambut Ramadhan

25 September 2006 jam 09:37
Sibolga (SIB)
Masyarakat pesisir khususnya yang berdomisili di kawasan Sibolga dan Tapanuli
Tengah (Tapteng) mempunyai budaya tersendiri menyambut sekaligus memasuki bulan suci Ramadhan (puasa-red) yaitu dengan “balimo-limo”. Balimo-limo diambil dari kata limau (artinya rempah-rempah) dan mendapat awalan ber- yang berarti mengerjakan. Kata ini selanjutnya diucapkan dalam bahasa pesisir dengan sebutan balimo-limo.

Bahan untuk balimo-limo terdiri dari rempah-rempah seperti bebungaan yang mengeluarkan bau yang harum seperti mawar, kamboja dan melati di tambah dengan jeruk purut dan dicampur air. Cara pemakainnya meliputi, campuran limau tadi dimasukkan dalam satu tempat seperti ember yang berisi air selanjutnya dibasuhkan ke sekujur tubuh melalui bagian kepala, atau dengan kata lain memandikannya.

Kebanyakan orang memandikan limau di aliran sungai ( atau di tempat air yang mengalir) dan mengenakan pakaian basahan (seperti pakaian mandi di sungai) dengan keyakinan seluruh hal yang buruk dan jelek dalam dirinya ini akan terbuang mengalir bersama air limau tersebut ke tempat jauh. Tokoh masyarakat Sibolga Drs H Radja Jafar Hutagalung yang akrab dipanggil “angku” dalam bincang-bincangnya dengan SIB, Sabtu (23/9) di rumahnya Jalan Lumba-lumba Sibolga menjelaskan, balimo-limo sudah turun temurun dilakukan masyarakat kedua daerah ini, meskipun bukan ajaran agama namun Balimo-limo diyakini sebagai budaya untuk membersihkan diri memasuki era baru yakni memasuki bulan puasa.

Islam, Balimo-limo tidak ada diajarkan dalam agama melainkan budaya pesisir di Pantai Barat, hal ini menjadi kebesaran hati yang lebih mengarah kepada faktor psikologis dengan menanamkan motivasi dalam diri sendiri untuk membersihkan diri sebelum memasuki bulan suci Ramadhan. Secara pribadi, pengakuan angku dirinya sendiri juga melakukan budaya balimo-limo setiap menyambut Ramadhan dan hal ini tidak menyalah ajaran agama. Demikian juga sanak saudara yang mengikuti budaya ini didukung sebagai motivasi membersihkan diri menyambut Ramadhan.

Untuk setiap melakukan balimo-limo ini, ia membasuh diri dengan air limau tadi sambil mengucapkan “ Bismilah” dan menghapalkan ayat suci Al-qur’an dari surat Al-anbiya. “Budaya ini hanya dilakukan untuk menyambut Ramadhan tetapi selesai Ramadhan tidak dilakukan lagi,” jelasnya.

Ribuan Warga Ikuti Balimo-limo

Pantauan wartawan, Sabtu (23/9) sore di sejumlah lokasi diadakan balimo-limo di antaranya di aliran Sungai Sarudik, Sungai Sipansihaporas, Sungai Rindu Alam dan Sungai Mela, terlihat ribuan warga terdiri dari anak-anak, remaja dan orang tua tumpah ruah memadati pinggiran sungai untuk melaksanakan budaya ini.

Dari hasil wawancara yang dilakukan wartawan terhadap sejumlah warga yang mengikuti kegiatan ini, ternyata tidak semuanya muslim, ada juga umat non-muslim berbaur bersama di lokasi tersebut.

Seperti halnya pengakuan Ricard Simatupang (20), Maria br Tobing (20) dan Donald Pasaribu (21) ketiganya penduduk Sibolga Sambas mengungkapkan, dirinya ikut balimo-limo untuk menemani tetangganya yang muslim karena kegiatan ini menurutnya menyenangkan dan sangat berkesan. “Biasanya kami akan mendapat kenalan baru di sini dan kegiatan ini hanya setahun sekali,” akunya.

Sejarah Perniagaan

2006-12-08T18:33:00.000-08:00

SEJARAH PERNIAGAAN HUTAGALUNG

Sejarah perniagaan komunitas Hutagalung tidak terlepas dari sejarah perkembangan peradaban Batak. Walaupun begitu, kiprah mereka baru dapat diketahui pada abad ke-16 M di mana tanah Batak dan Sumatera pada umumnya sedang dilanda booming ekonomi yang menjadi pemicu datangnya para kaum asing yang kemudian menjadi penjajah.

Perkembangan Islam membuat banyak warga Hutagalung yang menganutnya. Kelompok Marga Tanjung di Fansur, marga Pohan di Barus, Batu Bara di Sorkam kiri, Pasaribu di Sorkam Kanan, Hutagalung di Teluk Sibolga, Daulay di Sing Kwang merupakan komunitas Islam pertama yang menjalankan Islam dengan kaffah. Kota Sibolga sendiri sangat identik dengan komunitas Hutagalung, terbukti dengan penghitungan umur kota tersebut berdasarkan eksistensi marga Hutagalung, melalui silsilah tarombo Hutagalung di Sibolga.

Dalam kurun waktu 1513-1818, komunitas muslim Hutagalung dengan karavan-karavan kuda menjadi komunitas pedagang penting yang menghubungkan Silindung, Humbang Hasundutan dan Pahae dengan Sibolga yang menjadi daerah pesisir tempat keluar masuk komoditas ke tanah Batak selain Barus.

Komoditas yang dibawa dari pedalaman tanah Batak adalah hasil hutan. Sementara komoditas yang mereka bawa ke tanah Batak adalah garam, tekstil, perhiasan dan aksesoris dll. Pada permulaan abad ke-12, seorang ahli geografi Arab, Idrisi, memberitakan mengenai ekport kapur di Sumatera (Marschall 1968:72). Kapur bahasa latinnya adalah camphora produk dari sebuah pohon yang bernama latin dryobalanops aromatica gaertn. Orang Batak yang menjadi produsen kapur menyebutnya hapur atau todung atau haboruan.

Beberapa istilah asing mengenai Sumatera adalah al-Kafur al-Fansuri dengan istilah latin Canfora di Fanfur atau Hapur Barus dalam bahasa Batak dikenal sebagai produk terbaik di dunia (Drakard 1990:4) dan produk lain adalah Benzoin dengan bahasa latinnya Styrax benzoin. Semua ini adalah produk-produk di Sumatera Barat Laut dimana penduduk aselinya dalah orang-orang Pakpak dan Toba.

Para pedagang Hutagalung ini aktif menghadiri onan-onan yang menjadi pusat-pusat transaksi perdagangan di tanah Batak. Di setiap onan mereka mempunyai toko-toko untuk distribusi barang-barang sekaligus tempat pengumpul hasil hutan dari para petani. Alhasil pedagang Hutagalung menjadi makmur dengan tanah dan bangunan yang tersebar di mana-mana. Kelompok konglomerat Batak terbentuk melalui komunitas ini.

Untuk dapat dibayangkan dalam buku yang ditulis Colonel Hendry Yule, The Book of Sir Marco Polo The Venetian, hal 285 s/d 287, London 1875, tercatat bahwa antara tahun 1839 sampai tahun 1844 ekspor tahunan kapur barus dan sago dari negeri Barus (dan pesisir) langsung ke negeri Cina rata-rata 400 kg pertahun.

Harga yang dicatat Randot tahun 1848, kamfer keluaran negeri Cina kualitas nomor satu seharga 20 dolar per pikul. Kamfer keluaran Jepang 30 dolar per pikul. Kamfer Artemisia (Cina-ngai) harga per pikul 250 dolar. Sementara kamfer dengan nama "baroes" kualitas nomor satu mencapai harga 2000 dolar perpikul. Sementara kamfer baroes kualitas kedua harganya 1000 dolar per pikul. Secara umum kapur dari sumatera dinamakan camphor ping pien atau icicle flakes dan lungmau dragon brain.

Selain getahnya, pohon kayu kamfer juga sangat banyak manfaatnya. Antara lain minyak umbil untuk obat dan parfum. Pohon ini masuk nominasi nomor satu dalam ukuran mutu kayu gelondongan. Batangan kamfer sangat keras, tangguh dan terutama anti rayap.

Di samping komoditas ini, komoditas dari tanah Batak adalah damar, karet, getah jelutung, minyak nilam, minyak koring, meranti, sitorngom. Barang tambang seperti, emas, perak, timah dan batu bara.

Semuanya menyatu di onan-onan bersama hasil buah seperti, buah barangan, jeruk, jantikan, kare, kemiri, rambe, langsek ai-ai, durian, petai, jambu bol merah, jambu bol putih, duku atau laccat, sukun, kelawi, rambutan, manggis, sawo manila, kweni, mempelam, mangga salak dll. Hasil laut yang terdiri dari berjenis ikan, penyu, sadurei, karang badarah, kimo, rambu-rambu, kombalameh, lolak, lokan, udang dll. Hewan yang langka dan laku dijual adalah gajah, badak, kerbau, kambing, rusa, kancil, pelanduk, biawak, buaya, ular, harimau, kera, siamang, beruang, punai, bakuk, murai, salindik, tupai, elang, camar, balam, ikan leilan, gamak, lampung, garing lintih dll.

Kepiawaian marga Hutagalung dalam berdagang semestinya mendapat ucapan terima kasih dari orang-orang Batak kala itu. Tanpa mereka, huta-huta orang Batak yang berpencar-pencar dan terisolir di pedalaman hutan tidak akan dapat bertahan hidup tanpa supplai komoditas ekonomi ini. Praktis komunitas pedagang Hutagalung memonopoli arus keluar masuk komoditas ekonomi bersama kelompok marga Marpaung, Siopatpusoran dan Nasution.

Pada tahun 921H atau tahun 1514 M didirikan mesjid syiah di kampung Hutagalung, Horian di Silindung. Komunitas Hutagalung yang menguasai alur perdagangan di teluk Sibolga, sampai ke daerah Silindung, Humbang dan Pahae ini, mendirikan banyak mesjid di Silindung. Diyakini syiah berkembang lebih pesat daripada mazhab-mazhab mainstream Indonesia dan menjadi kepercayaan kebanyakakn marga Hutagalung yang dipengaruhi oleh paham tasawwuf syattariah dan ajaran-ajaran yang menyerupai syiah.

1285 M

Mulai masuk ajaran Islam syafii di Sumatera khususnya wilayah sekitar Pasai. Hal ini diakibatkan suksesi kepemimpinan di Mesir, dari Dinasti Fathimiyah lalu Ayyubiyah dan Dinasti Mamluk. Dinasti Mamluk mulai mengirim utusan dagang mereka ke wilayah ini yang mengakibatkan penyebaran ajaran syafii. Di Barus, tanah Batak pesisir, mazhab syafii banyak dianut oleh orang-orang Batak di Singkel, yang sekarang masuk dalam provinsi Aceh.

Pada tahun 1411 M, mazhab hanafi mulai dikenal penduduk Batak akibat interaksi dengan pedagang-pedagang Cina dengan orang-orang Batak di Singkuang, Perdagangan dan sepanjang sungai Bah Bolon.

Di daerah Natal, 1412 M, tanah Batak Selatan, ajaran mazhab Maliki mulai dikembangkan oleh seorang tokoh intelektual dan pedagang dari Maroko yang dikenal oleh penduduk setempat dengan Tuan Syeikh Magribi. Dalam perkembangan berikutnya, dia berdakwah ke Gresik dan meninggal di sana pada tahun 1419 dan dikenang dengan nama Maulana Malik Ibrahim salah satu sunan dalam walisongo yang dihormati di pulau Jawa.

Perkembangan Islam di tanah Batak tidak saja mencakup mazhab-mazhan besar dalam Islam. Di Fansur, sebuah wilayah di Kesultanan Barus, tanah Batak pesisir, golongan teolog khawarij dengan mazhab fiqih ibadiyah mulai berkembang. Faham ini dikembangkan dari Zanzibar, Afrika oleh intelektual lokal Abdulrauf Fansuri. Pada tahun 1601 M dalam rangka monopoli ekonomi dan pensucian agama, pihak Kesultanan Aceh menginvasi Kesultanan Barus dan melarang berkembangnya ajaran ini. Abdulrauf merupakan tokoh intelektual saat itu yang mempunyai pemikiran politik khususnya dalam tata negara; Sultan Amir al-Mukminin harus dipilih dan dapat diturunkan oleh rakyat. Pendapat ini ditentang oleh Aceh.

Tiga tokoh intelektual Batak saat itu adalah Abdulrauf Fansuri yang bermazhab khawarij dengan fiqih ibadiyah. Yang lain adalah Abdulrauf Singkily yang bermazhab syafii dan Hamzah Fansuri yang bermazhab syiah al-muntazar.

Seorang tokoh Hutagalung yang terkenal dan terdokumentasi, adalah Amir Hussin Hutagalung, bergelar Tuanku Saman lahir 1819 dan meninggal tahun 1837, yang semasa dengan Tuanku Rao; Faqih Amiruddin. Ayah dari Tuanku Saman adalah Kulipah Abdul Karim Hutagalung yang menjadi imam besar mesjid di Silindung. Namun pada tahap ini komunitas Hutagalung mulai meninggalkan praktek syiah dan beralih ke sunni seiring dengan redupnya pengaruh syiah di Indonesia. Alasan lainnya adalah mereka juga terimbas dari praktek pemurnian agama yang dibawa oleh kelompok Padri Batak.

Sebagai masyarakat pedagang yang menguasai jalur-jalur penting perdagangan di tanah Batak, komunitas Hutagalung juga dikenal sebagai komunitas maritim yang menguasai jalur pelayaran di pusat-pusat perekonomian nusantara kala itu. Mulai dari Sibolga, Malaka dan Riau.

Tokoh maritim Hutagalung yang dikenal adalah Abdullah Salatar Hutagalung. Abdullah Salatar inilah yang membantu migrasi orang-orang Batak ke Malaysia yang ingin merantau di abad ke-19. Diantaranya adalah Hussein Nasution, seorang tokoh Nasution yang berhasil menjadi elit bangsawan di Malaysia.

Di Sibolga Hussein Nasution anak dari Idris Nasutioan berhasil menjadi anak buah sebuah armada kapal layar perniagaan milik seorang nakhoda bernama Abdullah Salatar Hutagalung, seorang nakhoda muslim Batak Toba yang sering melakukan misi perdagangan ke Malaysia dan Riau.

Di sana Hussein Nasution bergabung dengan komunitas saudagar Minang dan Mandailing yang telah lama bermukim dan menjadi penduduk setempat. Sanking banyaknya orang Mandailing dan Minang di sana proses merantau tersebut sampai mempunyai nama tersendiri yakni 'Pai Kolang' yang berarti "Migration to Kolang". Dari tahun 1833-1871, Hussein menapaki hidupnya di Kelang yang semula masih termasuk Kerajaan Negeri Sembilan.

Pada tahun 1873, dalam sebuah praktek diskriminasi dan intoleransi agama, mesjid-mesjid marga Hutagalung di Tarutung, Silindung, diruntuhkan oleh penjajah Belanda. Haji-haji dan orang-orang Islam, kebanyakan dari marga Hutagalung, diusir dari tanah leluhur dan pusaka mereka di Lembah Silindung. Belanda melakukan pembersihan etnis, terhadap muslim Batak.

Paska kemerdekaan, marga Hutagalung mulai aktif berkiprah di pentas nasional. Beberapa diantaranya mulai membangun kampung halamannya. Pada 02/11/2006 Irjen Pol (Purn) H MB Hutagalung dan Kepala Biro Umum Kementrian BUMN Drs. Mantaris Siagian yang termasuk dalam keluarga besar Amir Mirza Hutagalung, memberikan sumbangan 300 juta rupiah untuk pembangunan mesjid Simangumban di Desa Simangumban, Kabupaten Tapanuli Utara.

Amir Mirza Hutagalung, mewakili keluarga besar Yayasan Pesantren H. Sutan Oloan Hutagalung dan Yayasan Marsipature mengatakan pihaknya siap melakukan renovasi mesjid yang berkapasitas 300 orang. "Ini merupakan nazar seluruh keluarga, mudah-mudahan menjadi amal ibadah dan kita mendapatan berkah dan semakin dekat kepada Tuhan." (Batak Pos)