With spate of attacks, Islamic State group begins bloody new chapter in Afghanistan

A bombing at a mosque in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 29 killed at least 10 and wounded dozens more. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

KABUL (NYTIMES) - The first blast ripped through a school in Kabul, the Afghan capital, killing high school students. Days later, explosions destroyed two mosques and a minibus in the north of the country. The following week, three more explosions targeted Shi'ite and Sufi Muslims.

The attacks of the past two weeks have left at least 100 people dead, figures from hospitals suggest, and stoked fears that Afghanistan is heading into a violent spring, as the Islamic State's affiliate in the country tries to undermine the Taliban government and assert its newfound reach.

The sudden spate of attacks across the country has upended the relative calm that followed the Taliban's seizing of power in August, which ended 20 years of war. And by targeting civilians - the Hazara Shi'ite, an ethnic minority, and Sufis, who practise a mystical form of Islam, in recent weeks - they have stirred dread that the country may not be able to escape a long cycle of violence.

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan - known as Islamic State Khorasan - has claimed responsibility for four of the seven recent major attacks, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist organisations. Those that remain unclaimed fit the profile of previous attacks by the group, which considers Shi'ites and Sufis heretics.

With the attacks, the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate has undercut the Taliban's claim that they had extinguished any threat from the Islamic State in the country. It has also reinforced concerns about a potential resurgence of extremist groups in Afghanistan that could eventually pose an international threat.

Last month the Islamic State claimed it had fired rockets into Uzbekistan from northern Afghanistan - the first such purported attack by the group on a Central Asian nation.

"ISIS-K is resilient; it survived years of airstrikes from Nato forces and ground operations from the Taliban during its insurgency," said Mr Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Programme at the Wilson Centre, a think tank in Washington, using an alternate name for the Islamic State Khorasan.

"Now after the Taliban takeover and the US departure, ISIS-K has emerged even stronger."

The Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate was established in 2015 by disaffected Pakistani Taliban fighters. The group's ideology took hold partly because many villages there are home to Salafi Muslims, the same branch of Sunni Islam as the Islamic State. Salafists are a smaller minority among the Taliban, who mostly follow the Hanafi school.

Since its founding, the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate has been antagonistic toward the Taliban: At times the two groups have fought for turf, and last year Islamic State leaders denounced the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, saying that the group's version of Islamic rule was insufficiently hard line.

Still, for most of the past six years the Islamic State has been contained to eastern Afghanistan amid US airstrikes and Afghan commando raids that killed many of its leaders. But since the Taliban seized power, the Islamic State has grown in reach and expanded to nearly all 34 provinces, according to the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban broke open prisons across the country during their military advance in the summer, the number of Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan doubled to nearly 4,000, the UN found.

The group also ramped up its activity across the country, said Mr Abdul Sayed, a security specialist and researcher who tracks the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate and other radical groups. In the last four months of 2021, the Islamic State carried out 119 attacks in Afghanistan, up from 39 during the same period a year earlier. They included suicide bombings, assassinations and ambushes on security checkpoints.

A boys’ school in Kabul that was bombed last month. 

PHOTO: NYTIMES

Of those, 96 targeted Taliban officials or security forces, compared with only two in the same period in 2020 - a marked shift from earlier last year when the group primarily targeted civilians, including activists and journalists.

In response, the Taliban carried out a brutal campaign last year against suspected Islamic State fighters in the eastern province of Nangarhar. Their approach relied heavily on extrajudicial detentions and killings of those suspected of belonging to the Islamic State, according to local residents, analysts and human rights monitors.

For months this past winter, attacks by the Islamic State dwindled - raising some hope that the Taliban's campaign was proving effective. But the recent spate of high-profile attacks that have claimed many civilian lives suggests that the Islamic State used the winter to regroup for a spring offensive - a pattern perfected by the Taliban when it was an insurgency.

A student wounded in the attack on a school, which was in an area of Kabul dominated by Hazara Shiites. PHOTO: AFP

While the Islamic State group's Afghanistan affiliate does not appear to be trying to seize territory, as the Islamic State did in Iraq and Syria, the attacks have demonstrated the group's ability to sow violent chaos despite the Taliban's heavy-handed tactics, analysts say.

They have also stoked concerns that, sensing perceived weakness in the Taliban government, other extremist groups in the region that already have reason to resent the Taliban may shift alliances to the Islamic State.

"ISIS-K wants to show its breadth and reach beyond Afghanistan, that its jihad is more violent than that of the Taliban, and that it is a purer organisation that doesn't compromise on who is righteous and who isn't," said Dr Asfandyar Mir, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace.

The blasts have particularly rattled the country's Hazara Shi'ites, who have long feared that the Taliban - which persecuted Afghan Shi'ites for decades - would allow violence against them to go unchecked. The strife has also caused concern in neighbouring Iran, a Shi'ite theocracy.

Many Afghan Shi'ites have been on edge since suicide bombings by the Islamic State at Shi'ite mosques in one northern and one southern city together killed more than 90 people in October. The recent blasts, which mainly targeted areas dominated by Hazara communities, deepened those fears.

Relatives mourning Mohammad Hussein, who was killed in an explosion outside the boys’ school in Kabul, on April 27, 2022. PHOTO: NYTIMES

Late last month, Mr Saeed Mohammad Agha Husseini, 21, was standing outside his home in the Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul, a Hazara-dominated area, when he felt the thud of an explosion. He and his father raced to the school down the street, where throngs of terrified students poured out its gate, the bloodied bodies of some of their classmates sprawled across the pavement.

His father rushed to help the victims, but minutes later Mr Husseini heard another deafening boom. A second explosion hit the school's gate, fatally wounding his father.

A week later, Mr Husseini sat under the shade of a small awning with his relatives to mourn. Outside, their once-bustling street was quiet, the fear of another explosion still ripe. At the school, community leaders had been discussing hiring guards to take security into their own hands.

"The government cannot protect us; we are not safe," Mr Husseini said. "We have to think about ourselves and take care of our security."

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Opposition head displaces Ankara, Istanbul mayors as Erdogan's next election rival

Republican People’s Party head Kemal Kilicdaroglu has entered the running for the Turkish opposition’s presidential candidate.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, chair of the Republican People's Party, arrives at his home after a power outage in Ankara, Turkey, on April 21, 2022. - ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images

Andrew Wilks
April 28, 2022

ISTANBUL — The lights were back on in Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s Ankara home on Thursday after a week without electricity in protest at surging energy prices.

The end of his protest — he had refused to pay his electricity bill since February — coincided with Kilicdaroglu emerging as the most likely candidate to face President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an election scheduled for June 2023.

As leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey's largest opposition party, Kilicdaroglu is the de facto head of the Nation Alliance, a electoral coalition of four opposition parties that formed for the 2018 elections.

In recent months, he has said he would be “honored” to be the alliance’s presidential candidate but refrained from indicating whether he would run.

Speaking on Tuesday, the day after philanthropist Osman Kavala was jailed for life in a case viewed as deeply unjust by many, Kilicdaroglu called on supporters to “join me or get out of my way right now.”

His rousing speech was interpreted by unnamed CHP insiders speaking to local media as a declaration of his candidacy. The Cumhuriyet newspaper, which has ties to the CHP, reported that other opposition party leaders backed the move.

Previously, two other prominent CHP figures had been touted as the likeliest candidates: Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. Both won office in the 2019 local elections, replacing incumbents from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey’s two largest cities.

Since their victories, Yavas and Imamoglu have adopted wide-ranging policies to improve public services and root out corruption and mismanagement.

Before he turned to politics, Kilicdaroglu was a civil servant who rose to head the social insurance agency. He has often been characterized by his bureaucratic background and criticized for not connecting with ordinary voters.

Critics have also pointed to his record since taking over leadership of the CHP in 2010, during which the party has failed to gain more than 26% of the vote in four parliamentary elections.

“It’s only natural that Kilicdaroglu becomes the candidate of the opposition because he’s the president of the largest party in the Nation Alliance. He’s the leader of the main opposition party,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara. “Yes, he has a track record of losing elections against Erdogan but he also has a track record of experience.”

He added, “Because he’s a senior figure, his candidacy cannot easily be contested by other people in his party or even by the other parties in the alliance.”

Kilicdaroglu’s pivotal role in forming the Nation Alliance, which has coalesced into a group promising wide-ranging reforms and a return to Turkey’s parliamentary system, is also seen as an achievement that now presents a united front to Erdogan.

He was also instrumental in helping the newly formed Iyi Party, now the second largest party in the alliance, to compete in the 2018 election by lending 15 CHP deputies shortly after the party was formed in a break from the Nationalist Action Party (MHP). The MHP is allied to the AKP as the People’s Alliance.

A year earlier, Kilicdaroglu embraced a new form of Turkish politics when he set off on a 25-day Justice March from Ankara to Istanbul to protest the imprisonment of a CHP lawmaker.

The march by the party leader, then 68, attracted support from a wide spectrum of government opponents. Islamic State suspects were arrested for planning to bomb the demonstration.

One concern for CHP campaign planners will be Kilicdaroglu’s Alevi roots. Alevis, who largely adhere to Shiism mixed with Sufi beliefs, are Turkey’s largest religious minority and have historically been subject to prejudice and pogroms.

“First of all he’s an Alevi in a Sunni-majority country. That will certainly have a negative impact on his chances; we don’t know by how much,” said Unluhisarcikli.

Journalist Murat Yetkin said Kilicdaroglu’s background could provide an avenue of attack for the AKP, telling Al-Monitor, “As soon as Kilicdaroglu is announced as a candidate, [the CHP] are worried that him being Alevi could led to black propaganda under the table, or perhaps openly, from Erdogan and the AKP that will deter conservative voters, the vast majority of whom are Sunnis.”

However, as the leader of a centrist, social democratic party, attracting Turkey’s vast right could prove to be the main obstacle on Kilicdaroglu’s path to power.

“It’s doubtful whether he’s the best person in the alliance to gain support from right-wing voters, ideally including from the AKP and MHP as well,” said Unluhisarcikli. “Other potential names that have been mentioned, first and foremost Mansur Yavas, would find it easier to attract AKP and MHP voters, as well as the votes from the right-wing parties in the Nation Alliance.”

This weakness could be countered by nominating opposition politicians from the right, such as Iyi leader Meral Aksener, for his cabinet if he wins, he added.

Turkish opposition

Courting Turkey’s disenchanted electorate

Despite the economic crisis and Turkey's increasingly undemocratic track record, surveys show the ruling AKP is still the party of choice. So what exactly is holding back the opposition? Ayse Karabat reports from Istanbulp

March 2022 saw the release of Turkey’s official annual inflation rate. The figure – 61 percent – was met with disbelief by many Turkish citizens, including Baki Ersoy, MP for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Like many Turks, Ersoy complained about the recent price hikes, saying the government should stop turning a blind eye to reality. Consequently, he was forced to resign from the MHP, a staunch ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The official inflation rate produced by The Turkish Statistical Institute (TUİK) was directly countered by the Independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG). This group of prominent independent Turkish economists found the country's annual inflation in March to be 142 percent. ENAG could face serious repercussions for challenging the official figures. An AKP bill proposing imprisonment for those who publish alternative statistics without using TUİK-approved methodology is currently awaiting ratification.

Yet other parameters are also indicative of growing fatigue towards Erdogan's government. The official unemployment rate is over 10 percent, more than 1,400 doctors have left the country due to poor working conditions and the tally of femicides continues to grow by the day. A recent survey conducted by Yeditepe University and polling company MAK revealed that 64 percent of young people aged between 18 and 29 want to leave Turkey because they see little hope for the future. 

Other polls suggest, however, that the AKP, which has been in power since 2019 and has seen its popularity wane, is still some four to five points ahead of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Plenty of reasons not to vote AKP: ENAG – Turkey's Independent Inflation Research Group – found Turkey's annual inflation in March to be 142 percent, more than double the official figure issued by government body TUIK. Unemployment is officially running at over 10 percent, more than 1,400 doctors have left the country due to poor working conditions and the tally of femicides continues to grow by the day. One recent survey revealed that 64 percent of young people aged between 18 and 29 want to leave Turkey because they see little hope for the future

From identity- to class-based politics

Turkey is a highly polarised society, based largely on differing identities and lifestyles. This is also reflected in the population's voting behaviour. Regardless of income levels, most conservative, religious citizens and some nationalists vote for the AKP and its ally, the MHP, while citizens with secular ideas and modern lifestyles support the opposition, dominated by the CHP. This societal division dates back to the founding of modern Turkey in 1923.

The CHP, established by the founder of the republic Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, supported a headscarf ban in the 1990s and early 2000s in public spheres and universities. In 2010, it was the AKP that lifted the ban. The ruling party remains adept at reminding the public about former grievances caused by the CHP. Leader of the opposition Kemal Kilicdaroglu has even criticised his own party’s past mistakes – such as the headscarf ban – several times.

He has also acknowledged mistakes made by the Turkish state, including harsh taxes imposed on non-Muslim minorities during the early decades of the republic, in which many believe the CHP to have been complicit. When and if his party comes to power in the next election, Kilicdaroglu has promised reconciliation and acknowledgement regarding those events. He has not, however, provided any details as to how his party intends to go about this.

According to Kilicdaroglu, there needs to be an end to politics based on fuelling tension and polarisation. "They are trying to stay in power by consolidating the masses using tensions and polarisation. This style of politics needs to end," he said in interview.

Bekir Agirdir, general manager of KONDA polling company and prominent political analyst, says that lifestyle-based political behaviours and voting habits are changing. Surveys conducted by KONDA reveal that "as unemployment, poverty and inequalities in income distribution increase, class tensions come to the fore and identity tensions are replaced by class tensions".

How to unite the country? Turkey has a history of polarisation along cultural, religious and ideological lines. Despite pleading for an end to politics based on fuelling division and preaching reconciliation, CHP leader Kilicdaroglu must offer more than solidarity with the working class. Committing to ongoing social support for the vulnerable and a 'strengthened parliamentary system' is a good start

On the other hand, it remains hard to assert that switching to the CHP and its leader, Kilicdaroglu, whose Alevi origins mark him out as a member of a historically persecuted Shia sect, will be easy for low-income conservatives. For his part, Kilicdaroglu is careful not to mention his Alevi or Kurdish origins, preferring to demonstrate his solidarity with the people on class issues, such as unpaid bills, rather than identity.

Unpaid bills

On 20 April 2022, Kilicdaroglu began a week of sitting in the dark in his flat in Ankara. His electricity had been cut off after he refused to pay his bills in protest over the 127 percent increase in electricity prices. He said he wanted to stand in solidarity with the 4 million Turkish households that were reportedly unable to pay their electricity bills last year.

Things are no different when it comes to gas. Prices increased by 93 percent last year; more than 1 million households were unable to pay their bills. In response, the government introduced state gas relief: more than 200,000 households applied for it within the first three days. This new social benefit comes on top of an estimated 22 million people who already rely on the state. The AKP is particularly proud of the increases in social benefits it has achieved since coming to power in 2002. The opposition, however, claims that citizens would not have to rely on the state were the right economic policies in place.  

Some are afraid that if the AKP loses power, they could lose their benefits. They also fear losing their jobs in the public sector. There is a widespread belief that to secure public sector employment, which accounts for six million of the country's 22 million jobs, you need good connections.

The CHP is trying to convince people that both these fears are groundless. After all, when the opposition party won local elections in Ankara and Istanbul in 2019, staff recruited by the former AKP authorities were neither sacked nor replaced. CHP municipalities have also introduced social support programmes such as "pending invoices", a website where families in need upload their bills for volunteers to pay.

Such efforts have been welcomed by the public, but the CHP-led opposition has yet to publish a comprehensive economic agenda, explaining how it intends to improve the situation. Just one more reason why voters aren’t jumping on the CHP bandwagon, even if they are unhappy with the current government. Various polls have revealed that some 20 percent of those eligible to vote remain undecided. 

Don't ignore the Kurdish HDP: bearing in mind Erdogan's AKP still enjoys a maximum five point lead over the opposition in the polls, failure to involve the Kurds in any election campaign is likely to end in defeat. With a ten percent share of the vote, the HDP and its voters deserve to be taken seriously – particularly if the CHP is in earnest about reconciliation within Turkey

The CHP and five other opposition parties – the "Nation Alliance" – agree that the main reason for Turkey's current problems is the presidential system, introduced in 2018 after a constitutional referendum. The alliance’s key pledge so far is to change the system to what they call a "strengthened parliamentary system".

This foresees stripping the presidential office of its wide-reaching powers, effecting a separation of the executive. The opposition is also promising to install an independent judiciary, with checks and balances to ensure politically motivated rulings are outlawed.

Kurdish party excluded; no presidential candidate

Although the Nation Alliance’s leaders assured the public they would continue to act together to defeat the ruling AKP, they are still excluding the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which attracts around 10 percent of the votes, mostly from Kurdish-populated areas. The government, especially the MHP, is attempting to criminalise the HDP, many of whose elected mayors and MPs have been jailed. The opposition's hesitation when it comes to including the HDP is preventing them from reaching another 10 percent of voters at least – a crucial margin if they want to defeat the AKP.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has boosted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s approval rating, which had been declining steadily. The public believes his diplomatic efforts towards regional peace and stability are valuable during such turbulent times.

The opposition has yet to present a joint presidential candidate. They say they will decide once a date for the election has been announced. But by the time a date is set, it may be too late for the opposition to campaign – and what momentum they had may be irrevocably lost.

Ayse Karabat

© Qantara.de 2022

Delia Smith: ‘The world is in chaos… but together we have such power’


Rachel Cooke
Sun, 6 March 2022

LONG READ

Delia Smith
English cook and television presenter

At 80, Britain’s queen of cookery has written a surprising new book about spirituality that was turned down by six publishers. She talks about meditation, MasterChef and her beloved Norwich FC

Why is it so exciting – and so nerve-racking – to be meeting Delia Smith? Down the years, I’ve interviewed a lot of famous and important people (and three prime ministers), and yet I can’t remember any of them having induced this combination of extreme eagerness and mortal fear. Is it because when I was a teenager, she was one of the very few truly successful women then in public life? I suppose it must be. It’s no exaggeration to say that she was up there with the Queen, Mrs Thatcher and Madonna – and just like them, her word was The Law. For my 21st birthday, my parents gave me a cheque and a copy of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, and for all that I was still in my radical feminist stage, I hardly batted an eyelid. Simone de Beauvoir was all very well, but did she have any advice on roasting times or how to make sure your yorkshire puddings rise? No, she did not.

Anyway, one result of this desperate, anxious state was that I stupidly decided to bake a cake for her – my God, even to write such words – and when I arrive at her cottage, the conservatory of which I recognise from the TV shows she once presented there, the very first thing I do is hand it over. “It’s a bit … flat,” I say, mournfully (for those who are interested, it’s Nigella’s ordinarily easy-peasy cardamon and marzipan loaf). But it seems that I’m worrying unnecessarily. Delia looks completely delighted by my foil-wrapped house brick, cradling it in her arms as if it was a newborn baby. “You used good ingredients,” she says, kindly. “It will still taste nice.” Cooking isn’t about perfection, she tells me; it’s about achievability. “I once went to a Women’s Institute thing, and I remember thinking: I’m not at all sure my jam would pass muster here.”

It’s a beautiful, crystalline day in Suffolk – the house is deep in the countryside outside Stowmarket – and from the sofa, the view is of a pond, on which there floats a single, serene moorhen, and beyond it a line of trees. Delia and her husband, the journalist Michael Wynn-Jones, have lived here since the 1970s, but this expanse of garden is a relatively recent addition: 20 years ago, he bought the meadow as a present for her 60th birthday, and together (with some help, obviously) they sunk the pond. Was it a blessing during the lockdown? “Oh, yes. We’re very lucky. The pandemic has been terrible for so many people, but it wasn’t a hardship for us. We’re older, and we live in a beautiful place. I have an office at the bottom of the garden, and I was there every day from 9.30.” Lunch was an apple, and then, at 5.30, she would return to the house, to a supper made by Michael, who now does most of the cooking. Is he a good cook? “Yes, if he follows the recipe. When he retired, he got really interested in it. He wanted to do more and more, and I let him do more and more, though I do still love cooking and, of course, food. You’ve got to be greedy to love cooking, and I always have been. The first thing I do in the morning when I get up is think: what are we going to eat today? And I’m lucky to be married to someone who feels the same way. But cooking is the one time when I know I’m 80: all that standing, getting a backache.”

How cheering to find that she loves Pharrell Williams, marched against Brexit and idolises Greta Thunberg

How on earth can she possibly be 80? In the flesh, she looks exactly as she did the last time we saw her on screen, more than a decade ago, and perhaps even before that. Close your eyes, moreover, and this is still the voice, crisp and light and warm, that once drove us all so mad for cranberries (Delia Smith’s Winter Collection, 1995). But there’s something else, too: she is so interested in everything, enthusiasm and energy radiating from her like steam from a pan. As all the world knows, she and Michael have long been majority shareholders in their beloved Norwich City football club, and her involvement there is still all-consuming. There are its restaurants, which she oversees, and every week there are dozens of management decisions to be taken; above all, there are the matches, her appetite for which remains undimmed. “Yes, I’m afraid so. Three hours there and three hours back, sometimes. Often, there’ll be a game on a Tuesday and I might say: ‘I’m not going.’ But then Monday will come and I’ll think: ‘Actually, I am. I can’t not go.’” For her, football is about community; she believes almost anything is possible when people commit to working together, though admittedly this may not stretch to poor old Norwich’s ability to remain in the Premiership come the end of this season.

Which brings us to her new book, the one she wrote while she was sequestered in her office at the bottom of the garden. It also has to do with community. As its title suggests, You Matter: The Human Solution is not a cookbook. Rather, it is (sorry) an extended recipe for living: a nourishing broth of ideas garnered from her wide reading (its presiding spirits are the Jesuit priest and palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, and the American psychologist Abraham Maslow), seasoned lightly with her own thoughts and experiences. How to sum it up? This is tricky. It has, I think, three central premises. First, that we have not yet fully perceived just how awesome the human race is, and as a consequence we underestimate our ability to come up with solutions to our increasingly grave problems. Second, that evolution encompasses, for human beings, a trajectory of unity, one we resist at our peril. Third, that we often neglect our inner, spiritual selves, and by doing so, tend to lose our all-important sense of perspective, something that has an egregious effect on our ability even to begin to tackle the mayhem that is all around

Smith and her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, presenting Norwich City player Emiliano Buendía with the club’s player of the season trophy, 2021. 

Photograph: Stephen Pond/Getty Images

Has Delia gone barmy? This is surely what some people are going to say when they hear about this book, and perhaps you’re thinking it even as you read this. But she doesn’t care if they do. “I’ve had a good apprenticeship when it comes to criticism,” she says. “Because I was very criticised when I was a cook. When people tell me I’m going to get a lot of flak, I think, well, no one wants to take a risk; no one wants to put their head above the parapet. This book could just sink without trace. But if it does, I won’t mind. I had to do it. I want people to know this stuff.” One of the practices she extols in You Matter is silent meditation – though she doesn’t use the m-word, on the grounds it might put people off – and the hour she spends each day sitting completely still as her mind roams where it will has brought her a kind of freedom. “Silence and stillness have taken my fear away,” she says, her voice as calm and as soothing as a bowl of custard.

When did she start thinking about these ideas? “Well, they were always bubbling around, and I did write some religious books at one stage [a Catholic convert, she used to go to mass every day; the books in question were published in the 1980s]. But I found they just went to religious people, and I wanted to write for those who don’t have any religion. The main thrust of it is that there is a whole part of our lives that is left unexplored, and this is the crucial time in our history to get into that. Things are very bad. How could we not want to look at the world and say: we’ve got to change?” A pause. “Have you seen Don’t Look Up?” she asks. I shake my head. (In case you don’t know, it’s a Netflix film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, about a comet that’s heading towards Earth, a calamity that is an allegory for the climate emergency]. “Well, it’s brilliant, and it’s also saying what I’m saying, which is that we don’t realise the power we have when we work together.”

Before I read You Matter, I hadn’t heard of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a man she describes as “a colossus” (he died in 1955). But she’s not surprised. De Chardin was a Darwinist who fell out with the church over the doctrine of original sin: “All his books were banned by the church for a time,” she says. She got into him in the 1960s. “They’re quite difficult to read. But the more mature I got, the more I realised that humanity is a phenomenon, which is what he says.” The title of her book, however, was not inspired by him, but by a piece torn from a magazine many years ago: the work of a young woman, Dorothea Lynch, who was dying of cancer (Lynch would go on to write a book, Exploding Into Life). It doesn’t always, Delia believes, take a philosopher to spell out the essence of complicated ideas. Lynch was suffering terribly, but in her pain she was able to grasp the beauty of life as never before. “Each of us is very special, very singular, carrying weight,” she wrote. “I matter. I would like to open the window tonight and yell that outside. I matter.”

Delia wishes we could all start thinking this way long before we lie dying – and this is where (she hopes) her book comes in. “The world is in chaos. We have got the war in Ukraine, concentration camps again, people freezing and starving. In our own country, some people can have heat, or they can have food… and yet, together, we have such power. People say to me: how can you get the whole world on board? Well, how did Christians get so many people on board? They were just a little band. Or Muslims? Another little band. So I can’t be put off by that. I’m very ambitious.” Her grand dream is to help her readers to achieve self-actualisation, which according to another of her gurus, Maslow, is the highest level of psychological development: the stage in life when potential may be fully realised, the rest of our needs (those that connect to our bodies and to our egos) having already been fulfilled.

Smith in 1996, the year her Winter Collection won the British book of the year award. Photograph: Wilkinson/Shutterstock

One of the ways such a state may be encouraged is via what she calls “reflective daydreaming”: that daily hour of silence she mentioned earlier. When, many years ago, she started doing this, inspired by an Indian sufi, she began slowly, clocking in 10 minutes or so at first. “It’s not easy,” she says. “It’s the hardest thing on earth to get someone to be still and quiet. But I just feel that there will be some people who will want to try it, and if we get enough people like that, the world will change.” The Beatles song Within You Without You pretty much sums up her book, she says. Pay attention to what’s inside, as well as what’s outside, and life will be better. “Let’s get away from the idea of me as a saint. I make as many mistakes as anyone. I’m always saying the wrong thing. These ideas are not virtue on my part. I just want to connect.”

If you think about it, I’m no threat to a chef, though if they do know who I am I feel bad if I leave anything

What has the response to the book been like so far? Michael scrutinised each section as she completed it. “He would say: ‘OK’. Or: ‘I don’t think you’ve got that quite right.’” But You Matter was turned down by no fewer than six publishers, in spite of the fact that Delia has sold more than 21m copies of her cookbooks. “It was tough. At one point we were looking at self-publishing.” Finally, it went to a small press: Mensch. “And thank God those six did turn it down. I couldn’t have done better.” I’ve no idea how her latest editor feels about self-actualisation. But he or she will surely have relished the glimpses its author gives of herself on the path to enlightenment. How surprising (and cheering) to find that she loves Pharrell Williams; that she marched against Brexit; that she idolises Greta Thunberg; that it is her great pleasure to take the Norwich apprentices to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia to look at paintings by Bacon and Picasso. (“In the cafeteria, these guys of 16 were collecting up the cups; they’ve been trained to think of others because you can’t become a team if you’re only interested in yourself,” she says, when I bring this up.)

In its exuberance and sincerity, You Matter is emphatically the work of an autodidact, and perhaps this is one way in which it connects, as unlikely as this sounds, to the rest of her career. She left her school in Bexleyheath at 16, and went to work first as a hairdresser. But having grown interested in cooking, at 21 she started again, this time as a dishwasher in a small restaurant in Paddington, a role that gave her the opportunity to learn on the job (eventually, she graduated to waitressing, and thence to the kitchen). Meanwhile, she spent her free time devouring cookbooks in the reading room at the British Museum, trying out the recipes she found on the family from whom she rented a room. In 1969, she was taken on by the Daily Mirror’s magazine, which is where she met Michael; the first thing she wrote was a recipe for kipper paté. From there, she moved to the Evening Standard and into television (her first appearances were on the BBC’s Look East). Again, she learned as she went along. “That was the best job,” she says, of the Standard. “I used to get a lot of letters, and I learned how to write recipes from those. Someone once asked: ‘You say the tomatoes must be peeled, but how?’ From that moment, I never wrote a recipe without explaining every part of the process.”

But she doesn’t miss writing cookbooks or making cookery programmes now. “Some people want more recipes,” she says. “But there are enough. If you’ve gone through your 50th asparagus season, there’s not a lot left to say. I left television when the era of chefs came in; what Elizabeth David called ‘theatre on a plate’, which I can’t stand. I was only about saying: ‘it’s not that difficult’.” Sometimes, she worries about her legacy: are people any better cooks now than they were when she started? “That awful MasterChef thing. You know: ‘Oh, this is a bit greasy,’ or whatever. It’s intimidating. It makes people self-conscious. They feel they’ll never be able to do it.” It’s for this reason that she has put together a cookery course on her website. “It’s the basics. A kid could learn how to make an omelette sitting on the bus.” But at other moments she is reassured. “When I once said that I’d failed [to teach the nation to cook], I got a lot of letters telling me I was wrong, and at football matches people will say: ‘Oh, my mum loves you.’” What about restaurants? Overall, haven’t we gained more than we’ve lost? She’s not sure. “I miss French food. That’s gone.” Do people make a fuss when she eats out? She laughs. “If you think about it, I’m no threat to a chef, though if they do know who I am I feel bad if I leave anything.” This week, she’s going to the Neptune, in Hunstanton, which has a Michelin star. “Usually, that would put me off, but he’s a lovely chef. It’s only slightly poncey.” What’s her favourite dish to make at home? She can’t possibly say, though the Piedmontese peppers from her Summer Collection (1993, as if I could ever forget) “do have to be eaten to be believed”.

Smith in 1975, when she was presenting her first solo TV cookery show, Family Fare. Photograph: Fred Mott/Getty Images

A friend of Delia’s who worked with her on the Standard told me that no one could be less changed by fame than her, and it is striking how straightforward she seems, how un-grand. What’s her secret? (I mean, apart from the meditation, and all the other things we’ve discussed). Does it – this is my hunch – have anything to do with her redoubtable mother, Etty, who died in 2020 aged 100? “Yes, that’s probably it. She was calm, too, and she had the same love of people. But she was also my biggest critic. ‘Coo, you’ve put on weight,’ she’d say, that sort of thing. I had quite a difficult time, and my parents’ divorce [when she was a teenager] was a trauma, though no one is without those, are they?” She thinks we have a duty to be happy if we can – or at least, not to be too discontented. But perhaps our terms are wrong. Her late friend Sister Wendy Beckett told her that, in life, “happy” is best substituted with the word “peace”. “That was wise. Happiness can seem like quite a shallow thing, like having a Mars bar or something.”

I’ve missed the train I was supposed to get, and so we talk on. She doesn’t know what she’ll do next: the press “ruined” her last book, How to Cheat at Cooking, in which she extolled the virtues of ready-prepared ingredients like powdered potato, by being “vile” about it. What about Norwich City? No, she and Michael are not selling, though if someone reasonable with money to spend came along, they would ask the supporters to vote on it. She could discuss football for ever, and it’s sweet to see how thrilled she is, still, to meet its biggest names (once my tape recorder is off, she tells me some good stories). And then, at last, it really is time for me to go. Behind the closed door of their kitchen – how I long to look in its cupboards – Michael is clattering slightly.

Back in London, I tell everyone I speak to that I’ve met Delia (no need for second names), and even my mother sounds quite impressed. But I’m still worrying about my cake. In the small hours, I picture her ruthlessly dispatching it, her foot deftly opening a pedal bin as Michael whips up some cheese on toast. Several days later, though, a parcel arrives. Inside it is a signed copy of Delia’s Cakes, and inside that is a card. As I read it, my heart expands inside me like one of her immaculate gooseberry and elderflower muffins. The cake I baked for her was delicious, she writes – and can she please have the recipe?

• You Matter: The Human Solution by Delia Smith is published by Mensch, £25 hardback/£14.99 paperback. 

Why Kazakhstan's Crisis Matters to China


Giulia Sciorati
11 January 2022
https://www.ispionline.it/en

Scarcely two years after protesters redefined the political landscape in Kyrgyzstan, the country’s giant northern neighbour – Kazakhstan – has witnessed a series of uprisings that started in the Western city of Zhanaozen and soon spread to other Southern cities and, most importantly, the former capital of Almaty. Other scholars and journalists have written on the complexities of the protests’ motivations and their potential impact on the country’s President Kasym-Jomart Tokaev, now in his third year in power. Kazakhstan’s 2019 political transition, once lauded internationally in terms of stability vis-à-vis Uzbekistan’s, is now under scrutiny. China, in particular, looks with concern at the protests in Kazakhstan – even more so than it did the 2020 coup in Bishkek – in light of the close relationship the two countries have shared since the launch of the Silk Road Economic Belt in 2013 and the proximity of protesters to the border with Xinjiang.

China’s Understanding of the Kazakh Protests

Two frames can be primarily detected in China’s reaction to the Kazakh protests. On the one hand, Beijing has accepted the Kazakh leadership’s framing of protesters as terrorists (e.g., 恐怖分子 kongbu fenzi). On the other, the protests have been understood as an attempt at a colour revolution (颜色革命 yanse geming).

Others will open debates on the conceptual validity of using these terms to define the Kazakh protests. At this point, what is interesting to discuss is the context within which the terms have emerged, as they both display a substantial Chinese imprint.

Linking protests to terrorism is an established practice in China. Recent examples include the 2019 Hong Kong protests and the 2021 Myanmar coup, which Beijing formally identified as terrorist events. Finding a comprehensive application after the launch of the Global War on Terror, China’s protest-terrorism nexus has primarily been transposed to Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). At the same time, the term “colour revolution” had a similar development process, as China has habitually interpreted Central Asian affairs through this prism,[1] especially since the 2005 Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which has remained at the centre of China’s concerns for future spillovers in other Central Asian countries. Such conceptualisation has actually been shared by China and Russia at the international level on numerous occasions.

China’s Attitude to Russia-led Peacekeepers in Kazakhstan

Tokayev’s decision to ask for Vladimir Putin’s support in handling protesters and the deployment of Russia-led peacekeepers from the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) have inspired inflated reactions from Western media, especially in terms of drawing connections with the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian conflict.

Some observers have asked for China to be galled by Russia’s intervention and, more generally, Kazakhstan’s decision to rely on Moscow to be evidence of a Russian sphere of influence, capable of trumping China’s engagement with its western neighbours. Although there might be some truth to these interpretations, an oversimplification of the China-Russia-Kazakhstan relation is risky because it does not consider the extensive concessions Beijing made in its dogmatic foreign policy since pursuing a more active role in the international system.

One should first take into account the regional context in which Kazakhstan’s protests unfolded, which still reflects China’s non-intervention in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops. Despite expectations from Central Asian countries that Beijing (and potentially the SCO) would assume a more active role in regional security, China made its non-interventionist position crystal-clear. The military outpost financed in Tajikistan, for instance, is managed by China’s military police and not the army, signalling Beijing’s interest in internal rather than regional security. Consequently, Kazakhstan’s quest for support has been rationally directed elsewhere.

Second, despite China’s limited ability to compromise on its core foreign policy principles, the country has been known for making concessions on peacekeeping. Therefore, the government could easily tolerate the involvement of Kazakhstan-requested CSTO peacekeepers in the country. For example, Beijing’s government-related media reiterated the use of the term “peacekeeping” (维和 weihe), justifying China’s recent offer to support Kazakhstan in terms of law enforcement and security as the situation in Kazakhstan stabilises.

In Support of China-Russia’s Economy-Security Division of Labour in Central Asia

China’s approach to the Kazakh protests and Russia’s CSTO peacekeeping intervention confirms a trend in Beijing’s relations with Central Asia: a preference for limited military presence, especially outside formal UN peacekeeping missions. This attitude also bolsters the case for a functioning Russia-China division of labour in Central Asia, successfully perpetuating a model originally designed to ensure that China’s regional activities would not be perceived as conflictual by Russia. A model that – at least from Beijing’s perspective – is still valid and worthy of being pursued.

[1] This tendency is clearly detectable in the documents released after China’s annual academic conference on the relations with Central Asia.

Was the Kazakhstan uprising an attempted Jihadi takeover?

11 January 2022

THE SPECTATOR

Francis Pike

The Kazakh uprising is over. The stench of burnt-out vehicles and bombed out buildings in Kazakhstan’s most populous city and former capital, Almaty, has begun to dissipate. Life is returning to normal. Banks have reopened. Salaries and pensions are being paid. The internet is up and running again. Almaty airport is expected to reopen today.

As the fog of war lifts some clarity about these events is beginning to emerge. Officials have reported that 100 businesses and banks were destroyed along with 400 vehicles. Seven policemen died and hundreds more were wounded; 8,000 people have been arrested. Some 164 civilians were killed.

The government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has survived and with some ease as it turns out. There will be no Maidan or Orange Revolution of the sort that overthrew the pro-Russian government of Ukraine. President Putin has made clear that he would not let anyone ‘destabilise the situation in our home and… allow the so-called colour revolution scenario to play out.’ Note the words ‘our home’, which is how he sees a country in which 20 per cent of the population is Russian — a not dissimilar proportion to Ukraine.

On the eve of US-Russian talks over Ukraine, the Kazakh uprising has been a gift to Russia’s leader. Putin grabbed the PR opportunity with alacrity. By sending 2,500 troops to help defend Kazakhstan, at a stroke Putin has validated his Collective Security Treaty Organisation, Central Asia’s equivalent of Nato. The other CSTO rulers of Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are likely to be impressed. If Russian troops return home as expected, former members such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan may consider re-joining. Even Turkmenistan’s isolationist and deeply unpopular ruling family may also consider the attractions of Russia’s protective embrace.

Apart from Putin, the other clear winner from recent events is President Tokayev himself. Although he took over the presidency in March 2019, his power was deeply circumscribed.

The Kremlin and Tokayev have accused ‘terrorists’ of acting with unspecified foreign agents

His predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbayev, had held the post for 29 years since the break-up of the Soviet Union and was not intending to give up power. On the day that Tokayev assumed the presidency Nazarbayev’s daughter, Dariga, already a major political figure, was elected to Tokayev’s former position as chairman of the Senate. Throughout Central Asia the rumour was that new President Tokayev was simply keeping the seat warm for Dariga.

The predecessor Nazarbayev retained control of the Kazakh army through his chairmanship of the National Security Council. He continued to lead the ruling Nur Otan party and remained a member of the Constitutional Council, an Athenian-style council of elders which, in theory at least, retains guardianship over Kazakhstan’s government.

However, Tokayev refused to follow the prescribed playbook. He kicked against the traces and tried to assert his independence. Dariga was sacked as chairman of the Senate. Rival presidential courts began to grow. A brief truce was observed when Nazarbayev, Dariga and President Tokayev made a show of unity at Nur Otan’s party conference in November 2019, two months before parliamentary elections in January 2020.

The uneasy truce remained until last week. As recently as Christmas, in an informal conference of regional leaders hosted by Putin in Moscow, both Tokayev and Nazarbayev were invited.

But last week, with popular protest on the streets calling for the ‘old man out’ (meaning Nazarbayev), Tokayev pounced. The Kazakhstan cabinet, hand-picked by Nazarbayev, was sacked. Meanwhile the former president was removed from the chairmanship of the Security Council. A purge of Nazarbayev loyalists was begun. The head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence services was sacked on 6 January. He has now been arrested for treason.

Nazarbayev and Dariga have disappeared into the ether, though rumour has it that they are still in Kazakhstan. If evidence were needed as to who now runs the country, the fact that Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping have only addressed their congratulations to President Tokayev is conclusive proof that an internal transition of power has taken place. Xi praised him for being strong and decisive and for ‘being highly responsible for your country and your people’.

Other issues are less clear. Who was doing the fighting in the streets? Some have suggested that the fighting was related to Tokayev’s ‘palace coup’. Unlikely. A palace coup would happen around the government buildings, which is in the new capital city, Astana. In Kazakhstan the riots started in the remote south west, more than 1,500 miles away. In any case, how credible is it that fuel-price protestors reached immediately for guns and bombs?

The Kremlin and Tokayev have accused ‘terrorists’ of acting with unspecified foreign agents. The US has largely assumed that the finger of blame is being pointed at them. Rather defensively, White House press secretary Jen Psaki complained that rumours of US involvement were ‘crazy’.

What has largely been overlooked is the possibility that violence in Kazakhstan, on the back of popular protests about the rising price of petrol, was indeed orchestrated by ‘foreign terrorist’ groups — Jihadi groups. There is significant circumstantial evidence.

There was violence in 19 of Kazakhstan’s 31 cities; 15 of these cities were close to foreign borders, notably Kyrgistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and China’s Uighur populated Xinjian Autonomous Region. About 1.5 per cent of Kazakhstan’s population is Uighur and there is growing resentment throughout Central Asia that their governments have yielded to Chinese pressure to render Uighur dissidents.

Muslim terrorist groups that operate throughout Central Asia include the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islam (party of Islamic Liberation), the Jamaat of Central Asian Mujahidin and the Uighur Islamic party of eastern Turkestan. Foreign based groups such as the Taliban are also allegedly present in the region. Along with Isis and the Muslim Brotherhood, there are estimated to be 19 Jihadi groups operating in Central Asia.

The fall of Isis in Syria has brought trained ‘talent’ back to Central Asia. Kyrgyzstan officials alone reported 863 returnees from conflicts in Syria and Iraq between 2010 and June 2016. All Central Asian governments, which are secular but with majority Muslim populations, have been reporting increased jihadi activity in recent years.

Although Kazakh Muslims are historically moderate, Sufi and apolitical with only around 10 per cent believing in Sharia law (compared to 43 per cent in the UK), nevertheless the Kazakh government has become increasingly alive to the threat posed by Jihadis. In 2013 Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee established an anti-terror centre. As far back as 2014, the Central Asian Caucasus Institute concluded that ‘Kazakhstan’s problem of radicalization is no longer limited to in-country malcontents.’

More than 60 Jihadi attacks have been thwarted in Kazakhstan over the last decade. For Europeans, Jihadi attacks such as that on the Bataclan in Paris are global events and the perpetrators are roundly abused. Double standards abound. Similar attacks in Central Asia and China go unreported and the response, if any, from the West is normally concerned with the ‘human rights’ of the perpetrators.

In his virtual address to fellow CSTO leaders yesterday President Tokayev made it clear that he was blaming ‘foreign militants from Afghanistan and the Mideast countries’. Thus far this is not the narrative being given by a sceptical western media. The problem is that we tend to assume, for good reason, that President Putin and all his Central Asian stooges always tell lies. Jihadi involvement in the Kazakh uprising is as yet still unproven — but Tokayev’s laying the blame on radical Islamic groups is credible. Astonishing as it may seem, a Central Asian despot may actually be telling the truth.

WRITTEN BY

Francis Pike
Francis Pike is a historian and author of Hirohito’s War, The Pacific War 1941-1945 and Empires at War: A Short History of Modern Asia Since World War II.

THE SPECTATOR IS A UK RIGHT WING PUBLICATION

How Tunisia inspired Kandinsky and enabled expressionist art

The Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky began his journey into the abstract during a stay in the North African country, inspiring others like Paul Klee and August Macke

Kandinsky's early works, like this piece, had not yet evolved to the elaborate abstract compositions he later became known for (Centre Pompidou)
By
Farah Abdessamad
29 November 2021 

The traditionally studded doors of Tunisia’s Sidi Bou Said village would have appeared dream-like to Vasily Kandinsky's artistic sensitivity.

For the Moscow-born painter, white symbolised the harmony of silence and blue was a heavenly colour.

Having arrived in the country with his German partner Gabriele Munter on Christmas Day in 1904, Kadinsky spent the next three months in Tunis, first at the Hotel Saint Georges, then the cheaper Hotel Suisse.

Can an open-air graffiti museum lure tourists back to Tunisia?

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Their perceptive photographs, sketches and gouaches capture glimpses of Tunisia’s capital city and beyond. The pair also briefly visited Sidi Bou Said, Hammamet, Sousse and Kairouan.

Even before he arrived in North Africa, Kandinsky was already making a name for himself. He had shown at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1904 and taught in Munich between 1901 and 1903, where he met Munter, a fellow artist. However, Kandinsky’s artwork had yet to evolve into the elaborate abstract compositions for which he is now famous.

In Tunis though, we see in his brush strokes the waning influence of neo-impressionism and an increasing attention towards colour, permeating from the everyday motifs he chose.

Life in the city, though relatively brief, would have a lasting impact on his works even decades later.

Munter’s camera was a shared accessory that immortalised street life and memories. Years later, these photographs would help Kandinsky revive the colours and scenes of Tunis from afar, in the manner of postcards or a first sketch.

Kandinsky's Mohrencafe, 1905, is an example of his early gouache on board work (Christies)

Kandinsky recalled in 1938 how he had felt under the "strong impressions of the phantasmatic environment" in Tunisia. Munter affirmed this view in 1960, after Kandinsky’s passing, stating that he "already expressed a great interest in abstraction" when in Tunisia.

Specifically, Islamic art and Islam’s religious prescription against the pictorial representation of the divine may have further prompted Kandinsky to experiment with new forms and colour, to begin questioning the power of the non-objective and explore the idea of "form-feeling" that the painter would later develop, notably in his ground-breaking art theory volume, On the Spiritual in Art.
'Hearing' colour

Less than a week after Kandinsky’s arrival, Japanese forces seized Port Arthur and the Russo-Japanese War continued its uncertain, dangerous course. It’s amidst deep worry for the fate of his compatriots, including his enlisted brother, that Kandinsky attempted to engage with his surroundings, limiting contacts with outsiders.

He and Munter arrived in Tunis, a generation after the establishment of the French protectorate of Tunisia, in 1881. Unlike Algeria, the Bey remained in nominal authority while France, through its highest representative, the resident general, took over diplomacy and finances, as well as stationing its army on Tunisian soil.

Gabriele Munter's Calvacade photograph taken in 1905 shows Arab horsemen parading at a carnival in Tunis (VG Bild-Kunst)

The pair witnessed traditional celebrations during their stay - of Eid Al Adha for instance, which Kandinsky sketched in his Fete de Moutons (Tunisian Sheep Festival, shown at the 1905 Paris exhibition, now in the Guggenheim’s Founding Collection). The painting portrays recognisably Muslim and Jewish people, including children, near a modest ferris wheel. The festive event, a fete foraine or travelling carnival, seems to have taken place in Halfaouine Square and is blessed by a rainbow.

In her photographs, Munter also captures the equestrian "fantasia", in which skilled horse riders were selected to parade the streets of Tunis holding rifles. In that image, a prominent Tunisian flag is held by one of the riders. Another rider follows him, this time holding a French flag of the same size.

Kandinsky’s rendering of the scene conveys movement and folklore. In Arab Cavalry, published in 1905, he strips away historicity and space, and what remains evokes the timelessness and resonance of the wild steppes of his native Russia.

Arab Cavalry by Vasily Kandinsky (1905)

What they see matters as much as what stays hidden from them and absent. As non-French Europeans, their gaze is largely confined to public spaces - to alleyways, to squares such as Halfaouine, Bab el Khadra or Bab Souika, or parks such as the Belvedere.

Nevertheless they remain attentive to Tunisia’s diverse social and cultural fabric, for instance painting Black subjects, daily workers, and Sufi Marabouts, the latter being the tombs of local saints, religious guides or founders of a zaouia (religious establishment).

Orange Sellers (1905) is based on the Marabout of Sidi Sliman, which no longer exists. The painting contains touches of vivid colour and the placement of oranges like notes on sheet music in front of the Marabout highlights the idea that Kandinsky could "hear" colour as he possessed a rare ability called synesthesia.

Kandinsky's visually striking Arabs I (Cemetery) painting showcases his foray into abstract art (Hamburger Kunsthalle/Elke Walford)

Kandinsky and Munter works during their visit to Tunisia demonstrate that they were more interested in the contemporary Arab soul of Tunis than its classical past and the ruins of Carthage. They visit the Bardo Museum, located in a 19th century Beylik palace, and not the Byrsa Hill, the site of an ancient Phoenician citadel, which was the heart of Carthage before its destruction by Rome.

They painted the modern villas of Tunis and the tombs of the Beys, capturing a city at a standstill and transformation, between tradition and modernity. Even long after his sudden return to Europe due to family matters, Kandinsky regularly went back to revisiting his Tunisian memories, for example in the visually more daring Arabs I (Cemetery) painted in 1909.

Impact on other artists

Kandinsky and Munter created the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) movement a few years after leaving Tunisia, in 1911, with other artists, such as Marc Franz, Paul Klee and August Macke. The symbol of the horse and its rider for this avant-garde group takes a spiritual connotation, one of artistic freedom, and inevitably refers to the Tunis cavalcade in its essentialised form.

Tunisia re-emerges in Expressionist art history, via two other artists affiliated with the Blaue Reiter, the Swiss Klee and German Macke. With a third friend, Louis Moilliet, a compatriot of Klee's, who had floated the idea of the trip since 1913, the artists visited Tunisia in 1914 on the eve of the First World War. Klee consigned his impressions in a diary, which provides us with rich insights on his artistic practice as well as daily life.

Kandinsky and Munter transcribed the domination of the French in Tunisia in symbolic terms, through flags and the official "Republique Francaise" insignia that would be included in (relatively few of) their paintings and photographs. Klee had also noticed the fleeting "Frenchness" of the protectorate.

The Tunisian independence movement before war mainly occupied the elite. In 1907, the Young Tunisians formed a political party and tried to increase the outreach of their message of liberal reforms and greater Tunisian participation in the country’s affairs with the launch of the bilingual newspaper Le Tunisien (Arabic edition launched in 1909).

Klee's Hammamet with its Mosque, (1914) is on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Artists Rights Society)

With mounting social unrest in the context of the recent Italian takeover of Tripoli, further compounded by a French decision to regulate land ownership in a cemetery, French authorities declared a decade-long state of emergency from 1911 which forced the editor of Le Tunisien, Ali Bach Hamba, into exile. At the outcome of a trial, the French guillotined several pro-nationalist protesters.

This helps in understanding Klee’s caustic remark when he wrote in his diary on Easter Monday, 1914, just before travelling to Hammamet: "Tunis is Arab in the first place, Italian in the second, and French only in the third. But the French act as if they were the masters."

Klee encounters French people, who were mostly arrogant, mocking - the three artists were presumed to be Germans and treated as such - and unwelcoming. He describes in later pages, as Kandinsky had also mentioned, the rickety trains and a dilapidated highway - not so advantageous for the image of the French colonial project which was to modernise public works among other "civilising" feats.

Klee was attracted to architecture, cafe life, as places of socialisation, gossip and storytelling; he often painted in Halfaouine Square. His interest encompassed vistas and gardens. In Tunis, the three men stayed with a Swiss doctor and his wife, who also owned a secondary home in Saint-Germain, today’s Ezzahra, less than 13 miles away from Tunis on the seaside. In Ezzahra, in a villa not far from the beach and close to Boukornine mountain, Klee and Macke drew evocative watercolour sketches.

In Saint Germain near Tunis (1914), Macke stylises Boukornine in blue, pyramid-like forms in the backdrop of a panorama, which includes both Arab and French houses amongst an ebullient flora.

From a similar-looking vantage point, Klee’s chromatic values are obliquely deeper, the hues less saturated and his watercolour, View of St. Germain (1914), suggest a subdued reverence.

We explore Klee’s journey as a geography and as an inner progression, towards works that highlight colour and abstraction, such as in Hammamet with its Mosque (1914) and Before the Gates of Kairouan (1914). In these two luminous watercolour paintings, we feel the stroke of a blinding Mediterranean high-noon sun and the awe of a spectacular, kaleidoscopic landscape. His exploration culminates in density, richness, depth and saturation in In the Style of Kairouan (1914), painted shortly after his return from Tunisia. Years later, like Kandinsky, he would remember Tunisia and its southern gardens.

The Boukornine mountain is paid tribute to in August Macke's Saint Germain near Tunis, 1914 (Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munchen)

Tunisia uniquely altered Klee’s artistic journey, which he likened to an "intoxication". Both Macke and Klee encountered local artworks and presumably interacted with their styles.

It was in the holy city of Kairouan that Klee discovered colour and experienced almost an epiphany.

"Colour and I are one. I am a painter," he wrote on 16 April 1914, leaving Tunisia shortly after, explaining: "I had to leave to regain my senses."

Macke was killed in action in France early during the war in September 1914.

Championing inner expression

Klee and Kandinsky would teach together at the influential Bauhaus school, which was formed in Germany after the war. The institute emphasised modern art theory and also taught other disciplines, such as design and architecture.

Following the rise of Hitler and the confiscation of some of their artwork, which were considered "degenerate" by the Nazi regime, both artists eventually left Germany.

A 2014 exhibition marking the 100-year anniversary of Klee, Macke and Moilliet’s trip to Tunisia underscores the contribution Tunisia made to European Expressionism.

The combined legacies of Kandinsky, Klee and Macke, as pioneers of the non-objective, and champions of using the canvas as a gate towards inner expression and the spiritual, is immense and extends a sphere of influence over artists such as Mondrian, Rothko, Pollock and others.

And behind this chromatic liberation, somewhere, is the memory of Tunisia’s shores, its markets, towns and people and the distant drums of a darbuka reverberating in strokes, shapes and gradients, colliding in beauty beyond words and an un-representable truth.

Don't blame Sharia for Islamic extremism -- blame colonialism


Mark Fathi Massoud, Professor of Politics and Legal Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
Sun, October 17, 2021, 

Warning that Islamic extremists want to impose fundamentalist religious rule in American communities, right-wing lawmakers in dozens of U.S. states have tried banning Sharia, an Arabic term often understood to mean Islamic law.

These political debates – which cite terrorism and political violence in the Middle East to argue that Islam is incompatible with modern society – reinforce stereotypes that the Muslim world is uncivilized.

They also reflect ignorance of Sharia, which is not a strict legal code. Sharia means “path” or “way”: It is a broad set of values and ethical principles drawn from the Quran – Islam’s holy book – and the life of the Prophet Muhammad. As such, different people and governments may interpret Sharia differently.

Still, this is not the first time that the world has tried to figure out where Sharia fits into the global order.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Great Britain, France and other European powers relinquished their colonies in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, leaders of newly sovereign Muslim-majority countries faced a decision of enormous consequence: Should they build their governments on Islamic religious values or embrace the European laws inherited from colonial rule?
The big debate

Invariably, my historical research shows, political leaders of these young countries chose to keep their colonial justice systems rather than impose religious law.

Newly independent Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia, among other places, all confined the application of Sharia to marital and inheritance disputes within Muslim families, just as their colonial administrators had done. The remainder of their legal systems would continue to be based on European law.


To understand why they chose this course, I researched the decision-making process in Sudan, the first sub-Saharan African country to gain independence from the British, in 1956.

In the national archives and libraries of the Sudanese capital Khartoum, and in interviews with Sudanese lawyers and officials, I discovered that leading judges, politicians and intellectuals actually pushed for Sudan to become a democratic Islamic state.

They envisioned a progressive legal system consistent with Islamic faith principles, one where all citizens – irrespective of religion, race or ethnicity – could practice their religious beliefs freely and openly.

“The People are equal like the teeth of a comb,” wrote Sudan’s soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Hassan Muddathir in 1956, quoting the Prophet Muhammad, in an official memorandum I found archived in Khartoum’s Sudan Library. “An Arab is no better than a Persian, and the White is no better than the Black.”

Sudan’s post-colonial leadership, however, rejected those calls. They chose to keep the English common law tradition as the law of the land.
Why keep the laws of the oppressor?

My research identifies three reasons why early Sudan sidelined Sharia: politics, pragmatism and demography.

Rivalries between political parties in post-colonial Sudan led to parliamentary stalemate, which made it difficult to pass meaningful legislation. So Sudan simply maintained the colonial laws already on the books.

There were practical reasons for maintaining English common law, too.

Sudanese judges had been trained by British colonial officials. So they continued to apply English common law principles to the disputes they heard in their courtrooms.

Sudan’s founding fathers faced urgent challenges, such as creating the economy, establishing foreign trade and ending civil war. They felt it was simply not sensible to overhaul the rather smooth-running governance system in Khartoum.


The continued use of colonial law after independence also reflected Sudan’s ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity.

Then, as now, Sudanese citizens spoke many languages and belonged to dozens of ethnic groups. At the time of Sudan’s independence, people practicing Sunni and Sufi traditions of Islam lived largely in northern Sudan. Christianity was an important faith in southern Sudan.

Sudan’s diversity of faith communities meant that maintaining a foreign legal system – English common law – was less controversial than choosing whose version of Sharia to adopt.
Why extremists triumphed

My research uncovers how today’s instability across the Middle East and North Africa is, in part, a consequence of these post-colonial decisions to reject Sharia.

In maintaining colonial legal systems, Sudan and other Muslim-majority countries that followed a similar path appeased Western world powers, which were pushing their former colonies toward secularism.

But they avoided resolving tough questions about religious identity and the law. That created a disconnect between the people and their governments.

In the long run, that disconnect helped fuel unrest among some citizens of deep faith, leading to sectarian calls to unite religion and the state once and for all. In Iran, Saudi Arabia and parts of Somalia and Nigeria, these interpretations triumphed, imposing extremist versions of Sharia over millions of people.

In other words, Muslim-majority countries stunted the democratic potential of Sharia by rejecting it as a mainstream legal concept in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving Sharia in the hands of extremists.

But there is no inherent tension between Sharia, human rights and the rule of law. Like any use of religion in politics, Sharia’s application depends on who is using it – and why.

Leaders of places like Saudi Arabia and Brunei have chosen to restrict women’s freedom and minority rights. But many scholars of Islam and grassroots organizations interpret Sharia as a flexible, rights-oriented and equality-minded ethical order.
Religion and the law worldwide

Religion is woven into the legal fabric of many post-colonial nations, with varying consequences for democracy and stability.

After its 1948 founding, Israel debated the role of Jewish law in Israeli society. Ultimately, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his allies opted for a mixed legal system that combined Jewish law with English common law.

In Latin America, the Catholicism imposed by Spanish conquistadors underpins laws restricting abortion, divorce and gay rights.

And throughout the 19th century, judges in the U.S. regularly invoked the legal maxim that “Christianity is part of the common law.” Legislators still routinely invoke their Christian faith when supporting or opposing a given law.

Political extremism and human rights abuses that occur in those places are rarely understood as inherent flaws of these religions.

When it comes to Muslim-majority countries, however, Sharia takes the blame for regressive laws – not the people who pass those policies in the name of religion.

Fundamentalism and violence, in other words, are a post-colonial problem – not a religious inevitability.

For the Muslim world, finding a system of government that reflects Islamic values while promoting democracy will not be easy after more than 50 years of failed secular rule. But building peace may demand it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Mark Fathi Massoud, University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Mark Fathi Massoud has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, and the University of California. Any views expressed here are the author's responsibility.