US curbs on caviar pinch Iran’s fishermen
MIYANKALE: In a country as inured to economic sanctions as Iran, one more embargo might be expected to pass unnoticed. But for Nazer A’alami Makhdoom, a US boycott of the most sought-after caviar from the Caspian Sea threatens to destroy his livelihood and a way of life passed down to him by his father and grandfather.
“I’ve been doing this job for more than 30 years and I don’t have any other skill,” said Mr Makhdoom, 53, as he checked the deep-water nets painstakingly laid to catch a potentially lucrative species of sturgeon that once swam the Caspian in abundance. “There are no factories in this area and even if there were, I’m too old to learn another job. These sanctions are unfair. They are affecting my ability to earn a living.”
His sentiments are shared by state-employed caviar fishermen all along Iran’s Caspian coastline, who fear the days of their expeditions in tiny motorised fishing boats are numbered. The number of caviar fishermen in the Iranian Caspian provinces has fallen by 50% in the past 15 years under government job-shedding schemes designed to tackle dwindling fish stocks and what is recognised as an environmental crisis.
In the down-at-heel port of Bandar-e Turkman, where Mr Makhdoom lives, the prospect of further job losses is grim for the mainly Sunni population. The possibility is growing after the US fish and wildlife service announced a ban on imports of beluga, the most prestigious Caspian caviar. The embargo has provoked cries of anguish from Iran’s fishing bodies, which say their fishermen are being unjustly penalised for illegal practices more common in the other Caspian states of the former Soviet Union.
The ban was prompted by environmental fears — expressed by the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), which sets fishing quotas for the Caspian — that the beluga species is facing extinction due to over-fishing and illegal poaching. The European Union, the second biggest importer after the US, has so far resisted pressure to impose a similar ban.
But with the US representing 80 per cent of the caviar export market, the embargo has potentially devastating consequences for Caspian fishermen. Existing US trade sanctions, imposed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, have been circumvented in recent years by routing large stocks of caviar through third countries to the US, where beluga sells at more than £2,000 a pound.
The blockade also applies to exports from the other four Caspian littoral countries, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, all former Soviet republics, where illegally caught caviar fish are believed to outnumber those caught legally by 12 to one. Legal catches in the Caspian — which holds more than 90% of the world’s caviar, produced from the tiny black eggs of sturgeon — fell from around 30,000 tonnes in the late 1970s to less than a tenth of that by the year 2000. Experts say the decline has been exacerbated by new dams and other development projects, blocking rivers that were once ideal habitats for the fertile Caspian sturgeon.
The downward trend is unlikely to be reversed, according to Iran’s state fisheries ministry, by an embargo which it says will merely force its fishermen out of business and further strengthen mafia-backed poaching and smuggling rings. “We are being punished for the sins of other countries,” said Mostafa Aghilinezhad, head of the caviar division in the fisheries department of Golestan province, the heart of Iran’s caviar trade. “Illegal fishing takes place in all the Caspian countries, but it’s on a lower level here. Banning the sale of caviar isn’t the right way.”
Iranian officials point to a network of fish farms carrying out carefully designed breeding programmes and a 1,000-strong coastal police force to combat poachers.
Caviar comes from the unfertilised eggs, or roe, of sturgeon. Salt is added to enhance the flavour. The sturgeon type gives caviar its name and includes beluga, sevruga and osetra, with the rarest from the golden eggs of the sterlet. The largest sturgeon is the beluga, which can grow up to 1,800lbs and live for 100 years. One fish is capable of producing up to 7m eggs a year.
The finished delicacy can cost £3,000 a kilo in London. The world’s caviar is mainly from rivers that flow into the Caspian sea and is sold by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Russia. Beluga sturgeon numbers have dropped 90% in the past 20 years. Efforts to stem the decline include the US ban on imports and suggestions from Russia to set up a state monopoly to regulate its production.
—Dawn/The Guardian News Service
New era for Afghanistan
KABUL: After three decades of coups, chaos and bloodshed Afghanistan’s parliament has reopened amid hopes that it will root the nation’s fledgling democracy. A collection of MPs — including women, warlords and Taliban defectors - crammed into the renovated national assembly for a simple ceremony. “We should stand bravely before the world to say we have emerged from war,” said President Hamid Karzai, tears welling up in his eyes. “This homeland will live forever!”
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, and his wife, Lynne, listened silently in the front row. Elections in Afghanistan and Iraq would be “an inspiration to democratic reformers in other lands”, he later told troops at Bagram airbase. But optimism was tempered with disappointment that so many strongmen, some accused of war crimes, had been allowed to run for office.
Sharif Zurmati, a TV newsreader turned politician, said the inauguration stirred mixed emotions. “I was happy but then I looked at the people I was sitting with - the same ones who committed crimes, shed much blood, made women into widows and children into orphans. I am very worried they will start a second war.”
Abdul Rasul Sayaaf, a once powerful mujahideen commander now running for speaker, denied accusations that his supporters had offered bribes for votes. “Our people have not interfered,” he said.
Mr Sayaaf warily welcomed plans for a truth and justice commission to examine past abuses.
Mr Karzai repeated pleas for an end to the booming drugs trade. At least 20 parliamentarians are directly involved in drugs smuggling, according to diplomats.
Tellingly, MPs clapped when he said neighbouring countries “should not interfere in our affairs”. Many Afghans blame Pakistan for a sharp resurgence in Taliban violence. A Taliban suicide bomb exploded near the parliament last Friday. After Mr Cheney entered the parliament chaotic scenes erupted when Afghan security guards insisted on searching the Americans’ bags — including a briefcase containing America’s secret nuclear bomb codes. An angry White House official ordered the guards to “open the gate now”, an AP reporter said. “These are the vice-president’s military aides.”
The Afghans, who were trained by the US security contractor Dyncorps, allowed the aides through but insisted on a thorough body search of the rest of the party.
—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service