China Hides the Truth About the Uyghurs

Some time ago, in a previous blogging identity, I raised the problems of the Uyghurs in East Turkistan (known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the occupying Chinese). I noted how the Chinese government was using the fact that the Uyghurs are Muslim to build up resentment against them in the West. It is much easier to do this with regard to East Turkistan than it is with Tibet, because nobody hates Tibetan Buddhists just for being Buddhists.

After all, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is only autonomous to the transplanted ethnic Han population who rule it. For the Uyghurs, complete autonomy from Beijing is exactly what they want. Outside communist doublespeak, “complete autonomy” is another term for independence. Yet Xinjiang has long been one of the most tightly controlled regions claimed by the Chinese government.

Here’s how things work in East Turkistan. Chinese officials claim that 156 died in violence that erupted from protests (originally about how Uyghur workers had been killed in a toy factory in Guangdong province) on Sunday and that most of those killed were Han. Chinese officials – never a very trustworthy lot – then arrested 1400 Uyghurs. About 200 Uyghur women, understandably unhappy about the 1400 arrests, decided to protest to appeal for the freedom of the detainees. They were confronted with riot police.

On Tuesday, some of the Han population in Urumqi (the capital of East Turkistan) then rampaged through the Uyghur parts of the city with clubs and machetes, smashing up businesses.

As is their common practice, the Chinese authorities don’t want the outside world to get unfiltered information. They shut down internet service and international telephone service in Urumqi. I think it is a good idea to fear a government that fears the truth.

The only just resolution to the current violence and more importantly to the suppression of the Uyghur people is true autonomy. They should have the right of self-determination.  When the left in the US and elsewhere complain about what they perceive to be right-wing American imperialism I marvel at the short-sightedness of not seeing the true imperialism of their fellow socialists, the Chinese government. I am also ashamed of the governments of other nations in the world (especially the US and UK) for not taking a stronger stand. No one wants to offend the Chinese government.

Rape Legalised in Afghanistan

The US-created regime in Afghanistan has passed legislation which allows some Afghanis to commit marital rape. Some women will only be able to get an education or even see a doctor if they get their husband’s permission. It only applies to the Shia population. Apparently, Sunni women will continue to have more rights.

The law was rushed through the Afghan parliament without the opportunity for much debate or amendment. The Afghanis won’t even let the United Nations see a copy of the actual bill. Opponents say that for Shi’ites it creates a situation worse than the Taliban.

This is the same US-created regime that outlaws Christianity. It appears that the US and its allies will allow the Afghans to do anything as long as they aren’t habouring terrorists training to bomb the US or its allies.

One Right Move

In some ways I’m happy that Obama is president. Being a grumpy old man, yet a Republican, it has been difficult to complain about American politics while being loyal to the president and the party. Now that the Democrats control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, it will be much easier.

Before I launch into what will no doubt be at least four years of moaning, I will give credit where credit is due. One of policies of the Bush administration with which I disagreed was the detention of enemy combatants and various others at Guantanamo Bay, using it as a loophole to avoid the usual Constitutional constraints. In one of his first acts, President Obama ordered the closure of Gitmo within a year.

I’m not denying that this will not be an easy thing to do while maintaining the security of the US and avoiding the disclosure of classified information. However, these things must be resolved within the law, something that was wearing thin in the ongoing situation since the overthrow of the Taliban and the installation of the current Christian-hating regime in Afghanistan.

So in this one small way, I think BHO has moved in the right direction. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

No News is Old News

I suppose with the economy so bad, everyone too poor to make any real news. That must be the reason why Prince Harry has been at top of the news here.

I have to admit that I have been kind of amused at it all. The News of the World (Britain’s most salacious Sunday tabloid) broke the store, complete with accompanying video coverage, that Prince Harry used the word “Paki”. This is the British equivalent of the “N word”. BBC News picked it up and ran story after story, while at the same time running it blow by blow, over and over, on the tickertape at the botttom of the TV screen.

You would have thought he had been caught making a verbal racist attack. Actually, he used it to refer to a military cadet colleague, calling him “our little Paki friend” in his presence.  It was captured on a home video that someone decided to sell to the paper. You would have thought this was hot off the press – Saturday night’s party turned Sunday’s news. It happened three years ago.

That’s right. Nonetheless, Harry had to issue a very prompt and grovelling apology.  As we know, there are sins, and then there are some things almost unforgiveable, like unintentionally given offense to unrelated third parties by using a remark that someone (who really had no business seeing someone’s home video) three years later could interpret as racist.

Harry’s commanding officer is to give him a formal dressing down and the Prime Minister has had go on national TV and say he believes the Prince’s apology. Of course it isn’t good enough for some people. Muhammad Yaqoob Khan Abbasi, the father of Harry’s friend said, “Prince Harry should apologise to the Pakistani Army and to the Pakistani government for this. I cannot accept his apology unless they first accept his apology.” That’s right. If you insult any Pakistani anywhere in the world (even if they aren’t actually insulted) you need to apologise to the Pakistani government.

Honest Hate

At least he’s honest. Anjem Choudary has been telling Muslims they shouldn’t be celebrating Christmas. “How can a Muslim possibly approve or participate in such a practice that bases itself on the notion Allah has an offspring? The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam.”

He sees that all this bunkum about worshipping the same God is as offensive to Islam as it is to Christianity. Either Jesus is the Son of God, the incarnation of Allah, or He is not. To say that the Babe in the manger is the Most Holy One is direct contradiction to the very essence of Islam.

So I don’t see why it is such big news that he is saying this. He’s just being a good Muslim.

Why didn’t it make bigger news when Choudary, who is the chairman of the Society of Muslim Lawyers, praised the Mumbai attacks? Nobody seemed to notice when he called for the assassination of the Pope.  It is almost forgotten that he organised the demonstrations over the Muhammad cartoons, which included incitement to murder.

And why it is only mentioned in passing that his family is not supported by his legal work and he apparently isn’t well paid as Principal Lecturer at the London School of Shari’ah.  Perhaps he doesn’t have time for that with all of his preaching since he has to fill in for his mentor Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has been exiled from the UK. I’m just guessing that’s why they receive  £25,000 a year in state benefits.

It’s like, sure he is bigging up the deaths of 163 people in the name of Islam, but now he hates Christmas, too? Good grief. Why not actually expose that we are supporting the work of a domestic terrorist who doesn’t just hate Christmas. He hates us.

Pearls Before Swine

I was discussing the number of Christians in the world with one of my classes and one boy questioned the number of worldwide believers. He doubted that the number was accurate. I agreed with him.

I explained that while demographic experts used a variety of data, that data was not always accurate. I explained that the Chinese government says there are 100 million Christians in China, while researchers at Shanghai University estimate the number is closer to 300 million, because most Christians in China worship in underground churches and are not recognised in the government’s figures. That would put the number of Christians in the world closer to 2.3 billion instead of 2.1 billion.

Then I made the mistake of explaining that many Christians in China and elsewhere are persecuted for their faith. Some kids, including the boy that questioned the numbers, thought that was pretty funny.

I don’t know why I then mentioned that they might have seen in the news that a British Christian who was working with handicapped children in Afghanistan was murdered just a couple of days ago. One girl laughed quite openly. I wanted to cry.

New Martyr Gayle Williams

Gayle Williams was working with handicapped children in Afghanistan. She was working there because she is a Christian. She wasn’t there to preach the Gospel – just to live it.

That was enough for Taliban leaders to order her murder. In the cowardly way of Islamist terrorists, two of them drove by on a motorcycle and shot her.

It is very unlikely that her murderers will be prosecuted. After all, preaching the Gospel is illegal in Afghanistan. Converting to Christianity can result in the death penalty. And this is from the regime that the US, UK and assorted allies put into power.

I have long suggested that the Western powers that are propping up the Karzi regime should refuse to support it until Afghanistan legalises and protects Christianity.

May the memory of the martyr Gayle be eternal.

Justice for the Uighurs – The Least They Can Do

A number of readers who can imagine that I do anything other than support any Republican policy will be happy to know that I have long been very troubled by use of Guantanamo Bay for holding prisoners. Beyond the problems I have with using Gitmo because it serves a useful loophole purpose by keeping prisoners of the Administration off of American soil, I have trouble with the policy of completely ignoring the power of judiciary. On top of that, I have a big problem with the extreme reluctance to release prisoners even if they pose no threat to the United States.

This is an extraodinary abuse of Executive power. Like most of the expansion of the Executive in the past seven years, no one has dared to attempt to check it, because it is shielded in the patriotism and fear of the War on Terror.

I was particularly disturbed to read about the 17 Uighur prisonser who were taken captive on the basis bounty money offered in Pakistan. I’m not suggesting that all Pakistanis will sell out their mothers for the right price, but some were willing to sell out Uighur refugees from China for $5,000 each.

They were sent to Guantanamo six years ago. It took the military two years to recognise that they posed no threat whatsoever. What happened to the other four years? Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter, since they don’t look like us and talk like us, and after all, they are Muslims. That seems to be the reason they are sitting in prison. I can’t imagine a government lawyer would like to give up six years of his own life for no reason in a foreign country – or actually a military outpost because the laws of that foreign country would not allow him to be held without trial. (That’s why I’ve always said it was 95% of lawyers who gave the rest of us a bad name.)

But then again that government lawyer wouldn’t be there because he didn’t have to flee his own country which had been taken over by another ethnic group who treated him as a second class and suspect citizen because of the way he looks and his religion. And that lawyer didn’t have to flee to the country of other ethnic groups who had no particular sympathy for him and who were willing to sell him out for cash.

But even though the Supreme Court has ruled that judges can release prisoners (not exactly a novel idea) and the Court of Appeal has ruled that there is no basis for holding Huzaifa Parhat, one of the Uighurs, the Administration will not let them go.

The problem seems to be that no country will take them, except for China of course. Chinese officials already have 17 bullets ready, with stamped envelopes addressed to their families ready for the spent cartridges. The one thing the government can’t bear to do is allow them to settle in the United States. Sure they settled them on US-leased land in Cuba for six years, but that doesn’t count. There are 20 churches in Tallahassee willing to help re-home them, amongst other religious and social groups.

The unbelievable and virtually admitted injustice that has been imposed upon these refugees is payment enough to bump them to the head of the queue for a Green Card. In addition to their immediate release, I hope U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina will further order the Department of Homeland Security to do just that.

Fatwa Rules Paedophilia Preferable to Christianity

Following up on the the previous story, I was looking to see what other WordPress bloggers might have said about the kidnapping, forced conversion and forced marriage of the Younis sisters. That’s where I found Blogging for a free world referring to information from Minorities Concern of Pakistan.

Even though the legal marriage age in Pakistan is 16 for females, this was negated by a fatwa – a decree issued by religious leaders – which justified it. It was worth it to them that the girls be kidnapped, sold as property, and then sexually abused in order to effect their conversion to Islam.

Reports indicate exactly what has happened to Saba Younis, the elder sister. After Muhammad Arif Bajwa kidnapped the girls at gunpoint, he sold them to Falak Sher Gill. Gill then gave Saba to his son, Muhammad Amjid. To whom Anila has been given seems to be unknown at this point.

In contravention of the statutory law, a Pakistani court has previously approved of the marriage of a 12-year-old because it ruled that Islam allows a female to marry if she has reached puberty. However, in that case it appears that the girl wanted to marry. Of course in that case, both parties were Muslim.

It now appears that special rules apply if the girl is a Christian and doesn’t consent. Puberty need not be an issue.

Remember to file this under “All religions and cultures are equal.”

Pre-teen Christian Girls Forced to Convert and Marry

Another one for the all religions and all cultures are equal file . . .

Saba and Anila Younis, sisters from a Christian family. They are 12 and 10 years old respectively. They were kidnapped on June 26 on their way to their uncle’s house in the Punjab province of Pakistan. When their father went to the police to complain about the kidnapping, he was threatened. By the 28th, their kidnappers had married them and filed with the police for custody of them. Their husbands declared that the girls had converted to Islam.

Apparently in Pakistan if a man finds a 10-year-old that he just can’t resist, he kidnaps her. If she’s not Muslim, he wants her converted, because even though it is legal for a Muslim man to marry a non-Muslim woman, there’s no reason he should have to have a kafir as one of his wives. I’m not sure if a man has to file for custody of any of his wives in Pakistan, or if it is just for those under 13.

As reported by Ecumenical News International, a court has agreed that the forced conversion was pefectly legal. There appears to have been to no challenge to the legality of the forced marriage.

This is by no means a unique situation. In a blog describing the hundreds of forced conversions to Islam in Pakistan, there is a quote from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telling President Musharraf at a 2005 meeting that Pakistan is “a model country for the Muslim world”.

More Christian Persecution in Burma

Being a Christian in Burma has never been an easy thing. This year is has gotten even more difficult.

First, the Karen and Karenni people were hit by Cyclone Nargis. Then the Burmese junta blocked aid especially to these two predominantly Christian ethnic groups.

Now there is a rat infestation in the mostly Christian Chin State. This is completely unrelated to the ravages of the Cyclone. Chin State is in the north of the country. This plague hits twice each century and is caused by the flowering of bamboo. The explosion in the rat population results in the consumption of all of the food supplies.

The junta will provide no aid and will allow no outside help. They are quite pleased that starvation in setting in. More information is available in the Telegraph.

Begging to Help

Burma is in the midst of a terrible national disaster. At least 100,000 people may have died as a result of the cyclone, with many, many more in dire straits. It appears that 1.5 people are homeless. Rotting corpses are everywhere. Massive outbreaks of disease are days away. Starvation is imminent. Even if the illegal ruling junta hadn’t destroyed the economy, it would impossible for the Burmese to take care of their own.

If there was ever any question that the junta has no concern for the people of Burma – and, okay, there’s never been any question, but just say there was – it would be answered by the way they have prevented help from reaching those who need it.  The world has come to Burma’s aid. Relief is on the doorstep.

Why should the UN have to beg to save lives? The US military, at the expense of the American people, is waiting to fly in with relief supplies. The broke off military exercises with Thailand to help, but even the negotiating help of the Thai government, the junta budged but then backed off.

“They were very suspicious that the Americans would do more than just distribute relief supplies, but we helped convince the Burmese to allow the Americans in,” Boonsrang Niumpradit, Thailand’s military chief, told Reuters. Then the Burmese junta changed it’s mind again. What do they think the Americans will do?

What it appears to come down to is the junta’s pride. They are refusing help from governments like the US which have criticised their policies. Since that means most of the first world, as well as the UN, they are cutting off their collective noses to spite their collective faces. It is only places countries like Indonesia, which have been careful not to be to critical in the past, which have been welcome to send in supplies.

Pride goes before destruction. It’s too bad that it is not just the proud who are destroyed by it.

Coroners Must Not Explain Avoidable Deaths

The audacity of the British Government never ceases to amaze. Just when you think they couldn’t do anything more outrageous against truth and justice, they prove you wrong. It’s like, “You think that was bad? Watch this!”

When British soldiers are killed overseas, their bodies are flown into RAF Brize Norton. The problem is that Brize Norton is in Oxfordshire. That means that as soon as the corpse touches British soil, it is under the jurisdiction of the Oxfordshire coroner’s office. Deaths outside of Britain are subject to a coroner’s inquest to determine the cause and responsibility for the death.

If the responsibility for the deaths were entirely with the enemy,  there would be no problem. Unfortunately for the Ministry of Defence, Oxfordshire assistant deputy coroner Andrew Walker just digs a little too deep. He notices that but for a few simple things like lack basic equipment and flawed procedures, men would be alive. It’s not easy digging, because the MoD is intentionally obstructive in the collection of evidence.
Now Defence Secretary Des Browne is trying to gag coroners from criticising the Government or the military. He wants the High Court to order coroners to censor their findings. He wants them to be prevented from using language that makes him look bad.

Since a Coroner is no Civil Serf, the Government can’t use it’s usual strong arm tactics to shut them up.  As for people who ask too many questions who work for the MoD, they have Dr David Kelly to look to as an example.

Sharia Adultery and Double Jeopardy

Another one for the all-religions-are-equal file, from The Daily Telegraph:

Two Iranian sisters convicted of adultery face being stoned to death after the supreme court upheld death sentences against them, Iranian media have reported.

The two sisters were found guilty of adultery – a capital crime in Iran – after the husband of one of the pair presented a video showing them in the company of other men while he was away.

The penal court of Teheran province had already sentenced the sisters, identified only as Zohreh, 27, and Azar, to stoning, the newspaper said.

The Etemad newspaper quoted Jabbar Solati, their lawyer, as saying that the sisters had initially been tried for “illegal relations” and had received 99 lashes. However, they were convicted of “adultery” in a second trial for the same incident.

The pair admitted they were in the video but argued there was no adultery as no scene on the video showed them engaged in a sexual act.

So in case you were wondering how sharia works, you can be tried and punished twice for the same incident.  And adultery? Nothing to do with sex. That’s when you are seen with your sister with men in a place public enough that you can be caught on video.

What They’re Fighting For

I’ve been thinking about writing about something since I commented on Matt’s blog. Now having come across something else on Steve’s blog, especially as I am not a regular reader of The Independent, I am compelled to spout off.

I have much more of a problem with the war in Afghanistan than I do with the war in Iraq. Or perhaps I should phrase it more accurately: I have a bigger problem with propping up an Islamofascist regime where Christianity is illegal and evangelism or conversion (along with many other things) is punishable by death, than I do with propping up a regime that still has the potential for being an almost secular Muslim state where Christianity can still be practiced. As hope fades for the latter, my supports fades as well.

In the wake of 9/11 we (America and all our sympathetically outraged friends) needed some place to attack. You just can’t let something like that go unpunished. Even if you can’t find the actual culprits – or they deprived you of the right to string them up by killing themselves – somebody has to pay. The Taliban government of Afghanistan never attacked the US. It did allow the mostly Saudi-funded mostly Saudi terrorists a place to train, or at best didn’t actively get rid of them. However, it wasn’t a strategic ally of the US like other places they trained, such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. And never mind that the US Government funded the Taliban to push out the Soviets in the first place. No, Afghanistan drew the short straw.

And how dare the Taliban not give up power and walk away when they were told to do so by the US Government. Don’t they know that all countries are ultimately subject to the sovereignty of the United States, as there is no corner of the global that is outside “American interests”. Not that the US really wanted them to walk away. They needed to do some killing. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, and all that.

Even though the US wouldn’t have taken on the 6th most populous country in the world – and a nookular power to boot – the military dictator of Pakistan quickly made sure he was on the right side of the Administration. The Wahabist absolutist monarchy of Saudi Arabia, with criminal law and social policies virtually the same as Afghanistan under the Taliban, knew that oil is a much more important export than heroin so they were safe. No matter that they actually provided the funding for extreme Islam around the world. Yep, Afghanistan definitely drew the short straw.

It seems to me that the case of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh is being a bit misrepresented in the headlines. He hasn’t been sentenced to death for just downloading and reading an article on women’s rights. No, he actually gave copies of it to other people. Islam respects the freedom of conscience. Kambaksh is allow to think whatever he likes. His truly fatal error was in telling someone else what he thought. That cannot be tolerated in liberated Afghanistan.

And that’s what US, British, and a handful of other forces are fighting to preserve. Not the democratic freedoms of the US or Britain or anywhere else. Not your freedom of speech. Not your freedom of the press. Not your freedom of religion. And certainly not anyone else’s. Aren’t you proud?

Assassination and the Civilised World

They get their day of fame and then fade from memory. That’s the fate of attempted assassins. Get the job done and they are famous forever. Miss and they fade into oblivion.

I’m surprised that the parole of Sara Jane Moore is a top story right now on US news network websites.  I suppose it is the combination of a slow news day and the aftermath of the Benazir Bhutto assassination. I’d even forgotten her name until now. Moore took a shot at President Ford in 1975. She has been paroled at the age of 77. I’m guessing she’s given up the radical revolutionary politics that motivated her actions. She’s probably happy to fade into oblivion.

Squeaky Fromme, who had a pistol without a round in the chamber when she got close to Ford a couple of weeks before Moore, is 59 and still incarcerated. She waives her right to parole hearings. It’s probably for the best, since she hasn’t exactly been a model prisoner. She hit the prosecutor in the head with an apple at her sentencing hearing. She then attacked another inmate with a claw hammer. She then escaped from prison in West Virginia, apparently to try to meet up with Charles Manson, though this would not have been likely as he is in prison in California. She’s tucked away in Texas now. Fromme is now 59 years old.

John Hinckley, who shot Reagan, is now allowed out of the mental hospital for a few days at a time to visit his parents. No word on whether he is still fixated on Jodie Foster, or whether Jodie’s coming out as a lesbian has finally convinced him to give up the dream. Maybe he be declared cured when he is in his seventies. He’s 52 now.

I think that’s all the presidential would-be assassins.  Deprived of freedom, tucked away, lives wasted, mostly forgotten. That’s the price of their actions.

Because of the proximity to the Bhutto assassination, I can’t help but make a connection. If any of them had been successful, it would have been a terrible day for America and a tragic loss to the First Families.  Nonetheless, I can’t imagine that there would have been rioting in the streets, banks robbed, untold numbers of deaths. Likewise if something were to happen to one of the current presidential candidates, it would be the top of the news for days, but the country would not unravel.

This is another juncture at which the politically correct idea that all cultures are equal falls apart. I have no problem making a moral judgment that the response to the Bhutto assassination in Pakistan is inferior to the response to an assassination in a Western country.  While I do not think it is the responsibility of the US to force the rest of the world into democracy, neither is it wrong to say that non-democratic states ruled by a combination of Sharia and tribal customs are inferior.

Silencing the Voice of Moderation

I just happened to turn on BBC News 24 as the events in Pakistan were unfolding yesterday. Within a very few minutes the news changed from 20 dead and Bhutto escaped, to Bhutto injured and in hospital, to Bhutto dead.

It seems so strange to think that someone I saw not too many weeks ago as a panelist on Question Time has been assassinated.

Bhutto was a voice of moderation in a country severely in need of it.  She was a voice of challenge to radical Islam and to the military control of Pakistan. She was a Western voice in a non-Western culture. A lot of people had a lot of vested interest in her being dead.

I agree with Mike Huckabee that it is not our duty to evangelise the rest of the world with democracy. However, Bhutto had the opportunity to bring certain values of Western civilisation to a place where those values could alleviate suffering and oppression.  Bhutto was a Muslim, but her values were clearly influenced and shaped by her Catholic primary and secondary education.

Hopefully her values through her legacy will carry some weight and some light in the future of Pakistan and make the world a safer place.

British Muslims Favour Killing Christians

The Sunday Telegraph has an important article today on the threat to Muslims who convert to Christianity in this county.

It’s the aspect of Islam that isn’t included in most school curricula. It doesn’t fit with the multi-cultural pan-religionism the Government (and all good liberal open-minded teachers) want to promote. The death penalty for apostates is a moderate Muslim view. This is not extremism.  This is not al-Qaeda and a few radical mosques.

Under the human rights pressure of international community, only seven countries have codified the death penalty. Pakistan, the sixth most populous country in the world, is currently considering legislation to make apostasy a capital crime. In most countries it is carried out by family and friends.

And yet a significant portion of British Muslims think that such behaviour is not merely right, but a religious obligation: a survey by the think-tank Policy Exchange, for instance, revealed that 36 per cent of young Muslims believe that those who leave Islam should be killed.

This should not come as a surprised because this is what Islam universally teaches.

Patrick Sookhdeo was born a Muslim, but later converted to Christianity. He is now international director of the Barnabas Fund, an organisation that aims to research and to ameliorate the conditions of Christians living in countries hostile to their religion.

He notes that “all four schools of Sunni law, as well as the Shia variety, call for the death penalty for apostates. Most Muslim scholars say that Muslim religious law – sharia – requires the death penalty for apostasy.

“In 2004, Prince Charles called a meeting of leading Muslims to discuss the issue,” adds Dr Sookhdeo. “I was there. All the Muslim leaders at that meeting agreed that the penalty in sharia is death. The hope was that they would issue a public declaration repudiating that doctrine, but not one of them did.”

Crazy

Does Turkmenistan have to have an eccentric dictator? The late Saparmurat Niyazov wrote the main textbook in used in Turkmeni schools, banned car radios, built an ice palace in the desert, and renamed months and days for members of his family.

Now President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has banned satellite dishes from the capital Ashgabat because they are ugly. It doesn’t matter that everyone in the city of 700,000 needs a satellite dish to watch TV. After all, it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, located near the Iranian border.