AFGHANISTAN: Taliban accused of forcing farmers to grow opium poppy instead of saffron

It is as pricey as precious metals or illicit drugs, and in some kitchens it is increasingly becoming even more valued. Saffron, a spice that grows in Afghanistan, could be a solution for farmers who want to make ends meet without growing poppy flowers that can be turned into opium and heroin that enrich and empower drug barons.

But this week, the spokesman for the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan spoke of a "disturbing trend" in the western portion of the country: The Taliban is forcing farmers to stop growing the savory spice and switch to more nefarious crops. 

"Insurgents are pressuring Herat farmers to switch to growing poppy instead of saffron so they can use the money from drug sales to fund their operations," German army Gen. Josef Blotz told reporters Monday. "In areas north of Herat city, insurgents have destroyed fields planted with saffron, and last month they attacked two trucks carrying saffron bulbs for planting and killed the truckers who were delivering them."

A Taliban spokesman reached by telephone Wednesday denied the charge.

CENTRAL ASIA: WikiLeaks dispatches reveal a Great Game for the 21st century

The Americans were confounded. Maksat Idenov (pictured), the Harvard Business School-educated head of Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil company, had abruptly booted Guy Hollingsworth, a Chevron Corp. executive, from a meeting and from talks over a potentially lucrative deal.

A month went by before they finally figured out what had gone wrong. The executive of the California-based energy giant had been spotted playing golf in the Kazakh capital, Astana, and sunning in Spain with Idenov’s predecessor and rival, according to a Feb. 14, 2008, dispatch from the U.S. Embassy in Astana released by WikiLeaks.

“Idenov amplified his anger with Hollingsworth by explaining that Hollingsworth does not understand how we are doing business now,” said the dispatch.

The confidential dispatches from Central Asia depict a slicked-back 21st century version of the Great Game, the 19th century battle between the Russian and British empires over Central Asia’s riches. In today’s great game, diplomats and jet-set corporate executives gather business intelligence to outsmart corrupt autocrats and navigate teetering bureaucracies and make fortunes in the energy business.

LEBANON, TURKEY: Erdogan addresses Israel, shows off Turkish projects

For the second time in two months, a regional leader has addressed Israel in Lebanon.

This time, however, the words were a lot less harsh.

In a speech delivered in northern Lebanon on Wednesday, Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the tiny country's neighbor Israel to embrace peace and stop "provocations," for its own good.

"The Israeli government has to see and understand this: if there is peace in this region, Israel wins as much as the region. If there is war and clash in this region, Israeli citizens are harmed as much as the people in the region," he was quoted as saying by Turkey's semiofficial Anatolia news agency during his official visit to Lebanon. "Thus, we, one more time, invite Israel to peace, return from its mistakes and apologize both for the interest of Israel and the people in the region."

Erdogan's remarks were far more diplomatically worded and more conciliatory than the tirade Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered in south Lebanon last month, in which he said that "the world should understand that the Zionists will go."

But despite his carefully chosen words, Erdogan was clear in his message.

He called on Israel to immediately put an end to its "provoking activities" which he said put the region and the world in danger, according to the Anatolia news agency.

MIDDLE EAST: Black gold rush threatens regional stability

The race is on for oil in the eastern Mediterranean, with at least four major competitors gunning to win.

But it's far from a friendly competition. Of those four, two are locked in an ongoing state of war and the third refuses to recognize the fourth.

So will Israel, Lebanon, Turkey and Cyprus find a way to work things out?

Not likely, although the possibility of war between Israel and Lebanon is far more likely than an outbreak of violence between Turkey and Cyprus, observers say.

Turkey this week announced its intention to start oil exploration off the northern coast of Cyprus near the breakaway Turkish Cypriot enclave while simultaneously expressing dismay with the Greek Cypriot government's decision to negotiate oil exploration deals with Lebanon.

"Greek Cyprus does not represent the entire island and it cannot strike deals that concern the interests of the whole island," an unnamed Turkish diplomatic source told the Turkish English-language newspaper Hurriyet Daily News. "That's an attitude we have often shared with our Lebanese friends and I think they will take this into consideration."

LIBYA: Tripoli cracks down on 'sex-positive' URL shortener

Consider yourselves warned: registering "sex-positive" anything in Libya is a bad idea.

Earlier this week, sex and tech writer Violet Blue took to her blog to announce the Libyan government had seized her URL shortening service vb.ly, "the Internet's first and only sex-positive URL shortener."

Cute little .ly domain names have been all the rage for a while now, but many casual users of similar URL-shortening services like bit.ly and ow.ly may not know that the .ly stands for Libya, or, as it's formally known, the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

Vb.ly was intended as a "tolerant" service for sharing NSFW [not safe for work, i.e. porn] links, but did not actually provide graphic content (Unless you count the picture of Blue drinking a beer in a halter top on the homepage, which apparently the Libyan authorities did.)

SYRIA: Foreigners' interest in traditional furnishings counteracts weak local demand

The rich, dark wood furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay or mosaic decoration is a trademark of Syrian living rooms, luxury boutique hotels and government offices. But now the artisanal furniture from Damascus' traditional markets is increasingly attracting the eye of foreigners.

In the shops on Straight Street, furniture makers are experiencing a rise in exports, fueled by demand predominantly from the Gulf.

Al Moazen is a family outfit whose roots are more than 300 years old. The workshop, at the back of the shop, is abuzz as the handmade items are constructed. Chairs with beige cushions and mirrors surrounded by mosaic clutter the shop. Small tables and chests are stacked high upon one another.

"There is a lot more interest from outside Syria than there was," says Abdullah al-Moazen, the youngest generation to go into the business.

IRAN: No end in sight for gold bazaar strike as government plays down economic woes

Gold markets across Iran remained shuttered in recent days as a strike against a 3% value-added tax entered its second week. 

Video of the markets uploaded to the Internet from the capital of Tehran all the way to the southern provincial capital of Ahvaz showed darkened, locked stalls and empty corridors.

Monday was a religious holiday in Iran, and observers are waiting to see whether the strike will continue Tuesday. 

Merchants and jewelers claim the government is looking to fill its coffers by taxing small businesses unfairly. The government continues to paint the union of goldsmiths and jewelers as a group of greedy and corrupt businessmen.

Lawmaker Hasan Khastehband, a member of the parliamentary economic committee, blamed the strike on a handful of gold sellers involved in illegal smuggling.

"[These gold sellers] are agitating the goldsmiths to impede the implementation of the VAT because they do not want to make their illegal transactions transparent and revealed," he was quoted as saying by local media outlets.

IRAN: Gold bazaar on strike as merchants square off with government over tax hike [Updated]

Tehran's main gold bazaar is usually glittering with precious baubles and jewelry fit for royalty, but the last several days have seen it shuttered and empty as the union of goldsmiths and jewelers strikes against a 3% value-added tax.

"We'll stay on strike until the negotiation gets results," Ali Mosavi, a goldsmith in the bazaar, told Babylon & Beyond. "This is the third year we are protesting and so far we have been able to resist [the tax hike]."

The strike appears to be affecting the retail and wholesale gold markets of Tehran's main bazaar as well as the markets of other Iranian cities like Esfahan, Mashhad and Tabriz, but not non-union jewelry stores outside the bazaars.

The government's economic committee issued a statement condemning the strike against the tax, which, it claims, will eliminate illegal transactions and money laundering in the gold market.

"We, the members of the committee, support the law and the stance of tax office and ask the intelligence bodies and judiciary branch to recognize the certain goldsmiths who are impeding the execution of the law and punish them strictly with maximum penalty and review their documents and accounts thoroughly and levy the tax up to the last cent," the statement said.

[Updated, Monday, Sept. 27, 7:34 a.m. PDT: Babylon & Beyond has confirmed that the strike has spread to markets in the Karimkhan Zand and Tajrish areas of Tehran. Meanwhile, local press estimates that the value-added tax has raised around $52 million for the government since it was levied.]

LEBANON: Supermarket chain won't sell Melitta coffee filters with Hebrew writing on package

For those craving a fresh cup of home-made Joe while in Lebanon, finding a pack of coffee filters may become a difficult task.

You might even find yourself crawling from neighborhood corner store to mini-mart to grocery megaplex under the scorching sun searching for filters.

Why? Because though the Arab League may lack the unity to cling to its once-potent boycott of Israel, which from 1942 to 1993 was highly comprehensive, Syria and Lebanon still adhere to an orthodox interpretation.

And though the coffee filters you seek may be German and not Israeli -- Melitta in this instance -- it apparently makes no difference to the Lebanese branch of a major Kuwaiti supermarket chain, The Sultan Center, known by its acronym T.S.C.

At least one T.S.C. supermarket nestled in the quaint, largely Francophone neighborhood of Ashrafiyeh in Beirut recently sent back its shipment of Melitta coffee filters after discovering that the boxes had Hebrew script on the side.

“We saw that they are from Israel so we sent them back," one of the retail assistants said to a customer. "Don’t worry. We will be getting Melitta’s from America instead."

No, they’re not from Israel. Though the sight of the Jewish state’s official language is enough to make some foes of Israel recoil, Melitta’s European Article Number, a bar code listed on all products from the continent, shows that the filters were made in Germany.

IRAN: Assessing the politics behind the recently concluded bazaar strike

A recently concluded strike throughout Iran's main traditional markets, or bazaars, was initially embraced by the opposition movement born out of last year’s allegedly fraudulent reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But as it became clear the stakes were more about cash than politics, those supporting the self-described Green movement appeared to distance themselves from it. 

Many were downright suspicious of the bazaaris, who contribute relatively little to Iran's tax structure compared with salaried workers at ministries or big state firms. 

"When people's children were being beaten and killed in the street, these ... bazaaris did not support us," said one young Tehran man, referring to the wave of protests and the violent crackdown that followed last year's disputed presidential elections. 

"Now, for their own vested interests, they strike so as not to pay taxes," he said. 

WEST BANK: A tit for tat or just a new policy?

Hundreds of Palestinian dairy and meat producers demonstrated Monday outside the Palestinian Authority prime minister’s office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, demanding that Israel cancel an order banning the sale of their products in East Jerusalem markets.

The demonstration took place only hours before Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority  was scheduled to meet Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Jerusalem to discuss such matters and many more that directly affect Palestinian living conditions.

The producers demanded that the Palestinian Authority respond by banning Israeli dairy and meat products from the Palestinian areas. Although Palestinians sell about $2.5 million worth of their dairy and meat products in East Jerusalem markets a month, Israel sells six times this quantity, or $15 million, a month in the Palestinian areas.

SUDAN: Print more news, please

While newspapers in the U.S. and other countries are facing dwindling pages and Internet pressures, Sudan is taking a different approach: The government has ordered the nation’s dailies to print more pages.

The strategy seems odd in a country where about half the population can’t read, but the government of President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir says it wants to promote the print media. Naturally, journalists are suspicious, and it appears that the intentions by the Sudanese Press and Publication Council are less about press freedom than making money.