IPT IO N SC R SU B
SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2012
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150 Fils
Egypt Islamists denounce Mubarak-era ‘leftovers’
JAMADI ALAWAAL 23, 1433 AH
No: 15418
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Four protesters shot dead amid Syrian ceasefire
N Korea embarrassed as rocket crashes into sea Rocket launch draws anger; Failure wounds pride
PYONGYANG: North Korea said its much hyped long-range rocket launch failed yesterday, in a very rare and embarrassing public admission of failure by the hermit state and a blow for its new young leader who faces international outrage over the attempt. The isolated North, using the launch to celebrate the 100th birthday of the dead founding president Kim Il-sung and to mark the rise to power of his grandson Kim Jong-un, is now widely expected to press ahead with its third nuclear test to show its military strength. “The possibility of an additional long-range rocket launch or a nuclear test, as well as a military provocation to strengthen internal solidarity is very high,” a senior South Korean defense ministry official told a parliamentary hearing. The two Koreas are divided by the world’s most militarized border and remain technically at war after an armistice ended the Korean War in 1953. The United States and Japan said the rocket, which they claimed was a disguised missile test and the North said was to put a satellite into orbit, crashed into the sea after travelling a much shorter distance than a previous North Korean launch. Its failure raises questions over the impoverished North’s reclusive leadership which has one of the world’s largest standing armies but cannot feed its people without outside aid, largely from its only powerful backer, China. “(There is) no question that the failed launch turns speculation toward the ramifications for the leadership in Pyongyang: a fireworks display gone bad on the biggest day of the year,” said Scott Snyder of the Council on Foreign Relations. In a highly unusual move, the North, which still claims success with a 2009 satellite that others say failed, admitted in a state television broadcast seen by its 23 million people that the latest satellite had not made it into orbit. The failure is the first major and very public challenge for the third of the Kim dynasty to rule North Korea just months into the leadership of a man believed to be in his late 20s. “It could be indication of subtle change in the North Korean leadership in how they handle these things, something that may be different from the past,” said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses a thinktank affiliated with South Korean Defense Ministry. Continued on Page 3
SEOUL: South Korean people watch a TV screen showing a graphic of North Korea’s rocket launch yesterday. — AFP
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KUMZAR: A general view shows the village of Kumzar on the northernmost tip of Oman’s Musandam peninsula. — AFP
Rare language under threat in Hormuz KUMZAR: Home to 4,000 people and overlooking the strategic Straits of Hormuz that Iran has threatened to close, Kumzar village has a thousand year-old language of its own that no one else on earth understands. Nestled on the northernmost tip of Oman’s Musandam peninsula and hidden by spectacular mountains that plunge into the Gulf’s aquamarine waters, tiny Kumzar is a simple fishing village that is a haven for dolphins and teems with marine life. But with the arrival of television and the Internet not many years ago, its people are very much aware of the growing speculation that their lives could be shaken by a war involving Iran, which lies just 50 kilometers away. These same outside influences are also threatening the survival of the ancient Kumzari language, a mix of Indo-European languages and Arabic, remarkable in that it is the only non-Semitic language spoken on the Arabian Peninsula in the past 1,400 years. For centuries, Kumzaris have had front row seats to history. They have witnessed and even assisted invading armies of the world’s great empires that have sought control of the Straits, a chokepoint crucial to global marine trade and through which most of the world’s seaborne oil passes today. At first inspection, Kumzar seems entirely cut off from civilization. But looking more closely one can see signs of the march of modern time in the past 10 years or so-besides electricity, running water, a school and a hospital, a helipad, satellite television and Internet access. These new-found luxuries are a welcome change for the village’s resident teenagers, but according to experts, they are contributing to the extinction of their unwritten language. “The schooling in Kumzar is in Arabic, and they get a lot of influence from the (United Arab) Emirates and Oman ... so children don’t speak Kumzari as well as their grandparents did,” says Christina van der Wal, a researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands who has lived in the village. The Kumzari word for oven is “forno”, likely picked up from the Portuguese who ruled the region in the 16th and 17th centuries, says Van der Wal.
“There’s a lot of vocabulary from Arabic and Persian as well but they have made it their own,” adds Van der Wal, who says Iranians and Arabs cannot understand it. A lot of potential-The word for “rod” is “qetub”, derived from the original Arabic word “qadib” and would be totally unintelligible to Arabs, according to linguist Erik Anonby, who has also lived in the remote village. For ‘car’ they say ‘motor’, and like ‘raha’ (radio) and ‘apsit’ (upset) these words were derived from English, says Anonby, adding that there is “extensive marine terminology exclusive to Kumzari”, not found in any other language. The two linguists are on a mission to save the dying language. Together, they are working on a Kumzari dictionary. Anonby is working on a spelling system, while Van der Wal is working on the grammar. Meanwhile, satellite television and the World Wide Web have brought a source of entertainment for the youth who say life in the sedentary and geographically isolated village has always been somewhat dull. “There wasn’t much to do around here except hike up the mountain trail,” says 15-year-old Jamayel as she walks through the narrow alleyways of the village. “But now we can watch TV, we can search things on the Internet, we can listen to music online,” she says, adding that her favorite Western artist is the late Michael Jackson. Her best friend Mariam dreams of becoming an architect and wants to renovate the poorly built village stone shacks in which most people live. “This place has a a lot of potential,” she says. She plans to return to Kumzar and rebuild it once she gets her degree. Despite Kumzar’s conservative Islamic culture, parents are sending their sons and daughters to the Omani capital Muscat and abroad for higher education. Village resident Mariam Ahmad, a 34-year-old mother of three already has one daughter studying computer science. Ahmad was married at 13 and had her first child soon after. “But we don’t marry them off so young anymore,” she says, as her husband nods in agreement. “What’s the point of sending them to school for 12 years if they’re just going to get married,” he argues. — AFP