The release of US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks contains some serious stuff: US diplomats have been trying to steal the credit card numbers of top UN officials, Saudi Arabia is putting pressure on the US to attack Iran, Iran has obtained advanced long-range missiles from North Korea. Other cables are not so earth-shaking, but they nonetheless reveal personalities and events that are comical, surprising, or just plain weird. Here's our top five.
William Burns, the highest-ranked Foreign Service Officer in the United States, attended a 2006 wedding in Dagestan, a region of Chechnya, of the son of a well-connected oil mogul. In an account that British historian Timothy Garton Ash describes as "almost worthy of Evelyn Waugh," Burns describes the antics of Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov."After the fireworks, the musicians struck up the lezginka in the courtyard and a group of two girls and three boys – one no more than six years old – performed gymnastic versions of the dance. First Gadzhi [ the father of the groom] joined them and then Ramzan, who danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down in the back of his jeans (a houseguest later pointed out that the gold housing eliminated any practical use of the gun, but smirked that Ramzan probably couldn't fire it anyway)."Burns said that, as a wedding gift, Ramzan presented the couple with a "a five kilo lump of gold."
2. Implanting tracking chips?
In March 2009, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia suggested to Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, that the US government track detainees freed from Guantanamo Bay by surgically implanting electronic tracking chips in them, adding that it is commonly done with horses and falcons.
Brennan's response: "Horses don't have good lawyers."
3. Single-malt only, please
President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the authoritarian ruler of Yemen, which bans alcohol consumption for non-Muslims, told US Army General David Petraeus that he was concerned about the smuggling of drugs and weapons from nearby Djibouti. But he wasn't concerned about one other form of contraband."Tell (Djiboutian President) Ismail Guelleh that I don't care if he smuggles whiskey into Yemen," Saleh told Petraeus. "Provided it's good whiskey."
4. Escape from Iran
Around noon on January 9, 2009, Hossein Ghanbarzadeh Vahedi, a US citizen of Iranian descent, arrived at the US consulate in Ankara, Turkey, with a harrowing story of escape from Iran.
Vahedi, age 75, visited Iran for a four-week trrip to meet his family and visit his parents' gravesite. When he tried to return home to Los Angeles, Iranian authorities confiscated his passport and refused to give it back, unless he paid a fine of $150,000 and instructed his sons, music promoters in LA, to cancel a concert in Dubai by popular Persian pop singers Kamran and Hooman.
After seven months trapped in Iran, Vahedi paid smugglers $7,500 to take him across a freezing mountainous passage across the Iran-Turkey border a grueling, 14-hour journey, by horseback. The horse, recounts Vahedi, seemed to know the route very well.
After Vahedi cleared the border, Turkish authorities told the US consulate that they intended to deport him back to Iran. One standard practice of deportation is to round up deportees in the middle of the night, bus them to the southern border, and then shoot into the air, forcing them to run into Iran or Iraq. Fortunatley for Vahedi, the State Department intervened and finally allowed him to return home.
As for Kamran and Hooman, they performed most recently in Dubai on November 18.
5. Qaddafi tiene duende
In a dispatch titled "A glimpse into Libyan leader Qadhafi's eccentricities," reveals that the Brother Leader dislikes flying over water, only stays on the first floor, tends to receive visitors and conduct meetings inside a traditional Bedouin tent, is accompanied everywhere by a Ukrainian nurse described as a "voluptuous blonde," and, perhaps most surprising of all, is a huge fan of flamenco dancing.
No comments:
Post a Comment