Unexpected Peace

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While Syria, Israel and Iraq — all of which share borders with Jordan — struggle through civil wars and political uprisings, Jordan has stayed relatively quiet, welcoming refugees from Syria at an astounding rate, and for the most part minding its own business.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Tourism in Jordan has waned in recent years in light of the surrounding tensions, but the country's major attractions such as Petra and the Dead Sea still draw crowds albeit smaller than they have been in the past. Despite my own hesitations about heading to the Middle East at a time like this, I wanted to see these wonders for myself.

As it turns out, it was a quieter, more remote part of the country that revealed a peacefulness I had not expected to find in this part of the world. After a couple nights in Amman, I head into the Jordanian wilderness to the Rummana Campsite in the heart of the Dana Biosphere Reserve, which spans square kilometres of varied landscape, from rugged limestone and sandstone ranges to desert plains.

The seasonal camp of 20 large canvas tents sits on a small plateau overlooking the Rift Valley.

The next morning, a bus drops my group 45 minutes from the campsite, beside a switchback road just outside the village of Mansoura. Eighteen kilometres away and metres down, our next stop, Feynan Ecolodge, awaits. Our guide, Mohammed Daifallah, points out across a vast expanse of sandstone mountains that look like heaps of dried-up brown sugar, dusty and crumbling under a brilliant blue sky.

That's where we're going, he tells us. The bus takes off in the direction it came. It's barely 9 a. We trek down the road until the pavement ends and the hills tower above us. Bushes of bright pink oleanders line the edges of the pebbled valley floor — two signs that the little stream that trickles down the middle has a feisty side. Rain, usually between January and March, can trigger flash floods that might raise water levels up to nine metres for a day. This is Wadi Ghwayr. We crisscross the stream and hop over boulders, and pretty soon the mountain walls close in on us as the stream leads us into a towering sandstone slot canyon.

Walls up to metre high block out the sun, bulging here and there, flowing around bends laced with swirls of oxidized sediment.

At times, the stream pools and we trek through knee-deep murky blue water. A couple hours in, we reach an impasse. The stream seeps under boulders that leave us at a 2. A massive rock sits wedged between the walls of the canyon 30 metres above. The only way forward is to jump and then swim. Three local boys are already there and one assures me it's deep enough, though his smile reads more like a dare than a promise. I hesitate, but take the plunge into frigid water. My toes don't touch the bottom, but after a few strokes my knees brush rocks and I stand up again.

Just beyond the pool, the canyon widens again and palm trees reach down from above. The stream persists despite the widening wadi that now lets the sun in, but not for long.

When the stream peters out as we leave the valley, we carry on without it. I trek along behind Mohammed until he points up a crevasse that juts into the hillside. It's the continuation of the trail, but I would never have known it without him. I shrink into a patch of shade and douse myself in water. Mohammed clearly knows the lay of this land — he was born in a cave not far from here. He wanders off to the side, positions himself toward Mecca and prays as we wait for the others, so they don't miss the exit.

It's pushing 3 p. We do, and just over the hill, just as Mohammed promised, we can see Feynan at the end of a dusty track. The lodge is seven kilometres from the nearest paved road, so most people don't cruise by in their own car, but few arrive by way of Wadi Ghwayr. Most drive as far as the village of Qurayqura, where lodge staff transfer them the remaining seven kilometres on a dirt road through the desert. I'll go back that way in the morning.

The room lodge has little electricity — only in the bathrooms, at the front desk and a bit in the kitchen, and all of it is solar generated. At night, Feynan is lit by candles made at the on-site candle workshop. Almost all of the 25 staff members are part of the local Bedouin community. That night, on the rooftop terrace, we can hear a call to prayer echo off the surrounding desert hills.

Once darkness falls, one of the staff sets up the lodge's new high-powered telescope. We take turns peering through at what looks like a glow-in-the-dark sticker of Saturn, rings and all.

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We joke about how it can't be real, it seems so cartoon-like. Never before had a sitting Greek Cypriot leader lost in the first round of elections. By contrast, the winner, pragmatic communist Demetris Christofias, campaigned for concessions with the Turkish Cypriots.

Since coming to power, he has broken many taboos. He has accepted that Greek Cypriots may share responsibility for the conflict. He sent a wreath and a representative to the funeral of an exhumed Turkish Cypriot killed in the s communal violence and met Turkish visitors who entered Cyprus directly from Turkey. On April 3, the two sides opened a new crossing in the heart of Nicosia's old city. Christofias's initiatives went beyond mere confidence-building measures.

He accepted that there will be a Turkish Cypriot administration after a settlement. He told his people that a deal wouldn't bring the return of all Greek Cypriot refugees displaced during Turkey's invasion. And he said he is ready to accept that 50, of the Turkish immigrants who have since moved to the north can stay in their adopted homeland.

This is a contentious issue for Greek Cypriots who consider these immigrants as illegal settlers, sent by Ankara to change the island's demographic balance. Christofias can count on broad-based political support for his bold approach. If anything, the main opposition party, the center-right Democratic Rally of Nicos Anastasiades, is pushing even harder for settling the conflict. This newfound taste for compromise is as much driven by economic necessity as by political pragmatism. The Greek Cypriot business community as well as the liberal media realize that by normalizing relations with Turkey, the island could relaunch a sagging tourism sector and better profit as a hub for financial and other services in a region that is increasingly turning to Turkey's strong economy.

And most Greek Cypriots now accept that compromise is the only way to get compensation for lost property and win the withdrawal of the 25, to 43, Turkish troops from the island. This is remarkable progress, suggesting the two sides could hammer out a deal within the next 12 months. On March 21, they formed 13 working groups and technical committees to discuss the basis of a settlement.

Unexpected peace - Peace Memorial Museum (Beit el Amani)

One diplomat believes the two leaders "seem to have it all stitched up already. They managed, linguistically at least, to square the circle between Greek Cypriot demands for unity and Turkish Cypriot demands for autonomy. Under the envisioned deal, Cyprus would have one "federal government" with a "single international personality" but two constituent states "of equal status.

Been to Peace Memorial Museum (Beit el Amani)? Share your experiences!

Walking the balmy streets of Nicosia, it's hard to feel the Cyprus dispute. Amid honey-stoned British colonial villas and palm tree-lined roads full of gleaming sports cars, the island looks more like a prosperous East Mediterranean emirate than a frozen conflict.

Yet the status quo is as deceptive as ever. With the island's Greek Cypriot part now in the EU, failure in these talks will come at a cost for the rest of Europe, too.

Unexpected Peace

The Greek Cypriots are already causing trouble by blocking the discussion of energy coordination between Brussels and Ankara as part of Turkey's EU accession talks. If all goes wrong, the Greek Cypriots will certainly use their EU membership to wreck the bloc's relations with Turkey, just like Greece held up EU financial aid to Turkey with damaging results in the s and s. Turkey will doubtless go even further if the current talks crash. In short, it's time for European leaders to put Cyprus on the front burner.

What better way to demonstrate the EU's relevance after the Irish treaty rejection than by bringing peace to Cyprus? Spreading democracy and prosperity has been the EU's most noble goal and biggest success. It can do so again by helping Messrs. Christofias and Talat get right in what everyone got so badly wrong in Originally published in Russia File. The chummy joint news conference of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki seemed to suggest that the Russian president had scored a major victory over his U.

The Russians had modest expectations, seeing the summit as primarily an opportunity to display Putin as an equal to the U.

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