In the Company of Microstates, P.E.I. Is a Giant

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Europe is home to five miniscule microstates - these are countries that are geographically extremely small and, with one exception, have populations far less than 100,000.

While the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, a former British colony encompassing 316 square kilometres, has only been an independent country since 1964, the others - Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino - have been self-governing jurisdictions for centuries.

San Marino traces its existence back to the late Roman Empire and claims to be the world's oldest republic. Andorra arose out of a 13th-century treaty that created a jurisdiction jointly ruled by a Catalonian bishop and a French count. Monaco also emerged in the 13th century as a Genoan colony under the control of the House of Grimaldi. Liechtenstein had been part of the old Holy Roman Empire and acquired full sovereignty at the beginning of the 19th century.

Andorra, with a territory of 468 square kilometres, is nestled in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain, and Liechtenstein, at 160 square kilometres, is in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. Monaco, just two square kilometres in size, is surrounded by France, and San Marino, at 61 square kilometres, is an enclave inside Italy.

Compared to these countries, Prince Edward Island, at 2,194 square kilometres, is a giant.

Malta has a population of 410,000, Andorra 85,000, Liechtenstein 36,000, Monaco 35,000, and San Marino 31,000.

(Vatican City in Rome, the home of the Catholic Church, is technically a state and has observer status at the United Nations but it's not a real nation. Iceland and Luxembourg are by some definitions microstates, but they are far larger in area and population than these five countries.)

In the past considered too tiny to be full partners in the international community, these countries were viewed as anomalies, merely the leftover quirks of history.

When the League of Nations was founded after the First World War, none of them joined. And when the successor United Nations was formed in 1945, again none were among the original 51 signatories to its charter.

However, post-war global decolonization resulted in a wave of sovereign microstates, most of them small islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and South Pacific. Today's Commonwealth (of which Malta is a member) is largely a collection of such countries.

This paradigm shift allowed the European microstates to take their rightful place as full members of the international community.

Today, these tiny entities are all members of the greatly-expanded 192-member United Nations. Andorra and Malta joined in the 1960s, and the very tiny states of Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino in the 1990s.

They participate fully in European affairs. All are members of the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They belong to many other international organizations as well.

They conduct bilateral diplomatic relations with many countries around the world. Andorra has five embassies abroad, Liechtenstein six, Monaco nine, San Marino 14, and Malta 23. They also staff numerous consulates and diplomatic missions in various capitals and other cities.

Professor Barry Bartmann, one of our colleagues in the Department of Political Studies at UPEI and a specialist on the politics of microstates, recently interviewed many of their UN-accredited diplomats in New York for a study on their foreign relations.

No longer is size an impediment for countries wishing to make their mark in the world.

Libyan War Could Signal NATO’s Collapse

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Christopher Hill, a former United States special envoy for Kosovo and now dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, has remarked that the NATO operation against Moammar Gadhafi is in danger of failing.

It suffers, he has written, from a “strategy/policy mismatch. The policy is to remove Colonel Gadhafi from power. The strategy – the mandate for the means – is to protect civilians. The latter will not ensure the success of the former.”

His warning echoes that of outgoing U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who recently pulled no punches when he told the leaders of the alliance that it faces a “dim” and “dismal” future, if so many of its member states refuse to get involved in the current war against the Libyan dictator.

Gates said that less than half of NATO’s members have participated in the effort, and only one-third have contributed militarily. (Canada is among the one-third involved.) Shortcomings in capability and will, he remarked, “have the potential to jeopardize the alliance’s ability to conduct an integrated, effective and sustained air-sea campaign.”

Not only is Gadhafi continuing to defy the alliance, but had himself photographed playing chess with the visiting Russian head of the World Chess Federation in Tripoli recently.

The U.S. Congress is also tiring of the Libyan campaign and has not hesitated to let President Obama know it.

The House of Representatives last week rejected a bill to authorize continued American military operations in Libya.

This was mostly symbolism, as a measure that would have limited financing to support those efforts failed. It was, however, a warning to the administration.

America is drowning in debt, caused partly by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there is little appetite for this conflict.

The total cost of American operations in Libya is expected to top $1 billion by the end of the summer.

Barack Obama doesn’t want to throw his weight around the way George W. Bush did.

But the Libyan mess actually illustrates the shortcomings of multilateralism and dependence on organizations such as NATO, the Arab League and the UN Security Council itself, which has forced the U.S. and its allies to conduct a campaign with not one, but almost both hands, tied behind their backs.

If the United States, and other willing countries, had attacked Libya’s armed forces, and killed or captured Gadhafi, right at the start (even if this had involved elite ground forces), this war would have been over within weeks, if not days.

Maybe it would have been “illegal” by the standards of international law today, but think of how many lives, buildings, and other infrastructure –  not to mention money – would have been saved.

No “Arab Spring” in Yemen

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

Yemen, the poorest Arab state, with a gross domestic product per capita of little more than $1,000 a year, has descended into political chaos.

Located at the south-western edge of the Arabian peninsula, the present-day Yemeni state was formed in 1990, when the north, an ancient Arab kingdom and then a republic, united with the south, the former British colony of Aden and later a Marxist-ruled “people’s democratic republic.”

Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s president, who took power in the north in 1978, has ruled the loosely unified Republic of Yemen since its formation.

Yemen’s population, which now stands at more than 24 million, has far outstripped its meagre resources. Much of the country is desert, and its predominantly rural population has a literacy rate barely above 50 percent.

Yemen is a small petroleum producer, but output from the country’s oil fields is falling and they are expected to be depleted by 2017 – a major concern, since oil provides around 90 percent of the country’s exports.

Saleh supported Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait in 1990, alienating not only that emirate but also Saudi Arabia, which was providing critical financial assistance to Yemen. The Saudis, in retaliation, expelled 1 million Yemeni expatriate workers.

Also, endemic civil warfare, mainly various northern tribes and secessionist socialists in the south fighting the central government, has further hampered economic growth. As a consequence, for the past 10 years Yemen has relied heavily on aid from multilateral agencies to sustain its economy.

The northern part of the country is controlled by tribes belonging to the Zaidi stream of Shia Islam; they constitute about 40-45 percent of the country’s population. Sunni Muslims live mainly in the south and southeast.

In 2004, one Zaidi insurgent group in the northwest, the Houthis, launched an uprising against the government. The Yemeni regime accused them of having ties with Shi’ite Iran, and in 2009, the Saudis, fervent Wahhabi Sunnis, intervened on the side of the government, bombing Houthi regions.

Yemen has now also been swept up by the turmoil that has spread across the Arab Middle East.

More than 20,000 anti-government protesters gathered in Sana’a, the capital, for a “day of rage” against President Saleh in early February. They called for immediate regime change and rejected Saleh’s offer to step down in 2013.

They want a transitional government of national unity, composed of technocrats, that will function until new parliamentary and presidential elections can be held. The Houthis announced their support for the pro-democracy protests.

More protests followed throughout March and April, but Saleh stood his ground. However, in May, the powerful Hashid tribal confederation, also composed of Zaidi Shi'ites, joined the fight against the president.

Battles soon ensued in Sana’a, and in early June Saleh was himself severely injured by a bomb, and was flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment. Meanwhile, vice president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has assumed power. Many in the opposition movement like him, because he is a southerner and shows no signs of tribal loyalties.

Saleh’s return is uncertain, but he has left behind a failed state which has little prospect for a transition to democracy.

 

Is “Arab Spring” Now Stalled? 

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

As spring gives way to summer, the "Arab Awakening" seems stalled.

While dictators in Egypt and Tunisia were fairly easily removed by pro-democracy forces, the autocrats that have ruled Libya, Syria and Yemen for decades are not going quietly into the night.

Despite months of bombardment by NATO, and the loss of about half the country to opposition forces, Moammar Gadhafi remains defiant in Tripoli, and shows no signs of exiting willingly.

This should come as no surprise to those who have observed this megalomaniac's behaviour over the four decades he has terrorized his people.

Meanwhile, the Assad clan that has been in power in Syria since 1970 is fighting for its life and seems willing to use whatever it takes to stay in power. At least 1,400 protesters have been killed since the uprising began some 12 weeks ago, and thousands more have fled across the border into Turkey.

Jisr al-Shughour, a town of 50,000, became the latest focus of the Syrian government's efforts to crush the rebellion. Security forces sent in tanks and attack helicopters to recapture the town.

The armed forces had already used similar tactics in other cities, and parts of the capital, Damascus.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, took over after his father, Hafez, died in 2000. The Assads have used the Ba'ath Party apparatus to run a tightly-controlled despotic one-party state.

The Assads are members of the Alawi offshoot of Shia Islam, while most Syrians are Sunni Muslims and consider the sect heretical.

In 1982, Hafez al-Assad crushed an uprising in Homs led by Sunni Islamists, killing at least 25,000 people and razing much of the city. Should the regime fall, there would probably be a bloody settling of accounts, so Bashar has little choice but to fight to the death.

Yemen, the poorest Arab state, has descended into political chaos. About half of the population is functionally illiterate, and most Yemenis identify themselves as members of tribes that often battle each other over the scarce resources of the country.

The present-day Yemeni state was formed in 1990, when the north, an ancient Arab kingdom and then a republic, united with the south, the former British colony of Aden and later a Marxist-ruled "people's democratic republic."

President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been in power in the north since 1978, has ruled the loosely unified Republic of Yemen since 1990.

The protests in the country started at the end of January, when some 16,000 demonstrators took to the streets in the capital, Sana'a, demanding the end of Saleh's rule.

First he said he would not stand for re-election in 2013 and then he promised he would oversee a "transition" to democracy. This did not satisfy his opponents, who did not trust him to keep his word. They proved to be correct.

But the pro-democracy movement, based largely in urban areas, was overtaken by older divisions within Yemeni society.

Saleh decided to transform the conflict from a protest movement against an autocratic leader into a military conflict between the state and leading tribal rivals, and hoped in this way to remain in power.

At the end of May, he unleashed his guns on the forces of Sadiq al-Ahmar, leader of the powerful Hashed tribal confederation (of which Saleh himself is a member). The Hashed and Bakil, followers of Zaidi Shi'ism, are two large tribal groupings in north Yemen that historically have been important sources of power in the country.

This was a calculated gamble - but it proved to be a mistake. Opposition tribesmen left the mountains for the capital to reinforce Hashed fighters. Soon, intense fighting erupted in Sana'a.

Saleh and several others were injured and at least five people were killed by the June 3 bombing of the presidential compound. Badly wounded, Saleh flew to neighbouring Saudi Arabia for treatment and transferred power temporarily to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

To add to the turmoil in the country, another group of Zaidi Shi'ites, the Houthis, based in the northwest of the country, have been waging a rebellion against the central government since 2004.

As well, Islamist militants suspected of links to al-Qaida have taken over two towns, including Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, in southern Yemen.

Whether he returns or not, Saleh has left a country on the verge of civil war and economic collapse, with a violent power struggle among rival tribes underway. Yemen has become a failed state, and democracy is nowhere on the horizon.

Uprising Highlights Ethnic, Religious Divisions

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal-Pioneer

The Assad clan that has ruled Syria since 1970 is fighting for its life and seems willing to use whatever it takes to stay in power.

At least 1,400 protesters have been killed since the uprising began some 12 weeks ago, and many thousands more have fled across the border into Turkey.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, took over after his father, Hafez, died in 2000. The Assads have used the Ba'ath Party apparatus to run a tightly-controlled despotic one-party state.

The Assads are members of the Alawi offshoot of Shia Islam, while most Syrians are Sunni Muslims and consider the sect heretical.

The Alawis were once at the bottom of the ethnic and religious ladder, but began their ascent during the period of French rule in Syria, which lasted from 1920 to 1946.

Profiting from French efforts at divide-and-rule in Syria, they joined the military in disproportionately large numbers.

After independence, chaos reigned in the country, as one coup d'état followed another.

This provided the Alawis with the opportunity to rise to power, by dominating the armed forces and the Ba'ath Party. In 1963, the party took power away from the Sunni majority.

Sunni resentment has never disappeared. In 1982, Hafez al-Assad crushed an uprising in Hama led by Sunni Islamists, killing at least 25,000 people and razing much of the city.

Should the regime fall, there would probably be a bloody settling of accounts, so Bashar has little choice but to fight to the death.

However, Assad is popular among Christians, who make up more than one tenth of the population, and other minorities who fear a change in the country's delicate ethnic and religious balance should a Sunni-majority regime replace him.

Mordechai Kedar, author of Asad in "Search of Legitimacy - Messages and Rhetoric in the Syrian Press 1970-2000," thinks it possible that "six states will rise from the ruins of Syria, each more homogeneous than the former united Syria and more legitimate in the eyes of most of its inhabitants."

Minorities such as the Druze and Kurds might seek independence, and dissident groups in Aleppo and other cities might secede from the Damascus-based country.

Kurds make up about seven percent of the country's population, yet were only recently granted citizenship.

For more than 50 years they have been subjected to an aggressive Arabisation policy, denied the right to speak or be taught in the Kurdish language or to practice Kurdish traditions.

Official positions by governments and movements in the region have taken on a sharply sectarian character.

While the Shiite regime in Iran, the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government, and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah have all been silent on the uprising or supportive of Assad, other Middle Eastern states, including neighbouring Turkey, have become increasingly critical of Damascus.

Before the uprising, Turkey had become one of Syria's closest allies, but relations have badly deteriorated.

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced the repression as savage.

Syria is geographically and historically a pivotal country in the Middle East, and the outcome of the current struggle will have ramifications across the region.

Canadian Jewish Congress Future Uncertain

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), the once-proud and venerable “parliament of Canadian Jewry,” has become a shadow of its former self.

Soon it will become just another agency under the aegis of a yet-unnamed organization that will supervise most of the country’s national Jewish organizations.

Originally created in 1919, the CJC soon became moribund. Only with the rise of new threats of fascism and anti-Semitism at home and abroad after 1933, was the Congress again reconstituted.

Congress became a permanent institution, an “umbrella” comprising a large number of affiliated Jewish organizations, and a pinnacle in Canadian Jewish political development. From 1939 to 1962 its national president and most powerful figure was Samuel Bronfman.

In the 1930s, the CJC was concerned mainly with monitoring the rise of various anti-Semitic and pro-fascist movements, and attempting, unsuccessfully, to facilitate the entry into Canada of Jewish refugees escaping Europe.

Following the Second World War, the Congress dealt with the tragedy of the Holocaust, and was focused on lifting the barriers to immigration by the European survivors.

It also welcomed, and provided support for, the new state of Israel.

The “golden age” of Congress was probably between the 1950s and 1970s, when it championed human rights and social justice, and was instrumental in lobbying governments to abolish discriminatory laws in employment, housing, and other impediments to the full participation of Jews in Canadian life.

It also monitored and fought, after much prodding by Holocaust survivors, the resurgence of neo-Nazism in the mid-1960s, and it later applied pressure on the Canadian government to prosecute war criminals living in the country.

At the time, as historian Gerald Tulchinsky has remarked, it “effectively embraced Jewish organizations of nearly all political and social stripes in the country and was recognized as the voice of the entire community.”

By the 1960s, though, Jewish federations were becoming established in the major Jewish centres; they not only provided services and raised funds for domestic and Israel programs, but also assumed direction for community planning.

They solidified their position in the 1970s, as all funding decisions regarding community money came under their control – including the operating budget of Congress.

The federations became the crucial link between Canadian Jews and their governments on matters relating to their communities.

Since Congress had always viewed itself as the focus for community policy-making, its dominant role began to diminish.

So by the turn of the 21st century, the Canadian Jewish Congress was definitely no longer “the only game in town.”

It co-existed, sometimes uneasily, with a number of municipal Federations and other Jewish organizations.

The Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), founded in 2004, became the principal advocacy, oversight and co-coordinating body for the Congress, the Canada-Israel Committee, the Quebec-Israel Committee, National Jewish Campus Life, and the University Outreach Committee.

This year the CIJA has formally incorporated these groups, including Congress, to create one advocacy organization.

The new, as yet unnamed, agency “will continue the work of all the agencies that it is succeeding or that are being folded into it, including the whole range of traditional Congress activities,” Shimon Fogel, the CEO of the CIJA, has stated.

Fogel said the Canadian Jewish Congress leaders were involved in the process.

“This isn’t a hostile takeover.”

Maybe not, but the Congress, despite its glorious past, still faces an uncertain future.

The American South Today

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish-Tribune

Escaping a particularly cold Prince Edward Island  spring, we flew to Tampa, rented a car, and spent two weeks driving along the Gulf of Mexico coast, through the Florida panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, until we reached New Orleans.

This whole region is part of the American deep South, where 50 years ago, segregation was still the norm, the racist Ku Klux Klan was a power to be reckoned with, and civil rights workers were beaten and even murdered.

On the surface, little of this horrid period of history remains visible. On the highways and in the towns, one sees the same fast food chains, Walmarts and supermarkets as elsewhere in the United States. Blacks and whites now eat and work together.

In Biloxi, Miss., we visited Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.

In 1861, 11 of the states where African-Americans were enslaved seceded from the Union. Most American Jews abhorred slavery, though some did serve in the Confederate ranks.

Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana was appointed Secretary of State of the Confederacy by Davis in 1862.

The southern states were only defeated following one of the most terrible civil wars in history, one that cost 625,000 lives. Finally, in 1865, the Confederacy ceased to exist and slavery was abolished.

But for the next century, the so-called Jim Crow laws kept Blacks segregated in schools, workplaces and neighbourhoods. Few could even vote, much less run for political office.

All that changed after the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King in the 1960s.

A significant number of those trying to bring the South into the 20th century were idealistic young Jews. About 50 per cent of the civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, as were more than half of the whites who went to Mississippi in 1964 to challenge the Jim Crow Laws.

Two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, along with one African American, James Chaney, were murdered there by the Ku Klux Klan as a result of their participation.

In the South today, Blacks serve as sheriffs, mayors, state legislators and congressional representatives.

In Biloxi, more people are interested in the casinos that have turned the city into a southern Las Vegas than in the so-called ‘Lost Cause,’ the Confederacy of Jefferson Davis.  

The South does retain a distinctive culture, however. Most of the stations we found on the car radio were devoted either to country music or evangelical religion. 

Last year, Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, had to apologize when he suggested during an interview that the White Citizens’ Councils active in his state during the era of desegregation weren’t “that bad.” 

And in 2002 Trent Lott, a US Senator from the state, was forced to step down as the leader of the Republican Party in that body when he remarked that Strom Thurmond, the arch-segregationist senator from South Carolina, should have won the 1948 presidential election. Thurmond ran as a ‘Dixiecrat’ opposing integration.

“When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him,” said Lott. “We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years either.”

Despite such backsliding, the American South, more than at any time since the Civil War, has itself been integrated into the wider political culture of the country.