The Process of Decolonization in Goa and East Timor

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneeer

During the age of European imperial expansion which began at the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese and Spanish kingdoms were first off the mark.

 

While the Spanish headed west, with Columbus landing in the Americas, the Portuguese, attracted by the wealth of the fabled east, sailed around the continent of Africa and into the Indian Ocean, to south and south-east Asia.

 

In 1498, Vasco de Gama reached India, and 12 years later Portugal acquired Goa, on India’s west coast. They also managed to conquer areas of what is now Indonesia, including Timor, where Portuguese merchants arrived in 1515. Macao, at the mouth of the Pearl (Zhu Jiang) River, in southern China, became a Portuguese trading post in 1557.

 

However, while they would lose most of their empire to stronger European powers such as Great Britain and the Netherlands, the Portuguese managed to retain little remnants, including Goa, Macao, and the eastern end of the island of Timor. (The Dutch had made the western part of Timor part of their Dutch East Indies empire.)

 

While British India gained its freedom in 1947 and Dutch-ruled Indonesia its independence in 1949, the Portuguese hung on to their small possessions.

 

By the mid-1950s, though, decolonization was in full swing in Africa and Asia, and these little colonies stuck out like sore thumbs. The Bandung Conference, a meeting of 25 recently independent Asian and African states that took place in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955, had called for an end to colonialism, and Indonesia’s President Sukarno became one of the leaders of the nonaligned movement of newly sovereign countries.

 

However, in both Goa and East Timor, centuries of Portuguese rule had made the native populations almost entirely Portuguese-speaking Roman Catholics, and Lisbon stubbornly refused to give them up. Portugal itself remained a backward semi-fascist state.

 

Losing patience, India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, sent the Indian army into Goa (and Portugal’s two other Indian dependencies of Diu and Daman) in 1961 and expelled the Portuguese. No one took much notice or protested. In India, the action was seen as the liberation of historically Indian territory. (When Macao was returned to China in 1999, the same argument was made.)

 

Relations between India and Portugal only thawed in 1974, when, following a revolution that led to the end of authoritarianism in Lisbon, Goa was finally recognised as part of India. In 1987 Goa became a separate state in the Indian federation, which it remains to this day.

 

Although Goa was predominantly Catholic during the long centuries of Portuguese rule, many left after 1961, and today Goan Catholics form only 30 per cent of the state’s total population (the majority are now Hindu).

 

The 1974 Portuguese revolution also saw the final end to its empire, as the new democratic government in Lisbon granted its African colonies independence. In East Timor, however, things turned out differently. It had also declared its independence, in 1975, but was invaded by Indonesia and declared Indonesia’s 27th province the following year.

 

The regime in Jakarta claimed the same rights to East Timor as India had done with Goa – it was a matter of decolonization. Based on the premise that the Portuguese half of Timor, an island geographically situated in the center of the vast archipelago, was really part of its territory, Indonesia contended that the division of the island into two had been simply the legacy of European imperialism and therefore should be rectified.

 

The Indonesians considered it another stage in the emancipation of their country, which had begun with the war of national liberation against the Dutch. No doubt Indonesia thought the same political reconciliation that had taken place with India would also occur following the annexation of East Timor. But things did not work out that way.

 

The United Nations never recognised the annexation, nor did Portugal. And the East Timorese, who were 97 per cent Catholic, never reconciled themselves to being part of the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Their long and bloody subjugation under Indonesian rule resulted in some 200,000 deaths from famine and violence during the occupation.

 

International pressure mounted on Indonesia to allow self-determination for the province. Wishing to avoid the impression that Indonesia ruled East Timor as a colony, Indonesian president B.J. Habibie agreed to a vote, offering a choice between special autonomy and independence.

 

The 1999 UN-sponsored referendum found 78.5 per cent of East Timorese opting for independence. Further Indonesian-sponsored violence ensued, resulting in the arrival of an Australian-organized peacekeeping force. Finally, in 2002, East Timor (Timor-Leste) became an independent country and a member of the United Nations. 

 

The world had changed since the era that produced the Bandung Conference. In 1961, the ideologies that legitimized the acquisition of territory by force, if necessary, on the basis of decolonization and anti-imperialism had allowed India to incorporate Goa. But four decades later, these had been trumped by the concept of the right of a people to self-determination.

 

The Anomalous Political Status of Puerto Rico

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Captured in the Spanish-American War of 1898, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico has been an American possession ever since.

Spain possessed Puerto Rico for over 400 years, despite attempts at capture of the island by the French, Dutch, and British. Given the long history of Spanish rule, while Spanish and English are both official languages, Spanish is the island’s primary language.

In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted American citizenship and since 1948 have elected their own governor. In 1952 a constitution was adopted and ratified by the electorate, turning the unincorporated territory into the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, with its own democratically elected legislative and executive branches and its own Supreme Court.

Puerto Ricans are American citizens and can come and go to the mainland as they please; they also need no permits to work. It is estimated that some two million Puerto Ricans have migrated to the United States, and there are more Puerto Ricans living in New York than in the capital, San Juan.

However, the 3.6 million residents of Puerto Rico pay no federal income tax, nor can they vote in American presidential elections. And the United States Congress still legislates over many aspects of Puerto Rican life, including the currency, the postal service, foreign affairs, military defence, communications, and commerce.

This anomalous situation has made the political future of the island a constant preoccupation. In 1950, Puerto Rican nationalists led a three-day revolt against U.S. domination, known as the Jayuya Uprising, in various cities and towns on the island, decrying the island’s colonial status. Two Puerto Rican nationalists attempted to assassinate President Harry Truman in Washington. But since the island achieved Commonwealth status as an autonomous polity, there has been little violence.

Still, politics continue to revolve around the question of Puerto Rico’s future and its three major political parties have been formed around the preferences of statehood, independence and the current commonwealth status. The Partido Popular Democratico (PPD) seeks to maintain or improve the current status, the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) wants to fully incorporate Puerto Rico as a U.S. state, and the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (PIP) calls for national independence.

Since 1998, Puerto Ricans have cast their ballots in three plebiscites regarding their relationship with the U.S., the most recent held in November of last year. Voters were asked first whether they agreed that Puerto Rico should continue to have its present form of territorial status. Regardless of how voters answered that question, they were asked secondly, to express their preference among three non-territorial alternatives: statehood, complete independence, or a form of sovereign nationhood in a “compact of free association” with the U.S. The Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau in the Pacific have such arrangements with Washington.

On the second ballot question, of the 1.3 million voters who made a choice, nearly 800,000 supported statehood, some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose complete independence. But nearly 500,000 left that question blank, as the pro-Commonwealth PPD instructed its supporters not to answer it at all, since the Commonwealth option wasn’t listed. Puerto Rico’s Governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla, a member of the PPD, also supports the current Commonwealth status.

However, the PNP organized pro-statehood marches in both Puerto Rico and on the U.S. mainland on March 2, demanding that the American government honor the results of the referendum. On May 15, the island’s non-voting Congressman, Pedro Pierluisi of the PNP, introduced the Puerto Rico Status Resolution Act in the House of Representatives, which if passed would ask Puerto Rican voters if they want Puerto Rico to be admitted as the 51st state of the Union.

Regardless of whether Pierluisi’s bill becomes law, yet another plebiscite may be in the island’s future. The budget President Barack Obama sent to Congress in April includes $2.5 million for a status plebiscite in Puerto Rico in 2014.

Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is in financial trouble. It has about $87 billion of debt, counting pensions, or $23,000 for every person on the island. Governor Padilla, has frozen the biggest of the island’s public pension funds, raised utility rates sharply, imposed new taxes and stepped up enforcement of existing taxes. The territory will postpone most long-term borrowing for the rest of 2013.

Should Puerto Ricans opt for statehood, would they even be admitted? Congress has ultimate authority over the admission of new states and is under no obligation to admit states even in those areas whose population expresses a desire for statehood. The Republican Party might not like the idea of millions more Hispanics, who would probably vote Democratic, added to the electorate. It therefore remains an unlikely prospect.

Sri Lanka, the Commonwealth and Harper

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The 54-nation Commonwealth is an organization that professes to be committed to common values, such as democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, as expressed in the Singapore Declaration of 1971. The Harare Declaration of 1991 reaffirmed the principles laid out in Singapore and they were most recently reinforced in the Commonwealth Charter adopted earlier this year.

South Africa was prevented from continuing as a member after it became a republic in 1961, due to its policy of apartheid; it was readmitted in 1994. Nigeria, Pakistan, Fiji and Zimbabwe have in the past at times been suspended, following military coups or fraudulent elections. Zimbabwe quit the organization altogether.

Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma says the oreganization imparts its values of good governance and democracy around the world. Yet the Commonwealth is holding its annual Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka next month – a country in which some 80,000 people, mainly civilians, have been killed during a 25-year civil war and one whose government continues to engage in human rights violations, including murder and rape. Human Rights Watch has noted that the Commonwealth Secretariat has refused to discuss the human rights situation.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has, correctly, announced he will not attend, due to ongoing human rights abuses by the host Sri Lankan government. The prime minister cited everything from the impeachment of a chief justice to allegations of extra-judicial killings and disappearances, and the jailing of political opponents and journalists.

Harper said it was unacceptable that Sri Lanka had yet to investigate allegations of atrocities during and after the civil war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which ended in May 2009. In April 2011, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon published a report by a UN-appointed panel of experts, which concluded that as many as 40,000 people were killed in the final weeks of the military campaign.

This past March the UN Human Rights Council voted urged the Sri Lankan government to investigate “alleged violations of human rights.” More recently, Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner on human rights, criticised the Sri Lankan government's failure to investigate allegations of war crimes against military officers and government officials. Sri Lanka has denied allegations its troops committed major crimes.

Sri Lanka’s Tamils, who make up about 15 per cent of the population of 21 million and are mainly Hindu, have long been subjected to by the majority Buddhist Sinhalese. They seek, if not a fully sovereign state in the country’s north, where they form a majority, some form of federalism enabling them to have some semblance of self-government in the region and power-sharing at the national level.

Pillay was “particularly alarmed at the recent surge in incitement of hatred and violence against religious minorities, including attacks on churches and mosques, and the lack of swift action against the perpetrators.”

Four years after the end of the Tamil insurgency, great sections of the north remain a scene of devastation. The Sri Lankan army continues to occupy thousands of homes, farms, factories and resorts for which the government has paid little or no compensation.

However, the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who led the war against the Tigers, declared that interference in the internal affairs of the country in the guise of protecting human rights was “disturbing.” He has complained that Sri Lanka was being persecuted by the international community, and has used that as a pretext to obstruct even more thoroughly the work of journalists, lawyers and activists.

Sri Lanka also maintains that Canada’s critiques are motivated by domestic concerns, given that some 300,000 Tamils live in the country, mainly in the Toronto region – the largest Tamil population outside South Asia. Tamil Canadian candidates have participated in the political process representing various parties at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.

Rajapaksa’s government has also become increasingly authoritarian. Following the 2010 presidential election, Rajapaksa even ordered his main opponent, Sarath Fonseka, a former commander of the army, arrested. Fonseka was found guilty of corrupt military supply deals and sentenced to three years in prison.

Given the undeniable evidence of human rights violations by the Colombo government, Prime Minister has made the right call in deciding to stay home.

 

The Dual Cultural Societies of Trinidad and Tobago

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The southernmost of the Caribbean islands, situated just off the coast of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago were first colonized by the Spanish, then came under British control in the early 19th century.

The islands' sugar industry was hurt by the emancipation of the Afro-Trinidadian slaves in 1834, but they were replaced by indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1917.

This legacy remains evident today. The country's population of 1,225,000 consists of Indo-Trinidadians, who constitute 40 per cent; Afro-Trinidadians, another 40 per cent; mixed 18.4 per cent; white 0.6 per cent; and Chinese and other minority groups 1.2 per cent.

Though all these people share a small island, a common language, schools, and even food and clothes, their identity as Trinidadians exists alongside their separate political and cultural spheres.

Many Indians, in particular, feel they have been forced to submerge their culture and conform to the country's Black culture.

The plural nature of the society gave rise to political parties sharply divided along ethnic lines, as politicians began playing the "race card." Even before independence in 1962, two major parties had emerged six years earlier, as the two dominant ethnic groups began to battle for political primacy.

The People's National Movement (PNM), led by Dr. Eric Williams, represented the Afro-Trinidadians, and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) under the leadership of Bhadase Sagan Maraj, was the vehicle for the Indo-Trinidadians.

The Democratic Labour Party (DLP) replaced the PDP in 1957 and it evolved into the United Labour Front (ULF) in 1976, and later into the United National Congress (UNC) in 1989, both led by Basdeo Panday. For the most part, its fate would be that of the official opposition. Under the rule of the PNM, the political identity and international face of the country was an Afro-Caribbean one, with South Asian culture minimized.

This is now changing. In May 2010, the People's Partnership party, led by Kamla Persad-Bissessar, an Indo-Trinidadian, achieved a landslide victory against the incumbent PNM government of Prime Minister Patrick Manning. The new grouping won 29 of the 41 seats in the House of Representatives, reducing the PNM to 12. It even captured the two seats on the island of Tobago, whose 60,000 people are mostly of African origin. However, in the 2013 election to the Tobago House of Assembly, the local government body responsible for the small island, the PNM won all 12 of its seats.

The People's Partnership was formed after a Unity Accord was struck prior to the election between several groups, including the Opposition UNC; the Congress of the People (COP); the Tobago Organization of the People (TOP); the Movement for Social Justice (MSJ); and the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).

Many of these groups, including the COP and the MSJ, representing labour, had felt alienated from the governing process under the PNM.

The rise to power of the island's first female prime minister has had a transformative effect. For decades, politics were dominated by men, and Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who became leader of the opposition in 2006, had at times been fighting for her political life.

Despite its goal of people-centered growth and development, the People's Partnership faces numerous challenges. The country's ethnic and class cleavages result in competing interest groups and divergent demands.

During the election campaign, Manning had sought to stir up intercommunal divisions by suggesting that Persad-Bissessar would seek to harm the interests of Afro-Trinidadians should she be elected.

On the other hand, Persad-Bissessar claimed that while the previous government "did not pay much attention to the Hindu population," her government would. Her new attorney general, Anand Ramlogan, concurred. "People think of Trinidad as a predominantly African country. We want to rectify this misperception." Previously there was "discrimination manifest in subtle ways," he stated, "one of which was the allocation of state funding."

The government has instituted a new multicultural policy, which came about, according to Winston Peters, the Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism, because the new government recognized that "a large portion of the citizenry feels itself alienated from sharing in the development of the nation."

The policy seeks to foster "a climate of inclusion, equitable distribution of resources and recognition and celebration of cultural diversity."

This emphasis on Indo-Trinidadian culture will rectify the previous lack of attention given to Indo-Trinidadians by governments dominated by Afro-Trinidadians. But in the end, for the country to thrive, it will need to find a middle ground between the needs of its citizens of African and Indian origin.

 

The Case for Animal Rights, Changing Attitudes

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

At a recent conference at the University of Prince Edward Island, I was on a panel dealing with the issue of animal rights. One of the speakers was Lesli Bisgould, an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto law school who specializes in animal rights law and is the author of "Animals and the Law," published in 2011.

Animal rights, she said, encompasses "the idea that animals should not be regarded as things that we can own and use for our own purposes, for pleasure or profit." Its very premise is "that animals have the right to their own lives."

Currently in Canada, the law regards animals as property, objects that can be disposed of as long as reasonable care is taken to minimize their suffering. While the criminal code forbids "unnecessary" pain or injury to them, the corollary, Bisgould emphasized, is that "necessary" pain is permissible if it’s for a human purpose.

Today, the use of animals is ubiquitous, for food, entertainment, and scientific experiments. Animal-using industries have aggressively lobbied governments against changes in legislation regarding cruelty to animals and the Conservative Party has consistently opposed any reforms.

Though sentient animals are "profoundly similar to humans in the most profound ways" - they think, feel, communicate, and have their own interests - they cannot go to court to assert their interests. "And what rights does an animal have if not the right to live," she asked.

Bisgould remains optimistic that science and ethics are putting pressure on our legal system to take this into account and that, "as ideas change, so will the laws."

The Australian philosopher Peter Singer, a professor at Princeton University, in his landmark 1975 book "Animal Liberation," has also argued that, although there may be differences between animals and humans, they are sentient creatures that share the capacity to suffer, and we must give equal consideration to that suffering; any other position fails to qualify as an acceptable moral theory.

Tom Regan, professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, in his 1985 philosophical treatise "The Case for Animal Rights," has maintained that any being with a complex mental life, including perception, desire, belief, memory, intention, and a sense of the future is what he calls a subject of a life, and therefore that life has inherent value.

After all, even among humans, the concept of equality is not that of an actual equality of attributes. The inclusion of animals is therefore necessary, and treating animals respectfully is not simply a matter of kindness or sentimental interest, but of justice.

David DeGrazia, a professor of moral philosophy at George Washington University, is the author of the 1996 book "Taking Animals Seriously." Some people have argued that we should not be cruel to animals because such cruelty is likely to spill over into brutish treatment of our fellow humans, he has noted. Others have claimed that the only thing wrong with such cruelty is that it upsets the sensibilities of animal lovers. But such human-centered accounts miss the most obvious reason cruelty is wrong: the great harm it causes to its victims for no compelling reason.

Much animal use causes them extensive suffering, either for frivolous purposes -- amusement or vanity, or for more substantial purposes -- nutrition or warmth -- even when non-animal alternatives are readily available.

Hence, factory farming or making use of fur-bearing animals, for example, cause extensive, unnecessary harm to which its victims have not consented. Since causing such harm is surely wrong if anything is wrong, the conclusion that these are unjustified uses of animals seems inescapable.

More and more people are coming around to this way of thinking. It gives us hope that attitudes towards our fellow non-human creatures are undergoing a transformation.

Chechen Nationalism Remains a Force in the Caucasus

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Journal Pioneer

The Boston Marathon bombings this past April, carried out by two men of Chechen descent, reminded us of the continuing tension in the Russian Federation’s Chechen Republic.

The most restive of the numerous peoples living in the Caucasus, the Chechens have chafed under Russian domination for 150 years.

In the recent past, they have fought two bloody wars, in 1994-1996 and 1999-2000, for independence; the conflict left at least one hundred thousand dead and the capital, Grozny, a wasteland. Most ethnic Russians living in Chechnya at the time fled.

Following prolonged resistance during the 19^th century, the Russians in 1859 finally overcame the forces of Chechen leader Imam Shamil, who had created the first state structures that Chechens had ever known, and they claimed the Caucasus region for the tsarist empire. The Chechens were incorporated into the new Soviet Union following the collapse of the empire after the First World War.

More than a half million Chechens were deported to Siberia in 1944, on the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, officially as punishment for collaboration with the invading German forces in the Caucasus during the Second World War, and their autonomous republic was abolished. Only after Stalin’s death were they given permission to return to their homeland; their republic was also restored, in 1957.

In 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the Chechens again saw a chance to gain their freedom. Although they lost the two wars, a new constitution granted Chechnya in 2003 did give the republic more autonomy within the Russian Federation.

Since then, Chechnya has been governed by Russian-approved puppets. The current head of the republic is a onetime Chechen rebel, Ramzan Kadyrov, son of a former Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in 2004.

By 2009, Moscow announced that the situation in Chechnya had improved to such extent that it felt able to end its military operation against the rebels. Sporadic attacks by separatists continue, though.

Since the events of September 11, 2001, Russia has exaggerated the role of international Islamists in Chechnya and tried to link the repression in Chechnya to the broader context of fighting international terrorism.

Vladimir Putin has tended to highlight the role of Islamic fundamentalism in the Chechen insurgency. There are Chechen Islamists fighting alongside the rebels in Syria, and part of the reason Putin supports the Assad regime is the fear that they might get their hands on a chemical-weapons site should the Syrian government lose the war.

But actually, in Chechnya Sufi Islam, the more mystical branch of Islam, has always been practised, and Wahabis, who might be connected to terrorist groups, have in the past been fringe elements.

Still, foreign radicals did arrive in Chechnya in the 1990s to help in what they believed was a religious struggle. Once these foreign fundamentalists, with their money, war tactics, and outside connections, became more established, calls for the establishment of an Islamic Caucasian Emirate became louder.

By 1999, then Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov was forced to introduce Islamic law and had lost control over the radical forces led by Shamil Basayev – in fact he joined them. The incursion into neighbouring Dagestan, which triggered the second war in Chechnya, had the declared aim of establishing an Islamic state in the North Caucasus, much like the one Imam Shamil himself had tried to create.

Things are quieter today, but who knows for how long? Shamil’s image is publicly displayed in Chechnya today, with a memorial complex built in his capital, Vedeno, in southeastern Chechnya. After all, the most important aspect of Shamil’s legacy for Chechen identity is their tradition of "continued resistance." 

For Many Republicans, Distrust of the Federal Government is Paramount

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

For many Republican members of the United States House of Representatives, with their Tea Party ideology, the constitution they would prefer would resemble the Articles of Confederation, ratified by the original 13 states by 1781.

Under that initial governmental pact, the states were primary, as they are for most Republican House members today. The United States was not defined by the Articles as a country or nation but rather a loose union of states, each of which retained its sovereignty and independence. The Continental Congress, made up of one representative appointed by each state, had very little power.

It lacked the power to lay or collect taxes, found that requisitions asked of the states were almost always ignored, and could not even impose uniform tariff policies throughout the nation. Most significantly, the central government lacked the instruments with which to effectively confront economic crises that were national in scope, such as the post-war conflict between debtors and creditors. Leaders of states like Rhode Island routinely refused to honor their debts. In the words of George Washington, who would become the first president of the new federal United States in 1789, the 13 states were united only “by a rope of sand.”

To put an end to this chaos, in 1787 the Continental Congress issued a call for the states to send delegates to Philadelphia to revise the Articles. But they proceeded to construct a charter for a new, more centralized form of government. The new document was completed in 1787, and was officially adopted two years later. 

If the Republicans today were given the choice between the Articles and the present-day United States Constitution, many might well chose the former. This might be particularly the case with southern members, who represent Congressional districts in states that tried to leave the federal Union in 1861, and who still smart over the federal government’s imposition of civil rights legislation ending segregation in the 1960s.

Actually, the Articles still live on in a sense, since the states determine federal voting procedures, have their own armies (the National Guard), and their own legal systems – which, for example, allows some to abolish the death penalty, others to retain it.

Today’s Republicans distrust the federal government since they identify it with progressive legislation. They prefer a country run in the interest of the “one percent,” with very little emphasis on cultural diversity or on correcting the legacy of slavery and segregation, with few new refugees and immigrants, and a gerrymandered House of Representatives which allows them to control the lower house of Congress.

They also are engaged in vote suppression, by demanding stringent forms of identification and by limiting voting days and hours, to make it harder for people – especially the poor and minorities – to exercise the franchise. (Of course in the 18^th century only rich white men could vote.) And they have shut the federal government down to achieve that kind of country.

 

 

Somalia, Kenya and al-Shabaab: More Than Meets the Eye

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya Sept. 21-24, which resulted in at least 67 deaths, many people have wondered who the perpetrators, known as al-Shabaab, are, and why they carried out such a murderous assault.

While the Somali group has been active for less than a decade, the antagonistic relationship between Somalis and Kenyans dates back to the pre-1960s colonial days.

In the colonial era, the territories inhabited by the Somali people were divided between Britain, France, Italy, and Ethiopia. But only the old British and Italian Somaliland colonies were united as one nation, in 1960.

Upon independence, therefore, the new Somalia laid claims to all of the remaining areas inhabited by Somalis, based on the irredentist idea that all Somalis should be united in one country. In 1977, Somalia fought a war with Ethiopia to try to gain the Ogaden, an area populated by Somalis, but lost.

As for Kenya, which itself gained its independence from Britain, in 1964, its Northern Frontier District, now the North Eastern Province, was handed over to Kenyan nationalists at the end of British colonial rule despite the fact that it is inhabited almost entirely by Somalis.

The Somalis in the region fought a war against Kenyan troops between 1963 and 1967 to join their kin in the Somali Republic to the north. Although the war ended into a cease-fire, the Somalis there still identify and maintain close ties with their kin in Somalia, and see themselves as one people. They number more than two million people, out of Kenya’s total population of 44 million.

The two countries continued to have a troubled relationship. Kenyan forces were engaged in two massacres of ethnic Somalis in the province in 1980 and 1984.

But Somalia itself has been without an effective government since 1991, when the last dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the country. It has been governed, or more accurately misgoverned, by a collection of clan-based “warlords,” who have looted and murdered their way through the country ever since.

As a reaction to this Hobbesian lawlessness, a system of Islamic courts became the main governmental body in much of the country. United into the Islamic Courts Union by 2006, they were eliminated by other Somalis, backed by the Ethiopian military, in a brutal war. But a militant offshoot morphed into the al-Qaeda affiliated Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Youth Movement), or al-Shabaab.

Ethiopia and Kenya, neither of them Muslim-majority states, have periodically crossed into Somalia ever since then to battle the terrorists. In 2011 their troops entered Somalia in a coordinated attack, known as Operation Linda Nchi, against the al-Shabaab insurgents in southern Somalia.

As well, in November of last year, Kenyan forces launched a military attack on the Garissa district of their own North Eastern Province, inciting violence, raping women and shooting at students; a mass exodus of Somali residents followed.

In return, al-Shabaab has carried out attacks on Ethiopian and Kenyan troops in Somalia, but also against those countries on their owl soil as well. We learned the full extent of their retaliation when they wreaked havoc in Nairobi.