Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Some 25 million ethnic Russians were left adrift when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and was replaced by 15 different nations. They now found themselves living as minorities in newly-independent countries.
Included in this huge Russian diaspora are some 8.5 million people in Ukraine, about 17 per cent of the total population of 44 million. And in one region of the country, the Crimea, Russians make up 60 per cent of the population of two million. (The rest are Ukrainians, at 25 per cent, and Tatars, at 12 per cent.)
The Crimean peninsula, which juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres. Virtually an island, it has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great in 1783, wrested from its Crimean Tatar inhabitants. It has been used as a beachhead from which to attack Russia, as was the case during the Crimean War of 1853-1856, when Britain and France went to war to protect the Ottoman Empire against Russian attempts at expansion.
It was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. During his last years in power, the paranoid Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin even believed that the United States planned to invade the Soviet Union through the Crimea.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
It didn’t much matter back then, as the Soviet Union was, despite its formal ethno-federalism, really run from the Kremlin by the Communist Party. But it does matter now, since the Russian-majority population of the peninsula is cut off from Russia itself.
Today the Crimea is an autonomous republic within Ukraine, with its own constitution and 100-member parliament, which appoints the prime minister, currently Anatoliy Mohyliov. Politics continues to be dominated by the Russian majority. In the 2010 Crimean election, the pro-Russian Party of Regions won 80 seats.
The Crimea is also represented by 12 out of 225 single-member constituency seats in the Ukrainian parliament (the other 225 are elected by proportional representation). In the 2012 Ukrainian national election, the Party of Regions won all but one Crimean seat. Although Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, in the Crimean republic more than 77 per cent speak Russian, and government business in the capital of Simferopol is carried on mainly in Russian.
In 2009, anti-Ukrainian demonstrations were held by ethnic Russian residents, and the then deputy speaker of the Russian-dominated Crimean parliament said that he hoped that Russia would come to the aid of the Crimea in the same way as it had when it had helped the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia fend off the Georgian army a year earlier.
A year earlier, Ukraine’s foreign minister had accused Russia of giving out Russian passports to the population in the Crimea and described it as a “real problem.”
The Russian Black Sea fleet still uses the Crimean port of Sevastopol as its home base; the lease runs through 2042. Sevastopol, which is now home to a Ukrainian naval base as well, has an even higher proportion of ethnic Russians than the rest of the republic.
While Moscow does not publicly back Crimean separatists, it has declared that the rights of ethnic Russians in the Crimea must not be violated. The Crimea is now the setting for a political tug of war between Russians, Ukrainians, and even the small Tatar minority.
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Half-Century Elapsed Since JFK's Assassination
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
For those of us old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, it’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since then.
But we can appreciate how far back that was if we go back to 1963 and see what the world looked like a half-century earlier.
In 1913, monarchs sat on the thrones of most European countries. Wilhelm II was the Emperor of Germany, Victor Emmanuel III was king of Italy, and Nicholas II was tsar of “all the Russias.” A Habsburg, Franz Joseph I, governed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Sultan Mehmed V ruled the Ottoman Empire.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and the three Baltic states did not yet exist as sovereign entities. And of course almost all of Africa, and much of Asia, including India, were colonies of European powers.
Trouble was brewing in the Balkans, and two wars, in 1912 and 1913, among Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, would help ignite the Great War that would begin a year later.
By the end of the First World War, the German Hohenzollerns, Austrian Habsburgs, Russian Romanovs, and the Ottoman Turkish dynasty would be no more. Austria-Hungary itself ceased to exist, divided into a number of successor states, and a Turkish republic replaced the Ottoman rulers, while Turkey’s Middle Eastern provinces were divided between Britain and France.
Women in most countries were still unable to vote in 1913. In Britain, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union was sentenced to three years in jail in response to the organization’s campaign to destroy public and private property. In the United States, a Woman Suffrage Parade marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that March.
It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract and famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman died.
It was only a half-century after the decisive 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, and a gathering of 53,407 veterans of both the Confederate and Union armies commemorated the event.
The start of the Second World War was still 26 years away. Very few people had yet heard of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin. And John Kennedy himself had not yet been born.
For those of us old enough to remember the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, it’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed since then.
But we can appreciate how far back that was if we go back to 1963 and see what the world looked like a half-century earlier.
In 1913, monarchs sat on the thrones of most European countries. Wilhelm II was the Emperor of Germany, Victor Emmanuel III was king of Italy, and Nicholas II was tsar of “all the Russias.” A Habsburg, Franz Joseph I, governed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Sultan Mehmed V ruled the Ottoman Empire.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Finland, Ireland, Poland, and the three Baltic states did not yet exist as sovereign entities. And of course almost all of Africa, and much of Asia, including India, were colonies of European powers.
Trouble was brewing in the Balkans, and two wars, in 1912 and 1913, among Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and the Ottoman Empire, would help ignite the Great War that would begin a year later.
By the end of the First World War, the German Hohenzollerns, Austrian Habsburgs, Russian Romanovs, and the Ottoman Turkish dynasty would be no more. Austria-Hungary itself ceased to exist, divided into a number of successor states, and a Turkish republic replaced the Ottoman rulers, while Turkey’s Middle Eastern provinces were divided between Britain and France.
Women in most countries were still unable to vote in 1913. In Britain, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst of the Women’s Social and Political Union was sentenced to three years in jail in response to the organization’s campaign to destroy public and private property. In the United States, a Woman Suffrage Parade marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington that March.
It was the year Charlie Chaplin signed his first movie contract and famed abolitionist Harriet Tubman died.
It was only a half-century after the decisive 1863 Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, and a gathering of 53,407 veterans of both the Confederate and Union armies commemorated the event.
The start of the Second World War was still 26 years away. Very few people had yet heard of Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Benito Mussolini, or Joseph Stalin. And John Kennedy himself had not yet been born.
Monday, November 18, 2013
The Southeast Asian Sultanate of Brunei Strengthens its Muslim Identity
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, announced the promulgation of a new Islamic criminal law that could include penalties like amputation for theft and stoning for adultery, to come into effect next year.
The Shariah penal code, which would be applied to Muslims only, should be regarded as a form of “special guidance” from God, he stated, and would be “part of the great history” of the country. Brunei’s Shariah Islamic court had previously handled mainly family-related disputes.
Brunei was once much bigger. It became an Islamic sultanate in the 14th century, under a newly converted ruler, Muhammad Shah. At its peak in the 16th century, it controlled the northern regions of Borneo, including modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, today part of Malaysia, as well as the Sulu islands, now governed by the Philippines.
During the 19th century, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to a British adventurer, James Brooke, as a reward for his aid in putting down a rebellion and named him as rajah; and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888 what was left of Brunei itself became a British protectorate.
It’s not often that the small country of Brunei makes the
news, but it did in October.
Brunei’s ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, announced the promulgation of a new Islamic criminal law that could include penalties like amputation for theft and stoning for adultery, to come into effect next year.
The Shariah penal code, which would be applied to Muslims only, should be regarded as a form of “special guidance” from God, he stated, and would be “part of the great history” of the country. Brunei’s Shariah Islamic court had previously handled mainly family-related disputes.
Brunei Darussalam (its full name)
consists of two small enclaves of land on the northeastern coast of the
southeast Asian island of Borneo, surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak.
Most of the huge island is part of Indonesia.
With a population of some 420,000 people, mostly Muslims, in
an area of 5,765 square kilometres, Brunei is a tiny country. An oil-rich state,
the sultanate is sometimes referred to as the Kuwait of southeast Asia.
Brunei was once much bigger. It became an Islamic sultanate in the 14th century, under a newly converted ruler, Muhammad Shah. At its peak in the 16th century, it controlled the northern regions of Borneo, including modern-day Sarawak and Sabah, today part of Malaysia, as well as the Sulu islands, now governed by the Philippines.
During the 19th century, the Sultanate ceded Sarawak to a British adventurer, James Brooke, as a reward for his aid in putting down a rebellion and named him as rajah; and it ceded Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1888 what was left of Brunei itself became a British protectorate.
Brunei regained its independence in 1984 and, thanks to
extensive petroleum and natural gas fields, is now one of the world’s richest
countries. It is the world’s fourth-biggest producer of natural gas, giving the
country enough wealth to buy the loyalty of its subjects. There is no income tax,
and education and health are virtually free.
Brunei’s ties with Britain remain strong. The current ruler,
Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, went to
the Royal British Military Academy at Sandhurst and his late father was rescued
by the British Army when it crushed a brief revolt in 1962.
Under Brunei’s 1959 constitution, the country is an absolute
monarchy. The Sultan, who
succeeded to the throne in 1967, is both head of state and, in his capacity as
prime minister, head of government, with full executive authority, including
emergency powers since 1962.
The Sultan’s role is enshrined in the national philosophy
known as Melayu Islam Beraja,
which encompasses Malay culture, Islamic religion, and the political framework
under the monarchy. As an Islamic country, Brunei became a full member of the
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in 1984.
Southeast Asia’s Islam, unlike that of the Middle East, has
historically been more relaxed when it came to practice but has become more
stringent. Since the late 1970s an Islamic resurgence is taking place in the
region.
Rising oil revenues provide an extensive social welfare
system and promote Islam, including subsidizing the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca),
building mosques, and expanding the Department of Religious Affairs.
Brunei’s Muslim-majority neighbours have also been
tightening their religious rules. In Indonesia, a bill submitted to parliament
earlier this year that called for a ban on alcohol has stirred unease among the
country’s predominantly moderate Muslims. Also, the government has ordered that
the finals of the Miss World pageant, which some Islamic groups denounced as
immoral, be moved from the outskirts of Jakarta to predominantly Hindu Bali.
In Malaysia, former prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi furthered the agenda of Islamic supremacy at
the expense of other religions. The country has restricted the ability of
Christian groups to proselytize among Malays, and recently a Malaysian court
has ruled that non-Muslims cannot use the word Allah to refer to God, even in
their own faiths.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Crimean Tatars a Beleaguered Minority
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
A peninsula that juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, the Crimea, which covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres, is virtually an island, and has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people, had founded an independent state there in the Middle Ages, allied with the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.
However, their state weakened as the Ottomans lost ground to an expansionist Russian Empire. When Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea in 1783, the Tatars comprised 98 per cent of the population, but many Crimean Tatars were massacred or exiled. Their numbers continued to dwindle, due to Russian settlement.
They fared little better in the new Soviet Union in the 20th century. The Crimea was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. The Tatars were all expelled in 1944, having been accused by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Nazis. Given the geopolitical position of the Crimea, the Tatars were perceived as a threat. Some 200,000 were deported to central Asia, and many more thousands died en route.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in the Crimea or to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly 300,000 Tatars were able to return to the Crimea, despite strong opposition from its mostly Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants. The Crimea had now become an autonomous republic within an independent Ukraine. The Tatars now comprise 12 per cent of the peninsula’s population of two million, with the remainder made up of Russians, at 60 per cent, and Ukrainians, 25 per cent.
When the USSR dissolved, the Tatars collaborated with the newly independent Ukrainian government in Kyiv to secure their rights. They founded a representative body, the Qurultay, with the 33-member Mejlis as its executive; the current chair, Refat Chubarov, was selected this year. It is able to address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean republic’s government, and international organizations.
But the Crimea continues to be dominated by its Russian majority, and there were violent clashes between them and the Tatar minority in 2006-2007. Many Russians (and Ukrainians) fear the spread of radical Islam among the Tatars. Amid the ethnic tensions, small-scale Wahhabist groups sponsored by Arab Gulf states emerged, including the banned Hizb-i-Tehrir, which castigated the Mejlis for its “soft” policies, but the radicals have little support.
In 2010, several pro-Russian Crimean political leaders demanded the disbanding and banning of the Mejlis and all other forms of political representation for the Crimean Tatars. The current Crimean republic’s prime minister, Anatoliy Mohyliov, has in the past praised Stalin’s expulsion of the Tatars.
Two mosques were attacked recently, and ethnic tensions threaten to throw the Crimea into a downward spiral of civil violence.
A peninsula that juts out into the Black Sea from Ukraine, the Crimea, which covers an area of more than 26,000 square kilometres, is virtually an island, and has been a bone of contention and an arena for war for centuries.
The Crimean Tatars, a Muslim Turkic-speaking people, had founded an independent state there in the Middle Ages, allied with the Ottoman Empire. The Crimean Khanate was among the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the beginning of the 18th century.
However, their state weakened as the Ottomans lost ground to an expansionist Russian Empire. When Catherine the Great annexed the Crimea in 1783, the Tatars comprised 98 per cent of the population, but many Crimean Tatars were massacred or exiled. Their numbers continued to dwindle, due to Russian settlement.
They fared little better in the new Soviet Union in the 20th century. The Crimea was captured by the Nazis in 1941 during the Second World War and retaken by the Soviets three years later. The Tatars were all expelled in 1944, having been accused by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin of collaborating with the Nazis. Given the geopolitical position of the Crimea, the Tatars were perceived as a threat. Some 200,000 were deported to central Asia, and many more thousands died en route.
After Stalin’s death, the new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in 1954 transferred the Crimea from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, today’s Russian Federation, to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Ukraine.
Although a 1967 Soviet decree removed the charges against Crimean Tatars, the Soviet government did nothing to facilitate their resettlement in the Crimea or to make reparations for lost lives and confiscated property.
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly 300,000 Tatars were able to return to the Crimea, despite strong opposition from its mostly Russian and Ukrainian inhabitants. The Crimea had now become an autonomous republic within an independent Ukraine. The Tatars now comprise 12 per cent of the peninsula’s population of two million, with the remainder made up of Russians, at 60 per cent, and Ukrainians, 25 per cent.
When the USSR dissolved, the Tatars collaborated with the newly independent Ukrainian government in Kyiv to secure their rights. They founded a representative body, the Qurultay, with the 33-member Mejlis as its executive; the current chair, Refat Chubarov, was selected this year. It is able to address grievances to the Ukrainian central government, the Crimean republic’s government, and international organizations.
But the Crimea continues to be dominated by its Russian majority, and there were violent clashes between them and the Tatar minority in 2006-2007. Many Russians (and Ukrainians) fear the spread of radical Islam among the Tatars. Amid the ethnic tensions, small-scale Wahhabist groups sponsored by Arab Gulf states emerged, including the banned Hizb-i-Tehrir, which castigated the Mejlis for its “soft” policies, but the radicals have little support.
In 2010, several pro-Russian Crimean political leaders demanded the disbanding and banning of the Mejlis and all other forms of political representation for the Crimean Tatars. The current Crimean republic’s prime minister, Anatoliy Mohyliov, has in the past praised Stalin’s expulsion of the Tatars.
Two mosques were attacked recently, and ethnic tensions threaten to throw the Crimea into a downward spiral of civil violence.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
The Ongoing Problem of Kashmir
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The most intractable problem between India and Pakistan has been the status of Kashmir, which has bedeviled their relationship from the moment both countries gained their independence.
When India was partitioned into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India in 1947, princely states were given the option of joining either country.
Though Kashmir had a Muslim majority, and its territory was contiguous to what had become Pakistan, the Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh, who ruled Kashmir opted to throw in his lot with India. It was incorporated into the Indian Union as the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan has never reconciled itself to this.
Pakistan has argued that including a Muslim-majority state in India repudiates the two-nation theory responsible for its identity; it insists that the “completeness” of the nation depends on the integration of the state into Pakistan. Former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said that “Kashmir must be liberated if Pakistan is to have its full meaning.”
On the other hand, India insists that Kashmir’s annexation validates the theory of secular nationalism on which it was founded.
Pakistani irregulars occupied a partition of the territory, now called Azad (Free) Kashmir, in 1947, and Pakistan fought wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999 to try to conquer it. In 2003 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a cease-fire, but Kashmir remains divided, with troops from both countries facing each other at the Line of Control.
Pakistan contends that India is still bound by a 1948 UN Security Council resolution to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir, to allow its people to decide whether they would like to accede to India or Pakistan. A third option, an independent Kashmir, has also been suggested by some of Kashmir’s political elite. So Kashmir’s own inhabitants are not united in their political desires.
Multiple peace talks have been held over the years in attempts to resolve the conflict, although there have been disputes about who can legitimately represent the various parties involved.
Meanwhile, a major insurgency within the Indian state itself began in 1988, after Muslim political parties complained that the 1987 elections to the state’s legislative assembly were rigged. Fuelled by covert support from Pakistan, and involving many mujahidin who had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, by the end of the decade at least 50,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 people had died in the conflict.
India used draconian laws, which allow security forces to detain individuals for as many as two years without presenting charges, and a massive military presence, to quell the violence. There was eventually one Indian soldier or paramilitary police officer for every five Kashmiris. Yet there was further large-scale unrest in 2010.
In September, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met in New York and agreed to maintain peace on the border, but their pledge seems to have made little difference on the ground.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Morocco, Spain, and the Western Sahara Issue
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
By the end of the 15th century, Spain controlled the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that time. In the Americas, except for Brazil, everything from the southwestern United States and Florida down to present-day Chile and Argentina belonged to the Spanish Crown, along with the islands of the Caribbean. As well, the Philippines archipelago in Southeast Asia and some south Pacific island chains were Spanish possessions.
However, Britain and France began to acquire Caribbean islands as Spanish power weakened, and in the first quarter of the 19th century, the vast colonies in Latin America all acquired their independence as seventeen sovereign republics.
In 1898, defeated in a war with the United States, Spain also departed Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the South Pacific Caroline and Mariana islands, including Guam.
All that was left in the 20th century were a few small bits and pieces, all in Africa: Ifni and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco in northern Morocco (the rest of Morocco was a French protectorate); Spanish Sahara to Morocco’s south; and Spanish Guinea, consisting of the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) and the small continental enclave of Rio Muni.
In 1968, under pressure from nationalists and the United Nations, Spain granted independence to its tropical colony, renamed Equatorial Guinea. It has since been one of Africa’s worst-run states, under the dictatorial rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been president since 1979.
After Morocco achieved independence from France in 1956, Ifni and Spanish Morocco became part of that country. However, Spain has retained two small enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast, though Morocco considers them to be under foreign occupation. Spain has ruled both cities for centuries and the local populations of the disputed territories reject the Moroccan claims by a large majority. The Canary Islands, off the Moroccan coast, also remain part of Spain.
Morocco also laid claim to Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), which Spain had acquired in 1884 during the so-called “scramble for Africa,” asserting that the territory was historically an integral part of the Moroccan monarchy. The population there is of mixed Arab and Berber descent.
Since 1973, a guerrilla war led by the Polisario Front, representing the native Sahrawi tribes, had also challenged Spanish control in the colony, and Spain had actually begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the indigenous rebel movement.
Meanwhile, Morocco lost its case for legal control of the territory at the International Court of Justice in October 1975 and a United Nations mission to the territory found that Sahrawi support for independence was “overwhelming.”
So one month later some 350,000 Moroccans advanced several miles into the territory, escorted by 20,000 Moroccan troops, in the so-called “Green March.” It caught Spain in a moment of political crisis. In 1975, with the death of Francisco Franco, Spain was transitioning from a fascist dictatorship to a constitutional monarchy.
Madrid decided to withdraw from Spanish Sahara following renewed Moroccan demands and international pressure, mainly from United Nations resolutions regarding decolonisation. The Spanish government feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to an open colonial war in Africa,
Under immense pressure, therefore, Spain agreed to cede the colony to Morocco and Mauritania, to Spanish Sahara’s south; the area was then split between the two. But after a disastrous four-year war with the Polisario, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara, and left Morocco in control of all of what it calls its Southern Provinces.
The Polisario, aided by Algeria, has continued to oppose the Moroccan occupation, which has not been recognized by the African Union or the UN. In 1976 the guerrilla movement proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and set up a government in exile in Algeria. Since 1979, the Polisario Front has been recognized by the United Nations as the representative of the people of Western Sahara. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was admitted to the African Union in 1984, prompting Morocco to withdraw from the organization.
In 1991 Morocco and the Polisario agreed to a UN -backed cease-fire, which included an agreement by Morocco to allow a referendum in Western Sahara to determine the wishes of its population.
However, to date the referendum has not been held because of questions over who is eligible to vote. In 2001, Algeria proposed a division of the area, with the southern part going to the Polisario and the northern part to Morocco, but both parties turned it down.
As of 2013, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been recognized by 85 states. On the other hand, Morocco’s claim is supported by the Arab League.
In the 1980s Morocco built a 2,700 kilometre-long barrier to keep Polisario fighters out of the bulk of the area that lies to the north and west of it. Today the Polisario Front controls the eastern third of the territory, but this area is almost uninhabited, while many thousands of Sahrawis languish in refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
The stalemate continues, and bloody clashes erupted between police and pro-independence protesters in October when a UN envoy visited the territory.
By the end of the 15th century, Spain controlled the largest empire the world had ever seen up to that time. In the Americas, except for Brazil, everything from the southwestern United States and Florida down to present-day Chile and Argentina belonged to the Spanish Crown, along with the islands of the Caribbean. As well, the Philippines archipelago in Southeast Asia and some south Pacific island chains were Spanish possessions.
However, Britain and France began to acquire Caribbean islands as Spanish power weakened, and in the first quarter of the 19th century, the vast colonies in Latin America all acquired their independence as seventeen sovereign republics.
In 1898, defeated in a war with the United States, Spain also departed Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the South Pacific Caroline and Mariana islands, including Guam.
All that was left in the 20th century were a few small bits and pieces, all in Africa: Ifni and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco in northern Morocco (the rest of Morocco was a French protectorate); Spanish Sahara to Morocco’s south; and Spanish Guinea, consisting of the offshore island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) and the small continental enclave of Rio Muni.
In 1968, under pressure from nationalists and the United Nations, Spain granted independence to its tropical colony, renamed Equatorial Guinea. It has since been one of Africa’s worst-run states, under the dictatorial rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been president since 1979.
After Morocco achieved independence from France in 1956, Ifni and Spanish Morocco became part of that country. However, Spain has retained two small enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, on the Mediterranean coast, though Morocco considers them to be under foreign occupation. Spain has ruled both cities for centuries and the local populations of the disputed territories reject the Moroccan claims by a large majority. The Canary Islands, off the Moroccan coast, also remain part of Spain.
Morocco also laid claim to Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara), which Spain had acquired in 1884 during the so-called “scramble for Africa,” asserting that the territory was historically an integral part of the Moroccan monarchy. The population there is of mixed Arab and Berber descent.
Since 1973, a guerrilla war led by the Polisario Front, representing the native Sahrawi tribes, had also challenged Spanish control in the colony, and Spain had actually begun negotiations for a handover of power with leaders of the indigenous rebel movement.
Meanwhile, Morocco lost its case for legal control of the territory at the International Court of Justice in October 1975 and a United Nations mission to the territory found that Sahrawi support for independence was “overwhelming.”
So one month later some 350,000 Moroccans advanced several miles into the territory, escorted by 20,000 Moroccan troops, in the so-called “Green March.” It caught Spain in a moment of political crisis. In 1975, with the death of Francisco Franco, Spain was transitioning from a fascist dictatorship to a constitutional monarchy.
Madrid decided to withdraw from Spanish Sahara following renewed Moroccan demands and international pressure, mainly from United Nations resolutions regarding decolonisation. The Spanish government feared that the conflict with Morocco could lead to an open colonial war in Africa,
Under immense pressure, therefore, Spain agreed to cede the colony to Morocco and Mauritania, to Spanish Sahara’s south; the area was then split between the two. But after a disastrous four-year war with the Polisario, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara, and left Morocco in control of all of what it calls its Southern Provinces.
The Polisario, aided by Algeria, has continued to oppose the Moroccan occupation, which has not been recognized by the African Union or the UN. In 1976 the guerrilla movement proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and set up a government in exile in Algeria. Since 1979, the Polisario Front has been recognized by the United Nations as the representative of the people of Western Sahara. The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was admitted to the African Union in 1984, prompting Morocco to withdraw from the organization.
In 1991 Morocco and the Polisario agreed to a UN -backed cease-fire, which included an agreement by Morocco to allow a referendum in Western Sahara to determine the wishes of its population.
However, to date the referendum has not been held because of questions over who is eligible to vote. In 2001, Algeria proposed a division of the area, with the southern part going to the Polisario and the northern part to Morocco, but both parties turned it down.
As of 2013, the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic has been recognized by 85 states. On the other hand, Morocco’s claim is supported by the Arab League.
In the 1980s Morocco built a 2,700 kilometre-long barrier to keep Polisario fighters out of the bulk of the area that lies to the north and west of it. Today the Polisario Front controls the eastern third of the territory, but this area is almost uninhabited, while many thousands of Sahrawis languish in refugee camps in Algeria and Mauritania.
The stalemate continues, and bloody clashes erupted between police and pro-independence protesters in October when a UN envoy visited the territory.
Friday, November 01, 2013
India's Restive Regions Not Easy to Govern
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
India has faced insurgencies in some of its states over the past decades, though the issues that gave rise to these have to some extent been resolved.
Sikh nationalists began to agitate for a sovereign state of their own, Khalistan, in the northwestern state of Punjab. The region has been the traditional homeland of the Sikhs, an ethno-religious people, and they ruled the Punjab for some eight decades before being subdued by the British in the mid-19th century.
In 1947 the Muslim parts of the Punjab became part of the new country of Pakistan, while the eastern half, comprising Hindus and Sikhs, remained in India. In 1966, owing to the demands made by Sikh organisations to create a Punjabi-speaking state, the Indian government divided Punjab into a Punjabi-speaking state of the same name, and the Hindi-speaking states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Today Sikhs form about 60 per cent of the population in the Punjab.
But for many this was not enough. In 1984, extremists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), in the Sikh city of Amritsar. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually had the army storm the temple, killing perhaps as many as 2,000 people. In turn, she was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards a few months later. Massacres of Sikhs throughout the country followed.
There were still thousands being killed in the Punjab in the 1990s, but the crackdown on extremists, coupled with some accommodation to Sikh aspirations, have greatly minimized the problem. In recent years, Sikh extremism and the demand for Khalistan has all but abated.
In the far eastern state of Assam, almost cut off from the rest of the country by Bangladesh, a similar movement for self-determination was fuelled by neglect and resentment at the fact that immigrant Bengalis from West Bengal were moving in and occupying key positions in business, industry and government.
An armed struggle, led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, ensued in the 1980s and in the past two decades some 18,000 people died in clashes between the rebels and the security forces. Assamese natives have now been given a greater say in the running of the state and the ULFA suspended operations in 2011.
Various tribal peoples have also had states carved out of Assam over the decades, including Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. This too has led to a diminution of conflict. There are still demands for statehood for a state of Bodoland in Assam and Gorkhaland in neighbouring West Bengal.
India’s southern states have also experienced dissatisfaction with rule from the predominantly Hindi-speaking north, and many have at times been governed by regional parties. A Dravidian party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is currently in power in Tamil Nadu.
This past July, the Congress Party unanimously passed a resolution to recommend the formation of a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, and it will become India’s 29th state. Proponents of a separate Telangana state have in the past cited perceived injustices in the distribution of water, budget allocations, and jobs.
No one ever thought it would be easy to govern such a vast and multi-ethnic land.
India has faced insurgencies in some of its states over the past decades, though the issues that gave rise to these have to some extent been resolved.
Sikh nationalists began to agitate for a sovereign state of their own, Khalistan, in the northwestern state of Punjab. The region has been the traditional homeland of the Sikhs, an ethno-religious people, and they ruled the Punjab for some eight decades before being subdued by the British in the mid-19th century.
In 1947 the Muslim parts of the Punjab became part of the new country of Pakistan, while the eastern half, comprising Hindus and Sikhs, remained in India. In 1966, owing to the demands made by Sikh organisations to create a Punjabi-speaking state, the Indian government divided Punjab into a Punjabi-speaking state of the same name, and the Hindi-speaking states of Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. Today Sikhs form about 60 per cent of the population in the Punjab.
But for many this was not enough. In 1984, extremists led by Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale occupied the Harmandir Sahib (Golden Temple), in the Sikh city of Amritsar. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi eventually had the army storm the temple, killing perhaps as many as 2,000 people. In turn, she was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards a few months later. Massacres of Sikhs throughout the country followed.
There were still thousands being killed in the Punjab in the 1990s, but the crackdown on extremists, coupled with some accommodation to Sikh aspirations, have greatly minimized the problem. In recent years, Sikh extremism and the demand for Khalistan has all but abated.
In the far eastern state of Assam, almost cut off from the rest of the country by Bangladesh, a similar movement for self-determination was fuelled by neglect and resentment at the fact that immigrant Bengalis from West Bengal were moving in and occupying key positions in business, industry and government.
An armed struggle, led by the United Liberation Front of Assam, ensued in the 1980s and in the past two decades some 18,000 people died in clashes between the rebels and the security forces. Assamese natives have now been given a greater say in the running of the state and the ULFA suspended operations in 2011.
Various tribal peoples have also had states carved out of Assam over the decades, including Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura. This too has led to a diminution of conflict. There are still demands for statehood for a state of Bodoland in Assam and Gorkhaland in neighbouring West Bengal.
India’s southern states have also experienced dissatisfaction with rule from the predominantly Hindi-speaking north, and many have at times been governed by regional parties. A Dravidian party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is currently in power in Tamil Nadu.
This past July, the Congress Party unanimously passed a resolution to recommend the formation of a separate Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, and it will become India’s 29th state. Proponents of a separate Telangana state have in the past cited perceived injustices in the distribution of water, budget allocations, and jobs.
No one ever thought it would be easy to govern such a vast and multi-ethnic land.
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