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.

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.

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.

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.

Ethiopia Is a Unique African Country

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Ethiopia is that rarity among African states: a country with a very long continuous history and one of the two never conquered by Europeans during the 19^th century partition of Africa. It also has one of the world’s oldest Christian churches, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, dating back to the fourth century. Christianity was declared the state religion in the Kingdom of Axum, forerunner of today’s Ethiopia, in 330 AD.

The medieval Christian kingdom was known to Europeans, often in the form of myths regarding Prester John, a mythical Christian king in the heart of Africa.

Unlike most parts of Africa, Ethiopia also had a feudal social system, with a land-owning nobility ruling over a peasantry from which it exacted tribute.

The Italians had tried to incorporate Ethiopia (also known as Abyssinia) into their empire but were defeated by Emperor Menelik II at Adwa in 1896, thus allowing Ethiopia to retain its independence.

But 40 years later, Ethiopia was subjugated by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and amalgamated with neighbours Eritrea and Italian Somaliland into an East African empire. Mussolini’s dream didn’t last long, though; in 1941, during World War II, the British expelled the Italians and restored Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne.

However, Ethiopia remained a feudal backwater. This came to a sudden end in 1974, when Haile Selassie was overthrown in a military coup, and was dead a year later, probably murdered by the revolutionaries who had assumed power.

The next few years marked a period of turmoil, as the Derg, the military council now running the country, quickly fell into internal conflict. In 1977 Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam became Ethiopia’s leader. Calling himself a Marxist-Leninist, he instituted a regime of terror, killing thousands of his opponents.

He also began to collectivize agriculture. All rural land was nationalized, stripping the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Imperial family, and the nobility of all their sizable estates. But within a matter of years the country was suffering from a major famine which killed hundreds of thousands of people.

By now the country was beset by various separatist movements, operating in regions inhabited by peoples who were not Amhara, the ruling ethnic group who represent only about one-fourth of the population. The Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front launched a war for regional autonomy; the Oromo Liberation Front started political agitation in the Oromo areas; while in the Ogaden, the eastern part of the country inhabited by Muslim Somalis, the Western Somali Liberation Front began armed struggle. In 1977 Somalia invaded the Ogaden region in an attempt to annex it, but with Cuban and Soviet aid, Ethiopia drove its army back.

All of these different struggles merged into an overall civil war in the 1980s. Mengistu was finally toppled by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), an alliance of the various insurrectionary movements, and he fled to Zimbabwe in 1991. He remains there despite an Ethiopian court verdict finding him guilty in absentia of genocide for the deaths of some two million Ethiopians overall.

With Mengistu’s removal, the country, which had been run as a centralized state by both emperors and Marxists, acknowledged its diverse nature. In 1993 Eritrea, which had been attached to Ethiopia against its will after the Second World War, and had fought against its incorporation for decades, was granted independence. A year later the rest of the country, under a new constitution, was reorganized as a federal polity.

The first multi-party election took place in 1995, with Meles Zenawi Asres, head of the EPRDF, elected prime minister; he served until his death in 2012. Allegations of human rights abuses were levelled against his government, which continued to battle political opponents and secessionists.

In 2005, a disputed election led to violent unrest, and security forces killed nearly 200 people while putting down demonstrations. The 2010 election was also marred by irregularities. A leader of the country’s largest opposition group, the Forum for Democratic Dialogue in Ethiopia, Gebru Asrat, said that “The ruling party has completely turned the country in to a one party state.”

Under Meles Zenawi’s tenure Ethiopia also fought a boundary war against Eritrea from 1998 to 2000, and sent troops into Somalia in 2006 to halt the gains of the al-Shabaab Islamist militants; some are still involved there. The current prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn Boshe, was Meles Zenawi’s deputy.

The 94 million Ethiopians are now divided into nine ethnically based and politically autonomous regional states, and two chartered cities, Addis Ababa, the capital, and Dire Dawa. The constitution assigns extensive power to them; on paper, they even have the right to secede. In practice, though, Ethiopia is far from being a democratic state.

 

Canadian - South Korean Relations Over Five Decades

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Canada and South Korea, and on Sept. 12-13 the ambassador of the Republic of Korea, Cho Hee-yong, visited Prince Edward Island to celebrate 2013 as “the year of Korea in Canada.”

While bellicose North Korea languishes under the Orwellian dictatorship of the Kim family, focused on building nuclear weapons while its people starve, South Korea has gone from strength to strength, and is now a modern democratic state, with one of the world’s strongest economies.

Few people in the 1950s would have predicted this. Long a Japanese colony, Korea was partitioned between a Communist north and a capitalist south after 1945. The north, calling itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, attacked the south five years later, and soon Communist Chinese troops entered the war on the northern side.

Canada, as part of a 16-nation American-led United Nations force, fought in the war on behalf of the south. A total of 26, 791 Canadians troops participated; more than 1,200 were seriously wounded and 516 Canadians died in the conflict. Canada supplied the third-largest military contingent, after the United States and Britain, on the Allied side.

The Korean War lasted from 1950 to 1953. By the time it ended, the south was a wasteland, its capital Seoul, destroyed. In the 1960s, its economy was still comparable with levels in the poorer countries of Africa and Asia.

But South Korea over the past four decades has demonstrated incredible growth and global integration to become a high-tech industrialized economy. It adapted an export-oriented economic strategy, with finished products such as electronics, textiles, ships, automobiles, semiconductors, computers, wireless telecommunications equipment, and steel being some of its most important exports.

Some of its major firms are known throughout the world: Hyundai and Kia are major automobile manufacturers, and LG and Samsung produce televisions and other electronics.

Today South Korea, with its 49 million people, is one of the “Asian tigers,” along with Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Despite a lack of major natural resources, the economy ranks 15^th in the world, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $1.116 trillion, and it is a member of the G-20.

South Korea is Canada’s seventh-largest trading partner, and Canadian-South Korean two-way trade reached $10.1 billion last year. South Koreans have invested more than $11 billion dollars in Canada over the past four decades, mostly in the field of energy.

More than 23,000 Canadians currently live in South Korea, including over 5,000 English teachers. Altogether, over 100,000 Canadians have taught English in the country over the years. As well, Canadian missionaries were active in the country from the late 19^th century on; the first Korean-English dictionary was compiled by a Canadian.

“We are strong allies and partners,” Ambassador Cho told an audience at the University of Prince Edward Island, “and relations have never been stronger.” He expressed his thanks for the “tremendous contribution” Canadians played in the war sixty years ago and also noted that Canada is concerned about the disregard for human rights in North Korea.

Short Guide to the PQ's Charter of Values

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The so-called “Quebec Charter of Values” unveiled by the governing Parti Québécois has, predictably, been met with almost universal condemnation in the rest of Canada, as well as by most non-francophones in Quebec itself. However, a significant percentage of Québécois francophones are in support, according to polls.

The charter would forbid all public employees from wearing “overt and conspicuous” religious symbols and headgear, including Muslim face veils, Jewish yarmulkes, Sikh turbans, or large crucifixes. “This restriction would reflect the state’s neutrality,” the proposal for the charter states.

The regulations would apply only to publicly-paid employees. These include police officers, prosecutors, doctors, teachers, daycare workers and other government workers.

The PQ considers itself a left-of-centre party, yet to many advocates of multiculturalism in the country, this seems to place them in the same category as those xenophobes, and even racists, who oppose diversity.

To understand where this charter is, so to speak, coming from, it’s necessary to view the context in which it is being proposed. We have to examine the different historical circumstances that are behind it. This is not to condone it, but to understand its ideological roots.

I have identified four important issues:

First, Quebec is a French Canadian “homeland” nation, like Serbia or Sweden. It’s not just a “Nebraska” or “Saskatchewan,” places that don't “belong” to a specific ethnic group. In those places, no other community can be seen as a “threat” to the “nation.” The rest of Canada actually accepts this definition – the province is considered a “distinct society,” after all.

Secondly comes the fact that this people was conquered, in the 18^th century, by others who didn’t accommodate themselves to the majority culture. The British Protestants who took over after 1759 didn’t become French-speaking Catholics. And the immigrants that followed, especially non-Catholics, moved into the anglophone sphere, humiliating the majority population as a conquered people without control over their own “homeland.”

So for decades, the accommodation ran the other way – only with the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s did French Quebeckers become “maîtres chez nous” (“masters in our own house”). And so there is a fear, however unfounded, that a new wave of immigrants, even if speaking French, will also not become part of “la patrie.”

Third, in Quebec there is a strong strain of anti-clericalism, one that has followed centuries of what many consider cultural and religious oppression by a hegemonic Roman Catholic Church. The secularization of French Canadian society only began in the 1960s, and so many see all religion as repressive.

Pre-1960s Quebec is now viewed by those on the left as “la grande noirceur” (“the great darkness”), an era when so many Québécois were uneducated and under the supposed thumb of priests and nuns, and it makes many in the province wary of any religious presence. There was no equivalent to this in the pluralistic, largely Protestant, English Canada, where separation of church and state does not involve removing religion from the public square.

Finally, many strands of Quebec feminism, unlike the multicultural version prevalent elsewhere, consider all religious garb as inherently oppressive to women and forced on them by males.

If the charter ever manages to be passed into law by Quebec’s National Assembly, most of it will probably be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. The separatists will then claim that this demonstrates the need for Quebec to become a sovereign nation.

 

 

Israel and North American Jewish Youth

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

There has been no shortage of articles and books in recent years lamenting the apparent lessening of interest in and emotional ties to Israel on the part of North American Jewish youth. Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism documents this in great detail. There are many programs, such as Birthright Israel, which sends teenagers from Canada and the United States to visit Israel, that have struggled against this trend, with only limited success.

Very often, the blame is placed on specific Israeli policies, in particular relations with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. North American Jewish kids are mainly liberal, the argument goes, and they find much of what Israel does distasteful; as a result they feel defensive and uncomfortable when defending the Jewish state against its many detractors.

But perhaps the problem is even deeper than this. Perhaps today’s English-speaking North American young Jewish kids don’t see in Israelis “themselves,” the way older Jews did when they were young.

For the first 70 years or so of modern Jewish settlement in Palestine, following the creation of the Zionist movement in the late 19^th century, the community in Palestine, and then in the new state of Israel, was largely the child of secular east European Jewry. And so were the Jews who came to North America. The two were, so to speak, twins, and indeed, in many cases, individuals in the two communities were actual relatives. In almost all cases, they also spoke a common language, Yiddish.

This has changed dramatically. In recent decades very few North American secular Jews have moved to Israel. Today, the image of an Israeli might be a very religious “messianic” Zionist settler in the West Bank; a Jew from the Arab or Iranian Middle East; an Ethiopian or central Asian Jew; and a Jew from the Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union. Finally, there are the ultra-Orthodox. And most Israelis speak Hebrew (with some English), whereas North American Jews speak English – almost none can converse in Hebrew.

Therefore most Israelis today do not feel or sound or, in many cases, even look, like North American Jews. And even if some are relatives of people on this side of the world, they have typically never met them.

The West Bank settlers view the state in an eschatological context, seeing the entire land of Israel as having been given to the Jewish people by Divine decree, with not a square centimetre to be transferred to non-Jewish Arabs. Most North American Jews, especially younger ones, cannot subscribe to this view.

Other Jews in Israel, even if not religious, are also more likely to hold attitudes towards Arabs (including those who are Israeli citizens) that are at variance with the views of children on this continent, who are brought up in multicultural societies, where nationalism is often considered to be, ipso facto, racist and xenophobic. The Russian Jews, too, tend to be “hawks” when it comes to foreign policy.

So this chasm is clearly widening, despite the efforts of Jewish communal organizations to instill a sense of unity between Israel and the Diaspora, as it is a product of the current zeitgeist.

As this generation of North American Jews become adults, an embattled Israel may in future years find less emotional and uncritical support from among overseas Jewish communities than it did in, say, 1967 and 1973, when Israel was involved in major wars. This is for Israel a worrisome prospect.

 

It's Not the Zanzibar of Fantasy

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

For western travellers, the Zanzibar archipelago has long conjured up images of enchantment: palm-fringed beaches, ancient palaces and forts, and narrow streets overlooked by elaborately carved doors in the capital, Stone Town.

Books and films have long portrayed the Indian Ocean islands off the coast of Africa as an exotic paradise. Typical of the genre was “Road to Zanzibar,” a 1941 film starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.

The real Zanzibar was always quite different. Slavery was a large part of Zanzibar’s commercial power, and from 1700 to 1850 the sultans of Zanzibar, who were Omani Arabs, effectively controlled the slave trade in East and Central Africa.

The British gained control in 1890 and ended the slave trade. However, the sultanate was allowed to remain in place and the Arab elite remained dominant over a Black African majority.

Independence from Britain in 1963, as an Islamic monarchy, was followed by a bloody revolution in which thousands of Arabs were killed or expelled. The Black majority gained control and the following year Zanzibar merged with mainland Tanganyika, as a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania.

Many Zanzibaris were unhappy about the union. Ever since, the islands have always been on the edge of political turmoil, with a sense of grievance against mainland political control and economic exploitation. This is exacerbated by tensions between the broadly Christian mainland and the predominantly Muslim islands.

Zanzibar has been wracked by political violence in recent decades. Contested elections in 2000 led to a massacre when the army and police shot into crowds of protestors, killing at least 35 people. Violence again erupted in 2005 when there were accusations of fraud by the losing party.

The push for independence, or at least greater autonomy from the mainland, gained new impetus after politicians and jurists began work last year on a new constitution for Tanzania. At first, the status of the union was off the table, enraging Zanzibari nationalists. (Zanzibar’s own constitution, amended in 2010, refers to the archipelago as a sovereign state, with no mention of the union with Tanganyika.)

There are many who would prefer a Zanzibar with its own currency and a seat at the United Nations. They maintain that an independent Zanzibar could develop into another Singapore or Hong Kong, an island entrepot for international trade (as was the case historically). But mainland politicians, they argue, don’t want Zanzibar to be free.

Some Zanzibaris have begun to blend their nationalism with religion. In recent years, a group called Uamsho, or “Awakening,” has called for an independent Zanzibar governed under Muslim shariah law.

Two churches were set ablaze in May 2012 in the midst of rioting after the police arrested leaders of the separatist group. On Christmas Day last year, a priest was shot in the jaw but survived. Another priest was shot and killed on Feb. 17.

The acid attack in August on a pair of British teenagers engaged in charity work on Zanzibar is likely to have a deleterious effect on the tourist industry. Tourism officially accounts for a little more than a quarter of the island’s economic activity, but 70 per cent of its foreign-exchange earnings. Fifteen thousand people work directly in tourism, and 50,000 are employed indirectly.

The minister of tourism, Said Ali Mbarouk, said that the episode had “shocked and shamed” his country. Security was increased in tourist areas, and measures were taken to curb the distribution and production of acid. However, Uamsho wants to enforce strict dress codes on foreign visitors and ban alcohol outside private hotels.

Forget the dated images of Zanzibar as portrayed in films and novels. It has become a fairly insecure place.

Hannah Senesh Should Not Be Forgotten

Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune


When I was a teenager in Montreal back in the late 1950s-early 1960s, I was a member of the Zionist youth group Young Judaea. There, we learned the story of Hannah Senesh, the heroic young woman who, during World War II, left Palestine for Nazi-occupied Europe to try to save Jews.

Senesh was a young poet and diarist who was captured and executed in 1944, at age 23, after parachuting into Yugoslavia and then entering Nazi-occupied Hungary to try to smuggle Jews out of the country.

Hannah Szenes (the original spelling) was born in Budapest on July 17, 1921, to a wealthy, distinguished, and assimilated Hungarian Jewish family. Though given a modern Hungarian education, she was exposed to antisemitism during her high school years, and decided to join a Zionist youth movement, learning Hebrew in preparation for aliyah to Palestine.

In October 1938, she recorded in her diary: "I've become a Zionist. This word stands for a tremendous number of things. To me it means, in short, that I now consciously and strongly feel I am a Jew, and am proud of it. My primary aim is to go to Palestine, to work for it."

She came to Palestine in 1939 to study at the Agricultural Training Farm in Nahalal, and after two years became a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam near Caesarea.

In 1943, however, Senesh enlisted in the British Army and began her training as a paratrooper. She and some others were parachuted into occupied Yugoslavia in mid-March 1944 in order to aid the anti-Nazi forces. Two months later she smuggled herself into her native Hungary but was captured.

Imprisoned and tortured, she refused to reveal details of her mission and was sentenced to death. She refused an offer of clemency and was executed by a firing squad in Budapest on Nov. 7, 1944.

In 1950 Hannah Senesh’s remains were brought to Israel where they were buried in the military cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. In the same year a kibbutz was founded and named Yad Hana in her memory.

A poet and playwright, writing both in Hungarian and Hebrew, Senesh’s best known poem is probably "Halikha LeKesariya" ("A Walk to Caesarea"), often known as "Eli, Eli" ("My God, My God"), written in 1942. Her last poem "Ashrei HaGafrur" ("Blessed is the Match") was the title of a documentary about her life produced in 2008. Israeli President Shimon Peres, who knew Hannah as a young pioneer in the 1940s, appears on camera.

A number of books have also been published about her life. An early one, Blessed is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance, by Marie Syrkin, published in 1947, also takes its title from "Ashrei HaGafrur."

Yet for all that, I have always wondered why the story of Hannah Senesh is not as well known as that of Anne Frank. Senesh was much more the "agent" of her own life than was Frank. Is it because somehow the outside world prefers a Jewish victim to a Zionist heroine?

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a critique of Anne Frank, who was herself just a teenager. We have long ago rejected the callous insult to the victims of the Holocaust made by ill-informed people who had asserted that the Jews of Europe went "like sheep to the slaughter."

What, precisely, could a family like the Franks have done? They were, like most Jews, civilians, young and old, without weapons, hidden in a house, and facing the most fanatically trained killers the world has ever seen, masters of most of Europe between 1939 and 1945.

We have learned from this. If Anne Frank symbolizes the doomed stateless Jews of Europe, in the story of Hannah Senesh we see the glimmer of the Jewish state about to be born.

 

 

What Now for Obama and Syria?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

There’s a reason German statesman Otto von Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” once advised an emissary to “strike while the iron is hot.” Because if you are indecisive, hesitate and temporise, you lose the moment and prove yourself weak.

It has now been two weeks since Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad crossed Barack Obama’s “red line” regarding chemical weapons and gassed almost 1,500 of his own people, including hundreds of children, on Aug. 21. That red line must have been drawn in shifting sands, because Obama has now announced that, while he remains prepared to punish the Syrian regime for this war crime, which he once declared would be a “game-changer,” he will seek approval from the U.S. Congress first.

According to various sources, he has nurtured doubts about the political and legal justification for action, even one of limited scope and duration, given that the United Nations Security Council had refused to sanction a military strike that he had not put before Congress.

Critics called it an example of a less than flattering Obama characteristic: delaying major decisions, muddling the power of his argument and, in this case, perhaps blunting the effectiveness of military action. After all, the delay allows Assad to move his assets elsewhere and strengthen his defences.

Meanwhile, there has been growing opposition in the United States and around the world from right-wing isolationists, pacifists, and assorted anti-Americans, including the Russians, who have effectively disabled the UN. (Vladimir Putin called the planned attack “foolish nonsense.”)

Even the American military, despite the bloated annual defence budget of more than $600 billion, are reluctant warriors – are they really afraid of Syria? Or is it Iran that looms in their vision?

What if the Congress votes to oppose Obama? There are many Republicans and left-wing Democrats, especially in the House of Representatives, opposed to any more involvement in overseas wars after the negative experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a similar vote in his parliament on Aug. 29.

Obama claims that he doesn’t need congressional approval, but seeks it merely to make certain that the country is behind him. But will a defeat allow him to back down from his commitment to hold Syria accountable for this clear breach of long-standing international norms?

Obama himself in 2008 ran for the presidency as the “anti-Bush.” Is this now going to come back to bite him? That would indeed be ironic.

The president is an example of the worst muddle-headed thinking that came out of the 1960s – the concern about “exit strategies” and “quagmires” and “escalations” and “timelines” is as much a reaction – still -- to the disaster of the Vietnam War as it is to Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the Kosovo War, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 straight days, and Slobodan Milosevic never used chemical weapons. Madeleine Albright, the then Secretary of state, called the U.S. the “indispensable nation.” Under Obama, it’s no longer indispensable.

 

 

The Philippines: An American Ally in Southeast Asia

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
 

The United States and the Philippines have had a long, and sometimes problematic, relationship. The 7,000-island nation became an American possession following the Spanish-American War of 1898, though it took many years for U.S. forces to subdue the entire archipelago.

 

Conquered by the Japanese during World War II, the country received its independence from the U.S. in 1946 but continued to maintain a close relationship with the former imperial power. Domestically it was embroiled in a counterinsurgency campaign against the Hukbalahap pro-Communist guerrillas on Luzon for many years.

In June 1950, American alarm over the rebellion during the Cold War prompted U.S. President Harry Truman to approve special military assistance that included military advice, sale at cost of military equipment to the Philippines and financial aid under the Joint United States Military Advisory Group. The insurrection petered out by the mid-1950s.

The Philippines also faced the growing might of Communist-ruled China after 1949. The Philippines sent an expeditionary force of around 7,500 combat troops to Korea in August 1950 as part of the American-led effort to push back the Chinese and North Korean troops that had invaded South Korea.

 

The country signed a mutual defence treaty with the United States in 1951 and joined the anti-Communist eight-member South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) upon its formation in 1954. SEATO ceased to exist in 1977 and after the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of the threat of communism in the 1990s support for the mutual defense treaty has also declined in the Philippines. It does remain in force, though, and was reaffirmed with the November 2011 Manila Declaration.

 

The strategic location of the archipelago in the South China Sea, northeast of Malaysia and Indonesia, south of China and Taiwan, and east of Vietnam, made it a favorable location for American military bases during the Cold War, and the Clark Air Base and Naval Station Subic Bay were among the largest facilities maintained by Washington during much of that period, in particular when they were centres of logistical support for American forces during the Vietnam War.

 

With the Cold War over, Clark Air Base was closed in 1991, partly due to the refusal by the Philippine government to renew the lease; this was followed by the closing of Subic Bay a year later.

 

However in 2012 Manila approved limited U.S. deployments to the former American military outposts, after a tense standoff between Chinese and Filipino warships in the South China Sea, spurred by conflicting territorial claims to the contested waterway and some of its small island chains.

In more recent years, the country has been battling an Islamist insurgency in its southern island of Mindanao and in the Sulu Archipelago, led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

 

Since 2002, the United States has provided non-combat assistance to the Philippine armed forces through the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines. Counterterrorism efforts, along with development aid, have helped to significantly reduce the size and strength of Islamist organizations.

After warfare that left tens of thousands dead, the MILF and the government signed a landmark peace deal in October 2012 aimed at ending the long-running insurgency.

The accord paves the way for a new autonomous region to be administered by Muslims in Mindanao, according to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III. “Today, we sign a framework agreement that can finally seal a genuine, lasting peace in Mindanao,” he announced in a speech. He said that the MILF is no longer seeking to form a new nation.

The deal sets up mechanisms to tackle issues such as power structure and revenues in the southern region, which will be named Bangsamoro. The new region is expected to replace the current one, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, by 2016.

However, Nur Misuari, founding chair of the MNLF, rejected the deal, and remains in favour of declaring an independent Bangsamoro state. “We encourage Mr. Misuari to be a partner in ensuring the welfare of MNLF communities and actively engage with us in the drafting of the Bangsamoro Basic Law which will include the agenda of the MNLF,” stated Jose Lorena, a government advisor dealing with the peace process.

Still, things have definitely improved in the southern, Muslim areas of the country.