Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The following countries have held parliamentary or presidential elections so far this year: Afghanistan, Algeria, El Salvador, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Panama, Thailand, and Ukraine.
So what? you might remark. After all, that’s quite a rogue’s gallery.
Yet for many people, elections have become the sine qua non of democracy. Our television screens show us people lined up at polling stations, eager to cast their ballots, and commentators usually let us know how excited these voters are to “finally” have a say in the governance of their country.
But in fact, in states without a robust civil society, the rule of law, protection of human rights, and a political culture that tolerates diversity of opinion, elections may even exacerbate, rather than resolve, deep cleavages within the policy – even if they have been relatively free and honest.
In most such places, though, opposition parties often boycott what they consider to be a foregone conclusion; or, if they do contest the election, they invariably claim – usually correctly – that widespread fraud, intimidation, and other irregularities have rendered the result invalid. In many countries, furthermore, so many parties are in the running that no one ever wins a convincing mandate.
Also, only too often, governments brought to power are fairly quickly dispatched in coups (Thailand), or themselves become highly autocratic and sectarian (Iraq). Some countries seem to be in a permanent state of alternation between civilian and military-authoritarian rule (Nigeria, Pakistan), or are such failed states, with component groups fielding their own armies, that elections are completely meaningless (Lebanon).
In yet others -- Central American oligarchies such as Guatemala and Honduras – incredible inequality makes for continuous political and criminal violence. Elections are irrelevant, held merely to please some foreign capital like Washington.
Political parties are typically simply the vehicles for non-democratic elements to gain control and impose their own brand of autocracy (and, not coincidentally, gain access to the state’s resources).
Elections can’t paper over issues of what political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan called problems of “stateness” in places where “there are profound differences about the territorial boundaries of the political community’s state and profound differences as to who has the right of citizenship in that state.”
These are matters relating to the very definition of the country and usually revolve around deep-seated class, ethnic, religious, and/or regional conflicts, often involving repression of aggrieved minorities without a share of power. Each group votes for its champion, so, as political scientist Donald Horowitz has written, elections are little more than a census count. Demographics neatly predict party support levels.
For example: Although Sri Lanka has never ceased to be an electoral democracy, the lack of genuine political power by the minority Tamils led to a vicious decades-old civil war in which tens of thousands of people were slaughtered. In pre-1974 Cyprus, ethnic bloc voting by Greeks meant that the Turks, with fewer people, could never hold power. It ended with partition.
In Africa, political violence broke out after the adoption of democracy in various countries, including Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and Togo, as different ethnic and religious groups vied for power.
Such issues even affect states such as Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and have led to violence, despite the fact that they are, unlike our earlier examples, robust democracies.
So, as author and journalist Robert Kaplan has observed, in many states without a genuine sense of national consciousness, what is left when authoritarian rulers are deposed are tribes, clans, and sects; they have now, for instance, become the most important actors in entities like Libya and Yemen.
Libyans went to the polls June 25 to elect a new parliament. But one of Libya’s most prominent human rights activists, Salwa Bugaighis, was assassinated in her home in Benghazi -- shortly after she had voted.
To make my point at its most basic level, ask yourself this: would you rather have lived in a colony without any internal self-rule at all, but with the rule of law, like pre-1990s Hong Kong, or in a sovereign state with “elections,” like Zimbabwe?
You know the answer.
Professor Henry Srebrnik
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Monday, July 07, 2014
A Sunni State in the Fertile Crescent?
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The various Sunni jihadist groups, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who are battling the Shia regimes in Iraq and Syria, are attempting to carve out a Sunni emirate in parts of both countries (and possibly also in Jordan).
ISIS formally declared the creation of an Islamic State on June 29, its territory stretching from the northern Syrian province of Aleppo to the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is its new leader.
But this should come as little surprise. These countries are all artificial creations, the fruits of French and British imperialist cartography following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
Syria and Iraq (then known as Mesopotamia) were little more than geographic expressions prior to the 20th century. But the Allies would give them definite boundaries, which more or less remained stable until recent years.
In a secret 1916 accord between a British colonel, Sir Mark Sykes, and a French diplomat, François Georges-Picot, London and Paris agreed upon the division of Ottoman territories should the Turks lose the war.
They were believers in the notion that the people of the region would be better off under the European empires.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement carved up the Fertile Crescent. France obtained Lebanon and Syria, while Britain took Iraq and Palestine (today’s Israel and Jordan). Needless to say, no Arabs were consulted.
The deal was formalized by the newly-formed League of Nations after the war; it allocated these territories as “mandates” to be governed by France and Britain. Though the new Iraq was officially designated a kingdom, it was also effectively under British control.
The colonial powers lumped together Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Christians, and other minorities, with little regard for the animosities these groups had felt towards each other for many centuries.
From the 1950s through the 1990s, pan-Arabists sought to unite the Arab world into one super-state. This failed miserably. Since then, sectarian forms of Islam have replaced secular nationalism as a rallying cry, leading to the present discord in the region.
ISIS’s emergence can be traced to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which arose in response to the American invasion in 2003. The group was active in the insurgency in Iraq, but when civil war broke out along sectarian lines in Syria in 2011, many ISIS members crossed the border to fight with other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups against the Shia Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Now they are back in Iraq again. One of the reasons they were able to easily take cities like Mosul and Tikrit is because these are fundamentally Sunni cities that feel marginalized by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia. Many ordinary Sunnis describe this as a popular revolution against a Shia-led government, not a terrorist onslaught.
Given the growing Shia-Sunni war throughout the region, other states and groups have also lined up with ISIS. A large part of their financing comes from wealthy benefactors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.
On the other hand, Assad and Maliki depend on arms and money from fellow-Shia Iran. In little Lebanon, itself a microcosm of the region, the country’s Shia militia, Hezbollah, is fighting alongside Syria’s army, while Sunni Lebanese provide aid to the rebels.
The conflicts in Iraq and Syria are to some extent proxy wars that pit Saudi Arabia against Iran.
It seems the arbitrary borders created by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the product of a now long-discredited zeitgeist, may soon themselves become little more than history.
The various Sunni jihadist groups, in particular the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), who are battling the Shia regimes in Iraq and Syria, are attempting to carve out a Sunni emirate in parts of both countries (and possibly also in Jordan).
ISIS formally declared the creation of an Islamic State on June 29, its territory stretching from the northern Syrian province of Aleppo to the eastern Iraqi province of Diyala. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi is its new leader.
But this should come as little surprise. These countries are all artificial creations, the fruits of French and British imperialist cartography following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.
Syria and Iraq (then known as Mesopotamia) were little more than geographic expressions prior to the 20th century. But the Allies would give them definite boundaries, which more or less remained stable until recent years.
In a secret 1916 accord between a British colonel, Sir Mark Sykes, and a French diplomat, François Georges-Picot, London and Paris agreed upon the division of Ottoman territories should the Turks lose the war.
They were believers in the notion that the people of the region would be better off under the European empires.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement carved up the Fertile Crescent. France obtained Lebanon and Syria, while Britain took Iraq and Palestine (today’s Israel and Jordan). Needless to say, no Arabs were consulted.
The deal was formalized by the newly-formed League of Nations after the war; it allocated these territories as “mandates” to be governed by France and Britain. Though the new Iraq was officially designated a kingdom, it was also effectively under British control.
The colonial powers lumped together Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, Christians, and other minorities, with little regard for the animosities these groups had felt towards each other for many centuries.
From the 1950s through the 1990s, pan-Arabists sought to unite the Arab world into one super-state. This failed miserably. Since then, sectarian forms of Islam have replaced secular nationalism as a rallying cry, leading to the present discord in the region.
ISIS’s emergence can be traced to al-Qaeda in Iraq, which arose in response to the American invasion in 2003. The group was active in the insurgency in Iraq, but when civil war broke out along sectarian lines in Syria in 2011, many ISIS members crossed the border to fight with other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups against the Shia Alawite regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Now they are back in Iraq again. One of the reasons they were able to easily take cities like Mosul and Tikrit is because these are fundamentally Sunni cities that feel marginalized by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shia. Many ordinary Sunnis describe this as a popular revolution against a Shia-led government, not a terrorist onslaught.
Given the growing Shia-Sunni war throughout the region, other states and groups have also lined up with ISIS. A large part of their financing comes from wealthy benefactors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf states.
On the other hand, Assad and Maliki depend on arms and money from fellow-Shia Iran. In little Lebanon, itself a microcosm of the region, the country’s Shia militia, Hezbollah, is fighting alongside Syria’s army, while Sunni Lebanese provide aid to the rebels.
The conflicts in Iraq and Syria are to some extent proxy wars that pit Saudi Arabia against Iran.
It seems the arbitrary borders created by the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the product of a now long-discredited zeitgeist, may soon themselves become little more than history.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Why Putin is no Hitler
Henry Srebrnik [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
At his own request, the upper house of the Russian parliament has revoked President Vladimir Putin’s authorization to invade Ukraine. The Federation Council voted 153 to 1 to cancel its resolution of March 1 allowing Putin to send Russian troops to Ukraine.
Yet American officials remain unconvinced that he has backed up words with deeds. They considered the move positive but symbolic, assuming that it was really meant to undercut European support for additional sanctions. Instead, they mocked Putin by calling it a “charm offensive.”
Ever since the crisis in Ukraine began, with the overthrow of the legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, war drums have been beating in the West.
They have defined as “aggression” Putin’s attempts to make certain Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine don’t get trampled by the nationalist Ukrainians in the west – the heirs of those who fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.
To add to the insult, people like Hillary Clinton and Prince Charles, who should know better, have glibly compared Putin to – wait for it – Adolf Hitler! I guess even a lesser tyrant like Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of pre-war Italy, or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad won’t do.
The comparison was due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But that’s a special case.
The great majority of the population of the peninsula, almost physically cut off from the rest of the country, is ethnically, linguistically, and religiously Russian. The majority of its population prefers to be ruled from Moscow rather than Kyiv and it has been part of Russia for centuries.
So why has it been Ukrainian? The answer: a dead dictator’s whim. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev 60 years ago detached Crimea from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and gave it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, without consulting anyone – including the population of the peninsula.
It didn’t matter much anyhow, as in reality everyone in the Soviet Union was ruled from the Kremlin anyway. But after 1991, when the USSR collapsed, the Russians in the Crimea found themselves under Ukrainian sovereignty.
At least this time there was a referendum – the result overwhelmingly favourable to rejoining Russia.
But American observers insisted this annexation, which righted an historical injustice, was only the first step on Moscow’s part to grab more Ukrainian territory. CNN for weeks ran almost daily “breaking news” alarmist clips warning of Russian troop movements near the Ukrainian border – as if there was something illegal about a country moving its forces around within its own territory.
In fact, it’s the outgunned “rebels” in the east, not the Ukrainian army, that have been suffering most of the casualties, and have begged Putin to intervene. The Ukrainian military has been using air strikes and artillery attacks against them.
Unlike Hitler, Putin hasn’t sent forces across the border, though there has been enough provocation for him to invoke an international norm like R2P (“responsibility to protect”) to do so.
Instead, he keeps calling for substantive negotiations between the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and the new president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko – who was elected with virtually no ethnic Russian support.
Putin said that declaring a cease-fire and asking the rebels to disarm without addressing their long-term political grievances would yield nothing. The separatists want increased autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk.
“If we see there are substantive talks, so that people in eastern Ukraine can finally understand how their legal interests will be guaranteed, then there is a high possibility of success,” Putin indicated.
He also charged that Kyiv not done enough to disarm an anti-Russian group called Right Sektor. Without that, it did not make sense to call on the militias in the east to disarm.
The Ukrainian president has now also signed a sweeping trade deal with the European Union that calls for the establishment of a “deep and comprehensive free-trade area.”
Russia sees the agreement as a serious threat to its own historically close ties to Ukraine. “The anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and attempts to artificially impose a choice between Europe and Russia on the Ukrainian people have pushed society toward a split and painful confrontation,” Putin said. But again, there has been no threat of military action by Moscow.
If only Hitler had been more like Putin! The Second World War might never have occurred.
At his own request, the upper house of the Russian parliament has revoked President Vladimir Putin’s authorization to invade Ukraine. The Federation Council voted 153 to 1 to cancel its resolution of March 1 allowing Putin to send Russian troops to Ukraine.
Yet American officials remain unconvinced that he has backed up words with deeds. They considered the move positive but symbolic, assuming that it was really meant to undercut European support for additional sanctions. Instead, they mocked Putin by calling it a “charm offensive.”
Ever since the crisis in Ukraine began, with the overthrow of the legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, war drums have been beating in the West.
They have defined as “aggression” Putin’s attempts to make certain Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine don’t get trampled by the nationalist Ukrainians in the west – the heirs of those who fought alongside Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union in World War II.
To add to the insult, people like Hillary Clinton and Prince Charles, who should know better, have glibly compared Putin to – wait for it – Adolf Hitler! I guess even a lesser tyrant like Benito Mussolini, the fascist leader of pre-war Italy, or Syria’s Bashar al-Assad won’t do.
The comparison was due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. But that’s a special case.
The great majority of the population of the peninsula, almost physically cut off from the rest of the country, is ethnically, linguistically, and religiously Russian. The majority of its population prefers to be ruled from Moscow rather than Kyiv and it has been part of Russia for centuries.
So why has it been Ukrainian? The answer: a dead dictator’s whim. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev 60 years ago detached Crimea from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and gave it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, without consulting anyone – including the population of the peninsula.
It didn’t matter much anyhow, as in reality everyone in the Soviet Union was ruled from the Kremlin anyway. But after 1991, when the USSR collapsed, the Russians in the Crimea found themselves under Ukrainian sovereignty.
At least this time there was a referendum – the result overwhelmingly favourable to rejoining Russia.
But American observers insisted this annexation, which righted an historical injustice, was only the first step on Moscow’s part to grab more Ukrainian territory. CNN for weeks ran almost daily “breaking news” alarmist clips warning of Russian troop movements near the Ukrainian border – as if there was something illegal about a country moving its forces around within its own territory.
In fact, it’s the outgunned “rebels” in the east, not the Ukrainian army, that have been suffering most of the casualties, and have begged Putin to intervene. The Ukrainian military has been using air strikes and artillery attacks against them.
Unlike Hitler, Putin hasn’t sent forces across the border, though there has been enough provocation for him to invoke an international norm like R2P (“responsibility to protect”) to do so.
Instead, he keeps calling for substantive negotiations between the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine and the new president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko – who was elected with virtually no ethnic Russian support.
Putin said that declaring a cease-fire and asking the rebels to disarm without addressing their long-term political grievances would yield nothing. The separatists want increased autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk.
“If we see there are substantive talks, so that people in eastern Ukraine can finally understand how their legal interests will be guaranteed, then there is a high possibility of success,” Putin indicated.
He also charged that Kyiv not done enough to disarm an anti-Russian group called Right Sektor. Without that, it did not make sense to call on the militias in the east to disarm.
The Ukrainian president has now also signed a sweeping trade deal with the European Union that calls for the establishment of a “deep and comprehensive free-trade area.”
Russia sees the agreement as a serious threat to its own historically close ties to Ukraine. “The anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and attempts to artificially impose a choice between Europe and Russia on the Ukrainian people have pushed society toward a split and painful confrontation,” Putin said. But again, there has been no threat of military action by Moscow.
If only Hitler had been more like Putin! The Second World War might never have occurred.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Back to the Future? Battling Jihadis in Africa
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Across a wide swath of North Africa and the Sahel countries, the United States has assumed an old European role: combating Islamist jihadis.
The situation has become worse since the overthrow of Libya’s brutal dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011; many of his former mercenaries, along with their large stockpile of weapons, are now active in this vast region, especially in Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), founded in Algeria in 1998, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a splinter group formed in 2011, took control over a large part of Mali in early 2012; they captured Mali’s three largest northern cities, Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, imposing draconian versions of sharia law. They also damaged or destroyed a number of historical sites on the grounds that they were idolatrous, particularly in Timbuktu.
In January 2013, the old colonial power, France, began operations against the Islamists, aided by African Union troops. The Islamists were pushed into the barren northern deserts but they still remain a danger.
The Central African Republic has also experienced horrific violence, after the mostly Muslim Séléka rebel group seized power in March 2013 in the majority Christian state. They were dislodged by 1,600 French soldiers along with a 6,000-man African Union force, but the violence has continued.
Former colonial power France has done most of the heavy lifting in these former colonies, but the United States has now also become a major presence. In Mali, for instance, American aircraft airlifted the French troops and their vehicles and provided intelligence.
In 2003, the Pan-Sahel Initiative was developed by the U.S. to enhance security in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Two years later, Washington announced the creation of the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative/Partnership to prevent terrorists from establishing a foothold in Africa; it eventually included ten countries.
Its first project, Exercise Flintlock, involved U.S. Special Operations forces training 3,000 soldiers in seven Saharan and sub-Saharan countries. This year it involved soldiers from 18 countries.
In 2007, the Pentagon established its Africa Command (Africom) because, it asserted, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria were increasingly trying to coordinate and synchronize their operations on the African continent.
Today the Pentagon is spending nearly $70 million on training, intelligence-gathering equipment and other support to build a counter-terrorism battalion in Niger and a similar unit in nearby Mauritania. The U.S already launches unarmed surveillance drones from Niger to fly over Mali in support of French and United Nations troops.
Washington also operates a base in the small Red Sea country of Djibouti, adjoining Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland. Camp Lemonnier, with about 4,000 troops, is used to launch counter-terrorism missions, including drone strikes, in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
“My job is to look at Africa and see where the threat to the United States is,” Brigadier- General James B. Linder, who commands U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa, said in a recent interview with the New York Times. “We have a real global threat,” he continued. “The problems in Africa are going to land on our doorstep if we’re not careful.”
When the European powers divided Africa among themselves in the late 19th century, opposition typically came from Muslim peoples. In the Sudan, a fiercely fundamentalist state was established in 1885 when Muhammad Ahmad, who called himself the Mahdi (the Redeemer), defeated a British army at Khartoum. It lasted until 1898.
Further west, in what is now Chad, one of the Mahdi’s disciples, Rabin ibn Fadl Allah, led the resistance against the French. On his death his son followed in his footsteps and fought the French for 15 more years until he died in 1901.
In what are now parts of Mali and Burkina Faso, an Islamic theocratic state known as the Tukulor Empire flourished in the 19th century and successfully held off French military incursions until its defeat in 1893.
A more formidable enemy of the French was Samori Ture, the founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic state that resisted French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until 1898.
MUJAO claims to be a successor to Usman dan Fodio, a 19th-century reformer who waged jihad across West Africa to purify Islam and founded the Sokoto Caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria.
There is nothing new in the Sahel region when it comes to militant insurgencies against non-Muslims, as the European knew and the Americans are learning.
Across a wide swath of North Africa and the Sahel countries, the United States has assumed an old European role: combating Islamist jihadis.
The situation has become worse since the overthrow of Libya’s brutal dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011; many of his former mercenaries, along with their large stockpile of weapons, are now active in this vast region, especially in Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), founded in Algeria in 1998, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a splinter group formed in 2011, took control over a large part of Mali in early 2012; they captured Mali’s three largest northern cities, Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, imposing draconian versions of sharia law. They also damaged or destroyed a number of historical sites on the grounds that they were idolatrous, particularly in Timbuktu.
In January 2013, the old colonial power, France, began operations against the Islamists, aided by African Union troops. The Islamists were pushed into the barren northern deserts but they still remain a danger.
The Central African Republic has also experienced horrific violence, after the mostly Muslim Séléka rebel group seized power in March 2013 in the majority Christian state. They were dislodged by 1,600 French soldiers along with a 6,000-man African Union force, but the violence has continued.
Former colonial power France has done most of the heavy lifting in these former colonies, but the United States has now also become a major presence. In Mali, for instance, American aircraft airlifted the French troops and their vehicles and provided intelligence.
In 2003, the Pan-Sahel Initiative was developed by the U.S. to enhance security in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Two years later, Washington announced the creation of the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative/Partnership to prevent terrorists from establishing a foothold in Africa; it eventually included ten countries.
Its first project, Exercise Flintlock, involved U.S. Special Operations forces training 3,000 soldiers in seven Saharan and sub-Saharan countries. This year it involved soldiers from 18 countries.
In 2007, the Pentagon established its Africa Command (Africom) because, it asserted, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shabaab in Somalia, and Boko Haram in Nigeria were increasingly trying to coordinate and synchronize their operations on the African continent.
Today the Pentagon is spending nearly $70 million on training, intelligence-gathering equipment and other support to build a counter-terrorism battalion in Niger and a similar unit in nearby Mauritania. The U.S already launches unarmed surveillance drones from Niger to fly over Mali in support of French and United Nations troops.
Washington also operates a base in the small Red Sea country of Djibouti, adjoining Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland. Camp Lemonnier, with about 4,000 troops, is used to launch counter-terrorism missions, including drone strikes, in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
“My job is to look at Africa and see where the threat to the United States is,” Brigadier- General James B. Linder, who commands U.S. Special Operations forces in Africa, said in a recent interview with the New York Times. “We have a real global threat,” he continued. “The problems in Africa are going to land on our doorstep if we’re not careful.”
When the European powers divided Africa among themselves in the late 19th century, opposition typically came from Muslim peoples. In the Sudan, a fiercely fundamentalist state was established in 1885 when Muhammad Ahmad, who called himself the Mahdi (the Redeemer), defeated a British army at Khartoum. It lasted until 1898.
Further west, in what is now Chad, one of the Mahdi’s disciples, Rabin ibn Fadl Allah, led the resistance against the French. On his death his son followed in his footsteps and fought the French for 15 more years until he died in 1901.
In what are now parts of Mali and Burkina Faso, an Islamic theocratic state known as the Tukulor Empire flourished in the 19th century and successfully held off French military incursions until its defeat in 1893.
A more formidable enemy of the French was Samori Ture, the founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic state that resisted French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until 1898.
MUJAO claims to be a successor to Usman dan Fodio, a 19th-century reformer who waged jihad across West Africa to purify Islam and founded the Sokoto Caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria.
There is nothing new in the Sahel region when it comes to militant insurgencies against non-Muslims, as the European knew and the Americans are learning.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan Gains Upper Hand over Military
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Last week we saw something unprecedented in Turkey: In a landmark decision meant to curb the power of the country’s massive military establishment, a court sentenced two top former generals, army chief Kenan Evren and air force head Tahsin Sahinkaya, to life imprisonment for leading a 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests and deaths.
Evren, who then served as president of Turkey from 1980 to 1989, claimed the coup had saved Turkey from anarchy after thousands were killed in fighting between militant left-wingers and right-wingers.
Is the Republic of Turkey, the resolutely secular state founded in 1923 by Kemal Ataturk on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, undergoing a fundamental transformation?
Ataturk reformed everything from dress codes to the alphabet during his 15-year reign as president. He even moved the country’s capital from Istanbul, the old imperial capital, to Ankara, in the heart of Anatolia.
And his legacy was guarded for decades afterwards by the Turkish Army. They carried out three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pushed an Islamist-led government led by Necmettin Erbakan from power in 1997. In 1998, his Welfare Party (RP) was banned.
But things have been changing. Since the 1990s, the revival of a Sunni-infused sense of nationalism is transforming the country.
The old republican verities have been challenged, especially by the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself a former member of the Welfare Party, who has been in office since 2003. He has now even taken on the generals, something earlier rulers did at their peril.
His popularity -- he has won three elections in a row -- has afforded him protection while he moved to break their power. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds a majority of the seats in parliament.
Erdogan, who was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994, was himself arrested four years later, sentenced to 10 months in jail for “inciting religious hatred.”
He had publicly read an Islamic poem including the lines “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Because of his criminal record, he was barred from standing in elections or holding political office until 2001.
In another case, 230 army officers who were convicted in 2012 in the so-called “Sledgehammer” trial, accused of taking part in in an alleged plot to topple Erdogan, have been released.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the officers’ rights had been violated in the handling of digital evidence and the refusal to hear testimony from two former top military commanders, as requested by defendants.
So the prime minister is not yet home free, though he himself recently began discrediting the convictions, because many of the prosecutors and investigators are followers of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. He was once Erdogan’s ally but now opposes him.
As well, could the country’s so-called “deep state” return? The term refers to a supposed clandestine network of military officers and their civilian allies who, for decades, suppressed and sometimes murdered anyone thought to pose a threat to the secular order.
Human rights groups accused them of thousands of political deaths and disappearances during the 1990s.
It’s no secret that Erdogan plans to run for president this coming August, when Turkey’s head of state will be directly elected by the people, for the first time ever.
Will there now be genuine civilian oversight when it comes to the armed forces? Has Erdogan actually managed to tame the Turkish military, or will he meet the fate of earlier civilian rulers unseated by coups? Right now, he does seem to have the upper hand.
Last week we saw something unprecedented in Turkey: In a landmark decision meant to curb the power of the country’s massive military establishment, a court sentenced two top former generals, army chief Kenan Evren and air force head Tahsin Sahinkaya, to life imprisonment for leading a 1980 coup that resulted in widespread torture, arrests and deaths.
Evren, who then served as president of Turkey from 1980 to 1989, claimed the coup had saved Turkey from anarchy after thousands were killed in fighting between militant left-wingers and right-wingers.
Is the Republic of Turkey, the resolutely secular state founded in 1923 by Kemal Ataturk on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, undergoing a fundamental transformation?
Ataturk reformed everything from dress codes to the alphabet during his 15-year reign as president. He even moved the country’s capital from Istanbul, the old imperial capital, to Ankara, in the heart of Anatolia.
And his legacy was guarded for decades afterwards by the Turkish Army. They carried out three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pushed an Islamist-led government led by Necmettin Erbakan from power in 1997. In 1998, his Welfare Party (RP) was banned.
But things have been changing. Since the 1990s, the revival of a Sunni-infused sense of nationalism is transforming the country.
The old republican verities have been challenged, especially by the current prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, himself a former member of the Welfare Party, who has been in office since 2003. He has now even taken on the generals, something earlier rulers did at their peril.
His popularity -- he has won three elections in a row -- has afforded him protection while he moved to break their power. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) holds a majority of the seats in parliament.
Erdogan, who was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994, was himself arrested four years later, sentenced to 10 months in jail for “inciting religious hatred.”
He had publicly read an Islamic poem including the lines “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Because of his criminal record, he was barred from standing in elections or holding political office until 2001.
In another case, 230 army officers who were convicted in 2012 in the so-called “Sledgehammer” trial, accused of taking part in in an alleged plot to topple Erdogan, have been released.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled that the officers’ rights had been violated in the handling of digital evidence and the refusal to hear testimony from two former top military commanders, as requested by defendants.
So the prime minister is not yet home free, though he himself recently began discrediting the convictions, because many of the prosecutors and investigators are followers of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. He was once Erdogan’s ally but now opposes him.
As well, could the country’s so-called “deep state” return? The term refers to a supposed clandestine network of military officers and their civilian allies who, for decades, suppressed and sometimes murdered anyone thought to pose a threat to the secular order.
Human rights groups accused them of thousands of political deaths and disappearances during the 1990s.
It’s no secret that Erdogan plans to run for president this coming August, when Turkey’s head of state will be directly elected by the people, for the first time ever.
Will there now be genuine civilian oversight when it comes to the armed forces? Has Erdogan actually managed to tame the Turkish military, or will he meet the fate of earlier civilian rulers unseated by coups? Right now, he does seem to have the upper hand.
So What if Iraq Splinters?
Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax, NS] Chronicle Herald
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been asking Washington to intervene in his war against Sunni insurgents. U.S. President Barack Obama should take a pass.
I was somewhat agnostic about the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. I wasn’t ready to believe Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, nor that he was a major danger to the Middle East.
It seemed to me he was more of a caged beast after the 1991 Gulf War.
Still, I thought, there’s no harm in removing such a tyrant, even if, unlike the fantasists who hoped this would bring democracy to Iraq, I was certain his successors would be little better.
All this proved to be true. America’s attempt at “nation building,” in a place where there is no “nation,” failed, of course. It couldn’t have been otherwise.
Now it looks as if no lessons have been learned in the past decade. I’m old enough to remember the endless propaganda during the Vietnam War about the necessity to “save” South Vietnam – from whom? From themselves, it turned out!
Those of us who felt the United States should simply get out were derided as “defeatists” and “simpletons” who “didn’t understand” the intricacies of international politics, and so on. More than 58,000 American (and millions of Vietnamese) deaths later, it turns out we were right.
The U.S. is again “saving” people who don’t want to be saved. For some reason, it has become paramount, for the “best and the brightest” in Washington, to try to hold together an artificial state created by the British after the First World War, incorporating three groups who clearly have little use for each other – and never have. (Read a history book to see if I’m right.)
Do they really plan to use air power against the Sunnis on behalf of a puppet Shi’ite regime in Baghdad that is beholden to Iran, the most dangerous state in the region? Is America about to become Tehran’s air force?
Let us assume the Sunnis in central Iraq regain control of that part of the country, while the Kurds hold the north, and a rump Shi’ite state emerges in the south. So what? There are already numerous states in the Middle East, why would a few more matter? After a few years, no one will remember this was once a so-called country.
Partition is the worst possible outcome – save for all the others! Or do you think Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would have been better off in a united India, or Arabs and Jews in one-state Palestine? Would you like to put the Yugoslav and Soviet empires back together? Actually, all these peoples would be at each others’ throats.
Good fences may not always make good neighbours; sure, there are still problems between these now separate countries – but having no fences would be even worse.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been asking Washington to intervene in his war against Sunni insurgents. U.S. President Barack Obama should take a pass.
I was somewhat agnostic about the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. I wasn’t ready to believe Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons, nor that he was a major danger to the Middle East.
It seemed to me he was more of a caged beast after the 1991 Gulf War.
Still, I thought, there’s no harm in removing such a tyrant, even if, unlike the fantasists who hoped this would bring democracy to Iraq, I was certain his successors would be little better.
All this proved to be true. America’s attempt at “nation building,” in a place where there is no “nation,” failed, of course. It couldn’t have been otherwise.
Now it looks as if no lessons have been learned in the past decade. I’m old enough to remember the endless propaganda during the Vietnam War about the necessity to “save” South Vietnam – from whom? From themselves, it turned out!
Those of us who felt the United States should simply get out were derided as “defeatists” and “simpletons” who “didn’t understand” the intricacies of international politics, and so on. More than 58,000 American (and millions of Vietnamese) deaths later, it turns out we were right.
The U.S. is again “saving” people who don’t want to be saved. For some reason, it has become paramount, for the “best and the brightest” in Washington, to try to hold together an artificial state created by the British after the First World War, incorporating three groups who clearly have little use for each other – and never have. (Read a history book to see if I’m right.)
Do they really plan to use air power against the Sunnis on behalf of a puppet Shi’ite regime in Baghdad that is beholden to Iran, the most dangerous state in the region? Is America about to become Tehran’s air force?
Let us assume the Sunnis in central Iraq regain control of that part of the country, while the Kurds hold the north, and a rump Shi’ite state emerges in the south. So what? There are already numerous states in the Middle East, why would a few more matter? After a few years, no one will remember this was once a so-called country.
Partition is the worst possible outcome – save for all the others! Or do you think Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis would have been better off in a united India, or Arabs and Jews in one-state Palestine? Would you like to put the Yugoslav and Soviet empires back together? Actually, all these peoples would be at each others’ throats.
Good fences may not always make good neighbours; sure, there are still problems between these now separate countries – but having no fences would be even worse.
Monday, June 23, 2014
Kurds Capitalize on Iraqi Chaos
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Iraq is imploding. The Sunni jihadis of the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have moved to within sight of Baghdad, while the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki becomes more dependent than ever on Iran.
More and more, even Americans – who suffered tens of thousands of soldiers killed and wounded during their occupation of the country between 2003 and 2011-- are staring the obvious in the face: Iraq is really composed of three mutually hostile groups: Arab Sunnis in the center, Arab Shi’ites in the south, and Kurds in the north.
With talk of partition, has the moment of historical opportunity finally arrived for the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of its own? Will one of the results of the current chaos be the formation of a sovereign entity on Kurdish territory?
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United States and Great Britain established a so called “no fly zone” above the 36th parallel in northern Iraq, allowing Kurds in that region to establish a de facto autonomous jurisdiction.
The defeat of Saddam Hussein by the United States in 2003 enabled the Kurds to strengthen their hold. Though divided into two major political groupings, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which were often at odds, the Kurds presented a united front in their efforts to gain control of northern Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdistan is now virtually independent, with its own flag, executive, legislature, and judiciary. Its capital is Erbil (sometimes spelled Arbil).
Last September, Iraqi Kurdistan held its fourth legislative election for the 111-seat Kurdish National Assembly, with the KDP winning 38 seats to the PUK’s 18. A new opposition group, Gorran (the Movement for Change), which split off from the PUK, took 24, while two Islamic parties won another 16.
However, since the parliamentary elections of 2005, the KDP and PUK have ruled the Kurdish region as a united government, though the KDP has had the upper hand. Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Region and son of the famed rebel leader Mustafa Barzani, heads the KDP. The PUK’s leader is Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, who has been ill and holds little power in that largely ceremonial position.
Taking advantage of the turmoil in Iraq, the Kurdish military, known as the Peshmerga, has now seized large tracts of Kurdish-populated territories that had remained disputed and outside its control, including Kirkuk, which the Kurds see as a future capital.
Capturing the city and its huge oil reserves, just outside the area controlled by the Kurdish regional government is a huge achievement.
In Mosul, Sunni insurgents have gained control of the area on the west bank of the Tigris River, the Kurds on the other side.
Will the Kurds be able to gain -- and retain -- cities such as Kirkuk and Mosul, surrounded by oil-rich areas that would enable a Kurdish state to become economically self-sufficient, indeed wealthy? In two decades of de facto autonomy in Iraq's north, the Kurds have proved they can run a civil state.
The Kurds have also benefitted from improved relations with Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergogan, a religious Sunni, is no friend of the Shi’ite regime in Baghdad.
So Ankara and Erbil have built strong economic and diplomatic relations; they have signed a 50-year energy deal and Kurdish oil is being exported via a pipeline that connects the autonomous region to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Turkey is now the KRG’s main business partner.
Last November Erdogan met with KRG President Barzani in the largely Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey. The city was adorned with Turkish and KRG flags.
Earlier this month, Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), declared that the Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land. “Turkey has been supporting the Kurdistan Region,” he said, and will continue to do so.
This is probably the best chance the Kurds have had in 80 years to form a sovereign state in at least a part of their historic patrimony. They are certainly laying the groundwork for it to come to pass.
Iraq is imploding. The Sunni jihadis of the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have moved to within sight of Baghdad, while the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki becomes more dependent than ever on Iran.
More and more, even Americans – who suffered tens of thousands of soldiers killed and wounded during their occupation of the country between 2003 and 2011-- are staring the obvious in the face: Iraq is really composed of three mutually hostile groups: Arab Sunnis in the center, Arab Shi’ites in the south, and Kurds in the north.
With talk of partition, has the moment of historical opportunity finally arrived for the Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a state of its own? Will one of the results of the current chaos be the formation of a sovereign entity on Kurdish territory?
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United States and Great Britain established a so called “no fly zone” above the 36th parallel in northern Iraq, allowing Kurds in that region to establish a de facto autonomous jurisdiction.
The defeat of Saddam Hussein by the United States in 2003 enabled the Kurds to strengthen their hold. Though divided into two major political groupings, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which were often at odds, the Kurds presented a united front in their efforts to gain control of northern Iraq.
Iraqi Kurdistan is now virtually independent, with its own flag, executive, legislature, and judiciary. Its capital is Erbil (sometimes spelled Arbil).
Last September, Iraqi Kurdistan held its fourth legislative election for the 111-seat Kurdish National Assembly, with the KDP winning 38 seats to the PUK’s 18. A new opposition group, Gorran (the Movement for Change), which split off from the PUK, took 24, while two Islamic parties won another 16.
However, since the parliamentary elections of 2005, the KDP and PUK have ruled the Kurdish region as a united government, though the KDP has had the upper hand. Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Region and son of the famed rebel leader Mustafa Barzani, heads the KDP. The PUK’s leader is Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, who has been ill and holds little power in that largely ceremonial position.
Taking advantage of the turmoil in Iraq, the Kurdish military, known as the Peshmerga, has now seized large tracts of Kurdish-populated territories that had remained disputed and outside its control, including Kirkuk, which the Kurds see as a future capital.
Capturing the city and its huge oil reserves, just outside the area controlled by the Kurdish regional government is a huge achievement.
In Mosul, Sunni insurgents have gained control of the area on the west bank of the Tigris River, the Kurds on the other side.
Will the Kurds be able to gain -- and retain -- cities such as Kirkuk and Mosul, surrounded by oil-rich areas that would enable a Kurdish state to become economically self-sufficient, indeed wealthy? In two decades of de facto autonomy in Iraq's north, the Kurds have proved they can run a civil state.
The Kurds have also benefitted from improved relations with Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergogan, a religious Sunni, is no friend of the Shi’ite regime in Baghdad.
So Ankara and Erbil have built strong economic and diplomatic relations; they have signed a 50-year energy deal and Kurdish oil is being exported via a pipeline that connects the autonomous region to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Turkey is now the KRG’s main business partner.
Last November Erdogan met with KRG President Barzani in the largely Kurdish-populated city of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey. The city was adorned with Turkish and KRG flags.
Earlier this month, Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), declared that the Kurds of Iraq have the right to decide the future of their land. “Turkey has been supporting the Kurdistan Region,” he said, and will continue to do so.
This is probably the best chance the Kurds have had in 80 years to form a sovereign state in at least a part of their historic patrimony. They are certainly laying the groundwork for it to come to pass.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Reminiscing About Israel, Then and Now
Henry Srebrnik, [Toronto] Jewish Tribune
In 1972, while a graduate student at Brandeis University outside Boston, I spent the summer at the Mount Scopus (Har ha-Tsofim) campus of the Hebrew University, which had been an enclave within Jordanian east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 and was not reopened until after the Six-Day War. (When the Jordanians denied Israeli access to Mount Scopus, a new campus was built at Givat Ram in western Jerusalem; it was completed in 1958.)
I used to walk down the hill from the campus, through east Jerusalem and the Old City, into West Jerusalem, with its cafes and museums – sometimes even in the evening.
That same summer, I visited the West Bank, including Ramallah, now the capital of the Palestinian Authority. Along with graduate student friends, I travelled down to Sharm el-Shek, the resort at the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula, then occupied by Israel (the town had been renamed Ofira). We slept on the beach at night. Could anyone imagine doing that now?
Israel had come into possession of all these territories in the 1967 Middle East War, and a feeling of elation enveloped the country. During the so-called War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt in the years immediately following the war, Israeli aircraft bombed targets deep within Egyptian territory.
Some of the aerial dogfights that ensued involved Russian pilots flying Egyptian planes. Defence minister Moshe Dayan boasted that Israel could even defeat Egypt’s then ally, the Soviet Union.
Prior to 1967, Israel had been a small country that, unlike today, wasn’t in the news day and night. Tel Aviv looked like a modest European city. (I was there just after the war.) The country had been established by European Jewish pioneers who founded kibbutzim and labour unions.
It had been governed, from independence in 1948 on, by the semi-socialist Labour Party, and secular Haifa was more important than Jerusalem. Most non-Orthodox diaspora Jews did not regard Israel as the very center of their religious or cultural identity.
Israel had not yet become the focus of a global attack by its enemies, many of whom today consider it the very embodiment of evil, a state that must be destroyed.
In some ways, 1967-1973 was a golden age for Israel, but the dangerous sense of hubris set the stage for the catastrophe of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the ideological and political retreats that would follow, and that now place it in grave danger.
In 1972, while a graduate student at Brandeis University outside Boston, I spent the summer at the Mount Scopus (Har ha-Tsofim) campus of the Hebrew University, which had been an enclave within Jordanian east Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967 and was not reopened until after the Six-Day War. (When the Jordanians denied Israeli access to Mount Scopus, a new campus was built at Givat Ram in western Jerusalem; it was completed in 1958.)
I used to walk down the hill from the campus, through east Jerusalem and the Old City, into West Jerusalem, with its cafes and museums – sometimes even in the evening.
That same summer, I visited the West Bank, including Ramallah, now the capital of the Palestinian Authority. Along with graduate student friends, I travelled down to Sharm el-Shek, the resort at the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula, then occupied by Israel (the town had been renamed Ofira). We slept on the beach at night. Could anyone imagine doing that now?
Israel had come into possession of all these territories in the 1967 Middle East War, and a feeling of elation enveloped the country. During the so-called War of Attrition between Israel and Egypt in the years immediately following the war, Israeli aircraft bombed targets deep within Egyptian territory.
Some of the aerial dogfights that ensued involved Russian pilots flying Egyptian planes. Defence minister Moshe Dayan boasted that Israel could even defeat Egypt’s then ally, the Soviet Union.
Prior to 1967, Israel had been a small country that, unlike today, wasn’t in the news day and night. Tel Aviv looked like a modest European city. (I was there just after the war.) The country had been established by European Jewish pioneers who founded kibbutzim and labour unions.
It had been governed, from independence in 1948 on, by the semi-socialist Labour Party, and secular Haifa was more important than Jerusalem. Most non-Orthodox diaspora Jews did not regard Israel as the very center of their religious or cultural identity.
Israel had not yet become the focus of a global attack by its enemies, many of whom today consider it the very embodiment of evil, a state that must be destroyed.
In some ways, 1967-1973 was a golden age for Israel, but the dangerous sense of hubris set the stage for the catastrophe of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the ideological and political retreats that would follow, and that now place it in grave danger.
Czech People Face Adversity Throughout History
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The Czechs may have the saddest history of any European people. At many times, they have been thwarted in their desire for freedom and independence.
The years 1415, 1620, 1938, and 1968, in particular, were disastrous.
The historic lands of Bohemia and Moravia in central Europe have been home to the Czech people since the Middle Ages and an independent Bohemian kingdom existed from the ninth century until 1306, when it became a component, but distinct, kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.
A full century before Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, a Czech theologian, Jan Hus, was burned at the stake for heresy, setting off decades of warfare. Following his execution in 1415, the Hussite movement continued to advance the Czech cause.
The Protestant Reformation gained support in the 16th century; soon some 90 per cent of the Czech population had become Protestant. But in 1620, two years after the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants throughout Europe, the Protestant Czech landowners were defeated by the Imperial Habsburg armies at the Battle of the White Mountain, and Bohemia lost its autonomy.
Now part of the Habsburg Empire, the country for the next three centuries would be ruled from Vienna. Czechs were forced to convert to Catholicism or leave Bohemia and Moravia. Many of the cities became culturally and ethnically German.
Perhaps this is why the Czechs, unlike their Catholic Slavic neighbours in Poland and Slovakia, have worn their religion lightly and have not fused it with their national identity.
Following the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War, a new state, Czechoslovakia, a union of the Czech and Slovak peoples, emerged. However, it also contained the Sudetenland, with its three million Germans, almost one-quarter of the country’s population, and this would lead to disaster two decades later.
At the infamous Munich meetings held in September 1938 between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and Edouard Daladier of France, the Sudetenland was handed over to Nazi Germany, leaving Czechoslovakia virtually defenceless.
Hungary and Poland also bit off small chunks of the country. (My father was part of the Polish army that occupied the Zaolzie region of Cieszyn Silesia.)
In March 1939 Hitler completed the destruction of the country. Slovakia became a separate puppet state, while the Czech lands were incorporated into Nazi Germany, as the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”
The Nazi occupation lasted for most of the war; Prague was not freed until May 8, 1945.After the German defeat the Czechoslovak state was reconstituted and its German inhabitants, now considered “fifth columnists,” were expelled. Three years later, though, the country fell under Soviet domination.
In the 1960s the tight grip of the Communist apparatchiks began to loosen. In January 1968 a reformer, Alexander Dubcek, became the country’s leader. A program adopted in April 1968 set guidelines for a modern, humanistic socialist democracy that would guarantee freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech, as well as abundant consumer goods. It would be “socialism with a human face.”
But in August 1968 Warsaw Pact troops snuffed out Dubcek’s attempt to liberalize Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev claimed that the country was falling into the hands of “western imperialists” and following Dubcek’s overthrow the Soviets installed a regime loyal to Moscow.
Those who could not be intimidated into collaborating were punished or marginalized. When I visited Czechoslovakia in July 1977, I was struck by the contrast between the beauty of the country, Prague in particular, and the despondency and sadness of its inhabitants. The heavy hand of Communist repression was evident everywhere – this was only nine years following the dashed hopes of the “Prague spring.”
However, dissidents regrouped, led by human rights activists and intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel; they founded the group known as Charter 77, which in the 1980s became the Civic Forum, an umbrella group championing bureaucratic reform and civil liberties.
By the late 1980s Communism was a discredited ideology throughout eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia, the “velvet revolution” of November-December1989 – a very secular affair – would be followed by the “velvet divorce” of January 1993, which split the country into Czech and Slovak states. Following the collapse of the Communist regime, Havel had become president of the country.
Today’s Czech Republic is a homogenous, liberal multi-party parliamentary democracy, and a member of both the European Union and NATO. The current president is Milos Zeman, of the Party of Civic Rights. The prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Social Democratic Party, heads a three-party coalition government. The Czechs, it seems, have finally overcome their sad history.
The Czechs may have the saddest history of any European people. At many times, they have been thwarted in their desire for freedom and independence.
The years 1415, 1620, 1938, and 1968, in particular, were disastrous.
The historic lands of Bohemia and Moravia in central Europe have been home to the Czech people since the Middle Ages and an independent Bohemian kingdom existed from the ninth century until 1306, when it became a component, but distinct, kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire.
A full century before Martin Luther inaugurated the Protestant Reformation, a Czech theologian, Jan Hus, was burned at the stake for heresy, setting off decades of warfare. Following his execution in 1415, the Hussite movement continued to advance the Czech cause.
The Protestant Reformation gained support in the 16th century; soon some 90 per cent of the Czech population had become Protestant. But in 1620, two years after the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War between Catholics and Protestants throughout Europe, the Protestant Czech landowners were defeated by the Imperial Habsburg armies at the Battle of the White Mountain, and Bohemia lost its autonomy.
Now part of the Habsburg Empire, the country for the next three centuries would be ruled from Vienna. Czechs were forced to convert to Catholicism or leave Bohemia and Moravia. Many of the cities became culturally and ethnically German.
Perhaps this is why the Czechs, unlike their Catholic Slavic neighbours in Poland and Slovakia, have worn their religion lightly and have not fused it with their national identity.
Following the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the First World War, a new state, Czechoslovakia, a union of the Czech and Slovak peoples, emerged. However, it also contained the Sudetenland, with its three million Germans, almost one-quarter of the country’s population, and this would lead to disaster two decades later.
At the infamous Munich meetings held in September 1938 between Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and Edouard Daladier of France, the Sudetenland was handed over to Nazi Germany, leaving Czechoslovakia virtually defenceless.
Hungary and Poland also bit off small chunks of the country. (My father was part of the Polish army that occupied the Zaolzie region of Cieszyn Silesia.)
In March 1939 Hitler completed the destruction of the country. Slovakia became a separate puppet state, while the Czech lands were incorporated into Nazi Germany, as the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.”
The Nazi occupation lasted for most of the war; Prague was not freed until May 8, 1945.After the German defeat the Czechoslovak state was reconstituted and its German inhabitants, now considered “fifth columnists,” were expelled. Three years later, though, the country fell under Soviet domination.
In the 1960s the tight grip of the Communist apparatchiks began to loosen. In January 1968 a reformer, Alexander Dubcek, became the country’s leader. A program adopted in April 1968 set guidelines for a modern, humanistic socialist democracy that would guarantee freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech, as well as abundant consumer goods. It would be “socialism with a human face.”
But in August 1968 Warsaw Pact troops snuffed out Dubcek’s attempt to liberalize Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev claimed that the country was falling into the hands of “western imperialists” and following Dubcek’s overthrow the Soviets installed a regime loyal to Moscow.
Those who could not be intimidated into collaborating were punished or marginalized. When I visited Czechoslovakia in July 1977, I was struck by the contrast between the beauty of the country, Prague in particular, and the despondency and sadness of its inhabitants. The heavy hand of Communist repression was evident everywhere – this was only nine years following the dashed hopes of the “Prague spring.”
However, dissidents regrouped, led by human rights activists and intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel; they founded the group known as Charter 77, which in the 1980s became the Civic Forum, an umbrella group championing bureaucratic reform and civil liberties.
By the late 1980s Communism was a discredited ideology throughout eastern Europe. In Czechoslovakia, the “velvet revolution” of November-December1989 – a very secular affair – would be followed by the “velvet divorce” of January 1993, which split the country into Czech and Slovak states. Following the collapse of the Communist regime, Havel had become president of the country.
Today’s Czech Republic is a homogenous, liberal multi-party parliamentary democracy, and a member of both the European Union and NATO. The current president is Milos Zeman, of the Party of Civic Rights. The prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka of the Czech Social Democratic Party, heads a three-party coalition government. The Czechs, it seems, have finally overcome their sad history.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Le Pen, the National Front, and France
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Who is Jean-Marie Le Pen? This is no idle question, as he is the founder of a French political party that has been making significant gains in recent years and, as such, he remains an important figure in his country.
Capitalizing on anti-Muslim sentiment and anger about the state of the French economy, the party he created, the National Front (NF), came first in French balloting for the European parliament elections held this past May, with a full 25 per cent of the vote.
Born in 1928, Le Pen led the NF from its foundation in 1972 until 2011. His longevity in politics and his five attempts to become president of France have made him a fixture on the political right.
Le Pen’s political career began in Paris in 1956, when he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade’s populist party, the Union de Defense Commercants et Artisans. Le Pen was a deputy until 1962, and again (for the NF) from 1986 to 1988.
In 1984, Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament and has been continuously re-elected since then, though in 2000 he was banned from public office and stripped of his seat for one year, following a 1998 conviction for assaulting a Socialist politician the year before.
In the 2002 presidential election, he obtained 16.86 per cent of the votes in the first round, good for second place, before losing badly to incumbent Jacques Chirac in the run-off. He finished fourth in the 2007 election. His daughter Marine Le Pen, who has headed the party since 2011, finished third in the 2012 presidential election, with 17.9 per cent of the vote.
Ever since the French Revolution, France has been divided by two ideological strands: the first is the Jacobin republicanism of liberty, equality, fraternity, the second the organic Catholic nationalism and monarchism that morphed into fascism and racism in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The former championed secularism, universalism and anti-clericalism. Its advocates prevailed in the famous Dreyfus case at the turn of the 20th century, when a Jewish army officer who had been falsely imprisoned as a German spy by anti-Semitic elements in the general staff was exonerated. The issue divided France from the affair’s inception in 1894 until its resolution in 1906.
The right-wing tradition culminated in the Nazi collaborationist Vichy government in the Second World War under Marshal Philippe Pétain, when some 90,000 Jews were sent to their deaths.
The decades preceding the 1940 defeat of republicanism saw the rise of fascist movements and ideologues.In January1934, fascist groups in Paris rioted trying to overthrow the Third Republic.
Writers such as Edouard Drumont, Maurice Barrès, Drieu La Rochelle, and Charles Maurras presented a resurgent clericalism and a heightened xenophobia as the solution to France’s malaise, in opposition to the Enlightenment rationality of the left.
The Vichyites, defeated in the Second World War, lost their ideological and political power, and their ideas became anathema to most. Upon his conviction in 1945 for “complicity with the enemy” during the German occupation, Maurras exclaimed: “It’s Dreyfus’s revenge!”
But has the National Front emerged out of this tarnished tradition? Le Pen himself certainly has. Already in the 1960s, he called for the rehabilitation of collaborationists, asking “Was General de Gaulle more brave than Marshal Pétain? It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France.”
Le Pen was fined by a French court in 1996 for saying that the gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were “merely a detail in the history of the Second World War.” Three years later a German court fined him for a similar comment judged to have minimised the Holocaust.
In 2004 France’s highest court convicted him of inciting racial hatred for telling a newspaper in 2003 that Muslims would one day run France and strike fear into the hearts of the non-Muslim population.
Marine Le Pen has modified the party’s positions while remaining opposed to the European Union. She also favours a “radical change of politics” in order to drastically reduce the influx of illegal immigrants towards France, as well as a moratorium on legal immigration.
The NF leader maintains that the party resolutely “condemns any form of anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.” She has rebuked her father for recent remarks many construed as anti-Semitic. Indeed, she even hopes the NF gains some Jewish support, since the main danger to the French Jewish community now comes from Islamist radicals.
Who is Jean-Marie Le Pen? This is no idle question, as he is the founder of a French political party that has been making significant gains in recent years and, as such, he remains an important figure in his country.
Capitalizing on anti-Muslim sentiment and anger about the state of the French economy, the party he created, the National Front (NF), came first in French balloting for the European parliament elections held this past May, with a full 25 per cent of the vote.
Born in 1928, Le Pen led the NF from its foundation in 1972 until 2011. His longevity in politics and his five attempts to become president of France have made him a fixture on the political right.
Le Pen’s political career began in Paris in 1956, when he was elected to the National Assembly as a member of Pierre Poujade’s populist party, the Union de Defense Commercants et Artisans. Le Pen was a deputy until 1962, and again (for the NF) from 1986 to 1988.
In 1984, Le Pen won a seat in the European Parliament and has been continuously re-elected since then, though in 2000 he was banned from public office and stripped of his seat for one year, following a 1998 conviction for assaulting a Socialist politician the year before.
In the 2002 presidential election, he obtained 16.86 per cent of the votes in the first round, good for second place, before losing badly to incumbent Jacques Chirac in the run-off. He finished fourth in the 2007 election. His daughter Marine Le Pen, who has headed the party since 2011, finished third in the 2012 presidential election, with 17.9 per cent of the vote.
Ever since the French Revolution, France has been divided by two ideological strands: the first is the Jacobin republicanism of liberty, equality, fraternity, the second the organic Catholic nationalism and monarchism that morphed into fascism and racism in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The former championed secularism, universalism and anti-clericalism. Its advocates prevailed in the famous Dreyfus case at the turn of the 20th century, when a Jewish army officer who had been falsely imprisoned as a German spy by anti-Semitic elements in the general staff was exonerated. The issue divided France from the affair’s inception in 1894 until its resolution in 1906.
The right-wing tradition culminated in the Nazi collaborationist Vichy government in the Second World War under Marshal Philippe Pétain, when some 90,000 Jews were sent to their deaths.
The decades preceding the 1940 defeat of republicanism saw the rise of fascist movements and ideologues.In January1934, fascist groups in Paris rioted trying to overthrow the Third Republic.
Writers such as Edouard Drumont, Maurice Barrès, Drieu La Rochelle, and Charles Maurras presented a resurgent clericalism and a heightened xenophobia as the solution to France’s malaise, in opposition to the Enlightenment rationality of the left.
The Vichyites, defeated in the Second World War, lost their ideological and political power, and their ideas became anathema to most. Upon his conviction in 1945 for “complicity with the enemy” during the German occupation, Maurras exclaimed: “It’s Dreyfus’s revenge!”
But has the National Front emerged out of this tarnished tradition? Le Pen himself certainly has. Already in the 1960s, he called for the rehabilitation of collaborationists, asking “Was General de Gaulle more brave than Marshal Pétain? It was much easier to resist in London than to resist in France.”
Le Pen was fined by a French court in 1996 for saying that the gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were “merely a detail in the history of the Second World War.” Three years later a German court fined him for a similar comment judged to have minimised the Holocaust.
In 2004 France’s highest court convicted him of inciting racial hatred for telling a newspaper in 2003 that Muslims would one day run France and strike fear into the hearts of the non-Muslim population.
Marine Le Pen has modified the party’s positions while remaining opposed to the European Union. She also favours a “radical change of politics” in order to drastically reduce the influx of illegal immigrants towards France, as well as a moratorium on legal immigration.
The NF leader maintains that the party resolutely “condemns any form of anti-Semitism in the strongest terms.” She has rebuked her father for recent remarks many construed as anti-Semitic. Indeed, she even hopes the NF gains some Jewish support, since the main danger to the French Jewish community now comes from Islamist radicals.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The Revolt in China's Uighur Autonomous Region
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the far west of the People’s Republic of China is more than 1.6 million square kilometres in area.
An arid region that historically was called East Turkestan, it is the homeland of the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people. In recent decades, though, Han Chinese moved in and took the better jobs and housing.
Today it is estimated that Uighurs make up only about 45 per cent of its 22 million people. Most of Xinjiang's Uighurs live in the southwestern portion of the region, in the Tarim Basin.
The influx of Chinese settlers has sparked resentment and calls for an independent Uighur state. But the Uighur struggle to assert a right to national self-determination is a difficult one. Unlike most formerly colonized peoples around the world, the Uighurs have never benefited from the fruits of de-colonization, since they were absorbed by a non-western neighbouring state, China.
Beijing refuses to acknowledge that it acts as a colonial power in the region; after all, it considers itself as having also been historically a victim of imperialism.
A Uighur Empire stretched from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria from 745 to 840 but it fragmented into smaller kingdoms and eventually came under Mongol control. Originally Buddhists, the Uighurs were converted to Islam by the beginning of the 16th century.
Xinjiang was conquered by the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in the mid-18th century and the Uighurs became subjects of the Chinese emperors.
Since then, there have been periodic uprisings against Chinese domination. In 1933 and 1944, the Uighurs temporarily gained their independence from Nationalist China, backed by the Soviet Union. The second East Turkistan Republic lasted from 1944 to 1949.
In 1949, the Chinese Communists took over the territory and declared it a Chinese province. In October 1955, Xinjiang was classified as an autonomous region.
There are ideological divisions among the Uighur nationalists. Some Uighurs call for an Islamic state, while others support a more ethnically independent and self-governing East Turkestan.
In July 2009, ethnic tension between the Han Chinese and Uighurs led to severe riots in the capital city of Urumqi. According to Chinese state media, almost 200 people were killed, and more than 800 injured.
There has been an upsurge in violence since then. In June 2012, six ethnic Uighur men tried to hijack an aircraft heading to Urumqi, but failed after passengers and crew resisted and restrained the hijackers. A year later, 27 people were killed in disturbances in the township of Lukqun; 17 of them were killed by rioters, while the other ten were alleged assailants who were shot dead by police.
At least 29 people were killed in early March in an attack at a railway station in the Chinese city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. It was an organised, premeditated assault by knife-wielding Uighur assailants, according to the Chinese Xinhua news agency.
In late May, attackers in two cars ploughed through shoppers while setting off explosives at a busy street market in Urumqi, killing 39 people. The Xinjiang regional government, which is Chinese-controlled, said in a statement that it was “a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature.”
In response, China’s president Xi Jinping has called for moving more Uighurs to inland areas of China in order “to enhance mutual understanding among different ethnic groups and boost ties between them.”
All told, at least 180 people have been killed in attacks across China over the past year. But the anti-colonial goals that motivate Uighur nationalists to work to construct a modern Uighur nation remain unfulfilled. The plight of the Uighurs should command more attention.
The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in the far west of the People’s Republic of China is more than 1.6 million square kilometres in area.
An arid region that historically was called East Turkestan, it is the homeland of the Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim people. In recent decades, though, Han Chinese moved in and took the better jobs and housing.
Today it is estimated that Uighurs make up only about 45 per cent of its 22 million people. Most of Xinjiang's Uighurs live in the southwestern portion of the region, in the Tarim Basin.
The influx of Chinese settlers has sparked resentment and calls for an independent Uighur state. But the Uighur struggle to assert a right to national self-determination is a difficult one. Unlike most formerly colonized peoples around the world, the Uighurs have never benefited from the fruits of de-colonization, since they were absorbed by a non-western neighbouring state, China.
Beijing refuses to acknowledge that it acts as a colonial power in the region; after all, it considers itself as having also been historically a victim of imperialism.
A Uighur Empire stretched from the Caspian Sea to Manchuria from 745 to 840 but it fragmented into smaller kingdoms and eventually came under Mongol control. Originally Buddhists, the Uighurs were converted to Islam by the beginning of the 16th century.
Xinjiang was conquered by the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in the mid-18th century and the Uighurs became subjects of the Chinese emperors.
Since then, there have been periodic uprisings against Chinese domination. In 1933 and 1944, the Uighurs temporarily gained their independence from Nationalist China, backed by the Soviet Union. The second East Turkistan Republic lasted from 1944 to 1949.
In 1949, the Chinese Communists took over the territory and declared it a Chinese province. In October 1955, Xinjiang was classified as an autonomous region.
There are ideological divisions among the Uighur nationalists. Some Uighurs call for an Islamic state, while others support a more ethnically independent and self-governing East Turkestan.
In July 2009, ethnic tension between the Han Chinese and Uighurs led to severe riots in the capital city of Urumqi. According to Chinese state media, almost 200 people were killed, and more than 800 injured.
There has been an upsurge in violence since then. In June 2012, six ethnic Uighur men tried to hijack an aircraft heading to Urumqi, but failed after passengers and crew resisted and restrained the hijackers. A year later, 27 people were killed in disturbances in the township of Lukqun; 17 of them were killed by rioters, while the other ten were alleged assailants who were shot dead by police.
At least 29 people were killed in early March in an attack at a railway station in the Chinese city of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. It was an organised, premeditated assault by knife-wielding Uighur assailants, according to the Chinese Xinhua news agency.
In late May, attackers in two cars ploughed through shoppers while setting off explosives at a busy street market in Urumqi, killing 39 people. The Xinjiang regional government, which is Chinese-controlled, said in a statement that it was “a serious violent terrorist incident of a particularly vile nature.”
In response, China’s president Xi Jinping has called for moving more Uighurs to inland areas of China in order “to enhance mutual understanding among different ethnic groups and boost ties between them.”
All told, at least 180 people have been killed in attacks across China over the past year. But the anti-colonial goals that motivate Uighur nationalists to work to construct a modern Uighur nation remain unfulfilled. The plight of the Uighurs should command more attention.
Monday, June 09, 2014
Pope Francis in the Middle East
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Pope Francis I visited Jordan, the Palestinian West Bank, and Israel in May. The three-day pilgrimage was his second trip outside Rome since becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.
In Bethlehem, Francis called for “a stable peace based on justice, on the recognition of the rights of every individual, and on mutual security,” and for intensified efforts for the creation of two states, Palestinian and Israeli, before moving on to Israel.
He also invited Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli and Palestinian presidents, to pay a symbolic visit to the Vatican to pray for peace.
To say that the Church historically had a contentious relationship with the Jewish people is an understatement.
For some two millennia, the Church considered itself the successor to the Biblical covenant between the Israelites and God and, as the “new Israel,” the proper heir to the “promised land.”
The Jewish people were doomed to a diasporic existence; their very lives would be circumscribed and they would remain at the mercy of their Christian neighbors.
Clearly, for the Church, the rise of Jewish nationalism in the 19th century, with its program of reconstituting a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, was theological anathema.
But the Zionist movement sought allies wherever it could find them, and the founder of the World Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl, even made entreaties to the Vatican. In 1904, he asked Pope Pius X for help in his efforts to establish a modern Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish nation. Pius rejected the request.
At the time of the 1947 UN decision to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the Vatican expressed its support for Jerusalem to become a “corpus separatum” under an international regime. And when Pope Paul VI visited Israel 50 years ago he never once uttered the name of the Jewish state, preferring to call it the Holy Land. He avoided meeting with Israeli statesmen.
But things would begin to improve. “Nostra Aetate,” the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions,” was passed by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. The document absolved the Jewish people as a whole of deicide: “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God,” it asserted.
This theological pivot led to a sea change in Church relations with the Jewish state, especially under John Paul II, the Polish pope. In 1985 the State of Israel was for the first time mentioned by name in a public Vatican document, and the Holy See established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993.
By 2000 John Paul had prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He met with the president, the prime minister and the chief rabbis of Israel. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI followed the same itinerary.
In February 2013, a papal conclave elected the Argentinian Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Benedict’s successor.
As archbishop, the future pope had cultivated closer relations with Argentina’s large Jewish community. He attended services at a synagogue in 2007 and told the congregation that he was there to examine his heart “like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers.”
In 2012 he hosted a Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, commemorating the Nazi destruction of Jewish lives and property in Germany in November 1938.
As Francis I, the pope has followed in the footsteps of his two predecessors. Addressing a delegation in Rome in June 2013, Pope Francis described “Nostra Aetate” as a “key point of reference” for Catholic relations with the Jewish people.
“A Christian cannot be anti-Semitic,” he declared, due to “our common roots” with the Jewish people. And he has praised the Jews for remaining faithful to God “despite the awful trials of these last centuries.”
In Jerusalem, Pope Francis laid a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl. The symbolism was evident to all.
Pope Francis I visited Jordan, the Palestinian West Bank, and Israel in May. The three-day pilgrimage was his second trip outside Rome since becoming head of the Roman Catholic Church.
In Bethlehem, Francis called for “a stable peace based on justice, on the recognition of the rights of every individual, and on mutual security,” and for intensified efforts for the creation of two states, Palestinian and Israeli, before moving on to Israel.
He also invited Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli and Palestinian presidents, to pay a symbolic visit to the Vatican to pray for peace.
To say that the Church historically had a contentious relationship with the Jewish people is an understatement.
For some two millennia, the Church considered itself the successor to the Biblical covenant between the Israelites and God and, as the “new Israel,” the proper heir to the “promised land.”
The Jewish people were doomed to a diasporic existence; their very lives would be circumscribed and they would remain at the mercy of their Christian neighbors.
Clearly, for the Church, the rise of Jewish nationalism in the 19th century, with its program of reconstituting a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, was theological anathema.
But the Zionist movement sought allies wherever it could find them, and the founder of the World Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl, even made entreaties to the Vatican. In 1904, he asked Pope Pius X for help in his efforts to establish a modern Jewish state in the historic homeland of the Jewish nation. Pius rejected the request.
At the time of the 1947 UN decision to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, the Vatican expressed its support for Jerusalem to become a “corpus separatum” under an international regime. And when Pope Paul VI visited Israel 50 years ago he never once uttered the name of the Jewish state, preferring to call it the Holy Land. He avoided meeting with Israeli statesmen.
But things would begin to improve. “Nostra Aetate,” the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions,” was passed by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. The document absolved the Jewish people as a whole of deicide: “The Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God,” it asserted.
This theological pivot led to a sea change in Church relations with the Jewish state, especially under John Paul II, the Polish pope. In 1985 the State of Israel was for the first time mentioned by name in a public Vatican document, and the Holy See established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993.
By 2000 John Paul had prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He met with the president, the prime minister and the chief rabbis of Israel. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI followed the same itinerary.
In February 2013, a papal conclave elected the Argentinian Jesuit Jorge Mario Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Benedict’s successor.
As archbishop, the future pope had cultivated closer relations with Argentina’s large Jewish community. He attended services at a synagogue in 2007 and told the congregation that he was there to examine his heart “like a pilgrim, together with you, my elder brothers.”
In 2012 he hosted a Kristallnacht memorial event at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, commemorating the Nazi destruction of Jewish lives and property in Germany in November 1938.
As Francis I, the pope has followed in the footsteps of his two predecessors. Addressing a delegation in Rome in June 2013, Pope Francis described “Nostra Aetate” as a “key point of reference” for Catholic relations with the Jewish people.
“A Christian cannot be anti-Semitic,” he declared, due to “our common roots” with the Jewish people. And he has praised the Jews for remaining faithful to God “despite the awful trials of these last centuries.”
In Jerusalem, Pope Francis laid a wreath on the grave of Theodor Herzl. The symbolism was evident to all.
Monday, June 02, 2014
Populist Anti-EU Parties Make Gains in Elections for European Parliament
Henry Srebrnik. [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
While much of the world’s eyes were on Ukraine, and wondering about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, populist parties often tinged with xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, made gains in May’s elections to the European Parliament, the legislative body for the 28-member European Union.
Parties strongly opposed to the European Union performed well in several countries, including France, Denmark, Greece, and Britain.
Much of this was fuelled by opposition to Muslim immigration into the continent, and the feeling that EU apparatchiks in Brussels, rather than national parliaments, were increasingly in control of policies. Mass unemployment and economic austerity added to the discontent.
The 751- member European Parliament, which meets in Brussels as well as Strasbourg, seems remote from most voters, who still define themselves first and foremost as members of their respective nations rather than as abstract “Europeans.” Yet its principal concern, according to Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research group, “has been to get more power for itself and more money for the European Union.”
This does not go over well in hard economic times, and protest parties are making the most of the situation.
Most startling was the French result, where the far-right National Front (NF) won about 26 per cent of the vote, edging out the two major parties, President François Holland’s governing Socialists and the Union for a Popular Movement. The NF won 25 of the 74 seats allocated to France in the European Parliament.
The NF quadrupled its vote from the six per cent they won at the last European parliamentary elections in 2009. Its support has been driven by growing discontent with historically high jobless claims and an economy that has barely grown in two years.
Marine Le Pen, the NF’s leader, told supporters that “The people have spoken loud and clear.” They no longer want to be led “by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny.”
In Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) won 28 per cent of the vote, ahead of both the Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron and the main opposition Labour Party. This almost doubled the 16.5 per cent the UKIP secured in 2009 and brought it 24 of the country’s 73 seats.
Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, asserted that this would help those in Britain and elsewhere who want to slash the European Union’s powers and return decision-making to individual states.
“As members of this union we cannot run our own country and crucially, we cannot control our own borders,” said Farage. “I don't just want Britain to leave the European Union,” he added. “I want Europe to leave the European Union.”
The far-right Danish People’s Party became Denmark’s biggest party with 27 per cent of the vote and doubled its number of seats in the European parliament from two to four of Denmark’s 13 member delegation. It had campaigned to reclaim border controls and curb benefits to other EU citizens living in Denmark.
The anti-euro Alternative for Germany party won its first seats in any election in that country with seven per cent of the German vote, good for seven of Germany’s 94 seats. “It’s springtime in Germany,” leader Bernd Lucke told chanting supporters in Berlin. “Some flowers are blooming and others are wilting.”
In Greece, best by economic troubles and an unemployment rate of 27 per cent, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn picked up votes, while the far left made even greater gains. Golden Dawn will enter the European Parliament for the first time after winning nine per cent of the vote and three of 21 seats, a third place finish.
“I congratulate you for managing to resist the government’s terrorism and for not believing their lies,” Nikos Michaloliakos, the party leader, declared. “We are the only political power that actually stands up against our state being run by foreign powers.
In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik, also had some cause to celebrate. While it won 14.7 per cent of the vote, the same as in 2009, with its three of Hungary’s 21 seats it beat out the Socialists to become the country’s largest opposition party at the EU level.
“I have important news for you: today Jobbik is the second largest party in Hungary,” Gabor Vona, the Jobbik leader told cheering supporters. “We all want a common Europe, but a different one to what we have at the moment.”
While much of the world’s eyes were on Ukraine, and wondering about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, populist parties often tinged with xenophobic, racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, made gains in May’s elections to the European Parliament, the legislative body for the 28-member European Union.
Parties strongly opposed to the European Union performed well in several countries, including France, Denmark, Greece, and Britain.
Much of this was fuelled by opposition to Muslim immigration into the continent, and the feeling that EU apparatchiks in Brussels, rather than national parliaments, were increasingly in control of policies. Mass unemployment and economic austerity added to the discontent.
The 751- member European Parliament, which meets in Brussels as well as Strasbourg, seems remote from most voters, who still define themselves first and foremost as members of their respective nations rather than as abstract “Europeans.” Yet its principal concern, according to Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research group, “has been to get more power for itself and more money for the European Union.”
This does not go over well in hard economic times, and protest parties are making the most of the situation.
Most startling was the French result, where the far-right National Front (NF) won about 26 per cent of the vote, edging out the two major parties, President François Holland’s governing Socialists and the Union for a Popular Movement. The NF won 25 of the 74 seats allocated to France in the European Parliament.
The NF quadrupled its vote from the six per cent they won at the last European parliamentary elections in 2009. Its support has been driven by growing discontent with historically high jobless claims and an economy that has barely grown in two years.
Marine Le Pen, the NF’s leader, told supporters that “The people have spoken loud and clear.” They no longer want to be led “by those outside our borders, by EU commissioners and technocrats who are unelected. They want to be protected from globalization and take back the reins of their destiny.”
In Britain, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) won 28 per cent of the vote, ahead of both the Conservatives of Prime Minister David Cameron and the main opposition Labour Party. This almost doubled the 16.5 per cent the UKIP secured in 2009 and brought it 24 of the country’s 73 seats.
Nigel Farage, the UKIP leader, asserted that this would help those in Britain and elsewhere who want to slash the European Union’s powers and return decision-making to individual states.
“As members of this union we cannot run our own country and crucially, we cannot control our own borders,” said Farage. “I don't just want Britain to leave the European Union,” he added. “I want Europe to leave the European Union.”
The far-right Danish People’s Party became Denmark’s biggest party with 27 per cent of the vote and doubled its number of seats in the European parliament from two to four of Denmark’s 13 member delegation. It had campaigned to reclaim border controls and curb benefits to other EU citizens living in Denmark.
The anti-euro Alternative for Germany party won its first seats in any election in that country with seven per cent of the German vote, good for seven of Germany’s 94 seats. “It’s springtime in Germany,” leader Bernd Lucke told chanting supporters in Berlin. “Some flowers are blooming and others are wilting.”
In Greece, best by economic troubles and an unemployment rate of 27 per cent, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn picked up votes, while the far left made even greater gains. Golden Dawn will enter the European Parliament for the first time after winning nine per cent of the vote and three of 21 seats, a third place finish.
“I congratulate you for managing to resist the government’s terrorism and for not believing their lies,” Nikos Michaloliakos, the party leader, declared. “We are the only political power that actually stands up against our state being run by foreign powers.
In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik, also had some cause to celebrate. While it won 14.7 per cent of the vote, the same as in 2009, with its three of Hungary’s 21 seats it beat out the Socialists to become the country’s largest opposition party at the EU level.
“I have important news for you: today Jobbik is the second largest party in Hungary,” Gabor Vona, the Jobbik leader told cheering supporters. “We all want a common Europe, but a different one to what we have at the moment.”
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Vichy France is a Cautionary Tale
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
We are coming up to the 70th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the liberation of France began. But four years earlier, a defeated France had effectively become a fascist state -- and it’s amazing how quick was the transformation.
Within a few weeks of the country’s invasion by Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940, the French government surrendered and signed an armistice with Adolf Hitler on June 22. (Remember, France was not conquered, the way Belgium or Poland were, so had no government-in-exile that had escaped the country.)
The armistice gave Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied.
And almost immediately, the country was transformed into an authoritarian state. On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly, summoned to ratify the armistice, granted the hero of France’s success in the First World War, 84-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, authority to promulgate a new constitution. The vote, 569 in favour, 80 against, 18 abstentions, wasn’t even close. The Third Republic ceased to exist.
Pétain was able, the very next day, to assume in his own name full legislative and executive powers in the new political order. The République Francais was replaced by l'État Francais , the republican slogan “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (“Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood”) by “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”). The French tricolour flag now included in the middle Pétain’s personal emblem, a stylised francisque, an axe said to have been used in the early Middle Ages by the Franks.
The national holiday, Bastille Day, became a day of mourning, and the stirring French national anthem, the “Marseillaise,” gave way to a song of praise, “Maréchal, Nous Voila !” (“Marshal, Here we Are!”) for Pétain. He was now the “Chef de l'État Francais,” his portraits soon everywhere.
The Vichy government declared neutrality in the war between Germany and Great Britain, but was committed by the armistice provisions to cooperation with Germany. The aged Pétain now had become a Nazi collaborator – even though he had briefly served as prime minister in the last democratic government. There is an infamous photo of him shaking hands with Hitler on Oct. 24, 1940, in the town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir.
The Vichy prime minister and head of day-to-day governance between April 18, 1942 and August 20, 1944, Pierre Laval, had twice served as a prime minister in the Third Republic in the 1930s.
Vichy France, as the country became known – because the collaborationist regime was located in the town of Vichy, in the southern “unoccupied zone” – remained, even in the eyes of the Allies fighting Germany, the sovereign and legitimate government of France, technically ruler over the entire country.
Vichy continued to be recognized as such by, among others, Canada and the United States, for at least two more years.
French colonial officials in the country’s overseas empire also at first were loyal to Vichy – as everyone who has seen the 1942 movie “Casablanca” knows. In one of the film’s very first scenes, the wall of a building is painted with a large picture of Marshal Pétain and a quote attributed to him.
In the first years after the 1940 defeat, much of the war-weary French population fell in behind Pétain. General Charles de Gaulle, who had fled to England after the fall of France, faced a lonely uphill battle at first, as he formed the Free French forces abroad and encouraged the anti-Nazi resistance inside France. The French flag with the Cross of Lorraine in the centre was the emblem of the Free French.
Pétain blamed the Third Republic and its endemic corruption for the French defeat. He rejected its secular and liberal traditions in favour of an authoritarian, paternalist, Catholic society. Vichy even produced a legion of volunteers to fight against Soviet Russia.
But Vichy’s so-called “Révolution Nationale” (“National Revolution”) included the passage of numerous anti-Semitic laws. When France fell, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in the country. As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures.
In 1941 the regime mounted a major anti-Semitic exhibition, “le Juif et la France” (“The Jew and France”), in Paris, depicting the Jews as a criminal race responsible for all of France’s problems. It is estimated that around 200,000 people visited the exhibition.
French Jews were denaturalized, and in many cases rounded up by French (not German) police and sent to death camps. According to historian Robert Paxton, some 90.000 Jews living in France were killed in the Holocaust.
In 1995 President Jacques Chirac publicly recognized France's responsibility for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation. His statement put an end to decades of equivocation by successive French Governments about France’s wartime role.
The French Vichy regime remains a cautionary tale, as it demonstrates how quickly a democratic political order can be reversed.
We are coming up to the 70th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when the liberation of France began. But four years earlier, a defeated France had effectively become a fascist state -- and it’s amazing how quick was the transformation.
Within a few weeks of the country’s invasion by Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940, the French government surrendered and signed an armistice with Adolf Hitler on June 22. (Remember, France was not conquered, the way Belgium or Poland were, so had no government-in-exile that had escaped the country.)
The armistice gave Germany control over the north and west of the country, including Paris and all of the Atlantic coastline, but left the rest, around two-fifths of France's prewar territory, unoccupied.
And almost immediately, the country was transformed into an authoritarian state. On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly, summoned to ratify the armistice, granted the hero of France’s success in the First World War, 84-year-old Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, authority to promulgate a new constitution. The vote, 569 in favour, 80 against, 18 abstentions, wasn’t even close. The Third Republic ceased to exist.
Pétain was able, the very next day, to assume in his own name full legislative and executive powers in the new political order. The République Francais was replaced by l'État Francais , the republican slogan “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” (“Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood”) by “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (“Work, Family, Fatherland”). The French tricolour flag now included in the middle Pétain’s personal emblem, a stylised francisque, an axe said to have been used in the early Middle Ages by the Franks.
The national holiday, Bastille Day, became a day of mourning, and the stirring French national anthem, the “Marseillaise,” gave way to a song of praise, “Maréchal, Nous Voila !” (“Marshal, Here we Are!”) for Pétain. He was now the “Chef de l'État Francais,” his portraits soon everywhere.
The Vichy government declared neutrality in the war between Germany and Great Britain, but was committed by the armistice provisions to cooperation with Germany. The aged Pétain now had become a Nazi collaborator – even though he had briefly served as prime minister in the last democratic government. There is an infamous photo of him shaking hands with Hitler on Oct. 24, 1940, in the town of Montoire-sur-le-Loir.
The Vichy prime minister and head of day-to-day governance between April 18, 1942 and August 20, 1944, Pierre Laval, had twice served as a prime minister in the Third Republic in the 1930s.
Vichy France, as the country became known – because the collaborationist regime was located in the town of Vichy, in the southern “unoccupied zone” – remained, even in the eyes of the Allies fighting Germany, the sovereign and legitimate government of France, technically ruler over the entire country.
Vichy continued to be recognized as such by, among others, Canada and the United States, for at least two more years.
French colonial officials in the country’s overseas empire also at first were loyal to Vichy – as everyone who has seen the 1942 movie “Casablanca” knows. In one of the film’s very first scenes, the wall of a building is painted with a large picture of Marshal Pétain and a quote attributed to him.
In the first years after the 1940 defeat, much of the war-weary French population fell in behind Pétain. General Charles de Gaulle, who had fled to England after the fall of France, faced a lonely uphill battle at first, as he formed the Free French forces abroad and encouraged the anti-Nazi resistance inside France. The French flag with the Cross of Lorraine in the centre was the emblem of the Free French.
Pétain blamed the Third Republic and its endemic corruption for the French defeat. He rejected its secular and liberal traditions in favour of an authoritarian, paternalist, Catholic society. Vichy even produced a legion of volunteers to fight against Soviet Russia.
But Vichy’s so-called “Révolution Nationale” (“National Revolution”) included the passage of numerous anti-Semitic laws. When France fell, there were approximately 350,000 Jews in the country. As early as October 1940, without any request from the Germans, the Vichy government passed anti-Jewish measures.
In 1941 the regime mounted a major anti-Semitic exhibition, “le Juif et la France” (“The Jew and France”), in Paris, depicting the Jews as a criminal race responsible for all of France’s problems. It is estimated that around 200,000 people visited the exhibition.
French Jews were denaturalized, and in many cases rounded up by French (not German) police and sent to death camps. According to historian Robert Paxton, some 90.000 Jews living in France were killed in the Holocaust.
In 1995 President Jacques Chirac publicly recognized France's responsibility for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation. His statement put an end to decades of equivocation by successive French Governments about France’s wartime role.
The French Vichy regime remains a cautionary tale, as it demonstrates how quickly a democratic political order can be reversed.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Caribbean is a Sea of Islands
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
The Caribbean Sea comprises more than 700 major islands. While most of the larger ones, like Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola (divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) are independent, many of the smaller ones remain non-sovereign entities.
Integral parts of France as départements d’outre-mer (overseas departments) with full rights of citizenship, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are represented in the French parliament and, as part of the European Union (EU), use the euro as their currency.
They are relatively large: Guadeloupe has an area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 405,739 inhabitants, while Martinique is 1,128 square kilometres in size, with a population of 386,486.
The population of Guadeloupe is mainly of African or mixed descent, speaking French and Antillean Creole. Martinique’s demographics are similar.
France also governs Saint-Barthélemy and part of Saint-Martin; they are known as collectivités d’outre-mer (overseas collectivities) and are also part of metropolitan France and the EU.
The other half of Saint-Martin, known as Sint Maarten, is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and thetefore also in the EU. The population of the entire island is 77,741, with 40,917 living on the Dutch side, and 37,429 on the French side.
Other Dutch jurisdictions in the kingdom (and in the EU) are Aruba and Curacao, which are officially called autonomous countries and have a status equal to that of the European Netherlands itself; and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius, known collectively as the Caribbean Netherlands, which are part of the Netherlands proper and governed as ordinary municipalities of the metropolitan country.
The collective population of Aruba and Curacao numbers 249,318; the three smaller island municipalise have 16,912 inhabitants. Dutch is an official language throughout the Dutch islands, but Papiamento, a creole language with African, Portuguese, and Spanish roots, is also recognized on Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.
None of the non-sovereign British islands in the Caribbean are formal parts of the United Kingdom, though their residents are British citizens. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands are all British Overseas Territories. As such they are members of the Commonwealth of Nations via the United Kingdom, rather than in their own right.
While defence and foreign affairs are handled by Great Britain, they otherwise have considerably autonomy, including their own governments, currencies, and economic structures. The constitutions of the British Virgin Islands and Montserrat afford greater autonomy than those of Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
This has enabled Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with a combined population of some 130,000 residents, mostly of African heritage, to become tax havens and offshore financial centres. The Cayman Islands have more registered businesses than people.
An exception to this is Montserrat, which has been devastated by volcanic eruptions in recent years; its population declined from 13,000 in 1994 to 5,879 today. Much of the island is now uninhabitable and its economy has yet to recover.
The United States Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas have a combined population of 106,405, mostly people of African descent. As an “unincorporated United States territory,” its residents are American citizens, but cannot vote in presidential elections. The islands are self-governing, with an elected territorial governor and legislature.
In the early 1980s, there was some support for sovereignty in both Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands, while Curacao has a pro-independence party. Guadeloupe saw the most militant pro-independence action with violence occurring periodically in the 1970s and early 1980s, leading to a further devolution of powers to it and Martinique from the French government, including a “cultural right to difference.”
The vast majority of the citizens of all these small islands appear to be satisfied with their non-sovereign status. They prefer the benign relationship with their metropole (which includes monetary transfers) to the alternative of full independence, a situation in which they would be more vulnerable, and responsible for their own economic self-sufficiency and military security.
The Caribbean Sea comprises more than 700 major islands. While most of the larger ones, like Cuba, Jamaica and Hispaniola (divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic) are independent, many of the smaller ones remain non-sovereign entities.
Integral parts of France as départements d’outre-mer (overseas departments) with full rights of citizenship, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are represented in the French parliament and, as part of the European Union (EU), use the euro as their currency.
They are relatively large: Guadeloupe has an area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 405,739 inhabitants, while Martinique is 1,128 square kilometres in size, with a population of 386,486.
The population of Guadeloupe is mainly of African or mixed descent, speaking French and Antillean Creole. Martinique’s demographics are similar.
France also governs Saint-Barthélemy and part of Saint-Martin; they are known as collectivités d’outre-mer (overseas collectivities) and are also part of metropolitan France and the EU.
The other half of Saint-Martin, known as Sint Maarten, is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and thetefore also in the EU. The population of the entire island is 77,741, with 40,917 living on the Dutch side, and 37,429 on the French side.
Other Dutch jurisdictions in the kingdom (and in the EU) are Aruba and Curacao, which are officially called autonomous countries and have a status equal to that of the European Netherlands itself; and Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius, known collectively as the Caribbean Netherlands, which are part of the Netherlands proper and governed as ordinary municipalities of the metropolitan country.
The collective population of Aruba and Curacao numbers 249,318; the three smaller island municipalise have 16,912 inhabitants. Dutch is an official language throughout the Dutch islands, but Papiamento, a creole language with African, Portuguese, and Spanish roots, is also recognized on Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.
None of the non-sovereign British islands in the Caribbean are formal parts of the United Kingdom, though their residents are British citizens. Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands are all British Overseas Territories. As such they are members of the Commonwealth of Nations via the United Kingdom, rather than in their own right.
While defence and foreign affairs are handled by Great Britain, they otherwise have considerably autonomy, including their own governments, currencies, and economic structures. The constitutions of the British Virgin Islands and Montserrat afford greater autonomy than those of Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
This has enabled Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, with a combined population of some 130,000 residents, mostly of African heritage, to become tax havens and offshore financial centres. The Cayman Islands have more registered businesses than people.
An exception to this is Montserrat, which has been devastated by volcanic eruptions in recent years; its population declined from 13,000 in 1994 to 5,879 today. Much of the island is now uninhabitable and its economy has yet to recover.
The United States Virgin Islands of Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas have a combined population of 106,405, mostly people of African descent. As an “unincorporated United States territory,” its residents are American citizens, but cannot vote in presidential elections. The islands are self-governing, with an elected territorial governor and legislature.
In the early 1980s, there was some support for sovereignty in both Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands, while Curacao has a pro-independence party. Guadeloupe saw the most militant pro-independence action with violence occurring periodically in the 1970s and early 1980s, leading to a further devolution of powers to it and Martinique from the French government, including a “cultural right to difference.”
The vast majority of the citizens of all these small islands appear to be satisfied with their non-sovereign status. They prefer the benign relationship with their metropole (which includes monetary transfers) to the alternative of full independence, a situation in which they would be more vulnerable, and responsible for their own economic self-sufficiency and military security.
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
The Ukrainian Crisis as Seen from Moscow
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The standard “CNN version” of the crisis in Ukraine goes as follows: In order to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has concocted a narrative of resentment against America and NATO, seen as a purely defensive alliance and a force for peace and stability.
In actual fact, even before the present crisis, NATO has acted as a spearhead of American-West European attempts to bring most of the former eastern bloc –including parts of the old Soviet Union – under its suzerainty.
NATO now includes not just former Warsaw Pact countries but even the three Baltic states, former component republics of the Soviet Union. And American hawks like Senator John McCain, who never saw a crisis that American power might not take advantage of, has at times suggested that Ukraine, Moldova, and even Georgia, deep in the Caucasus, should be allowed into this “North Atlantic” alliance.
During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this supposedly defensive alliance forced competing ethnic nationalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina to continue to co-exist in a shotgun marriage for reasons bordering on ideological fantasy. And it then, under false pretences, wrested Kosovo away from Serbia and handed it over to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Jack F. Matlock, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, has stated that the effect of NATO actions in the 1990s was devastating, and turned Russian public opinion against the United States.
When it is in America’s interest, it has no trouble partitioning countries or interfering in their internal affairs – ask the Grenadans, Panamanians, and Nicaraguans, among others.
Yet for some reason, when Russia, already pushed back to pre-19th century borders, feels threatened by western moves, it is accused of aggression.
Day after day, we hear about threatening moves by Moscow – but in actual fact, most of the violence in Ukraine has been initiated by Ukrainian nationalists from the western part of the country.
A fire in Odessa on May 2 left at least 46 people dead after radicals joined by Right Sector militia blocked anti-government protesters in a trade union building and set it alight. Ethnic Russian secessionists also fought Ukrainian forces in Mariupol a week later, a battle that left more than 20 dead.
Putin is within his rights to invoke the emerging human rights norm known as “R2P” (responsibility to protect), which maintains that if a state fails to protect its nationals from severe human rights abuses, including ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the international community assumes the responsibility of protection.
The nationalists seized power in an illegitimate coup in late February, and wish to make of the country a “pure” Ukrainian state. They don’t want any talk of decentralization or federalism, which Putin in fact has suggested.
Putin also discouraged ethnic Russians in cities like Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine from holding a referendum on May 11 on self-rule. (They went ahead anyhow, voting strongly in favour.)
The leading candidates in the Ukrainian presidential election scheduled for May 25 are all ethnic Ukrainians who support the aims of the coup leaders and are opposed to any forms of autonomy for Russian-inhabited regions.
Yet as far as CNN and the State Department are concerned, Putin remains behind the unrest!
Whereas the people who overthrew the Yanukovych regime were described in the press as “pro-democracy freedom fighters,” those ethnic Russians now wishing to protect their own interests are termed “militants” and “rebels.”
The only area that Russia has annexed is Crimea – rectifying a ridiculous decision made 60 years ago to transfer it to Ukraine, when internal borders in the USSR were largely meaningless anyhow. Crimea has a Russian majority and was Russian for centuries – including in Soviet times, when it was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
For Americans to suddenly become concerned about “territorial integrity,” when they wrested Kosovo away from Serbia, oversaw the partition of Sudan, and so forth, is rather rich, especially as it was clear the vast majority of Crimeans welcomed their return to Russia.
The view from Moscow is one very different from that of the American media, who seem to have forgotten, or don’t care, that Russia has been attacked by different countries over the centuries, and most recently lost 27 million lives in bearing the brunt of Hitler’s aggression in the Second World War.
This conflict with Russia is about geopolitics, not ideology. After all, NATO and the European Union now include countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania, none of which have political systems in any way superior to Russia’s -- and neither will Ukraine, no matter who eventually controls it.
The standard “CNN version” of the crisis in Ukraine goes as follows: In order to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has concocted a narrative of resentment against America and NATO, seen as a purely defensive alliance and a force for peace and stability.
In actual fact, even before the present crisis, NATO has acted as a spearhead of American-West European attempts to bring most of the former eastern bloc –including parts of the old Soviet Union – under its suzerainty.
NATO now includes not just former Warsaw Pact countries but even the three Baltic states, former component republics of the Soviet Union. And American hawks like Senator John McCain, who never saw a crisis that American power might not take advantage of, has at times suggested that Ukraine, Moldova, and even Georgia, deep in the Caucasus, should be allowed into this “North Atlantic” alliance.
During the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this supposedly defensive alliance forced competing ethnic nationalists in Bosnia-Herzegovina to continue to co-exist in a shotgun marriage for reasons bordering on ideological fantasy. And it then, under false pretences, wrested Kosovo away from Serbia and handed it over to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Jack F. Matlock, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, has stated that the effect of NATO actions in the 1990s was devastating, and turned Russian public opinion against the United States.
When it is in America’s interest, it has no trouble partitioning countries or interfering in their internal affairs – ask the Grenadans, Panamanians, and Nicaraguans, among others.
Yet for some reason, when Russia, already pushed back to pre-19th century borders, feels threatened by western moves, it is accused of aggression.
Day after day, we hear about threatening moves by Moscow – but in actual fact, most of the violence in Ukraine has been initiated by Ukrainian nationalists from the western part of the country.
A fire in Odessa on May 2 left at least 46 people dead after radicals joined by Right Sector militia blocked anti-government protesters in a trade union building and set it alight. Ethnic Russian secessionists also fought Ukrainian forces in Mariupol a week later, a battle that left more than 20 dead.
Putin is within his rights to invoke the emerging human rights norm known as “R2P” (responsibility to protect), which maintains that if a state fails to protect its nationals from severe human rights abuses, including ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, the international community assumes the responsibility of protection.
The nationalists seized power in an illegitimate coup in late February, and wish to make of the country a “pure” Ukrainian state. They don’t want any talk of decentralization or federalism, which Putin in fact has suggested.
Putin also discouraged ethnic Russians in cities like Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine from holding a referendum on May 11 on self-rule. (They went ahead anyhow, voting strongly in favour.)
The leading candidates in the Ukrainian presidential election scheduled for May 25 are all ethnic Ukrainians who support the aims of the coup leaders and are opposed to any forms of autonomy for Russian-inhabited regions.
Yet as far as CNN and the State Department are concerned, Putin remains behind the unrest!
Whereas the people who overthrew the Yanukovych regime were described in the press as “pro-democracy freedom fighters,” those ethnic Russians now wishing to protect their own interests are termed “militants” and “rebels.”
The only area that Russia has annexed is Crimea – rectifying a ridiculous decision made 60 years ago to transfer it to Ukraine, when internal borders in the USSR were largely meaningless anyhow. Crimea has a Russian majority and was Russian for centuries – including in Soviet times, when it was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
For Americans to suddenly become concerned about “territorial integrity,” when they wrested Kosovo away from Serbia, oversaw the partition of Sudan, and so forth, is rather rich, especially as it was clear the vast majority of Crimeans welcomed their return to Russia.
The view from Moscow is one very different from that of the American media, who seem to have forgotten, or don’t care, that Russia has been attacked by different countries over the centuries, and most recently lost 27 million lives in bearing the brunt of Hitler’s aggression in the Second World War.
This conflict with Russia is about geopolitics, not ideology. After all, NATO and the European Union now include countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Romania, none of which have political systems in any way superior to Russia’s -- and neither will Ukraine, no matter who eventually controls it.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Who is a Russian?
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
In English, we sometimes differentiate between people’s ethnicity and citizenship, especially when talking about “homeland” nation-states. For instance, we may refer to someone as an “ethnic Hungarian” in Romania, or an “ethnic Croat” who is a Serbian citizen.
And we’ve certainly heard a lot lately about “ethnic Russians” in Ukraine.
The names of such countries are synonymous with the historic majority nationalities that created them, and if other peoples live in them, they are distinct minority groups and usually identified as such.
Immigrant countries that are a melange of different groups are not ethnically-based, at least no longer, so there are no “ethnic Americans” or “ethnic Brazilians.”
Multinational states often have names that don’t specify any group’s ethnicity. “Soviet” and “Yugoslav” was a state identity; no actual peoples were Soviets or Yugoslavs.
The same holds true for many polyglot African countries. There are no “Nigerians” by ethnicity, only members of groups such as the Igbo or Yoruba.
Things get more complex when a multi-national state, with territorially concentrated peoples, is named after the dominant nation within it. We speak of “Russia,” but it is in reality the “Russian Federation,” and of its 143 million people, only 81 per cent are ethnic Russians.
The country’s political divisions include 22 ethnic republics, such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Tatarstan, where the indigenous ethnic nationality (known as the “titular nationality”) runs its own internal affairs in its own language.
These peoples are citizens of “Russia,” but are not “Russians.” And Russians acknowledge the distinction. The Russian language distinguishes between “ethnic Russian” (“russkiy”) and “citizen of Russia, regardless of nationality” (“rossiiskiy”).
Is Russia to be a nation of Russian citizens (“rossiiskaia natsiia”) or of ethnic Russians (“russkaia natsiia”) only? Because this remains unsettled, there is no consensus on whether Russia’s present-day borders should be accepted as given. Those who subscribe to an ethnically-based Russian state might seek to annex territories with large ethnic Russian populations, such as the northern part of Kazakhstan or eastern Ukraine; the Crimea has already been absorbed.
President Vladimir Putin has taken to calling much of eastern and southern Ukraine “New Russia,” a historical term referring to territories previously controlled by Muslim entities that were conquered and settled by ethnic Russians beginning in the 18th century.
At the same time, ethnic nationalists might see the need for Russia to rid itself of certain so-called “undesirable” territories that are currently part of the country, such as the Muslim areas in the north Caucasus.
In official, “politically correct” language “rossiiskaia natsiia” is considered the norm. But this is not always the case in everyday speech, where people see Russia in ethnic terms, or even religious ones, in which Orthodox Christianity becomes a component part of Russian identity.
A civic Russian nation, one whose identity is not simply ethnic, can only be a “rossiiskaia” nation. But Russian history is not very encouraging for those who see this as a necessity if the country is to become a modern pluralistic and democratic entity.
Critics of the old tsarist empire referred to it as a “prison house of nations,” and the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia retains many elements of autocracy. So there’s still a long way to go.
In English, we sometimes differentiate between people’s ethnicity and citizenship, especially when talking about “homeland” nation-states. For instance, we may refer to someone as an “ethnic Hungarian” in Romania, or an “ethnic Croat” who is a Serbian citizen.
And we’ve certainly heard a lot lately about “ethnic Russians” in Ukraine.
The names of such countries are synonymous with the historic majority nationalities that created them, and if other peoples live in them, they are distinct minority groups and usually identified as such.
Immigrant countries that are a melange of different groups are not ethnically-based, at least no longer, so there are no “ethnic Americans” or “ethnic Brazilians.”
Multinational states often have names that don’t specify any group’s ethnicity. “Soviet” and “Yugoslav” was a state identity; no actual peoples were Soviets or Yugoslavs.
The same holds true for many polyglot African countries. There are no “Nigerians” by ethnicity, only members of groups such as the Igbo or Yoruba.
Things get more complex when a multi-national state, with territorially concentrated peoples, is named after the dominant nation within it. We speak of “Russia,” but it is in reality the “Russian Federation,” and of its 143 million people, only 81 per cent are ethnic Russians.
The country’s political divisions include 22 ethnic republics, such as Chechnya, Ingushetia, or Tatarstan, where the indigenous ethnic nationality (known as the “titular nationality”) runs its own internal affairs in its own language.
These peoples are citizens of “Russia,” but are not “Russians.” And Russians acknowledge the distinction. The Russian language distinguishes between “ethnic Russian” (“russkiy”) and “citizen of Russia, regardless of nationality” (“rossiiskiy”).
Is Russia to be a nation of Russian citizens (“rossiiskaia natsiia”) or of ethnic Russians (“russkaia natsiia”) only? Because this remains unsettled, there is no consensus on whether Russia’s present-day borders should be accepted as given. Those who subscribe to an ethnically-based Russian state might seek to annex territories with large ethnic Russian populations, such as the northern part of Kazakhstan or eastern Ukraine; the Crimea has already been absorbed.
President Vladimir Putin has taken to calling much of eastern and southern Ukraine “New Russia,” a historical term referring to territories previously controlled by Muslim entities that were conquered and settled by ethnic Russians beginning in the 18th century.
At the same time, ethnic nationalists might see the need for Russia to rid itself of certain so-called “undesirable” territories that are currently part of the country, such as the Muslim areas in the north Caucasus.
In official, “politically correct” language “rossiiskaia natsiia” is considered the norm. But this is not always the case in everyday speech, where people see Russia in ethnic terms, or even religious ones, in which Orthodox Christianity becomes a component part of Russian identity.
A civic Russian nation, one whose identity is not simply ethnic, can only be a “rossiiskaia” nation. But Russian history is not very encouraging for those who see this as a necessity if the country is to become a modern pluralistic and democratic entity.
Critics of the old tsarist empire referred to it as a “prison house of nations,” and the Soviet Union was a totalitarian state. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia retains many elements of autocracy. So there’s still a long way to go.
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Saudi Arabia a Politically Unique Country
Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
Saudi Arabia is a very unique country.
A founding member of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), Saudi Arabia remains the world’s largest oil exporter, producing about nine million barrels per day. Its economy is largely backed by its oil industry, which accounts for more than 95 per cent of exports and 70 per cent of government revenues.
Thanks to the Internet, the young know all about life in more open Arab
societies and in the West. As unrest spread throughout the Arab world in 2011, the
Saudi state faced mounting pressure to introduce reforms. King Abdullah granted
more rights to women, including the right to vote and run in municipal
elections, and to be appointed to the consultative Shura Council.
He also announced increased welfare spending and a promise to build 500,000 homes for the poor, as well as opening the public sphere to quasi-independent civil society associations.
But at the same time public protests were banned, after small demonstrations in the mainly Shi’a Eastern Province along the Persian Gulf, where 90 per cent of the country’s oil reserves are located. The king warned that threats to the nation’s security and stability would not be tolerated.
Saudi troops also participated in a crackdown in 2011 on unrest in neighbouring Bahrain, whose Sunni royal family was under threat from its predominantly Shi’s population.
The Saudis also provide aid to the Sunni rebels in Syria, who have been
trying to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s Shi’a regime, which happens to be Iran’s
main ally in the region.
Saudi Arabia is a very unique country.
It’s the only state in the world named after a large royal family.
It is home to Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities in Islam, and its religion
is a severe – its supporters would call it pure – form of Sunni Islam known as
Wahhabism.
And it sits on the world’s second largest oil reserves,
estimated to be at 267 billion barrels. The Ghawar oil field, the world’s
largest, has estimated reserves of 70 billion barrels.
Saudi Arabia regards itself as the spiritual leader of the
world’s Muslims – and sees Shi’a Iran as a religious as well as political
rival. It is a founding member of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), an
organization created to provide collective security against Tehran. Its other
members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Most of the Arabian peninsula’s independent states, including
Nejd and Hejaz, were conquered by the Saudi royal family between 1902 and 1927,
and the consolidated kingdom was named Saudi Arabia in 1932.
A few years later, the king, Abdulaziz al Saud, authorized a
team of American engineers from Standard Oil of California to explore the
desert bordering the Persian Gulf. In 1938 they discovered what would turn out
to be the largest supply of crude oil in the world.
After the king’s death in 1953, five of his sons in
succession have ruled Saudi Arabia as an absolute monarchy. The current
monarch, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al
Saud, ascended to the throne in 2005.
A founding member of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries), Saudi Arabia remains the world’s largest oil exporter, producing about nine million barrels per day. Its economy is largely backed by its oil industry, which accounts for more than 95 per cent of exports and 70 per cent of government revenues.
He also announced increased welfare spending and a promise to build 500,000 homes for the poor, as well as opening the public sphere to quasi-independent civil society associations.
But at the same time public protests were banned, after small demonstrations in the mainly Shi’a Eastern Province along the Persian Gulf, where 90 per cent of the country’s oil reserves are located. The king warned that threats to the nation’s security and stability would not be tolerated.
Saudi troops also participated in a crackdown in 2011 on unrest in neighbouring Bahrain, whose Sunni royal family was under threat from its predominantly Shi’s population.
When U.S. president Barack Obama visited Riyadh in March, Saudi
leaders expressed alarm at his diplomatic initiative with Iran, which it
suspects is continuing its program to develop nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia
fears an American-Iranian accommodation at the expense of the Arab world and
has threatened to acquire its own nuclear arsenal should Iran acquire these.
Yet all the GCC states except Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
approved the interim nuclear agreement reached by the U.S. and Iran in
November 2013. And Qatar has backed the Muslim Brotherhood, which the
Saudis consider a “terrorist organisation.”
Aware that the Saudi kingdom cannot forever rely on oil
revenues, Abdullah wants to diversify the economy and reduce the
underproductive public sector. So now about a quarter of each yearly budget
goes toward education and vocational training. The Ministry of Higher Education
has placed its emphasis on technical, engineering, science and medical
programs.
But all of this takes time. Meanwhile, as Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist Karen Elliott House, who has been visiting the kingdom
for more than 30 years, writes in her 2012 book “On Saudi Arabia: Its People,
Past, Religion, Fault Lines -- and Future,” the country remains a maze “in
which Saudis endlessly maneuver through winding paths between high walls of
religious rules, government restrictions and cultural traditions.”
Monday, May 05, 2014
Syria's Past is Being Obliterated
Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
A crossroads in the fertile crescent of the Middle East,
Syria has been the site of one civilization following a previous one. The
country’s monuments and artifacts are, so to speak, piled one layer atop
another. But all these treasures are now at risk, as the country’s civil war
drags on, and its history is in danger of being obliterated.
Last August, the Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova,
called on all parties involved in the conflict in Syria to safeguard the
country’s cultural heritage and take all possible measures to avoid further
damage.
The United Nations agency that works to protect historic
places, UNESCO has classified as endangered all six of Syria’s World Heritage
sites. But the destruction continues, some as the result of warfare, others due
to intentional looting.
An oasis in the Syrian desert northeast of Damascus, the
ancient city of Palmyra was one of the most important cultural centres of the
ancient world. It was a wealthy caravan centre from 44 BC to 272 AD, on the
trade route linking Persia, India and China, alternately independent from and
under the rule of the Roman Empire. Its culture was largely Greek.
One of its rulers, Zenobia, who became queen of Palmyra in
267 AD, overran much of the Roman Middle East, even conquering Egypt, until
defeated and taken as a hostage to Rome.
Palmyra’s art and architecture, standing at the crossroads
of several civilizations, married Greco-Roman techniques with local traditions
and Persian influences.
Its major public monuments include the Temple of the Semitic
god Bel, the Agora (the centre of spiritual and political life), and the theatre,
along with other temples and urban quarters. Outside the city walls are the remains
of a Roman aqueduct and immense necropolises (cemeteries).
At first occupied by rebels, now it is the Syrian Army using
the ruins for military purposes and artillery pieces and tanks have been
positioned at the site.
Illegal digging has also accelerated. Grave robbers
have stolen numerous objects from Palmyra’s tombs and smuggled them to Beirut. “I
feel as if I’m dead,” Khalil al-Hariri, an archaeologist and the director of
the Palmyra Museum, told the New York Times.
Another heritage site, the Old City of Aleppo, has
been a battleground since the summer of 2012. Shelling gutted medieval covered
markets after insurgents took refuge there, and government troops are now positioned
in its 13th-century Citadel, a fortified palace in the centre of the old city.
Last year the minaret of the Umayyad
Mosque of Aleppo, built in 1090, was reduced to rubble during an
exchange of heavy weapons fire between government forces and rebels.
Fighting has also damaged the Krac des Chevaliers,
built by the Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem from 1142 to 1271. One
of the world’s best-preserved Crusader castles, it was occupied by insurgents but
recently recaptured by government troops. An air raid damaged one of its
towers.
Syria’s past as well as its present and future are
being destroyed.
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