Why is the West Enraging Russia?

Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax] Chronicle Herald 

A cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian fighters went into effect on Feb. 15, but no one knows whether it will last. Previous ones have been broken, and in any case some fighting continues.

The United States has apparently been considering sending “lethal aid” to Ukraine should the war resume, which some military analysts believe is the only way to deal with what they see as belligerence from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The incoming U.S. defence secretary, Ashton B. Carter, has said he is inclined to provide arms to the Ukrainians.

But this is madness. If anything, the belligerence comes from the other side. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich recently said that a U.S. decision to arm Ukraine would not only escalate the situation but “threatens the security of the Russian Federation.”

Of course it does. This is part of Russia’s “near abroad,” an area for centuries under Moscow’s control (and in large parts of Ukraine, remember, inhabited by ethnic Russians and Russophiles). 

The western boundaries of Russia have since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 been pushed back to where they were in the 17^th century. What if the U.S. kept losing state after state, with California and the southwest deciding perhaps to rejoin Mexico – aided by Moscow?

When the USSR fell apart, and the internal Soviet boundaries of the republics suddenly became international frontiers, trouble was bound to follow. 

This is true anytime, when a region that breaks away from a bigger state itself includes a minority that is ethnically related to the larger one. Remember the anglo-Quebec slogan at the time of the 1995 referendum on separation in Quebec? “If Canada is divisible, Quebec is divisible.” 

In other words, non-francophone areas might have chosen to break away from an independent Quebec and remain in Canada.

In 1991, when the Soviet state collapsed, Ukraine should have been subject to plebiscites to determine whether its people wanted independence, or to join Russia, or to split into two states. The eastern regions now in revolt would no doubt have chosen to unite with Russia, and the same is true for the Crimea.

The rest of Ukraine could have become a smaller, but homogenous – and peaceful -- country. There’s nothing wrong with a political divorce for peoples who don't want to stay together, where one feels oppressed by the other! 

Why is territorial integrity such a sacred cow? After all, these Soviet republics weren’t even sovereign states, and their borders were often changed; they were the products of Communist manipulation. The same issues we see in Ukraine also plague Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova, among other former parts of that defunct Communist empire.

Yet now we see the western powers attempting to force Russians who had been living in these regions for centuries and considered themselves, in effect, really part of Russia, to now remain part of Ukraine -- a country which they never considered themselves part of. Why are Donetsk and Luhansk all of a sudden more “Ukrainian” than “Russian?”

Whatever became of the principle of self-determination? Why is it suddenly so important for NATO to make sure that frontiers that a mere 24 years ago were simply internal Soviet boundaries are now so sacrosanct that it is willing to risk war with Russia?

 “This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former secretary-general of NATO, told Britain’s Daily Telegraph. 

But Russia has always been a great power! Would anyone deny that status to the U.S.? Why the attempt to humble the Russians?

Since it makes no geopolitical or ethnic sense, is it a wonder Vladimir Putin sees this as little more than American imperialism designed to weaken his country? 

Remember, this all started, not with Russian intervention in Ukraine, but with last February’s overthrow of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.

We might forget, but Russians remember, that they have been attacked from the west numerous times in their history, including major invasions by Napoleon and Hitler, the latter killing many millions of people. Nor did the Cold War do much to improve their opinion of America.

When the Russians intruded into the western hemisphere by aiding Communist Cuba, it almost led to a world war in 1962. Now Washington is threatening Russia in its own back yard.

It might be time to heed a piece of advice from John Mearsheimer, co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago: “Any time a great power armed with thousands of nuclear weapons is backed into a corner, you are asking for really serious trouble.”

France and Germany, who oppose arming Ukraine, have heeded this warning.

The North Caucasus Cauldron

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian 

While the crisis between Russia and Ukraine has been the focus of much of the world’s attention, there are simmering brushfires in other areas of the former Soviet Union.

In the North Caucasus, still part of the Russian Federation, five Muslim-majority ethnic republics, with a combined area of 97,200 square kilometres and a population of more than six million, remain restive and a worry for Moscow. All but Ingushetia border Russia proper.

One of them, Chechnya, has been the scene of two major wars since 1994, leaving tens of thousands dead, and resulting in the displacement to southern Russia of 400,000-600,000 people, predominantly from Chechnya and neighbouring Dagestan. 

Despite the official claims of peace, both republics remain major centres of violence. Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia have also experienced jihadi-inspired turmoil. 

The revival of traditional Sufi groups and the rise of radical Salafi (or Wahhabi) Islam, especially in Dagestan and Chechnya, was brought about by “the perpetuation of corrupt ruling elites, the absence of political pluralism, severe economic hardship, youth unemployment and high levels of income inequality,” according to Domitilla Sagramoso and Akhmet Yarlykapov, two scholars specializing in the study of the region.

Indeed, they argue, the impact of “growing Islamization of the region’s political life and the increased religiosity” has created a “significant cultural and political cleavage between the North Caucasus and the rest of Russia.” 

The works of radical ideologues, the presence of militants from the Arab world, and travels to Muslim countries by young Caucasians, have inspired many to embrace imported jihadi creeds. A network of extremists continues to advocate the establishment of an Islamic state governed by sharia law in all of the North Caucasian republics.

Much of this radicalization is fueled from outside the country. French scholar Giles Kepel has used the term “petrodollar Islam” for the vast infusion of wealth from Saudi Arabia. The long-term strategy is proselytism of Islam -- especially Salafi Islam.

In Dagestan the Salafi ideologue Akhmed-hadji Akhtaev founded Al-Islamiyyah and by the late 1990s the organization controlled numerous mosques and religious schools; it also sent students to study in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.

The percentage of ethnic Russians in the republics has dropped from 26 per cent in 1989 to about nine per cent today; in Chechnya, it went from under 25 per cent to less than two per cent.

In 2011, two nationalist Russian groups, the Russian Public Movement and the Russian Civic Union, launched a campaign to have the entire region cut off financially. 

Under the slogan “Stop Feeding the Caucasus,” they demanded that the Kremlin cease supporting the economies of the region, which have suffered greatly due to the political instability. (Each republic receives more than 50 per cent of its budget from Moscow.)

Russia may have beaten back Chechen attempts at independence or its takeover by Islamists, but at a price. 

As British academic Richard Sakwa has pointed out, Russian president Vladimir Putin has allowed the republic to be governed by “strongmen” such as Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, in power since 2007. 

In effect, he writes, Chechnya has achieved “secession without independence.” Dagestan and Ingushetia also, in the words of Anna Matveeva, an expert on the region, are “drifting away by default.” There are now even border guards between southern Russia and the North Caucasus. 

Kadyrov is a strict Muslim who urges Chechen women to wear headscarves. He also encourages polygamy and has imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol. He even supports so-called “honour” killings.

Kadyrov has also overseen the construction of hundreds of mosques, including one in the centre of Grozny capable of hosting 10,000 worshipers.

The president denounced the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Parisian magazine Charlie Hebdo, at a mass rally Jan. 19 in Grozny, the capital of the republic.

“We resolutely announce that we will never let anybody insult the name of the Prophet without punishment,” Kadyrov told the crowds.

Thanks to the ongoing unrest in the republics, and the periodic terrorist acts by Chechens in Russian cities, including Moscow itself, there has been a concomitant rise of anti-Caucasian sentiments among ethnic Russians, occasionally boiling over into attacks on Caucasians living in Russia proper by ultra-nationalist Russian gangs.

But Kadyrov has proved useful to Putin. By his adherence to Islam, he undermines the ideological attraction of Islamism. He also supported Russia in its war with Georgia in 2008, and delivered an astounding (and of course unbelievable) 99.76 per cent of the vote in Chechnya for Putin in the 2012 Russian presidential election!

So Putin continues to support Kadyrov and other Russian-installed rulers in the Caucasus, knowing that the alternative would be worse.

Is There a Future for Ethno-Religious Nations?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Some nations were originally founded upon a sense of religious “chosen-ness,” the idea that God or Providence had selected them to be a force for good in the world.

And the geographic space they came to inhabit was seen as a “promised land” given them by their deity. It became a “sacred homeland.”

This produced a strong sense of what we today would call national consciousness, an identity very different from that of, say, someone Belgian.

Anthony D. Smith, a scholar of nationalism and ethnicity at the London School of Economics, has examined this form of nationalism in his book Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity, published in 2003.

From the moment of God’s covenant with the Israelites in the Old Testament, the idea that a people are chosen by God has had a central role in shaping national identity in the western world, he writes. And sacred belief remains central to national identity in many places, even in today’s modern world.

Clearly, this has been the basis for the modern Jewish form of nationalism known as Zionism, since even secular Jews had to base their claim to an ancient homeland where they had become a minority over the centuries by reference to the original biblical claim to the land.

While the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox forms of Christianity were more universal in outlook, the Protestant Reformation saw the formation of renewed Old Testament forms of identity.

Calvinists, in particular, saw themselves as the elect of God. They saw their conquest of new territories as divinely inspired.

The Congregationalists and Presbyterians who settled in colonial New England in the 17th century constantly made the analogy between America and Ancient Israel. The chosen people, they declared, is closer to God than any other and is held to higher standards.

In the words of John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, “we shall be as a City upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

In his 1988 book God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism, the late Irish writer Conor Cruise O’Brien described this outlook as “providing nationalism with divine legitimation.” The Constitution would become a sacred document.

To this day, American nationalism retains a sense of “manifest destiny,” and the idea of the country as the “indispensable nation.”

Two other Calvinist outposts, Protestant Ulster and the Afrikaner settlements in South Africa, are examples of the concept of “holy nationalism.”

Both groups of settlers considered themselves new chosen peoples in new promised lands, with the God-given right to take over areas inhabited by Irish Catholics and various African tribes, respectively, just as the Israelites had conquered the land of Canaan.

In a study published in 1992, God’s Peoples: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster, Queen’s University historian Donald Harman Akenson found a common thread in the views of Ulster Scots Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed Church Afrikaners, and the Jews of Israel.

Each of these peoples, he suggested, were committed to an Old Testament-like covenant with God that promised them the land they had struggled to get if they made the commitment and sacrifice necessary in such a covenant. This religiously-based fervor resulted in some of the world’s most obdurate political conflicts.

However, Akenson suggested that the covenantal mindset was gradually dissolving in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and recent events have borne him out.

In 1994 Afrikaner-based apartheid gave way to majority black rule in South Africa, and Ulster Scots-Irish Unionists are slowly reconciling themselves to power-sharing with Catholics in Northern Ireland, as mandated by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement signed by most of the province’s political parties as well as by the British and Irish governments.

Akensen contended, though, that the Israelis would remain adamant in their determination to fulfill their ancient covenant -- the template for all the others. They remain the last ones standing, but we don’t know if that will last either.

Obama's Foreign Policy: Ignore Friends, Placate Tyrants?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

President Barack Obama cut short his trip to India to fly to Riyadh on Jan. 27 to pay homage to the rulers of Saudi Arabia, following the death of King Abdullah. Secretary of State John Kerry called the late king “a man of wisdom and vision.”

In actual fact, Abdullah, in the words of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, presided over a state “whose domestic policies are almost cartoonishly repressive and whose international influence has been strikingly malign.”

Those who hope the new monarch, King Salman, will prove to be more progressive will soon enough be disabused of that notion.

On the other hand, Obama was too busy to join the huge Paris rally on Jan. 11 attended by some two million people, including more than 40 world leaders, which followed the massacre at the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket a few days earlier.

Obama has also announced that he will not be meeting Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister comes to Washington to speak to a joint session of Congress on March 3.

Netanyahu has said his priority is to urge the United States and other powers not to negotiate an Iranian nuclear deal that might endanger Israel.

This is something Obama doesn’t want to hear. Indeed, he has indicated he will veto any action by Congress to strengthen sanctions against Tehran.

Is he hoping that reason might prevail over the apocalyptic religious visions harbored by the mullahs – visions which require, among other things, destroying Israel and vanquishing Sunni Arab rivals? The current talks will in the end legitimize Iran as a nuclear state.

Since the ascension to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, Iran has been slowly building an empire in the Middle East, through armed force and terror. Its Lebanese Shi’ite proxy Hezbollah has taken Lebanon hostage, and is now helping Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime in Syria, long an Iranian client.

The Shi’ite government of Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad, which rules those parts of the country not under Kurdish or Islamic State control, is effectively an Iranian puppet. Like his predecessor Nouri al-Maliki, he is a member of the Hizb Al-Dawa, the Islamic party long under Iranian tutelage.

In chaotic Yemen, the Houthis, also allied to Iran, have taken the capital, Sanaa. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has resigned and the country is close to disintegration.

Iran has also had a hand in trying to destabilize some of the small Sunni-ruled Gulf states, in particular Bahrain, which has a Shi’a majority population. Saudi Arabia has blamed Iran for inciting upheaval in the small country starting in 2011.

Partly as a response, Sunni terrorist groups, sometimes bankrolled by the Saudis, Qatar, and other Sunni states, have mounted their own campaigns in the region. The Islamic State controls about 90,000 square kilometres in parts of Iraq and Syria, and is gaining support elsewhere.

Alarmed by the Houthis’ expansion, Sunni separatists in the south of Yemen have started to seize territory and are working with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The demise of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya has turned that country into a failed state, with various Islamist militias fighting each other in the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi. Militants have also become active in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

And Hamas, despite three major wars with Israel since 2008, remains stronger than ever in Gaza, which it has governed since 2007.

In 2009, soon after taking office, Obama made a major speech at Cairo University, asking the Islamic world for a “new beginning” in its relations with the United States.

But for all of his “make nice” foreign policy, Obama will probably leave office with a Middle East in much worse shape, and less friendly to the U.S., than it was when he won the presidency in 2008.

Do Cry for Me, Argentina

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

As Marcellus, one of the sentries at Denmark’s royal castle in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” might have said, “Something is rotten in the state of Argentina.”

The puzzling death of a prosecutor on Jan. 18 has fed speculation that he might have been murdered while gathering evidence in a high-profile terrorist attack more than two decades ago.

In 2004 Alberto Nisman was assigned to investigate the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead. He eventually traced the plot to Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

On October 25, 2006, Nisman formally accused the government of Iran of directing the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building, and Hezbollah of carrying it out.

But the Argentine government, not wishing to get involved in a diplomatic contretemps with Tehran, kept dragging its feet, instead signing an agreement with Iran to create a joint commission to investigate the bombing.

Nisman kept at it, though, and was set to testify to Argentina’s Congress on his report alleging that Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, and other officials had covered up Iran’s connection to the bombing of the building.

They were accused, in a 300-page document, of setting up a “parallel diplomacy” to sign a “secret pact” with Iranian authorities that would lead to the exchange of Argentine grains for much-needed Iranian oil, and even an arms deal, to ease the country’s energy crisis and lack of hard currency.

But now, instead of presenting his findings to legislators, Nisman has been found dead in his apartment with a gun nearby. Government officials rushed to declare it a suicide.

But few believe it. Diego Guelar, a former Argentine ambassador to the United States, told CNN en Espanol that the suicide explanation is “ridiculous.” Patricia Bullrich, head of the legislative committee that invited Nisman to testify, agreed.

“In the days before his death on Sunday, the prosecutor was very active, very focused on the presentation he was going to give before Congress, in the evidence he was going to present and his mind made up about going forward with it,” Bullrich stated. “It's hard to believe that he would have taken his own life.”

Nisman himself had told a reporter a day before his death, “I could end up dead from this.”

Following news of the death, some 2,000 protesters took to the streets near the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, waving Argentine flags and holding signs proclaiming “Yo soy Nisman” (“I am Nisman”).

“The executive power is consolidating its dictatorship,” remarked protester Luciano Florio. “The judicial system cannot work independently when prosecutors are being killed.”

The 1994 attack, along with a 1992 suicide bombing of the Israeli embassy, which killed 29 people, remains an unhealed wound within Argentine society, particularly for its 180,000-strong Jewish population.

Palestinian Plan to Join International Criminal Court Roils the Waters

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

In an article I published in the Calgary Herald in November 1999, I wrote that “it is conceivable that some international tribunal may some day indict an Israeli leader for war crimes.”

Might this soon come to pass? On Dec. 30, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, paving the way for membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

Palestinian chances of joining the ICC improved in 2012 after the United Nations General Assembly voted to upgrade their status to that of a “non-member observer state.”

These are not easy days for Israel. The summer war with Hamas in Gaza, whatever the military outcome, was largely negative from the standpoint of international opinion.

In Europe, more and more countries are moving towards recognition of a Palestinian state, even in the absence of a peace treaty with Israel, recognized borders, the final status of Jerusalem, and other critical issues. The legislatures of Great Britain, Ireland, France, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden have all urged their governments to take this step.

In the United Nations, only the American veto on the Security Council prevents even more drastic international sanctions of various sorts.

Membership in the ICC could see the Palestinians pursue Israel on war crimes charges. The ICC can prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed since July 1, 2002, when the Rome Statute came into force. Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognise its jurisdiction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by asserting that “It is the Palestinian Authority, which is in a unity government with Hamas, an avowed terrorist organisation that, like ISIS, perpetrates war crimes, that needs to be concerned about the International Criminal Court in the Hague.”

The move to join the ICC is part of a strategic shift by the Palestinian leadership to pursue statehood in the international arena after years of failed U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel. At the same time, Abbas also signed applications to join 20 other international conventions.

All of this follows the narrow rejection of a UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories by late 2017. Eight members of the 15-strong Security Council voted for the Jordanian-sponsored resolution, while the U.S. and Australia voted against. Five countries abstained. (It needed nine votes to pass.)

Permanent members China, France and Russia voted yes, while Britain abstained. Nigeria, which had been expected to vote in favor, changed its position at the last minute -- thus preventing its passage.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the resolution’s failure “should teach the Palestinians that provocations and attempts to force Israel into unilateral processes will not achieve anything.”

Lieberman’s gloating may be premature. The composition of the Security Council has now changed, with newly-elected members Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Venezuela and Spain – none particularly enamoured of Israel -- replacing Argentina, Australia, Luxembourg, the Republic of Korea and Rwanda for two-year terms.

Since South Korea and Rwanda abstained, while Australia was opposed, the same resolution may get nine votes if re-introduced in 2015, necessitating the embarrassment of an American veto.

As for Abbas’ plan to join the ICC, given Washington’s displeasure with the decision it could prove counterproductive. “There will be immediate American and Israeli financial sanctions,” declared Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

A U.S. State Department spokesman warned that it would only “push the parties further apart.” Meanwhile, Netanyahu will be facing the Israeli electorate in March, and is certainly in no mood to compromise.

What Can We Learn from Paris Terrorist Attacks?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The three days of terror in Paris are over. The gunmen who murdered 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo have been killed by the French police. The victims, mostly journalists, included the Jewish caricaturist Georges Wolinsk and two police officers.

A second suspect, who killed another  police officer in a separate incident, and then held numerous hostages in a kosher supermarket, murdering at least four of them, has also been killed. There may be others, as yet unknown, who were involved in this. 

It also brought all of France to a standstill.

These were not random attacks. Charlie Hebdo was singled out for its satirical attacks on Islamist extremism, while the Jewish store was undoubtedly selected because of the religion of its owner and customers, especially on the day preceding the Jewish Sabbath, when there would have been many shoppers inside.

The magazine had already been firebombed in 2011 and had enhanced police protection for awhile – but there is only so much that can be done to guard places against attacks that come without any warning. It is simply impossible to protect everyone at all times, or to keep potential terrorists under surveillance indefinitely.

This will of course benefit those on the right in France. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France’s National Front, tweeted an image of his daughter Marine Le Pen, now the party’s leader, with the slogan “Keep Calm And Vote Le Pen.”

Marine Le Pen remarked that she had been warning of the dangers of Islamist fundamentalism for years. “It is the Islamists who have declared war on France,” she told a French network.

While France’s next presidential election isn't due until 2017, some polls are already showing Le Pen as the most popular candidate in first round voting.

Why should we be surprised? When a liberal political order cannot protect its citizens, eventually people turn to more drastic measures.

The Charlie Hebdo killers might as well have had signs on their backs reading “we are terrorists.” Both were known to the authorities and indeed, one had already served time in prison. They were on an American “no-fly” list. Yet nothing could be done until their massacre at the magazine. In the end, they were killed anyway.

It’s all well and good to worry about “Islamophobia,” but this kind of thing can't just keep going on, whether in stores, offices, cafés, train stations, and so on. Vigilance can only take you so far. 

Constitutional protections may end up victims of enhanced security measures, with civil liberties falling by the wayside. And a frightened public won’t care.

That happened in South America in the 1960s-70s, when radical left groups were kidnapping and killing people. As society became ever more destabilized, eventually a full scale coup, and the complete loss of civil liberties, was the result, in countries like Argentina and Uruguay.

So over-solicitous liberal worries about “rights” may, ironically, end “rights” for everyone! We must find some middle ground.

Afghanistan War Ends with a Whimper

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The western-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan has, we are told, come to an end.

It began on Oct 7, 2001, a month after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, and was initially aimed at degrading Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda organization, which had found a home in the country, then ruled largely by the fundamentalist Taliban.

By 2003, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force included troops from 43 countries, the bulk coming from the United States. At peak levels the U.S. had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan.

But though bin Laden evaded capture and fled to Pakistan, while the Taliban head, Mullah Omar, was never found, this war would go on for a further 13 years, its aims shifting to the virtually impossible task of defeating a movement that clearly epitomized the ethno-religious beliefs of the majority Pashtun population.

A tribal society, Afghanistan became for NATO a project aimed at creating, among other things, a modern state, with a democratic political culture ensuring equal rights for women and minorities.

This was never going to happen. Afghanistan remained mired in economic and political corruption, run by warlords whose income derived largely from the sale of opium for the international drug trade.

The country’s former president, Hamid Karzai, who won two highly suspect elections in 2004 and 2009, was an unstable politician who spent much of the time biting the American hands that kept him in power.

Once Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush in the White House, it was clear the United States and its allies would try to get out of Afghanistan as soon as they could without losing face.

In May 2014, Washington announced that its combat operations would conclude at the end of the year, leaving just a small residual force at Bagram Air Base and in Kabul until the end of 2016.

On December 28, 2014 the International Security Assistance Force formally ended combat operations in Afghanistan and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government at a rather muted ceremony in Kabul.

President Obama issued a statement declaring the step “a milestone for our country,” adding that “the longest war in American history is coming to a responsible conclusion.”

The ceremony was held on the floor of an indoor basketball court, and many people stayed away for fear of the Taliban, which has carried out an unprecedented wave of attacks in the capital while retaking territory abandoned by western troops.

It wasn’t exactly a victory parade, nor will the day be commemorated, the way V-E Day is remembered as the end of the Second World War in Europe in 1945.

By the Afghanistan war’s end, 3,387 coalition troops had been killed, including 2,257 American, 453 British, and 158 Canadian, soldiers. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan National Army and Taliban militants had also died, along with countless civilians.

The war has cost America alone over one trillion dollars since 2001. As for Canada, Ottawa spent at least $18 billion and perhaps as much as $22 billion.

Operation Enduring Freedom, as the U.S. mission in Afghanistan had been known since 2001, has come to an end. But it will not be enduring, nor did it bring freedom.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted Dec. 11-14 found 56 per cent of respondents concluding that it had not been worth fighting.

In the Pashtun heartland in the south and east, many people value the Taliban way of life and moral code. The Taliban made major gains last summer, killing a record number of Afghan policemen and soldiers.

“The Taliban still carries the banner of Islamic morals,” a senior diplomat told the New York Times recently. “The Taliban still grabs people’s minds. And in a fight about who is right, you must gain the minds of the people.”

Karzai may be gone but the Kabul government remains corrupt and untrustworthy. His successor, Ashraf Ghani, the winner in another questionable election last year, is little better.

 A State Department poll conducted in late October found that 66 per cent of Afghans favour amnesty for Taliban leaders if it paved the way for a peace deal.

So the Taliban is regaining control of much of the country, and the dreams of democracy and modernization have proved to be mirages, unable to transcend the country’s political culture.

How Valid is the U.S. Terrorism List?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer
Now that U.S. President Barack Obama has indicated that he will be removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, only three countries – Iran, Sudan and Syria – remain.

The list began in December 1979, with Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, and Syria. Cuba, Iran and North Korea were later added. During his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush declared that North Korea, Iran and Iraq -- then ruled by Saddam Hussein -- formed an “axis of evil.”

According to the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, which determines which nations deserve the designation, a country can be added to the list if it has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” and can be taken off only when there is a demonstrable shift in the government’s policies or leadership.

Being branded as a terrorism sponsor comes with consequences, including bans on U.S. financial assistance, defence exports, and considerable banking restrictions that can effectively cut a country off from the global financial system.

Libya agreed to dismantle its nuclear program in 2006 in exchange for being taken off the list, even though Muammar Gadhafi had been one of the main sponsors of terrorist groups for decades and was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing all 259 people on board.

Two years later, President George W. Bush removed North Korea from the list in exchange for its cooperation in scaling back its nuclear program. Compounding the mistake, wrote Michael Auslin for the conservative National Review, Obama kept it off the list, despite North Korean actions like the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel in 2010 and conducting a nuclear test in 2013.

On the other hand, Fidel Castro’s support of Colombia’s leftist FARC rebels and the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) movement, which was the original rationale for placing Cuba on the list 32 years ago, is no longer an issue.

Indeed, the U.S. State Department last year admitted that there was “no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training to terrorist groups.”

Frankly, the list is dated. While Iran remains the main purveyor of terrorism worldwide, Syria and Sudan have had their own troubles in recent years.

Since 2012, the United States has seen a resurgence of activity by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force (IRGC-QF), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s ally, the militant Lebanese Hezbollah.

Among their many activities were the smuggling of weapons and explosives to insurgents in Bahrain and Yemen, and a bus bombing at the Burgas Airport in Bulgaria in July 2012.

The explosion killed the Bulgarian bus driver and five Israelis. Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the Bulgarian interior minister said there was “well-grounded” evidence that Hezbollah was behind the attack. Most ominously, Tehran continues to pursue the development of nuclear weapons.

Syria, though, is not much of a threat. It has been home to a number of Palestinian terrorist groups in the past, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

But today the Assad regime is in the midst of a bloody civil war and hanging on for dear life; it’s doubtful that Damascus has the ability to engage in terrorism abroad.

In Sudan, the National Islamic Front has been the power behind the throne since the 1989 coup that brought President Omar al-Bashir to power. In its attempts to Islamize the country, it has been ruthless in its use of violence.

But Sudan was forced in 2011 to give up one third of its southern territory and allow the birth of Christian-majority South Sudan; it also faces a continuing struggle against rebels in Darfur.

The government has taken steps to limit the activities of foreign terrorist groups within Sudan and has worked hard to disrupt foreign fighters’ use of Sudan as a logistics base and transit point for extremists going to Iraq. It is not the threat it was when it harbored Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.

Meanwhile, following the recent cyber attacks against Sony Pictures, blamed on North Korea, for producing the movie “The Interview,” which ridicules North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, there have now been calls to again place the Pyongyang Communist regime on the terrorism sponsors list.

North Korea has been committing mayhem for decades, and continues to do so. Given their unpredictability and involvement in numerous nefarious military and political activities, the North Koreans would certainly be a “worthy,” and more logical, replacement for Cuba.

The Complex Politics of Indonesia

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Last year, with the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370, the world’s spotlight was focused on Malaysia.

Now, the crash of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 halfway through a two-hour flight between Surabaya, Indonesia and the island state of Singapore, has drawn our attention to the neighbouring southeast Asian country of Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelago, with some 13,000 islands stretching over thousands of kilometres.

It ranks as the fourth-largest country in the world in population, as well as the biggest economy in southeast Asia.

Around 88 per cent of Indonesia’s 250 million people are Muslim, making it the world’s biggest Islamic nation. Seven per cent of the population is Christian, 1.7 per cent Hindu, and less than one per cent Buddhist.

But Indonesia is not a state ruled by Islamic law. Most Indonesians are moderate Muslims, and approve of a secular and pluralist society. The political parties that support a moderate and tolerant Islamic democracy and society remain popular.

The April 9, 2014 legislative election saw the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P) come first with 19.8 per cent, followed by Golkar, the ruling party from 1973 to 1999, at 14.6 per cent.

Five Islamic parties won a combined count of 31.9 per cent of the vote. The National Awakening Party (PKB) was the best performer among the Islamic parties, with nine per cent, up from 4.9 per cent in 2009. The National Mandate Party (PAN) scored 7.5 per cent, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) gained 6.79 per cent, the United Development Party (PPP) received 6.7 per cent, and the Crescent Star Party (PBB) 1.46 per cent.  

But the PKB is allied with the country’s biggest Muslim organization, the moderate Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), and has pledged to keep religion out of policy-making.

“What’s important is that our behavior is Islamic and by that I mean upholding justice, rule of law, defending ordinary citizens' rights, welfare, health, stability -- all that is in line with Islam,” said Said Aqil Siradj, the head of NU. “We don't need an Islamic country or Islamic parties to do that.”

As well, in the July 9 presidential election, Joko Widodo defeated retired Lt. Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who was backed by the Islamic parties. Widodo, who obtained 53.1 per cent of the vote, was nominated by the PDI-P.

That party’s ideology is based on the official Indonesian national philosophy, Pancasila, whose principles are belief in one supreme God; humanitarianism; nationalism expressed in the unity of Indonesia; consultative democracy; and social justice.

The Chinese population of the country consists of some 2.8 million people who self-identify as ethnic Chinese; some estimates place it as much higher. Though small in numbers, the Chinese control much of the country’s privately owned commerce and wealth, especially in the capital, Jakarta, and hence are often the subjects of populist envy.

As well, they are not Muslim, and so are sometimes the targets of extremists.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a 48-year-old Chinese Protestant whose grandfather was a tin miner from Guangzhou, China, has become the Governor of Jakarta. On Nov. 14, he was confirmed by Jakarta City Council and was inaugurated by President Widodo, his predecessor as head of the city of 10 million people, four days later.

This did not go unchallenged. A rally organized by the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), founded by Muhammad Rizieq Syihab, warned against the appointment, because, the group said, it is forbidden to have “an infidel as the head of Jakarta.”

FPI’s members have conducted yearly raids during the month of Ramadan, attacking nightclubs, bars and other venues, which they say are not in line with Islam.

The FPI is one of a number of radical organizations that wish to implement sharia law, are anti-western, and often use violence. The Islamic Congregation (Jema’ah Islamiyah), founded by Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, in particular, has been responsible for some of the most vicious attacks in recent years.

The most notorious were the 2002 bombings which killed over 200 people on the island of Bali, home to most of Indonesia’s Hindus.

But while the virulent brand of Islamist activism epitomized by the ideology and agenda of such groups is a feature of the social-political terrain in Indonesia, they form a small fraction of the wider Muslim community.

The Controversy over Education in Britain's Muslim Community

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The 2011 British census provides a snapshot of the country’s Muslim population, which now stands at almost 2.8 million – 4.4 per cent of the country’s overall total. Most live in cities such as Birmingham, Bradford, and of course London, whose Muslim population, at a bit over one million, is 12.4 per cent of the city’s people.

Philip Lewis, a scholar of Islam at the University of Bradford, has emphasised the variety of the Muslim population across the country.

Though the largest number, at 1.26 million, are of Pakistani descent, Britain’s Muslims are a very diverse group of people, originating in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia – places where Britain once ruled an empire.

So while wealthy Arabs buy up chunks of prime real estate in central London and the West End, impoverished immigrants from Bangladesh crowd into tenements in the city’s poor East End, with its high unemployment, chronic over-crowding and the worst child poverty in the land.

Muslims account for almost a tenth of babies being born in England today. So many schools have a majority of Muslim students -- and some have become controversial.

In the 2011 Census 21.8 per cent of the Birmingham population identified themselves as Muslim, mostly people from South Asia. This past January, the head teacher (principal) of the city’s Saltley School and Specialist Science College, a facility that serves a socially deprived inner-city community in Birmingham, resigned, saying he could no longer face relentless criticism from its Muslim-dominated school board.

It had pressed him to replace some courses with Islamic and Arabic studies, segregate girls and boys, and drop a citizenship class on tolerance and democracy in Britain.

As there had been previous complaints about other schools, Britain’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) carried out an inspection of 21 schools in Birmingham.

Its report concluded that pressure from fundamentalist Islamic school board governors had created a culture of “fear and intimidation” in a number of the city’s schools, including Saltley.

“Some head teachers reported that there has been an organized campaign to target certain schools in Birmingham in order to alter their character and ethos,” according to the report. It also said that some senior teachers claimed they had been “marginalized or forced out of their jobs.”

The report stated that in one school “boys and girls are also taught separately in religious education and personal development lessons.” Another stopped Christmas and Diwali celebrations, and subsidized trips to Saudi Arabia for Muslim students.

As a result, five schools, including Saltley, were placed in “special measures,” while a sixth was labelled inadequate for its poor educational standards.

Britain’s newly-appointed education secretary, Nicky Morgan, called the information “disturbing.”

Asked about the incendiary language surrounding the debate, she added that politicians should be “very conscious of the language we use and make sure it is appropriate, proportionate and absolutely not seen to be criticizing one particular community.”

Meanwhile, the governors of the Saltley School resigned in protest at the way their school had been treated by Ofsted. Dr. Mohammed Khan, who was chair of the governors at the school, said there had been “no conspiracy” to force out the head teacher, who is a Sikh.

The report’s findings were also criticized by the Muslim Council of Britain, which declared that it was wrong to conflate conservative Muslim practices with an alleged agenda to Islamicize school systems.

The Council argued that “extremism will not be confronted if Muslims, and their religious practices are considered as, at best, contrary to the values of this country and at worst, seen as ‘the swamp’ that feeds extremism.”

In late August, though, British Prime Minister David Cameron criticized the policy of multiculturalism, and declared adherence to “British values” a “duty.”

Cameron remarked that “Britain is an open, tolerant, and free nation. We are a country that backs people in every community, who want to work hard, make a contribution, and build a life for themselves and their families.” 

But, he concluded, “We cannot stand by and allow our openness to be confused with a tolerance of extremism, or one that encourages different cultures to live separate lives and allows people to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values.”

Are multiculturalism and social inclusion mutually exclusive? In Britain as elsewhere, the debates over integration and tolerance are being played out across the educational system.

How Will Renewed American-Cuban Relations Affect Jews and Israel?

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

President Barack Obama created a political bombshell when he announced that the United States would be re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, after an absence of almost 54 years.

The news was accompanied by Cuba’s release of American Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years, and the swap of a Cuban who had spied for the U.S. for three Cubans jailed in Florida.

Gross was detained in December 2009, during his fifth trip to Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for trying to deliver satellite telephone equipment while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Gross was also involved with Cuba’s small Jewish community, setting up Internet access that would bypass local censorship and help connect Cuban Jews to the outside world.

A large number of Jews immigrated to Cuba from 1910 until 1920. Many of these Jews came from Eastern Europe and used Cuba as a stopover en route to the United States, which had a strict quota system at that time.

However, some decided to stay. Many of the new immigrants from Europe prospered in Cuban’s garment industry. By 1924, there were 24,000 Jews living in Cuba, and more immigrated to the country in the 1930s.

But during and after the 1959 Communist revolution, 94 per cent of the Jews left for the United States and other countries, and only about 2,000 remain.

However, Jews remained able to practice their religion. They were permitted to buy and distribute kosher food and could receive donations from Canada and other countries for Passover food products.

In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba changed its constitution allowing for more religious freedom. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has been instrumental in helping Cuba’s Jewish population.

Since 1992, the JDC has sent rabbis and community organizers to the community. The community maintains that anti-Semitism is rare. Still, Cuban Jews have to make a strong effort just to keep their tradition alive.

On the other hand, Cuba has long been critical of Israel, and the two countries have no diplomatic relations. After the 1967 Six Day War, Cuba condemned Israel at the United Nations. Its ambassador, Ricardo Alarcon, called the war an “armed aggression against the Arab peoples.”

At the 1973 Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers, Castro announced that Arab arguments had convinced him to sever relations with Israel. A year later, the government invited PLO leader Yasser Arafat to the island.

In 1975, Cuba was one of only three non-Arab governments to sponsor the resolution declaring “Zionism is Racism” that was adopted by the UN General Assembly.

This hostility continues unabated. During last summer’s war in the Gaza Strip, Cuba accused Israel of using its military and technological superiority to execute a policy of collective punishment causing the death of innocent civilians and huge material damage.

Fidel Castro, in an article titled “Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza,” published in the Communist newspaper Granma Aug. 5, referred to “the genocide of Palestinians,” and described Israel’s offensive in Gaza as a “new, repugnant form of fascism.”

Clearly, relations between Havana and Jerusalem are not on the horizon.

The Politics of Two Small Island African Countries

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Portugal’s overseas empire lasted almost six centuries, and was spread throughout a vast number of territories across the globe.

How did this happen? Little Portugal was first off the mark in imperial expansion. Even before Columbus set off across the Atlantic in 1492, Portuguese sailors had rounded the coasts of Africa.

So there are a number of important former Portuguese colonies in Africa: Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique.

As well, there are two Portuguese-speaking island republics off the west coast of Africa, the archipelagos of Cape Verde, and Sao Tomé e Príncipe. They were originally “stepping stones” for Portuguese exploration of the continent and for trans-Atlantic trade.

The model of the plantation economy dependent on slave labour, later developed on a large scale in the Americas, was first created there.

Cape Verde (officially the Republic of Cabo Verde) consists of 10 major islands in the Atlantic Ocean, 460 kilometres off the coast of Senegal. Its 4,033 square kilometres are home to 512,096 people.

Acquired by the Portuguese between 1455 and 1461, the uninhabited islands, while resource poor, were strategically positioned.

Proximity to the African coast made slave-trading the largest commercial activity, peaking in the first half of the 17th century, when Africans were transported to Portugal’s western hemisphere colony Brazil.

The islands were settled by a mixture of former prisoners, Iberian Jews fleeing the Inquisition, Black African traders who adapted to Portuguese culture, and freed slaves. The result was a unique Afro-Portuguese Crioulo (creole) culture.

In addition to building transportation facilities, prior to independence Portugal established the islands as an educational center for its African colonies, with a seminary and secondary school. Because of this, Cape Verdeans had a fairly high educational level and prominent roles in the Portuguese colonial administration.

Further south, the Democratic Republic of Sao Tomé and Príncipe consists of two main islands. Sao Tomé lies 289 kilometres from Gabon, while Príncipe is located about 257 kilometres from Equatorial Guinea. The country’s population of 187,356 occupies just 1,001 square kilometres.

The islands were uninhabited before the arrival of the Portuguese around 1470. Sao Tomé’s topography lent itself to the development of large plantations, so slave labour was brought in from the African mainland.

By the mid-16th century Portuguese settlers had turned the islands into Africa’s foremost exporter of sugar, but in the early 19th century, two new cash crops, coffee and cocoa, were introduced. Cocoa remains the main agricultural crop today.

Both of these microstates suffered prolonged periods of non-democratic misrule after independence in 1975. Cape Verde moved to multiparty democracy in the 1990s following a lengthy period of one-party rule under the leftist African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), later known as the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV). The process was orderly and without violence.

In 2001 and 2006, there were hotly-contested presidential and legislative elections in which the PAICV prevailed over the opposition Movement for Democracy. The PAICV presidential candidate, Pedro Verona Rodrigues Pires, won the office both years and served a decade as head of state.

In 2011 Pires was awarded the $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. It is given only to a democratically elected president who has stayed “within the limits set by the country’s constitution.”

However, while the PAICV also won the 2011 National Assembly election, Jorge Fonseca of the Movement for Democracy beat Manuel Sousa of the PAICV for the presidency.

In Sao Tomé e Príncipe, Manuel Pinto da Costa of the Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tomé e Príncipe (MLSTP) took power and instituted a quasi-Marxist regime. He ruled the islands from 1975 to 1991.

After the mid-1980s, though, the political climate began to shift, as protests rose over unemployment and high inflation. The legalization of opposition political parties led to multi-party elections and an effective opposition emerged in the country’s parliament. The 2010 National Assembly election saw the Independent Democratic Action (ADI) win the most seats.

Fradique de Menezes, supported by various parties, including the Force for Change Democratic Movement-Liberal Party (MDFM-PL), the Force for Change Democratic Movement-Democratic Convergence Party (MDFM-PCD), and the ADI, was the president of Sao Tomé e Príncipe from 2003 to 2011; he survived two attempted coups. In 2011, Manuel Pinto da Costa, running as an independent, returned to power, defeating the ADI candidate, Evaristo Carvalho.

The country had become increasingly dependent on the export of cocoa since its independence, but the discovery of potentially rich offshore oilfields in the Gulf of Guinea is likely to have a significant impact on the economy.

Havana, Washington Enter New Era

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian 

By re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba after an almost 54-year break, U.S. President Barack Obama will be putting an end to a policy that long ago became pointless.

Cuba may be no democracy, but I can offhand name at least 20 countries with which Washington enjoys diplomatic relations, whose regimes are more repressive than that of the Castro brothers. Yet Cuba remained one of just a few nations, along with Iran and North Korea, that had no diplomatic relations with Washington.

The economic and political embargo against Cuba had become hostage to the domestic politics within South Florida’s Cuban community. Also, there was Washington’s petulance with an island just 145 kilometres south off Key West that had tweaked America’s nose during the Cold War.

But, really, all that is history. With Communism a spent force, Cuba long ago ceased to be a danger in the western hemisphere. In the 21st century, the United States has far more important enemies to worry about. This announcement is long past due.

“These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked,” Obama said in remarks from the White House. “It’s time for a new approach.” The deal will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.”

Obama has instructed Secretary of State John Kerry to begin the process of removing Cuba from the list of states that sponsor terrorism and announced that he would attend a regional Summit of the Americas in Panama next spring at which Cuban President Raul Castro is also scheduled to appear.

For his part, Castro stated that while the two countries still have profound differences in areas such as human rights and foreign policy, they must learn to live together “in a civilized manner.”  He did add that “the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.”

Since replacing his brother Fidel, Raul Castro has allowed greater access to cell phones and the Internet, and lifted some restrictions on travel. The political system is also more open -- though no competing political parties are permitted, non-Communists now sit in the country’s parliament.

Tourism is now big business in Cuba, and the country is packed with Europeans and Canadians. Cubans can now open their own restaurants and hire non-family members to work in them. They are now permitted to lease land from the government in order to grow food and raise animals for the tourist hotels and restaurants. Those leasing the land can hire help to assist in their work.

The re-establishment of diplomatic ties was accompanied by Cuba’s release of American Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years, and the swap of a Cuban who had spied for the U.S. for three Cubans jailed in Florida.

Gross was detained in December 2009, during his fifth trip to Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for trying to deliver satellite telephone equipment while working as a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was charged with attempting to bring down Cuba’s revolutionary system.

Gross was also involved with Cuba’s small Jewish community, setting up Internet access that would bypass local censorship and help connect Cuban Jews to the outside world.

“He’s back where he belongs, in America with his family, home for Hanukkah,” Obama said, as Gross was flown back to his home outside Washington.

Most Jews left Cuba after the 1959 revolution, and only about 2,000 remain. There are seven synagogues in the country, one Orthodox, and six Conservative. The one Reform temple has closed. The community maintains that anti-Semitism is rare.

Also, though Cuba does not subsidize the Jewish community, by renting space in underused Jewish buildings, the government provides it with some income.

Dina Siegel Vann, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs, said Gross’ release, along with the improvement in American-Cuban relations, will allow Cuban Jews to “have stronger ties to Jewish organizations, they will be much more in the open.” 

On the other hand, Cuba has long been critical of Israel, and the two countries have no diplomatic relations.  Clearly, relations between Havana and Jerusalem are not on the horizon.

Azerbaijan’s Complex Relationships With Armenia, Iran and Israel

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Among the many groups who inhabit the Caucasus are the Azeris, a Turkic people who speak a language related to Turkish, but who are culturally closer to the Persians.

The Republic of Azerbaijan’s 9.49 million people inhabit a land 86,600 square kilometres in size. The country borders the Russian Federation’s republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to its northwest, Armenia to its west, and Iran to its south. It faces the Caspian Sea on its east.

Armenia also cuts off the very western section of the country, known as Nakhchivan, from the rest of the country, though this enclave, 5,500 square kilometres in size and with a population of 415,000, provides Azerbaijan with a 15-kilometre long border with Turkey.

Virtually the entire population of Azerbaijan is Muslim, with approximately 85 per cent Shia and 15 per cent Sunni.

Along with occasional rule by indigenous dynasties, the Azeris were at various times governed by Arab, Ottoman Turkish, and Persian empires, until incorporated into the Russian Empire in the early 19th century.

After the Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan became a full-fledged Soviet Socialist Republic. However, it also incorporated, in its southwest, the 4,400 square kilometre Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Oblast.

Entirely enclosed within Azerbaijan, but not far from Armenia itself, this province was more than three-quarters Armenian by ethnicity.

As the USSR disintegrated, the parliament of Azerbaijan in 1991 abolished the autonomous status of the region, while the majority Armenian population declared its independence.

War ensued between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, backed by Christian Armenia, and Muslim Azerbaijan. By 1994, when a cease-fire went into effect, the new de facto republic of Nagorno-Karabakh had proved victorious and had enlarged its territory. Today, it includes some 140,000 residents, 95 per cent of them ethnic Armenians.

Armenians now control all of the territory of the former oblast, plus conquered areas south to Iran and west to Armenia itself -- the so-called Lachin corridor.

Of course Baku has not reconciled itself to this situation, and refuses to accept either the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh or the loss of seven other territories within an Armenian-controlled “security belt.”

Iran was quick to recognize Azerbaijan as an independent nation in 1992. It saw Azerbaijan, a Shia-majority state, as fertile ground for spreading its Islamic Revolution.

But relations between the two countries quickly turned sour, as Baku expressed irredentist sentiments and promoted the idea of a “Greater Azerbaijan,” which would unite the country with the 16 million Azeris in northwest Iran.

In February 2012, a member of the ruling New Azerbaijan Party asked the government to change the country’s name to “North Azerbaijan,” implicitly suggesting that the Azeris who live in northern Iran are in need of liberation.

Fearing Baku’s intentions to fuel secessionism inside its borders, Iran provided backing to Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan – something that has not been forgotten.

Azerbaijan has openly accused Iran of interfering in its domestic affairs. Tehran supported the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan (AIP), a pro-Iranian and religious Shiite opposition party banned by Baku.

The leader of the AIP, Movsum Samadov, called for the overthrow of President Ilham Aliyev’s government and was sentenced to 12 years in jail in 2011.

In 2012, 22 Azerbaijanis charged with spying for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were given lengthy prison sentences.

Instead, Azerbaijan has developed bilateral strategic and economic relations with Israel; they share the common goal of containing Iranian influence.

In a 2007 speech, the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan, Arthur Lenk, spoke of increasing trade between energy-rich Azerbaijan and Israel. Israel is the second largest customer for Azeri oil, shipped through the Baku-Tibilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey.

In 2009, the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. embassy in Baku, Donald Lu, sent a memo to Washington which quoted President Aliyev as describing his country’s relationship with the Jewish state as an iceberg, as “nine-tenths of it is below the surface.”

In February 2012, Azerbaijan signed a $1.6 billion defense deal with Israel’s Aeronautics Defence Systems that included air defense systems, intelligence hardware, and drones.

A month later, the magazine Foreign Policy reported that Israel had been granted access to air bases in Azerbaijan on Iran's northern border to serve Israel in a possible strike on Iran.

Access to such airfields would mean that Israeli fighter-bombers would not have to refuel midflight but could continue north and land in Azerbaijan. Such a possibility might be keeping Iran’s rulers awake at night.

Scotland and Prince Edward Island Have Something in Common

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

There’s been a lot of hoopla this year about both Scotland and Prince Edward Island, in the one case because of the referendum on independence, in the other, the commemoration of the 1864 Charlottetown Conference leading to the creation of Canada.

It’s instructive to note, though, that they both joined larger political entities not for positive reasons, but rather under duress.

An independent kingdom of Scotland was established in the ninth century, and despite periodic wars with England, retained its sovereignty throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century the Stuart dynasty began its three centuries of rule over the country.

The Stuart king James VI of Scotland inherited the throne of England in 1603, as James I, and the Stuart kings and queens ruled both independent kingdoms until the Acts of Union in 1707, which merged the two kingdoms into a new state, Great Britain.

The closing years of the 17th century saw a decline in Scotland’s economy. There was a slump in trade with the Baltic countries and France from 1689–1691, caused by French protectionism and changes in the Scottish cattle trade, followed by four years of failed harvests (1695, 1696 and 1698-1699), an era known as the “seven ill years.”

To try to turn things around, the Scottish Parliament in 1695 granted a charter to the “Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies.”

The new company, hoping to create a lucrative colony for Scotland, invested in the so-called Darien scheme, a plan to found “Caledonia,” a colony on the Isthmus of Panama, as a means of establishing trade with the Far East. Vast sums of money were raised to finance the project.

It turned out to be a disaster. Three small fleets with a total of 3,000 men set out for Panama in 1698. Poorly equipped, at the mercy of tropical storms and disease, under attack by the Spanish in nearby Colombia, and refused aid from English settlements in the Caribbean, the colonists abandoned their project in 1700. Only 1,000 survived and only one ship managed to return to Scotland.

Its failure left nobles, landowners, town councils and many ordinary Scots completely ruined. Voices began to be raised suggesting that union with England would enable Scotland to recover from the financial disaster through English assistance.

This indeed proved to be the case. A sum negotiated at 398,000 pounds was paid to Scotland by the English government under the terms of the 1707 merger, and 58.6 per cent of the money was allocated to the shareholders and creditors who had lost money in the Darien debacle.

Even more direct bribery was also said to be a factor, with many supporters of union receiving funds from English sources.

For many Scots, it was a sad occasion. Wrote Robert Burns: “We’re bought and sold for English Gold, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation.”

As every Islander knows, P.E.I. only became a Canadian province in 1873, six years following the establishment of Canada. Many Islanders had been opposed to Confederation, feeling the Island was doing quite well on its own.

Islanders were also disappointed that neither the Charlottetown nor Quebec Conferences of 1864 had dealt with the island’s “land question” – the fact that absentee landlords owned much of the colony’s farmland. It had led to Tenant League riots a year later.

In 1866, the island government passed a resolution declaring that no new terms would induce it to join Confederation.

In 1871, however, the colony began construction of a railway and soon found itself financially overextended. The ambitious railway-building plan had put the government into debt and created a banking crisis.

Two years later, the Canadian government negotiated for the island to join Canada. It agreed to take over the island’s extensive debt, consented to provide $800,000 towards a buy-out of the last of the colony’s absentee landlords, and promised to establish and maintain a year-round steamer service between the island and the mainland.

During the election of April 1873, island voters had the option of accepting Confederation or facing increased taxes. They decided to join Canada as a way out of their financial problems. Yet now the province cashes in on being the “Cradle of Confederation!”