Crackdown is Ballot Question in Spain's Election

By Henry Srebrnik [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The rise in Catalan nationalism over the past two decades has led to overly repressive measures taken by the Spanish government.

Spain is going to the polls this coming Sunday and the outcome will depend in large part on how voters react to the days of unrest which have swept Barcelona and other Catalan cities after Spain’s Supreme Court on October 14 sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to lengthy jail terms over a failed 2017 independence bid.

The vote for independence in a referendum two years ago, though successful, was quashed by the central government in Madrid and its leaders arrested.

The longest prison term, 13 years, went to the former deputy leader of the Catalan regional government, Oriol Junqueras, head of the secessionist ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya – Republican Left of Catalonia).

 “The road of self-determination is a dead end,” claimed Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, speaking recently at a rally near Barcelona, as the leader of the Catalan branch of the party, Miquel Iceta, stood beside him.

He might be proven wrong, if the number of Catalan flags flying in Barcelona is any indication -- something I took note of when in the city last June.

Large protests erupted in Barcelona and other cities after the verdicts. On Oct. 24 some 350,000 people rallied in Barcelona in support of the separatist leaders.

Catalonia’s current pro-independence president, Quim Torra, criticized the arrests and has called for a new independence referendum within two years.

Torra was voted into office in 2018 by the JxCat (Junts per Catalunya – Together for Catalonia), an electoral alliance created by former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, and the ERC.

Puigdemont, who fled the country and now lives in Belgium as a fugitive, has stated that Catalans were victims of a “strategy of repression and revenge.”

Catalan politics remained remarkably stable until 1999 in terms of party competition and parliamentary balance.

The party system was dominated by the CiU (Convergència i Unio – Convergence and Union), while the main opposition party was the PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya – Socialists’ Party of Catalonia).

But in 2000, the PSC launched a proposal to reform the 1979 Statute of Autonomy, which provided Catalonia with a large measure of self-government. Their goal was to reinforce political collaboration with the secessionist ERC.

Following elections in 2003 the CiU, which had governed Catalonia since 1980, lost power to a PSC-ERC coalition.

The reform was approved by referendum a year later and whetted the appetite of nationalists wanting to go further; they saw their chance following the 2008 financial crisis in Spain. Today, the idea of Catalan sovereignty has captured the loyalty of a large percentage of Catalans.

The response has been a new and strengthened Spanish nationalism. Sanchez has spoken out vehemently against Catalan independence in order to win the general election. But parties on his right that have adopted an even stronger stance are gaining.

The PP (Partido Popular – People’s Party) has called for a national security law which would allow Madrid to take control of Catalonia’s regional police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra. Others want direct rule. Where this will end is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be pleasant.

Boko Haram is a Formidable Movement

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

 

In northeastern Nigeria, a war has raged for a decade between Boko Haram militants and the Nigerian state. Can it be won?

Boko Haram emerged in the late 2000s in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority northeast, an area that has endured years of poverty, corruption and underdevelopment. 

Its militants mainly inhabit areas in the northern states of Nigeria, specifically Yobe, Kano, Bauchi, Borno and Kaduna. 

Boko Haram was referred to locally as the Nigerian Taliban because of their religious similarities to the Afghani movement.

Boko Haram does not engage in Nigeria's political system out of an adherence to a fundamentalist form of Islam which forbids participation unless the system is based on Sharia, or Islamic law. 

Originally a popular religious movement that challenged this status quo through ultra-conservative Islamist activism – openly opposing democracy and the legitimacy of the Nigerian state – Boko Haram turned to armed revolt in 2009, launching an uprising that the authorities have tried to crush with extreme brutality. 

More than 37,500 people have died in the conflict with the group, according to data collected by the Council of Foreign Relations. Millions have had to flee the wider area, with many living in internally displaced person camps miles away from home.

Today it remains a violent insurgent group, widely abhorred but still able to recruit on the basis of grievances many in northern Nigeria share, and whose members have tried to build links with other jihadists in west Africa. 

Last year, the group split into the “Islamic State – West Africa Province” (ISWAP) and a splinter faction operating under the group’s original name. ISWAP in particular now appears resurgent, having conducted a recent series of attacks against the Nigerian army and built closer ties to communities around the Lake Chad Basin, extending the territory under its influence.

The Lake Chad Basin, at the borders between Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Niger and the Central African Republic, is an important strategic location as the last green oasis before the Sahara Desert.

Some analysts have pronounced Boko Haram al-Qaeda’s representative in Nigeria, a view designed to push the United States to view Boko Haram as a global strategic threat to Western interests.

But this is rejected by many scholars of the region, who understand Boko Haram as just one of the symptoms of an ailing Nigeria-- a country riven by corruption and violent abuse, facing multiple crises across a diverse and large population. 

Portraying Boko Haram in this way, warned such academics, could hurt many more innocent people and exacerbate a grievous humanitarian emergency. 

Actually, Nigeria’s military influences and controls much of the debate about the movement, and its own conduct can be intimidating, even towards the politicians in Abuja. 

Last December the Nigerian government briefly suspended the operations of UNICEF, accusing it of “unwholesome practices” and “deploying spies” for Boko Haram.

This followed the UN agency’s claim earlier that year that Boko Haram had kidnapped more than 1,000 children since 2013.

It is difficult to verify such claims, given the militants’ control of most of the countryside. The heartland of the insurgency is a conservative, deeply rural society with low literacy and few English speakers. It’s impossible for outsiders to get around easily.

Does the West Want Out?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

I lived in Calgary through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, when discontent with the way governments in Ottawa seemed to neglect the West in favour of central Canada gave rise to small provincial separatist parties like the Western Canada Concept.

It also led to the rise of the federal Reform Party, with its slogan, “The West Wants In.” Leader Preston Manning’s party effectively destroyed the old Progressive Conservative Party and eventually became the nucleus of today’s Conservatives.

The 1993 federal election saw Reform sweep much of the West, while the newly formed Bloc Québécois took most of Quebec’s seats.

But here we are, three decades later, and western alienation has again brought out separatist sentiment in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile, the resurgent Bloc again speaks for much of francophone Quebec. Canada seems to be a political version of the movie Groundhog Day.

Does the West now want out? For many in Alberta, whose oil sector drives its economy, the answer increasingly may be yes.

After all, as political scientist Albert Hirschman pointed out in his book Exit, Voice and Loyalty, if you feel you have little say in the governing of your country, you may feel you have no choice but to leave.

The Oct. 21 election saw the Conservatives sweep all but one seat across Alberta and Saskatchewan – the Tories have owned Western Canada since the 1950s – while Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were re-elected. Now, so-called “Wexit” rallies are planned in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton next month.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said he’s going to hear out separatist sentiments in the province through public town halls and consultation. 

University of Calgary political scientist Barry Cooper has written that the divide between the Canadian prairies and the political hubs of Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal is as much cultural as geographical. 

While Alberta lacks the population to make enough of an impact electorally, the province contributes some 17 per cent to Canada’s GDP. Its residents have come to feel besieged by the rest of the country.

Albertans pay billions a year in federal taxes, but the province has not received equalization payments since 1965, despite its current economic recession.

Climate change is one of the top concerns across the country now. In the mouths of climate activists, Alberta’s oil sands are the enemy, yet in Alberta, they are the lifeblood of the economy. 

The federal government bought the Trans Mountain Pipeline in 2018, but it remains doubtful whether expanding it by building a second span will ever take place. Landlocked Alberta will need the permission of, among others, British Columbia to do so, and this seems unlikely. 

Defeated Liberal cabinet minister Ralph Goodale, who lost his seat in Regina, admits that his party has a lot of urgent work to do to prove to western provinces that the Trudeau government understands their needs. 

“It’s not healthy for the country to have a major national political party without elected representation across one region of the country,” he said. 

All Canadians should imagine what it feels like for Albertans when Ottawa treats them like a hostile foreign power, while the Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg is treated with more respect than Premier Kenney. 

Many Canadians can’t believe Alberta might one day secede. But plenty of people scoffed at the possibility of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union disintegrating. This country might not be as secure as we all think.