Vermont Snub on Karabakh May Signal Crimea Crisis Has Derailed Armenian-American Pressure-Politics Gravy Train

For decades, the Armenian-American political lobby in the United States has pushed aggressively to chalk up symbolic victories by pressuring state and other legislative bodies into granting utterly-nonbinding “recognition” to the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.), the Armenian puppet state which the newly independent Republic of Armenia, with the help of Russia, carved out of Azerbaijan’s western flank in a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing in the late 1980s and ’90s.  The N.K.R. has essentially no recognition in the real world of international diplomacy, except from three puppet states of the Russian Federation: Abkhazia and South Ossetia (within Georgia) and Transnistria (within Moldova).  Not even Armenia or its close ally, Russia, recognizes the N.K.R.  But the Armenian National Committee of America (A.N.C.A.) and other groups have successfully cajoled the state legislatures of Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, as well as the Los Angeles city council, to “recognize” the N.K.R.  (Abroad, Australia’s state of New South Wales recognizes it too.)

Armenian-American demonstrators in Los Angeles display Nagorno-Karabakh flags.

Some reckon that the Armenian lobby is the third most powerful immigrant-minority lobbying group in U.S. politics, exceeded in influence only by the Jewish and Cuban-American lobbies.  They have also been pushing for recognition of the Armenian genocide at the hands of Anatolian Turks a century ago as a genocide, something the U.S. has over the decades resolutely refused to do, mostly to avoid offending Turkey, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally.  There are perhaps as many as a million and a half Armenian-Americans in the U.S., mostly in southern California and New England.  There are, for example, only three cities in Armenia itself that have more Armenian residents than there are in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles.  For legislators confronted with an N.K.R.-recognition bill, the choice is between capitulating, passing the bill, and moving on, on the one hand, or, on the other, needlessly alienating and infuriating a powerful ethnic lobby.  There is, by contrast, almost no Azeri-American community of any size to exert pressure of the same kind.

Mammad Talibov tells the Vermont Senate the Azeri side of the story.

But the Armenian lobby’s winning streak, in New England at least, ended last week when Vermont’s state senate declined to wade into South Caucasus politics and recognize the N.K.R.  Vermont senators debating on the resolution were paid a visit by Yusif Babanly of the U.S. Azeris Network and a legal attaché from the Azerbaijani embassy in Washington, D.C., Mamma Talibov.  Babanly and Talibov gave the (in America, rarely heard) Azeri perspective on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and emphasized the strategic relationship between the U.S. and oil-rich Azerbaijan.  Azeris are closely related to the Anatolian Turks of Turkey proper, both culturally and linguistically, and Azerbaijan is a front-line state in the U.S.’s cold war with Iran.  (The Azeri lobby, which is closely linked to Turkey, is no stranger to manipulation and propaganda either.  See an article from this blog which touches on Azeri and Turkish efforts to build up the very minor 1992 “Khojaly Massacre” into a full-fledged “genocide” by Armenians.)  Mostly, the senate threw up its hands and decided the situation on the ground was too complex for the body to take a position on it.  As Norm McAllister, a Republican senator said, “We’re never going to know in this little committee who’s actually telling us the whole story.”

Earlier, in 2004, Vermont’s governor, James H. Douglas, officially recognized the Turkish genocide of Armenians during the First World War.  There are not a lot of Armenians in Vermont, but they include the novelist Chris Bohjalian, possibly the most prominent Armenian-American writer, who has written novels about the genocide and lives in Lincoln, Vermont.  It was Bohjalian who brought the N.K.R. recognition issue to Montpelier.

Chris Bohjalian poses before a statue in Yerevan, Armenia,
of William Saroyan, another Armenian-American writer.

Not only that, but Armenian-Americans are on the defensive elsewhere.  They only just barely managed to scotch Azeri-initiated bills this spring in Mississippi and Tennessee on recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity—i.e., declaring the N.K.R. illegitimate.  Hawaii, South Dakota, and Wyoming also rejected pro-Azerbaijani bills in February.  Similar Azeri lobbyists to those that swayed Vermont were involved in those states’ efforts as well.

Armenians with their national flag

Why did Azeris manage to keep Vermont in their column—or at least out of Armenia’s—after trying and failing to do so in those other five states?  The answer may have something to do with Crimea.  Armenia was one of only eleven countries which (as discussed recently in this blog) sided with Russia and against Ukraine in a recent United Nations General Assembly vote condemning Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.  Others in that small club included some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world, like North Korea, Syria, and Sudan.  It is possible, in fact, as an Armenian politician recently suggested (discussed recently in this blog), that Kremlin arm-twisting brought Armenia into Russia’s new “Eurasian Union” trade bloc with Belarus and Kazakhstan, using the threat of seeing to it that Armenia would lose its grip on the N.K.R. (which many Armenian nationalists hope, and most of the rest of the world fears, could be among the next territories President Vladimir Putin is eyeing for annexation).  We may never know whether the Armenian government was bullied by Putin into backing him at the U.N. or whether it found immoral and hypocritical reasons of its own for doing so.  But Armenia’s international standing has taken a hit.  Pre-Crimea, it was a mere detail of Caucasus geopolitics that Armenia was more aligned with Russia while Georgia and Azerbaijan were more aligned with NATO and the West.  But after Crimea, it matters quite a bit.  Supporting Armenia’s foreign-policy agenda is now, in a not so indirect way, support for Putin’s new cold-war project of aggressively expanding the territories in which Russians—and allied nationalities, like Armenians—are in charge.  “Recognizing” N.K.R. is, for state legislatures today, not just taking an irrelevant position on an obscure struggle.  It’s actually siding against U.S. interests.

The Armenian lobby in the U.S. should have just stuck with the genocide question.  Their moral stance on that issue is unassailable.  Instead, they opted for mimicking the fundraising model of Jewish-American groups raising money for Israel in the early days of Israeli settlement.  In fact, the N.K.R. was largely built with money from Armenian-American donors.  But Armenia has now squandered the moral authority it enjoyed as a nation victimized by genocide.  Armenian-Americans had better climb down from their support for the N.K.R. now.  Because if Nagorno-Karabakh does become the next Crimea-type battleground in Putin’s Russo-fascist expansionist schemes, it could get very uncomfortable for them in the U.S.

You won’t see this picture on the Armenian National Committee of America
website: Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad with Armenia’s president, Serzh Sargsyan

Oh, and one other thing.  The chair of the Vermont senate’s Government Operations Committee, Sen. Jeanette White, told a reporter while discussing the setting aside of the N.K.R. question, “I believe that countries should be able to determine their own destiny.  However it isn’t Vermont seceding from the U.S., which we have threatened to do.  It’s complicated.”  She is reminding us that Vermont has its own independence movement, a left-wing, environmentally-oriented movement called the Second Vermont Republic (S.V.R.).  (Vermont was an independent nation before joining the U.S. in 1791.)  So if Vermont ever does become an independent state, it can just forget about getting any diplomatic recognition from Armenia.  In the South Caucasus, people have long memories.  They never forget a slight.

Flag of the Second Vermont Republic

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

Study Finds Silicon Valley’s 6-Way California Split Is Doable

In December, when the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper suggested splitting California into six separate states, it seemed like a pie-in-the-sky side show to the more serious movement gaining steam in the state’s far north, to create a separate State of Jefferson.  But Draper’s “Six Californias” idea has just got a sort of thumbs-up—from Sacramento, no less.  A 16-page report drafted for the California legislature concludes that splitting the Golden State into pieces is “clearly legal and doable.”

This would probably not be the flag of the State of Silicon Valley,
but it’s a nice try.

Draper may be best known to the general public as Principal Schmoke on the teen situation comedy The Naked Brothers Band, but in tech circles he is heir to a high-profile venture-capital dynasty.  Silicon Valley’s discontent with California’s corporate regulations and its redistribution of tax revenue from the wealthiest areas to the poorer, more remote ones has been discussed in this blog recently—notably with the San Francisco genetics entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan planning the Valley’s “ultimate exit” from the state by some means or other, as well as organizations like the Seasteading Institute which want to set up floating free-market cities off the California coast outside United States jurisdiction.  But Draper’s solution is more old-fashioned, following a state-secession trend going back to Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys, who sliced a new state, Vermont, out of New York’s western flank in the colonial period.

Creating new states through secession has occasionally worked in the past.

Draper’s “Six Californias” plan includes a State of Silicon Valley, which would include the San Francisco Bay area and points south; a State of North California running in a thick band from Napa Valley to Lake Tahoe; a State of Jefferson composed of the state’s 14 northernmost counties; a primarily agricultural State of Central California centered on Fresno; a State of West California, stretching from San Luis Obispo to Long Beach, including liberal Los Angeles; and a State of South California composed of some of the inland, conservative, desert states that a Riverside County politician (as reported in this blog) is already trying to form, with a coastal toehold at San Diego and the Republican Party stronghold of Orange County.

A sketch by Draper shows which counties would be in which of six new states:
Jefferson (top), North California (just below it), Silicon Valley, Central California (the largest),
West California (including L.A.), and, at the bottom, South California.

The current state of California, the most populous in the U.S. and the most diverse in terms of ethnicity, landscape, and local economy, is, according to Draper, “ungovernable.”  There is already a movement to gather the necessary 1 million signatures which will put the proposal on the ballot in November.  The report, which was prepared by a legislative expert, Mac Taylor, and a financial specialist, Michael Cohen, notes that the states of Silicon Valley and North California would each have a higher per capita income than California’s current $46,477.  In fact, Silicon Valley would surpass Connecticut and become the state with the highest average income.

Tim Draper—guru of the state-partition movement

Draper says the highest interest in the “Six Californias” proposal is in the areas that would be Central California and the State of Jefferson.  The problem is that which counties want to be in Jefferson (listed in this blog as one of “10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014”) is being sorted out right now at the grass-roots level, without waiting for a top-down partition by any city-slicker millionaire technocrat.  To date, the boards of supervisors in Siskiyou and Modoc counties have voted in favor of secession, and Siskiyou and Tehama will put the question before voters in June.  Other counties are considering it, and in Siskiyou there is even going to be an alternate ballot initiative to create a sort of sovereign “Republic of Jefferson” within Siskiyou County’s territory.

But ultimately, the problem is that Draper is approaching the alleged problem of California’s ungovernability like a businessman, not a politician, and it will be politics that will decide, all on its own, whether to partition the state.  Just for the sake of argument, even if the U.S. Congress did agree to a subdivision of California that, let’s say, maintained the same balance between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, that still doesn’t tell us why California Democrats, who already control the largest state in the U.S., would settle for a smaller place to run.

Related articles from this blog:
“Glenn County Becomes 4th California Jurisdiction to Opt to Join ‘State of Jefferson’” (Jan. 2014)
“Northern Californian Voters Torn between ‘State’ or ‘Republic’ of Jefferson” (Jan. 2014)
“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014” (Dec. 2013)
“State of Jefferson Idea Won’t Go Away: Activists across Northern California Push for Statehood” (Nov. 2013)
“Silicon Valley Technocrats Plan to Flee U.S. for Libertarian Floating Cities” (Nov. 2013)
“Modoc County Joins Siskiyou in Seeking to Split from California as State of Jefferson” (Sept. 2013)
“Other California & Oregon Counties May Be Jumping on ‘State of Jefferson’ Bandwagon” (Sept. 2013)
“Siskiyou County, California, Takes the Plunge, Votes to Secede as Kernel of New ‘State of Jefferson’” (Sept. 2013)
“Colorado’s Secession Wildfire Spreads to Northern California: Siskiyouans Raise “State of Jefferson” Flag” (Aug. 2013)
“Let a Thousand Secession Petitions Bloom: The U.S. Balkanized, but Perhaps Only on the White House Website, Nowhere Else—but Most Importantly: What Does All This Have to Do with Topless Car Washes and the State of Jefferson?” (Nov. 2012)
“‘South California’ Statehood Movement Reignites in Election Year” (Sept. 2012)

[For those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with my forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  The book is now in the layout phase and should be on shelves, and available on Amazon, by early fall 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even though you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook.]

The Tea Party Discovers Secessionism

When George W. Bush stole the election from Al Gore in 2000, and then again when Bush was, unbelievably, reelected in 2004, liberals and progressives in the United States talked a lot about moving to Canada, though very few did.  Mostly this was just a rhetorical way of venting steam.  It had a logic to it, though: Canada is a country where no one becomes homeless because of unpaid medical bills, where no one dies of a treatable disease because of an inability to get health insurance, where the government acknowledges the existence of anthropogenic global warming, where gays and lesbians are allowed to marry (this was not fully true until 2005, of course), where politicians who believe the story of Noah’s Ark is literally true are laughed out of office, and where, more to the point, the government did not operate a gulag of extrajudicial prison camps and torture chambers and where trillions of dollars and thousands of young lives were not being dumped contemptuously down the black hole of a war against an invented enemy in Iraq.

But when Barack Obama was reelected last week and conservative and right-wing Americans were equally baffled and outraged, Canada was not really an option for them.  Canada was, after all, more or less what America would look like if the folks who voted for Obama had their way completely.  No; if right-wing Republicans wanted to move to a country where religion played a central role in formulating laws and where traditional family values were upheld and where gays and lesbians were treated as second-class citizens and enemies of the state were thrown into torture chambers without due process, they would have to move to ... um ... Saudi Arabia or, um, Iran or Syria or the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.  And that would run counter to one of the core values of the Republican Party’s right wing, which is Islamophobic bigotry.  What a quandary for the poor fellas!

But the right-wing extremists who had buffeted Bush into power and who organized against the advent of a black president with the Tea Party movement shortly after Obama’s election have finally hit on another solution.  If they can’t leave the U.S. as individuals, they can take whole chunks of the U.S. with them as they leave.  Yes, the Tea Party has discovered secessionism.

Starting the day after the election on November 6th, the White House’s website began to receive petitions from state residents wanting to secede from the United States.  According to the rules for the website’s “We the People” online petition program, any petition gathering 25,000 signatures in the space of a month will “require a response” from the Obama administration.

The petition page from Whitehouse.gov

So far, 46 states have also been represented in secession petitions on the website, starting with Louisiana and Texas within 24 hours of Obama’s win.

The former Confederate States of America were among the first to launch petitions, and some of these have the highest numbers (these numbers are as of the morning of November 14th and will be higher by the time you read this): Georgia with 43,306 (though split among three separate petitions, one of them calling the state “georgia” and only one reaching the 25,000 mark), South Carolina with 33,008 (split between two petitions), Louisiana (32,927), Florida (28,706), Alabama (26,365), Tennessee (26,268), North Carolina (25,639), Arkansas (25,190, but split between two petitions, neither reaching 25,000), and Mississippi (15,343).  (Virginia, which has over the past decade become an Obama-supporting swing state, has gotten 9,714 secession signatures, split between three petitions.)

The proud rebel flag

Texas, of course, which has a vigorous (if usually only rhetorical and symbolic) separatist movement (discussed in a recent article in this blog), has the highest number of signatures: 95,838.  Other states with high numbers of signatures include the hard-core red states Missouri (29,166, split between two petitions), Oklahoma (22,660; two petitions), Arizona (17,783), Indiana (17,088), Kentucky (15,611), Montana (11,487), and North Dakota (10,075).  Some swing states have also gathered lots of signatures, notably Colorado (18,108), Pennsylvania (17,078), and Ohio (15,368—split between two petitions, one of which calls it the Republic of Ohio).  New Hampshire, a red state with one of the country’s few fully active, though small, separatist parties (the individual-sovereigntist, Tea Party–affiliated New Hampshire Liberty Party, discussed earlier in this blog), has garnered only 3,475.

The only states not represented in the petitions are Hawaii, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts—four of the most Democratic-dominated states.  In fact, these may be the four bluest states on the list.  (Ironically, Vermont has its own left-wing separatist movement (see a recent blog post on this) and Hawaii has decidedly-not-politically-conservative indigenous separatists, but they are not participating in the petition process.  Hawaii is, of course, Obama’s home state.)  But there are some true-blue states that are petitioning for secession this week: Delaware with 12,782 signatures (two petitions), New Jersey with 12,000, and Maine with 1,430.  This makes little sense.  If Delawarean Republicans, for example, feel they have little voice in national politics, they would have even less if Delaware were independent.  New York’s 19,659 signatures seem like a lot until you realize that one of the two New York secession petitions originated in North Dakota.

Flag of the “Second Vermont Republic” movement

Nor are there petitions to secede from the District of Columbia (the most Democratic jurisdiction in the U.S.), the Northern Marianas, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or, of course, Puerto Rico—which in fact just voted on November 6th in favor of full statehood (as discussed in a recent article in this blog).  If all the folks with the petitions, of course, get their way, then Puerto Rico can join Hawaii, Connecticut, Vermont, and Massachusetts in designing a five-starred U.S. flag.

There are also petitions in reaction to the secession petitions: 3,187 have signed a petitioned to allow the secessionist states to secede, while only 1,029 signed a petition to “keep the United States united”—confirming the “don’t let the screen door hit your ass on the way out” attitude that many blue-staters have towards Southern and other Bible Belt separatists.  A petition with 1,504 signatures asks that states pay their share of the national debt before being allowed to secede.  A paltry 224 North Carolinians signed a petition to stay in the U.S.  But 14,170 Americans signed to urge that signers of secession petitions be deported, and 8,410 signed another urging that such signators be stripped of their citizenship and “exiled.”

And in Texas, 3,802 citizens signed a petition asking that Austin, an ultraliberal university town, be allowed to stay in the U.S. if Texas secedes.  This would be tricky, since Austin is landlocked and the state capital.

So far, only eight states have reached the 25,000 mark: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.  Minus the comparatively unpopulous Mississippi—which may well reach 25,000 before the month is out—and the newly branded swing state of Virginia (see above), this is essentially the heartland of the old slave-holding South.  Of course, that’s just a complete coincidence.

[You can read more about state secession in the U.S. and many other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this interview for more information on the book.]

[Thanks to Amy P. and Mike B. for, independently of each other, bringing to my attention the image used at the top of this article.]

Gunplay at Quebec Victory Rally, MNLA + Ansar al-Dine = BFF?, Blair in the Dock in Edinburgh?, Migron Dismantled, Vermont Separatists’ Montpelier Manifesto, Yugoland Decays: The Week in Separatist News, 2-8 September 2012

TOP STORY:
PARTI QUÉBÉCOIS WINS, CAN FORM GOVERNMENT, PUSH FOR REFERENDUM;
VICTORY RALLY DISRUPTED BY POSSIBLE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

The Parti Québécois (P.Q.), with its goal of seceding from Canada, on September 4th secured 54 of Quebec’s National Assembly’s 125 seats, not a majority but enough to put it in charge of forming a new government and on track perhaps for another referendum on separation.

Quebec’s premier elect, Pauline Marois, being hustled off stage by her bodyguards as shots are fired.

But a Montreal victory rally by the P.Q. leader and now incoming premier, Pauline Marois, declaring that “Quebec needs to become a sovereign country,” was disrupted by a man wearing only a bathrobe, black underpants, and what one can these days only describe as a Pussy-Riot-style black balaclava who opened fire nearby, killing a 45-year-old man and injuring another man, and then set a small fire.  Marois was in no direct danger but was hustled off stage to a by her security detail.  The shooter was identified later as Richard Henry Bain, age 62, an anglophone fishing-lodge owner who was having business troubles that he blamed partly on government red tape.  No firm motive has been established, but authorities are not ruling out the possibility that it was an attempt on Marois’s life.  He is being charged with first-degree murder and related offenses.  As Bain was packed away by police he was heard to say, “The English are rising up.”  Oddly enough, he said it in French.  [Related article: “Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (Nov. 2012).]

Richard Henry Bain, the shooter

AFRICA

Islamists Take Major Town in Mopti, Expanding Area of Control in Central Mali.  Islamist extremists that control the northern two-thirds of the Republic of Mali, calling it the Independent State of Azawad, expanded their territory in the divided Mopti region on September 1st by capturing the town of Douentza, a mere 120 miles from the region’s eponymous capital and a mere 500 miles from the Malian capital, Bamako.  The Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) rolled into town in pick-up trucks and took control from the Ganda Iso self-defense militia, which had been resisting the jihadists.  A MUJAO leader said they would not retreat, but would also not attempt to take Bamako unless provoked.  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012), “Dream of a Tuareg State Fizzles: Is This the End of Azawad?” (July 2012), “Mali Becomes the 92nd Country to Formally Recognize Kosovo ... or Not” (Aug. 2012).]

Map of Mali showing, in red, the Douentza district, which is part of Mopti province.  To the north are the solidly Azawadi-occupied provinces of Kidal, Timbuktu, and Gao.

Al-Qaeda Captors Kill Algerian Deputy Consul in Northern Mali.  The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (A.Q.I.M.) announced that it had executed, on September 1st, a diplomat from Algeria that it had been holding in captivity along with three other diplomats in the northern part of Mali which calls itself the Independent State of Azawad.  The statement read by the A.Q.I.M. leader, Abulwaleed al-Sahrawi, said that the diplomat, al-Tuher Tuwati, Algeria’s deputy consul for northern Mali, was executed because the deadline given to the Algerian government by A.Q.I.M. for freeing three al-Qaeda prisoners had expired.  Algeria, in response, vowed “painful revenge” for the execution.  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012), “Dream of a Tuareg State Fizzles: Is This the End of Azawad?” (July 2012), “Mali Becomes the 92nd Country to Formally Recognize Kosovo ... or Not” (Aug. 2012).]

M.N.L.A. Regrouping, Maybe Even with Ansar al-Dine, to Retake Azawad from MUJAO.  The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (M.N.L.A.), the Tuareg army which declared the northern two-thirds of the Republic of Mali an Independent State of Azawad in April, only to see their secession hijacked by Islamists linked to the al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb (A.Q.I.M.), said this week that it is organizing Azawadi tribes in an attempt to take Azawad back from the Islamists.  It is not interested in remaining part of Mali.  “We were able to defeat the Malian army,” one rebel said, “and we can also eliminate these extremist terrorist brigades.”  Iyad Ag Ghali, a Tuareg spiritual leader who heads Ansar al-Dine, one of the two jihadist militias ruling Azawad, indicated that he may take up the M.N.L.A. suggestion that his ranks join them in a fight against the other jihadist group, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).  Of the two Islamist militias, MUJAO, which is more closely linked to A.Q.I.M. and Algeria, is proving more ruthless, while Ansar al-Dine, which is dominated by Tuaregs, is softening its position and is more and more resentful of MUJAO’s religious hard line and its ties to foreigners—especially after this week’s execution of an Algerian diplomat by A.Q.I.M. (see article above).  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012), “Dream of a Tuareg State Fizzles: Is This the End of Azawad?” (July 2012), “Mali Becomes the 92nd Country to Formally Recognize Kosovo ... or Not” (Aug. 2012).]

Somaliland Claims Complete Control of Buhoodle Region.  The de facto independent Republic of Somaliland announced August 31st that it was firmly in control of the Buhoodle region, in what the Somali Republic calls Sool province and what was formerly claimed by the Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (S.S.C.) State, a.k.a. Khaatumo State.  The announcement coincided with the assumption of their duties by a new governor and mayor under central Somaliland auspices.  Sporadic violence by Khaatumo loyalists had persisted for weeks after the August 12th peace accord between Khaatumo rebels and Somaliland’s government.  [Related articles: “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), “Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012).]

Somaliland Parliament Rejects Gender, Ethnicity Quotas for Elected Officials.  The lower house of the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland’s parliament this week rejected a legal provision dictating the proportion of parliamentarians and local council members that must be women and minorities.  With just over half of members in attendance, the vote was 30-8 against the provision.  The deputy speaker of parliament, Bashe Mohamed Farah, called the proposal unconstitutional.  [Related articles: “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), “Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012).]

U.N. Sounds Alarm over Puntland President’s Army of South African Mercenaries.  A report by the United Nations’ Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea (S.E.M.G.) blamed the government of South Africa for failing its international obligations by allowing South African mercenaries belonging to Sterling Corporate Services (S.C.S.) to function as the “private army” of Abdirahman Mohamed Farole, president of the self-governing Puntland State of Somalia.  An earlier U.N. report had called Saracen International Lebanon—like S.C.S., a shell company for South African and Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) mercenaries linked to lawless, murderous mercenary firms like Blackwater Worldwide (now known, ridiculously, as “Academi”) and Executive Outcomes—the “most egregious threat” to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.  Offenses include the torturing of recruits and what the recent report called “brazen, large-scale, and protracted violation of the Somalia sanctions regime.”  S.C.S. and Saracen at the moment are run by Lafras Luitingh, a South African who became a citizen of Australia in 2009 and lives in Sydney.  [Related article: “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012).]

A Saracen International recruit in the aftermath of a training session.

Barotse Boycott Zambian Constitutional Meetings; Activists Tear Copies of Constitution.  The Barotse Royal Establishment (B.R.E.), which represents the interests of the traditional Lozi (a.k.a. Barotse) people of Zambia’s Western Province, notified the central government on August 31st that it was declining to name two representatives, as Zambia had requested, to meetings to plan a new Zambian constitution.  In a letter signed by Wainyae Clement Sinyinda, the B.R.E.’s prime minister, explained, “all the previous submissions by the BRE and other Barotse people to all the previous Constitutional Review Commissions (CRC) fell on [deaf] ears, meaning that the Zambian Government has no intention to respect and honour our views.”  Then, on September 6th, hundreds of Barotse stormed the district administration office in Mongu, capital of Western Province, and tore into pieces over 500 copies of the draft constitution translated into the Lozi (Barotse) language.  As a result, Mongu police are interrogating members of the Barotse Freedom Movement, the organization which organized the protest, for “disrupting peace and unity.”

A modified map showing the notional territory of Barotseland

Nigerian Soldiers arrest 19 Biafran Separatists, Including Local Onitsha Leader.  Soldiers from a Nigerian artillery regiment arrested 19 members of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), an Igbo separatist movement, on September 4th, including Chief Arinze Igbani, MASSOB’s regional head for Onitsha, in southeastern Nigeria.  Igbani was being treated at an orthopedic clinic when he was arrested, simultaneous with other coordinated arrests around the city.  The arrest further injured Igbani’s leg, which he was having looked at from a motorcycle accident in June.  No reason has been given for the arrests.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Southern Nigeria Splitting Apart Too as the Muslim North Burns” (Aug. 2012).]

Efik King Urges Nigeria to Appeal World Court Ruling That Gave Bakassi to Cameroon.  The obong (king) of Calabar, the traditional kingdom of the Efik ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria and adjoining—including disputed—areas of Cameroon, along with other Efik leaders, this week asked the Nigerian government to appeal the International Court of Justice’s 2002 ruling ceding the till-then-Nigerian-administered Bakassi Peninsula to Cameroon before a 10-year window for appeals closes on October 10th.  The obong, Edidem Ekpo Okon Abasi-Otu V, affirmed that Bakassi is the territory of the Efik kingdom’s ruling houses.  A month ago, the Bakassi Self-Determination Front (B.S.D.F.) declared an independent Republic of Bakassi from a pirate radio station on a Cameroonian-ruled island offshore of the peninsula (as reported recently in this blog), and the larger region, Ambazonia, is a formerly British-ruled area that would like to secede from the authoritarian, centralized francophone government in Cameroon.  King Edidem and other Nigerian Efik, however, are merely seeking a reassignment of Bakassi to Nigerian jurisdiction or, failing that, the right of exiled Bakassian Efik in Nigeria to return home and settle in Bakassi.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Ambazonian Separatists Focus on Bakassi Peninsula in New Push to Split Cameroon” (Aug. 2012), “Southern Nigeria Splitting Apart Too as the Muslim North Burns” (Aug. 2012).]

The King of Calabar

Ogoni Leaders Reassure Nigerian President on Autonomy Declaration.  Some mainstream leaders of Nigeria’s Ogoni ethnic group are distancing themselves from an August 2nd declaration of autonomy (reported on at the time in this blog) by Goodluck Diigbo, head of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP).  Two leaders—Sen. Magnus Ngei Abe and the Ogoni paramount ruler, Godwin N. K. Gininwa—visited Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan at his villa on September 3rd and told him that, while they favored greater opportunities and autonomy and freedom for the Ogoni, they did not seek unilateral separation.  However, the leaders did support a plan to create a new state, to be called Bori State, out of the existing Rivers State, in the Niger Delta region.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Southern Nigeria Splitting Apart Too as the Muslim North Burns” (Aug. 2012).]

33 Dead in Nigerian Strife Linked to Boko Haram Islamists.  This week’s ongoing violence by the northern Nigerian Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram left 33 people dead in Nigeria.  A presumed Boko Haram ambush on August 31st at a mechanical workshop in Damaturu, in Yobe State, in the northeast, killed a member of the military’s anti-terrorist Joint Task Force (J.T.F.).  Meanwhile, military authorities claimed this week that five suspected Boko Haram fighters were killed after they attacked a military patrol with “a fuel-propelled improvised explosive device” in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State in the far northeast.  Two soldiers were injured, as was a civilian, and several houses were burnt.  Meanwhile, over the September 1-2 weekend, also in Borno, in the town of Marte, gunmen killed a police sergeant and two civilians and set fire to five police vehicles, the police station, a church, and the residence of an army commander.  Boko Haram is also suspected in the killings of two people in Maidiguri, one killed in his bed and the other shot point blank in the head on the street.  Again in Damaturu, Islamists attacked a police vehicle on September 4th, but there were no reports on casualties.  Suspected Boko Haram rebels began firing on security forces in Maiduguri on September 6th, and seven militants were killed in the ensuing gun battle, while on the same day in Damaturu Boko Haram rebels killed 15 during a severely disruptive wave of attacks on cellphone transmission towers across northern Nigeria.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011), “Jihadists Imperil Nigerian Unity” (June 2012), “Southern Nigeria Splitting Apart Too as the Muslim North Burns” (Aug. 2012).]

Cabindans Voted for Angola’s Ruling Party after All.  On September 6th, newly released results from the Republic of Angola’s August 31st elections (reported on earlier in this blog) showed that the small exclave of Cabinda, disconnected from the rest of Angola by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s narrow wedge of coastline, opted as well for the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola–Labor Party (M.P.L.A.), a former rebel group (from the days of fighting rule by Portugal) which is now a political party and which opposes Cabindan independence.  The M.P.L.A. was easily reelected, with 71.8% of the national vote and 59.4% of Cabinda’s.  The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), another former rebel group and the main opposition party, which also opposes Cabindan independence, came in with 18.6% of the national vote and 24.5 of Cabinda’s.  [Related article: “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists” (April 2012), featuring a profile of Angola’s Queen Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba.]

Cabindan separatists with their flag

Moroccan Troops Arrest 5 Sahrawi Protesters in Western Sahara.  Moroccan occupation forces arrested five young Sahrawis in Dakhla, Western Sahara, on September 5th for holding a non-violent protest in favor of greater freedoms and for independence for the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, according to Sahrawi human-rights monitors.  The Kingdom of Morocco has been occupying Western Sahara, in violation of international law, since Spain abandoned the colony in 1975.  [Related article: “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

EUROPE

Separatists Want Blair to Face War Crimes Charges in Scottish Court for Iraq Invasion.  While an independent Scotland’s membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) may still be an unresolved issue among Scottish separatists, some Scots nationalists have made their feelings about western European militarism known by putting forward a motion to bring the United Kingdom’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, to Scotland to face charges on war crimes for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  The proposal got immediate support from five Scottish National Party (S.N.P.) backbenchers.  Even the S.N.P.’s leader and Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, would not speak out against the idea, saying, “ I fully understand the sentiment because I think that Tony Blair misled this country into an illegal war ....  I led an attempt to impeach the prime minister on this very subject. In terms of the interpretation of Scots law, that’s a matter for law officers.”  The nationalist member of the Scottish Parliament (M.S.P.) who brought the motion, Margo MacDonald, is an independent, though still a nationalist.  Her husband, Jim Sillars, former leader of the Scottish Labour Party and now an S.N.P. member who is on the outs with Salmond, wrote on the matter this week in The Scotsman, arguing, “Blair knew aggressive war was a crime.  He believed he was safe, there being no legal system that could touch him.  There is one now—ours.”  [Related articles: “The Iraq War Is Over, but Is Iraq’s Partition Just Beginning?” (Dec. 2011), “Succession or Accession—Could Scotland Leave Britain but Stay in Europe?” (Jan. 2012), “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012).]

Margo MacDonald wants to see Tony Blair in chains.

Sturgeon Named “Minister for Scottish Independence.”  The First Minister of Scotland and head of the pro-independence Scottish National Party (S.N.P.), Alex Salmond, on September 5th appointed his deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, the new Minister for Scottish Independence, to guide Scotland to its separation from the United Kingdom.  Sturgeon had also been serving as Scotland’s minister of health.  [Related articles: “Succession or Accession—Could Scotland Leave Britain but Stay in Europe?” (Jan. 2012), “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012).]

Rioters Wound 47 Police at Republican Parade in Northern Ireland.  Rioting in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, between loyalists, who wish the territory to remain in the United Kingdom, and republicans, who want it to join the Republic of Ireland, injured 47 police on September 2nd.  Police say the violence began when loyalists began throwing golf balls and paving stones at a republican parade.  Police dispersed the crowd with water cannons.

Belfast this week

Gagauzia Threatens Secession if Moldova and Romania Reunify.  The leader of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, a self-governing region of the Republic of Moldova’s Turkic-speaking minority, told media this week that increasing calls for the reunification of Moldova and Romania may push the Gagauz to declare independence.  See my separate article on this development.

The flag of Gagauzia

Policewoman Injured as Official Vehicles Fired upon in North Kosovo.  An unidentified assailant opened fire on September 7th on two moving official vehicles in the partially recognized Republic of Kosovo’s disputed North Kosovo region.  One policewoman was wounded in the incident, which occurred in the majority-Serbian village of Zubin Potok.  Two vehicles were fired on: one from the Kosovo Police, and one from the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo, known as Eulex.  North Kosovo is the one part of Kosovo, near the border with the Republic of Serbia, which is dominated by Serbs rather than by ethnic Albanians.  It is largely administered through proxy by Serbia, but it is claimed by Kosovo.  The day before, in the North Kosovo town of Leposavić, a bomb was thrown into the garden of a city official, but no one was injured, though his house was damaged.  [Related articles: “Balkan Semantics: How Kosovo Dropped Two Words and Serbia Gained Europe” (March 2012),  “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012), “Mali Becomes the 92nd Country to Formally Recognize Kosovo ... or Not” (Aug. 2012).]

Spain Relents to Hunger-Strikers’ Demands, Releases Terminally Ill Basque Prisoner.  A court in Spain on August 30th agreed to release a convicted Basque terrorist whose continued incarceration despite his terminal cancer prompted a hunger strike among hundreds of Basque prisoners in France and Spain last month (as reported on at the time in this blog).  The prisoner, Jesús María Uribetxebarria Bolinaga, is serving time for murder and kidnapping charges on behalf of the struggle for a separate Basque state.  [Related article: “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” featuring a profile of the Basque warrior Idoia López Riaño, a.k.a. la Tigresa.]

Jesús María Uribetxebarria Bolinaga

Bossi Touts Founding of Padana–Alpine Euroregion.  In Gattico, in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, the Northern League’s founder, Umberto Bossi, told a rally that his parting gift to the League, after his removal as leader following a corruption scandal earlier this year, is the Padana–Alpine Euroregion.  Euroregions are politically powerless cross-national designations approved by the Council of Europe to guide tourism and economic development.  The Padana–Alpine Euroregion is the newest, declared last month in St. Gall, Switzerland, and covering parts of Italy and Switzerland.  It joins the existing Northern League–lobbied Adriatic, Alps–Mediterranean, Insubria, Sea–Alps, and Tyrol–South Tyrol–Trentino Euroregions.  [Related articles: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011), “Umberto Bossi’s ‘Republic of Padania’ Expands into Central Europe” (Jan. 2012), “Valtellina: A History Lesson on Europe’s Tense North–South Border” (July 2012), and “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” featuring a profile of Bossi’s son Renzo Bossi.]

“Yugoland” Communist Theme Park in Serbia on Verge of Closing for Lack of Funds.  A theme park catering to Serbs nostalgic for the old Communist Yugoslavia is on the verge of shutting down for lack of money, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.  Yugoland, founded in 2003 in Subotica in the Republic of Serbia, is a 1.5-acre tourist attraction featuring iconography of the dictator Josip Broz Tito, flags, monuments, and landscaping that includes a ditch dug to resemble the Adriatic Sea and a pile of soil said to represent Triglav, Yugoslavia’s highest mountain (currently—ahem!—in independent Slovenia).  Thousands of Yugoland “passports” have even been issued.  Its founder, Blasko Gabric, a Serbian printer, was moved to found the park in 2003, after Yugoslavia, then down to two constituent republics after the secessions of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, changed its name to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.  (Secessions by Montenegro and Kosovo came later.)  Gabric worries that Serbia will further disintegrate if “Yugo-nostalgia” such as he promotes is not nurtured.  (Ironically, the decaying Yugoland sits on the territory of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, a part of Serbia that indeed does have its own separatist movement.)  Three other, much larger, Communist theme parks are still open in other parts of the world.  Their names are the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Belarus, and Transnistria.  [Related articles: “Balkan Semantics: How Kosovo Dropped Two Words and Serbia Gained Europe” (March 2012),  “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

Sho whaddaya shay, Tito?  We had a good run, didn’t we?  Hic!

[For the latest news from the North Caucasus (including Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Krasnodar Krai), see today’s article “Pankisi Gorge Questions, Azeri Axe-Murderer Pardoned, New N.K.R. Pres, Cossacks on Patrol: Caucasus Update, 2-8 September 2012.”]

BITS OF ASIA THAT LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE

[For the latest news from the South Caucasus, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, see today’s article “Pankisi Gorge Questions, Azeri Axe-Murderer Pardoned, New N.K.R. Pres, Cossacks on Patrol: Caucasus Update, 2-8 September 2012.”]

[For the latest news from Turkey, including Turkish Kurdistan, see this week’s update “Turkey Crosses Iraq Border Again: Kurdistan Update, 2-8 September 2012.”]

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

[For the latest news from Iraq, including Iraqi Kurdistan, see this week’s update “Turkey Crosses Iraq Border Again: Kurdistan Update, 2-8 September 2012.”]

Israel Evacuates 300 from Migron “Outpost,” but Settlement Expansion Rolls On.  Authorities in Israel evacuated on September 2nd one of the largest illegal Jewish settlement “outposts” in the West Bank portion of the Palestinian Territories.  The outpost, Migron, near the Palestinian capital, Ramallah, is built on land privately owned by Palestinians.  Police met little resistance in the removal of about 300 Jewish settlers from the hilltop site.  A Christian monastery near Jerusalem was vandalized two days later in what authorities believe was retaliation for the evictions; graffiti included the name Migron and the phrase, “Jesus is a monkey.”  (Is that really the best they could come up with?)  Israel’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made it clear that he had no intention of halting the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which is in violation of United Nations resolutions and international law and is the primary barrier to peace between Israel and Palestine.  “We are honoring the court’s rulings,” he said, “and we are also strengthening settlement.  There is no contradiction between the two.”  In addition to new housing for the people of Migron, he promised the construction of hundreds more illegal settlements in areas that are less likely to be challenged in court.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

Not everyone left the Migron outpost willingly.

Israeli Forces Kill 6 in Gaza, Thwarting Terror Attacks.  The Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) thwarted what it said were two terrorist plots this week.  On September 5th, Israeli aircraft bombed a group of Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip who were apparently preparing to fire rockets into Israel.  The operation killed three Palestinians and wounded one.  Then, the next day, Israeli tanks and aircraft killed three Palestinians seen planting a bomb along a border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel proper, according to the I.D.F.  Israel blamed Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization which runs Gaza within the Palestinian Territories, for the incident.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

3 Injured in South Yemen Separatist Rally in Aden.  In Aden, former capital of the formerly independent South Yemen, which merged with (north) Yemen to form the Republic of Yemen in 1990, police fought on September 6th with secessionists who want to reestablish the region as independent.  Three people were injured when police responded to stone-throwing with live ammunition.  The protesters were trying to storm a jail to free separatist prisoners.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

1 Rebel Killed in Shootout between Indian Security Forces and Kashmir Separatists.  In Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only majority-Muslim state, gunfire broke out September 1st between separatists in their hideout and Indian security troops who had surrounded them, acting on a tip.  At least one separatist militant was killed in the incident, which occurred in the Ganderbal district.  Meanwhile, in Kulgam district, authorities arrested the chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (J.K.L.F.), Mohammad Yasin Malik, during a protest rally and caused injuries when they used batons to beat away protesters interfering with the arrest.

Mohammad Yasin Malik

Baloch Rebels Claim Killing of Pakistan Government Death-Squad Member.  The Baloch Liberation Army (B.L.A.), which seeks to separate the province of Balochistan from Pakistan, announced August 30th that its militants had killed a member of the Musallah Defa Tanzeem, which they call a government-backed civilian death squad.  The killing of the man, Mohammad Ali, ak.a. Parvez Painter, was in Khuzdar, in Balochistan.  Another government collaborator, Abdul Khaliq Baranzai, was also attacked and injured, possibly in the same incident.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

ASIA—EAST ASIA

Thousands in Hong Kong Protest Beijing’s “Brainwashing” School Curriculum.  Thousands of parents, students, and teachers protested in Hong Kong on September 3rd outside the People’s Republic of China’s government offices, in anger over a controversial school curriculum.  The new material, which critics call “brainwashing,” sings the praises of single-party authoritarian rule and denigrates alternative forms of government, such as the more democratic system in place in Hong Kong, a former United Kingdom colony.  [Related article: “Happy Dependence Day, Hong Kong!  400,000 Protest Chinese Rule—but Secession Is Not on the Table” (July 2012).]

Hong Kongers take to the streets against “brainwashing”

6 Thai Soldiers Injured by Bombs in Wave of Violence on Anniversary.  A wave of violence on August 31st swept the predominantly-Muslim, ethnically Malay provinces of southern Thailand, which are agitating to form a separate state.  Authorities reported 102 separate incidents, including at least 60 bombs planted, Thai flags burned, and Malaysian flags raised.  Six soldiers were wounded by bomb blasts in Narathiwat province.  August 31st marks the 55th anniversary of both the founding of the Federation of Malaya (precursor to modern Malaysia) and of predecessors to the Malay secessionist movement Bersatu in Thailand.

A Thai bomb squad attending to a booby-trapped Malaysian flag in the separatist Muslim south

World Islamic Body Sends Fact-Finding Mission to Burma over Rohingya Question.  A fact-finding team from the 57-member Organization of Islamic States (O.I.C.) arrived in Burma on September 6th to look into the welfare of the disenfranchised and predominantly-Muslim Rohingya people of western Burma, who bore the brunt of a wave of interethnic violence with members of Burma’s Buddhist majority this June.  The military junta which rules Burma as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar welcomed the delegation and claimed to be eager to clear up “misconceptions” about the treatment of the 800,000 or so Rohingyas, whom the United Nations calls the most numerous stateless people in the world.  [Related article: “The Moment Burma’s Ethnic Minorities Have Been Waiting for” (Jan. 2012).]

Civilian Shot and Killed by Burmese Troops in Kachin State.  In Burma, government troops shot an unarmed civilian in the neck on September 5th, killing him, in western Kachin State.  The civilian, Kareng Naw Chyan, was gathering jade stones in the jade-mining region when he was shot and left for dead.  [Related article: “The Moment Burma’s Ethnic Minorities Have Been Waiting for” (Jan. 2012).]

OCEANIA

Papuan Independence Leader Arrested; Link to 2011 Machete Attack Claimed.  In Indonesia’s far-eastern Papua region, security forces stormed the headquarters of the Free Papua Organisation (O.P.M.) on September 3rd and arrested its leader, Daniel Kogoya, who was shot in the leg while resisting arrest.  Dozens of others were arrested, and weapons were seized.  Kogoya is receiving medical care at a hospital in Jayapura, the Papuan provincial capital.  He is accused of involvement in numerous attacks on police and others.  Indonesian authorities said later that the raid was in response to an August 1, 2011, separatist machete attack which killed four.  Six of those arrested, including Kogoya, are considered to be implicated in the attack.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

Papua’s banned “Morning Star Flag” on display

In Wake of Assassination Flap, Canberra Still Backs Indonesian Rule in Papua.  In the wake of a scandal (reported on last week in this blog) linking Australian anti-insurgency trainers to the June 2012 assassination (also reported on at the time in this blog) of Mako Tabuni, a Papuan separatist leader in Indonesia, Australia’s foreign minister, Bob Carr, clarified his government’s position on independence for Indonesia’s far-eastern Papua and West Papua provinces, saying it was “in support of Indonesian sovereignty over the two Papuan provinces.”  He added, “While we make representations as required about human-rights issues there, we are unequivocal.”  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011).]

Queensland Aboriginal Parliamentarian Eric Deeral Dies.  Aboriginal leaders in Queensland and throughout Australia are mourning the death of Eric Deeral, the state’s first indigenous member of parliament, who died September 5th in Hope Vale, Queensland, at the age of 80.  He represented Cook in Queensland’s parliament from 1974 to 1977.

NORTH AMERICA

Quebec’s Atikamekw Cree Make Last-Hour Land Deal to Avert Roadblocks.  Just as the deadline they had declared was running out before the roadblocks were to go up (as reported on last week in this blog), three chiefs from the Atikamekw Nation, part of the indigenous Cree ethnic group in northern Quebec, Canada, agreed August 31st with negotiators from the Quebec Liberal Party (P.L.Q.) (this was just before their defeat in a September 4th election; see article above) to a deal which offers more environmental protections to their vast forested territory.  Denis Chilton, an Atikamekw elder, said, “We were ready to get out there and block logging roads, to protest, to get political.  We were waiting in the parking lot outside the band council when they told us they’d reached a deal.  It was almost disappointing that we didn’t get to take our struggle to the streets.”

Squamish Activists Take to Canoes to Protest Oil Pipeline Expansion.  Members of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, part of the indigenous Squamish ethnic group in British Columbia, Canada, took to the water in canoes September 1st to protest a planned major expansion of a Texas firm’s oil pipeline in their territory.  The small nation—which is part of the Salish language group and is based at the suburban Burrard Inlet Indian Reserve, near North Vancouver—insists that the existing pipeline has already had spills that have damaged their environment and their traditional resources.  If it the expansion occurs, says the Tsleil-Waututh’s elected chief councillor, Justin George, “the Vancouver waterway becomes a major oil-port city, and oil-port cities throughout the world become waterway dead zones.”

Squamish activists near Vancouver this week

Vermont Separatists Release “Montpelier Manifesto” in Run-Up to Annual Conclave.  In the northeastern United States, the Second Vermont Republic movement released a manifesto in advance of its Third Statewide Convention on Vermont Self-Determination, to be held September 14th in Montpelier, the state’s capital.  Called the Montpelier Manifesto (read it here), the document calls on Vermonters to “consider ways peaceably to withdraw from the American Empire by (1) regaining control of our lives from big government, big business, big cities, big schools, and big computer networks; (2) relearning how to take care of ourselves by decentralizing, downsizing, localizing, demilitarizing, simplifying, and humanizing our lives; and (3) providing democratic and human-scale self-government at those local and regional levels most likely to effect our safety and happiness.”  The manifesto is signed by two retired economics professors, Thomas Naylor and James Starkey; Kirkpatrick Sale, a Green Party activist and author of respected scholarly studies of Christopher Columbus, the original Luddites, bioregionalism, and other topics; and Charles Keil, an ethnomusicologist.

87 Months Added to Aryan Brother’s Life Term for Texas Beating.  A “general” in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas who is serving a life sentence for a 2010 murder was given an additional 87 months in prison for brutally beating a Brotherhood member.  The convict, Steven Walter “Stainless” Cooke, who is 48, confessed to orchestrating an attack, in 2008 in Tomball, Texas, by about a dozen Aryan Brothers on an underling who owed them drug money.

Steven “Stainless” Cooke of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas

PRACTICALLY BLOODY ANTARCTICA

Falklands Executive Council Announces Referendum on Status for March 2013.  The Executive Council of the Falkland Islands announced this week that the planned referendum on the islands’ political status will be held in March 2013.  A more precise date has yet to be set, but the Council recommended that representatives from mainland South American countries—which overwhelmingly support the Argentine Republic’s claims on the archipelago—serve as independent election observers.  The vote is expected to ask voters to choose between independence, joining Argentina, or maintaining the territory’s current status as an overseas dependency of the United Kingdom.  Predictably, the reaction from Buenos Aires was swift.  Argentina’s minister of defense, Arturo Puricelli, said, “If you ask any English citizens [note typical Argentine confusion between England and U.K.] if they’d like to continue being English or not they will most probably answer yes.  So, as I see it, that referendum lacks any creativity.”  An interesting criticism, given that Argentine arguments supporting their Falklands claims are quite creative—one might almost say, wildly inventive.  [Related articles: “Prince William Lands in the Middle of a New Cold War over the Falklands” (Feb. 2012), “What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul” (June 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

SPORT

Farah’s Olympic Bathwater for Sale on eBay—Maybe.  Meanwhile, a vendor on the online auction site eBay was, according to media, hawking this week what he or she claimed to be Mo Farah’s bathwater.  The product description read, in part: “This is only water that I hope to have been scooped out of Mo Farah’s ice bath and placed into this water bottle after his 2012 Olympic win.  Impossible to authenticate buy at own risk.  Their was ice in the bottle but it has melted.  My apologizes.  This unauthenticated, melted, possibly-purchased-from-the-grocery-store bottle of water has a starting price of $1,000.  There are no bids, yet.”  As of a few days later, the listing had been removed—possibly because eBay bars the auctioning of human body parts or fluids, and, let’s face it, Farah’s bathwater would only really have any collector value if tiny bits of him were floating in it.  [Related article: “Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012).]

Mo Farah Shows Off New Twin Daughters.  This week Mohamed “Mo” Farah, the Olympic runner whose family hails from the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland but who won two gold medals for the United Kingdom this summer at the London games, showed off his newborn baby girls, Aisha and Amani.  He plans to have his two gold medals engraved with their names.  Farah is himself a twin.  His twin brother, Hassan Farah, lives in Somaliland.  [Related article: “Somaliland’s Own Mo Farah Clinches Olympic Immortality” (Aug. 2012).]

Mo Farah and his two baby twin daughters.
Now, if anyone tries to sell their bathwater on eBay, I’m calling the police.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]