Donetsk Rebels’ “Novorossiya” Fits Russian Vision of Reshaped Europe in 2035

Ultranationalist demands by ethnic Russians and their supporters in eastern Ukraine have now shifted from talk of Crimea or the Donetsk People’s Republic and are now focussing on creating a larger entity to be carved out of southern and eastern Ukraine to be called Novorossiya, or “New Russia,” using Czarist Russia’s name for the region.  The most high-profile proponent of the idea is Pavel Gubarev, the imprisoned “people’s governor” of Donetsk, whose covertly-Kremlin-backed government-building takeover in that southeastern oblast (provincial) capital last month sparked the uprising and military confrontation in the region.  From prison in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, last week, Gubarev said that “we”—i.e. the Donetsk People’s Republic, which he considers already independent—“want to join the new federative State of Novorossiya, which will build its own relations with the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan in the future.”  The leadership of the neighboring “Lugansk People’s Republic” plans to join the Donetsk republic in holding the May 11th vote.  He added that plans were underway—as other Russian-backed rebels have said also—to hold an independence referendum on May 11th in Ukraine’s rebel-held regions.  (Gubarev’s wife, Yekaterina Gubareva, the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic’s “foreign minister,” has since then announced that her husband is on hunger strike to protest the Ukrainian military’s offensive on the northern Donetsk Oblast city Slovyansk.)

Yekaterina Gubareva, foreign minister and first lady of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”

But there is nothing “new” about Russian nationalist dreams of a “New Russia” carved out of Ukraine. Nationalism- and separatism-watchers in Europe were abuzz in late 2012 and early 2013 over a high-level report by Russian security and policy experts on what Europe’s borders would probably look like in 2035.  The accompanying maps offer an unsettling insight into Russian ultranationalists’ hopes and fears—but also, as is now becoming clear, their plans.  The Russians apparently based the projection on Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and other United States and Russian intelligence sources as well as the writings of American geopolitical experts like Zbigniew Brzezinski (President Jimmy Carter’s Polish-born national-security advisor) and Samuel Huntington (the xenophobic neo-conservative political scientist who wrote Clash of Civilizations).

A pro-independence demonstrator in Catalonia.
Madrid says “don’t hold your breath,” but Moscow thinks she’s got it in the bag.

In 2035 in western Europe, the report envisions, quite feasibly (see map below), independent republics in Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque Country, northern Italy, and even Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily.  Less feasibly, a reunified Ireland will become closer to Scotland than the rump United Kingdom is.  Southeastern France’s Provence region is to have become an Arab republic—something that presumably Marine Le Pen will not take lying down.  But in the Russian view this is how the French government will solve the inevitable “multicultural collapse”—by picking a region and sticking all the unassimilable Muslims there.

It takes no expert to suggest that Belgium might divide—it is practically two states already—though it is a stretch to think, as Russia’s expert prophets do, that Flanders will join the Netherlands in a “Holland Union” while Wallonia becomes a tiny land-locked state and Alsace–Lorraine confederates with Germany as something called simply “Lorraine.”  The experts here underestimate not only Alsatian pride but Germany’s appetite for expansion—after all, they already control Europe financially, so why change the map?  Equally comical is the suggestion that Germany will retake Silesia, Pomerania, and East Prussia from Poland—and, incidentally, from Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast exclave.  Don’t these Russian “experts” realize that no Germans live there anymore?

The Russian map of 2035 in the Balkans (see map above) likewise reeks of Russia’s preoccupation with U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) hidden agendas in the Wars of Yugoslav Succession—especially the Kosovo War, in which Russia resolutely sided—and still does—with Serb nationalists who saw it as a Trojan horse for some sort of Islamization of Europe.  The 2035 map’s whittled-down Serbia feeds the shared Serb and Russian ultranationalist feeling that the West has been cruelling paring down these once-mighty Slavic nations: Albania has swallowed up western Macedonia, Kosovo, and a juicy slice of southern Serbia proper (in reality, Kosovar and Albanian nationalists do indeed openly plan for a united “Greater Albania” within the European Union); Hungary now extends into western Romania’s Transylvania region as well as Serbia’s Vojvodina province; and the disappearance of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state has, quite unrealistically, only meant its near-complete absorption into Croatia, including presumably subject Serbs in the former Bosnian subdivision of Republika Srpska.  (Poor maligned Serbia doesn’t even manage to pull Montenegro back into its orbit.)  Turkey and its bloodthirsty Saracens have also, apparently, by 2035 retaken the Rumelian and Pomak areas in the southeast of proud Slavic Bulgaria.

It is once we get to the former Soviet Union itself (see map below) that things really get wonky.  First of all, the Russian experts see an independent Carpathian Ruthenia emerging from Ukraine’s Zakarpattia (Transcarpathia) oblast.  This is the region—formerly the eastern tail of Czechoslovakia, where Slavic-speaking Ruthenians (Rusyns) are far outnumbered by ethnic Ukrainians—where alleged Kremlin provocateurs staged a declaration of independence in 2008 which came to nothing.  Today, pro-Russian nationalists in Ukraine are envisioning a “Transcarpathian People’s Republic,” though the oblast is so far, in 2014, quiet.  Romania, in 2035, will supposedly have swallowed up nearly all of Moldova, except for the tiny sliver of Bessarabia—i.e., the current Russian puppet state of Pridnestrovia (a.k.a. Transnistria, a.k.a. Transdniestria)—which the Russian geopolitical visionaries see absorbed into the Russian Federation along with Crimea (that part, in 2014, is a done deal) and the south and eastern region of Novorossiya and Donbas (those are, today (April 26, 2014), works in progress).

But not even all that’s left of Ukraine gets to be Ukraine, according to the Russian experts.  They see, by 2035, in what is today far-western Ukraine, an independent Galicia (Halychyna, in Ukrainian—no relation to the Galicia in northwestern Spain), with its capital at Lviv.  This Galician state even takes in part of southeastern Poland, while Romania has also taken Bukovina, also in Ukraine’s west (i.e., Chernivtsi oblast, where the population today is about 20% Moldavian (Romanian).  It seems odd for Russian nationalists to claim on the one hand that Ukrainian national identity is only some post–Cold War figment invented by the West but then assume that a “Galician” national identity (which in the real world barely exists at all) is strong enough to snatch away NATO (Polish) territory with such ease.

Galicia (Halychyna) was its own kingdom briefly during the First World War,
but today’s Galicians mostly want to be in a united Ukraine.

Belarus as an independent state has vanished in the 2035 map, becoming just a big Russian oblast, which actually does seem fairly likely.  Belarus is barely even independent today.  Belarussians never had as strong a national identity as Ukrainians and would never have asked for independence on their own if they hadn’t been handed it on a platter in 1991.  Much less plausibly, eastern Latvia, including its ethnic-Russian-dominated second city, Dagauvpils, has become a Russian oblast called Dvinskaya (Dvinsk is the city’s name in Russian), while Estonia’s northeast, including the Russian-speaking city of Narva, is not even an oblast; it is a raion (district) within Russia called Narvskiya.  Apparently, Russians doubt how seriously NATO takes its mutual-defense pact with the Baltic states.  In reality, a Russian invasion would put President Vladimir Putin on an immediate war footing with three nuclear powers (the U.S., France, and the U.K.), so he will probably leave the Baltics alone, at least territorially (economic blockades and punishments are another matter).

These Belarussians, shown at an independence-day rally last month in Minsk,
stand with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.  But, in Belarus, they are a minority.

In the Caucasus, there is a mixture of hope and fear as well.  Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia have become split away as the Caucasus Emirate, which is the name that an ongoing Islamist insurgency does indeed want to plaster over the whole north Caucasus.  The Russian puppet state of Abkhazia has been absorbed into Russia, but its sister republic within internationally recognized Georgian borders, South Ossetia, is returned to Georgia as a consolation prize.  The reverse, to my mind, has more logic to it: in reality, Ossetes seem to feel far more Russian than Abkhaz do, and the dispossession and expulsion of ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia has been more extreme.  Plus, just think: annexing South Ossetia puts Josef Stalin’s home town of Gori, in Georgia proper, close enough to recapture as well!  How could they pass that up?

The Caucasus Emirate terrorist group’s map is slightly different.

It is no surprise that Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh and Lachin regions are shown (again, see map no. 3 above) as part of Armenia in the Russians’ map of 2035; those areas are already the unrecognized Armenian puppet state of Artsakh (a.k.a. Nagorno-Karabakh Republic).  Russia has indeed been increasingly building ties with Armenia and making Armenia’s expansionist agenda an ancillary cause to its own Slavic blood-and-soil nationalism.  But a big conundrum for Russian nationalists today is how to fully incorporate Armenia into the Russian geopolitical backyard.  Today, Armenia is slated to join Putin’s envisioned Belarussian–Kazakh–Russian “Eurasian Union” trade bloc—the same one that Ukraine was almost bullied into joining last year, which is how the whole Ukraine crisis erupted in the first place.  But Armenia–Artsakh is currently nearly entirely surrounded by Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, all of them Western-aligned states (Turkey is even in NATO).  The only Russian-allied state bordering Armenia is Iran, but that is a circuitous supply route for a geostrategic partner; plus, Iranians and Armenians regard each other far, far more warily than their shared alliance with Russia would otherwise suggest.  So the solution, in this 2035 map, is a “transport corridor” that bisects Georgia, running from the Russian–Georgian border ’round about Ossetia to northern Armenia.  The coloration on the map implies that Georgia will remain united but become territorially discontinuous, divided into “Western Georgia” and “Kakhetia.”

Russia would like to draw the Artsakh Republic into its sphere of influence.
But why stop there?  Next: Legoland!

One modification missed in the 2035 map is the question of the Armenian minority in the southern Georgian region of Javakhk.  Already, since earlier this year, the Russian consulate has been distributing Russian passports to ethnic Armenians there, which is the kind of thing that was a precursor to the Russian takeovers in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Crimea.  An Armenian-annexed Javakhk would shorten the necessary “transport corridor.”  On the downside for the Kremlin would be the complication that Javakhk is only the eastern part of Georgia’s Samtkhe–Javakheti province; the western part is Meskhetia, a.k.a. Moschia, whose indigenous Meskhetian Turks were deported eastward by Stalin during the same campaign of ethnic cleansing in the 1930s that shipped Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and others to Siberia and Central Asia as well.  Like the Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks were not allowed to return during the repatriations of Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization policies, though, like Crimean Tatars, they trickled back in the post-Soviet era.  Any realization of Javakhki irredentist aspirations could reawaken Meskhetian grievances.  Then again, Putin seems to have made an art of “rehabilitating” the Crimean Tatars as an official national minority while still cracking down on their political leadership, so perhaps the Armenian government could learn to perform that dance with its own Turkic minority.  Armenians are quick learners, and their government seems eager to make them solid citizens, as a junior nationality, in Putin’s neo-Czarist Russian empire.  When it comes to shitting all over Muslims, Armenian nationalists have shown an eagerness to learn from the best.

“Greater Armenia” in the Armenian—and maybe also Russian—imagination

Now, it is important to take predictions a quarter-century out with a grain of salt, even when they come from intelligence sources.  After all, the C.I.A. had agents and bureaus in every Arab capital in 2011, and nobody saw the Arab Spring coming.  The way to read these Russian maps is not as a true vision of the future but as a map to the Russian ultranationalist mentality with its hopes, fears, and—as I mentioned above—perhaps its plans.  Be warned: this is not the future, but it is a peek into the madness swirling inside the brains of the Kremlin’s strategists.

The Donetsk People’s Republic’s Yekaterina Gubareva whips out her foreign-policy agenda.

[You can read more about these 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.]

Members of the Ukrainian feminist political collective Femen demonstrating against Russia outside the Ukrainian peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland, on April 17th.

Serbia’s Albanians Turn Kosovo–Crimea Parallels on Their Head, Ask Tirana to Annex Preševo Valley

Residents of Preševo, Serbia, celebrating the centenary of Albanian independence in 2012 (BBC)

Diplomacy over the Russian Federation’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula this month has swirled around the question of whether Crimea can or cannot be legitimately compared to Kosovo, the ethnic-Albanian “autonomous” province in southern Serbia which declared independence in 2008 after a 1999 bombing campaign by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) chased Serbia’s ultranationalist government out of the area.  Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, declares that if NATO can unilaterally carve a new territory out of the Republic of Serbia, a Russian ally, citing Serbian oppression of the ethnic-Albanian minority that is a majority in Kosovo, then by the same token Russia can unilaterally separate Crimea from a newly westward-tilting Ukraine by citing Ukrainian government persecution of the ethnic-Russian minority that is a majority there.  Just as the international community has so far not recognized Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Putin himself uses Russia’s veto power as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council to block the Republic of Kosovo’s membership in the U.N. General Assembly, even though it is recognized as sovereign by a (slight) majority of the world’s countries.  The United States and NATO reject Putin’s argument, among other things pointing out, quite rightly, that Serbian violations of Kosovar Albanians’ human rights in the 1990s was all too real, while the so-called “fascist” and “neo-Nazi” Ukrainian government’s persecution of ethnic Russians is a shoddy myth perpetrated in the echo chamber of Russia’s (and eastern Ukraine’s) Kremlin-controlled media.  But George W. Bush’s bald-faced lies in defense of his 2003 invasion of Iraq make it easy for Russian nationalists to smirk at such hair-splitting.

Reunification with Albania is a popular idea in Kosovo.

And so the arguments go back and forth about whether Kosovo is equivalent to Crimea.  But this week leaders from the small ethnic-Albanian minority in the non-Kosovo parts of the rump Serbia are using the analogy to equate Russia’s moral position with that of Albania and Kosovo.  To understand this, one must understand that Serbian nationalists have always accused Kosovar separatists of secretly wanting to reunify eventually with Albania in a “Greater Albania” which would also include ethnic-Albanian bits of Montenegro, Macedonia, and even Greece and Serbia.  In this, their fears have been vindicated—sort of.  The leadership in both Albania and Kosovo speak now of Albanian reunification, but only within the context of eventual membership in the European Union (E.U.), and in this view Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia could be members as well (Greece already is one)—with the free movement of peoples making all these borders irrelevant.

The municipalities of Serbia’s Preševo Valley shown in red

Jonuz Musliu, deputy mayor of Bujanovac (Bujanoc, in Albanian), a predominantly-ethnic-Albanian town in southern Serbia’s Preševo Valley, said this week, “If Moscow wants Crimea, then Tirana and Priština should unite with the region of the Preševo Valley” (referring to Tirana and Priština, capitals of Albania and Kosovo, respectively).  Bujanovac and Preševo are both municipalities of between 30,000 and 40,000 people that make up the Preševo Valley region, wedged in the extreme south of Serbia between Kosovo and Macedonia.  Ethnic Albanians make up only one-half of 1% of Serbia’s over 7 million people.  Musliu, who in addition to his municipal role also heads the Party for Democratic Prosperity (P.D.P.), an ethnic-Albanian political party which operates in both Serbia and Macedonia, referred also to a 1992 referendum in which Preševars opted for joining Kosovo.  In those days, Musliu headed something called the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa, and Bujanovac (Ushtria Çlirimtare e Preshevës, Medvegjës dhe Bujanocit, or U.Ç.P.M.B.), which aimed for three municipalities to secede from what was then the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (i.e., Serbia–Montenegro).  Medveđa is a much smaller Serbian municipality to the north, along the Kosovo border.

Serbian mayor, Albanian flag: Jonuz Musliu would like to redraw some borders.

The rebuke from Serbia’s cabinet minister in charge of Kosovar matters, Aleksandar Vulin, came swiftly.  Vulin called Musliu’s statements a “threat to the territorial integrity of Serbia” and “urged the international community to loudly and publicly condemn such statements and show that it is against such attitudes,” adding, “When it comes to the latest threats to the territorial integrity and wholeness of the Republic of Serbia, this time arriving from Musliu, I wish to warn that any such statement is very dangerous and could have devastating consequences in the whole territory of Serbia.”

Serbia’s minister for Kosovo affairs Aleksandar Vulin,
portrayed here by the actor Steve Buscemi, reacted angrily to Musliu’s declaration

It is unclear what kind of game Musliu is playing.  Perhaps he is engaging in political theater, voicing support for a politically impossible proposal as a way of pointing up the absurdity of the equivalency between Crimea and Kosovo made by Serbian and Russian nationalists.  Or perhaps this represents a very real Albanian nationalist shift toward making future dreams of “Greater Albania” a crisis on the ground in today’s Balkans.

A very expansive view of a Greater Albania,
based on historical borders, not current ethnic ones.

Either way, Musliu’s comments will cheer ultranationalists among the ethnic Albanians who make up about 5% of Montenegro’s population, and fully a quarter of Macedonia’s.  (In addition, there are about half a million Albanian citizens living in Greece as immigrants, dwarfing the minuscule Albanian-speaking population in the border regions.)  And they will cause pan-Slavic nationalists among the Serbian population—including the fiercely autonomist Serbs of North Kosovo—to dig in their heels.

Another rendering, this time by district/province.

Already, the idea is catching on elsewhere in the Balkans.  In Bosnia and Herzegovina—which in 1995, after a bloody war of secession from Yugoslavia, was separated into two halves—the ethnically Serb half is talking about splitting into two independent states.  Milorad Dodik, president of the Republika Srpska, said on March 18th, fresh from a meeting with Russia’s ambassador to Bosnia, “Bring back to Republika Srpska the powers that it had under the Dayton agreement and it will not leave Bosnia.  If you do not bring the powers back, our conviction that we have to move on will get stronger.”  The Serb half (the other half is composed of Croats and Muslim Bosniaks) has gradually ceded many more powers to the federal government in Sarajevo since 1995.  The original Serb goal, during the Bosnian War, had been to attach that half to the Serb-dominated remainder of Yugoslavia, and Serbia–Republika Srpska reunification is a dream that many Serb nationalists have never abandoned.  The parallels with the Soviet break-up are multitudinous.

Bosnia’s internal partition today.  The “Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina” half
is sometimes called the Muslim–Croat Federation.

By claiming that the Russian government has the right to intervene militarily to protect ethnic Russians anywhere, he has opened Pandora’s Box.  Now every ethnonational group with an ultranationalist streak will be dreaming of a “Greater Such-and-Such” spilling over its neighbors’ borders.  Just watch.

Kosovar and Albanian flags are both common sights in Priština.

(In other Kosovo news, the Greek government announced this week that it was prepared to grant diplomatic recognition to Kosovo, and Slovakia and Romania are apparently to follow suit.  This leaves only Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia itself as the only immediate neighbors still opposing Kosovo’s independence.  This will leave Spain and the Republic of Cyprus as the only two of the 28 E.U. members with no diplomatic ties to Kosovo.  Spain is fearful to set an example for separatists in Catalonia and the Basque Country, while Albania’s interests in Kosovo are a bit too much like Turkey’s in the puppet state of Northern Cyprus for Cyprus’s comfort.  On the whole, the Crimea crisis has been good for Kosovar recognition.  Greece, Slovakia, and Romania are surely feeling now that E.U. unity in the face of aggression is now more important than fretting about needlessly antagonizing Serbia, which had been at the source of their waffling on the Kosovo issue over the years.)

[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 and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  (That is shorter than the previous working title.)  The book, which contains dozens of maps and over 500 flags, will be on shelves and available on Amazon in February 2015.  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 and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Serbs Call Hague Tribunal an Anti-Serb Kangaroo Court (and It Sure Does Look That Way Sometimes): Kosovo Update, 25 November–1 December 2012

From Radio Free Europe, an image of a Serb nationalist protest of Ramush Haradinaj’s acquittal

Serb nationalists—and even Serbs that are not all that terribly nationalist—have long suspected that the United Nations judicial tribunal in the Hague, in the Netherlands, known as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (I.C.T.Y.) is more or less rigged to prosecute Serbs and no one else in its pursuit of war-crimes convictions for the separatist wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo during the 1990s.  There was certainly plenty to support that view this week, as the I.C.T.Y. cleared three co-defendants, including Ramush Haradinaj, the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.) and Kosovo’s prime minister for three months in 2004-2005, of all war-crimes charges in a retrial.  The three were charged with torturing and killing Serb, Roma, and even ethnic-Albanian (“collaborator”) civilians in illegal detention camps during the Kosovo War.  Haradinaj was greeted as a hero by jubilant crowds and congratulated by Kosovo’s current prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, and said he planned to return to politics.  The governments of Russia and Serbia reacted vitriolically to the decision, which they—quite reasonably understandably—claim indicates an anti-Serbian bias in international courts’ decisions.

The ruling seemed especially egregious following, as it did, close on the heels of the November 16th overturning of war-crimes and crimes-against-humanity convictions of two Croat generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, who had been convicted in 2011 of murdering Serb civilians during an invasion of the Serb-dominated and at that time de facto independent Republic of Serbian Krajina (now part of the Republic of Croatia) in 1995.  They were already serving decades-long prison terms, and Gotovina, when he was first arrested, had to be retrieved from the Canary Islands, where he was in hiding.  Even most Croats realize these two guys are as guilty as all get-out, though Croat nationalists still danced in the streets in a very unseemly fashion.

Croats celebrating the acquittal of two Croatian war criminals

The I.C.T.Y. has yet to demonstrate that they truly believe it is a crime to kill a Serb.

In other news from the former Yugoslavia ...

At Skopje Rally, Albanian, Kosovar Premiers Envision “Greater Albania” within E.U.  The prime minister of the Republic of Albania, Sali Berisha, and his counterpart from the partially recognized, ethnic-Albanian-dominated Republic of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, spoke of a united “greater Albania” in Skopje, Macedonia, on November 25th for the centennial celebration of Albania’s independence from the Ottoman Empire on the eve of the First World War.  Berisha told a crowd of 10,000 chanting, “Greater Albania!” and waving Albanian flags, “Through the European Union, we are going to realize the project of our national unity.”  He and Thaçi also made references to Albanian minorities in Macedonia and in Serbia proper.  Refugees from the Kosovo War in 1998-99 helped swell the Albanian minority in Macedonia to a quarter of the population, and they enjoy a power-sharing agreement which guarantees them government representation, but there are strains between Albanians and Macedonia’s Slav majority.  Albanians declared a brief-lived Republic of Illyrida in western Macedonia in 1990.  Fears of a “greater Albania”—and designs on chunks of Serbia proper—are among the primary rationales of the Republic of Serbia’s opposition to the independence of Kosovo, which it still claims.

“Greater Albania!  Greater Albania!”

Kosovo War Vets Disrupt Highway Opening in Protest over Limaj Retrial.  Two days after the pan-Albanian celebrations in Skopje, Macedonia (see above article), the Republic of Albania’s prime minister, Sali Berisha, was forced to cancel plans to attend an opening ceremony in for a new highway between Tirana, the Albanian capital, and Pristina, the capital of the Republic of Kosovo, because of mass protests by hundreds of Kosovo War veterans.  The veterans, mostly from the Kosovo Liberation Army (K.L.A.), took control of the stage at the ceremonies, which were in Gjurgjica, Kosovo, and demanded the release of Fatmir Limaj, a former K.L.A. commander and deputy chairman of Kosovo’s current ruling party, who was charged anew last week (as reported in this blog) on charges of war crimes.  Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, cancelled his planned attendance as well.  Thaçi’s retrial was welcomed, however, in the Republic of Serbia, where the government’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija released a statement November 26th, noting “that over 1,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians killed since 1999 to date are still waiting for justice to be served.”

Kosovo War veterans spoiled the party

Shooting, Explosion, Vandalism Mar Quiet in Disputed Kosovo Border Area.  An explosion was reported on November 27th at or near a border crossing between Serbia and Kosovo, alerting authorities on both sides, but its cause was yet to be determined.  There was also, around the same time, an as yet unexplained shooting in the north end of Kosovska Mitrovica, the de facto capital of the Serb-administered North Kosovo enclave within the partially recognized Republic of Kosovo.  Also on the 27th, stones were thrown at a house belonging to a Serb in the village of Suvi Do, in North Kosovo.

[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.]

Scotland to Stay in NATO, Zanzibar Abduction Hoax, Rohingya Strife Re-Erupts, Siege in Tatarstan, Telugu Riot over Movie, 5 Tibetan Self-Immolations, Brazilian Indian Mass Suicide, Plus Curaçao, Nuwaubians, etc.: The Week in Separatist News, 21-27 October 2012

Photo of the week: In Quebec, Canada, Montreal police remove a member of the Ukrainian feminist activist group Femen from an Ikea store to protest the global chain’s capitulation to radical-Islamist sensibilities by removing women’s images from catalogues available in Saudi Arabia.  Note the fleurs-de-lis breast-paint.  (Yes, I realize that this is only tangentially related to separatism, but I’m trying to give readers what they want.)

TOP STORY
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PARTY VOTES TO KEEP SCOTLAND IN NATO;
PLOY TO GARNER CENTRIST VOTES PROMPTS 2 M.S.P.S TO QUIT PARTY

The Scottish National Party (S.N.P.) narrowly voted in a party conference on October 19th to keep Scotland in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) if a 2014 referendum on independence from the United Kingdom should succeed.  But the party, voting 394-365, agreed that continued membership in NATO is contingent on the withdrawal of any nuclear forces from Scottish territory and waters.  The S.N.P.’s leader, Alex Salmond, had advocated staying in NATO, his argument being that fear of being left militarily vulnerable might be keeping some voters from supporting secession.  Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s minister of justice, articulated the position, saying, “We’re all against” Trident missiles; “but we have moved on from being a party of protest to being a party of power.  I have marched for C.N.D.”—referring to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament—“and I have protested against Trident and I am tired of marching.  I want a seat for our government in the situations of power.”  The U.K. has promised, however, to block an independent Scotland’s membership in NATO, whose rules would require it to reapply.  After the party’s decision, two members of Scotland’s parliament for Highlands constituencies, John Finnie and Jean Urquhart, quit the party in protest.  A few days later, Salmond was dodging questions about rumors that he received legal advice to the effect that the European Union (E.U.) may make adopting the euro a condition for an independent Scotland’s “re”-admission to the E.U.

Alex Salmond

AFRICA

[For updates from Nigeria and Cameroon , including the Bakassi Peninsula and Boko Haram conflicts, see this week’s Nigeria Separatism Update.]

Kenyan Court Reinstates Ban on Mombasa Separatists; Warrants Issued for Leadership.  In Mombasa, Kenya, a high court has outlawed the popular separatist organization in Kenya’s predominantly-Muslim Coast Province, the Mombasa Republican Council (M.R.C.), which had had its ban lifted by another kcourt mere months ago, in July.  The magistrate, Stephen Riech, was responding to an appeal by the Kesnyan government.  Arrest warrants were immediately issued for those of the M.R.C. leadership that were still at large.  The M.R.C.’s leader, Omar Hamisi Mwamnuadzi, was arrested on October 15th (as reported on at the time in this blog), along with his wife, on weapons charges, but released October 22nd on the equivalent of $35,300 (U.S.) bond.  The weapons in question included (get this—you don’t hear this every day): “four bottles of petrol bombs, three Swahili swords, six knives, four arrows, two bows, two Maasai swords, one spear, and eight machetes.”  I wonder if he’ll tell the judge he was just planning to do a little yardwork?

The Mombasa Republican Council’s flag

Zanzibari Islamists Charged with Faking Leader’s Abduction to Spark Unrest.  Amid a new wave of separatist rioting in Zanzibar, police have issued warrants for leaders of the Islamist movement Uamsho (Islamic Revival Forum) for, police say, causing unrest by staging the phony abduction of a leading separatist cleric.  The story began with rioting by radical Islamists demanding secession from Tanzania (as reported on last week in this blog) dragging into its fourth day in Zanzibar by October 19th.  Young rioters threw stones and coconuts at police and were met with tear-gas attacks in reply.  (They should be careful about the coconuts.  Don’t they watch Gilligan’s Island?  Someone could get amnesia.)  There were also protests in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s mainland capital.  In both places, protesters railed were angry at the disappearance of a Zanzibarian cleric and separatist leader.  Late on the 19th, however, the leader, Sheikh Farid Hadi, who had been missing for days, was “freed,” but it is still unclear by whom or from where.  He heads the main Zanzibarian separatist group, Uamsho.  Then, by the 22nd, police were saying that Sheikh Farid had staged his own disappearance as a hoax—as they ascertained after they discovered him hiding at his private retreat, arrested him, and interrogated him for 10 hours.  Police say they unraveled the mystery after Farid’s driver gave conflicting testimony about his supposed abduction.  Arrest warrants were issued for the rest of Uamsho’s leadership, and by day’s end seven Uamsho leaders, including Farid, were in court facing charges that included incitement and breach of the peace.

Sheikh Farid Hadi’s perp walk

France, U.S. Plan to Send Surveillance Drones to Northern Mali.  An official from the French Republic’s ministry of defense told media in Bamako, Mali’s capital, on October 22nd that there were plans to cooperate with the United States to send unmanned, remote-controlled “drone” aircraft to conduct surveillance in the northern two-thirds of Mali run by Islamist militias as the Independent State of Azawad.  “It is no secret,” the official said, “there is military planning going on.  The European Union is conducting a scoping mission and looking to send a training team to help train the Malian army.  But the French are the nation with the most experience working here, and they see the terrorism threat more acutely than others.”  Meanwhile, credible reports by witnesses and others are telling of hundreds of jihadist fighters from Western Sahara and even as far away as Sudan arriving in Azawad to defend it from a foreign invasion, but the Tuareg nationalist army which was sidelined by the jihadists, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (M.N.L.A.), says those reports are false.

Azawadi Islamists Bulldoze More Sufi Tombs in Northern Mali.  Near Timbuktu, in the part of northern Mali run by Islamist militias as the Independent State of Azawad, militants with bulldozers demolished three Sufi tombs on October 18th.  The Islamists, who were from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Dine group, obliterated the resting places of at least three Sufi saints: Cheick Nouh, Cheick Ousmane el-Kabir, and Cheick Mohamed Foulani Macina.  A resident said, “They arrived aboard six or seven vehicles, heavily armed.  They flattened everything with a bulldozer and pulled up the skeletal remains.”  In Ansar al-Dine’s strict interpretation of Islam, Sufism is heretical and it is forbidden to build structures atop burial sites.  The group’s systematic destruction of Sufi tombs in and around Gao and Timbuktu followed closely upon the United Nations Cultural and Educational Organization (Unesco) declaring them an endangered World Heritage Site earlier this year.

... and in the “You Know You’re an Extremist When ...” Department ...  One of Osama bin Laden’s former senior advisors has spoken out against the Islamists running the de facto independent Azawad republic in northern Mali, saying, “I am against the way in which these groups have gone about establishing an Islamic state in northern Mali.  This undertaking will do far more harm than good to the Muslims and people in the sub-region.  It would be better to seek dialogue and find a solution jointly.”  The advisor, Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, parted ways with bin Laden after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Mahfouz Ould al-Walid.  Even he thinks the folks running northern Mali are bonkers.

Ethiopia Removes Head of Somali Region Accused of Running Paramilitary.  The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia has removed the president of one of its constituent ethnically-defined provinces, the Somali Regional State, after numerous allegations and testimonies that he ran brutal militias and abducted and tortured opponents.  The president, Abdi Mohamud Omar, is said to be in charge of the Liyuu Police, a paramilitary that has made deadly forays into the neighboring Republic of Somaliland and elsewhere but operates mostly out of the nearby Afar Regional State, also part of Ethiopia.  Initially, the Liyuu Police were formed to counteract the influence of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (O.N.L.F.).  For the time being, Abdifatah Mohamud Hassan, the former deputy president, is heading the Somali Regional State.

After Kenyan Rout of al-Shabaab, Puntland Supports Autonomous Jubaland.  The president of the de facto independent Puntland State of Somalia spoke at Friday prayers in Garowe, the capital, on October 26th and praised the newly stabilized (but, sadly, still barely existent) Federal Republic of Somalia, while also calling for the reestablishment of an autonomous Jubaland State in the areas of southern Somalia where African Union (A.U.) forces led by Kenya recently took control from the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab militia.  The president, Abdirahman Mohamed Farole, said, “Puntland played an important in the national political process for Somalia and we appeal to the new Somali Federal Government to promote national reconciliation and state-building processes, such as the formation of Jubaland.”

E.U. Brings Somaliland into EUCAP Nestor Anti-Piracy Initiative.  The European Union (E.U.) announced this week that it is officially incorporating the unrecognized but de facto independent Republic of Somaliland into its EUCAP Nestor program for suppressing sea piracy off the Somali coast.  Somaliland’s foreign minister, Dr. Mohamed Abdilahi Omar, called the agreement a milestone, especially given the context: a visit by the E.U.’s envoy to Somalia and Somaliland, Michele Cervone d’Urso, to Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, to meet with the president, Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo.

Journalist Killed in Somaliland Brings Somalia Total to 16 for 2012.  A 25-year-old television reporter for Universal T.V. of the United Kingdom was shot in the head and killed on October 23rd in a disputed area in the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland.  The journalist, Ahmed Saakin Farah Ilyas, is the 16th to be killed this year in the areas the international community regards as the Federal Republic of Somalia.  The killing occurred in Las’anod, in the Sool region, which is claimed by both Somaliland and the Puntland State of Somalia and is also the site of a recent secessionist movement by the so-called Khaatumo State.

3 Bombs Planted in Disputed Somaliland Region; 4 Injured.  Also in Las’anod, Somaliland, (see above article), authorities announced on October 25th the discovery of three bombs planted at an Islamic school and a public market.  The one at the school detonated and injured three police who were trying to disable it, plus a civilian.

Casamance Rebels among Suspects Rounded Up after Guinea-Bissau Coup Attempt.  In the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, 20 people were arrested this week following an attack on an army facility on October 22nd by military servicemen that is being called an attempted coup d’état.  While the presumed mastermind of the attack, Capt. Pançao N’Tchama, is at large, some of those arrested include fighters from the Democratic Forces of Casamance (M.F.D.C.), a rebel group fighting for the secession of the adjacent southern region of the Republic of Senegal.

Barotse King, Prime Minister Snub Zambian Vice-President on Visit; Prisoners Freed.  Both the prime minister and the litunga (king) of the separatist region of Barotseland, in western Zambia, refused over the October 20-21 weekend to meet with Guy Scott, vice-president of Zambia, who tried to cool the war of words between the Lozi (Barotse) people and the government by making a side trip during a visit to Mongu, capital of Western Province (formerly Barotseland).  Scott is a white African, of mixed Scots and English ancestry.  Meanwhile, 17 Barotse separatists charged last month with malicious damage to government property for publicly tearing up copies of a draft Zambian constitution (as reported on earlier in this blog) were freed on bail on October 16th by a high court in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.

EUROPE
[For updates on Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country, see this week’s Spanish Separatism Update.]

Belgian Premier Rejects Separatism, Populism as Way Out of Economic Crisis.  The prime minister of Belgium, Emilio di Rupo, a French-speaking Socialist, urged European leaders in Brussels this week to confront the continent’s economic crisis in a way that does not give quarter to populists and separatists.  He noted that 40 of Belgium’s 150 legislators do not want to preserve the country.  Thirty-nine of those are members of the New Flemish Alliance (N.–V.A.), who effectively put Belgium’s partition into Flemish and Wallonian regions back on the table last week (as reported in this blog) in an election in which the N.–V.A.’s leader became mayor of Antwerp.

Emilio Di Rupo wants Flemings and Walloons to stay together/

Serbian, Kosovar Premiers Meet in Brussels, Prompting Nationalist Rioting in Pristina.  The prime minister of the Republic of Serbia, Ivica Dačić, and the prime minister of the de facto independent state Serbia still claims as its own, the Republic of Kosovo’s Hashim Thaçi, held direct talks for the first time on October 19th at the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels, prompting rioting by the opposition in the streets of Kosovo’s capital.  The meeting was overseen by the Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the E.U.’s highest ranking diplomat.  Lady Ashton, the who holds the title High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, said that she and the two leaders “will meet again soon ... to improve the lives of people and help solve problems and, in so doing, bring Serbia and Kosovo closer to the European Union.”  Though the meeting was in fact “talks about talks,” rather than talks themselves, and the two premiers did not shake hands.  Despite the unofficialness of the events, members of the small radical-nationalist opposition party Vetëvendosje! (“Self-Determination!”), which advocates union with Albania, staged violent protests in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, on October 22nd to protest what nationalists describe as capitulation to Serbia.  Banners were raised reading, “Unification with Albania instead of agreement with Serbia!”  Stones and tomatoes were lobbed at police, who responded with tear gas, and parliament was cordoned off after activists attempted to storm it.  Thirty-three people, some of them members of parliament, including Albin Kurti, Vetëvendosje’s leader, were arrested—Kurti only briefly.  More than 20 were hurt in the mêlée. Three days later, the United Kingdom’s foreign minister, William Hague, met with Thaçi in Pristina while on his way to another meeting in Belgrade and declared that, contrary to proposals by Serbia, Kosovo should never be partitioned.  “The map is finished in southeastern Europe,” he said.

Vetëvendosje! activists in Pristina

Vojvodina Police Arrest 5 Hungarian Neo-Nazis for Assault.  Five ethnic Hungarians belonging to extremist right-wing groups were arrested on the night of October 20-21 in Temerin, in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, an historically-ethnically-Hungarian part of the Republic of Serbia.  The men, who were drunk, shouted Nazi slogans, made Nazi-style right-arm salutes, and, after being tossed out of a tavern, assaulted two other men.  Hungarians make up only 15% of Vojvodina’s population today, but the province was once joined with Transylvania, the ethnic-Hungarian-dominated region in neighboring Romania, to form a German-allied Banat Republic after the First World War, before Vojvodina was absorbed into the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia.  Vojvodina is a flashpoint in the rhetoric of increasingly strident neo-fascist Hungarian militias in Romania (as discussed in a recent article in this blog).

Strasbourg Court Sides with Transnistria’s Moldovans over Russia’s Language Policy.  In Strasbourg, France, on October 19th, the European Court of Human Rights (E.C.H.R.) ruled in a 16-1 decision to hold the Russian Federation culpable for depriving children of education in Transnistria by imposing chauvinistic language policies that prompted Moldovan authorities to shut several schools down.  The policy, in place since the early 1990s, requires Moldovan to be written in the Cyrillic alphabet, as it had been when Moldova and Transnistria were part of the Soviet Union.  Transnistria is an eastern sliver of the Republic of Moldova which seceded in 1990 as the still-today-unrecognized Pridnestovian Moldavian Republic (a.k.a. Transnistria) and is propped up and occupied by Russian troops.  In a statement, the E.C.H.R. “found that the separatist regime could not survive without Russia’s continued military, economic, and political support and that the closure of the schools therefore fell within Russia’s jurisdiction.”

3 Militants, 1 Policeman Killed in Gun Battle with Islamists in Tatarstan.  A gun battle broke out on October 24th in Kazan, capital of central Russia’s predominantly-Muslim Republic of Tatarstan, with police and security forces besieging an apartment building in Kazan where Islamist radicals were holed up.  The interior ministry reported that three militants, described as radical Muslims, were killed, as well as one officer killed and one wounded.  Or, as the Islamist radical Caucaus Emirate’s website put it, a little subjectively: “A member of the K.G.B. commandos gang was eliminated.  The Russian terrorist died in hospital of his wounds.  Another Russian terrorist one badly wounded, and later also went to his Master Satan.”  (Watch a video of the siege here.)  Authorities later linked the men in the siege to the coordinated assassination attempts (one successful) on moderate Tatar muftis in Kazan in July (reported at the time in this blog).

The siege in Kazan, Tatarstan

[For updates from the North Caucasus (Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, North Ossetia, and Circassia), see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

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

[For updates from the North Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), see this week’s Caucasus Update.]

Pamiri Warlord under House Arrest in Tajikistan Predicts Authorities Will Eliminate Him.  The former Pamiri rebel leader in the Republic of Tajikistan, Tolib Ayombekov, who was placed under house arrest after a government crackdown in July and August (as reported at the time in this blog), told interviewers this week that he doubted he would ever be brought to trial.  He is regarded as having been set up as a fall guy after the beating death of a secret-police chief in July, an incident which he and his militias may or may not have been involved.  Dressed in the trademark post-Soviet gangster regalia of a tracksuit and baseball cap, Ayombekov said from his home in Khorug, the capital of Tajikistan’s vast Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, that he predicted the government could one day, without warning, eliminate him without making it look like a murder.  After a failed ethnic uprising in the 1990s pushed Tajikistan into civil war, Ayombekov and his fighters were absorbed into the Tajikistani military as part of the truce.  For years, Gorno-Badakhshan remained mostly outside government control, ruled by his militias.  Ayombekov claims that the spy chief’s murder was merely an excuse to bring the region back under central control.  He said, “The whole community is scared.  The atmosphere here is worse than during the civil war.  Not even young children or old men are forgiving the central government.”

Tolib Ayombekov

Security Tight, Flags a Flashpoint at Turkish–Greek Cypriot Football Match in Nicosia.  In Nicosia, the capital of the ethnic-Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus, security was tight as a football (soccer) team from Turkey arrived for a match with a Greek Cypriot team.  500 police were on hand to monitor the crowd—which was separated into ethnic-Greek and ethnic-Turkish sections—for outbreaks of violence.  In negotiations between the football clubs and associations before the match, fans of the Istanbul-based Turkish team, Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü, were permitted to display, during the game, flags of the Cyprus Turkish Republic (formerly known as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus), an unrecognized Turkish puppet state occupying the northern third of the island of Cyprus.  The Greek Cypriot team is Athlitiki Enosi Lemesou, or, as it is known, A.E.L. Limassol, representing Limassol, a Greek-governed town that is the island’s second-largest city.

Turkish fans waving the Northern Cypriot flag

Turkish Forces Battle Rebels in Kurdistan Region; at Least 49 Dead.  At least 49 people were killed in battles between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military over this past week.  First, three Turkish police officers and three members of the banned, separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) died over the night of October 19-20 in a battle along a highway in Hakkari province, in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdistan region.  Meanwhile, in Bitlis province, three pro-government village guards, who were Kurdish, were killed in a battle with P.K.K. rebels.  That incident also wounded three other guards and a Turkish soldier.  Then, on October 20th or 21st (reports differ), a natural-gas pipeline in Turkey’s Ağrı province was damaged by an explosion.  The provincial governor blamed the P.K.K.  Also on October 21st, the Turkish government announced that joint police and military operations over the previous five days in Hakkari province’s Kazan Valley, even using fighter jets and helicopters, had killed at least 40 Kurdish rebels.

400 Kurdish Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Rights Group Reports.  The Turkish Human Rights Association reported on October 22nd that as many as 400 Kurds in Turkey’s prisons are refusing food in a hunger strike over Kurdish rights and for conditions of the imprisoned founder of the armed separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), Abdullah Öcalan.  About 70 Kurdish prisoners began the hunger strike on September 12th, and the numbers have grown since then.

Abdullah Öcalan’s original perp walk

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

Palestine Reschedules Try for Upgrade to U.N. “Member State” Status for November.  The chief negotiator for the Palestinian National Authority (P.A.), Saab Erakat, told interviewers in Ramallah, in the West Bank, this week that Palestine would apply next month to upgrade its status at the United Nations (U.N.) from “observer” to “non-member state.”  This plan—originally (as reported in this blog) scheduled for last month—is less ambitious than the failed bid in 2011 to apply for full membership in the U.N. General Assembly (G.A.), which was blocked by the United States’ veto on the Security Council.  The Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) has had U.N. “observer” status since 1998.  Palestine is diplomatically recognized by most of the world (133 sovereign out of, depending on how you count them, 193 sovereign states) and is treated as a de facto member state by U.N. institutions such as Unesco.  Should the vote succeed, Erakat said, “Palestine will become a nation under occupation.  The moment we get this, every single thing Israel does in East Jerusalem or the West Bank will become null and void.”  The U.S. has no veto in the G.A., which has authority over  upgrades such as the P.A. is planning.

6 Killed as Hamas, Israel Exchange Rocket Attacks, Bombs, Airstrikes.  Six people were killed in a series of retaliations between Israel’s military and rebel fighters inside the Palestinian Territories’ Gaza Strip exclave this week.  Rockets apparently fired from within the Gaza Strip on October 22nd prompted Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) airstrikes—one on a supposed Hamas training camp in Beit Hanoun, and another at nearby Jabalya.  At Beit Hanoun, two Palestinians were killed and wounded two others.  In Jabalya, four were wounded.  An I.D.F. soldier was injured by a bomb planted along the border between Gaza and Israel on October 23rd.  Then, on October 24th, 60 rockets were fired from Gaza into southern Israel, wounding five people.  Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the bomb and the rockets, though the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (P.F.L.P.) claimed the October 23rd bomb as well.  Israeli airstrikes killed four Hamas fighters in retaliation.

Low Turnout in West Bank Voting; Rival Fatah Faction Gains in Jenin, Ramallah.  There was a disappointing turnout in local-council elections in the West Bank portion of the Palestinian Territories on October 20th, with only 55% voting.  The enclave’s ruling party, Fatah, did well in Hebron, Bethlehem, Kalkiya, Jericho, and Tulkarm, while a dissident Fatah faction came out ahead in Jenin, Nablus, and the Palestinian capital, Ramallah.  Hamas, the Islamist terror group which governs the Gaza Strip, boycotted the elections.

Emir of Qatar Pays First State Visit by Anyone to Hamas-Ruled Gaza Strip.  For the first time since the Islamist terrorist militia Hamas took power there after a 2007 election, a foreign head of state has visited the Gaza Strip portion of the Palestinian Territories.  Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, emir of the State of Qatar, crossed into Gaza via a border crossing with Egypt.  Qatar had already been a supporter of Hamas, but both the government of Israel and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority criticized the visit as lending the party legitimacy.

Palestinian children welcome the Emir of Qatar to Gaza.

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

Baloch Rebels Claim Bicycle-Bomb Attack That Killed 8 (Officially Only 3) Soldiers.  In Quetta, capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, three members of the federal paramilitary Frontier Corps (F.C.) were killed and 10 people, including six civilians, were injured when a remote-control bomb on a bicycle took out a patrol convoy on October 19th.  The Baloch Liberation Army (B.L.A.) claimed responsibility.  The B.L.A.’s statement claimed eight dead Corpsmen instead of three.  Meanwhile, an F.C. officer was killed in an armed attack on a checkpoint in Dera Bugti, in Balochistan, on the same day, and five were injured.

Rival Chittagong Hills Factions Clash in Bangladesh, Leaving 1 Dead.  At least one person was killed after a clash between rival factions in southeastern Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hills region.  The battle involved the Parbotto Chôṭṭogram Jônoshônghoti Shomiti (P.C.J.S.S., or United People’s Party of the Chittagong Hill Tracts), which signed a peace treaty with the Bangladeshi government in 1997, and the United People’s Democratic Front (U.P.D.F.), which rejects the treaty and desires more autonomy for the Chittagong Hills region, which is home to Buddhist-majority tribal groups within a predominantly Muslim nation.  The army was deployed, and five people were arrested.

The five arrested in the Chittagong Hills

2 Islamists Killed in Kashmir Included 1 Linked to 2011 Delhi High Court Attack.   Two militants were killed on October 21st in Sopore, in the north of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s largest and most strife-torn Muslim-majority state.  They were members of the radical Islamist and separatist militia Lashkar-e-Taiba, and one of the men, named Urfi (his full name), was said to be linked to the attack on a high court in Delhi on September 7, 2011.  The other man, Abdullah Shaheen, was a citizen of Pakistan.  Lashkar-e-Taiba, meanwhile, has claimed responsibility for an attack on a hotel in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, on October 19th (reported on at the time in this blog), which killed one person.  Later, on October 27th, tear gas was used to disperse an anti-government riot by separatists in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital.

Charges Dropped against Sikh Nationalists Arrested in 2005 for Advocating “Khalistan.”  A court in Amritsar, India, on October 22nd dropped all charges against 21 members of Dal Khalsa International, a Sikh separatist organization, who were first arrested in 2005 for “provocative speeches” arguing for an independent Khalistan.  They had been demonstrating to mark the 19th anniversary of Operation Bluestar, the Indian government’s deadly attack on Amritsar’s Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest site.  The charged included Dal Khalsa’s president, H. S. Dhami.

Flag of Khalistan

3 ULFA Fighters Busted with Weapons Cache in Assam.  In India’s strife-torn northeast, three fighters from the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) were arrested on October 27th in Assam’s Goalpara district.  Large amounts of weapons were seized from them.

Telugu Nationalists Riot over Film Said to Parody Telangana Statehood Movement.  If you thought the movie Borat got people’s knickers in a twist ... activists throughout the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, in India, vandalized movie theaters in Hyderabad and other cities on October 19th and also attacked a film director’s office, burning posters and film reels. The film in question, Cameraman Gangatho Rambabu, which is in the Telugu language and had been released the day before, was perceived to mock the political movement to create a separate federal state for the Telangana region.  Members of the Telangana Joint Action Committee and the Telugu Desam Party claim that two characters in the film are parodies of Telangana separatist leaders.  Some dialogue offended Telugu nationalists as well.  The filmmakers promised to release an edited version to placate the protesters, but the groups demanded the entire film be banned.  The film has been pulled from theaters throughout the region to avoid unrest.

The offending film

Karnataka Cabinet Minister Urged to Resign after Calling for Separate State.  A cabinet minister in Karnataka state, in southern India, is being asked to resign after calling for a separate state within India for his home region in the north.  Umesh Vishwanath Katti, who is the state’s minister of agriculture, said that northern Karnataka should be its own state by 2020, mainly for administrative reasons.  He envisioned a better-run India with 50 or more states, instead of the current 31.  Karnataka’s population is about two-thirds Kannada, an ethnic group that speaks a Dravidian language related to Tamil and Telugu.  Katti said later that he stood by his comments, adding, “I am not worried even if I lose my ministership.”

Accessory to Suicide Attack on Sri Lankan Army Commander Given 35 Years in Prison.  In Sri Lanka, a Tamil man named S. Suriyakumar was given 35 years in prison on October 23rd for aiding and abetting a female—and pregnant—Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.) suicide bomber the attempted assassination of the Army commander (and later presidential candidate) Gardihewa Sarath Chandralal Fonseka in 2006.  Nine people were killed in the eventual attack, but without harming Fonseka.

Sarath Fonseka: his would-be assassin finally receives justice.

ASIA—EAST ASIA

5 More Self-Immolations in Tibet, amid Reports Beijing Killed Man Planning Another.  Tibetan exile information networks are reporting that a 57-year-old Tibetan man who had been planning to immolate himself to protest Chinese rule over the region has disappeared and may even have been killed by Chinese authorities.  The man had arrived in Siling, in the north of the People’s Republic of China’s misnamed Tibet Autonomous Region, and, according to a well-connected Tibetan exile who spoke to Voice of America, “Chinese security personnel murdered Dorjee Rabten in Siling’s ‘Pachen’ guest house” on August 23rd.  The source, Gyaltsen Choedak, went on, “The Chinese security official called Dorjee Rabten’s elder son, Drukjham Gyal, and told him that he should come at once to pick up the body,” but the son received only ashes, and a warning to keep silent.  If true, the events would confirm an escalation in China’s crackdown on Tibetan activists and on self-immolators in particular.  Meanwhile, there were five more self-immolations in Chinese-occupied Tibet, all in Tibetan areas of Gansu province.  A man in his fifties named Dhondup (his full name) set himself on fire on October 22nd at the Labrang Monastery, two days after another self-immolation near the same monastery.  The next day, also near Labrang, Dorje Rinchen, age 58, immolated himself along a roadside near the police station.  These three Gansu self-immolations are among seven in Tibet in the past month alone.  There were two self-immolations on October 26th in Amuquhu, in Gansu’s Xiahe County: a 24-year-old farmer, Lhamo Tseten, who burned himself at a military base, and a Tibetan in his early 20s named Tsepag Kyab who did the same at a bus station.

Dorje Rinchen’s last minutes

2 Dead, 3 Wounded in Uyghur Axe Attack on Police, Prompting Chinese Crackdown.  The World Uyghur Congress, an exile group based in Munich, Germany, reported this week that house raids and attacks on protesters in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China on October 19th had involved an unknown number of deaths and injuries.  The clashes and crackdown occurred in Korla, in central Xinjiang (known to Uyghur separatists as East Turkestan), where, according to media, three Uyghurs attacked a group of policemen, who then opened fire on their attackers.  One attacker was killed, another was injured, and two policemen are in critical condition, one nearly losing his arm—bolstering rumors that it was an axe attack.  The incident followed other unrest in Korla and Kashgar, including the distribution of anti-Chinese leaflets.  Dilxat Raxit, the W.U.C.’s spokesman, said, “The local authorities have enforced a news blackout since the clashes took place, and have been conducting raids.”

112 Dead in New Eruption of Buddhist–Muslim Violence in Burma.  In western Burma, where a cycle of violence between disenfranchised Rohingyas, who are Muslim, and members of the country’s Buddhist majority left scores or hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless in May and June, 112 people have been killed in a new round of violence which began on October 21st, with scores wounded and almost 2,000 (mostly wooden) homes burned to the ground.  The violence first flared in Minbyar and Mrauk-U, two remote townships in Rakhine (a.k.a. Arakan) State, by the border with Bangladesh, but then spread.  The first three killed in this cycle of violence were one Buddhist man and two Muslim women.  Muslims have borne the great brunt of the unrest.

The unofficial flag of the Rohingya people

Burmese Troops Invade Kachin Village, Round Up Men, Expel Villagers.  Reports filtered out of Burma’s war-torn Kachin State this week that an entire village’s population had been forced to flee violence and threats by government troops.  The battles began on October 19th when 60 soldiers arrived in the village, Nam Si, and began rounding up and tying up the village’s men to interrogate them about ties to the Kachin Independence Organization (K.I.O.).  Some village leaders remain in custody, and the rest of the village fled for fear of more violence from the troops.

3 Malay Insurgents Surrender in Southern Thailand.  Three fighters from the rebel group Runda Kumpalan Kecil (R.K.K.), which aims to establish a separate state for ethnic Malays in what is now southern Thailand, surrendered to police this week.  The governor of Narathiwat province, in the far south, accepted their surrender and promised safety for them and their families.  Later, on October 27th, two Thai soldiers were injured in a drive-by shooting in another insurgency-plagued southern province, Pattani.  The same morning, a landmine on a rubber plantation in Narathiwat injured one man.

OCEANIA

Indonesian Cops Injure Break Up Independence Rally in West Papua, Injure 8.  In Indonesia’s far-eastern West Papua province, hundreds of police broke up a pro-independence rally with rubber bullets, injuring at least eight demonstrators.  Media report that the rally, at the University of Papua in Manokwari, became violent when students, who were among the 300 or so protesters, began throwing stones at police.  Four were hurt by rubber bullets, and another four in ensuing scuffles with police.  One journalist who was there said, “They punched me twice in the face and tried to strangle me.  They hit other journalists and I saw at least two people get shot.”  The rally was organized by the West Papua National Committee (K.N.P.B.), which advocates a referendum on independence for the provinces of Papua and West Papua.

The rally in Manokwari, West Papua

French Court Rejects Appeal by Polynesian Separatist Senator Who Cited Persecution.  The French Republic’s highest court rejected this week an appeal by a Socialist senator and Polynesian separatist who claimed that his two-year-long disbarment from legal practice in his native French Polynesia was politically motivated and sought redress.  The senator, Richard Tuheiava, was disbarred in March for criminal charges dating to 2008 that included forgery.  He maintained his innocence, claiming that the charges were an attempt to sideline him so as not to embarrass France.  He specifically cited the recently defeated president, Nicolas Sarkozy, as responsible for his persecution.  Tuheiava has since been reinstated to the bar in French Polynesia.

Aboriginal Boxer Apologizes to Tasmanians but Not to Opponent He Trash-Talked.  The famed Australian aboriginal boxer Anthony Mundine had to back-pedal from trash-talking of a fellow Aboriginal boxer he is to face in the ring in January, after suggesting that Tasmanian Aborigines were extinct.  In his comments, he had questioned his opponent Daniel Geale’s claims to indigenous ancestry, saying, “He’s got a white woman.  He’s got white kids.  I keep it real, all day every day.”  He said Geale should not wear the Aboriginal flag on his shorts and said, “I thought they wiped all the Aborigines from Tasmania out.”  Indeed, the last full-blooded indigenous Tasmanian died more than a century ago.  By the 1830s, all the Aboriginal Tasmanians that had not been exterminated in an overt genocide had been removed from their communities.  Surviving people of aboriginal Tasmanian descent are of mixed ancestry and have benefited from almost no cultural transmission.  The languages of the island are extinct.  Mundine has apologized to the Tasmanian people, but he refuses to apologize to Geale, saying, “I know there are a lot of Aborigines in Tasmania that are proud of their heritage, just like me,” but “There are people who get jobs, and are claiming benefits, who claim to be Aboriginal, because they have a great-great-great-great-grandmother or grandfather; that, I think, is wrong.”  He also called Australia a racist country and demanded a new flag that honors Aboriginal people instead of “the Union Jack, something that symbolises the invasion, the murder, the pillaging, and on and on.”

Anthony Mundine and Daniel Geale go to the mat over who’s more indigenous.

SOUTH AMERICA

Brazil Indian Tribe Vows Mass Suicide after Judge Upholds Eviction from Sacred Land.  An entire Indian tribe of 170 people in Brazil has vowed to commit mass suicide following a court ruling which orders them to abandon what they call their sacred land.  The land in question is a graveyard inside a privately owned ranch in Mato Grosso do Sul state in southwestern Brazil, bordering Paraguay.  A judge this week upheld the rancher’s eviction notice on the so-called “squatters.”  A letter to Brazilian authorities from the tribe, the Guarani-Kaiowá, read,  We are already going to and want to be killed and buried along with our ancestors here where we are today, therefore, we ask the Government and the Federal Justice not to decree our eviction, but instead we request them to decree our mass death and to bury us all here.  We ask them, once and for all, to decree our total decimation and extinction, besides sending many tractors to dig a large hole to drop and bury our bodies.  This is our request to the federal judges.  We already await this decision of the Federal Justice.  Decree our mass death Guarani and Kaiowá of Pyelito Kus/Mbarakay and bury us here.  Given that we fully decided it and won't leave this place dead or alive.”  Others denied the interpretation of the letter as a literal threat of mass suicide.

A Guarani-Kaiowá activist tends to graves on “privately owned” land his people refuse to vacate.

Chilean Riot Police Attack Crowd of Mapuche Demonstrators on Columbus Day.  In the Republic of Chile, riot police used tear gas and water cannons to break up a rally by several thousand protesters who took over downtown Santiago on October 15th to mark Columbus Day by demonstrating for the rights of indigenous people.  Media report that police intervened after about 100 hooded young people joined the march and started vandalizing banks.  The march was sponsored by the Meli Wixan Mapu Organization, the Wente Winkul Mapu community, and the Temukuikui Autonomous Mapuche Community, among others, to urge the release of four indigenous Mapuche political prisoners who had been hunger-striking for 50 days.

CENTRAL AMERICA & CARIBBEAN

Curaçao Independence Party Tops Vote, but Barely; Must Form Coalition.  Election results in Curaçao, in the southern Caribbean, released on October 20th put the Sovereign People Party, which calls for independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, ahead, but with a plurality that still requires a coalition deal in order to form a government.  Sovereign People received 23% of the island colony’s 87,000-or-so votes and will thus still hold only five out of the colonial parliament’s 21 seats.  The far more mainstream Movement for the Future of Curaçao, headed by a former Curaçaoan prime minister, Gerrit Schotte, won 21% of votes, with an equal number of parliamentary seats.  Curaçao, which is just off Venezuela’s coast, won separation in 2010 from the Netherlands Antilles, and the two are now separate “constituent countries” of the kingdom.  The two other Dutch “constituent countries” are Aruba and Sint Maarten; all are in the Caribbean.

The flag of Curaçao

NORTH AMERICA

Nuwaupian Scare Letters to Georgia Officials Were in Fact from Splinter Group.  Investigations are revealing this week that the loopy scare letters sent to various law-enforcement and other officials in central Georgia, in the United States, were not from the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors, the Black nationalist sect (classified as a racist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.)) whose cause they took up, but from a hitherto unknown splinter group.  Claiming to be from the embassy of the United Nuwaupian Nation (sic: with a p, not a b), the letters were addressed October 1st to officials and citizens involved in the law-enforcement take-down, in 2004 and 2005, of the Nuwaubians, their 500-acre compound in Putnam County, Georgia, called Tama Re, and the sentencing of their leader, Dwight Malachi York, to 135 years in prison on racketeering, tax-evasion, and child-molestation charges.  Previously well known members of the Nuwaubian movement have hastened to distance themselves from this month’s mailings.  Journalists, however, have identified the first signature on the letters—which nominally signed “for the Ministers of Justice” by one Ari Hatep sanan en mut (sic, including idiosyncratic lowercase)—as that of one Doosua York, a.k.a. Damon Pryor, linked to the Celebrity Status hair salon and tattoo parlor in Atlanta.  Another signature is that of Joe Hibner, one of seven officers from the Macon Police Department who quit the force in 2004 out of loyalty to York.  A more mainstream Nuwaupian named Kermit B. “Damur” Nowlin said, “There are a lot of law-abiding Nuwaupians that do not agree with the actions of this ‘Sovereign Citizens’ group called the United Nation of Nuwaupia,” whom he called “paper terrorists” and “bullies.”

Flag of the Nuwaubian Nation of Moors.
Crescent, Star of David, ankh—see? they love everybody!

Manitoba Ojibwe Occupy Tribal Office to Oust Self-Proclaimed “Chief for Life.”  In southeastern Manitoba, in Canada, dissident members of the Buffalo Point First Nation, an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe and Saulteaux) community, occupied their reserve’s band office over the October 20-21 weekend to protest the heavy-handed rule of their elected chief councillor, whom they accuse of nepotism and corruption, especially with respect to a land deal.  The chief, John Thunder, claims legitimacy through an hereditary title from his father, Jim Thunder, and asserts that he is Chief for life.  This runs counter to the Indian Act, which regulates elections to Band Council, including the position of Chief Councillor in First Nations communities.  The sit-in was prompted by the removal of Thunder’s opponents from voter rolls and the stuffing of them with relatives, which was discovered when voting began over the weekend on a referendum on a land deal.  Thunder’s opponents are asking the federal government to free Buffalo Point from the Indian Act so that proper elections can be held, even though it is Thunder’s authoritarianism which runs afoul of the Act.

3,000 First Nations Rally at B.C. Parliament against Tar-Sands Project.  In Canada, more than 3,000 protesters, including First Nations leaders and elders, filled the square in front of British Columbia’s parliament on October 22nd to protest plans by Enbridge, Inc., to run an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to Kitimat, on the northern B.C. coast.  Scores of First Nations communities have organized in opposition to the project and its environmental risks.  Art Sterritt, who is from the Tsimshian community of Hartley Bay and is executive director of Coastal First Nations, spoke and asked the crowd if they were willing to lie down in front of bulldozers if necessary to stop the project and the crowd replied loudly, “Yes!”  The B.C. parliament has yet to rule on the proposed project.

Haida protesters in Victoria

Russell Means, Leading American Indian Activist, Dies at 72.  See the full obituary in this blog.

[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.]