Puerto Rico Libertarian Proposes “Micro-Independence” and Partition of Island

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has held several referenda—including major ones in 1967, 1993, 1998, and 2012—on the question of its future status.  Today, the island nation is as self-governing as any of the 50 United States of America, but it has no voting representatives in Washington and Puerto Ricans cannot vote for U.S. president without relocating to one of the fifty states.  Most of the previous referenda have offered Puerto Ricans three choices: (1) admission as the 51st state—61.13% opted for that in the 2012 vote; (2) “free association” (the status currently enjoyed by three former U.S. colonies in the South Pacific, which rely on the U.S. for defense but have United Nations seats) (33.33% in 2012); or (3) independence (5.54%).  (See a previous article for a fuller discussion.)  The 2012 referendum was non-binding, so while most national politicians advocate statehood in principle, it is essentially blocked by the divisiveness and intransigence of the U.S. Congress, whose job it is to approve the addition of any new stars to the flag.

Puerto Ricans have their own Olympic team, but can’t vote for their own president
(you know, just like Cuba).

But Puerto Rican independence—an idea which was buoyed in the 1950s and ’60s by Cuba’s revolution not far to the west and has traditionally been associated with leftist radicalism and thus demonized and suppressed by the U.S. government—is persistent in the Puerto Rican consciousness, despite its low numbers.  But this does not mean those not choosing independence would be happy with statehood or the status quo.  In the 1998 poll, 46.6% voted for statehood, but the fourth option, “none of the above,” got 50.5%.  Since the U.S. snagged the island in the Spanish-American War, there has been discontent in Puerto Rico, and a feeling of nationhood, but nervousness about its viability as an independent state (the most prosperous Caribbean nation-states are tiny, low-population tax havens; no one wants to be the next Haiti).  The Puerto Rican electorate also worries about the political consequences of a long, divisive push for secession—especially if it ends up failing.

One Puerto Rican, Frank Worley-Lopez, founder of the Libertarian Party of Puerto Rico, has a proposal for a way toward more self-determination that mixes some of the benefits of the others.  In a recent editorial, he calls the idea “micro-independence.”  It involves giving something to different camps in the status debate by partitioning Puerto Rico, with one half becoming a U.S. state and the other half becoming an independent nation, with or without the “free association” apron-strings currently loosely tethering the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia to the mother country.  But if you’re picturing a bisected island which mimics the line that runs through neighboring Hispaniola to separate Haiti from the Dominican Republic, the partition wouldn’t need to be exactly into halves.  As Worley-Lopez puts it, “Even if the portion that becomes an independent ‘micro-nation’ is only a handful of the island’s 78 municipalities, it would still allow those who truly support independence to achieve their stated goal, while allowing others to reach theirs.”  (Puerto Rico does not have counties or the equivalent.)

Frank Worley-Lopez

But is this idea viable?  For one thing, it would not eliminate the problem of getting a statehood bill through Congress, or the trickier problem of how to negotiate independence.  President Barack Obama, after all, in 2012 gave a firm thumbs-down to the idea of secession in the wake of a tsunami of post-reelection secession petitions uploaded to the White House website.

Secondly, there is the question of how to draw the new border.  Worley-Lopez seems to suggest asking each municipality to pick a side.  In reality, this may not end up creating a very clean line.  It might be a wild gerrymander, with lots of exclaves.  This could lead to disruptions at the administrative and economic levels; it could also prove to be more divisive at the community level than even the multiple-choice referenda have been.

Referenda in Puerto Rico do not follow clear regional patterns.

Finally, we can look to places where something similar has been done.  In Switzerland, the seven districts of the contested Jura region of the Canton of Bern each had a chance, in 1979, to choose whether to stay in Bern or form a new canton or join the neighboring Basel-Land.  But the referendum was so designed because the divide was both geographical and linguistic and would not create a difficult border—though Switzerland already has plenty of crazily wiggly lines dividing its cantons, including lots of exclaves.

Switzerland’s Jurassians had to leave some territory behind
when they seceded from Bern in 1979.

Another example is Quebec, where Anglophone opponents of the province’s separation from Canada have reacted to independence pushes by suggesting different parts of Quebec choose whether to stay in or out.  In fact, indigenous groups staged their own counter-referenda in remote parts of Quebec in parallel with the failed 1995 independence vote.  But Puerto Ricans should take note that such talk was designed specifically to divide the Québécois nation and stifle national aspirations.  Some would say it worked.

Quebeckers, too, have had to contemplate what their independent state
might look like it if they couldn’t secede with all of its territory.

Perhaps the closest example is the curious path taken by some municipalities in Spain’s separatist autonomous region of Catalonia.  Starting with San Pere de Torelló in 2012, more than 200 jurisdictions within Catalonia have now declared themselves independent of rule by Spain and part of what they call Territori Català Lliure (Free Catalan Territory).  Since it is not just municipalities but sometimes whole districts as well taking these measures, by now about a fifth of Catalonia’s land has this status—at least by self-declaration.  But no one wants Catalonia divided.  This is a mostly symbolic gesture, seen as a strategy to be used on the way to independence for the entire country.

Scattered bits of Catalonia have already seceded—but not as a final goal.

On the whole, if you ask Chinese and Taiwanese, and if you ask Koreans or Germans—or Ossetes, to take a more extreme example discussed in this blog—none of them would say that there is anything inherently desirable in having a nation divided into two different state entities.  Albanian nationalists in Kosovo, Azeris in northern Iran, and Inner Mongolians in China tend to feel the same way.  And so do Ukrainians, of course.

I love Azerbaijan so much, I am happy that there are two.

Worley-Lopez writes, “The idea of allowing independence supporters to retain a small portion of the island is not new.  It’s been proposed multiple times by multiple people, including myself in the past. Yet so far, the Puerto Rico Independence Party has steadfastly—and curiously—refused to take the idea seriously.”  But I’ll reckon that most Puerto Ricans, and most Americans, find Worley-Lopez’s micro-independence idea highly problematic, and there is nothing “curious” about that at all.  Yes, nations and communities should be allowed to choose their own destinies, and, yes, referenda are for the most part the best way to do it.  But turn on the television, and you will see city halls in various parts of Ukraine ringed by burning tires and barbed wire while masked men with machine guns wave separatist flags.  Right now, this week, a town-by-town, village-by-village plebiscite does not strike most people as the way to peaceful co-existence—or freedom from colonialism.  Puerto Rico deserves a better solution to its problems; “micro-independence” probably isn’t it.

One face of “micro-independence”: a “People’s Republic of Donetsk”
separatist posing in his Archie Bunker chair.

Related articles from this blog:
“Venezuela’s President Maduro Urges Puerto Rico to Declare Independence, Join Latin American Bloc” (Jan. 2014)
“Puerto Rico Votes for Statehood—or at Least for Some Kind of Change” (Nov. 2012)

[You can read more about Puerto Rico, Jura, Quebec, Catalonia, South Azerbaijan, and 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 special announcement for more information on the book.]

San Diego County Partition Would Complicate Foundering “South California” Statehood Movement

While several plans to secede from, or subdivide, the State of California gather steam—including the State of Jefferson and a new “Six Californias” proposal—one languishing statehood movement in southern California faces a new challenge to its already-gerrymandered map: the possibility of San Diego County splitting in two.

Though it is still a new idea, some residents in the arid, less populous east of California’s southernmost county, think they would be better off on their own.

The current flag of San Diego County

A Valentine ’s Day “reader’s editorial” in East County magazine (which seems to think “editorial” means any opinion piece), by one (possibly pseudonymous?) Libby Belle, lists the ways in which eastern communities like Julian, Ramona, Alpine, Jamul, and Jacumba Hot Springs are slighted by San Diego’s eponymous county seat: fire safety, public safety, rural poverty, access to public services, and the county government’s imposition of wind energy programs on east-county residents, at the expense of solar energy.  The new entity would be called Chaparral County, inspired by a series of stories in that same publication which called east county residents’ revolt against takeovers of local fire departments “the Chaparral Rebellion.”

And local media quoted one resident as saying, “For instance, like the sheriffs would respond faster.  Then [San Diego Gas & Electric] wants to put their Powerlink in further … Drained our lake … They want to put the sexual perverts out here, too … I feel like San Diego does not care.”

San Diego County has subdivided before.  It used to stretch all along California’s border with Mexico and to the Arizona state line until Imperial County was created out of its eastern half in 1907.  That was the last time a new county was created in the state.

A county partition would have repercussions beyond the current county borders.  For one thing, it throws a wrench into the works of one Jeff Stone, the county supervisor in Riverside County, to the north, who would (as reported earlier in this blog) like a swathe of 13 Republican-dominated counties in the south and east of the state to split away as the State of South California.

Stone’s “Rebellion 2012” plan, as it was originally known, would form South California out of the existing counties of Fresno, Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Kings, Mariposa, Madera, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Tulare (see map above).  The choice of counties makes a certain amount of sense.  Orange County, one of the most consistently Republican-voting counties in the United States, was at the heart of Ronald Reagan’s rise to the governorship in the 1960s and is the birthplace of Richard Nixon and site of John Wayne International Airport.  But the Stone plan eschews the traditionally liberal Los Angeles County and the southern coastal areas in favor of a state boundary that snakes upward through Death Valley, almost all the way to Lake Tahoe, taking in many rural and desert counties that are overwhelmingly Republican.

The one thing that makes Stone’s map look odd is San Diego County.  Though San Diego voted for George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 (but only by a Florida-like, wafer-thin margin) and John Kerry in 2004, and tends to send Republicans to Washington, it went for Barack Obama by comfortable margins in both 2008 and 2012.  Like many border areas, it is rapidly Hispanicizing, and most observers feel sure it is headed toward becoming a solidly “blue” (Democratic) county.  Surely, that is one component of the secession drive in the county’s more rural and conservative east, but it also makes San Diego County one that Stone would have a hard time convincing to join his new state.  As I pointed out in my analysis of the South California movement a couple years ago, the proposed state would need to include deep-red Orange County and exclude left-wing L.A., and San Diego and Imperial need to be included so as not to leave the remaining part of California split into two noncontiguous chunks.  (Not that that sort of thing hasn’t been done before—see Michigan’s Upper Peninsula or Virginia’s Northampton and Accomack counties or Point Roberts, Washington—but why push it?)  San Diego also brings South California a decent amount of coastline, rather than settling for only Orange County’s smaller coastline, which contains mostly public beaches anyway, instead of San Diego’s world-class global shipping facilities.  And San Diego would make a much more respectable capital for the new state than a backwater like Riverside or Bakersfield, or even Irvine.  But the idea of San Diego County residents consenting to leave California and becoming the most Democratic part of a solidly-Republican state is quite far-fetched.

A not-serious suggestion for a “South California” flag

A successful drive to create Chaparral County would have the effect of making what was left of San Diego County even more Democratic-leaning than it was before.  Chaparral would be a reliably Republican part of South California, but it would put San Diego—and Jeff Stone’s dream of a state that is a bit more than a high-desert gerrymander—permanently out of reach.

Barack Obama (blue) and Mitt Romney (red) voters by county
in the 2012 election in California

But there is another problem, too.  As southern California becomes more Latino with each census, it is not just San Diego County that has become more “blue” in the Obama era.  In 2012, Obama took comfortable leads in other “South California” counties, including Mono, Fresno, San Bernardino, Imperial, and—bad news for Stone, though the margin was narrow—Riverside County itself (see map above).  Gosh, perhaps even “Chaparral County” could be blue!  How much of this is the “Obama effect”—Latinos identifying with and rallying around a candidate of color—or whether the leftward drift of Hispanics in the last two elections is a trend in and of itself, is the $64,000 question among party strategists.  It’s also one that Stone and his “South California” rebels would do well to pay more attention to.

Latino culture thrives in San Diego—and not just under the freeways.

This may not be an issue quite yet.  Of late, South California has taken a back seat to the resurgence of secessionism in the far-north State of Jefferson region and in Silicon Valley, but California has rarely been as fissiparous as it is now.  Stone better dust off his map, and come up with something more viable.

Hollywood votes blue, but the real housewives of Orange County vote red.

[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 some time in mid 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Related articles from this blog:

“Study Finds Silicon Valley’s 6-Way California Split Is Doable” (Feb. 2014)

“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)

“‘South California’ Statehood Movement Reignites in Election Year” (Sept. 2012)

Ukraine Loses Grip on Crimea, Prepares for Open War with Russia; Role of Far Right in New Kiev Regime Unclear

The Russian Federation and the Republic of Ukraine seem to have passed the point of no return and are on the brink of open war this morning (March 2nd) in a conflict that began with a months-long street-politics movement that removed the elected but corrupt and authoritarian pro-Kremlin president last week and is becoming a face-to-face military struggle over Crimea, a predominantly-Russian autonomous region in Ukraine that was part of Russia until 1954.

Duma Gives Putin Green Light for Military Intervention in Ukraine
The Duma, Russia’s parliament, on March 1st resoundingly met President Vladimir Putin’s request for authorization to use military force to intervene in Ukraine, and Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, responded by ordering Ukrainian troops, including reservists, to “full combat readiness” and has called the Russian moves “a declaration of war.”

The Ukrainian and United States governments are unequivocal in describing the events in Crimea as a Russian invasion.  The U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, referred to “the Russian Federation’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory.”  Russia’s prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, denies that such a thing has occurred.

Putin told Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations secretary general, and the U.S. president, Barack Obama, by telephone on March 2nd that he reserved the right to protect Russian-speakers and Russian interests if things became violent in Ukraine, including Crimea.  In the 90-minute-long conversation, Obama was able to threaten Russia with no more than “costs,” “risks,” and diplomatic isolation.

“Try and stop me” ...

It is hard for the U.S. or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to offer credible warnings, however, since both stood by and did nothing in 2008 when Putin invaded the Republic of Georgia, which was and is, like Ukraine, a NATO “partner” but not one of the full members of the alliance, among whom there is a mutual-defense pact.  In those events, Putin split off and established as “independent” puppet states two separatist regions of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in an often cited parallel to this week’s events.  Nor can America speak to Putin with much moral authority: the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 in a naked act of aggression on even flimsier pretexts than Russia is using now.  At least the Russian majority in Crimea—unlike Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”—actually exist.

An equal amount of doublethink, to be sure, operates in the Kremlin.  In Russia, as per new legislation passed last year (as reported on at the time in this blog), it is illegal to advocate any kind of “separatism.”  To actually enable, let alone advocate, Crimean separatism in Ukraine, one must adopt—as Putin very nearly has—the line that Crimea is not actually part of Ukraine, perhaps that Ukraine itself is actually part of Russia.  (Russia formally, on paper, recognizes Crimea as part of sovereign Ukraine, but it remembers that that is only because Nikita Khrushchev, reputedly while drunk, transferred it from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine with a stroke of the pen in 1954.  It has a Russian ethnic majority and is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.)

“I think I’ll slam back a few more of these and then swap some oblasts around just for shit and giggles."

Despite the precedent of inaction on Georgia, the interim Ukrainian government on March 1st appealed to the NATO with “a request to consider all options to defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.”  The North Atlantic Council, which governs NATO, is meeting today (March 2nd) to address the situation.  The Ukrainian parliament has also requested international help in securing their nuclear facilities.  (Like Kazakhstan, Ukraine ended up with some nuclear weapons in its territory after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991.)

Meanwhile, on the ground in Crimea itself ...

Russian Military, Mercenaries Control Crimea

Late last week, unidentified armed Russian-speaking men wearing no insignia took control of the Crimean parliament building and other government offices in Simferopol and also took control of the peninsula’s two major airports, while a Russian naval ship blockaded the harbor.  There was speculation as to the actual identities of these forces; they were clearly not an ad hoc mob, like ones that have been confronting protestors in Ukrainian cities for weeks now.  Some observers describe the occupying force as a military contracting security organization (i.e., mercenaries) operating under the orders of the Russian ministry of the interior, but it is also clear that they are being transported in vehicles bearing the plates of the Russian military associated with the leased military base in Sevastopol where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based.  The Ukrainian government says about 6,000 “additional” Russian troops are now in Crimea.

Russian irregulars patrol Crimea’s airports.

Russian authorities in Crimea are reportedly distributing Russian passports to members of the Berkut, the dreaded élite anti-riot police force under the command of the recently ousted pro-Kremlin Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, which the post-Yanukovych interim government has disbanded but which still seems to be involved in keeping order in Crimea.  There are other reports of Russian passports being distributed to ethnic Russians.  This was also a strategy used in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the run-up to the South Ossetia War in 2008.

The dreaded Berkut

In Crimea itself, the pro-Russian president of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, said that he himself was in control of all military and police in Crimea.  He also followed up an earlier promise of a referendum “on Crimea’s status” in May with a new promise for an explicit referendum on independence in only four weeks.  This follows the Crimean parliament’s refusal to recognize the newly installed pro-Western interim government in Kiev.

Sergei Aksyonov says he is now in charge of Crimea.

Local Crimean special forces presumably under Aksyonov’s command, armed with assault rifles, have established checkpoints on all roads connecting Crimea to the Ukrainian mainland and are flying Russian flags there.  According to the latest news reports, hundreds of Russian troops are headed from the leased Russian military bases in Sevastopol and headed to Simferopol, the Crimean capital.  Actual Russian military forces have, according to sources, been looting Ukrainian military facilities on the peninsula of their weapons.

The Crimean parliament building under Russian occupation

Also today (March 2nd) in Simferopol, according to Russian media, members of the Ukrainian military are abandoning their barracks and handing over their weapons to pro-Russian militias.  The Ukrainian ministry of defense denies that any of this is occurring.  To whatever extent it may actually be happening, it may be isolated responses to the reported recent statement by Ukraine’s acting minister of defense, Ihor Tenyuh, in a closed-door parliamentary meeting, to the effect that “Ukraine does not have the military force to resist Russia.”  At the very least, it is confirmed that Ukrainian forces are being ordered not to engage Russian troops directly until so ordered.

And just within the past hour or so, it has been reported that the new admiral in charge of Ukraine’s navy, Denis Berezovsky, who was appointed mere days ago, has pledged his allegiance not to Kiev but to the new pro-Russian regime in Crimea.  In a videotaped statement, he said, “I, Denis Berezovsky Denis, swear allegiance to the Crimean people and pledge to protect them, as required by military regulations.  I swear to take orders of Crimea and Sevastopol’s Supreme Commander” (i.e., Sergei Aksyonov).

Admiral Berezovsky has switched sides.

The Tatar Factor

The indigenous Crimean Tatars, who make up 12% of the peninsula’s population and are Turkic-speaking Muslims, have resolutely sided with the anti-Yanukovych and anti-Russian forces and support the interim government in Kiev.  Tatar leaders, who are guaranteed a certain number of seats in the Crimean parliament, claim that they have been barred from the chamber for the recent pro-Moscow resolutions there.  On February 28th, Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, arrived in Kiev to meet with the chairman of the Mejlis (the mostly toothless “parliament”) of the Crimean Tatar People, Mustafa Abdülcemil.  The Mejlis does not recognize the new emergency governmental structures that Aksyonov has been setting up in Crimea.  This raises worries that Turkey may intervene militarily to defend the Tatars, a kindred ethnic group with deep historical ties, despite the fact that this would bring NATO (of which Turkey is a member) into direct confrontation with Russia.  Turkish government policy, though nominally democratic, is in the de facto control of its “deep state” military complex, which is always poised to stage a coup d’état if Turkish policies are not sufficiently jingoistic.

Role of Far-Rightists in New Ukrainian Government Unclear
The constant description of the new Ukrainian regime in Russian media and in most of the media available in the predominantly-Russian-speaking east and south of Ukraine is as “ultranationalists,” “Nazis,” “fascists,” and “Banderists.”  This last term refers to Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian ultranationalist who tried to form an independent Ukrainian state in opposition to Moscow as the Second World War was winding down.  Though he did accept help from Nazi Germany at times, Bandera was ultimately as despised by Adolf Hitler as he was by Josef Stalin, and many of his fellow ultranationalists died in Nazi concentration camps.  When Yanukovych was elected in 2010, the outgoing, anti-Moscow government declared Bandera a “hero of Ukraine,” an official designation that was rescinded after loud international condemnation, including by the European Parliament.  Russian national identity is fiercely bound up with what is considered its greatest moment, Stalin’s defeat of Hitler in what Russians refer to only as “the Great Patriotic War.”  Thus, it is easy to brand those who defy Moscow with anything like the anti-Stalin imagery or iconography of that era as “Nazis.”

Stepan Bandera is still a hero to many Ukrainians.

On the other hand, Ukrainian nationalism is fiercely defined by being anti-Russian, and anyone or anything that defied Stalin is liable to be held up as honorable by the Ukrainian ultranationalist fringe.  Thus, throughout the Euro-Maidan protest movement, the blue-and-yellow national flag of Ukraine has flapped alongside the more grim, swastika-like red-and-black heraldry of pro-fascist organizations that fought Stalin during the Second World War.  For Ukrainian ultranationalists, these flags are “anti-Soviet” and “anti-Russian” rather than “pro-Nazi” or “pro-fascist.”  Or are they?  It is unclear how much of a role far-right groups have played in the Euro-Maidan movement and are playing in the new Euro-Maidan-installed and -vetted Ukrainian interim government.  One thing is certain: these groups have exploded in popularity over the past few months, even if they are still a minority.  It is also difficult to evaluate the situation clearly, because anti-Yanukovych and anti-Putin sources are likely to downplay the role of rightists as they court Western sympathy and pro-Yanukovych and pro-Putin sources are likely to exaggerate it for the opposite reason.

Dmitry Yarosh (left) of the Rightist Sector

One of the more frightening new Ukrainian opposition groups has been the Rightist Sector (Pravy Sektor), whose leader, Dmytro Yarosh, recently called on Doku Umarov, the radical Islamist Chechen leader of the Caucasus Emirate terrorist organization, “to activate his fight” and “take a chance to win” and to take up arms against Russia on the side of Ukraine.  Yarosh pointed out that “many Ukrainians with arms in hand” supported the Chechen Republic’s failed wars of secession from Russia and “it is time to support Ukraine now.”  That kind of statement is unlikely to win the hearts of Western supporters.  Yarosh’s views may or may not be fringe, but his own role is not: he is a deputy secretary—or claims to be one—in Ukraine’s post-Yanukovych National Security and Defense Council (N.S.D.C.) and was prominent on the Euro-Maidan side of the negotiations that led to the transition in power.

Doku Umarov (center)—an ally of Ukraine’s far right?

TheRightist Sector considers itself a successor to Bandera’s “Trident” organization.  In one viral YouTube video, a Rightist Sector activist brandishes an AK-47 and declares, “The Right Sector was armed and will be armed till the time when it will be necessary.  You did not give us this weapon and you will not take it away.  Who wants to take away my machine gun, my pistol, my knives?  Let them try!  As Americans say, ‘God made every man different; Sam Colt made them equal!’  I will put aside my Kalashnikov only when order in Ukraine is restored.”

Other active far-right groups include Patriots of Ukraine, the Social-National Assembly, “Kyiv Organization’s ‘White Hummer,’” and the Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO), a right-wing Ukrainian paramilitary founded by veterans of the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan.

The Ukrainian far right.  The torches add a nice Transylvanian touch, don’t they?

Pro-Kemlin Mob Raises Russian Flag in Kharkov, Capital of Proposed “Malorossiya”
Pro-Russian rallies were held March 1st, and are ongoing, in various cities across Ukraine, especially ethnic-Russian-dominated ones such as Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, and especially Kharkov and Donetsk. Donetsk is the capital of Yanukovych’s home oblast (province), where ethnic Ukrainians have only a tiny majority; Yanukovych is of mixed Polish, Belarussian, and Russian parentage.  Kharkov was the capital of the nascent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during the Russian Civil War in the late 1910s, when it allied itself against anti-Moscow republics formed in Kiev and other areas in western Ukraine.  It is the proposed capital of the separate republic of Malorossiya (“Little Russia”) that some Russian nationalists would like to establish in eastern and southern Ukraine (as discussed recently in this blog).  Kharkov was also Yanukovych’s first stop when he fled Kiev after his impeachment.

The scene in Donetsk this weekend

Andry Parubij, Ukraine’s new acting secretary of defense, says that the country’s N.D.S.C. (see above) has foiled attempts by foreign forces to foment uprisings in other oblasts of Ukraine similar to the one that has played out in Crimea.  At least one western oblast, Transcarpathia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia, tried to secede in 2008 on behalf of its Ruthenian and Hungarian ethnic minorities.  Ethnic Hungarians in Transcarpathia seem at least to be siding against the new government in Kiev.

Ukrainian founder of Femen seeks asylum in Switzerland
Anna Hutsol, the leader of the Ukrainian feminist guerilla-politics collective Femen, confirmed on March 1st that she was seeking political asylum in Switzerland.  The group, which has aligned itself with the dissident Russian punk band Pussy Riot and takes an aggressive anti-clerical, anti-puritanical, anti-patriarchal, and anti-Moscow stand.  Femen has also made some enemies among the opposition by siding resolutely against the until-recently-imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who was a hero of Ukraine’s pro-Western “Orange Revolution” of 2004 but who is regarded as corrupt as well.  During the Euro-Maidan movement, Femen has been based in Paris, but has run afoul of France’s laws against blasphemy and causing “offense,” which are nearly as harsh and arbitrary as Russia’s, though they tend not to be enforced by Cossacks with whips.  Hutsol has a sister who lives in Winterthur, in the canton of Zurich, but due to the fact that her visa is for France she may have to seek asylum there instead.  Hutsol said that it is too risky for her and her fellow activists to return to Ukraine.

[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 some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Related articles from this blog:

“Putin and Ukraine’s Ultranationalist Russians Light the Fuse: Second Crimean War Begins” (Feb. 2014)

“Games Begin! Ukrainian Hijacking, Putin Rounds Up Dissidents” (Feb. 2014)

“Yet Another Genocide Olympics: 10 Political Causes Sure to Disrupt the Sochi Games” (Feb. 2014)

“Minuscule Gagauzia Votes 99% to Declare Independence If Moldova Attempts Romanian Reunification” (Feb. 2014)

“Partition Lines in Ukraine Sharpen as Crimean Russians Call for Separate ‘Malorossiya’” (Jan. 2014)

“Will Ukraine Crisis Become Second Crimean War? Tatars and Russian Nationalists Take Sides” (Jan. 2014)

“Is Ossetian Reunification Just Russian Irredentism by Another Name?” (Jan. 2014)

“10 Separatist Movements to Watch in 2014” (Dec. 2013)

“‘Separatism’ Added to List of Things Russians Aren’t Allowed to Talk about” (Sept. 2013)

“Road Dispute Pushes Town near Moscow to Declare Independence from Russia—but with Dusted-Off Fascist Ukrainian Flags, Oddly Enough” (Oct. 2012)

“Transnistria’s Limbo to Continue Indefinitely” (Nov. 2011)

Kurdistan Update, 18-24 November 2012

NORTH KURDISTAN (TURKISH KURDISTAN)

Turkish Military Reports 24 Kurdish Rebels Captured in 2-Day Operation.  The Turkish military announced on November 16th that operations in southeastern Turkey’s Kurdistan region over the previous two days had captured 24 fighters from the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.).  Most of the operations took place in Tunceli province.  Then, on November 18th, Turkey’s military announced that five Turkish soldiers had been killed in a battle with the P.K.K. in Hakkari province.  It said one Turk was wounded.  Four P.K.K. rebels were killed, and four were taken prisoner.

Öcalan Calls End to Kurdish Prisoners’ Hunger Strike in Turkey.  A hunger strike by over 700 Kurds in Turkey’s prisons—joined by several prominent Kurdish politicians—ended on November 18th after Abdullah Öcalan, the long-imprisoned founder of the banned, separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), held talks with Turkish intelligence officials and called an end to the action.  Öcalan’s announcement was released by his brother on November 17th.

SOUTH KURDISTAN (IRAQI KURDISTAN)

Soldiers, Kurds Skirmish in Turkmen Town in Northern Iraq.  In a Turkmen-dominated town in a disputed, Kurdish-dominated region of northern Iraq which lies just outside the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, a battle broke out between Iraqi soldiers and armed Kurds on November 16th, leaving two people dead and 10 injured.  The incident, in Tuz Khormato, near Kirkuk, began when troops attempted to search the home of a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), the political party headed by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani.  One of the member’s bodyguards threw a grenade, leading to a short skirmish.  Within days, both the Iraqi military sent tanks and armored personnel carriers to reinforce their control over the area, and the Kurdish peshmerga were also mustering more forces for a possible showdown.

Turkmens in Tuz Khormato.  But Kurds and Shiites want to rule the town too.

WEST KURDISTAN (SYRIAN KURDISTAN)

Syrian Kurds Reject U.S. Urging to Join Rebel Umbrella Group as Killing Continues.  The spokeswoman for the United States’ Department of State, Victoria Nuland, said this week that Barack Obama’s administration is urging that Kurds be included in the newly coalesced armed opposition in Syria, called the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.  “There are a number of reports from inside Syria of some of the liberated areas where Kurdish populations and Sunni populations are working well together,” she said (obviously meaning to say Sunni Arab populations, since most Kurds are Sunnis), adding, “That’s certainly the direction that we encourage.”  Meanwhile, though, violence between predominantly Sunni Arab rebels and the Kurdish-run People’s Defense Units (Y.P.G.) (reported on last week in this blog) continued in the town of Ra’s al-’Ayn (called Serêkanî in Kurdish), in Syria’s now-mostly-Kurdish-controlled Hasakah province in the far northwest, where rebels from the militias Jabhat al-Nusra and Ghurba’ al-Sham attacked a Y.P.G. checkpoint, leaving at least 18 dead, possibly many more.  Some blame the violence on jihadist elements that have infiltrated the Syrian opposition.  There were also reports that the president of the Kurdish council in Ra’s al-’Ayn, Abed Khalil, had been assassinated by rebel snipers.  And on November 20th, Saleh Muslim, the head of the Syria’s Kurdish-run Democratic Union Party (P.Y.D.), which is suspected of links to Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), said that his group had not been invited to join the new group and would not join it.  He called the new Coalition a proxy group for the governments of Turkey and Qatar.  The Coalition has already been recognized by the French Republic, the United Kingdom, and others as the legitimate government of Syria.  Abdulbaset Sieda , the head of the Syrian National Council (S.N.C.), speaking to media in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, said that Jabhat al-Nusra, despite its claims, was not part of the Free Syrian Army (F.S.A.), and he disavowed S.N.C. responsibility for anti-Kurdish violence, but he said Kurds must choose sides in the Syrian civil war.

A P.Y.D. patrol in Syria

EAST KURDISTAN (IRANIAN KURDISTAN)

Rights Activists Call for General Strike over Plight of Kurds on Iran’s Death Row.  Human-rights activists in East Kurdistan, i.e. the portion of the Kurdish homeland which lies within Iran, are calling for a public protest over death sentences passed on 27 Kurds being held in Iranian prisons.  A general strike and boycott of schools and other institutions is to start November 17th.  Most of the condemned prisoners are in the city of Saghez, in Iranian Kurdistan.  Meanwhile, exile rights groups announced this week that Zainab Bayazidi, a Kurdish political prisoner and women’s-rights activist, had been released on November 20th from a prison in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province.  Bayazidi was first arrested in 2008.

[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.]