Yemeni Interim Government’s 6-Region Federation Plan Is Too Little, Too Late for Southern, Houthi, and al-Qaeda Separatists

A six-way split is popular not only among Silicon Valley dreamers who (as discussed yesterday in this blog) would like to partition their state.  It is also the magic number that the government of Yemen is banking on as it decides how to allocate power to the regions in a way that will mollify those who want to split the country up for good.

Yemen’s president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Hm, this doesn’t look quite like a rally for an interim president.

On February 9th, the caretaker interim president of the Republic of Yemen, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, announced a plan to divide the formerly partitioned Arab country into six autonomous regions—two making up what used to be the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (a.k.a. South Yemen) and four making up the smaller, more mountainous Arab Republic of Yemen.  The country will, under the new Constitution if implemented, be called the Federal Republic of Yemen.  The two were pawns of opposite sides in the Cold War until the abrupt end of Soviet communism in 1990 brought about reunification.  But the old border mapped tribal and sectarian loyalties as well, and since then there has been an insurgency seeking to revive an independent South Yemen.  Things had calmed down somewhat after a failed Southern secessionist revolt in 1994, but the Arab Spring revolutions which started in 2011 turfed Yemen’s autocratic ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh, out of office the following year, and since then the Southern Separatist Movement, also called al-Hirak, has been fighting tooth and nail to split away.

The partition until 1990

Like much else in the Arab Spring, the violence is often sectarian in basis, with Shiites more dominant in the old North Yemen and Sunnis more dominant in the South.  This has given the northern-dominated government the opportunity to cast Southern secessionism as Wahhabist and Islamist in origin, and indeed Ansar al-Shari’a, also known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (A.Q.A.P.) operates mostly in Yemen, and mostly in the south (but increasingly in the north).  But al-Hirak are hardly radical Islamists; they command wide and deep loyalty in the former South Yemen.

But it is not just Southerners who want to split away.  The Houthi minority in the mountainous north of the country, along the border with Saudi Arabia, also have militias and also control territory.  The Houthis are the group that ruled North Yemen when it was the Mutawakelite Kingdom of Yemen, an Arab Revolt successor to the Ottoman Empire.  The Mutawakelites were turfed out of power in an Egyptian-led coup d’état in 1962 in a wave of movements that brought Nasserists, Ba’athists and other Arab nationalists to power in the wake of the Suez Canal crisis.

Apparently some Yemenis wouldn’t mind too much if the South seceded.

To look at the new map of territories unveiled this week (see map at the top of this article), the Yemeni regime seems more worried about the Houthi insurgency, which is closer to the capital, Sana’a, than the Southern one.  The four current Yemeni provinces where Houthis have the strongest presence—’Amran, al-Jawf, Hajjah, and their heartland, Sa’ada—are allocated among three different regions in the new plan: Tahman, Azal, and Sheba.  The former South Yemen, on the other hand, would become two large regions, Aden, around their eponymous former capital, and Hadramaut.

The situation in Yemen early on in the Arab Spring, when the current conflict began ...

Indeed, Houthis have made great gains recently.  It was reported recently that scores were killed in fighting in the northern mountains as Houthis have been disloding rival tribes from their lands.  Houthis now the core territory of the Hashid tribe, in Amran province.  The deposed dictator, Saleh, was a Hashid.

... and the state of play a little later on.
(Both maps are from the excellent and worthwhile Political Geography Now website.)

In some ways, the plan seems to be an attempt to hand a large degree of united autonomy to the South, mainly to try to bring the major Southern secessionist players back to the negotiating table.  Most Southern leaders withdrew from the negotiations for the new Constitution late last year.  The United States has been working quietly behind the scenes to help ensure the South does not split away, though the semi-secret American drone-aircraft war on A.Q.A.P. has not so far been extended to al-Hirak.  As far as the West is concerned, two Yemens would mean double the chance that one of them—most likely the South—would fall under the sway of al-Qaeda.  We have already seen the disastrous effects of al-Qaeda-linked groups piggybacking their cause onto separatist movements in northern Mali and southern Somalia.  Northern Nigeria’s Islamist insurgency could be put in this category as well.  Al-Qaeda also takes advantage of power vacuums in secessionist regions like eastern Libya and Syria’s Kurdistan region.  And, indeed, in 2011 and 2012, Ansar al-Shari’a established two towns, Jaar and Zinjibar, as sovereign Islamist enclaves (Jaar was the “Emirate of Waqar”); those were shut down by the Yemeni military (as reported at the time in this blog), but al-Qaeda will try again if they can.  After all, makeshift city-states is the new al-Qaeda strategy in both Syria (Azaz) and Iraq (Fallujah).

The Emirate of Waqar was short-lived.

President Hadi is now in the unenviable position of proposing a plan to end the violence which does not even have the backing of the major insurgent group in the country.  (At least the Houthis were at the table, but al-Qaeda certainly isn’t—and Houthi rebels naturally reject the six-region proposal.)  Part of the new plan is that after five years the borders and divisions can be reexamined and, possibly, renegotiated.  But that is not necessarily welcome news to Southerners who want independence now.  If nothing else, this means the Southern insurgency will not end any time soon, and may even intensify.

Southern separatists with their flag

[You can read more about South Yemen and other separatist movements, from the well known to the bizarre 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.]

Iraq’s Kurds and Arabs Debate Inclusion of Minorities in National Anthem

In the Republic of Iraq, some Kurdish members of the parliament in Baghdad would like the Iraqi national anthem to be modified in order to represent their large minority, but they are getting pushback from representatives of the Arab majority—and even from some fellow Kurds.

Muayad Tayyib, M.P., from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (K.D.P.), is one Kurdish legislator who would like no fewer than three verses in the currently-under-revision national anthem devoted to Iraqi Kurds.  Proposed verses include excerpts from the works of poets, including the Iraqi Kurdish versifier Fayak Bekas (How sweet and fulfilling is the water of our homeland ...) and a non-Kurdish Iraqi poet and theologian from Najaf, Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahri, who nonetheless composed verse about Kurdistan’s “high mountains and wide plains, ... your generous people and rich history.”

Set your poems to music!
Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahri in his later years

Since the Iraqi state was carved out of the remnants of the Ottoman Empire by the League of Nations in 1920 (the United Kingdom then oversaw its 12-year transition to independence), the Iraqi national anthem has changed each time there has been a regime change.  But Iraqis of all stripes are now wondering if Kurds (who are 17% of the population; nearly all the rest are Arab) should be included in the anthem if, as many expect, the northern Kurdistan Autonomous Region is on its way toward eventual independence.  Could three verses be enough to convince the Kurds to stay in a perhaps looser federal union?  Or should the anthem be an apologetically Arab-nationalist one, in preparation for a smaller and more ethnically homogeneous country?

Kurdistan’s flag

And then there is the the uncomfortable question of how many Kurds might still be in Iraq after the region secedes: after all, large Kurdish areas remain outside the reach of the Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R.G.), including vast oil resources and the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk.  But the K.R.G. administers these areas, if loosely anyway.  Would they be taken along into an independent Kurdistan as well?  Such demographic and cartographic details (see maps above) as that will be a bigger headache down the road for the Iraqi parliament, and maybe for the Iraqi army too.

As could perhaps have been expected, Iraq’s Turkmens (3% of the population, including many in the disputed Kurdish area) and Christians (mostly Chaldeans and Assyrians, 1% of the population and shrinking) want verses too—and in their own languages.  So how about some brief mentions for the minuscule Yezidi and Zoroastrian populations?  That doesn’t seem too much to ask.

Turkmens want a piece of the pie too.

Perhaps the wisest suggestion is from Sardar Abullah, a member of parliament who thinks the national anthem should resemble that which was used under King Faisal I in the 1920s: it had no words at all.

Faisal I in 1919.
T. E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) is to his immediate left behind him.

[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 some time in 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Gagauzia Threatens to Secede from Moldova If Nationalists Push Reunification with Romania

The leader of the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia, a self-governing region of the Republic of Moldova’s Turkic-speaking minority, told media this week that increasing calls for the reunification of Moldova and Romania may push the Gagauz to declare independence.  In particular, the leader, Mikhail Formuzal, cited plans to hold a Unionist march in Chișinău, the Moldovan capital, on September 16th.  Previous such marches have resulted in violence between unionists and their opponents.

This part of the former Soviet empire is a region of slivers.  Moldova (formerly the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) is really just a sliver of Romania.  It is the eastern portion, known traditionally as Bessarabia (though much of true Bessarabia is in modern Ukraine) of Moldavia, which was one of the three regions—Transylvania and Wallachia are the others—which made up the Kingdom of Romania that broke free of the Ottoman Empire in the 1870s. But this Christian chunk of a Muslim empire had its rough edges: its western reaches were and are ethnically Hungarian (as discussed in detail in a recent blog posting about Romania’s Magyars), while at its eastern edge there were minorities of both Slavs (Romanians speak a Romance language) and Gagauz.  The Gagauz are Eastern Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkic language and are either Seljuq Turks or Turkified Bulgars who migrated to Bessarabia from what is today Bulgaria perhaps as long ago as the 13th century. The Gagauz staged a brief, disastrous, five-day-long uprising against the Russian Empire in 1906 as the Republic of Comrat, after which they nursed their grievances for generations until reasserting themselves in the late 1980s as Communism’s grip began to loosen.  They have never felt Romanian.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Lenin still looks out over the main square in Comrat, capital of Gagauzia.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Moldavian S.S.R. declared independence as the Republic of Moldova, Romania became Moldova’s first and warmest ally; Moldovans and Romanians tend to consider themselves one nation.  One would think that this would be the time to realize the dream of a united Romania.  But any talk of eventual reunification is dampened by a separatist movement in Moldova that has proved intractable for twenty years: the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, also called Transnistria.  This is the eastern sliver of Moldova whose ethnic population is about a third Ukrainian, a third Russian, and a third Moldovan (i.e. Romanian).  The Slavic (Russian-plus-Ukrainian) majority declared this ridiculously slender shard of land a sovereign state in 1990 when the U.S.S.R. imploded, and its independence, though unrecognized by any except other Russian (or Armenian) puppet states (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia), is maintained by the presence of thousands of Russian troops.

This ad targeting foreign investors shows Gagauzia’s current flag in front of the Moldovan one.
(The Moldovan flag is simply the Romanian tricolor with the Moldovan national seal in the center.)

Currently, as discussed earlier in this blog, Transnistria is a frozen conflict, and thus Romanian–Moldovan reunification is stalled as well.  Romania does not want to absorb Moldova if this means that it would suddenly have uninvited Russian troops on its territory; in fact, under the rules of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which Romania joined in 2004, that would put NATO on an immediate and automatic war footing with Russia, which no one in the world wants.  Meanwhile, if Moldova tried to retake Moldova militarily, it would test Russia’s commitment to defending it—and, because of the NATO issue, Romania would stay out of the fight at all costs.  That would mean that Transnistria would likely absorb Moldova, while the world looked on helplessly.  Thus the standoff.

The traditional Gagauzian flag.  Now this is the one they should use if they declare independence, right?  Though that wolf looks not quite fierce enough, and a bit like the fox from The Little Prince or something.

So most talk of Romanian–Moldovan unification is merely nationalist bluster.  Or is it?  Romania is in the midst of an ugly constitutional crisis, the sort where jingoism finds its voice.  Popular Romanian populist nationalism could spur Slavic anger and vice versa, ad bellum—and, indeed, Gagauzia could be part of this cycle too.  Gagauz in the early years of Moldovan independence first had their unilateral declaration of an autonomous republic annulled, and did not fight that.  Then they saw their support for a three-way Moldovan–Transnistrian–Gagauz federation sidelined.  Finally, they benefitted when Moldova came around to granting them autonomy—without republic status, however, and with a territory that is a cluster of slivers of territory in the country’s far south (see map, above).  But nationalist feelings have never gone away in Gagauz communities.  Just last month, a diplomatic visit to Moldova by Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, was disrupted by a Gagauz who threw a Molotov cocktail at her motorcade.

Angela Merkel arrives in Moldova.
Flowers and folk tapestries now; cocktails will be thrown later.

The Gagauz would have everything to lose from Romanian–Moldovan unification, since Romania’s hypernationalists would not countenance the high degree of autonomy the Gagauz have in Moldova today, and the Gagauz would be a far smaller share of the population.  They may be too isolated, put-upon, and paranoid at this point to realize that the unification talk is talk only.  But if they react with true secessionist spirit, it could push Moldova to repress them to the point where separation looks genuinely appealing.  And Transnistria, after all, has survived the decades since the Cold War, without apparently feeling that they would be better off Moldovan.  True, Gagauzia would need Russian military and economic military support to follow a similar path, but with the right diplomacy Russia may just be willing to offer that—whether through Gagauzian unification with Transnistria as an expanded sliver of Moldova, or as its own state.

Gagauzia’s coat of arms

Far stranger things have happened in post-Communist eastern Europe.  This is one situation to keep an eye on.

[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.]

Caucasus Update: Chechen-Ingush Border Conflict; Female Breakdancing Suicide-Bomber in Dagestan; South Azerbaijani Separatism; Is Georgia Supporting Islamism in Russia?

Georgian interior-ministry snipers being transported to the crisis in Lopota Gorge this week

TOP STORY: ABDUCTION AND DEADLY SIEGE AT LOPOTA GORGE
SHINE LIGHT ON ABILITY OF ISLAMISTS TO OPERATE WITHIN GEORGIA

The Republic of Georgia’s ministry of the interior said August 29th that its forces had killed 11 militants in an attempt to free hostages in an anti-terrorist operation near the border with the Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan.  The ministry would not give further information, such as the nationality of the gunmen or whether they had crossed into Georgia from Russia; an entire mountain gorge was closed off to reporters and other civilians.  Two Georgian interior-ministry troops and a defense-ministry medic were killed and five other Georgians injured, the ministry said.  The crisis had begun days earlier when five young people from the area had gone missing while hiking near the Russian border.  Police discovered the kidnappers’ hideout and managed to free the five captives.  Brief video footage on television showed suspects with the tell-tale beards of Islamist radicals.  (Later, the Georgian interior ministry said that most of the militants were Dagestani but included some from Russia’s nearby Republic of North Ossetia–Alania.)

Map showing the location of Pankisi Gorge, site of an earlier 2003 battle with Islamists.
Lopota Gorge is to its east, along the Dagestani border.

Who were the culprits? Chechen nationalists operating within Georgia?  This part of Georgia has at times been home to a cell of a Chechen separatist government-in-exile, a member of which, Khizri Aldamov, earlier this year said that the armed group operated in northern Georgia with the support of Georgia’s president, Mikhail Saakashvili, and that Georgia was used as a launching area for terrorist attacks within Russia’s Chechen Republic.  Moreover, Aldamov alleged, the group, known as the Government of Ichkeria (this being an alternate name for Chechnya), whose leader, Akhyad Idigov, lives in France, sought to create a radical Islamist state in northern Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge region, by the Chechen border, to be called Pankisi Jamaat. Saakashvili, for his part, in a televised national address from his vineyard at his home, said, “We, the Georgian state, will not allow turmoil, instability, and violence on the territory of our neighboring country to spill over into Georgia in any form.”

... or Caucasus Emirate operatives who took a wrong turn?  Meanwhile, the Kavkaz Center website of the Caucasus Emirate movement, which seeks to establish a separate Islamic state out of the predominantly-Muslim areas of southwestern Russia and environs (though not out of predominantly-Christian Georgia), described “what really happened” at Pankisi Gorge as a Dagestani detachment of Emirate recruits passing through Georgian territory on their way to an operation within Dagestan, at which point Georgia dispatched troops, parleyed, and then refused to allow the Emirate recruits safe passage back into Dagestan.  The Emirate version of events also denies that hostages were taken.  The statement attributes Georgia’s overly aggressive response to a fear that the presence of Emirate operatives in Georgia will lead to a Russian pretext for another invasion of Georgia, as in the 2008 war over South Ossetia.

Mikheil Saakashvili meeting a survivor of the Lopota Gorge hostilities

NEWS FROM THE REST OF THE NORTH CAUCASUS ...

Chechnya Accuses Ingushetia of Border Encroachment, Asks Moscow to Mediate.  The Chechen Republic and the Republic of Ingushetia, two Russian republics in the war-torn North Caucasus region, are in a new conflict, over territory.  The Chechen government announced August 26th that it was appealing to the Russian Federation to resolve a lingering border-demarcation conflict which the Chechen Republic claims is allowing Ingush encroachments on Chechen territory.  Ramzan Kadyrov, the authoritarian Moscow-appointed president of Chechnya, said, “Whole villages and districts have been seized [by those] taking advantage of the Chechen people’s problems.  ...  These actions are provocative by nature.  The boundary line, which we have never drawn and in which we took no interest, is being pushed inside the Chechen Republic.”  Chechnya and Ingushetia used to be united, within the Russian Federative Soviet Socialist Republic, as the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, until Chechnya’s de facto secession from Russia in 1991 led to the establishment of Ingushetia as a separate republic.

Ingush Police-Funeral Bomber Got Wrong Victims, Emirate Admits; 4 More Rebels Killed.  The Caucasus Emirate militants that attacked a funeral in the Russia’s Republic of Ingushetia August 19th (as reported last week in this blog) admitted August 24th that they’d gotten the wrong victims.  Meanwhile, it was reported August 28th that four suspected militants were killed and two arrested in Malgobek, Ingushetia, in the ongoing attempt by security forces to sweep up those complicit in the attack.  In a “clarification” posted on the Emirate website http://hunafa.com, the “Mujahideen Command” for the vilayet (as provinces in the old Ottoman Empire were known) of “Ghalghayche” (i.e. Ingushetia) says the attack, which killed seven, had targeted Mukhazhir Yevloyev, chief of police for Malgobek, whom the Command calls “one of the worst enemies of Allah.”  Indeed, Ingush authorities had said that the policeman, killed the day before, whose funeral was attacked, Ilez Korigov, had been killed precisely in order to lure Yevloyev to the funeral.  However, the entire Malgobek police department was during the funeral busy hunting for Korigov’s assassins’ getaway car, so all the police there were from another detachment.  Meanwhile, the Emirate’s website announced August 28th that three civilians had been killed and at least two kidnapped in a “punitive raid” by Russian forces in Sagopshi, the village in the Malgobek region where the funeral massacre occurred.

Ingushetia’s Caucasus Emirate “Mujahideen Vilayat Command”

DAGESTAN’S BLOODY TUESDAY: 17 DEAD IN SUICIDE-BOMBING, BORDER-POST RAMPAGE, AND ARMORY TAKEOVER

Aminat Sapyrkin, the breakdancing suicide-bomber

1. Female Suicide Bomber Blows Up Sufi Cleric in Dagestan, 6 Others.  First, a female suicide bomber disguised as a pilgrim seeking conversion to Islam killed a Sufi leader and six of his followers, including an 11-year-old boy, as well as herself, on August 28th.  The blast occurred in the village of Cherkei at the home of the leader, Said Atsayev, also known as Sheikh Said Afandi al-Chirkavi, who was 74 years old.  The bomber, identified now as Aminat Saprykina, was an ethnically Russian actress and breakdancer (!) and wife of an Islamist militant who had also been widowed by two successive Islamist militant husbands.  Sufism tends to be a politically moderate form of Islam, and is regarded as heretical by the Wahhabist brand of Sunni Islam followed by most Islamist militants in the North Caucasus.  A member of parliament for the extremist-right-wing Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Yaroslav Nilov, who chairs a committee on religious organizations, blamed foreign enemies of Russia for the attack.

Said Atsayev, assassinated this week

2. Dagestan Border Guard Goes Berserk, Kills 7; Emirate Radicals Claim Responsibility.  On the same day, a border guard in Dagestan shot and killed seven fellow servicemen at a border post “for no apparent reason” and was himself killed by others responding to the incident.  The shooter, one Sgt. Ramzan Aliyev, fired at least 30 rounds at his comrades, who were a visiting unit from the Altai Republic.  Six were injured in the incident.  The Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement claimed on its website that Aliyev, was in fact “a brave martyrdom-seeking infilitrator Mujahid of the Caucasus Emirate ... working as a puppet policeman.”

3. Islamist Rebels Seize Russian Armory in Dagestan, Killing 2 Soldiers.  Then, again on the same day, a group of gunmen took over an Interior Ministry armory in Belidzhi village in Dagestan, killing two soldiers as they opened fire with automatic weapons and injuring three others.  The Caucasus Emirate took credit for this as well, describing the incident thus on their website: “The Caucasian Mujahideen attacked from a forest a gang of Russian special police troops from Siberia which were stationed in the same village of Beliji.  At least 1 Russian invader was killed and 5 others were seriously wounded.”

Caucasus Emirate Appoints New “Emir” for Dagestan Front.  A new “emir” of the “Dagestan Front” was announced August 25th on a website of southwestern Russia’s Islamist separatist Caucasus Emirate movement.  The Emirate uses the bureaucratic language of the old Ottoman Empire in its terrorist campaign to wrest the predominantly-Muslim fringes of the Russian Federation from Moscow’s control, with most of its activity being in the North Caucasus, including especially the Republic of Dagestan.  The appointment, signed by Dokku Abu Usman (a.k.a. Dokku Umarov), so-called Emir of the Caucasus Emirate, designates Abu Muhammed to the post.

Abu Muhammad, new “emir” for Dagestan

Azerbaijan Takes Over Investigation into Shiite Mosque Massacre in Dagestan.  The Republic of Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said on August 23rd that its embassy in Moscow is taking the lead in investigating an August 18th massacre at a Shiite mosque in Khasavyurt, in the Republic of Dagestan, in southwestern Russia’s North Caucasus region.  In that incident (reported on last week in this blog), it is rumored, but not yet confirmed, that the one fatality and three of the eight injuries were of Azerbaijani citizens.  The majority of Azeris are Shiite, while the radical Salafist terrorists whose violence has been plaguing the North Caucasus for years are mostly Sunni Muslims who view Shi’a Islam as heretical.

Kazakh Accused in Chechen, Russian Assassination Plots Switches Plea after Extradition.  A citizen of Kazakhstan who was extradited on August 25th (after a brief delay reported on in this blog last week) from Ukraine to Russia to face charges of plotting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin has changed his testimony.  Originally, the defendant, Ilya Pyanzin, had confessed, then changing his story and pleading innocence to Ukrainian authorities and shifting the blame onto his accomplice, Adam Osmayev, a Russian citizen from Chechnya.  Now, Pyanzin is fingering Ruslan Madayev, a fellow militant who died in the explosion at the makeshift explosives factory in Odessa, Ukraine, which first led authorities to the plot in February.  Osmayev is still in detention in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.  Ukraine will not extradite him until the European Court of Human Rights hears his case.  The two are also accused of plotting to kill Ramzan Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed president of the Chechen Republic.

... AND FROM THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

U.S., Azerbaijan Oppose Rohrabacher’s Plan to Split Azeri Region from Iran.  The United States’ Department of State announced this week that it had received the July 26th letter (reported on last week in this blog) from California’s Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (a Republican legislator) recommending that the U.S. help the Azeri-dominated part of northwestern Iran secede and unify with the Republic of Azerbaijan, and that the department had responded.  The spokesman would not elaborate on the reply except to state that “we support the principle of territorial integrity.”  Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry, too, rejected the idea, with a foreign ministry spokesman, Elman Abdullayev, stating, “Despite the historical ties, similar cultural values, and family ties between Azerbaijan and Iran, we support the territorial integrity of Iran.”  But support for Rohrabacher’s letter was voiced by Rahim Humbatov, head of the Azeri community in Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and from 

Donna D’Errico Updates from Noah’s Landing Spot.  Meanwhile, there are updates from Donna D’Errico, the former nude model and Baywatch actress who has now famously left her fast-lane Hollywood lifestyle behind and committed herself to theological passions such as her expedition to the Turkish–Armenian–Iranian–Azerbaijani border region to investigate whatever might remain of Noah’s Ark (as reported on recently in this blog).  On her blog site (http://www.donnaderrico.com/wordpress/), one can find numerous updates and details from her trip, including photos and video-blog entries.

Donna D’Errico interviewing a Kurdish elder and Noah’s Ark researcher in Yenidoğan, in Anatolia

[Related articles: “The Armenian Genocide Debate: Turkey, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Politics of Memory” (April 2012); “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists” (April 2012), featuring a profile of the Chechen rebel leader Akhmed Zakayev; “Massachusetts Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic!” (Aug. 2012); “Separatist Football Update: Carnage at a Dagestan–Netherlands Match ...” etc. (Aug. 2012); “That Creepy Underground Islamic Cult in Tatarstan? Turns Out It Was Just a Split-Level—and the Kids Were Fine” (Aug. 2012).]

[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.]