Turkey Crosses Iraq Border Again: Kurdistan Update, 2-8 September 2012

Kurds demonstrating in Aleppo, Syria, this week

TOP STORY:
KURDISH CIVIL WAR IN TURKEY STILL RED HOT:
31 KILLED IN ONGOING INSURGENCY IN SOUTHEAST;
BOLD TURKISH CROSS-BORDER OPERATION ALONG IRAQI FRONTIER KILLS 26

26 Dead as Turkish Air Force Pounds Positions in Northern Iraq and Şirnak.  The Turkish air force and army pounded suspected Kurdish rebel positions along both sides of the border between Turkey and Iraq on September 5th, with about 2,000 ground troops, 10 F-16 fighter jets, and several Cobra helicopters involved in the battle, part of which focused on Kato mountain in Turkey’s Şirnak province.  By the next day, one soldier was reported killed and two injured.  The Dwele region in northern Iraq’s mountains was hit by bombers.  There were no indications that Turkish ground troops had crossed the border into Iraq, which would have represented a raising of stakes by Ankara.  On September 7th, Turkish authorities announced that 26 Kurdish rebels had been killed in the two-day offensive.

31 Killed in Ongoing Violence in Turkish Kurdistan.  Thirty-one people were killed this week in the ongoing civil war between Turks and Kurds in southeastern Turkey.  On August 31st, a bomb derailed a train in Van province, damaging four train cars but causing no injuries.  Soon after, six Turkish soldiers on their way to investigate the blast site were hurt when a remote-controlled roadside bomb hit their vehicle.  The same day, fighting that followed an attack by the banned separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) on a police station in Beytüşşebap, in Şirnak province, killed 10 Turkish soldiers and 20 P.K.K. fighters.  Acting on a tip, police forces in Şanlıurfa province, in the southeastern Kurdistan region, intercepted what they reported to be an attempted suicide-bombing on September 2nd.  The tip was reportedly that a suicide bomber was attempting to cross into Turkey from Syria.  A black minivan approached and opened fire on a police checkpoint on the evening of the 2nd, injuring three police and a nearby civilian.  In the ensuing firefight, one militant from the P.K.K. was wounded and captured, while another another reportedly detonated his suicide vest and died while being pursued on foot.  The dead militant was later identified as the perpetrator of an August 9th landmine attack on a military bus in İzmir province (reported on at the time in this blog).  In further reverberations from the İzmir attack, authorities are suggesting that three villagers found shot and killed in a field on August 7th were witnesses killed by the planners of the İzmir attack to prevent it being foiled.  Meanwhile, it was reported that the P.K.K. had released a state official named Ubeydullah Sancar, who was kidnapped in Diyarbakir on August 17th, but on September 4th the P.K.K. announced it had the day before abducted the Hakkari provincial head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), Majid Tarhan.  An explosion at an armory in Afyonkarahisar, in Afyon province, which killed 25 soldiers on September 5th, was ruled an accident and, according to authorities, “not a terrorist attack” (though, as a military target, it would not have fallen under the category of terrorism anyway).

NORTH KURDISTAN (TURKISH KURDISTAN)

B.D.P. Claims Kurdish Rebels Control 400 Square Km of Southeast Turkey.  The main pro-Kurdish party in mainstream Turkish politics is inciting controversy by claiming that the banned separatist P.K.K. controls 400 square kilometers of southeastern Turkey following a pitched battle in July and August for the city of Şemdinli, in Hakkari province.  Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Bekir Bozdağ, called the claim, by Serkan Demirtaş of the Peace and Democracy Party (B.D.P.), “not even a claim, but a lie.”  Adnan Keskin, deputy chair of another opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (C.H.P.), supported Ankara’s position, stating, “Demirtaş stated that the P.K.K. controls 400 square kilometers, and he invited any minister to see this situation with his own eyes,” and that “the P.K.K. has an ‘open land control strategy,’ meaning that the P.K.K. controls all the land,” but that “control of such a large area requires a minimum of 10,000 people [and] there [are] only 700 terrorists in the area.”  Presumably in response to the B.D.P. assertion, Turkish flags began showing up on mountaintops around Şemdinli.

C.I.A. Director Petraeus in Istanbul to Discuss Syria, Kurds.  The director of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), David Petraeus, arrived in Istanbul on September 3rd for unannounced, high-level talks with the Republic of Turkey on matters that include the civil war in Syria and the Kurdish rebellion there and in Turkey.  Sources say that another central topic of the talks were deteriorations in relations between Turkey and Israel, in part over last year’s incident on the high seas, in which Israeli troops stormed a passenger vessel bringing humanitarian relief to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip and, according to a United Nations report, “summarily executed” nine Turkish activists on board.

David Petraeus

Taliban Calls for Kurdish Volunteers in Afghanistan Recruitment Video.  The Taliban, the radical Salafist terrorist group operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, has begun specifically targeting Kurds, whom it asks to come to Afghanistan to “join the jihad.”  In a video released August 15th on a Turkish website, Maulvi Sangin Zadran, commander of the Haqqani Network, which is a branch of the Taliban, refers to seven members of Turkey’s military recently killed by jihadists in Afghanistan and asks not just Kurds but even ethnic Turks to join the battle against Afghanistan’s occupiers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including the United States and Turkey.  A terrorism expert, Karen Hodgson, noted that the move was unusual, writing, “The few radical Islamic groups that are thought to include Kurds have been active mostly in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, the main one being the Kurdistan Brigades—a group linked to the Salafi-Jihadi Ansar al-Islam movement, the insurgent group bombed by U.S. forces during the 2003 American invasion.”  A Turkey expert, Gareth Jenkins, said, however, that “there were certainly ethnic Kurds going to al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan prior to the U.S.-led military campaign in late 2001.  Most of the Turkish nationals responsible for the 2003 Istanbul bombings were ethnic Kurds who had travelled to Afghanistan for training, thought with al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.”

SOUTH KURDISTAN (IRAQI KURDISTAN)

Iraqi Kurdistan Extends Deadline for Disputed Payments by Baghdad.  The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R.G.) in northern Iraq announced September 1st that it would continue pumping oil until September 15th, “as a goodwill gesture” extending the deadline for an ultimatum to the central Iraqi government in Baghdad to make payments the K.R.G. claims are owed firms working in Kurdistan.  The exports were halted in April but restarted in August pending negotiations.  In reply, Baghdad threatened to cut the K.R.G.’s federal budget allocations by $3 billion.

[Note: See these earlier articles from this blog on related topics, especially with respect to the Kurds and the Arab Spring: “And Now Civil War ... Could Syria Break Up?” (Nov. 2011), “The Iraq War Is Over, but Is Iraq’s Partition Just Beginning?” (Dec. 2011), “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012” (Dec. 2011); “Get Ready for a Kurdish Spring” (March 28, 2012); “Shifting Alliances in the Kurdish Struggles” (April 1, 2012); “Turkish Delights Hide Ugly History” (April 4, 2012);  “Syria’s Kurds Are Setting Up a Quasi-State—How Long Can It Last?” (July 2012), “Liberation of Syrian Kurdistan Infuriates Turkey, Iraq, and the Free Syrian Army—in Fact, Everyone but Assad” (Aug. 2012), “Turkish Kurdistan Ground War in Progress, Iraq Border Crisis Eases: Kurdistan and Syria Update” (Aug. 2012), “Kurdistan Update: Both Turks & PKK Claim to Control Şemdinli, Zaza MP Abducted, Donna D’Errico and Noah’s Ark” (Aug. 2012), “Carnage Continues in Turkish Kurdistan” (Aug. 2010), “Syria and Kurdistan Update, 26 August–1 September 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.]

Gaza Border Attack, Wisconsin Sikh Massacre, Underground Tatarstan Cult, Feuding Ugandan Kings, Scots Split over NATO, Quebec Kicks Some Beaver, Charles Aznavour Drawn into Ancient Ottoman War: The Week in Separatist News, 5-11 August 2012

Photo of the week:  Members of the Ganda Iso militia in Mopti province, Mali, training in preparation for an eventual reabsorption of the Azawad region.  (For updates, see below, under “Africa.”)

TOP STORY:
22 DIE IN ATTACK AT SINAI–GAZA BORDER;
HAMAS, AL-QAEDA, ISRAEL ALL GET BLAMED;
EGYPT CRACKS DOWN WITH AIRSTRIKES, ARRESTS

A group of about 35 attackers coming from the direction of Egypt on August 5th gunned down and killed 16 Egyptian border patrolmen on the Sinai Peninsula at a three-way border checkpoint where Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip converge.  Seven other Egyptians were injured.  Israeli authorities claim the attack was meant to culminate in the an abduction of an Israeli soldier.  Indeed, the attackers hijacked Egyptian army vehicles, including a pick-up, and drove them through a border fence into Israel.  One of the vehicles was destroyed by an Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) airstrike and the other engaged in a firefight with Israeli soldiers.  Eight militants, in all, were also killed.  Israeli authorities were harshly critical of the new government in Egypt, which may have made the attack possible by easing border controls between Gaza and Egypt (as reported recently in this blog), and since the Egyptian part of Sinai has been only sloppily governed since Arab Spring uprisings began in Egypt early last year.  Soon after the attacks, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a spokesman for Hamas, the jihadist terrorist organization which has ruled Gaza as a quasi-state since 2007, said that his group was not responsible for the incident, since, he insisted, Hamas would never harm an Egyptian soldier.  Preliminarily, the I.D.F.’s chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, blamed “terrorists who are connected between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai,” while the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, blamed “Iranian-backed terrorists” over Twitter.  On August 7th, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the Gaza prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, went further, saying that “the attack’s method confirms some sort of Israeli involvement aiming to achieve political and security goals, cause tension on the border with Egypt and destroy joint efforts to end the Gaza blockade.”  These conviction was being echoed by some members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Israel’s minister of defense, at first blamed al-Qaeda for the attack.  Egypt has asked Hamas to hand over three commanders from the militia Army of Islam, which is linked to Hamas, and three from Hamas’s own political wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in connection with the border attacks.  In retaliation for the incident and in a show of a desire to control terrorism in the Sinai, the Egyptian military killed what it said were over 20 Islamist terrorists in the Sinai, near the Israeli border, on August 8th, and in a later security crackdown arrested nine terrorist suspects, one of whom, an as-yet-unnamed 62-year-old identified as “the Osama Bin Laden of the Sinai,” was arrested in Sheikh Zowead, in the Sinai, brought to Cairo, and indicted on August 10th as the attack’s suspected mastermind.  But on August 10th the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with the Gaza Strip was opened up to allow pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia to pass through, as part of a special arrangement between the Palestinian and Egyptian governments.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

[For developments in Turkey, Kurdistan, Syria, and Iraq, see today’s separate article “Turkish Kurdistan Ground War in Progress, Iraq Border Crisis Eases: Kurdistan and Syria Update.”]

AFRICA

Nigerian President Rejects Islamist Demand to Convert; Clinton Pledges U.S. Aid.  The northern Nigerian Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram posted a YouTube video August 4th, in which Abubakar Shekau, the apparent leader of the shadowy group, demands that Goodluck Jonathan, president of Nigeria, either convert to Islam or resign his position.  Jonathan is a member of the small, predominantly-Christian Ijaw ethnic group, from the southern Niger Delta region.  His office replied quickly, saying the president would neither convert nor resign and that he was president of all Nigerians, of whatever faith.  The United States secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, traveled to Nigeria this week to meet with Pres. Jonathan.  She pledged American assistance to Nigeria on security issues related to Boko Haram, arguing correctly that the insurgency is not merely an internal matter, since northern Nigeria is in a transnational lawless zone of the western Sahel—also including parts of Mali, Libya, Algeria, Niger, Chad, and other countries—which are a haven of sorts for jihadist groups connected to al-Qaeda.  [Related articles: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012,” “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Jihadists Imperil Nigerian Unity” (June 2012).]

Bayelsa, Nigeria President’s Home State, to Adopt Flag, Anthem, Prompting Alarm.  Meanwhile, the personal ethnic background of Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has become politicized in another way, as his home state, Bayelsa State, announced plans on August 8th to adopt its own flag, coat of arms, and anthem.  Bayelsa, which is noted for its oil wealth, is in the Niger Delta region, in south-central Nigeria, where the Ogoni people have had intermittent demands for secession.  Jonathan is a member of the Ijaw nationality, who, with about 15 million people, are far more numerous than the Ogoni (about 800,000) but have tended to be less politically strident.  Bayelsa’s governor, Seriake Dickson, explained the decision: “In line with the vision of the founding fathers of our dearly beloved state and given this admnistration’s stand on Ijaw mobilization, Ijaw integration, and the need to promote Ijaw fundamental interest, which clearly is not subordinate to any other interests, the government of Bayelsa State has given its approval to have a state-owned emblem mark and strengthen our sense of identity as a state.”  Understandably, given that rhetoric, critics are regarding this as heading down the road toward some sort of separatism.  Some editorial-writers have demanded that Jonathan distance himself from such expressions of regional ethnic distinctness.  In Nigeria, still scarred by its bloody war over the secession of Biafra in 1967-1970, flags other than the Nigerian national flag are considered provocative.  Most of Nigeria’s 36 states do not have flags.  The nine exceptions are: Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Ekiti, and Kwara—all in southeastern Nigeria, which is dominated by the Yoruba nationality—and Cross River and Rivers states, in the southeastern “Biafra” region of the Igbo people, and, most recently and most controversially, Osun State, in the southwest, which led to an ethnopolitical crisis this April (as reported at the time in this blog).  Bayelsa’s flag, state, and coat of arms have not been revealed to the public, but once the state legislature fully adopts them they will be presented publicly.  You will certainly be able to see them in this blog.  I’m all over this story.  [Related article: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011).]

Osun State’s coat-of-arms.  Coming soon: Bayelsa!

Islamist Strife Grinds On in Nigeria; 20 Killed in Raid on Church in Middle Belt.  The jihadist violence continued in Nigeria, most horrifically on August 6th, in Otite, near Okene, in Kogi State in the mixed-religion Middle Belt region in central Nigeria, where gunmen believed to be members of Boko Haram stormed into the Deeper Life Bible Church and killed the pastor and at least 18 worshippers.  Including those who died from wounds later, the death toll eventually reached 20.  A dawn-to-dusk curfew was then imposed in the state, and four suspects, including a woman, have been arrested at a hideout in Ibillo, Edo State.  Elsewhere, the army announced the discovery on August 4th of what it said was a Boko Haram bomb factory in Kaduna, arresting one suspect, while simultaneously, in the Boko Haram stronghold of Maidiguri, police raided homes and fought members of the group while explosions went on through the night.  Five people were killed in that violence.  In Damaturu, in Yobe State, a suicide-bomber killed six soldiers and two civilians at a military checkpoint on August 5th, while on the same day in Maiduguri suspected Boko Haram members assassinated a former state commissioner for environment and a senior immigration officer at their homes.  Nine soldiers were injured.   Also in the Okene area, a motorcycle drive-by shooting on August 7th killed two soldiers and two civilians as they were leaving a mosque.  The same day, militants shot dead two policemen at a checkpoint in Bauchi State.  [Related articles: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012,” “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Jihadists Imperil Nigerian Unity” (June 2011).]

Neighbors Plan Intervention in Congo, as Oxfam Reports Hundreds Killed.  In Kampala, capital of the Republic of Uganda, 11 neighboring states to the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) agreed August 7th to an international military deployment to halt the civil war there.  The decision came at the meeting of foreign ministers to an 11-nation consortium based on the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (E.C.G.L.C.), whose core member-states are the D.R.C., Burundi, and Rwanda. Meanwhile, the international organization Oxfam’s representatives in the eastern part of the D.R.C. said this week that hundreds are being killed and raped and homes are being destroyed.  About a quarter-million people have been displaced, mostly in North Kivu state after a Tutsi-dominated militia, probably backed by Rwanda and calling itself M23, mutinied from within the Congolese military earlier this year and began trying to take control of the region.

With World’s Eyes on Kivu, Katanga Separatists Attack Lubumbashi Airport.  In the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.), the airport of Lubumbashi, capital of the sometimes-separatist Katanga Province, was attacked August 8th by militiamen who killed three troops—two shot, one burned to death—and injured another before being repelled by government forces.  At first it was unclear who the perpetrators were.  They fled into the forest, providing no chance to pursue them, though a witness later described, in one press report’s words, “men in ragged clothes and wearing charms around their necks throwing grenades into the tents of troops guarding the runway.”  D.R.C. authorities said later that day that the attackers were from the same Katangan separatist militia behind a February 2011 attack on the same airport, in which four attackers were captured and later sentenced to death.

Map showing the Democratic Republic of Congo’s provinces of North Kivu and Katanga.

Cabinda Separatists Hope for Negotiations after August 31st Angola Elections.  The leader of the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLECD), which advocates secession from the Republic of Angola, said August 5th that his group will be ready to open talks with the government after the national elections of August 31st.  However, the elections are expected to retain the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola–Labor Party (M.P.L.A.)—the former anti-colonial rebel army that has been Angola’s ruling party since independence from Portugal in 1975—and its president, José Eduard dos Santos, who has been in power since 1979 and staunchly opposes Cabindan independence.  Cabinda is an oil-rich city-state under Angolan rule which is separated from the rest of the country by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s narrow wedge of coastline (see map above).  In colonial times, Cabinda was a separate colony, but the M.P.L.A., supported by troops from Cuba, invaded and annexed it during the war for independence.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011) and “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists” (April 2012), featuring a profile of Angola’s Queen Nzingha of Ndongo and Matamba.]

Ecowas Plans to Offer Mali Junta Troops to Fight Islamists, in Exchange for Reforms.  The 15-member Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) is accelerating its long-delayed action on solving the crisis in the Republic of Mali.  Ecowas has notified the only mildly reformed military junta that took power in Mali’s capital, Bamako, in March that it needs to share more power with ethnic groups other than the Bambara who dominate southern Mali and especially with ethnic groups in the far north, such as the Tuareg, whose declaration of an Independent State of Azawad in the northern two-thirds of the country in April has been hijacked by Islamists bent on extending shari’a (Islamic law) throughout Mali.  If those conditions and others are met, Ecowas says, then it will supply as many as 5,000 troops to fight alongside the Malian military to retake Azawad.  The sponsors of the original secession, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (M.N.L.A.), which has been pushed out of power in Azawad, has also pledged to fight alongside Malian troops to take Azawad back from the Islamists.  Ecowas plans to present this plan to the African Union and to the United Nations Security Council this month.  But some A.U. member-states oppose military intervention.  Meanwhile, Djibrill Bassolé, foreign minister for the Republic of Burkina Faso, visited Gao and Kidal, in Azawad, on August 7th to hold preliminary direct dialogue with representatives of Ansar al-Dine, one of the Islamist militias currently governing Azawad.  He met directly with Iyad Ag Ghaly, Ansar al-Dine’s leader, and with Sharif Ould al-Taher of the allied militia MUJAO (the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa).  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012), “Dream of a Tuareg State Fizzles: Is This the End of Azawad?” (July 2012).]

Citizens in North Mali Halt Shari’a Amputation by Jihadists; Other Punishments Continue.  In the northern two-thirds of the Republic of Mali which seceded in April as the Independent State of Azawad, but which is now run by ruthless Islamist militias, hundreds of citizens of the city of Gao in August 5th stormed a public square and prevented jihadist patrols from cutting off the hand of a thief.  The public implementation of shari’a (Islamic law) had been announced the night before over radio by the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), an al-Qaeda-affiliated terror group which co-governs Azawad with another militia, Ansar al-Dine.  The thief was a young MUJAO recruit who had stolen weapons.  But later, on August 9th, a MUJAO spokesman announced that the hand of a motorcycle thief was successfully amputated by ad hoc judicial authorites in Ansongo, a village near Gao.  Meanwhile, in Bamako, capital of Mali proper, the Malian Coalition of Children’s Rights (COMAD) announced the same day that it knew of “several hundred children aged between nine and 17 years old within the ranks of the armed groups, including the Islamists who control northern Mali,” and that some of them are being used as spies, combat soldiers, mine-sweepers, or sexual slaves.  Most of the children in question are from Mali, Senegal, and Niger.  [Related articles: “Mali Becomes the Latest African Country to Split along North–South Lines” (Feb. 2012), “A New Country in Africa: Islamic Republic of Azawad” (April 2012), “Why It Matters What You Call Your Country: Cyprus vs. Northern Cyprus, Azawad vs. the Azawad” (April 2012).]

MUJAO on patrol in Gao, Azawad

Sool Warlord Made Somaliland Minister for “Eastern Reconciliation”; Talks Begin.  President Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo of the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland has appointed a former rebel commander from the Sool region, Keyse Abdi Yusuf, to the newly created position of Minister of State for National Reconciliation for Eastern Regions.  The move follows the recent fizzling-out (reported at the time in this blog) of the brief-lived project, of which Yusuf was part, to establish a self-governing, clan-based Khaatumo State, a.k.a. Sool, Sanaag, and Cayn (S.S.C.) State, loyal to the Somali Republic’s Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) in Mogadishu, in areas on Somaliland’s blurry eastern border, where land disputes with the Puntland State of Somalia remain unresolved.   Yusuf’s appointment came as a surprise partly because his superior, the supreme warlord of Khaatumo, Suleiman Isse Ahmed Kara, better known by his nom de guerre “Hagaltosie,” who had signed a “Reconciliation Declaration” with Silanyo on June 28th in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was widely expected to be given the post.  Meanwhile, reports of the S.S.C. State’s demise are exaggerated.  Khaatumo loyalists clashed with Somaliland forces under the leadership of Ali Khalif Galayd, who heads the die-hard separatists.  On August 7th, formal peace talks began between Somaliland and S.S.C. delegations in Ainaba, with “Hagaltosie” himself heading the S.S.C. team.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), “Introducing the Republic of Wadiya” (May 2012).]

Cops Beat Somaliland T.V. Journalist with Plastic Tubing in Awdal Police Station.  In Borame, a town in the Awdal region of the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland, a journalist was beaten savagely by police on August 4th, according to the Mogadishu-based National Union of Somali Journalists.  The reporter, Hodan Abokor Afi, of Somaliland Televsion (SLNTV), was at a police station pursuing a story about a custody battle and taking notes while two squabbling parents were being interviewed by police.  In circumstances that are still unclear, the Borame central police station’s deputy commander and others were, in the words of one press report, “insulting, slapping, and beating her with plastic tubing, damaging her face.”  Afi requested that a complaint be filed and passed along to the Ministry of the Interior, but she was denied the opportunity on the grounds that the accused in her complaint were also part of the Ministry of the Interior.  At least they were honest about the way things work in Somaliland.  The Somaliland government administers the Awdal region, but parts of it are also claimed by the Saylac and Lughaye State of Somalia, a quasi-statelet operated by Ismaïl Omar Guelle, president of the Republic of Djibouti, on behalf of his clan from the Issa nationality (as reported on in this blog), and another quasi-state, called Awdal State or Awdalland, loyal to the Somali Republic’s Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) in Mogadishu but governed, or quasi-governed, by a government-in-exile in a suburb of Toronto, Ontario.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), “Introducing the Republic of Wadiya” (May 2012).]

Puntland Legislator Assassinated.  A member of the parliament of the self-governing Puntland State of Somalia was assassinated by unidentified gunmen on August 6th.  The lawmaker, Abdukadir Sheikh Mohamud was at the time leaving a mosque in Garowe, Puntland’s capital.  He was the brother of Khalif Sheikh Mohamud, a renowned Somali poet.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), “Introducing the Republic of Wadiya” (May 2012).]

Conflicts between Kings Raise Tension ahead of Ugandan Vote.  An upcoming by-election in Uganda is under threat as tensions among traditional kings are rising.  One of the constituent (and purely ceremonial and constitutionally powerless) kingdoms of Uganda, the Kingdom of Rwenzururu, is facing a rebellion in one of the two districts in its territory.  In Bundibogyo district, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.), one Ivan Bwebale Rwigi IV is calling himself King of Busongora, but the current Rwenzururu omusinga (king), Charles Wesley Mumbere Iremangoma, regards Bundibogyo, even though it is inhabited by members of the Bamba (a.k.a. Amba) ethnic group, as the heart of his own kingdom, which is ruled by Konjo (a.k.a. Konzo or Bakonzo) people.  The Busongora, or Songora, kingdom was phased out during the period of British rule.  Tensions were heightened June 30th when the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, intervened and warned King Mumbere not to hoist the “Rwenzururu freedom flag” in Bundibogyo on the anniversary of Rwenzururu’s secession in 1962 from the Kingdom of Toro, and locals in the district warned the king not to come.  An agreement was forged for a more low-key ceremony, but in the midst of King Mumbere’s speech, the public-address system cut out, which few thought was an accident.  Then, on July 6th, violence broke out as partisans of the two kings scuffled over the erection of a shrine in Bundibogyo.  One person was killed and several were beaten and much property destroyed in a series of reprisals.  The Rwenzururu kingdom is accused of turning away from its embrace of its own multi-ethnic make-up and becoming simply a Konjo kingdom.  Now an upcoming election for the parliamentary riding of Kasese district on August 8th may upset the uneasy calm in the region.  Most of Kasese’s land is taken up by two national parks and some wetlands, making arable land scarce and hotly contested.  Many people were displaced when the parks were established.  Kasese and Bundibogyo districts comprise the Kingdom of Rwenzururu, so there are fears that the entire kingdom may become the site of interethnic conflict.

Flag of the Kingdom Rwenzururu.  Now that is what I call a flag.
Get these folks their own sovereign state immediately.

Sudan and South Sudan Agree to Talks in Late August.  The African Union (A.U.) announced this week that the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan would continue their negotiations in late August and hoped to resolve their differences before the deadline of September 22nd.  The week before, the A.U. announced that at least on the contentious issue of oil revenue, the two sides had come to a preliminary agreement with the mediation of South Africa’s former president, Thabo Mbeki.  Meanwhile, in South Kordofan, one of the Sudanese states in dispute between the two countries, a Sudanese driver with the United Nations’ World Food Programme (W.F.P.) was shot dead near the town of Kadugli.  [Related articles: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012,” “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Boeremag Leader Convicted of Treason in Mandela Assassination and Coup Plot.  A tenth member of the Boeremag, a white-supremacist militia which planned to assassinate Nelson Mandela and take over South Africa in 2002 in what the group anticipated as “D-Day” or “Operation Popeye,” has been convicted of treason by a court in Pretoria, it was reported August 6th.  The defendant, Tom Vorster, succeeded Mike du Toit—already convicted (as reported in this blog)—as leader of the group in 2002, when du Toit went on the run from the police.  15 Boeremag members await verdicts.

EUROPE

Salmond Faces Party Rebellion after Switching Stance on Scotland and NATO.  The First Minister of Scotland and the leader in the country’s drive to secede from the United Kingdom, Alex Salmond, is facing a rebellion in his own Scottish National Party (S.N.P.) on the question of whether an independent Scotland would be a member, like the U.K., of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  The party leadership has recently shifted to a position of staying in NATO while still keeping Scotland a nuclear-free zone.  (Nuclear-armed Trident submarines are currently based in Scottish waters.)  But as many as a fifth of S.N.P. members of the Scottish Parliament think that Scotland would best stay out of NATO entirely.  The party leadership cites the need of an independent Scotland to defend itself, but one dissident M.P. put it this way: “To join NATO while claiming you want rid of Trident just does not make any sense.  NATO is a nuclear-weapon alliance.  If your state does not have nuclear weapons, as a member, it means you accept that other members of the alliance are ready to use them to commit mass murder on your behalf.”  The differences will be aired and voted on at a party conference in October.  If it left NATO, Scotland would likely end up with a status similar to the Republic of Ireland, which stayed neutral during the Second World War and never joined NATO, though it, like other neutral states in Europe—Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, and Finland—is in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, which was developed in 1993 to tie newly freed parts of the Communist East Bloc to western Europe.  [Related articles: “Succession or Accession—Could Scotland Leave Britain but Stay in Europe?” (Jan. 2012), “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012).]

Separatist Snubs Separatist: Alex Salmond Turned Up Nose at Dalai Lama.  The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, Willie Rennie, whose party opposes Scotland’s campaign for independence from the United Kingdom, revealed August 9th that he had minutes of a meeting between Scotland’s separatist First Minister, Alex Salmond, and Chinese officials in which Salmond promised not to meet the 14th Dalai Lama during his visit to the U.K. in June of this year (reported on at the time in this blog, including an Olympic controversy related to the visit).  The Dalai Lama visited Inverness, Edinburgh, and Dundee during the Scottish leg of his tour, but did not meet with Salmond, leading some to speculate that this was to risk causing offense that would jeopardize Scottish trade with the People’s Republic of China.  [Related articles: “Succession or Accession—Could Scotland Leave Britain but Stay in Europe?” (Jan. 2012), “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012), “China, Tibet, and the Politics of Reincarnation” (March 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012).]

The Dalai Lama got lei’d when he visited Scotland earlier this year.

Al-Qaeda Cell Busted in Spain Planned Gibraltar Attack for Olympics.  The two Chechen men and one Turk, believed to be members of al-Qaeda arrested in Spain last week were planning an attack on Gibraltar timed to coincide with the London Summer Olympics.  One of the men was a trained paraglider and their plans included an airborne attack—also possibly with a remote-controlled plane—on a shopping mall on Gibraltar, a United Kingdom possession attached to the Spanish mainland that has been the source of friction between Spain and the U.K.  The Turk who was arrested, Cengiz Yalçin, is a long-time resident of Spain and married to a Moroccan.  He was arrested in La Línea de la Concepción, a Spanish town on the Gibraltar border, and explosives were found in his home.  The other two members of the cell—Eldar Magomedov (a.k.a. Ahmad Avar) and Muhammad Adamov, both Chechens—were arrested on a bus bound for France.  [Related articles: “Prince William Lands in the Middle of a New Cold War over the Falklands” (Feb. 2012), “What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul” (June 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012), “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Bulgarian Border Cops Nab 2 Wanted Terrorists from Ingushetia, Turkey.  Border police in the Republic of Bulgaria, it was reported August 4th, intercepted two men from crossing into the country from Romania who were flagged by the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) as wanted terrorists.  The first, Mohammad Gadamouri, age 47, is from the Russian Federation’s Republic of Chechnya but a resident of Germany and was traveling with his family, though he was wanted for a 2003 terrorist attack in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia as well as on weapons and drug smuggling charges.  The second, Erkan Polater, age 29, is from Turkey and is charged with membership in a terrorist group.  The two cases seem to be unrelated.  This follows an earlier arrest of two Chechens in Spain the week before (see article just above).

Krasnodar Governor under Fire for Mobilizing Cossacks to “Protect” Sochi Games.  The governor of Krasnodar Krai, the province of the Russian Federation which will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, has come under criticism for his fiery August 2nd address to local police chiefs (reported on last week in this blog) in which he promised the assistance of 1,000 Kuban Cossacks in keeping order during the Games, adding, “What you can’t do, the Cossacks can.”  The Russian Public Chamber called for an official probe into the administration of the governor, Aleksandr Tkachev, while the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human-rights organization, Ludmilla Alekseeva, said, “How can anyone hound the Cossacks on people from Caucasus, or vice versa?  Are the people from the Caucasus not Russian citizens?”  Tkachev, in reply, back-pedalled his rhetoric, saying he had been addressing the problem of illegal immigrants, not Caucasian Russians.  Over Twitter, he reacted to accusations of nationalism, saying, “My first deputy is Adyghe [Circassian], my aide is a Crimean Tatar.  I have Armenians and Greeks among my friends.  In case you missed it, I’ve been governing a region with 120 nationalities living in it for 12 years.  I know better than many how fragile this world is.”  The 2014 Olympics, in Sochi, will be on the site of an 1864 genocide of Muslim, Turkic-speaking Circassians, and the games lie on the edge of the North Caucasus, a Russian region parts of which are virtually ruled by Muslim terror groups.  [Related articles: “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012),  “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012), “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Cossacks in Stavropol

Caucasus Emirate–linked “Mujahideen of Tatarstan” Take Credit for Assassination.  Credit for the July 19th assassination of Tatarstan’s deputy chief mufti and the attempted assassination of the chief mufti (reported on at the time in this blog) was claimed this week by an Islamist militant calling himself only “Muhammad,” whose announcement came in the form of a video uploaded to Kavkaz-Tsentr (“Kavkaz Center,” Kavkaz referring to the Caucasus region), an apparently Chechen-run website (at http://www.kavkazcenter.com/, but often inaccessible for unknown reasons) run by and for supporters of the Caucasus Emirate movement, which would like predominantly-Muslim areas along Russia’s southwestern rim, and adjoining regions of the South Caucasus, to form a separate jihadist state.  Muhammad identifies himself as “emir of the mujahideen of Tatarstan.”  Mujahideen means “holy warrior,” and the shadowy Emirate movement has divided Muslim areas of Russia into “emirates” with different local militant leaders assigned to them as “emirs.”  Tatarstan, a landlocked region in west-central Russia, is a new area of activity for this particular Islamist movement.  In the video (also on YouTube; I believe you can see it here), “Muhammad” says, in part, “On my orders, an operation was carried out against God’s enemies—Ildus Faizov and Valiulia Yakupov in Kazan on July 19th,” adding, “God willing, we will continue similar attacks against God’s enemies.”  The men in the video swear their allegiance to Doku Umarov (nom de guerre: Dokku Abu Usman), grand emir of the Caucasus Emirate movement and the so-called “Chechen Osama bin Laden.”  Yakupov and Faizov were political moderates and vocal critics of Islamic extremism.  Investigators now identify one of the men in the videos as Rais Mingaleyev, of Chistopol, Tatarstan.  Meanwhile, authorities on August 3rd arrested five more suspects in the attacks and are searching for both Mingalayev, who is 36 years old, and another suspect, 35-year-old Robert Valeyev.

The Caucasus Emirate movement’s new YouTube video.
Cats playing the piano it ain’t.

Russian Probe into Mufti Attacks Uncovers Underground Cult in Tatarstan.  In Kazan, capital of the Russian Federation’s Republic of Tatarstan, police and investigators working to solve last month’s attacks on moderate muftis (see article above) on August 2nd searched the grounds of a secretive religious group in a decrepit brick house topped with a tin minaret and freed 27 children held prisoner there in underground cells.  The full scope of the discovery was only made public nearly a week later.  The group’s 83-year-old leader, Faizrakhman Satarov, calls himself a “prophet” but is being held on charges of child negligence.  Ranging in age from 1 to 17, the children—part of a commune of over 70 followers—lived in what is described in media as “an eight-level subterranean honeycomb of cramped cells with no light, heat, or ventilation.”  None of the children had ever seen a doctor, attended school, or even left the property.  Some of them, especially those born over the past ten years—since the catacomb-like cells were built—may never have seen daylight until the police raid.  The children’s parents have all been arrested on charges of child abuse.  The children were taken by authorities and will be sent to orphanages.  Meanwhile, Satarov’s “deputy prophet,” Gumer Ganiyev, as of the 8th remained on the property and was shouting at television cameras, “They will come with bulldozers and guns, but they will have to demolish this house over our dead bodies!”  Satarov was a cleric during the Communist era and felt alienated by official atheism and anticlericalism, according to a 2008 interview.

Tatar tots freed

Busted Terrorist Turns Out to Be Dagestan Deputy Mayor’s Son; 17 Dead in Caucasus.  17 people were killed this week in the Russian Federation’s predominantly-Muslim republics in the North Caucasus.  Most seriously, a suicide-bombing in Grozny, capital of the Republic of Chechnya on August 6th killed four interior-ministry troops and injured three.  A rebel died in a shootout with police near Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Dagestan in, it was announced August 4th, and two days later authorities reported that another police officer had been injured in a gun attack on a police checkpoint elsewhere in Dagestan.  The Russian ministry of the interior reported on August 6th that two police officers from a special unit were shot and killed and a third injured in an attacked in Dagestan.  In Khasavyurt, Dagestan, federal anti-terrorism authorities on August 7th raided a house that was being used as a hideout for the extortionist “Khasavyurt gang,” arresting three and “neutralizing” a fourth, Hussein “Khalid” Azartsumov, suspected of organizing lethal attacks on military and police.  One of those arrested, Iskhak Dzhamaldinov, turned out—oops!—to be the son of Khasavyurt’s deputy mayor, Salimkhan Dzhamaldinov, who was then removed from his post.  And on August 8th, also in Dagestan, in imam was attacked in his home in the Khasavyurt district by gunmen.  The victim, Makardin Muzhaidov, a vocal critic of militant Islam, is in the hospital with serious wounds.  And on August 9th, five police were killed and another injured by an attack on their vehicle in Dagestan’s Botlikhsky district, near the village of Chanko, while three militants also died in the ensuing shoot-out.

Controversial Ukraine Law Goes into Force, Boosting Status of Russian Language.  The controversial law on minority languages that roiled the streets and parliamentary aisles of Ukraine with outbreaks of violence in the spring became law this week.  The law provides that if 10% of residents in a particular jurisdiction speak a particular language, then the work of local government must be translated into that language.  By far the most widely spoken minority language in Ukraine is Russian, especially in Crimea (which was part of Russia until Josef Stalin reallocated it to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954) and in vast areas of Ukraine’s east, in the Russian borderlands.  Ukrainian nationalists and others fearful of Russia’s imperialist policy toward its “near abroad” see it as a way to increase the influence in Ukrainian public life not just of ethnic Russians but of Moscow.  Other linguistic communities benefitting from the legislation, according to official lists, are speakers of 17 additional languages: Belarussian, Bulgarian, Armenian, Gagauz, Yiddish, Crimean Tatar, Moldavian, German, Greek, Polish, Romany (Gypsy), Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Karaim (a Crimean diaspora language with six living speakers, so it’s hard to see how that reaches the 10% threshold anywhere), and Judeo-Crimean Tatar (this last one sounds delicious, actually).  Many of these narrowly defined ethnic and regional languages are, in fact, mutually intelligible—as are, to a great extent, ironically enough for all the hubbub, Russian and Ukrainian—meaning that they do not fit most linguists’ definition of separate languages.  Just for fun—again—watch this video of a riot in Ukraine’s parliament in May over the language law.  Also watch a video of the previous year’s Ukrainian parliament riot.  I wonder if next year’s will be as good?  [Related article: “Language Referendum Pits Latvians against Russians” (Feb. 2012).]

2 Wanted Basque Terror Suspects Arrested in Aquitania, London.  Two suspected Basque terrorists were arrested this week, one in southwestern France and one in London.  In France, police this week arrested a Basque who was wanted in Spain on terrorism charges.  The suspect, Inaki Imaz Munduate, a 33-year-old native of Spain, has been on the run with fake papers since 2007 and had recently lived in Ireland.  Munduate, who was arrested in Hendaye, in Aquitania, is suspected of being a member of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatusana, “Basque Homeland and Freedom”), a recently disarmed and nearly-disbanded group which sought a separate Basque homeland in north-central Spain and southwestern France.  In London, Kemen Uranga, aged 43, was arrested after having been on the run for 12 years.  An alleged ETA commander for Vizcaya, in Spain’s Basque Region, Uranga is accused of the 2001 murder of a Spanish judge in his home.  [Related article: “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists,” featuring a profile of the Basque warrior Idoia López Riaño, a.k.a. la Tigresa.]

French Authorities Raid Roma Camps, Evict Hundreds.  Hundreds of Roma (Gypsy) people were evicted August 9th from encampments near Lille, in northern France, including 200 from one camp and 15 caravans of Roma from another.  Meanwhile, 240 Roma in Lyon, in southern France, were deported to Romania (a fellow member-state of the European Union).  France’s new president, François Hollande, acted quickly and without warning in ordering these expulsions and has gone farther than his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was himself regarded as being virulently anti-immigrant and anti-Roma.  A spokesman for l’Atelier Solidaire, a pro-Roma organization in France, told the press, “We’re dismayed.  There are many children who will be sleeping on the street tonight.  Sarkozy never expelled us.  In the end, it was the Socialists who did.”

Belarus Cuts Diplomatic Ties with Sweden over Teddy-Bear Airdrop.  As if anyone had any doubt about the spectacular humorlessness of Belarus’s tin-pot authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, sometimes called “Europe’s last dictator,” those doubts were put to rest on August 8th when Belarus withdrew all of its embassy staff from Sweden and told Sweden’s diplomats in Minsk, Belarus’s capital, to go home as well.  At issue is last month’s successful violation of Belarus’s airspace by Swedish pranksters who then airdropped large numbers of teddy bears festooned with anti-authoritarian and pro-free-speech slogans (as reported last week in this blog).  The flight took off from Lithuania, and there is no evidence to support Lukashenko’s assertion that Stockholm was directly involved in the stunt.  The European Union (E.U.) looked into the matter and expressed “full solidarity with the Swedes on this.”  Belarus has also demanded that Swedish and Lithuanian authorities assist their investigation.  Worst of all, on August 9th the Belarussian Association of Journalists announced that a reporter and a photojournalist had been arrested and fined in Minsk the day before for posing for pictures holding some of the bears.  The two, Irina Kozlik and Yulia Doroshkevich, were charged with “carrying out an unsanctioned protest.”

Two Belarussian journalists, being arrested on plush-toy-related charges.

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

[For developments in Turkey, including Kurdistan, see today’s separate article “Turkish Kurdistan Ground War in Progress, Iraq Border Crisis Eases: Kurdistan and Syria Update.”]

Armenians Blame Azerbaijan for Cease-Fire Breaches on Nagorno-Karabakh Line.  Military spokesmen for the unrecognized Armenian puppet state called the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.) (a.k.a. Artsakh Republic) accused the Republic of Azerbaijan of more than 250 cease-fire violations on August 4th, in the form of 1,200 rounds of ammunition fired from the Azerbaijani side of the border with the N.K.R. at Armenian “peacekeepers.”  That is the term given to the Republic of Armenia’s military presence in the N.K.R., which Armenian and Russian forces conquered from Azerbaijan, and then ethnically cleansed, in a war in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.).  Both sides for years have been trading frequent accusations of cease-fire violations, few of which can be satisfactorily verified.  Later, on August 6th, an Armenian soldier was reported injured by a landmine in the N.K.R.  [Related articles: “The Armenian Genocide Debate: Turkey, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Politics of Memory” (April 2012), “Massachusetts Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic!” (Aug. 2012).]

Massachusetts Legislature Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.  The House of Representatives of Massachusetts on August 6th joined Rhode Island in adopting a resolution urging President Barack Obama and the United States legislature to “support the self-determination and democratic independence” of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.).  See my blog article with fuller commentary on this development.

Javakhk Armenians Beg Charles Aznavour Not to Sing at Ottoman Fortress.  Representatives of the ethnic Armenian community in the Republic of Georgia’s Javakhk region, who would like to form an autonomous region within the country, this week wrote to the French crooner Charles Aznavour, himself the son of Armenian immigrants, pleading with him not to perform in front of a freshly restored Turkish mosque and fortress in a planned performance in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia.  Akhaltsikhe, in the ethnic-Georgian-dominated half of Georgia’s Samtskhe–Javakheti province, is a Georgian-dominated town with a large Armenian minority, but it was subject to the Ottoman Empire—history’s cruelest oppressors of Armenians—before being absorbed by the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century.  [Related articles: “The Armenian Genocide Debate: Turkey, Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Politics of Memory” (April 2012), “Massachusetts Recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh Republic!” (Aug. 2012).]

Charles Aznavour doesn’t care whether or not Georgia is a Turkish puppet state.

Lithuanian Explorers Missing in Abkhazia in Bowels of World’s Deepest Cave.  The fate of a team of cave explorers from Lithuania is unknown as they remain incomunicado within the Krubera-Voronja cavern in the unrecognized but de facto independent Republic of Abkhazia, which is the deepest known cave in the world, at 7,188 feet (2,191 meters) deep.  The cave, which was discovered only in 1960, was mentioned in this blog in February of this year, when scientists from Russia discovered there a springtail insect, Plutomurus ortobalaganensis, which became the deepest-dwelling land animal known to science.  The Lithuanian cavers were more than 1,200 down when communication with them was lost, it was reported August 4th.

ASIA—MIDDLE EAST

[For developments in Kurdistan, Syria, and Iraq, see today’s separate article “Turkish Kurdistan Ground War in Progress, Iraq Border Crisis Eases: Kurdistan and Syria Update.”]

Palestine-Hosted Non-Aligned Movement Summit Scrapped after Israel Bars Diplomats.  The August 5th meeting of the international Non-Aligned Movement (N.A.M.), to be held in Ramallah, capital of the Palestinian Territories, was cancelled after the State of Israel, which does not recognize Palestinian independence and controls movement in and out of the partially-occupied West Bank where Ramallah sits, barred several diplomats from attending.  In particular, Israel did not let in foreign ministers from states that do not diplomatically recognize Israel: the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, the Republic of Cuba, the Republic of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria.  Delegations from Egypt, India, Colombia, South Africa, Senegal, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were allowed in since they have relations with Israel.  The P.A. called Israel’s actions “a blatant and crude exercise of power and a form of political siege.”  It was widely understood that the Palestinian National Authority was planning to use the summit to explore the question of when it should make its next application for membership in the United Nations’ General Assembly—a move Israel and the United States oppose—the main question being whether it should be before or after the U.S. elections in November.  (The incumbent, Barack Obama, is friendlier to Palestine than his challenger, Mitt Romney, and a perceived need to appear tougher on Muslims during an election campaign might prompt Obama to be less receptive to the application, even though the opportunity to burnish pro-Israel credentials might help him at the polls.)  The N.A.M. was founded by Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Ghana, and Indonesia in 1961 as a counterbalance and “third way” alternative to the Cold War division between Western and Eastern (Communist) blocs.  Less relevant now, the movement now includes authoritarian Communist states like Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, and North Korea, as well as almost all of Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

Non-Aligned Movement member states are in dark blue.  Observer states are in light blue.

Palestinians Protest Planned Israeli Eviction of Shepherds near Hebron.  Mahmoud Abbas, the (West Bank) prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, on August 8th condemned a new plan by the State of Israel to evict twelve shepherd communities from around Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to make way for army training grounds.  Palestinians claim that the real reason for the forced removal will be to make way for new (illegal) Jewish settlements.  Israel says the whole area south of Hebron has already been designated a closed military zone.  A high court will rule on the evictions soon.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

46 Die as Suicide-Bomber Targets Collaborators in Yemeni Assault on al-Qaeda Enclave.  In the town of Jaar in southern Yemen’s Abyan province, where the military in June shut down a self-governing al-Qaeda enclave called the Emirate of Waqar which had been operating for over a year (as reported in this blog at the time), an al-Qaeda suicide-bomber on August 4th attacked a funeral, killing at least 46 people, including a tribal chief noted for his loyalty to the central government.  Reports say the bomber was targeting Jaar residents who supported the military during the June offensive.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

ASIA—SOUTH ASIA

Pakistan Interior Minister Bans More Baloch Militias, Offers Bugti Return from Exile.  The minister of the interior for Pakistan, Rehman Malik, on August 4th announced the addition of eight militant groups in Balochistan state to the list of outlawed groups, making a total of 16.  He also issued a public offer for Brahamdagh Khan Bugti, spiritual leader of those who want Balochistan to become a separate country, to return from exile.  “We know he is living in Switzerland under a pseudonym,” Malik said.  “I invite him to return to Pakistan under his own terms.  He will be given international guarantees of protection with full protocol.”  But he warned Bugti that he would need to dissociate his Balochistan Republican Army (B.R.A.), a political party despite its name, from the militant Baloch Liberation Army (B.L.A.), believed to be run out of Afghanistan.  Malik also swept aside rumors of a planned federal military operation in Balochistan to root out separatists.  The newly banned groups are the Tahafuz Hadudullah, the Balochistan Waja Liberation Army, the Baloch Republic Party Azad, the Balochistan United Army, the Islam Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Islam, and the Balochistan National Liberation Army—joining the already-banned B.R.A., B.L.A., Balochistan Liberation Front (B.L.F.), and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.  Meanwhile, two federal Frontier Corps (F.C.) checkpoints in rural Balochistan were attacked by armed men on August 7th, but there were no reported casualties.  The B.L.A. claimed responsibility and claimed that two F.C. members were killed and three injured in one of the attacks, while four were killed and five wounded in the other.  The same day, in Turbat, four officers with the Balochistan Constabulary were killed and at least six injured by a remote-controlled roadside bomb which targeted their truck.  [Related article: “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”]

From one of their pamphlets, the Balochistan Liberation Army’s vision for the future.
You can see how the Pakistani government is not totally on board with this.

Retired Cop Killed at Srinagar Mosque; House Arrest for Kashmiri Rebel Leaders.  In Kashmir, India’s one predominantly-Muslim state, separatist rebels shot and killed a retired police officer on August 10th as he left a mosque in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital.  There has so far been no claim of responsibility.  Meanwhile, authorities in Kashmir have once again put Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, and other separatist leaders under house arrest on August 10th in anticipation of trouble on the fourth anniversary of the death of the separatist leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who was by most accounts killed by Indian security forces during a protest.  [Related article: “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

ASIA—EAST ASIA

Turkish Foreign Minister on Fact-Finding Mission to Burma over Rohingya Issue.  The foreign minister of the Republic of Turkey—which has long claimed for itself the position of the Muslim world’s beacon of secularism, moderation, and Western values—set off on August 8th for Arakan (a.k.a. Rakhine), in western Burma, where the disenfranchised Muslim Rohingya minority suffered horrific violence in a cycle of reprisals with local members of the Buddhist majority in June (as well as another outbreak of strife there on August 5th, which left three dead).  Ankara’s aim is to bring aid but also to reconcile conflicting reports of what is really going on there.  The Burmese junta, says the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, “says the deaths are around a hundred ... but the Muslim leaders in Rakhine, with whom we have been in contact, say the deaths reach thousands.”  Last week (as reported in this blog), the United Nations sent a special envoy to investigate the situation, and Human Rights Watch (H.R.W.) issued a blistering report on how Burma’s ruling military junta allowed, and in some cases participated in, the anti-Rohingya atrocities.  [Related article: “The Moment Burma’s Ethnic Minorities Have Been Waiting for” (Jan. 2012).]

Beijing Chides India for Backing “One China” While Helping Tibetan Separatists.  Through its official media, the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) issued a warning August 6th to the Republic of India that Indian support for Tibetan separatists, including hosting the Central Tibetan Administration, the Tibetan government-in-exile, in Dharamsala, is harming Indian–Chinese relations.  In particular, an opinion piece by Xiao Jie, of the China Tibetology Research Center, wrote in an opinion piece that since restoring full diplomatic relations with China in 1976, India has followed a dual policy—an official “one China” policy and a recognition of the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of the P.R.C. one the one hand but on the other a covert policy advocating separatism.  [Related articles: “China, Tibet, and the Politics of Reincarnation” (March 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

OCEANIA

Philippine Government Asks MILF (Stop Snickering) to Rein in Radical Muslim Militias.  The government of the Philippines is asking the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), with which it has a peace deal, to rein in the more-radical Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (B.I.F.M.), which attacked a string of military targets on August 5th and 6th.  The series of coordinated attacks on military posts in Maguinanao province, in the predominantly-Muslim south of the country, were intended as retaliation for June 21st and July 26th clashes between the B.I.F.M. and the military which left a total of ten rebels dead.  Two rebels were killed in this week’s incidents.  The B.I.F.M. is led by Ameril Ombra Kato, a cleric trained in Saudi Arabia, who split his organization from MILF years ago.  For more information on the struggle of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for a sovereign state, see http://www.milf-nation.com.  Oh, no, wait, never mind!  Don’t click on that, that’s the wrong website!

I’m not sure how this is connected, but this is what I found when I did a Google Image search for “MILF violence,” in an attempt to get up-to-the-minute news photos of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.  Here at Springtime of Nations, we are always trying to keep you informed.

Activists to Issue “Aboriginal Land Passports” to Asylum-Seekers in Australia.  A group of radical sovereigntist Aboriginal activists in Australia will hold a special ceremony September 15th at a community center in Sydney, New South Wales, to issue over 200 “Original Nation” passports, bearing the Australian Aboriginal flag, to a group that will include newly arrived asylum-seekers.  To be called a “Welcome to Aboriginal Land Passport Ceremony,” the event is hosted by two organizations, Treaty Republic and the Indigenous Social Justice Association.  Among the speakers at the event will be Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen, born in Egypt, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 on trumped-up terrorism charges and then survived torture in three different countries in succession—Pakistan, Egypt, and the United States’ illegal prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—before being stripped of his passport upon return to Australia.  The gist is that Australian Aboriginal people have a right to welcome whom they want to their territories, rather than rely upon the often poor judgment of the occupying government of Australia.  [Related article: “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update” (July 2012).]

Protestant Church in Polynesia Wants French Colony Back on U.N. List.  In French Polynesia, the main Protestant church serving the indigenous population put itself on record this week supporting the Tavini Huiraatira Party’s push to get the colony restored to the United Nations’ list of Non-Self-Governing Territories whose continuing colonization is a concern for the U.N.  The church made it clear it was not necessarily promoting independence.  [Related article: “What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul” (June 2012).]

NORTH AMERICA

Parti Québécois Cites Demand for Quick Referendum but Won’t Promise.  Ahead in the polls and basking in last week’s announcement by Quebec’s premier, Jean Charest, that an election would be held September 4th, the leader of the Parti Québécois, Pauline Marois, declined to say how soon after taking office a referendum on independence from Canada would be held.  But, he said, “All separatists want there to be a referendum in our first term.”  Meanwhile, some dust has been kicked up by an Internet video spot from the small separatist party Québec Solidaire, which tries to stake out a strongly pro-independence position for itself despite earlier strategic alliances with the New Democratic Party by showing a Solidaire party member, portrayed as a stick figure, kicking a Mountie-hat-wearing beaver that tries to snuggle up against its leg.  Beavers (stop snickering) are considered the national symbol of Anglophone Canadians.  [Related article: “Quebec Cracks Down on Crimes against the State—Like Playing Hopscotch in English” (Nov. 2012).]

Québec Solidaire kicks some beaver

Member of Neo-Nazi “Hammerskins” Massacres 6 Sikhs at Wisconsin Temple.   A massacre in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb targeting Sikh worshippers has cast a light on the white-supremacist subculture in the United States.  Wade Michael Page, a U.S. Army veteran, killed six members of the Sikh religion and wounded three others, including a policeman still in critical condition, before taking his own life on August 5th at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek.  Authorities have all but ruled out the possibility of accomplices, let alone that the killings might have been carried out on behalf of a particular group.  However, Page—who was born in Colorado and was an alcoholic drifter living, for the time being, in Cudahy, a gritty, desolate working-class factory town on Milwaukee’s southern edges—was heavily involved in punk-rock- and heavy-metal-influenced “white power” rock.  This music is a central part of white-supremacist and neo-Nazi life while being little known to the general public.  Bands of which he had been a member included End Apathy and Definite Hate, both of which were already, like Page himself, in the database of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization, based in Montgomery, Alabama, which has been monitoring racist hate-groups since the civil-rights era.  Page, who used the nickname “Jack Boot” for himself, had been a member, since 2011, of the Hammerskins, “one of the oldest and largest hardcore racist skinhead groups,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.  It was founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1988, and Page apparently called himself a Northern Hammerskin, meaning he was in the group’s Upper Midwest chapter, even though he had only very recently relocated to Wisconsin from North Carolina.

Wade Michael Page

3 Hutaree Militiamen in Michigan Sentenced to Time Served; a 4th Running for Office.  Three members of the Michigan-based Hutaree Militia who were in a federal court in Detroit on weapons charges were sentenced on August 8th to time served—meaning they will do no more prison time.  But the defendants—the group’s leader David Brian Stone Sr., his son Joshua Stone, and Joshua John Clough—will spend two years on supervised release.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) in 2008 broke up the militia, which was planning to overthrow the U.S. government, but in March sedition and treason charges against them were dropped for insufficient evidence.  Meanwhile, Michael Meeks, another Hutaree alumnus as well as a former U.S. Marine, also exonerated with the others, took 120 votes and advanced through the primaries (guess which major party!) in Bridgewater Township, in Washtenaw County, near Detroit, and will run in the fall, possibly unopposed, for the position of town constable.  The now-disbanded militia included among its millennial Christian goals the establishment of an independent Colonial Christian Republic out of six rural Michigan counties.  [Related article: “Vast Arsenal Returned to Exonerated Hutaree Militiaman in Indiana” (July 2012).]

Aryan Brother in Texas Pleads Guilty to Killing Store Clerk.  In Texas, a 34-year-old white-supremacist from the town of Hull, near Houston, pleaded guilty August 6th to shooting and killing a 50-year-old convenience-store clerk during a robbery in 2009.  The victim was 50-year-old Naushad Virani, and the killer was named Stevie—I can’t believe I’m typing this—“Bubba” Walder, Jr.  Police have not said whether Walder’s relationship with the Aryan Brotherhood, a neo-Nazi group, played a role in the murder.

Oregon Writer Advocates Southern Secession with New Book Better Off without ’Em.  This week, on August 14th, Simon & Schuster will be releasing a new book titled Better Off without ’Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession.  Its author, Chuck Thompson, an “openly disgruntled liberal Northwesterner” who was raised in Juneau, Alaska, but lives in Portland, Oregon, is a travel writer whose previous books include To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism.  This blog will be publishing a review of the book as soon as possible.  (Read an early review, from the Wall Street Journal, here.)  One thing is for sure: if Mitt Romney beats Barack Obama in November, this will become a bestseller in every part of the country, though in the South people will be buying copies to burn them.  Brilliant marketing strategy, really.

PRACTICALLY BLOODY ANTARCTICA

Argentina Complains to U.S. over Texan Oil Firm’s Falklands Deal.  The Argentine Republic’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, on August 6th directed her ambassador to the United States, Jorge Martín Arturo Argüello, to hand-deliver a letter to the Department of State in Washington complaining of a deal between Noble Energy, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, and the United Kingdom firm Falkland Oil and Gas, Ltd.  Argentina still maintains its territorial claims on the archipelago, which is a self-governing overseas territory of the U.K.  [Related articles: “Prince William Lands in the Middle of a New Cold War over the Falklands” (Feb. 2012), “What Is a Colony? The United Nations’ Definition Needs an Overhaul” (June 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics” (July 2012).]

SPORTS (MOSTLY OLYMPICS)

Scots Tennis Champ Drawn into Edinburgh–London Tussle over Olympic Glory.  The impressive showing by Scotland in the London Olympics has been the occasion for subtle wars of words and symbols between opponents and proponents of the country’s independence from the United Kingdom.  Scots have won about a quarter of the U.K.’s medals this year, which for a country that forms one-twelfth of the U.K.’s population, and the U.K. being the fourth-ranked medals-winning country, is pretty good.  Scotland’s separatist First Minister, Alex Salmond, pointedly avoided the word Britain in comments praising Scottish athletes, whom he called “Scolympians.”  Earlier in this blog, I discussed the scandal over Scottish (and Welsh) footballers on Team Great Britain refusing to sing “God Save the Queen” before Olympic matches.  But unionists made political hay out of the fact that on August 5th Andy Murray, a Glasgow-born tennis gold-medalist, draped himself in the Union Jack, literally, during his medals ceremony.  “Andy Murray, great Scot and Olympic Champion, holding a gold medal and proudly draped in the Union Jack,” tweeted Struan Stevenson, a unionist member for Scotland of the European Parliament, adding, “Eat your heart out, Alex Salmond!”  However, as readers of this blog know, and as the Aboriginal Australian boxer Damien Cooper found out this year the hard way (as reported at the time in this blog), it is against Olympic regulations to display flags other than national or Olympic flags in an arena.  So we shouldn’t conclude that Murray is anti-independence.  In fact, he got into hot water in 2006 when he said that he backed “anyone but England” in the football (soccer) World Cup—a tournament in which England and Scotland, unlike in the Olympics, put forth separate teams.  And, you know, despite the Union Jack, that looks suspiciously like a St.-Andrew’s-cross blazer he’s wearing ...    [Related articles: “Succession or Accession—Could Scotland Leave Britain but Stay in Europe?” (Jan. 2012), “Orkney—the Next Dubai? Further Reflections on Scottish Independence” (Feb. 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics,” “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update,” “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Andy Murray

Somalilander Wins Gold for Britain in 10,000-Meter Run.  In the Summer Olympics in London, Mohamed “Mo” Farah, a United Kingdom citizen of Somali ancestry who regards his home country as the unrecognized but de facto independent Republic of Somaliland, won the gold medal August 4th in the 10,000-meter run, the first Briton to do so.  Farah’s father is a Somali and a U.K. citizen born in England, who met Farah’s mother on a trip to Somalia.  Farah was born in Mogadishu, capital of the Somali Republic proper, in 1983 but raised in Djibouti, to the west of Somaliland, until the age of eight, when he moved to the U.K. to join his father.  (He now lives in Portland, Oregon.)  Since achieving fame in track and field, Farah returns once a year to Somaliland, where he has built two houses for relatives and set up a charity.  Earlier this year, he won £250,000 on the television quiz show The Cube, all of which goes to the charitable foundation he founded.  His family lives in a remote village near the border with Ethiopia.  His brother has to walk four miles to the nearest village with electricity to watch him compete.  At press time (it is the morning of August 11th in North America), he is about to attempt a second gold in the 5,000-meter run.  [Related articles: “Remembering Odumegwu Ojukwu: On Biafra and on an African Continent Riven by European Borders” (Nov. 2011), “Somalia the ‘Failed State’—So What Are Somaliland and Puntland? Chopped Liver?” (Feb. 2012), , “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics,” (July 2012), “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Mo Farah

Oromo Patriots Photoshop the Ethiopia out of Olympic Champions’ Photos.  A fad has developed online of Oromiyan athletes—those from Ethiopia’s Oromo nationality, who inhabit Ethiopia’s sprawling, southern Oromiya (also spelled Oromia) Region, bordering Kenya—being Photoshopped to erase their “Abyssinian” (i.e., Ethiopian in the sense that Ethiopia is dominated by the Amhara and closely allied peoples) and insert Oromian identity.  Ethiopian flags are replaced with the Oromian, and the word “Ethiopia” replaced with “Oromia.”  Pictured here are Tirunesh Dibaba and Tiki Gelana, both gold-medalist runners.  [Related articles: “Détente in Ethiopian Civil War—or U.S. Power Play in the Horn of Africa?” (Jan. 2012), “10 Ethnonationalist Causes That Might Disrupt the Olympics,” (July 2012), “Celts, Cypriots, Aborigines Raise Stink at Olympics: Ethnonationalist Protest Update,” (July 2012), “Olympic Update: Femen Protest, Bigoted Judokas, Sudanese Defectors” (Aug. 2012).]

Tirunesh Dibaba and Tiki Gelana, after Photoshopping

[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.]