Photo of the week: Brigadier-General Harinder Singh, commander of the United Nations’ North Kivu Brigade, leads a group of peacekeepers through a rural area of the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo. They don’t seem too optimistic.
TOP STORY:
U.N. HELICOPTERS TACKLE TUTSI REBELLION IN CONGO
AS MILITIAS MARCH ON KIVU’S CAPITAL
World Court Calls for Arrest of Lubanga Ally Bosco Ntaganda in Kivu Conflict. The United Nations’ International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in the Hague, in the Netherlands, put out a new arrest warrant on July 13th for Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes that include murder, rape, and sexual slavery. Ntaganda’s brother-in-arms, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, was sentenced by the I.C.C. (its first sentence ever handed down) on July 10th (as reported last week in this blog) to 14 years in prison for conscripting child soldiers during a 2002-03 civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.). Now Ntaganda, whose arrest the I.C.C. has already been seeking for six years, is believed to be the head of M23, an ethnically Tutsi militia that is currently displacing hundreds of thousands of people as it seeks to overtake towns in the D.R.C.’s eastern North Kivu province. Ntaganda was reported to be conscripting children as recently as two months ago in North Kivu. A second warrant was issued for Sylvestre Mudacumura, leader of an ethnically Hutu militia called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (F.D.L.R.), based in Kivu since Rwanda’s 1994 civil war, for war crimes committed in 2009 and 2010, including mutilation, torture, rape, pillaging, and murder.
U.N. ’Copters Join Civil War in Congo; 220,000 Displaced. The United Nations reported this week that now about 220,000 people have been displaced in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.) to escape the outbreak of civil war in North Kivu province, where a reformed Tutsi militia that had been absorbed into the Congolese military has mutinied (as reported in this blog last week) and recently, under the name M23, begun taking over several towns in Kivu. Meanwhile, tens of thousands are leaving the D.R.C. for Rwanda—a Tutsi-dominated country which the Congolese government blames for backing the rebellion—and Uganda. (Uganda’s legislature also this week demanded reassurances from President Yoweri Museveni that he is not covertly supporting M23.) There are also reports of children being conscripted into militias near the town of Rutshuru in North Kivu. The U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the D.R.C., the peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO, began on July 12th using helicopters to keep M23 rebels away from civilians near the North Kivu villages of Ngugo and Nysisi. By July 18th, forces from M23 and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (F.D.L.R.) were advancing on Goma, North Kivu’s capital, threatening the local Bambuti and Batwa ethnic groups along the way, but by the next day Congolese troops were reporting the capture of Walikale and other key towns from the rebels. Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, for his part, is denying any involvement in the M23 rebellion, despite a growing suspicion in the region that his intention is to sponsor a Tutsi buffer state in eastern Congo.
The U.N. attempting to defend Goma from Tutsi rebels
U.N. Opens Inquiry into 1961 Hammarskjöld Air Crash during Katanga Rebellion. The United Nations is opening an official inquiry into the mysterious plane crash that killed Dag Hammarskjöld, the U.N. secretary-general, in what was then the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Hammarskjöld, who was from Sweden originally, was flying on a crisis mission to the unrecognized State of Katanga, which had seceded from the Congolese dictatorship of Patrice Lumumba the year before as what Hammarskjöld, a fierce critic of Western corporate interests, suspected was a puppet state of powerful global, especially British, mining interests. An investigation last year by the English newspaper The Guardian provided evidence that the plane had been shot down by British-financed mercenaries in the semi-independent Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, in the part that is modern Zambia, and that colonial authorities covered up the crime. The investigatory panel will be chaired by Sir Stephen Sedley, of the United Kingdom. Other panelists are South African, Swedish, and Dutch.
The flag of the State of Katanga
AFRICA
(For the latest on the Republic of Mali, Ansar al-Dine, and the Independent State of Azawad, see this week’s special “Mali Update.”)
Police Doubt Boko Haram’s Claim of Credit for Fulani Massacre in Plateau. Authorities in Nigeria are casting doubt on the northern Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram’s claims of responsibility for a July 7th attack by predominantly-Muslim Fulanis in Plateau State which was followed by a cycle of violence including an attack on a funeral for victims at which two prominent politicians were killed (as reported last week in this blog). Over 100 people were killed in the weekend’s violence. Police feel sure, however, that the Fulani herdsmen who led the assault were in charge of the attacks and if Boko Haram was involved it was at the Fulanis’ request. Members of the Fulani ethnic group have long-standing land disputes with the predominantly-Christian Birom ethnic group who dominate Plateau State. Meanwhile, Apostle Chidi Macjossy, founder of a the General Assembly of All Igbo Christians Organizations and Ministries (GAAICOM), addressing a conference in Enugu, the former capital of the Republic of Biafra in what is now southeastern Nigeria, said that Igbos living in northern Nigeria made up a disproportionate share of Boko Haram’s victims and chided the central government for not providing adequate protection. “Igbos are out in the cold,” he said, “wandering like sheep without shepherd.” (See my recent special report in this blog on the Boko Haram insurgency, as well as my blog article listing northern Nigeria as one of “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012,” and an article discussing Nigeria in the context of other north–south divides in the Sahel.)
Strife Persists in Northern Nigeria as Army Mulls All-Out Offensive. Violence continued in northern Nigeria on July 15th with the assassination in Maidiguri, capital of Borno State, of Hajja Bayayi, a female local politician. There are no suspects or leads in the killing. Then, on July 16th, members of the radical Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram attacked three police targets in Damaturu, capital of Yobe State, in the Muslim-dominated northeast. Police retaliated, but there were no reports of casualties. The following day, an attack on a Muslim school in Jos, in the religiously mixed Plateau State in central Nigeria, with a rocket-propelled grenade killed a 10-year-old boy. There are no suspects. Also in Maiduguri, four traders were shot and killed by unknown gunmen on July 19th and two Boko Haram were killed in a police shootout, while on the same day in Kano, in north-central Nigeria, two civilians and a police officer were killed in a drive-by shooting. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Nigerian army, Capt. Salihu Mustapha, told the press that the army is planning raids on suspected Boko Haram hideouts in several Plateau State villages. Mustapha warned residents “to evacuate the areas to avoid being caught in crossfire when the operation begins.” The offensives appeared to have begun the morning of July 16th with a police raid on a Boko Haram hideout in Kaduna, in central Nigeria. Three were arrested. (See my recent special report in this blog on the Boko Haram insurgency, as well as my blog article listing northern Nigeria as one of “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012,” and an article discussing Nigeria in the context of other north–south divides in the Sahel.)
500 Igbos Rampage in Southeast Nigeria, Injuring 16, Burning Cars. In Onitsha, in southeastern Nigeria’s Anambra State, 16 people were injured after over 500 young people, mostly men and some armed, invaded a “motor park” (a station for catching “bush taxis”) and burned cars and buildings. It was apparently a continuation of ongoing violence (reported on last week in this blog) between disorganized militias loyal to the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), an Igbo nationalist movement, and Ndi Mpiawazu, known in full as the Anambra State Special Task Force against Street Trading. (See my blog article on the legacy of Nigeria’s Odumegwu Ojukwu, founder of the failed Republic of Biafra.)
Kenyan Minister Decries U.N. Somali Meeting on Autonomous Jubaland. A government minister for the Republic of Kenya, who spoke without revealing his name or portfolio, this week castigated the Coordinator of the United Nations’ Somalia and Eritrea Monitoring Group, Matthew Bryden, for a conference in Nairobi on June 28-30 (reported on at the time in this blog) which he called an unwarranted interference in the Somali Republic’s internal affairs and a threat to Kenya. The conference, under U.N. auspices—and called by Bryden, who is a Canadian with dual Canadian and Somali citizenship—brought together a delegation from the Puntland State of Somalia—the most successful self-governing entity in the nominally unified but mostly nonexistent Somali Republic—with representatives of an aspirant autonomous region in the extreme south of Somalia, near the Kenyan border. The conference was later touted in an official announcement by Puntland’s government expressing hope in an eventual “Federated States of the Federal Republic of Somalia” (sic) which would be a middle way between the current dysfunctionality of the Somali Republic’s internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.) and the tighter centralism the international community is contemplating supporting in Somalia. In 1998, the deposed Somali dictator Mohammed Siad Barre’s son-in-law Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan declared an independent Jubaland (also sometimes spelled Jubbaland) in the far-southern region in question, which was known in colonial times as Trans-Juba. In the past year, an aspirant autonomous region calling itself, variously, Jubaland, Azania, and (believe it or not) Greenland, tried to establish itself in the region. It not only was not authorized by the T.F.G. but was overrun when the T.F.G. invited an African Union (A.U.) military force from Ethiopia and Kenya to invade southern Somalia to root out the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militia al-Shabaab. The Kenyan minister’s statement was reported to media by a Wagosha organization in New York—the Wagosha being a non-Somali, Bantu-speaking minority in Jubaland who oppose the Puntland proposal. The unnamed minister, identified only as being from western Kenya, said that some Somali-Kenyan politicians (the Kenyan province adjoining Jubaland is dominated by ethnic Somalis) were collaborating with foreign governments “to conquer Jubbaland regions in Southern Somalia, while the majority clans in these regions were left totally out in the process.” He accused Kenya’s minister of defense, Mohamed Yusuf Haji, of assuring the Kenyan cabinet that “all other clans opposing the Nairobi meeting will be silenced easily.” Haji is, according to the Wagosha report, closely related to Mohamed Abdi Gandi, an Ethiopian warlord who was one of the co-founders of last year’s failed Jubaland/Azania state. Kenya has suffered more than any other sub-Saharan African nation from spillover of al-Qaeda terrorism from the Muslim world. Opinion is divided as to whether an autonomous Jubaland would make it easier or harder for al-Qaeda or al-Shabaab to establish bases within striking distance of Kenya. (See my blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)
Map showing the approximate extent of the aspired-to Jubaland State in southern Somalia
Amnesty Urges Somaliland to Release Imprisoned Sanaag King. King Mahmoud Osman Buurmadow, a traditional leader from the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland’s Sanaag region, who had been sentenced July 8th (as reported in this blog last week) to a year in prison for insulting public officials, was freed on July 18th from his solitary cell in Hargeisa, the capital. Amnesty International had called for his release, labeling him a prisoner of conscience and expressing concern about his move into the notoriously harsh Mandera Prison, where he was being denied needed medication. The king was first arrested March 15th upon his return to Hargeisa from the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), where he had publicly disparaged a state visit (or should we call it a “pseudostate visit”?) by Somaliland’s president, Ahmed Mahamoud Silanyo, to the People’s Republic of China. Earlier, from November 2011 to January 2012, he had been imprisoned in the U.A.E.—in what amounted, according to Amnesty, to a forced disappearance—at the behest of the Somaliland government for similar charges connected to criticizing Silanyo. (See my blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)
British to Open Consulate in Somaliland Capital. The United Kingdom’s ambassador to the Somali Republic said in Hargeisa, capital of the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland, this week that his country would open a consulate in the city soon. The ambassador, John William Matthew Bough, who operates his diplomatic mission in Nairobi, Kenya, made the comments during his first visit to Somaliland. (See my blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)
Puntland Journalist Beaten, Life Threatened by Governor’s Security Detail. A television journalist in the fully self-governing Puntland State of Somalia was threatened and beaten by a regional governor’s security detail on July 12th in Bosaso, Puntland’s primary harbor town. The journalist, Ahmed Muse Ali, a.k.a. Ahmed Jokar, who works for Bosaso’s Royal T.V. and is also a union official, was covering a Somali Republic presidential candidate’s appearance at a local hotel, when he was, in his words, “called by the governor outside the hotel and he yelled at me ordering his guards to shoot me. I did not move, they beat me, tore my trousers, took my cell phone, and broke my camera.” The governor in question was Abdisamad Mohamed Gallan, who runs Puntland’s Bari region, which includes Bosaso. The incident has provoked an outcry from the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), of whose “Supreme Council” Ahmed Jokar is a member. (See my blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)
Ahmed Jokar displays the damage
Yemeni Would-Be Terrorist Arrested Arriving on Puntland Coast. Security forces in the Puntland State of Somalia on July 19th arrested a Yemeni man, who was in charge of a boat, bristling with guns and bombs, for plotting terrorist attacks. He and a Somali man were both arrested after apparently arriving from Yemen by sea in Bari province, at the very tip of the Horn of Africa. Al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-affiliated militia which controls much of southern Somalia, has recently expanded to Puntland, with plans to destabilize the self-governing statelet. (See my blog article on the fragmentation of Somalia.)
Zanzibar Separatists Battle Riot Police in Wake of Funeral for Ferry Victims. Riot police in Zanzibar battled with the separatist group Uamsho on July 20th in the streets near a mosque where services were being held for victims of a major ferry disaster near the archipelago on July 18th. Uamsho had blocked a busy downtown road after Friday prayers and threw stones at police, inviting volleys of tear-gas and power-hose blasts. Uamsho, which wants the predominantly-Muslim Zanzibar region to secede from the predominantly-Christian United Republic of Tanzania, has been banned from holding any public gatherings after a violent rampage in May (as reported at the time in this blog).
Barotse Call for Tax Protest over Zambian President’s Disparagement of King. Scores of members of the Lozi (a.k.a. Barotse) nationality in western Zambia rallied in Mongu, capital of the Barotse-dominated Western Province, July 14th, marching to the police station with placards. Representatives of the demonstrators then held a closed-door parley with the police. By July 16th they were planning to march as well on the Permanent Secretary’s office in Mongu. Then, on July 18th, flyers were circulated in Mongu and c.c.-ed to the president in Lusaka, asking Barotse people to stop paying taxes to the Zambian government and instead to pay them to the Barotse Royal Establishment (B.R.E.). At issue in this latest eruption of public outrage are “disparaging” and “derogatory” comments made last week (as reported in this blog) by Zambia’s president, Michael Sata, about the Barotse king, Lubosi Imwiko II, whom Sata called a “nobody” with no real power. The B.R.E. has in recent months been spearheading a drive for Barotseland—which, in British colonial times, was a separate colony from the rest of what is now Zambia—to secede.
Casamance Rebel Ready for Talks with Government. A leader of the separatist movement in southern Senegal’s Casamance region told a reporter this week that he was ready to negotiate with the central government. The leader, César Atoute Badiate, who heads one faction of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (M.F.D.C.), said, “A new president, Macky Sall, is in place. He must respect his electoral promises.” The war in Casamance has been simmering at at least a low level since 1982. Like all Senegalese leaders, Sall, who took office in April, pledged to end the crisis. (See my recent article including a profile of the colonial-era Casamance rebel Aline Sittoe Diatta.)
Senegal (red and green), with the Casamance region shown in red.
EUROPE
1 Cleric Critical of Radical Islam Killed, 1 Hurt in Coordinated Hits in Tatarstan. In dual attacks on moderate Muslim leaders in the Russian Federation’s Republic of Tatarstan, the republic’s deputy head mufti was shot dead on July 19th and the head mufti himself was injured by a car bomb. The dead man, Valiulia Yakupov, was shot six times outside his house in Kazan, the republican capital. Almost simultaneously, Ildus Faizov, the head mufti, was hurt in the leg after a planted bomb demolished his car, also in Kazan. Five suspects have been arrested in connection with the killings. Meanwhile, Muhammedgali Huzin, mufti of the nearby Russian province called Perm Krai, claimed that earlier this year he had warned Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, of Tatar muftis’ vulnerability to assassination. Tatarstan is the one area in Russia, outside the strife-torn North Caucasus region, where the Caucasus Emirate movement—which would like Russia’s Muslim regions to secede as a Salafist theocracy—is active, and both Yakupov and Faizov had been vocal critics of the radical Islamists. Tatarstan, the center of the medieval Khanate of Kazan and of the brief-lived Menshevik-allied Idel-Ural State during the Russian Civil War (1918-1920), was one of two republics (Chechnya is the other) which refused to join Boris Yeltsin’s new Federation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but after two years of announced independence, it signed on in 1994 in exchange for enhanced autonomy.
What they do to moderate muftis in Tatarstan
Ex-Cop Charged with Abetting Chechen-Led Squad That Killed Anti-Putin Reporter. In Russia, a retired policeman was charged in court on July 16th with helping plan the 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was investigating government abuses such as human-rights violations in President Vladimir Putin’s brutal anti-secessionist wars in Chechnya. The defendant, Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, was charged with tailing Politkovskaya around Moscow in the days before her murder and of providing her killer with the murder weapon. Investigators place a Chechen, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, as the leader of the six-man hit squad, including Pavlyuchenkov, at the center of the case.
Russian Troops Kill Canadian Ex-Boxer, 9 Others Dead in North Caucasus Unrest. In the village of Utamysh in the Russian Federation’s Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, a lawless zone plagued by Islamist separatism, the Russian military killed seven militants (including a most-wanted) in a gun battle, on July 14th. One soldier was also killed in that operation. The same day, another militant was killed by the military in the nearby Kabardino-Balkar Republic, while two policeman were killed July 14th in a drive-by shooting in Dagestan. Then, on July 17th, another militant, who opened fire on police, was shot and killed in the village of Tsalak in Dagestan. Later, it emerged that one of the dead in Utamysh was one William Plotnikov, a 23-year-old former student at Seneca College in Toronto, Ontario, who held Canadian citizenship. Canada’s government is looking into the matter. In April, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) said that “at least 45 Canadians, possibly as many as 60,” had joined al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations abroad. On July 19th, in the North Caucasus’s Republic of Ingushetia, unidentified men attacked police officers with a grenade launcher in Nazran, the republic’s largest city and former capital. Four police were injured.
Flag of the short-lived Ikaria Free State
Kosovo Gets Millions from I.M.F., but a Delay from FIFA. The International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) this week agreed to pay €48 million to the Republic of Kosovo while it still has not become swept along by the European financial crisis, “due to limited trade and financial links with the rest of Europe,” as an I.M.F. report put it. Western and Eastern Europe are divided over the question of Kosovo, which the Republic of Serbia still regards as part of its territory. Meanwhile, in Zurich, Switzerland, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) said it will delay further moves on allowing Kosovo’s football (soccer) team to play internationally until late September, after Serbia has formed its new government. (See my article on the Kosovo conflict.)
German Parliament Moves to Protect Religious Circumcision. After a controversial Cologne court ruling on June 26th (reported on at the time in this blog) which declared infant circumcision a form of illegal bodily mutilation, the lower house of Germany’s parliament on July 19th passed a motion preparing the way for a law that protects the religious-based circumcision of Muslim and Jewish boys. The original ruling had drawn an outcry from the human-rights community, from Germany’s Jews and Muslims, and from the chancellor, Angela Merkel, who said it risked making Germany look like a “laughing stock.”
Oslo Police Chase 200 Roma from Church Grounds to Squalid Gravel Pit. City authorities in Oslo, Norway, evicted on July 14th from the grounds of an historic church in the fashionable Grünerløkka neighborhood about 200 migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, members of the Roma (Gypsy) minority, who have been living homeless throughout Oslo for months and moved to the site to avoid police harassment. Police claim in their defense that they are only trying to enforce regulations against camping in the city. But the following day they accepted an offer from the owners of a disused gravel pit in the Årvoll district north of downtown, leading to an outcry from local residents who had already been in conflict with the pit’s owners, Årvoll Eiendom, over the use of the property, and sowing divisions as well among the firm’s partners. One owner, Albert Hæhre, said that his co-owner had extended the invitation without his knowledge and that the property, which has no facilities whatsoever, was unfit for human habitation.
A Roma (Gypsy) camp in Oslo
Basque Terror Suspect Arrested in Scotland Resists Extradition. A Basque separatist who was captured in a raid in Edinburgh, Scotland, July 13th (as reported last week in this blog), appeared at a preliminary extradition hearing July 16th, where his lawyer, Aamer Anwar, told the Scottish court that he “does not consent to the extradition proceedings and denies any wrongdoing in France or in Spain.” The defendant, Beñat Atorrasagasti Ordóñez, who is 36, had been on the run since 2001. He was arrested under a Europe-wide warrant for transporting “materials and persons between France and Spain for ETA”—meaning Euskadi Ta Askatusana (“Basque Homeland and Freedom”), the Basque separatist terror organization. He had been tried in absentia in Paris in 2008 and sentenced to five years in prison, though he says he is not a terrorist and is innocent of all charges. (See my blog article listing the Basque warrior Idoia López Riaño, a.k.a. la Tigresa, as one of “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists.”)
Catalan Separatist Using Porn-Star Girlfriend to Reclaim Barcelona Football Presidency. A prominent figure in both European football and in separatist politics in Catalonia, Joan Laporta, is taking an unusual approach in his bid to reclaim his job as president of Futbol Club Barcelona, one of the world’s most successful football (soccer) teams and a symbol of Catalan national identity: he has a new television spot featuring his supporter and rumored girlfriend, the porn-film star María Lapiedra singing and shimmying in support of his re-election. (You can watch the video here.) Laporta is founder of the Catalan separatist party Democràcia Catalana and a grassroots organization called Catalan Solidarity for Independence. In 2010, his party placed him as a member of Catalonia’s regional parliament. Lapiedra has long been a supporter of an independent Catalonia. Her film work includes Hasta que el sexo no separe (Till Sex Do Us Part) (2009), La montaña rusa (The Roller Coaster) (2012), and Ni pies ni cabeza (Neither Heads nor Tails) (2012) (that must make sense as something dirty in Catalan) and is the author of the 2009 book Follar te vuelve loco (Fuck You Crazy) (okay, well, that one translates just fine) and a forthcoming novel. She has a degree in philology. It is not known whether she is also a supporter of the southern Philippines independence movement the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). (See my article profiling Lapiedra as one of “The World’s 21 Sexiest Separatists.”)
María Lapiedra
BITS OF ASIA WHICH LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE
Georgia Moves Border Checkpoint, Shifting Strip of Land out of South Ossetia. It emerged this week that the Republic of Georgia has unilaterally moved the de facto border between the de facto rump Georgia and the de facto independent Republic of South Ossetia a few hundred meters by shifting a police checkpoint unannounced. The checkpoint was moved on June 29th from the village of Mereti to the village of Zaardiantkari, displacing residents in the process, though previously displaced Georgians have not moved back into the newly reabsorbed strip of land. South Ossetia, along with another territory, Abkhazia, unilaterally declared independence from the newly independent Republic of Georgia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation secured the republics’ separation from Georgia in a brief 2008 war, but only a handful of nations recognize the two states. (See my blog article on South Ossetia’s recent contested presidential elections.)
Ankvab Nixes Major Russian Highway Project through Abkhazia. The president of the de facto independent Republic of Abkhazia, Alexander Ankvab, on July 19th poured cold water all over reported plans to build a major highway through Abkhazia and Karachay-Cherkessia to connect the North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation with the Black Sea. Ankvab said he was not in the loop on the project and that it would not go forward. The highway project has been supported by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the president and prime minister of Russia, Abkhazia’s patron state, though one with which Ankvab’s administration is increasingly uneasy. In particular, Ankvab cited environmental concerns, saying, “I, as a citizen and head of the republic, am against the project, especially since the Kodori Gorge is a unique natural monument for us. We must keep it intact. This is my firm conviction.”
Alexander Ankvab waves an Abkhaz flag at the North Pole,
but he won’t let the Russians plant theirs on his Black Sea coast.
Abkhazia Backtracks from Recognizing Paganism as State Religion. The de facto independent Republic of Abkhazia (see article above), which most of the world regards as part of the Republic of Georgia, has changed a draft law on religion, removing paganism from the list of “state religions.” Instead, Eastern Orthodox Christianity will be recognized as having a primary role in Abkhaz life, while public institutions will be secular. Vissarion Apliaa, head of the Abkhaz Orthodox Church—which last month severed the last of its ties with the Orthodox churches of Georgia and Russia (as reported in this blog)—said, regarding the omission of paganism, that paganism as a full belief system was dead in Abkhazia, adding, “Paganism is people’s verbal tradition and folklore. It has always been, and it should be noted that even ‘pagan’ beliefs of Abkhazians were monotheistic, rather than polytheistic as many other nations. Christianity is a great culture that all peoples living on this planet should take as a starting point.”
Vissarion Apliaa, making a point about paganism.
That’s Abkhazia’s very fetching coat-of-arms displayed on his desk.
Incumbent Saakian Re-elected President in Nagorno-Karabakh. The incumbent, Bako Saakian, with almost exactly two-thirds of the vote, 66.7%, won the July 18th presidential election in the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.), also known as the Artsakh Republic, which was carved out of the Republic of Azerbaijan’s western flank and ethnically cleansed by forces from Armenia and Russia after the fall of Communism and is not recognized by any other state. The former deputy minister of defense, Vitaly Balasanyan, won 32.5% of the vote. 73% of the republic’s 98,909 voters cast ballots. The election was loudly condemned by nearly every major nation and international organization, other than the Republic of Armenia.
Casting a vote in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Azerbaijan Threatens to Shoot Down Civilian Aircraft from Nagorno-Karabakh. Amid presidential elections in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (N.K.R.) (see article immediately above), the Republic of Azerbaijan threatened on July 16th to shoot down any civilian planes from the N.K.R. that stray into what it regards as Azerbaijani airspace—including flights between Yerevan, Armenia, and Stepanakert, N.K.R., that fly only over territory controlled by Armenia and the N.K.R. This follows a statement from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (O.S.C.E.) task force on the N.K.R. conflict, the Minsk Group, that all sides had agreed to refrain from force against civilian aircraft. The N.K.R. was carved out of Azerbaijan’s western flank and ethnically cleansed by forces from Armenia and Russia after the fall of Communism. No state, not even Armenia, formally recognizes its independence. Meanwhile, the Azeri-Armenian border remains tense, with an Azeri army officer killed by an Armenian sniper on July 20th. (See my blog article on the N.K.R., Armenia, and South Caucasus geopolitics.)
Turkish Police Battle Kurds in Diyarbakir Protest; 1 Killed in Şırnak. In southeastern Turkey’s separatist Kurdistan region, riot police fought with water cannons and teargas on July 14th against Kurdish protesters that included members of Turkey’s parliament. The fighting occurred during a demonstration (for which the authorities had denied a permit) by the Peace and Democracy Party (B.D.P.), a mainstream pro-Kurdish political party, in Diyarbakir, the notional capital of Turkish Kurdistan. The protesters—who were focusing on demands for the release of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned founder and spiritual leader of the banned militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.)—threw stones at police and set up barricades. There were at least 20 injuries, including both sides, one of whom was a B.D.P. deputy. Meanwhile, it was reported July 14th that one Turkish soldier was killed in a battle with the P.K.K. in Şırnak province, and on July 18th the Turkish military launched what it said was a massive crackdown on the Kurdish drug trade, which it says is linked to the P.K.K. (though Germany’s intelligence service issued a report last year saying there was no evidence whatsoever of P.K.K. drug-trafficking). On July 20th, near the border with Syria, a pipeline carrying oil from Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, to Ceyhan, in southeast Turkey, exploded and caught fire. Authorities are blaming the P.K.K. for sabotage in the incident. (See my blog article on this spring’s Kurdish uprisings and another article on shifting alliances in the Kurdish struggle, plus another article listing Kurdistan as one of “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”)
Kurdish riots in Diyarbakir
Turkey Begins Trying 46 Lawyers for Aiding Terrorists in Defending Öcalan. Fifty defendants, including 46 lawyers, went on trial in Istanbul, Turkey, July 16th on charges over their involvement in legally representing Abdullah Öcalan, the revered founder and spiritual leader of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), now imprisoned in Turkey’s notorious İmralı island prison (made famous in the book and film Midnight Express). They are charged with offenses such as passing messages from Öcalan to P.K.K. rebels operating on the Turkish mainland. One of the defendants, Doğan Erbaş, told the court, “How bitterly funny is it that a country teaching democracy and human rights to Syria and the whole region is stealing the right to defense on its own soil. Going to bed as a lawyer and waking up as an executive of a terrorist organization shows that this case is not trying a crime, it is trying a political stance. This case has been political since the very start.” Outside the courtroom, a crowd of lawyers from 27 different countries supported the defendants. (See my blog article on this spring’s Kurdish uprisings and another article on shifting alliances in the Kurdish struggle, plus another article listing Kurdistan as one of “Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”)
ASIA—MIDDLE EAST
Rival Kurdish Militias in Syrian Civil War Bury Hatchet under Barzani’s Auspices. In Arbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, two organizations representing West Kurdistan (as Kurdish nationalists call the Kurdish-populated parts of Syria) pledged unity in the ongoing struggle against the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war. The agreement, by the Kurdish National Council (K.N.C.) and the People’s Assembly of Western Kurdistan, was presided over by Massoud Barzani, president of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (K.R.G.). The P.A.W.K. (these are my initials, but they are a new organization so they may choose a different acronym) emerged recently from Syria’s Democratic Union Party (P.Y.D.), after a breakdown in relations between the P.Y.D. and other Kurdish groups. In general, the P.Y.D. had been closely allied with the peshmerga of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), the banned militant separatist army in southeastern Turkey, while the K.N.C. has been more closely allied with the K.R.G. Relations between the two factions reached a low point recently on July 3rd, when the P.Y.D. and a Kurdish faction of the Free Syrian Army (F.S.A.) known as the Kurdish Salahadin Brigade, fought, killing two prominent Kurds. At issue were accusations that the P.Y.D. was siding with the P.K.K. and against Kurds in the mainstream Syrian opposition. (See my blog article on this spring’s Kurdish uprisings and another article on shifting alliances in the Kurdish struggle, plus another on prospects for the partition of Syria.)
Map showing where Kurds live in Syria
Teenager Shot Dead in Shiite Attack on Saudi Police Station. Deadly street protests sparked by the shooting and arrest on July 8th (as reported in this blog) of a radical Shiite cleric in the rigidly Sunni-dominated authoritarian Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continued on July 13th when an 18-year-old protester was shot and killed by security forces in Awamiyah, in Eastern Province, the vast coastal desert region which is home to most of Saudi Arabia’s marginalized Shiite minority. The killing occurred when a police station was attacked by masked gunmen on motorcycles throwing Molotov cocktails, according to the official Saudi press. Four police were injured in the incident. The anti-regime demonstrations have become more strident, now calling for the downfall of the al-Saud royal family.
ASIA—SOUTH ASIA
India Extends Ban on Liberation Tigers, Worried over Tamil Nadu Separatism. The Republic of India’s ministry of home affairs has extended for another two years its ban on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (L.T.T.E.), the ethnic insurgency that waged war for a separate state against the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka for 23 years until Sri Lankan forces defeated them in 2009. India calls the Tigers a threat to India as well, in particular their capacity to arouse separatism in the state of Tamil Nadu, which faces Sri Lanka across a narrow strait of the Bay of Bengal. The L.T.T.E. was first banned in India after the 1991 assassination by L.T.T.E. operatives of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Meanwhile, a Tamil separatist was sentenced to life in prison by an Indian court in Chennai on July 19th for a foiled bomb plot against Tamil Nadu’s chief minister in 1990. He was a member of the organization Tamilar Pasarai. (See my blog article featuring a profile of the Tamil activist Mathangi “Maya” Marulpragasam, a.k.a. “M.I.A.”)
India’s large state of Tamil Nadu faces the island of Sri Lanka just across the water
Indian Police Bust Hmar Rebel Leader from Mizoram at New Delhi Airport. Police at New Delhi’s airport arrested on July 17th a leader of the Hmar People’s Convention–Democrats (H.P.C.–D), a militant separatist organization operating in India’s remote and ethnically diverse far northeast. The leader, H. Sangbera, was arriving on a flight from Imphal, capital of the northeastern Manipur state. Police from Mizoram were also involved in his arrest. Thirty-two different charges were laid against him, including terrorism.
Indian Police Kill Kashmiri Separatist near Line of Control. Police in Srinagar, capital of the portion of Jammu and Kashmir controlled by the Republic of India, announced on July 17th that Indian security forces had killed a separatist guerilla in the northwestern part of Indian Kashmir, near the “Line of Control” separating it from areas controlled by Pakistan. A state police unit “cordoned off an area of Zachaldara forests in Kupwara district following reports about the presence of militants there. When asked to surrender, the hiding militants opened fire on the security forces, triggering a gunfight which has now ended. One militant has been killed.”
Dalai Lama Preaches Peace to Kashmir, Angering Some Separatists. The 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and of those resisting rule over Tibet by the People’s Republic of China, began this week a six-day visit to Kashmir, the separatist Muslim region in India, his first visit in 24 years. Addressing Tibetan schoolchildren in Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital, he said, “Violence will lead nowhere. Differences and disagreements should be resolved through dialogue.” Some Kashmiri activists criticized the Dalai Lama for not directly those comments more squarely at the Indian government as well. Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, leader of Kashmir’s moderate separatists, was more blunt, saying, “Peace is only possible with justice. Until justice is done, there cannot be peace.” Srinagar is not far from Kashmir’s border with the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where the Dalai Lama presides, with Indian protection, over the Tibetan government-in-exile, called the Central Tibet Administration, in Dharamsala. (See my blog article on China and Tibetan Buddhism.)
ASIA—EAST ASIA
Tibetan Monk Self-Immolates in Sichuan, Crowds Block Police. In the People’s Republic of China’s Sichuan province, another young Tibetan Buddhist monk self-immolated on July 17th in protest over Chinese rule in Tibet. The monk, Lobsang Luzin, set himself afire near a central-government office, and sympathetic Tibetans blocked a bridge to prevent police from arriving quickly to the scene. Luzin is one of 44 monks who have taken the fatal step in the past three years. Recently, most Tibetan self-immolations have been not in the heavily policed (and Orwellianly misnamed Tibet “Autonomous” Region itself but in culturally and historically Tibetan portions of adjacent Chinese provinces such as Sichuan and Qinghai. (See my blog article on China and Tibetan Buddhism.)
Aid Workers Warn of Humanitarian Disaster in Burma’s Rohingya Camps. Humanitarian aid workers warned this week of a humanitarian disaster in the making in western Burma, where tens of thousands of members of a disenfranchised Muslim minority near the border with Bangladesh are living in squalid refugee camps. Humanitarian groups describe the camps as “open-air prisons.” Meanwhile, Amnesty International reports that the Muslim minority, called Rohingyas, are still the targets of violence, including murder and rape, six weeks after cores were killed in a series of bloody reprisals last month (as reported at the time in this blog) between the Rohingyas and members of Burma’s Buddhist majority—violence of which Rohingyas bore the brunt. The rapidly reforming military junta which rules Burma as the Republic of the Union of Myanmar says the camps will remain in place for a year. Meanwhile, human-rights groups are excoriating the newly liberated opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, for her silence on the Rohingya situation, even as she loudly champions other kinds of reforms, including reconciliation with Burma’s many other non-Muslim minorities. Meanwhile, the Burmese junta is still imprisoning 10 aid-workers who were arrested during the Rohingya unrest last month, including three employees with the United Nations World Food Programme, three Burmese employees of the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (U.N.H.C.R.), and an unspecified number of workers for Doctors without Borders. The U.N.H.C.R., while asking for its employees’ release, is also demanding that the junta grant Burmese citizenship to the Rohingya population, which, at 800,000 people, is considered the largest stateless population in the world. Meanwhile, Bangladesh continues to prevent Rohingyas from crossing the border. On July 17th, Bangladeshi border police sent back 16 Rohingyas who had trespassed across the line. (See my blog article on prospects for Burma’s ethnic minorities.)
Burmese troops on patrol last month in the wake of the anti-Rohingya violence
China Allows Kachin Refugees to Stay in Camps for Time Being. The People’s Republic of China announced this week that Kachin refugees from the civil war in eastern Burma living in two camps on the Chinese side of the border would be allowed to stay, following an outcry (reported at the time in this blog) over reports that Chinese authorities were sending them back into Burma (now known officially as Myanmar). The camp residents have been advised to practice hygiene, keep the noise from motorcycles down, and refrain from drug trafficking. (See my blog article on prospects for Burma’s ethnic minorities.)
Rights Group Accuses Both Burmese Military and Ethnic Rebels of Using Landmines. The international organization Landmine Monitor issued a statement this week stating that both the government of Burma and the ethnic insurgencies it is battling are using landmines. Human Rights Watch last year reported that the Kachin Independence Army (K.I.A.), as well as the military, was laying mines. The military junta which runs Burma under the name Republic of the Union of Myanmar says it no longer uses mines and, as part of its accelerated process of reforms, it may join the international Ottawa Treaty forswearing the use of landmines—a treaty, by the way, which the United States, to its shame (and both political parties are to blame for this), still refuses to sign. Nearly every other Western democracy has done so. (See my blog article on prospects for Burma’s ethnic minorities.)
3 Dead, 6 Hurt in Coordinated Drive-By Attacks in Thailand’s Muslim Region. Two civilians and a soldier were killed July 17th in two coordinated attacks in southern Thailand’s Narathiwat province, one of three provinces where ethnically-Malay Muslims are seeking to establish a separate state. In the first attack, in Rueso, a predominantly Buddhist village, a gang of militants riding pick-up trucks and motorcycles killed two civilians, including an elderly woman, in a drive-by shooting and injured two others. The gang then opened fire on a nearby military base, killing one soldier and injuring four others. An army spokesman said about 25 militants took part in the attacks.
OCEANIA
Housing Estate Splits from New South Wales, Joins “Free State of Australia.” Members of an illegal housing complex in the municipality of Shoalhaven, on the southeastern coast of Australia, have responded to an order for their eviction by declaring secession from the state of New South Wales. Read the full blog article on this news story here.
New Zealand Premier’s Rejection of Native Water Rights Divides Māori Parties. Media in New Zealand are reporting that the repercussions of Prime Minister John Key’s controversial comments against indigenous Māori marine-tenure rights (reported last week in this blog) have sown divisions in internal Māori politics as well. Key has said that his government could, if it wished, ignore any eventual findings on the subject by the Waitangi Tribunal, a permanent independent commission tasked with interpreting the Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document; it functions as a kind of constitutional court, with considerable moral authority but only in an advisory capacity. The New Zealand Māori Council’s co-chair, Maanu Paul, has now called the Māori Party—which has pursued Māori causes from a perspective of traditional indigenous rights—“virtually useless” for its perceived entrenchment with mainstream politics and the New Zealand government. The Māori Party supported Key’s ruling National Party in the 2008 elections and received two cabinet positions. Annette Sykes, president of the Mana Party—a socialist offshoot of the Māori Party which focuses more on economic rights—said, of the Māori Party, “When you’re given the baubles of the Crown to sit at a table and you are having those baubles taken away, it does sometimes impact on moral appropriateness.” As if to prove Sykes’s point, the Māori Party co-chair, Tariana Turia, met with Key on July 18th in a closed-door meeting, telling the press afterward that Key had not apologized but that he had not needed to and both were happy with the outcome of the meeting. However, Key did promise that he would not legislate against any Tribunal findings on the subject of water rights. A Tribunal ruling is expected by the end of the month.
Tariana Turia and John Key see eye to eye. Some Māori say that’s the whole problem.
NORTH AMERICA
Hutaree Militia Member in Michigan Avoids Prison after Plea Deal. In Michigan, a former member of the right-wing extremist Hutaree Militia, learned July 13th that he will not need to return to prison when prosecutors decided that his two years served were sufficient, though he will be on probation for at least two years. The defendant, Joshua Clough, was one of nine Hutaree members rounded up when the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) broke up the group in 2008. Charges of conspiring to overthrow the United States government were dropped in March of this year (as reported at the time in this blog), and in April Clough was released from jail after pleading guilty to weapons charges. Hutaree means “Christian warrior” in the group’s private jargon. Their motto was, “Preparing for the end times battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive,” and among their aims was the creation, from six rural counties in Michigan, of an independent but anarchistic territory to be called the Colonial Christian Republic, ruled only by God’s law. (See my blog article from last week about another Hutaree member, Thomas Piatek.)
Now that that misunderstanding is cleared up, Josh Clough can return to the End Times battle.
[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.]
